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Fevered Mutterings: A Year In Review (Part 2)

Jan 6th, 2012
by Mikeachim.
1 comment

Clicked all the links in the first half of my 2011 roundup?

Wired sums of money to me, tears of gratitude coursing down your cheeks?

If not, I’ll wait for you to do that.

(Note: I accept all major credit cards, all minor credit cards and pretty much anything I can turn into money – ie. no GoDaddy accounts, official Rick Perry merchandise and so on. Thanks).

Now for the difficult sequel.

July

August

September

  • A very personal audio piece on the importance of not waiting….
  • …and then I go quiet – because I’ve started working here.

October

November

December

Well, that lot should keep you busy. (It certainly kept me busy).

But not as busy as 2012 will be keeping me. It’s barely the beginning of January, and I already have more travel planned and more exciting projects I’m busily kicking off than the last 3 years combined. No, really. (If I was waxing hyperbolical, I’d be the first to laugh at myself – you know what I’m like).

And more than that…I think I finally know what this blog is for. And I’m damn excited about that.

Yes, this is going to be a whirly year.

Coming along for the ride?

Images: aspearing, Cristophe Becker, flickrPrince and Mike Sowden.

Audio Essay: Never Wait

Sep 4th, 2011
by Mikeachim.
24 comments

And because I apparently have a “crazy English accent”….

Here’s a story about timing.

Once upon a time there was a kid with long, blond, curly hair and sun-browned legs. They were often tucked under him, on the middle of a row of airline seats ripped from a scrapped commercial jet. To the left, seat 1 contained a half-opened laminated scroll of map showing the lay of Middle Earth. A glass bottle of Coke, pierced by a straw, rested precariously in the middle of seat 3. Occasionally, the kid’s right hand would blindly feel its way across to the bottle, just managing to catch it before it got knocked over. This feat of dexterity, born of great deal of trial and error, would have been unnecessary if the kid used his eyes and maybe a little common sense – but he couldn’t take his eyes off the book he was reading.

“You’re late!”

“A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early – he arrives precisely when he means to!”

When he grew up and left Cyprus, the kid decided, he would become a writer.

Seven years later, those blond curls had turned brown and those legs had gone white. The kid was back in England, at an English school, and having the shit kicked out of him. It was that kind of school.

In Cyprus, the kid’s education was novelty and colour and fun, and the English made sense, but the rest was Greek to him. Back in England, school suddenly became a sullen place filled with repetition, resentment and occasional bouts of violence. Suddenly, being better than everyone else was the way to become a target, and so the kid let his grades lapse from As down to Bs and eventually into uncaring mediocrity – all except for his English scores. He really struggled to keep those down, and after a while, he gave up. After all, he knew that at some point, he’d become a writer. As soon as he got out of school and did something constructive with his time instead.

Now the kid was a teenager, and 5 years of being pushed around had made him bitter and a little misanthropic. School hadn’t changed: it was just a matter of repeating things emptily. It wasn’t about *thinking*. The only thinking he did was at home, his nose buried in books and old copies of National Geographic. School was just something to be endured, and the wait was almost over. A blur of GCSE exams – 2 A-grades for English, a passable mark for Geology and the rest of his scores reflecting his utter disinterest in being taught anything by people who clearly didn’t understand him.

Well, thank god THAT was over.

Now what? It was too early to be a writer, obviously. So…what should he do now?

Now it’s 1993. It’s starting to dawn on this kid-turned-teenager-turned-drifting-20-something that he’s made some serious blunders. There’s a version of himself in his mind, less an ideal than an adequate: a grown-up version of the kid sitting on that airline seat, his legs still brown, his hair still blond, still climbing trees and jumping off low cliffs into the sea and falling off bicycles, and above all, seeing the world. Perhaps National Geographic has given him unrealistic expectations, but he feels that staying in one place, seeing the same things day in, day out, is a pretty poor way to live. Yet that’s what he’s currently doing, drifting from one low-paid job to the next, finding nothing that inspires him enough to engage meaningfully with it, anaesthetizing his despair with junk food and allowing himself to become fat.

