Velveteen Mind

Mom Writers Literary Magazine Takes on a New Cover Editor and oh! The Fun Begins.

At the height of my morning sickness, I wasn’t checking my email or logging onto the computer at all for days at a time, and then only to check our bank balance.  When I would check my email, there would be several messages along the lines of, “Where is your article?” and “How far along in your cover feature are you?” and “You are killing us.  We go to print in two days.”

I would crawl away from the toilet long enough to reply, “Yep, almost done.  It’s smashing.  You’ll love it.  Just polishing it up.”  After which I would crawl back to the toilet and gaze at my reflection which was staring back and asking, “Really?  This is how you are going to play it?  Because last time I checked you hadn’t even read your notes since the interview.”

Toilet Water Megan is snarky and impatient.  She takes no crap.  Er, well, hmmmm.

To be fair, I am a master procrastinator, yes.  But I had lost so much energy and so many brain cells that I literally started crying one day because I couldn’t remember if salutations should include a comma before the name.  I wrote “Hey, Paula,” and “Hey Paula,” dozens of times before I finally gave up.  My brain was gone, replaced by pregnant mush capable only of calculating the time and distance to the bathroom from any given point in the house.

Our story ends brilliantly well, fortunately, as I managed to deliver my very first cover feature for Mom Writers Literary Magazine without a hitch.  This may be the first my publisher and editors have heard of my deceptions, in fact.  Rest assured, however, that I more or less write the exact same content regardless of whether it is delivered early or at deadline. 

This way was much more exciting though, right?  …I’m going with “Right.”

All of this is to proudly announce that I have accepted the position of Cover Editor at Mom Writers Literary Magazine.  My job is to write the cover feature each issue, which is pretty much exactly what I would have begged to do anyway.  Published quarterly, it is an engaging mix of interviews, essays, and poetry by mom writers. 

They gave me plenty of room to stretch my legs on my first feature, too.  Incredibly good news because my first interview was with Asha Dornfest of ParentHacks.com and I am just as long-winded on the phone as I am on this blog.  But who wouldn’t be when discussing the nitty gritty of blogging with someone as fascinating as Asha?  I even let Asha talk a little.

Note to self:  When the transcript has more “Megan” paragraphs than “Asha” paragraphs, you’ve gone off the tracks somewhere.

As it turns out, the Spring issue is focused on Mom Bloggers.  Right up your alley?  Subscribe today and the Spring issue (with my fingers-crossed gorgeous feature on Asha) should arrive at your doorstep within about a week.  Mom bloggers not your interest but mom writers more your thing?  Subscribe and enjoy a plethora of insightful interviews with the most talented mom writers publishing today.

Seriously, people, this is my first published piece.  My first “clip,” as it were.  The editors said they loved it, but I trust you, so check it out and tell me if I should throw in the towel and start writing snarky stories about the other moms in the pick-up line or not.  And if you do enjoy it, definitely drop Asha a line. 

I think I had her fooled into thinking I’d done this before, too.  Psych!

…  Suddenly I’m thinking that I no longer need an editor so much as I need a PR pro.  A spin doctor that would keep me from divulging my secrets and rather put a glossy spin on my mind-boggling writing skills.  Now then, let me try this again…

Grab your own subscription now and I’ll throw in a bonus!  Bring your Mom Writers Literary Magazine with my Asha Dornfest cover feature to BlogHer and I’ll autograph it for you!  Or, um, just sign Asha’s name.  Or explain why I asked her that question.  Or what I was thinking when I wrote that other thing.  Or give you a couple of bucks back because, hello, hack?  Whatever you want.

(I’m seriously just kidding about the autograph thing.  My ego is not that massive.)

Yeah, now hiring a PR specialist.  I just write the stuff.  I have no idea how to sell it.

In the meantime…  free stuff!

Leave a comment that bolsters my publisher and editors’ faith in mah mad writing skills (or really any comment) and I’ll randomly select 3 commenters to receive a copy of the Fall/ Winter 2008 issue featuring Melissa Stanton, former Senior Editor at People and LIFE magazines, author of The Stay-at-Home Survival Guide, and force behind both the MotherVerse Blog and Real Life Support for Moms.

