Free Range Brain

Northern Voice is around the corner. Had fun last year and I’ll go again. Time to get back on the blogging horse. Hard for me to go to a blog conference without actually cranking out a few posts.

I need the writing practice too. I need to get more productive with my freelance work during my after work hours. If I don’t exercise, my prose gets weaker and flabbier. I lose my mojo. And I struggle when faced with a blank page.

That is not a problem lately. I’ve become more proficient at starting and getting the ideas down in rough form then editing ruthlessly, then writing more, then editing again, and repeating until a deadline stops me.

I write at work. The job is less marketing now, and more sales and service related. I practice my copywriting for development and I write for cash when I find paid work. My job may be on the bubble again, so I need to ramp up searches for work as an employee or a freelancer and to get more done on the backburnered projects I’ve been nursing along or ignoring completely.

No matter how I look at it, more writing and more doing is in order again.

I’m starting to get excited about the conference. The Saturday schedule is full of interesting sessions. I’ll be crossing tracks, jumping from room to room, making tough choices since I can be in only once place at a time.

Here’s my tentative plan:

Wake up alive…no, no, no! For the conference…

10.45 - Marc Canter - Bringing Social to Software

(Marc’s Voice is one of my regular blog stops. I always learn there.)

11.30 - Monique Trottier and Friends - From Book to Blog or Blog to Book

(I’m interested in the latter as a way of sharing pieces of a novel I’ve started. Seems that writers don’t have to toil in isolation anymore. I have a lot of bits to weave into the story. Can’t see the harm in posting slices that don’t give away the farm. Maybe publishers and agents see it differently. I’d best find out.)

1.30 - Alan Levine - There Are 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story

(I love exploring the universe of software and Internet tools and utilities. Even if I don’t play with them all, I enjoy seeing what people’s creativity turns loose in the world. This should be fun.)

Kris and Alex - The Other Side of Two Dimensions

(photography related, that’s all I need to know. And I’ve enjoyed Alex W-H’s work for years.)

3.30 - Jeez, can’t call this one yet. They all sound good.

4.15 - Aieeee! Another toughie. I’m split between Jean Hebert and Jacqueline Schoemaker Holmes. I’d like to understand more about the mobile world and what Jean has discovered through his research. I’m also curious about Jacqueline’s work. Call it professional interest. I’m doing AdWords work for a local entrepreneur selling an online dating ebook. He took the same subject and is building a business around teaching people how to navigate online and offline dating.

Friday had me interested in PhotoCamp but I don’t know how that is going to play out yet. This is my first unconference so I’ll just relax and see what develops. Meanwhile, I may duck into a Bootcamp session or two. In particular, I’ll be at Linda Bustos’ Traffic, Stats, SEO 101 session. I know the topic but I’ve worked with Linda remotely and never met her in person. And this is her area of expertise so I bet I will learn new ideas.

Funny how things work. I start rolling out multiple blogs on topics that interest me because the thought of doing just one makes me queasy. I visit the library to return a whack of Christmas holiday reading and detour through the stacks for a browse and find a book.

According to Barbara Sher, author of Refuse to Choose, some of us are “genetically wired to be interested in many things.”

Check.

“Because your behavior is unfamiliar-even unsettling-to the people around you, you’ve been taught that you’re doing something wrong and you must try to change.”

Check.

Here’s my favorite parts. “What you’ve assumed is a disability (check) to be overcome by sheer will (check) is actually an exceptional gift (cool).” And, “You are the owner of a remarkable, multitalented brain trying to do its work in a world that doesn’t understand who you are and doesn’t know why you behave as you do.”

Now, I can’t be the judge of remarkableness as I’m too close to the situation. That’s a fairly subjective thing, deciding what’s remarkable. My friends are less diplomatic. I’ve heard, “You’re weird!” often enough to be partly convinced. But again, in comparison to what?

I’m guessing a lot of blogger types are people that may fit the profile. Expect further reports as I dig into the book. Does she have scientific evidence and more than a collection of anecdotes or is this a great idea for selling a book?

When I sat down and started thinking about blogging, oh, three or four years ago, I got sidetracked. My interests are diverse. It seemed sensible to carve out a separate blog for distinct and mostly unrelated subject areas.

 Then paralysis set in. And I’ve done nothing of note since a couple of aborted blogs that languished and filled up with comment spam until they died quietly, without ceremony.

This time will be different. Really. I want to attend Northern Voice in late February 2008. Attending blogless would be silly. So I’m rolling them out and starting to chip away at posting. Free Range Brain will be home base and cover topics that don’t fit elsewhere.