Then something happens, inside his head. Some kind of last-ditch emergency klaxon goes off. He goes for long walks, goes rowing on the nearby lake, sits on the beach and throws stones into the sea until his fingertips ache from all the blood pooled in them. He knows he’ll become a writer at some point, but…all this waiting is silly. It’s not going to end well. Something has to change, and it has to change NOW.

He goes home and flicks through some National Geographics. A few hours later, he’s scraped his meagre earnings together for a 2-week walking holiday in Austria. A month later, he’s walking through the South Tyrol with a bunch of crazy English people. Two weeks after that, he’s back home – bags under his eyes from exhaustion, and over a stone lighter. He feels…different. More aware. And this isn’t a pleasant feeling. He looks over his life as it is right now, and sees that ignorance was indeed a kind of bliss. Everything is a mess.

Then, a week later, his father dies of a heart attack.

It’s 2000, and he’s finally at University. After 7 long years of retaking GCSEs, taking A-levels for the first time in his life, failing them because he never learned how to study effectively, learning how to study effectively, retaking his A-levels at a 6th fom college in Hull surrounded by 17 year olds (he’s 29 at this point) and finally being accepted by the University of York on their Archaeology Undergraduate course…he’s here.

Why didn’t he pick English? Well, he knows he will be a writer at *some* point, but in the meantime it would be sensible to pick a career with strong job prospects.

So he picks…..

Archaeology.

*sigh*

Skip forward 4 years. His degree is over, a year later than planned because his mother was diagnosed with cancer and he deferred his course for a year to look after her. Once she was well again, he returned to York and finished up. His grades were pretty good, but not spectacular, as befitting his interest in the subject.

It’s in this year that he starts writing a blog called Fevered Mutterings. It’s an embarassingly self-conscious affair, but he finds that the process of writing a little every day is making strange things happen in his brain.

It’s September the 3th, 2011. He’s sitting in the back garden of the house he rents a room in, at night, tapping into his laptop a summary of the last 30 years of his life. And he’s a little appalled. There’s nothing *new* to him here, but it’s a disturbing thing, to put himself into his own mind, 10, 20, 30 years ago, and to relive those reasons for making those mistakes, reasons that felt rational at the time. He’s so bemused by it all that he distances himself from his story by writing it in the third-person, and curiously it helps him get a grip on it all, to see the shape of it as a narrative. Because it’s not as simple as a misguided waste of a couple of decades, a gradual waking of his true self. There’s an extraordinary amount of life lived in there, a lot of it unconventionally, yes, but…this is who he was, so it’s also who he is.

Where he is now…is extraordinary. He’s working harder than he’s ever worked, connecting with people he’d never dreamed of connecting with, and putting together a lifestyle that will allow him to earn enough from his freelance work to travel indefinitely. His days are packed, and his brain is working overtime.

But there’s no escaping the obvious. The best time for him to become a writer…was 30 years ago.

Never. Ever. Wait. 

Image: aspearing.

Freelance Writing: What I Did Wrong

Jun 9th, 2011
by Mikeachim.
28 comments

Okay, so I wrote this post called Freelance Writing: What I Did Right , about the things that worked for me in 2010 as a newly self-employed (p/t) writer. And I wrote it from the heart, as honestly as I could, in an attempt to avoid sounding smug. It’s up to you to decide if I succeeded or not.

But let’s face it, this is the fun part: listing the ways I screwed up.

Let’s not dawdle: we’ve got a Mike to laugh at. (more…)

Freelance Writing: What I Did Right

Apr 21st, 2011
by Mikeachim.
38 comments

Hi!

My name is Mike, and I’m the proud owner of a bouncing part-time online freelance writing business (staff: 1), focussing mainly on travel. So that makes me a travel writer, yes? Well…er…

Tell you what, let’s discuss that elsewhere, and for the moment, I’ll say “kinda” (or add that dignity-salvaging word “aspiring”).

Ta.

Being a freelance writer! Wow. Like, getting paid – for writing. That’s like getting paid for reading – or eating cake! You must have such a cool lifestyle!

Um…

While it’s true that my fledgling business thrills me (as well as being the hardest work I’ve ever done in my life), I wouldn’t know how to answer if you asked “Is it a success?”. In some ways, I’m proud of what I’ve done. Except I’ve clearly done other stuff exactly the wrong way, and right now those things are getting a damn good shake-up.