I didn’t write anything in that issue but I’ll be happy to doodle on the cover, if you want.  (again, no haters, I’m kidding.)

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The one where I go Jack-Jack on Miss Musing.

Yeesh.  I had changed my mind about writing about this today, but a quick glance at my incoming traffic told me that hundreds of you are poking around by way of The Jet Set, apparently by way of cjane enjoy it.

What follows is my explanation, as briefly as I can (which will be something because, new readers, I don’t do brief very well), as to how an unknown-to-me blogger turned me into Jack Jack from The Incredibles this Saturday.

(hmmmm, short…  short…  succinct…  to the point…  do that how?…)

I know!  We’ll make it like a play!  Oh yeah, this will be fun.  Ditch the prose and we’re in action.

***

Aaaaannd…  Action!

(open on Saturday morning when I know better than to check my email…)

Megan:  at her computer opening email expectantly… Surely I’ll have heard from Matt Lauer today…

Megan’s email:  You’ve been PWNED!  (okay, I’m not even that cool and had to look the term up to make sure I was using it correctly.  I can’t even pretend.)

Megan:  Say what?

email from Onnuh:  You’ve been plagiarized by Miss Musing.  Here are her posts and here is your post that she stole.

Megan:  exhaling wearily because I get weird spam sometimes and so don’t bother to click the links

email from Azucar:  You’ve been plagiarized by Miss Musing.  Here are her posts and here is your post that she stole.

Megan:  Oh no she di’int!

Megan clicks on the links.  Megan falls out of her chair.

On the computer screen, the audience sees Miss Musing’s posts:

Megan frowns but thinks maybe it’s only a couple of lines… 

She opens the next post:

Megan switches tabs to her own post and turns bright red and possibly grows horns as she appears to morph into Jack Jack at the end of The Incredibles, fireball turned lead weight turned devil:

Megan:  Oh. no. she. did. not.

Aaaaaaand….  Scene!

***

That, folks, is not scraping.  That’s not copying and pasting a bit of text along with a link to the original work. 

That is plagiarism.

Miss Musing took what I wrote and turned it into two posts of her own.  Not as an inspiration, but literally took the actual words and fit them into her own post.  The second post, by the way, I am near positive she completely fabricated given the “plot” of my story of seeing a man in the coffee shop I thought I recognized, blah blah blah.

What is all the more infuriating is that she had over 500 subscribers.  Hundreds of followers on her Google Friend Connect.  Hundreds of twitter followers.  And none of her readers had any idea.

The comments!  You can read the comments for both posts in the full screengrabs by clicking on the appropriate cropped image above.  The comments really kill me.  Her readers simply had no idea.

Were you a reader of Miss Musing?  Do you feel duped?  You should.  And not just because she stole at least one post of mine.

She had done this before.  And was continuing to do it.

Long story short (you are laughing, aren’t you?), she had plagiarized cjane before and had been caught.  Azucar from The Jet Set wrote a post about the entire debacle (with possibly the most clever title ever), which inspired her incredibly resourceful readers to do a bit of sleuthing.  The Sherlock Award most certainly goes to Onnuh, who is the Jet Set reader that found the Miss Musing posts plagiarizing me and others. 

I think sweet Azucar and Onnuh thought I would give Miss Musing some kind of warning.  Perhaps I come off as someone that wouldn’t, say, turn into a vigilante and rally twitter against plagiarism?

Now that I think of it, if I’m like Jack-Jack (seemingly powerless, yet able to turn into a bedeviled fireball right before your eyes), then Miss Musing is like Syndrome:  Not a real superhero, nay blogger, but rather an insecure sidekick-wannabe replicating the powers of those around her.  Manufacturing them in such a way that her onlookers have no idea that it is all a rouse. 

Miss Musing’s remote control wrist cuff powers were her abilities to use “cut and paste.”

Until, that is, Jack-Jack went all devil on Syndrome’s ass, leading to the fake superhero’s ultimate demise.

