Q & A with one of my favorite bloggers, {frolic} by Chelsea Fuss

By Caitlin Kelly

If you haven’t yet discovered the lovely images, stories and spirit of {frolic}, I urge you to do so immediately!

I don’t know how or when I found her, but am so glad I did.

Chelsea Fuss — who has the perfect name for someone with such exacting esthetic standards — now lives in Lisbon after traveling to all sorts of gorgeous places, which she has written about and photographed for her blog.

I admire her spirit of independence and exploration. She has spent her life discovering and sharing the world’s beauty — and for that I am a grateful reader and follower of her eye and her ideas.

She and I now follow one another on Twitter; she kindly agreed to let me do an email interview with her.

Tell me a bit of your history…where were you born? Raised? Did you move around a lot as a child or teen?

 

I lived in North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Olympia, WA. My family did move quite a bit though most of my growing up years were spent in Olympia, where my family goes back a generation or two. 

 

What sort of work do/did your parents do? i.e. where does your creative spirit come from? 

 

My dad was an accountant but we were always moving or talking about moving and he changed jobs a lot, setting up business wherever we went. My mother was a speech therapist but very creative with a very DIY mentality. She sewed all of our clothes and baked everything from scratch. 

My grandmother is an artist and my mom always encouraged creativity. I always looked up to my oldest sisters who brought home opera cassettes, foreign films, and art books.

Where did you attend college and why? 

I went to Brigham Young University (a Mormon school in Salt Lake City.) It was sort of the most comfortable thing to do at the time.

---

“I couldn’t wait to be “grown up” have a job and my own apartment. It’s something I dreamed of from a young age”

 

---

Did you enjoy it – how has it helped (or hindered) you? 

 

I loved my art history classes and the lifestyle of college though I had a difficult time with the particular culture of the university I was at. I grew up Mormon, and the most comfortable thing at the time was to go to Mormon University where my best friend was going. Sometimes I wish I went elsewhere but really I was in a hurry to get through university.

I couldn’t wait to be “grown up” have a job and my own apartment. It’s something I dreamed of from a young age.

When and where did you first get interested in the work you do now?

 

I was interested in flowers since the time I was about 7 years old and I asked my mom could we please plant a big huge flower garden instead of vegetables! Flowers have always been an obsession. As a teenager in Olympia in the 90’s, I spent most of time in my herb garden wearing a straw hat, while all the other kids were at Nirvana concerts. I made potpourri and dried flower wreaths. Ha!  I read every book about gardening and flowers that I could get my hands on. At 18 I arranged the flowers for my sister’s wedding.

I always loved reading magazines and studying the styling. Blogging is something that was unexpected. I discovered it by accident and got hooked.

New horizons!

Who, if anyone, encouraged or mentored you the most? 

 

My parents have always been very supportive. My mom was always buying gardening books when she found out it was an interest of mine and my father has always been a huge supporter of my entrepreneurial spirit. My grandmother, Grace, was always cheering me on as well.

---

 “When I want a “so truthful it hurts” answer, I call my dad, for his pragmatism”

---

What lessons did they teach you that have proven most useful?

 

My mother and grandmother have taught me the value of optimism and positive thinking. You really have to have a positive attitude and use intention as a small business owner because of the instability and unpredictability. 

 

My dad has always tried to teach me to be more detached and not make as many emotional decisions. I am still learning that one but I’ve gotten better. 

 

When I want optimism and a pep talk, I call my mom. When I want a “so truthful it hurts” answer, I call my dad, for his pragmatism. 

---

“Travel becomes a way of life and a comfort zone”

---

You’ve traveled the world…what gives you the confidence to do so?

 

I think it’s one of those things that the more you do, the more comfortable you get with it. Travel becomes a way of life and a comfort zone. Just like anything else. Even when it is uncomfortable, if you want something bad enough you’ll do it. Travel has always been an obsession I was willing to do anything to make it happen.

It’s funny you use the word “confident”. I’ve never been super confident and was very shy as a child and teenager. The Dr. thought I was mute when I was a kid because I never talked!

I always felt different from other people but because I had parents and siblings who encouraged me to forge my own path and live my own way, I slowly become a more confident person and found my comfort zone in doing my own thing. And I’ve always felt more confident, living life my way.

