On Saturday, my husband and our two sons and I decided to take a quick daytrip to NYC. We could have subtitled it the Madagascar fieldtrip. My younger son loves that movie. First, we wet to the MOMA and saw the Pixar exhibit, which was really neat with lots of sketches, busts, and variations of characters that made up the different Pixar movies, like The Incredibles, Monsters Inc., Toy Story, etc. Then we went to the Toys R Us in Times Square and rode the giant indoor Ferris Wheel. We rode in the M and M car, which was great since it’s my oldest son’s favorite candy. Then we went to Bubba Gump’s for lunch, where our Host’s name was also Kyle and made a huge deal out of the fact they had the same name and had Kyle totally cracking up. We had a good late lunch/early dinner there, walked to Grand Central Station and then took a subway ride back to the car. The boys were exhausted, but thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
For some reason it took us about an hour and a half to go 5 blocks to get to the tunnel to get to New Jersey. That was so frustrating. I can’t imagine dealing with that amount of traffic on a regular basis. But it was a great trip. My older son wants to move there. He needs to be consantly engaged in something and he was right at home in New York City. My older son just loves the fact that you can get soft pretzels (his favorite food) on just about every street corner.
I saw that James Frey was going to be on Oprah this afternoon, so I begged asked my kids if I could watch it instead of the normal diet of PBS afternoon cartoons.
Oprah was not happy at all. I’m surprised James Frey agreed to even come on. The weird thing was he even seemed dishonest and evasive when she was directly asking him questions. I got the impression that he doesn’t think he did anything wrong.
They also had his editor on, and asked her about her role in editing the book. I guess they were asking why she didn’t follow up on the claims he made in his book. As an editor, how would she even know which ones to fact-check? And is that really her job? I wonder if he signed a contract attesting that his memoir was a true account of what happened in his life?
So who is at fault for this? In my opinion, it’s James Frey. But is it that big a deal? Supposedly this book is a good read. But now, if and when I read it, I’ll consider it fiction. Does it make it any less of a good book? Hmm, hard to say. It all boils down to the reader (not to mention Oprah) feeling deceived.
I think I mentioned in a previous post that I’m helping a client with editing his memoirs. Now I’m not an editor at a major publishing company, and depending on whether this ends up being self-published or published by a major publishing house, it may not ever be seen by an in-house editor. But still, I have to make a leap of faith that the memoir my client and I are working on is all accurate. It’s from memory, so I’m sure no memoir is 100% accurate like it could be if you could rewind a videotape.
One of the guests on the show recommended the publishers come up with a rating system for memoirs based on the degree of believability. I’m not sure how you could possibly do that.
The much talked about root canal without novacaine….I’ve never had a root canal, thank goodness, but I’m sure some people could get through it without drugs, just as some women go through childbirth without them. As a child, my older brother would refuse novacaine shots to get cavities filled. I, on the other hand, would have probably passed out from the pain of the drill. Everyone is different.
So I guess the moral of the story is if you want to write a dramaticized version of your life, label it a fictional novel.
For some reason, greater Harrisburg virtual assistants seem to be in short supply. There are probably more than I know of, but the only one that is active in IVAA is Corie Stewart. I also belong to DVVAA which is made up of VAs from mostly Pennsylvania, but also NJ and DE. I know of another VA that lives in the Lancaster area, but there seems to be a definite lack of VAs here in the Harrisburg or York, PA areas. Hmm, maybe Corie and I will have to host some workshops!
I was reading an MSN story about what to do about the high cost of childcare when you have a baby. Since my sons are 5 and 3, I don’t have quite the expenses of new parents. To have my older son in 1/2 day care at a neighborhood babysitter (he’s in kindergarten the other half), and my younger son in preschool from 8:30-4, I pay $165 a week. That’s not pocket change. Next year with my older son in first grade, it will drop to $150 a week (preschool tuition is going up) and two years from now, it should drop to $50 a week. That’s going to be really nice. The year after, I won’t have any expense during the school year.
I can manage my childcare expenses, but it does take a substantial portion of my income. Then, when summer rolls around, to have them both in full-time care, it would cost me $40/day, which is still a bargain. But there comes a point where you have to wonder if it’s worth it. I’ll probably only have a babysitter 3 days a week and reduce my workload a little or work more in the evenings and on weekends.