So, before we dwell on my failings as a businessman (and hey, we both know that’s going to be the really fun part), let’s look at ten things I reckon I’ve got right.

1. I Do Unpaid work

Part of the reality of getting anywhere these days is working for “free”. It may give you something else you can quantify in advance – and if you’re being smart, it always does – but you’re not being paid in the most literal sense. This is a grey area that some people will argue is the road to being exploited by feckless marketeers. I not only think otherwise, I have secured work, built professional relationships, acquired lucrative new skills and yes, had fun doing it. It’s the quickest way to raise your profile online, and it’s a great method for demonstrating what you’re capable of because for the recipient of your unpaid services, there’s no financial risk – “first one’s free, mate” – so they’re more inclined to let you hog their webspace and sing your praises. (If you do a good job, of course).

Obviously there’s a line. But doing something for free can be the smart, profile-boosting, legacy-building thing to do, and putting aside the moral, volunteeristic aspect, it makes you look good. People will love you for it.

(But hey, don’t forget to earn money. That’s fun too).

2. I Hang Out

This is closely related to unpaid work. Is it a waste of time to engage in mass-chats on Twitter or comment on other blogs or meet people for drinks? What’s the point, other than fun? The point is the whole point of the Internet in the first place – to connect. There’s a really important word underpinning your online business: influence. Influence is a measure of how much people care about what you’re saying, doing and hustling.

By connecting better (please note, dear Follower-addled Twitter peeps, the word “better”), you spread the word.

And the word is everything.

3. I’ve Worked Hard At It

Chris Guillebeau says it. Gary Vaynerchuk says it. Anyone who is successfully self-employed knows it. If you’re working for yourself, you will work like a dawg. If you drink coffee, it will become even more useful than your skeleton in keeping you upright. If you’re a night owl, you’ll see a lot of dawn light and hear more dawn choruses than you’d ever nightmared. You will struggle to relax (see later). In short – obsession. The twitchy, deep-fried variety.

The good news is that the object of your obsession is totally worth it.

4. I Am Strangely Named

Type “mikeachim” into Google. Yes, they’re all me. Because who else would have such a stupid name? Ditto “Fevered Mutterings”.

I used to regret choosing these monikers (I’ve been stuck with them since 2004). Now? They’re an asset. It’s a fact, silly names are the new sensible.

5. I Read Widely

My twin fascinations are travel and storytelling (and the natural overlap therein). But my reading habits are all over the place – a good way to be as long as you’re also reading into your specialisations a goodly amount. Fusion food is about finding originality through blending. Try fusion reading – same principle. What do you never read? What subjects do you know nothing about? Go dabble.  Your brain will love it.

6. I Don’t Chase Really Small Change

“Needed: freelance writers to write short, timely pieces on tight deadline: payment $10 for 20 articles.”

This is one of the biggest traps for new writers. While I’d never be so pompous as to forbid anyone taking on any kind of paid work…really, you’re worth better than this by even breathing.

It’s my firm opinion that seemingly unpaid writing on your own blog - with your own name against it – has far greater value than anonymous nickel-and-dime work like this. Added to which, this is the way to burn out really fast. It’s unsustainable. You’ll be a cinder in 3 months.

7. It’s Not My Only Job

Launching yourself as a freelance writer is of course a financial risk – although arguably less of a risk right now than being an employee that can be laid off at any time. But however overcome with passion for your new career, you have to be practical. Entry-level writing doesn’t pay a lot.  You’re doing a great job if it’s a sustainable income, but most writers have to bolster it with non-writing wages. I’m one of them. That’s been a big help.

Don’t jump until you’re ready (but when you are ready, take a really big run-up).

8. I’m Thrifty

Caveats: i) I’m only recently thrifty (we’ll get to that when I list my failings), and ii) hey, I have to be.

But it’s really important to nail down your spending and really care about where your hard-earned cash is going. When I was on a larger, more dependeable income I could get away with being sloppy, however bad a habit that was. Now I can’t.

Understand where the money goes, and you get the self-confidence you will need to stay sane when money is tight, which it inevitably will be at regular intervals until you’re firmly established.

