Virginia Sole-Smith | Body politics, women's issues, and more.

January 10, 2013

Virginia on We Are the Real Deal

I know I’m subjecting you guys to some blog radio silence at the moment — and here you are, only halfway through your business plans! It’s the usual holidays-work-travel pile-up but I promise we’ll get back to that soon.

In the meantime, I’m delighted to report that several of my posts have been reprinted over on We Are the Real Deal, a project of the nonprofit NORMAL, which raises awareness about eating disorders, body image and self-esteem through the arts. We Are the Real Deal is “an educational blog universe” where a roster of over 40 contributors blog about body image, self-esteem and nutrition for young girls and women.

Filed under Beauty Standards, Press

Tagged as body diversity, Body Image, fat envy, fitspiration, Normal nonprofit, We Are the Real Deal

Look For The Helpers.

I know this has already made the rounds on Facebook, but I think it’s worth sharing here, too.

I don’t have to tell you that the story of Sandy Hook is a tragedy beyond comprehension.

But Sandy Hook is also a story of helpers.

And now it is time for all of us to be helpers, too.

Liza Lang was helping when she wrote “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother,” to show how poorly our country misunderstands, mistreats and ignores people with mental illness.

Mayor Bloomberg and the Campaign of Mayors Against Illegal Guns (and many other activists) are helping by demanding that President Obama and Congress come up with a plan to end gun violence.

Filed under Government Watch, Happenings

Tagged as Adam Lanza's Mother, Caitlin Kelly, Connecticut, Demand a Plan, gun control, helpers, Jezebel, Liza Long, Mayor Bloomberg, mental health, Mr Rogers, Newtown, Sandy Hook

[The Freelance Life] This Will Either Make Everything Better or Everything Worse

I’m going to interrupt the Business Plan Writing series real quick here, because I want to show you this. Brace yourself. It’s a lot.

Yes.

I’m posting that as big as Dashboard will let me — if you’re all squinty and can’t read it, click the image and it should get bigger in a new window. (If that doesn’t work, try zooming in your computer screen’s view.)

This, my friends, is the amazing color-coded spreadsheet that runs your entire Freelance Life. Now that you’ve learned how to set your income goals (or are maybe still digesting all of that), I thought it would be helpful if I showed you exactly what tracking those goals all year long looks like.

This spreadsheet is not a requirement. There are many good systems (Quicken, a big wall calendar, an intricate series of emails to yourself… ) but this is the one that I live and die by and have been refining for the past seven years.

So what the hell are you looking at?

Let’s break it down by looking just at Quarter 1:

Filed under Freelance Life

Tagged as business plan for creative, color-coded spreadsheet, freelance life, income record, the freelance life, tracking assignments for freelancers, tracking your income

[The Freelance Life] Writing Your Business Plan, Part 2

Writing Your Business Plan, Part 2: Setting Financial Goals #FreelanceLife

Today we’re going to talk about part two of your business plan: Financial Goals. This is where sh*t gets real, people. Break out the calculators! (I am so amused by me talking authoritatively about math, I can’t even tell you. Somewhere, my high school math teacher Mrs. Hayes is having the best day and she doesn’t even know why. It’s because all those hours you spent in after school study help, dragging me through quadratic equations were not a waste, Mrs. Hayes!*)

So let’s break this down.

Filed under Freelance Life

Tagged as accrual goals, business plans, business plans for creatives, business plans for writers, financial goals, freelance life

10 Comments

November 29, 2012

[The Freelance Life] Writing Your Business Plan, Part 1

The Brilliant Business Plan Top in Gold, by Mod Cloth.

Previously on The Freelance Life, we talked about useful resources and what you need to have in place before you quit your day job. But as I said at the end of that post, after you’ve started pitching and making connections and saving a start-up fund, there is still one more entirely critical thing that you need to do: Write a business plan.

