Halloweeeeeen! :)

Eeeeeeek!! :) It's my favourite time of year again. I have my witches hat at the ready - and a brand new cape! :) (Last year I was an impromptu 'Emily the Strange' lol).

Give me a cocktail, play me some Cure and I'm ready to paaaartaaaay!!! :)

Tips for freelancers

Get up early – 6am for a 7am work start is good.

Never treat yourself with a TV show over breakfast. It will probably be the best episode of any show you've ever seen in your life... and you will want to see the next, and the next... until you convince yourself to have a 'treat day' and watch the whole season. Baaaad idea! lol

Grey's Anatomy, Mad Men, Rubicon, The Event, The Hills, The City, Desperate Housewives, Brothers and Sisters = very lovely but baaaaaad.
Interesting work for money = gooood! :)

Eat raw food so that you have more energy and need less sleep.

Plan your day. Make a list of everything you need to get done – and how long it should take. Stick to it.

Get yourself down to a nearby cafe (if it has internet access). You'll be less distracted than you would be at home and you'll be amazed by how much you get done.

Don't faff over a story that you know you could get done pretty quickly. Don't spend a week gathering interviews and writing a feature that you know you could get done in a day. Don't leave that desk till it's finished!

Ok, so you might already have regular work, but don't forget to keep sending out those proposals. Always follow up with a phone call (or the other way around)... An email gets forgotten about. A phone call produces results.

Work as if you were at work. Freelancing shouldn't be a code word for one hour of writing and five hours of shopping.

Work like a full-time employer would expect you to work. How much did you used to get done at that office job? If the answer is picking out news stories, rewriting handfuls of wire reports, subbing stories, laying out 10-15 pages, proofing, re-proofing, chasing up PR peeps for an interview, go home, grab dinner, do interview, write up 1000 word feature and flop dead... all within the space of a day, then you know there's no excuse for taking it easy just because you work for yourself. Make sure work remains the biggest part of your day and relaxation comes as more of a treat a treat at the end.

If you were used to writing and rewriting several wire reports / press releases every hour at the newspaper job, there's no reason not to keep up the pace at home. The more you do in one sitting, the more free time you'll have.

Don't become a hermit. As a freelancer, you won't be getting that important day to day contact with random people, so make sure you plan regular time-out sessions with friends. Don't miss those dance classes, volleyball sessions and meet-ups. When your life stops revolving around the office, freelancing can become a great way to expand your world.

Getting yourself out there: Get yourself a website (I still need to do this!). Your various freelancer profiles will work too but story proposals will be helped if you can link your email to your own professional-looking website with story links etc...

Follow your own rules!!! You wrote them for reason! ;)

Freelancing is a wonderful route to freedom. You can pick the stories you choose, work where you want to work, travel at the drop of a hat, pick your own schedule. All you need to do it put the work in.

Happy writing! :)

Amsterdam and those old hidden mind maps

Isn't is funny how the mind maps places you've long forgotten about and brings them up like handy online versions of old paper maps you threw out long ago.

It's a bit like playing the piano - as a kid my teacher taught me an invaluable trick that still works to this day... 'Relax, close your eyes, and let your fingers find the keys'... True, you might not remember how to do something but your fingers (I guess that's your subconscious) sure as hell will.

Anyway, to get to my point, I had a one-day stopover in the beeeeautiful 'Omshdome' (or Amsterdam in my English accent) and was walking around like a little tour guide thinking 'woooow', I can't believe I know the way to get everywhere... 'You want to see Anne Franks house? Right this way my love'. 'A tour of the canals and the art gallery district? Ahh, well that would be right over here'...

We hopped off the plane nice and early at about 5am and spent a couple of hours exploring as we waited for the first few cafes to open up for breakfast.

Walking down the main road, Damrak, suddenly everything popped right back into my head like a scene from a movie... 'Oh yay, this is Dam Square where I once befriended some hippies and spent the day talking about philosophy and politics... I'd totally forgotten about that! :) ... Oh I've eaten in this restaurant before – and sat right here...'

I haven't been to Amsterdam for about 10 years now but have fond memories from my days as a poverty-stricken student living in the north of England and yearning for a backpacking experience. It was always a lot cheaper to hop on an Easyjet plane to Amsterdam than it was to catch the train down to London... and so every now and then, Amsterdam became the sum total of my backpacking on an 'extreme' budget experience, lol.

And what a wonderful experience it was! Amsterdam has to be one of Europe's most beautiful cities – the canals that wind their way through the city, the art galleries all over the place, cute little cafes, vintage boutique shops, the real young-traveller vibe of the place...

And then for me there's always been a little something extra about Amsterdam that I really loved. Every time I stepped out of the train station and looked around, I'd have a real feeling like I'd come home... The windmills, the clogs (in the tourist shops only, unfortunately! lol), the accent... Maybe it just reminded me a lot of my German oma's house in Friesland where I holidayed as a kid – a coastal region that spreads from Germany into Holland, with plenty of old fashioned windmills all over the place and shops selling wooden clogs... and that infamous Frisian dialect that sounds just like Dutch. (Incidentally, I also happen to be distantly related to the Dutch royal family - oh yah indeed! lol - if that makes a difference with this cultural identity ticker-tape parade! ;)

About a year ago on another stopover through Amsterdam I realised I could read and undertand Dutch. I had a real 'woah!!!' moment, as I thumbed through a various books in the airport book shop and started wondering if maybe I was Dutch in a past life.

Reading Dutch – for those who have never tried this – is a little bit like experiencing the mad ramblings of a highly dyslexic half German, half English person (in a nice way of course! ;) no offence intended! Lol). You know what they are trying to say but everything is spelt wrong.

I've spoken abut this to both South African and German friends who say they have the same thing – that they can also mysteriously read and understand Dutch – although speaking is another puzzle altogether.

I tested my Dutch / Frisian Plattdeutsch skills out with a shop-keeper the last time I passed through Amsterdam.

'Tag', I said for hello.
Then when he asked me something I added a 'yoo' for yes (haven't a clue what he asked me though! Lol)
And then a 'Dank' when we finished.

I was almost jumping up and down with excitement when he carried on chatting away to me in Dutch completely oblivious to the fact that I'd just taken a wild guess at disjointed German and Plattdeutsch words... Anyway, next time, maybe I'll try adding some more phrases and see how that goes – hopefully I won't sound too crazy! lol