My freelance life

Jozanny · Sun May 01, 2011 7:06 pm

Next article I sell, I will donate .01% to BookTalk, as a motivating force, conditioned upon that said community and Jozanny make a suitable courtship. Bylines to kill for? Not many.

My Philadelphia Inquirer clip made editors polite for a short time, but I am not making any successful pitches at present.

This is my hard hitting blog, but I like that LiveJournal allows me to be a pessimist without interference:

http://spastic-dowager.livejournal.com/

Jozanny · Mon May 02, 2011 8:00 am

I suppose I should add a few things about my background at least casually. I came up through the small presses, and do not like the term emerging writer. I may be obscure but I am a veteran. My best hits were an editorial in Small Press Review before Len Fulton took it digital, some shared space with Jayne Anne Phillips in Oxford Magazine that made my day, though she too, seems to have gone to pasture, and her strongest work seems to have been early, with Black Tickets, and an out of print edition of my poetry called Like Fire which appeared courtesy of Crawlspace.

I moved to journalism in 99, and landed two contracts with two disability websites, both dead, Half The Planet, and then AccessLife with Christopher Reeve and his wife. They're dead too. Did feature work for New Mobility, with steadily declining sales since, and otherwise bemusedly bitchy (ooooooo!) unless I get angry.

Miss my career and am not likely to have it again--working on one or two collections, which if I get past a publisher, I'll be delighted to promote on BookTalk if I don't fall from grace.

Do I intend to do that? Not particularly, but get dismayed with triviality.

Good enough?

Jozanny · Sun May 08, 2011 5:33 pm

To carry on the fine tradition of being an audience of one in my own threads:

On the off chance that you are an experienced editor or writer who happens by BookTalk, let me tell you what I am networking for within my limitations. I do not need to be told that the number of writers poets and journalists who earn their living off sales is slim. I know that; it is just going back to social work or other field is increasingly too difficult, because public transportation in Philadelphia for wheelchair users is a nightmare, and I am not that far away from my golden years.

Now, I know I have to earn it, but I am looking for a consultant freelance contract-- or salaried if the publishing enterprise is healthy, broadly in the health/disability and entertainment area, with a reasonable accommodation for me as it relates to travel, or pictures. I need a photojournalist partner who can negotiate their own contracts.

I know this is a networking mouthful, but it is where I came from ten years ago when I lost my career, and if any member has the commesurate experience to suggest a reliable organization that has an opening, I'd be forever grateful and give you good press. Cool?

I tend to rank myself as a mid-list author, though it is a vanishing breed.

[Doesn't hurt to always use my spell check....]

Randall R. Young · Mon May 09, 2011 6:34 am

I just glanced at your "hard hitting" blog. (Not long enough to read it, but just to see what it was about.)

I have to say, my 1st impression was that it must have something to do with Christmas! It has a lot of red & green, and candy-like icons.

Jozanny · Mon May 09, 2011 3:06 pm


	Randall R. Young wrote: I just glanced at your "hard hitting" blog. (Not long enough to read it, but just to see what it was about.) I have to say, my 1st impression was that it must have something to do with Christmas! It has a lot of red & green, and candy-like icons.

Ablests tend to find me intimidating, if past experience is any indicator, perhaps because they cannot see that I am a wheelchair user, so do not know for sure, unless they meet me at a net meet :twisted:

On a bad day I swear like a sailor, so I am not making any new friends in the publishing industry or the disabled community, I daresay, not to overstate the influence of one account among millions. I view it as a long spooling thesis, practice, and that perhaps with enough struggle I will get better, and maybe Slate or the Daily Beast would take me on, or a niche market of similar ilk.

I do not let go of indignation easily, and increasingly feel that online interaction isn't doing me many favors.

Randall R. Young · Mon May 09, 2011 3:13 pm


	Quote: "I do not let go of indignation easily, and increasingly feel that online interaction isn't doing me many favors."

I know what you mean!

Jozanny · Mon May 09, 2011 3:47 pm

Randall R. Young wrote:


	Quote: "I do not let go of indignation easily, and increasingly feel that online interaction isn't doing me many favors."

I know what you mean!

Birds of a feather? I use that phrase in an abstract story I wrote in university as a counter-factual, namely what if I had slept with a professor with whom I did not, but it is actually a great deal of anger directed at an amazing instructor, for whatever reason I have not abandoned it yet, still fine tuning its pathos.

I am a hard worker, however, and don't shy from controversy. I have a number of detractors on twitter who find my posts appalling, and it amuses me a great deal. :mrgreen:

Jozanny · Wed May 25, 2011 10:57 pm

If any BT members enjoy Modernism and its derivatives, I created a community, one that is separate from my blog, here:

http://modlit.livejournal.com/

I know registering at different sites is a pain, but to protect LiveJournal from DDOS attacks, I require posters to join LJ, but other than that I am probably liberal for a moderator, unless we're dealing with wheelchair users who want to chatter politics all the time, but Modernist literature involves more than identity issues.

I know a good deal on the movement, probably not enough to compete with scholars who publish on its miniscule aspects, although I am hoping to publish maybe one or two essays as a labor of love; for right now I'm focusing on Lampedusa and his quiet classic, The Leopard, but the discussions may be fairly broad.

Last week I searched for a modernism forum for hours, but I am not affliated with any university group that sponsored online groups, so I created my own. Thanks all.

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