 

---

 

“These things come with tradeoffs. Of course it’s not easy. The instability and unpredictability is hard for me”

---

Other people look at a creative life, and a somewhat transient one, as scary and unpredictable. How does it feel for you?

 

For me, running my own business and being a freelancer has always been more of a comfort zone than the alternative. I’ve always loved working by myself and I think honestly, that’s been the biggest appeal. That, and freedom. 

 

The transient part had always been such a dream for me that it just felt right and it felt overdue. As I kid I dreamed of seeing the world and that dream has never left me.

I think getting to the realization that these things come with tradeoffs. Of course it’s not easy. The instability and unpredictability is hard for me. And I definitely have moments of thinking “What in the world am I doing?!” Especially moving to Portugal. In my head it seemed pretty simple and easy but I have to say it’s been much more challenging than I imagined. 

 

Where do you find creative inspiration? Do you have any role models or people you especially admire (in or out of your field?) Why them?

 

I am super inspired by artist studios, other people’s gardens and kitchens and living rooms! I love seeing how other people live and work and what they collect and how they put it all together. I always find inspiration on walks through markets, a museum, and of course a new city.

I really love what Marie from My Life in Sourdough http://www.mylifeinsourdough.com/  is doing because it’s different than anything I’ve seen before. Her series combines a romantic comedy story line with a cooking show. I think it’s brilliant and timeless.

 

What advice would you offer to people who wish they had your life? (i.e. creativity, freedom, travel, etc.)

 

First off — not everything looks like it does on the Internet.. so it’s not perfect and I have lots of problems and bad days like everyone else. Also, everything is a trade off, so while I might have freedom to travel and a flexible job, there’s other things I don’t have that maybe I would love to have.

 

Also: Focus on doing what makes you happy and what you love. Don’t be afraid to market yourself as an artist. The Internet is still the Wild West so there are so many possibilities. Do what you love and use the Internet to the best of your advantage. Also, nothing is perfect. If you want your art or creativity to be a job, you might have to compromise as far as business models, products, etc.

 

What work are you most proud of, so far? Why?

This is so hard. I think every creative person is so tough on themselves! And I always see how I could do better or improve everything I do.

I really like the way these images came out for Anna Joyce’s Indigo Collection, photographed by Lisa Warninger and prop styled by me. http://www.frolic-blog.com/2015/07/indigo-beach-dreams-with-anna-joyce/

 

Want to blog better? Try these 5 tips — and take my webinar!

By Caitlin Kelly

Use your blog to capture and describe history — like this Paris Unity March, Jan. 11, 2015

Broadside now has more than 13,000 readers worldwide, and adds new followers daily.

Thanks!

I enjoy blogging and really enjoy the wit and wisdom of those who often make time to comment — ksbeth, modernidiot, ashokbhatia, rami ungar, kathleen r and others. It’s gratifying to converse globally with such interesting people.

I also teach others how to blog (and write) better…

Here are five of the 30 tips I share with the students in my webinar, “Better Blogging.”

I teach blogging at Pratt Institute, a private college in Brooklyn, and love helping others to achieve their goals.

Broadside, almost six years old and with more than 1,700 posts, has been Freshly Pressed six times and cited for its “signature clarity and wit” by this fellow blogger, writing on multi-topic blogs.

I offer my webinar scheduled at your convenience; paid via Paypal, it’s $125 for 90 minutes via Skype or phone which allows time for your questions as well.

I also do individual coaching at $200/hour, with a one-hour minimum; please email me at learntowritebetter@gmail.com.

Use photos, videos, drawings — visuals!

I wish more bloggers consistently added quality visual content to their posts. Often, a well-chosen, quirky or beautiful image will quickly pull in a curious reader.

Every magazine or newspaper, and the best blogs and websites, uses illustrations, maps, graphs and photos — chosen carefully after much internal debate by skilled graphics and design and photo editors and art directors, each working hard every single day to lure us in.

A sea of words is both daunting and dull. Seduce your readers, as they do.

Think like an editor

When you write for an editor, (as every journalist and author does), your ideas, and how you plan to express them, have to pass muster with someone else, often several. Their job is to ask you why you think this story is worth doing, and why now. (Just because you feel like hitting “publish” doesn’t mean you should.)

Who is this post — and your blog — written for? Have you made your points clearly?