9. I’ve Blogged Some Of My Best Stuff

On January 10th 2010 I put a post up called “The Human Scale Of Cold”. It took me 5 days to put together in reading, writing, editing and re-editing. In short, I treated it less like a blog post and more like a formally submitted article. The result was astonishing and immediate – it went BLAM on social media, primarily Stumbleupon. To date, at least 37,000 pairs of eyeballs have viewed it via SU alone. Factor in over a hundred shares on Facebook and cut to Mike dancing round the garden (his emaciated frame poking through tattered clothing), planning a new website based on a thousand such posts.

(I’ll admit, I wrote a sequel in the summer. It did even better).

I can’t put that much time into blogging on a regular basis. And it would be really daft to do so, because that’s time I could spend getting paid directly. But it is worth putting some of your best writing in your blog – if only to fill out your Best Of page (a really good technique for getting people’s attention). This is the evergreen flagship content the successful blog-folk talk about, and for longterm influence, for making people understand what you’re about and why you’re worth reading, it matters.

Hold Fast, by Ben Fredericson (Flickr)

10. It’s Not Just A Business – It’s Fun

Welcome to the best and the worst thing about this job if you’re me.

I love this job. Really. I am in permanent fanboy mode at the work itself. Sometimes I have to force myself to power the laptop down, blubbering pathetically and fighting my own arm like Dr Strangelove. I am an enthusiast, and that keeps me stubbornly hanging in there when it really hurts. If I didn’t care, I’d have given up by now. This is why I’m not working in archaeology (my undergraduate degree), and why other friends successfully are.

The problem? When you love the job, you can’t switch off. (More on that later).

This is the only thing about freelance writing that I feel comfortable forcing down people’s throats when they ask me (eg. here, point 8). It’s the thing that will get you anywhere, and a lack of it is the road to failure. It’s this.

You have to care.

If you can imagine being happy doing something else, go do that instead. Being a writer, the actual writing, has to be your number 1 reward because sometimes, that’s the only reward you will have. Through sheer bloodyminded persistence and an unquenchable thirst to improve you may get “lucky” (I hate that word, but anyway) and make £squillions. Or you may make just enough to scrape by – and even that isn’t guaranteed.

Yes, this is a fickle profession, and financially you will probably suffer.

But that’s okay – that’s not why you’re doing it. Right?

(Part 2 soon).

Images: xjrlokix, Nicola since 1972 and Generationbass.com.

The Least Worst of Fevered Mutterings

Jan 22nd, 2011
by Mikeachim.
2 comments

Of the hundreds of blog posts I’ve written here at Fevered Mutterings, here are the ones that have garnered the most comments, attracted the most eyeballs, been Stumbled and Tweeted most enthusiastically…in short, where I’ve caused the most fuss.

I consider these my least worst blog posts.

But feel free to disagree wildly. I run that kind of place.

Encadre, by Frederic della Faille - Flickr

Go Home Again: 4 Ways To Love Where You Are

Fretting because you’re not able to travel? Believe me, I’ve been there (all of 2010, in fact). But everywhere is worth rediscovering, even the places you long to leave. All it takes is a change of perspective – and here’s how to get that, and learn to love where you are (not where you aren’t).

Occhio #3 by Grevel - Flickr

The Human Scale of Cold: How We Freeze And How We Thaw, and The Human Scale Of Hot: How We Melt Down

My most popular posts – a series of ghoulish investigations into the effects of extreme temperature on the human body. I really enjoyed writing these. Yes, I know, “never darken my door in real life”, etcetera. Already been said, my friend.

Breaking The Ice With Strangers: Hook (Part 1), Line (Part 2) and Sinker (Part 3)

A three-part, ten-section guide to bridging that lonely gap between you and strangers when you’re travelling – including broadcasting your mistakes, avoiding mentioning what you do for a living…and acting like an American. Yes, really.

Tripping Sign by jcoleman - Flickr

50 Amazingly Achievable Things To Do Before You Die

Tired of reading lists of formidably demanding things you need to do before you die? Me too. Here’s the antidote. If you score less than 25, you’re in big trouble.

Lifehacker and World Hum linked to this post. And I bet they got all 50, too.

Fevered Mutterings image: Talk Shows On Mute by Katie Tegtmeyer - Flickr

Shhh! (A Writer’s Guide To Destroying The World)

Distractions destroy days. Destroy distractions, you get your day back. As a writer wanting to get stuff out the door, this is *vital* – and here are a few ways I’ve found for blocking out the world. (I’m not claiming to be very good at them, mind).