Look, I’m not saying we are superheroes.  Bear with me here.  I’m trying to have a little fun and needed an excuse to use these photos…  which I stole from Google Images, which means I stole from somewhere else.  The difference is that I’m linking.  Giving credit.  Not claiming to have created these images and directing you to exactly where I found them.

That being said, we can not allow for plagiarism. 

In many cases, when I find my work on someone else’s site with no credit given, I simply give them a polite warning.  Often, it’s a naive new blogger and they honestly didn’t know better.  Sometimes it is a scraper (a site that simply copies posts based around a given keyword), but I still give them a warning before I report them to their blog host for removal.

This time, given that Miss Musing had not only been given warning on earlier plagiarism examples but was continuing her plagiarism against an increasing number of bloggers, I gave no warning.  I immediately reported her to Blogger and then spread the word on twitter.

Why twitter?  Because if she chose to simply delete the posts, nothing would stop her from continuing her stealing and her readers would never know. 

Simply deleting the posts and possibly apologizing wouldn’t be good enough this time, as her empty apology to cjane had clearly demonstrated that she had no intention of stopping. 

And let’s be honest, it is stealing.

So what did I want to happen as a result of my going Jack-Jack?  Ultimately, I wanted the posts removed, if not her blog, yes.  But more than anything else, I wanted her readers to know what she had done to them.  Girl had a lot of readers.  She had violated their trust and trust is just about all we have to work with online.

Aside from talent.  But who needs talent when you can cut and paste?!

So what did happen?  The details are unclear, but what I do have is a cliffhanger of an ending to our little play:

***

Enter Megan after a long Saturday at the Crawfish Festival and Family Fair with her family where she didn’t give a single thought to Miss Musing:

Megan opens her email.

Megan’s email:  Oh no you di’int!  Miss Musing is gone!  Her blog has been removed and her twitter account is deleted.

Megan’s twitter:

To which Megan responds:

Laptop closes.  The end.

***

Except that obviously, it isn’t the end.  We are left with all kinds of questions regarding how we can protect ourselves against the Miss Musing’s of the Internet.  And what is to stop her from doing it again on a new blog?  To you?

What this post was going to be about was just that:  How do we protect our work online?  But that brevity thing, I’ve apparently also gone Jack-Jack on that. 

So next time I write about this it will be about going Violet on our blogs and creating an invisible yet impenetrable-as we-can-make-it bubble around our work.

In the meantime, a huge thanks to The Jet Set and Onnuh for bringing this to my attention. 

And potential plagiarizers?  Maybe don’t mess with me.  Or my friends.  And apparently definitely not cjane because, wow, her readers really like her.

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Into the Wild with Your Own Tribe

I’m in my studio today, brainstorming for a new writing project that I hope to tell you about soon.  Managing the Blog Nosh Magazine editors list, preparing to launch a couple of new channels.  Food and Race & Ethnicity, two of those channels whose links have been dead-ends since the relaunch so many months ago.

My studio is in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.  Just blocks from the water, but just far enough away from the waves that it suffered minimal damage in Hurricane Katrina.  I am on the same block as seafood restaurants and gritty little Southern bars.  At night, Lynard Skynard bleeds through the walls and the smell of poboys tempts me into unscheduled breaks.

Thanks to some tumultuous decision making I had to finish this afternoon, I decided to treat myself to one of those very same poboys for lunch.  Fully dressed shrimp poboy on crunchy-yet-chewy French bread, a side of crab balls, and a towering cup of sweet tea.

Rather than mindlessly watch my twitter stream or daydream while I ate, I decided to watch a DVD of Into the Wild, starring Emile Hirsch.  I’ve had this DVD for possibly years now, but never have gotten around to watching it.

Now, less than a quarter of the way in, it leaves me feeling much the same way the book Revolutionary Road did: 

This life of a suburban mom can sometimes be hard to swallow.

I have always wanted to be a mom.  I have always wanted to stay at home and raise the kids.  Though, to be clear, I don’t think I ever kidded myself or any potential suitors into thinking that I would be a reasonable housekeeper of said home.

But now I’m here.  And sometimes I can’t help but want to be there.

