Archives for December 2014

When I began dabbling with my very first website, a simple Flavors.me design that was basically a glorified business card, I felt baffled by slick, pretty fashion and lifestyle blogs. Where did bloggers find such clean, elegant and chic themes? How were their images so crisp, vivid and consistent?

I have a lot to learn on all these fronts, but I’m happy with how this blog has evolved over the last year. Here is exactly what I did, complete with missteps. Feel free to follow the steps exactly if you want a blog identical to this one (I recommend skipping steps 1 and 3).

1. Bought hosting and registered a domain on WordPress.com.

2. Bought the Adeline theme from 17th Avenue Designs.

3. Realized WordPress.com didn’t support custom themes, and that I needed to transfer my hosting and switch to WordPress.org.

4. Hired Ahmed Rameez from Elance.com to transfer my hosting to Godaddy.com and work out a few bugs.

5. Installed Adeline theme.

6. Bought an About Me graphic from 17th Avenue and installed it in my sidebar.

7. Found Gala Darling’s killer list of blog resources, free Blogging Basics video and began following her tips to make the whole place feel more streamlined. I also bought the Blogcademy’s About Me video guide, because I really struggled with writing about myself.

8. Installed Google Analytics Dashboard for WP, SEO by Yoast, Tumblr crosspostr and drop cap plugins.

9. Sourced stock photos from Death To The Stock Photo and Unsplash, and cropped them to a uniform width of 700 pixels for visual consistency. Customized my banner using PicMonkey.

10. Applied to Southern Blog Society, BlogHer and Clever Girls Collective for brand partnership opportunities and a sense of community.

That’s the big stuff so far. If you blog, what would you advise?

Full disclosure: While I have gone 10 days without drinking, they have not been consecutive. I had two glasses on wine on Christmas Day. It was sort of a slip-up, but I learned from the experience. And relapse is part of recovery, as they say. Anyway, I’ve noticed a lot of changes over the past 10 days without booze. Here are a few of them:

1. I’ve lost two pounds. I’ve been eating far more pecan pie and chocolate-dipped pretzels thanks to the holidays, so this weight loss must be due to a lack of wine calories (about 300-400 per day).

2. The cravings tend to hit at the same time. I’m accustomed to drinking at dinner, so that’s when I really want to open a beer. But if I make it past that hour, the cravings vanish like vampires at sunrise.

3. I have cross-addicted with this blog. I am very fixated with blogging right now. I haven’t felt this fired up about a creative project since I took a photography class in college. I’m having a lot of fun with it, as you can see, since it’s Saturday night and I’m soberly blogging.

4. My brain feels more responsive. This is a weird one. It’s like I had a program running on the laptop of my brain. And it was slowing my processes down more than I realized. Everything seems to happen faster now. I have an idea; I act on it. I feel like a Porsche or some other expensively sensitive machine.

5. When I drank on Christmas Day, it was underwhelming. I craved wine SO HARD and built it up in my mind as being SO GREAT. But when I was actually drinking, it was kind of meh. Being drunk is more fun in my fantasies than in reality.

As you can tell by the header, my day job is at a newspaper. Which means I’m lucky to get to cover tons of interesting stuff and people here in New Orleans. Most of these stories never make it to the blog, however. Here’s a rundown of features you may have missed if you’re not a Gambit reader. Hope you enjoy… and thank you for being here!

Ten parade tips for walking and dancing krewes // If you’ve never experienced Mardi Gras (or if you’re a parade warrior looking to increase your stamina), here are some insider tips on everything from blister avoidance to alcohol consumption.

How to maintain platinum blonde hair // The ins and outs of caring for the world’s most high-maintenance hue.

What “eating clean” really means // Everyone’s talking about clean eating. But how do you actually do it?

Stripping away rights? // I report on a lawsuit filed against Rick’s Cabaret by local strippers.

How to start a fine linen collection // It’s not as daunting as it sounds (scroll to the bottom for the tips).

Food advice and a recipe by Oprah’s former personal chef // I mean, he worked for OPRAH.

How to exorcise a haunted house // Psychic Cari Roy shares her ghostbusting secrets.

At writers’ conferences, you often have the opportunity to schedule one-on-one meetings with agents and editors who might be interested in your work. But pitching face-to-face is terrifying a challenge. While there are a ton of books, websites and others resources devoted to crafting query letters, very few address in-person pitches. Luckily, I got to hear a number of pros do exactly that at the Writers for New Orleans conference. Here are their tips.

Write down your pitch like you would write a movie blurb. You know, how you go through TV Guide, read a blurb and think, ‘Oh, I’ll watch that movie.'” —Lee Lawless

Know the person who is interviewing you. If you don’t care about them, why should they care about you? Don’t recite the plot of the book. Pre-submission blurbs from a well-known author help.  — Robert Gleason

Practice your pitch with friends, writing partners, family… Try to anticipate questions [agents and editors] might ask you. If you freeze up, my first thought is that’s what’s going to happen when you’re interviewed. —Greg Herren

A pitch is a crafted thing. Describe your work to me in 1-2 sentences. And understand what you’re writing. Most writers don’t understand their own work. —Donna Bagdasarian

 

(They also emphasized that you’ll want to lead with the manuscript’s title, word count, genre and whether it’s part of a series.)