Would your next post get past a smart editor or two?

Your readers are busy, easily bored and quickly distracted

All readers resemble very small tired children — they have short attention spans and wander off within seconds. Grab them fast!

Woo me with a fab headline

Magazine editors sweat over coverlines, the teasing short sentences they choose to put on their magazine covers, hoping to make you buy that edition. Newspaper editors know they need powerful, succinct or amusing headlines to catch our eye and pull us into a story.

Have you ever studied some of the best heads? “Headless body found in topless bar” is a classic. This is an excellent headline as it immediately made me read the post — it’s bossy, very specific and focused on a place I know well. Sold!

Here’s a link to how to write great heads —  and another.

Break your posts into many paragraphs, and keep them short

Don’t force readers to confront a huge unbroken block of copy! It’s lazy and editorially rude. They’ll just click away, irritated. (I see this on too many blogs.)

HOPING WE’LL WORK TOGETHER SOON!

 

When blogging about illness, what’s TMI? The NYT wades in — and angers many

By Caitlin Kelly

Maybe you’ve been following this recent firestorm?

The one in which Salon, a popular American website, called The New York Times’  former executive editor Bill Keller, and his wife, Gilbey’s gin heiress Emma Gilbey, despicable?

Both of them wrote about cancer patient Lisa Adams, who has advanced breast cancer.

From Salon:

Lisa Bonchek Adams is a mother of three living with Stage 4 breast cancer. She blogs and tweets about what she is undergoing and the decisions she is making about her health; she does so frequently and to a large audience that’s rooting for her. And to a prominent husband-wife pair of journalists, she’s somehow offensive.

Bill Keller, the former executive editor of the New York Times, published an Op-Ed in that paper today indicating that Adams, in spite of the image of positivity and strength she generally broadcasts on her social media platforms, is dying and doing so in a manner somehow undignified; Keller draws a comparison between Adams and his late father-in-law. “His death seemed to me a humane and honorable alternative to the frantic medical trench warfare that often makes an expensive misery of death in America.”

That “trench warfare” has, for Adams, included a variety of medical studies; Keller indicates that Adams’ personal decisions about her health, and her expressing herself online, somehow detracts from people who choose not to undergo experimental treatments or who choose to slip under with less of what is traditionally known as “fighting.” He even finds a Stanford associate dean who is willing to say that Adams “shouldn’t be unduly praised. Equal praise is due to those who accept an inevitable fate with grace and courage.”

Here’s an analysis piece from NPR’s blog:

the piece enraged a lot of Times readers, according to public editor Margaret Sullivan, that she heard a great deal of negative feedback, and who herself said “there are issues here of tone and sensitivity.”

Boy … you can say that again. By closing the piece with a piece about a dean who “cringes” at Adams’ alleged embrace of a “combat metaphor” (unsupported by any quotes from her own writing) and salutes those who show grace and courage, Keller implicitly suggests that to handle your disease as Adams has is one way to go. The other way to go is with grace and courage. And that’s very unfortunate.

Adams herself says that Keller, along with his wife Emma Gilbey Keller, who also wrote a controversial column critiquing Adams’ handling of her cancer (that was in The Guardian and has since ), have misrepresented the basic facts of her medical status, and Keller has already admitted he got the number of kids she has wrong. These disputes have been pretty thoroughly inventoried in a . And writers at outlets including and have been sharply critical of the need to explain to a cancer patient how to handle (and discuss) having cancer.

This is an issue I’ve thought a lot about — how much to write or blog about one’s illness or surgery or medical issues — and how much to never share beyond one’s circle of intimates. People, in my view, who are the ones who are most likely to have actually visited you and your family in the hospital or come with you to the chemo suite, perhaps.

One woman I know, barely, professionally, shared a lot of detail on Facebook about the effects of chemo as she was treated (so far, successfully) for breast cancer. But there was a lot I wish she had simply kept to herself.

She got a lot of emotional support, which I understand — why she craved it and why people offered it.

My mother had a radical mastectomy in 2003. She is alive. She has survived multiple cancers, including thyroid and a meningioma, a form of brain tumor.

In other words, I already live in daily fear of my genetic heritage and have little appetite to read anything about cancer.

That is not a judgment of people who do, but the effect of knowing too much firsthand already.