Fevered Mutterings image: Kindle 3, by kodomut - (Flickr)

How To Fill Your Kindle (& Other Gadgets) For Free

There’s an overwhelming amount of free Stuff out there – and if you’re a Kindle-user, there’s a gobsmacking variety of things to freely, and legally upload to your beloved tablet of magical wordery. Furthermore? You don’t have to put up with lame content – we’re talking full-price books released for free for promotion purposes or because of lapsed copyright, or full-fat professional content designed to reach eyeballs, not  generate money. This post rounds up the best sites doing just that. If your brain doesn’t pop, it’ll end up bigger.

………………..

Do you have a favourite post of mine? Feeling irked that it’s not on this page (yet)? Drop me a comment below. Thank’ee kindly.


Images: Frederic della Faille, Grevel, ancawonka, jcoleman, kodomut, Katie Tegtmeyer.

I Have All The Non-Answers

Jan 19th, 2011
by Mikeachim.
16 comments

With freelance work piled high, I’m rushing hither and thither at the moment, fuelled by the usual things (coffee, existential doubt, a useful artificially-induced sense of panic, and these amazing little things). That’s why it’s a bit quiet in here. Don’t worry. I’ll be back shortly. ‘Coz, well, I like you too much to stay away for long. *toys with hair*

In the meantime, I’ve just been interviewed! By a mobile lawyer. On a number of important and topical questions that I deliberately misconstrued. In time this may come to be known as “Mike’s Only Interview” for this very reason, so if you want to see what I’m like when I’m put on the spot and forced to be pithy and succinct under severe time constraints, this interview’s a waste of your time – I had a week to think these replies up. And they’re still nonsense.

Back soon.

Image: Eleaf.

My Dirty Travel Writing Secret

Nov 21st, 2010
by Mikeachim.
46 comments

Walking Boots, by soapbeard - Flickr

I have a dark, dirty little secret. (more…)

Competition: Eyeballs for HobNobs

Jul 20th, 2010
by Mikeachim.
41 comments

competition,hobnobs,mcvities,fevered mutterings,mikeachim,missy & the universe

I’m making lots of changes in here at the moment. (more…)

The Big List Of Fevered Mutterings (2009-2010)

Feb 24th, 2010
by Mikeachim.
17 comments

It’s been nearly a year since I accidentally deleted my blog and had to start all over again.

Here’s everything that’s happened at Fevered Mutterings (v4.0) since that glorious day of rampant stupidity for which I am rightly proud. A year’s worth: most of it original, some stolen from my archives; some of it carefully considered, some written wildly from the hip; and some of it incomprehensible, even to me.

If you decide to read on…well, best of luck.

(more…)

Where Did It Go?

May 30th, 2009
by admin.
9 comments

Good question.

You may remember there was a blog here called Fevered Mutterings (v3), packed to the rafters with wibblings. Well, yesterday I realised I hadn’t archived it properly. So I went into my webspace to do just that.

It involved moving files around into one folder, so I could export that folder onto my laptop for archiving. When I did so, WordPress seems to have automatically tried to “fix” my blog – which involved installing blank versions of my content files over the top of them. In other words: it’s all gone. Years of it.

There’ll be a lot of broken links out there. Blimey.

I know, yes, absolutely, I should have done this and I should have done that. There’s a way of exporting all your work as an .xml file. Yes, I’m aware. But I had no idea that this ‘live’ webspace would try to correct itself while I was working in it – otherwise I would have been around forty thousand times more careful. I would probably have left well alone until I had memory sticks bulging with every scrap of writing.

But I didn’t and I don’t, and now it’s all gone.

deletekey

Contrary to what you might think…no, I’m not in the depths of a whisky bottle right now. I was archiving the site because I wanted to reboot it, so change were already in the air. And I’m not too precious about most of the writing I’ve done for fun. If I wrote it, it’s still in my head somewhere, so it’s a chance to write some of my favorite posts for the second time. And it’s a chance to start as I meant to go on from the start last time – if that’s not too tortuous a sentence.

So, welcome to Fevered Mutterings version 4: less bugs, more stuff, and far more stable. You’ll see.

Image: djking

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