I am fortunate to be living in a neighborhood in Chicago that is populated by freelancers in a variety of fields. I am working with a group of really consummate professionals on the rebranding of a hedge fund accounting firm. You can see our work here. More to come about Newcor Group, as we develop our own Web site.

View From My Backyard

An indigo bunting, seen this morning at my pond. I don't have a telephoto lens on my digital camera, but was inspired to point the camera through one lens of my 10x binoculars. I don't know why I never thought of it before!

Proposal Time

I am in a funny stage for a writer: I am working on proposals for several new books. This can be a laborious process and it is one that should not be hurried. You have to come up with an idea, first of all. This is not the most difficult part, at least for me. The most difficult part is the tedious process of filling out the chapter headings and subheadings, a description of the audience, a synopsis of the book, and an overview of how the book is organized. Sometimes, the publisher comes to me or my agent with an idea, and I have to flesh out the proposal. Other times, I come up with an idea of my own and send it to the agent, who sends it around to see if anyone is interested. Both of these situations are ongoing currently. Typically, a proposal goes back and forth between publisher, agent and me as many as two, three, or four times. With luck, one or two of the proposals will be accepted. It's also possible that all of them will be okayed, at which point I have to make some tough decisions.

I spent part of the weekend at an Enneagram conference in Michigan. It was conducted by the well-known Enneagram authority Helen Palmer. She was very impressive. At the very end she produced gasps of surprise when she announced that she just turned 70. I guess when you understand yourself and learn to turn your vices into virtues, the stress drops away, and you sort of turn back the aging clock, or at least slow it down. The Enneagram, by the way, is a spiritual path based on a system of psychological profiles. It was apparently developed by monks back in the fourth century. I find it quite enlightening. My personality type is the four (there are nine types in all). Simply being around people who are "like me" was a thrilling experience.

April in My Backyard

Breathing space

I recently finished revising a couple of books and writing a couple of new ones. I say that casually, but within that single sentence are buried days and days of agony. I find myself with time to spruce up this blog as well as another one. It is a relief, but now, when I wake up with no huge deadlines looming over me, I am unable to relax. I keep watching the bank account dwindle, and wondering where the next job will come from.

I had lunch last week with my agent Lynn Haller and with another author, Anne-Marie Concepcion. She spends most of her time training and doing podcasts. She also has a well-maintained Web site. I have been so busy grinding out books that I haven't spent any time blogging, myself. I'm going to try to cobble together more income from this, if I can.

Photos from my 50th birthday party, Meier's Tavern, 3.21.57:




 

These are the young people who attended.




 

I am on track to become a PowerSeller. After only a couple of months of selling, this would be quite an accomplishment. Despite a heavy writing schedule, I've become obsessed with this goal, and am going to do everything I can to reach it.

I wrote a column for AuctionBytes on checking your MyeBay sales using your cell phone. The thing I noticed is that my own cell phone provider, Cingular, only displays the first 20 of your sales. If you have 30 items for sale (as I did this weekend), you're sort of out of luck when it comes to reviewing the other 10. I actually had to search for a couple of them to see if any had attracted bids. They had not. But as usual, people placed their bids right at the last minute and they sold. I managed to sell 14 items out of 30 I had up for sale. I thought August was the slow time of year. I'm finding that this might not be the case.