I get my medical tests and keep a careful eye on my own body and that of my husband.

I’ve already stared down plenty of doctors and Xrays and seen too much and heard too much. I saw my mothers’ very large brain tumor on the Xray and had to give informed consent for her; here’s the piece I wrote about it for Chatelaine, Canada’s largest women’s magazine.

Who am I to complain when I, too, have written these sorts of stories? They can, I know, be helpful to others and provide comfort to the ill and to their families.

A friend my age died of cancer in January 2006 and several men in my apartment building are currently fighting cancer.

It’s not that I don’t care about people who are ill. It’s the reverse. Instead, I find myself worrying about people I do not even know.

For me, that’s not the best choice.

I have really mixed feelings about this sort of thing — none of which suggests I’m right.

How do you feel about someone sharing a lot of very graphic detail on-line about their illness?

Come learn! May’s webinars: freelancing, interviewing, blogging and more

By Caitlin Kelly

Students signed up for my fall webinar series, and individual coaching — thank you! — from Australia, New Zealand, London, Chicago, D.C., California and Connecticut; one student saw her blog’s page views and followers increase as soon as she made the simple change I suggested.

I also coach individually whenever it suits you — by phone, Skype and/or email.

(All photos on this post are courtesy of my husband, Jose R. Lopez.)

These are the six 90-minute classes, each priced at $125:

Better Blogging

May 10, 10:00-11:30 a.m. ET

This practical, lively seminar offers more than 30 steps you can take — right away — to boost your blog’s engagement, views and followers; Broadside has more than 10,000 followers now, and grows every single day. To win writing jobs, freelance or full-time, your blog is your best marketing tool. Broadside has been Freshly Pressed six times and chosen as one of 22 in “culture” by WordPress worth reading. Let’s do it!

You, Inc: The Business of Freelancing

May 10, 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm ET

I’ve freelanced full-time since 2006, this time, for local, regional, national and international clients. You can too! In this super-focused, tips-filled webinar, we’ll discuss how much you really need to earn, negotiating, how to find (and keep!) clients and how to maximize your productivity. My clients include Cosmpolitan, Ladies Home Journal and The New York Times and on-line sites HGTV.com, Quartz.com, reuters.com and the Harvard Business Review blog.

 

Learn to Think Like a Reporter

May 10, 4:00-5:30 pm ET

If your mother says she loves you, check it out! This class teaches the tips and tricks I’ve gained from working as a staff reporter for three major dailies, including the New York Daily News — and freelancing for The New York Times since 1990. What’s a stake-out? A nut graf? A lede and kicker? Every reporter knows these basics, and if you hope to compete with them — whether you’re blogging, or writing for on-line or print or broadcast or video — this is the stuff you need to know.

 

Conducting a Kick-Ass Interview

May 17, 10:00 a.m. to 11;30 a.m. ET

No ambitious non-fiction writer, blogger or journalist succeeds without knowing how to conduct probing and well-controlled interviews. I’ve interviewed thousands of sources, from an Admiral to convicted felons, Olympic athletes, cancer survivors, duck hunters and ballet dancers. How to best structure an interview? Should you tape or take notes? What’s the one question every interview should end with? My 30 years’ experience as an award-winning reporter, author of two-well-reviewed books of nationally reported non-fiction — one of which included 104 original interviews — and frequent New York Times writer will help you ace the toughest interviews.

 

Crafting the Personal Essay

May 17, 1:00 p.m – 2:30 p.m. ET

From The New York Times to Elle and Marie Claire — to Thought Catalog, Salon, the Awl, Aeon and Medium — the marketplace for personal essay continues to thrive. How to sell this challenging genre? How to blend the personal and universal? Every essay, no matter the topic, must answer one key question, which we’ll discuss in detail. Having published my own essays in the Times, Marie Claire, Chatelaine and others — and winner of a Canadian National Magazine award for one — I’ll help you determine what to say and in what voice.

 

 

Finding and Developing Story Ideas

May 17, 4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m ET

We’re surrounded every single day by dozens of potential story ideas. Recognizing them — and developing them into salable pitches — is the topic of this helpful webinar. And every non-fiction book begins with an idea; developing it into a 30-page book proposal means “saving string”, collecting the data you’ll need to intelligently argue your points. This webinar will help you better perceive the many stories already swirling in your orbit and determine who’s most likely to pay you (well) for them.