But as a VA, I have the flexibility to make the decision of how often, when, and for what rate I’ll work. Many people don’t have that option. I really hope by the time my boys are fathers, childcare will be better, more affordable, and more flexible than it is today.
I know a lot of VAs work from home with their kids there. That doesn’t work out well for me. I’m really curious how it works for others. I want to have total concentration when I work, and I want my kids to be engaged in kid-appropriate, fun, social activities, which I can’t help them with if I’m working. So they’d probably be watching TV most of the day. I also like to have most of the normal business day available to meet with clients, have phone conferences, attend network events, etc.
The only advice I can give to new parents is to consider a family day care home. I’ve used 4 of them in the last 3 years. I feel that in each of the instances, my kids benefited from a closer bond, a smaller group of regular children and a home like atmosphere. Plus it cost about $10 less a day and my kids didn’t get sick as often. Most even gave me a sibling discount if both my boys were there. Obviously you need to extensively interview them and offer a whole bunch of questions on everything under the sun to make sure it is a fit for your child and provider. The disadvantage is that it’s a single human running it and that person does take a vacation and does occasionally get sick, but if you have flexibility in your job, I found it to be manageable.
Not sure why I’m thinking about this today. Maybe its because both my boys were sick last week and I had two workdays with them here. It definitely reaffirmed my belief that I’ve made the right decision about childcare and my business!
I’ve been following the story of author James Frey’s memoir, “A Million Little Pieces” with great interest. Right now I’m helping an author content edit his (very interesting, I might add) memoirs. When my author is relating a story from when he was 11 years old, he has to take a certain amount of liberty with what he was thinking and feeling at the time. He can make his best guess, but unless there was an MTV “Real Life” camera crew following him around 40 years ago, no one will really know for certain what exact words were said. Memories are subjective.
For some reason, this reminds me of a quote a former client (when I was a social worker) said to me one time: “There are two sides to every story…and then there’s the truth.” Two people can experience the exact same situation and come away with a different understanding of what actually happened.
Now, obviously, you shouldn’t do anything intentional to make up things about your life or take huge liberties, as James Frey is accused of doing, but sometimes you have to combine events so the story keeps moving. Makes you wonder how thick the line is between fiction and non-fiction.
Business continues to move along at a good pace…I’m having lots of fun with a new project…content editing a client’s memoirs. This is loads of fun and this client is a pleasure to work with. We’re making real progress rounding out his writing and adding some details to make it even more interesting to the readers. I need to market myself better to get more jobs like this. The best projects are ones that don’t seem so much like work!
I’ve been extremely busy with my clients and haven’t gotten back to recording my second edition of my podcast. It’s a shame, because I enjoyed doing it and it could turn out to be good publicity. I plan to write my notes for my second episode this week. I’ve come up with some great ideas for show topics. This has been a real interesting week and I’ve gained lots of material on how to work with a VA!
Ahh, and since I promised back in September…here’s my update on kidwriting. I was a little skeptical of how it would work, but I’m a believer. My kindergartner has made great strides in his writing, which still amazes me, because 30 years ago, when I was in kindergarten, we were playing trucks, painting and learning our ABC’s. This is way different. But back to kidwriting…I volunteer twice a month and have found it very interesting. It’s kinda neat to think you’re helping kids at the very beginning of learning to write, unlike what I normally do, helping adults learn to write better. It’s so neat to see them make progress. They take out these huge tablets of paper and draw whatever picture they want on the left side and the sentence that explains it on the right. Today they had assessments and the kids had to do it totally on their own. My son said he drew a picture of himself relaxing in the tub listening to the SG Show ( a kids podcast) and wrote “I am relaxing in the tub.” It doesn’t come home until the book is filled up, but my guess is he wrote something like, “I am relksing in the tb. He writes all the sounds he hears as he writes the sentence. He’s doing well with it. And all the kids are improving their writing skills, which also helps them with their reading. But, I’m a believer.
Stay tuned…
I periodically read the little MSN story teaser headlines on the MSN taglines, and one story ran the other day about the top slang of 2005. One was “jump the couch” referring to Tom Cruise’s erratic behavior when he was on Oprah gushing about Katie. Another was “Floodweiser” referring to the water Annheiser-Busch distributed to Hurricaine victims but my favorite was “spokesweasel” describing a PR spokesperson. Things are just funnier when they hit close to home!
Happy 2006 everyone. May this year be your healthiest, happiest and most profitable yet!
Lauren