We all struggle with where we belong.  Who we are.  Who we want to be.  Who we once were.  Who we could have been.

We struggle with the ties that bind and simultaneously long for the ties that bond.

At the risk of BlogHer stripping me of their offer, I will be speaking at the opening Mommyblogging track panel in Chicago this year on the topic of “Have you found your Mommyblogging tribe?” and will most definitely touch on some of these feelings of dissonance.

Sounds like a barrel of laughs, right?  Well, I promise you, it will be.  But yes, of course I’ll be throwing in a bit of the “threadbare.” 

Identity, knowing where we belong, feeling distinctly as though we don’t…  it’s all part of it.  BlogHer said they selected me for the topic because I have more or less created my own tribe.  To that, I say “Amen.” and “Hell yes.”

And I also say, “You should, too.”

Join me at BlogHer in Chicago July 24-25, 2009.  Early bird pricing ends February 28, so hop to it, sister.

You might even want to get there early.  I bet there are some fun parties the night before…

In the meantime, tell me your thoughts on belonging and tribes.  It doesn’t have to have anything to do with blogging.  My feelings today on Into the Wild had nothing, I assure you, to do with blogging. 

“It should not be denied that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations. Absolute freedom.”  -Wallace Stegner

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Back from Blissdom 09: I Got Soul but I'm Not a Soldier

Blog conferences are my element.  I can't even pretend to be cool about it.  I love them.

We spend so much time sending our voices out into this seemingly empty space, often having no idea if we are being heard, frequently feeling as though we are spinning our wheels, reassuring ourselves that we do it for us (!) alone...  but secretly knowing that we would love for someone to reply.

Just a simple "I hear ya."  An eye rolling, "Oh, you have no idea, I am so with you."  It doesn't take much.

That is what I adore about blog conferences.  Suddenly, warmingly, it becomes clear that damnit! someone did read that post I wrote last month that no one commented on but that was leaking my heart out everywhere!  What you thought was met by crickets now slips up to you from behind, places a tentative hand on your shoulder and says, "Real quick, I just wanted to say that I loved that post last month where your heart leaked out everywhere.  I was so with you on that one."

Aaaahhhhh.  You are there.

BlissDom is an annual blog conference, hell, writing conference I attended this weekend in Nashville, Tennessee, hosted by the magazine Blissfully Domestic and the PR-meets-bloggers-sans-headaches organization One2One Network.   I helped Mrs Fussypants, its founder, organize the dress rehearsal version of BlissDom '08 and was thrilled to lend Alli a hand this year.

And by "lend a hand," I mean insisting that I have a mic in said hand the entire time, regardless of whether I was actually on the current panel or not.  Ahem.  Officially, I was mic-wrangling the audience questions when I wasn't being a panel speaker, but yeah, somehow my voice kept getting amplified from within that audience, um, a lot.

(psst...  I don't have totally stolen flickr pictures, yet, so I'm illustrating with the logos from this weekend's sponsors.  Without them, such fabulous events would not be possible, but without our support, their interest would not be present.)

Needless to say, I love blog conferences and apparently also their proclivity to include voice amplification devices.  Because, as Alli pointed out in our "branding" panel, I am wordy.

Speaking of branding,  I sort of allude to my loquaciousness in my blog banner, though, so don't say I didn't warn you... 

That being said, I have a lot to write about BlissDom and the people I met, the things I heard, the ideas I was floated.  But for the sake of brevity (har har), I'm going to focus today on one recurring bit of feedback from the weekend:

I. just. want. to. write.

This sentiment was repeated in both the Apprentice track (new bloggers) and the Maven track (experienced bloggers).  After being doused with truly valuable tips and stories, a handful of bloggers would exit with a bit of a pout and say,

"But this isn't fair.  My writing should be enough."

"I don't want to have to learn the tech stuff!"

"I don't want to have to learn social media!"

"I don't have the time or the money!"

"Why can't people just come to me?"

Okay, that last one was never said to me, but that is essentially what was being said.  It all boiled down to, "It's not fair.  My writing is strong and should be enough."