Feel free to email me with any questions at learntowritebetter@gmail.com or call me in New York at 914-332-6065.

Sign up and further details are here.

These are the only webinars I’m offering until fall of 2014.

I look forward to working with you!

Thank you!

By Caitlin Kelly

It’s sometimes easy to forget that attention is a gift. We’re all busy, tired, distracted.

So when readers come to Broadside — for one post, or several — I know it’s a choice.

It’s been amazing and inspiring for me to “meet” people from around the world here, even just from reading your gravatars when you sign up to follow. Several of you have become good friends, from London to L.A.

Newest followers include a dancer/choreographer and playwright from Tel Aviv, a retired history teacher in Florida, a country singer from Nashville, and a suburban mum in Britain.

You are one seriously diverse audience!

I appreciate your comments, and especially so when you finally decide to join the conversation — I know many of you lurk, silently. Please weigh in!

London (Photo credit: @Doug88888)

It’s been a new privilege to start teaching and coaching, and the response has been terrific, with students coming from Australia, New Zealand, California, Virginia and other spots. Working with Skype is great, as we can see one another and exchange ideas and laughter. The other day, I waved to three small children in Adelaide as their mum and I were about to start a session. So fun!

Selfishly, coming back to teaching and coaching has also offered me a needed and welcome break from the usual routine of pitch/sell/write/revise. As a full-time writer, I’m an intellectual production line of one — the old brain gets tired!

It’s been great to leave my apartment, meet new clients face to face and begin to expand my teaching to other places. It looks like I might be teaching at NYSID, my former school of interior design in Manhattan. I really love teaching, and I’ve missed it. It’s fun to share my skills and help you meet your goals.

Writing well isn’t easy!

For some odd reason, people now think it is or should be or want it to be.

Great writing is really the end product of clear, focused thinking: about topic, tone, voice, diction, rhythm, intent, mood. It has many moving parts, and until they spin together without friction, you’re more likely to hear the nasty grinding of gears than the smooth humming you’d prefer.

So, dear readers, and those of you placing in your trust in my skills to teach and coach you, you’re very much appreciated.

Thank you!

Webinars and coaching — we’re off!

By Caitlin Kelly

It’s been a fun week!

Thanks so much to the students who have signed up so far — from Auckland, New Zealand, Chicago, Connecticut, Rochester, NY and Brooklyn.

blogging makes you a better marketer (Photo credit: Will Lion)

We’re working by phone, Skype and email, whatever works best for you — for individual coaching, I charge $150/hour.

If you want to participate in a webinar, though, you MUST register at least 48 hours before it begins. Thanks!

The next webinar is this Sunday November 10 at 4:00 p.m. EST, for 90 minutes, Better Blogging. It costs $100.

We’ll talk about:

— how to find new readers

— boosting engagement and comments

— using visuals (photos, video, drawings) to make your posts more appealing

— why it pays to think like a print editor, including layout, great headlines, copy-editing and proofreading

— why writing like a news journalist can help you

— that slooooooowwing way down will improve your quality

— why fewer posts might be your better choice

— what readers want most

Broadside began on July 1, 2009, and moved here to WordPress in July 2010.

It grows every single day by 1o to 20 followers, now almost 8,000 of you worldwide.

It has been featured six times on Freshly Pressed, the best posts of the day chosen by WordPress’ editors.

Here’s one sample of a FPed post.: Would You Rather be Productive or Creative? (It has 282 comments and 359 likes.)

And another. Have We Lost The Art of Conversation? (386 comments, 495 likes.)

As a career journalist, who writes frequently for The New York Times, I know what readers want. Here’s my most recent story for them, about women car designers, that ran October 30.

Sign up here…

Please sign up now for my webinars: reporting, essays, ideas and more

By Caitlin Kelly

I mentioned this here a while ago.

Now we’re ready to go!

As some of you already know, I’m an award-winning journalist who’s published two non-fiction books of national reporting and writes frequently for The New York Times. My work has appeared in publications in Canada, (Chatelaine, Flare, Toronto Life, Maisonneuve , etc.), the U.S., France, Ireland and New Zealand, including The Wall Street Journal, VSD, Marie Claire and Ladies Home Journal.