 

Today was DAY ONE of Heather Graham’s Writers for New Orleans conference. It’s a three-day bonanza of literary wisdom. Today, I absorbed knowledge from bestselling authors Maggie Mae Gallager and Michele Callahan regarding branding, social media and all the other fun stuff that ISN’T working on your next book.

(Spoiler alert: marketing isn’t a good time investment unless you have five or more books out, Maggie and Michele say. Spend the time writing your next book instead. [barf. I mean, awesome.])

They identified two different social media strategies for two different types of authors.

First is the PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP STRATEGY. This is a less-is-more strategy meant to forge personal connections with readers. It’s employed by S.E. Smith. Here it goes:

-Tweet no more than eight times a day.

-Two posts should offer kudos to other authors (talking about their books, calling them out for awards, etc.).

-Two posts should be about world events that relate to your brand. For example, if you’re a sci-fi writer, you might tweet about Mars rover news.

-Two posts should be related to your books, maybe including teasers or snippets of dialogue.

-Two posts should be personal, but NOT pertaining to religion, politics or anything that could alienate readers. Because if you piss readers off, they will not buy your books again, ever.

The other approach is the TIDAL WAVE STRATEGY. This brute force method recruits people with sheer volume. Get Hootsuit or Tweetdeck and schedule tweets to go out every 10 minutes. Examples are WTFFacts and Vanessa Vale.

Maggie and Michele say the Personal Relationship Strategy is better for writers, but you have to be willing to forge relationships with your readers, and not everyone is willing to do that.

And, day one is a wrap. Tomorrow I’m getting up at the crack of dawn to hear Julie Smith‘s talk. More conference notes to come.

The name says it all. I’m giving up booze for 30 days. Laying off the sauce! Hopping on the wagon! Getting dry! Finding my weekends! Today is day one and… it sucks.

I drink at minimum 10-15 drinks per week. Most of that comes from wine. I crack open a bottle while cooking dinner and generally down two to three glasses over the course of the evening. If I’m going out or to a party, I drink more. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, this makes me a “heavy” or “at-risk” drinker.

I don’t think I’m a huge boozer. If anything, I’m on the moderate side for a New Orleanian. I love drinking wine and chopping vegetables and eating dinner. It’s one of the highlights of my day. But I wonder if I’d feel better if I wasn’t getting a little drunk every night. Maybe that isn’t good for like, my liver. Or my complexion. The calories aren’t doing anything for my waistline. I do notice on the rare nights I don’t drink, I sleep better.

So Bryan suggested this 30 day experiment, and I took him up on it. It’s 9:23 p.m. and I am stone-cold sober. I can’t shut off my work brain. Here I am blogging after a full day at Gambit World HQ. I feel so restless. Drinking is a really great “off” switch when it comes to relaxation.

So anyway…day one DONE, 29 to go.

 

Yesterday I floated in a sensory deprivation tank for the first time. I’m writing a longer feature about “float tanks” for Gambit, but I wanted to jot down my experience here, while it is still fresh in my mind.

I have altered my consciousness in a lot of different ways, from distance running to PCP (I did not take PCP on purpose, for the record). I knew float tanks are a tool for that kind of thing, and I’d been interested in them, but not enough to seek one out. So when the owner of NOLA Float Tanks offered me a free float, I said yes with enthusiasm.

Then I set about Googling. One of my first search results came up on Erowid.org. I haven’t frequented that site since the rave days, but I remembered it as being a bunch of trip reports. That hasn’t changed since 2002. And apparently, float tank experiences are included alongside reviews of substances ranging from amanita to zopiclone.

That led me to what’s supposedly one of the Bibles of sensory deprivation: The Book of Floating: Exploring the Private Sea. I’m not done with this book, but so far, I really dig it. Sample quote: “To be human is to explore and make use of altered forms of consciousness.”

My sister floated once. She called the experience “really boring.” So I went to NOLA Float Tanks, a squat ranch house of white-painted brick, expecting the float to be a total mindbender or a total bore. In short, I didn’t know what to expect.

Owner Spencer Fossier was unfazed by the fact that I showed up an hour early. “I can come back,” I said, apologizing. He said we could go ahead and do the float now. He led me to the Samadhi* model: a closed, 150 gallon tank. It looked like a space pod that would conduct me into hyperspace. I regarded it with a kind of awe while Spencer placed his hand on it with love and pride, like a prize sheep.

“If it gets too stuffy in there, prop the door open with a rolled-up towel,” he said after showing me how to turn off the interior light. Then he left me to shower and hop in.

The water felt warm and slick thanks to the 800 pounds of dissolved salt. I closed the hatch, turned off the light and leaned back, bumping around against the sides of the walls for a while. Every tiny scratch, abrasian and nick came alive with fire, itching due to the extremely saline water. That died down soon, but the tiny blue cabin light was still on.  I sat up and fumbled for the button. That’s when I realized the visual hallucinations had begun. Cool.