But enough for what?  Enough for the millions of blog readers to locate and identify and devote the benefit of their doubt to your blog, which is one in millions?

In essence, we are slipping our books into the shelves at Barnes and Noble and saying, "Yes, the cover is plain blue with only my title centered on the front, no excerpts on the back, and no one knows I wrote it because I just brought it from home...  but yes, everyone here should single it out on the shelf and buy it.  Because it's damn good."

Don't judge my book by its cover, right?

I know it isn't fair.  Our writing should be enough.  But when you have millions of voices saying that their writing should be enough, what are our poor readers to do? 

I am your poor reader and as much as I would love to give every single blog out there five minutes of my time, I won't lie to you and say that I'm not encouraged by a blog banner (book cover) that hints at something interesting inside.  I won't pretend that I don't value the opinions of the people I follow on twitter when they tell me to check out a particular post.  I won't deny that I do click on links from the blogs I already read to blogs they tell me I might like.

I don't care if you are popular.  I just want to read something good.  But I have to find it first.

That's one of the reasons we devote our precious time and money to attend blog conferences.  We want to do better by our blogs.  Our writing deserves it.  Our writing deserves to be read.  There is nothing wrong with that.

Ain't no shame in this game.

But knowing how to play the game does not have to mean selling out or enlisting in the army of compromise.  It doesn't have to mean slapping on that uniform and joining the masses of the outstretched hand droning "Give me." 

You can still have soul. 

Yet...  wouldn't it be nice to feel other souls pass through every now and then?  To share their journeys and experiences as you share yours?

You can still have soul and be successful.

Having an audience, the numbers lurking in my stats that represent that audience...  those are souls passing through, leaving faint hints of their presence, leaving wisps of their being as they absorb a bit of my own.

If Joyful Girl by Ani DiFranco was my anthem before BlogHer last year, then All These Things That I've Done by The Killers is my post-BlissDom 09 anthem.  It was just what I needed to hear.  Such an inspiring weekend.

Now turn up the music (subscribers click through! and turn it up loud!) and think about it.  Then leave a wisp of your soul in the comments.

I got soul but I'm not a soldier.  What about you?

I wanna stand up, I wanna let go
You know, you know - no you don't, you don't
I wanna shine on in the hearts of men
I wanna mean it from the back of my broken hand

Another head aches, another heart breaks
I am so much older than I can take
And my affection, well it comes and goes
I need direction to perfection, no no no no

Help me out
Yeah, you know you got to help me out
Yeah, oh don't you put me on the back burner
You know you got to help me out

And when there's nowhere else to run
Is there room for one more son
These changes ain't changing me
The gold-hearted boy I used to be

Yeah, you know you got to help me out
Yeah, oh don't you put me on the back burner
You know you got to help me out
You're gonna bring yourself down
Yeah, you're gonna bring yourself down
Yeah, you're gonna bring yourself down

I got soul, but I'm not a soldier
I got soul, but I'm not a soldier

Yeah, you know you got to help me out
Yeah, oh don't you put me on the back burner
You know you got to help me out
You're gonna bring yourself down
You're gonna bring yourself down
Yeah, oh don't you put me on the back burner
You're gonna bring yourself down
Yeah, you're gonna bring yourself down

Over and in, last call for sin
While everyone's lost, the battle is won
With all these things that I've done
All these things that I've done
If you can hold on
If you can hold on

Want to hear my Branding panel (with Alli, To Think is To Create, and Liz Strauss from SOB) or any of the sessions you missed at BlissDom?  You can buy transcripts and audio and join the discussion from home.

(PS-  As soon as I get my voice back, I'll record all of the new audioblogs.  Hang in there.)

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In the Absence of a Sarcasm Font: Audioblogging

{Audioblog} Listen to or Download 'In the Absence of a Sarcasm Font' read by the author

We recently published a post at Blog Nosh Magazine that suggested the word "sarcasticate" be added to our vernacular.  "Sarcasticate" would be a verb and it would mean "to make something sarcastic" as applicable to writing text. 