Filed under Freelance Life

Tagged as business plans, business plans for freelance writers, business plans for writers, freelance life, freelance writing, freelancing, setting professional goals, writing

5 Comments

November 26, 2012

Going the Alternative Route with Migraines [Organic Spa Magazine, December 2012]

Here’s a fun one that I wrote for Organic Spa Magazine, a new mag about all things eco-beauty and wellness. It’s no secret round these parts that I live with migraines or that I’ve actually had to go the fairly aggressive route to deal with them and the related issues. There was that surgery, which, alas, is turning out to have mixed results. Plus my neurologist injects my shoulders, neck and scalp with 25 to 30 shots of Botox every three months, which makes me feel vaguely like a car getting its oil changed (oh so painfully) but does seem to be working.

Filed under Press, Sick

Tagged as alternative treatments for migraines, Botox for migraines, migraines, Organic Spa Magazine

4 Comments

November 20, 2012

[The Freelance Life] Can You Quit Your Day Job?

I get this question so often. People are miserable with cubicle life, itching for a more flexible schedule and ability to be outdoors in the daylight hours, and they want to up and drop everything and hang out the freelance shingle.

So let me cut right to the chase and give you the short but sad answer: Probably not.

At least, not right now.

This is because pretty much nobody should quit their day job in the current economy without having already lined up their next job. Not if they are responsible for say, rent, or feeding themselves and perhaps other people. It’s too damn dicey out there.

Filed under Freelance Life

Tagged as freelance life, freelance writing, make connections, networking, pitching, quit your day job, start-up fund

1 Comment

November 15, 2012

Introducing [The Freelance Life]

So a couple of things are going on.

First, and this is going to sound very humblebrag, but I get a lot of emails from people wanting to pick my brain about being a freelance writer. And I actually really love to talk about freelance writing (so much so that I taught about it for Mediabistro.com for several years when we still lived in the city — and I still totally endorse their classes). But just recently (probably after I wrote this post) it sort of got to the point where I can’t reply to them all and do my job.

Second, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we’re supposed to be seeing the rise of women right now — and yet we still have a wage gap for a whole variety of reasons. One is that women tend to be more uncomfortable talking about money stuff. Like how to make it. Journalism suffers from a unique gender problem in that there are lots and lots of women working in the field — but we’re grossly under-represented in byline counts, award tallies and editor salaries because we tend to all get stuffed into a couple of specific boxes. Either we write mostly about pink topics or we write mostly for pink places (and those topics and places don’t get the awards or respect from the rest of the industry).

Filed under Freelance Life, Reading List

Tagged as ASMEs, Broadside, Byline Count, byline gap, Freelance Folder, freelance life, freelance writing, Gary Rivlin, Gayle Forman, gender gap, Harper's Magazine, Jessica Valenti, journalism gender problem, Julie Morgenstern, Kristen Kemp, Mediabistro, Melissa Walker, Michelle Goodman, OPTP foam roller, Peggy Orenstein, pink ghetto, pink journalism, submersion journalism, VIDA, wage gap, women writers, writers

5 Comments

November 12, 2012

The Best Email I Received Last Month

Ever since my article “The Pink Pyramid Scheme” ran in the August issue of Harper’s Magazine, I’ve been getting the best emails (and blog comments and Facebook messages) from you readers. (Okay, I also get some funny and not so friendly feedback… but the positive outweighs the negative by a significant margin.)

If I haven’t responded to your note directly, please understand that it’s only because I get such an onslaught and I am but one medium-sized person. But I love and read them all because hearing your thoughts and experiences has a major impact on the work I do. Anyway, I thought I’d share this one email, from a reader who asked to be anonymous,* because she’s in a pretty vulnerable spot. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to quit an MLM-style program and reconcile your losses (whether it’s money, self-esteem, friendships, or a combination thereof). Her experience is pretty much why I wrote the article in the first place — to help women who have been exploited by these scams see what they are up against and get out.

Filed under Mary Kay

Tagged as Harper's Magazine, mary kay, MLM, pink pyramid scheme, pyramid scheme, Reader Mail

2 Comments

November 7, 2012