I’ve also taught journalism at Concordia University in Montreal, New York University, Pace University and The New York Times Student Journalism Institute. I also recently taught the first webinar here at Kristen Lamb’s online conference, WANACON.

I’m offering six webinars:

Think Like a Reporter

Finding and Developing Story Ideas

Growing Your Blog

Writing for A-List Editors

You, Inc: The Business of Freelancing 

Crafting The Personal Essay.

Each is 90 minutes in length, half of which is saved for your questions and comments.

They range in price from $100 to $200; details, prices, dates and sign-up are all here. After you’ve registered, I’ll email you each directly with the sign-in location for the webinar.

The first is Sunday November 3 at 4:00 pm. Eastern time. 

Finding and Developing Story Ideas will be helpful to anyone who’s freelancing, or hopes to. I’ll talk about which ideas are best suited to websites, newspapers, magazines or non-fiction books — sometimes all of these.

Three recent students say:

“By any metric, Caitlin soars as a teacher, especially her sincerity and kindness. Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Caitlin embodies that – with the experiences she can share, the skills she can teach, and lives she can change.”

— Amer Taleb

 

Caitlin is an exemplary mentor and teacher. She doesn’t just provide excellent training for the exacting standards and requirements of journalism and authorship, but shares her experience and knowledge readily, offering real, pertinent information and how to use it.

 

She invests herself in those she teaches, helping them to develop the wide array of skills and instincts they will need to succeed in any area.”

— Cadence Woodland

“I enjoyed Caitlin’s presentation very much. As a journalist with only a few years experience, I appreciated her willingness to share her expertise and experiential wisdom. She made herself available for questions afterwards, which was particularly helpful. Her experience was insightful. If you have a chance to take a class with her, don’t hesitate. Great value.”

— Lisa Hall-Wilson

If you have any questions, please email me at learntowritebetter@gmail.com

I hope you’ll sign up — and please spread the word!

Come take my on-line class this Friday at WANACON!

By Caitlin Kelly

For those of you who follow Kristen Lamb’s blog, I’m giving a 90-minute webinar this Friday, October 4, at 6pm Eastern.

English: The New York Times building in New York, NY across from the Port Authority. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s called “Learn to Think Like a Reporter” and will offer lots of practical tips from my 30 years as a journalist, 20 years writing freelance for The New York Times and my three staff writing jobs at three major daily newspapers, the Globe and Mail, Montreal Gazette and New York Daily News.

You can sign up here.

If this is too late, I’ll soon be posting a list of my own upcoming webinars, including that one, and will give you plenty of time to choose one (or several!), tell all your writer/journalist friends, and sign up.

Five essential qualities writers need

Writing exercise 3 (Photo credit: aaipodpics)

Writing — what we read here or elsewhere — is merely the end product, the visible, finished material emerging from a long process that really begins with an idea or a dream or a vision of something. Many people who say they really want to write well and be widely read and maybe even well-paid for it sometimes focus a lot of wasted energy on the wrong things.

They fuss over the font on their blog or their SEO or how to find an agent or what their book cover looks like.

It’s much more basic.

Here are five qualities anyone who wants to write well  — and find a large readership — needs:

Trust

To publish your work requires tremendous trust. First, in yourself, that you have something worth hearing and have the skills to express it clearly and compellingly. Second, in your audience — that there is an audience out there for your work. Third, in your agent, (should you wish to publish  traditionally). Fourth, in your editor(s). Fifth, journalists must also, (with open eyes and a healthy skepticism of “facts”), trust their sources, and their editors and copy editors.

You have to trust in your skills and experience to see you through, even when you’ve never tackled a subject or genre before. It’s like anything else — you can’t grow unless you push yourself into new and untried areas. Given the nature of journalism and publishing right now, being able to move quickly and persuasively into new ways of using your skills is essential to earning a good living.

Humility

Walk into a bookstore or library  — and look around. There are millions of books already in print. In addition to every other form of media out there, from Twitter and Pinterest to movies, TV and video games, these books are competing for your readers’ time and attention. Whose work is currently selling most, to whom, and why? Whose work has lasted for decades or centuries or even millennia and why? Asking readers to give us their time and attention means acknowledging those who have done it so well for so long.