"You see, I can make things bold. I can italicize. I can underline. I can even strikethrough. But, I can’t sarcasticate."

Gone will be the days in which people misunderstand your tone of voice when reading your brilliant writing! 

The Nerdist suggested a special font for sarcasm, after a couple of sticks-in-the-mud griped about a recent Wired article of his:

"I think both gentlemen failed to grasp the tongue-in-cheekity of it all. This is why there should be a font for sarcasm."

Hell.  yes.  Ditto.  Amen.

He went on to suggest that allowing such vocal readers to complain probably saves random strangers from being gunned down in the park.  "Gripes Not Snipes, I always say."  The Nerdist and The Bloggess should get together, is all I'm saying.

But unless Chris Hardwick figures out how to get more than just free gadgets out of all of these tech-gurus he knows, we won't be getting a font for sarcasm any time soon and I'm sick of either explaining myself or becoming a better writer.  Humpf.

That leaves us back where we started, with the burden of conveying tone remaining squarely on our shoulders, whispering into our ears, "No one is going to read that in the high-pitched nasally whine you are imagining.  Try harder.  Devices!  Devices, I tell you!"

Writing devices.  All of the little tricks of the trade that we use to convey tone.  You know...  ellipses... 

Blank space.

ALL CAPS!

wordssmushedtogethertoconveyimpatienceorrambling

Um's and er's and pfft's built into our text to help pace the reader.

Yeah, uh...  no.  kthanxbye

Despite our best attempts, we all still end up with comments that take us off guard with their level of misunderstanding.  Those "are they serious?" comments that make you think that someone involved in this equation must have been reading something other than what you wrote because forchrissakes that's not what you meant!

This, people, is why my posts are so damn long.  I try to cover every possible angle, anticipate every possible interpretation and conclusion and then address it before you force me to mutter, "But that's not what I'm saying" or "Yes, I already knew that but it was redundant to spell it out."

Then I don't end up with any comments because there's nothing left to say.  Crap.

(insert ;) emoticon, which is yet another device meant to convey that I'm yanking your chain but that I really hate to use in blogging because are we twelve?)

So...  in the absence of the sarcasm font and therefore the ability to sarcasticate, I have decided to start cheating: 

I'm adding audioblog versions of my posts!

A huge fan of audiobooks, I'm totally putting my melodrama hat on for you.

Oh yes, dear readers-come-listeners, you can now listen to my breathless tones as I read my posts to you live!  Well, -ish. 

There is currently a delay of about a day before I get the audioblog versions posted because I tend to furiously type and hit publish all within the same twenty minute period.  I've heard I could save things to "draft" until the audio version is done, but I've also heard that you shouldn't send emails when you are angry.  Or drunk.  Now, where is the fun in that?  Delayed gratification.  Pfft.  Maybe for you, but clearly not for me.

I'm also working on an easy link so that you can subscribe to my audioblogs via iTunes, but that takes some planning and I think we've already established my take on that.  I'll get back to you.

In the meantime, I've recorded some of my favorite posts and would love your feedback.  For instance, is anyone even going to listen to them?  Yeah, I'm thinking that would be a good place to start.

On the downside, I can't find anyone else that is doing audio versions of their blog posts, so I don't know how mine compare.  On the upside, I can't find anyone else pretending to be an audiobook performer, so I don't know how mine compare.

Posts with audio versions, so far:

I Am a Have but I Happen to Have Not

Hierarchy of Suffering. Who wins?

Gravel Paves the Road to The White House

The Trouble with Pies

Coffee Cup Lipstick

I Own This

iPod Identity

Be warned that I tried to read them more slowly than I speak so that you can actually follow along in the car (or wherever; that's your business) and I also apparently didn't find it necessary to stick entirely to script.  Before I do any more, let me know if anything doesn't work...  though if you just can't get them to play at all, I probably can't help you.  Gripes not snipes, people.  Gripes not snipes.

Most importantly, I have to say that reading what was written to be read silently was actually more challenging than I expected. 

All of those devices I spoke of earlier?  Yeah, just try to read a strikethrough out loud.  Jesus.  Good Lord.  Man.

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