I watched purple clouds for a while, but it got boring fast. It was just the kaleidoscopic interplay of colors that greet closed eyelids. The tank experience wasn’t all that different from lying in a bathtub with the lights off. I could do that at home, and it wouldn’t be humid and increasingly stuffy, like in the tank. Plus it smelled a little mildewy. My senses were deprived, not gone– and the small amount of stimuli they had was unpleasant. My breath was as loud as waves crashing on a shore, and if I listened for it, I could hear my heart beat. Every so often there would be a juicy peristalic squirting sound that I can only guess was my lunch being digested.

I was bored. I waited for my thoughts to change shape, but it was just my usual feedback loop. I thought a lot about Jonah and his family, because he’s been on my mind. No breakthroughs, no emotional release or heightened empathy.

And now it was stifling in that damned water box.

I opened the hatch and savored the cool, fresh air. Only 22 minutes had passed. Would it look bad if I aborted this attempt? Should I just hang out in the pod room until the time was up? My sister was right: this was beyond boring.

I compromised by keeping the hatch open, flipping my head around to be closer to the fresh air, and closing my eyes. It wasn’t total sensory deprivation. But it was something.

And it was enough. I was awake and asleep at the same time, in a kind of anesthetized slumber. I don’t know how else to explain it. When I fall asleep each night, my boyfriend tells me I twitch, groan and grind my teeth. I never feel any of those things. But in the tank, I felt the occasional, uncontrolled hypnic jerk propel me ever so slightly across the water. Relaxed isn’t the word from it. Embraced in a warm, amniotic unconsciousness is closer. Deep in an opiate dream works only as a metaphor.

I had no sense of time. I got out when the tank switched into its self-cleaning mode. That was a fucking trip. I showered and dressed. I still felt high. I thanked Spencer, not sure what to say. “It was very…languorous,” I said, but that doesn’t come close. The floating book says you can’t understand sensory deprivation without doing it, which is really true.

I did feel high though, almost like I shouldn’t be driving. The cars hurtling down Veterans Memorial Boulevard were so intense about not letting me merge. Cars are monsters, I thought, watching their mean headlights and metal bodies. A very tripped-out thought.

I went back to work, but that wasn’t the best idea. I was only up to getting a massage or eating a sandwich, not replying to email and writing fashion news.

So yeah. That was my experience in the float tank. I will definitely go back, because I think it might be a good tool when it comes time to actually write this feature.

 

*Definition of samadhi according to Wikipedia.org: “Meditative absorption, attained by the practice of dhana. In samadhi the mind becomes still, one-pointed or concentrated while the person remains conscious.”

A week ago my ex-boyfriend died. It was and wasn’t a surprise. Wasn’t because I knew he was sick. I touched the outline of his pacemaker on our first date. On our second, he told me he needed a a new heart. The doctors said he wasn’t a candidate for a transplant. “For muscular dystrophy patients?” said one with a strong French accent. “We do not do.”

His body wasn’t built to last. Still, it was shocking to discover his heart had really, truly failed once and for all, and that he was being kept alive by a a respirator, heart pump, drugs and God knows what else they have in the ICU. “His spirit was so invincible, I thought his body might be, too,” my mom said when I told her the news.

I’m trying to write about this, because I need to blog, and any other topic feels fake. But I am not ready. Everything I write feels dumb and wrong. It’s like after Hurricane Katrina. All these people came down here and made art out of the gutted houses and wreckage, and spun their observations into essays for the New York Times and stuff. While I sat in a sterile room in my sister’s Baton Rouge apartment, alone with my laptop. I was a writer granted a front-row seat to a national tragedy; it was my duty and privilege to write about it– but I couldn’t. I was completely blank, wiped clean, stripped bare.

That’s how I feel now. Also sad and angry. Grateful to have known him, pleased by the recognition he’s gotten for his activism and comedy.  Rejected because I wanted to be closer to him in his death, more involved in his dying process, but I had also wished I could have been more involved in his life. His death felt weirdly like being dumped all over again.

I feel alone in my grief. I am not close to his family, though I once considered them part of my own. At work, nobody acknowledged my loss (except for my editor, who wrote the obituary). I wasn’t expecting a sympathy card or a day off. But I wish just one person had asked, “Hey, are you doing OK?”

And then I feel angry at myself for being so selfish. He’s dead at 28 and here I am feeling sorry for myself. I’m a real asshole.

He planned his funeral. He wanted to have a party at his family’s Uptown home, then to second line to a comedy club where he was a fixture. Everybody’s going to roast him. I don’t know what to say or even if i will say anything at all. I’m planning an outfit though. I bought new shoes for the occasion. I want to look good, even though it’s not like he’ll be there or anything.

I did visit him in the ICU. I am glad I did. I probably wouldn’t have if not for our mutual friend. I’ll end with the email she sent me.