We don’t have to ape them, but the marketplace of ideas is a very, very crowded one.

Confidence

And yet…If you can’t summon the confidence in your voice and ideas and analysis, why would anyone else? If you lack confidence in your skills, take classes and read great writers and see what they do so well. Do whatever is necessary to develop the skill to tell your story. Then do it!

Also have the confidence that your material may have valuable iterations in other paid media, from film and television to theatrical productions to ideas you haven’t even imagined. Re-define “writing” as “intellectual property” and you will start to look at your work very differently, and protectively. (A ferocious agent and skilled entertainment attorney are key to this step.)

Empathy

You can’t be an intelligent or useful journalist without empathy — whether you’re interviewing a politician, a welfare mother, a billionaire banker or a criminal. You have to be able to imagine how the world looks and feels to them and care deeply enough to ask them thoughtful and probing questions.  Same for writers of fiction, whose characters must live and breathe for us as readers.

Decisiveness

What to say, and how to say it and in what detail? There’s no standard metric, no safe dividing line or blinking yellow warning light on our computer or notebook to warn us when we’ve moved from terrific to boring. We choose every word and then we must commit to it, even after the 10th or 20th draft. It has to go the printer! Editors are waiting. Readers expect to hear from you.

Decide what you want to express and get on with it. The only people who can call themselves writers write — they don’t just talk about writing.

I’m finally reading (and loving!) this book, a classic, by Howard Zinsser, “On Writing Well.” It’s funny and filled with fantastic advice. Here are his five tips.

What do you think are other qualities a writer needs most?

And for 2013…

Now you finally get to meet Jose…

I wish you all the best!

Excellent health, steady income, many cups of Earl Grey tea, glorious sunsets and ferociously enveloping hugs. Whatever your dreams may be, I hope you’ll take the first (or second or fifteenth) steps toward attaining them.

For those of you who have not yet read my Welcome or About page, I’m Caitlin Kelly, a New York-based author and journalist, who writes frequently for The New York Times. Some of my journalism, and my two non-fiction books, are here. I grew up in Canada, and moved to the United States in 1988.

My new book, “Malled: My Unintentional Career in Retail” will be published in China — !! — in March.

Broadside continues to grow daily, with a variety of readers that leaves me gobsmacked — high school students to seniors, Spaniards and Australians and fellow Canadians and Indonesians, a Ghanaian charity, a pastor-to-be in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a yoga teacher from Cobourg (coming to take your class later this month!), a journalism professor from Iowa, a photographer from Perth, an immigration attorney from Houston, a Jordanian medical student, musicians and artists and writers and moms-of-six. More than 3,300 people have joined so far.

I met Michelle, author of The Green Study, in Minneapolis in October, and hope to meet Elizabeth, who writes Gifts of the Journey about her life in rural England, and C, moving to London, and author of Small Dog Syndrome, in England this summer.

Mrs. Fringe and I have a coffee date in a few weeks as well; a thank-you to her, to Rami Ungar and to C. for their comments, (which my annual tally from WordPress tells me makes them the most prolific here.)

More comments from those who’ve yet to speak up, please!

We’ve enjoyed much lively, intelligent debate here, and I’ve really appreciated your input. With so many readers worldwide — especially when I blog on American political or economic issues — we have a chance for some serious dialogue.

In a global economy, the smartest choice we can make is to connect across borders and ideologies and truly try to understand how the world looks to others many time zones away.

Please email me, or comment here, on what you’d like to see more of at Broadside (or less); one reader has suggested interviews and Q and A’s with some of the interesting and accomplished people I know in various fields, which is a neat idea, so I’m working on that. Also, possibly, more reviews of cultural events (books. shows, art) I think you’d also enjoy.

I’m also always looking for amazing blogs to follow — please share a few with us that you find consistently fab? What do you love about them?

My professional hopes for this year include selling two new non-fiction books, creating a woman-only, invitation-only conference next fall, working with a new assistant, telling more interesting stories and doing more well-paid public speaking.

Personally, enjoying as much time as possible with Jose, (as we head into our 13th year together), some travel (Newfoundland is on our list, as is Paris and London), deepening my friendships and staying healthy. My father is still super-healthy at 83, so we’re heading north to Ontario this month to visit him and see dear old friends.

What are some of your hopes for 2013?