Tag Archives: blogging

TMSW Partners with Viewpoints to Test Consumer Products

30 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by in House and Garden, LifeStyles, What's the Buzz?

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Do I have a point of view? Why yes. Yes I do. Thank you for asking. Today, Viewpoints, a consumer-review leader based in Chicago, has issued a press release announcing that they want my opinion. Here are the details: Yours truly, The Midlife Second Wife, is one of seven bloggers in the U.S. and Canada named to a panel that will test consumer products and then share with our respective audiences whether or not the new products are worth the bother and the buy. It’s a unique partnership, and it’s an honor to share the same patch of blogosphere with the other distinguished women on the panel, which, incidentally, is known as “The Viewpoint.” (Gee, maybe Barbara Walters of The View will ask “The Viewpoint” panel to come on her show!)

Know what else I love about this venture? Not only do I get to share with you my experiences in trying these new products, but I also will be donating the product to a charity of my choice once the testing is complete.

Here’s what Denise Chudy, Viewpoints’ general manager, has to say about the program:

“Viewpoints is thrilled to welcome these experienced and witty writers to help us create a more meaningful conversation about new household products. More and more consumers use online reviews to make their purchase decisions. These respected bloggers are perfect for the assignment, and we have ambitious plans.”

You can learn more about the Viewpoints panel below, and if you click on this link you can read the press release.

Let the testing begin!

The Viewpoint Panel

  • Lian Dolan, The Chaos Chronicles by Lian Dolan
    Aside from being a successful blogger, Lian Dolan hosts an iTunes top-rated podcast for moms also called “The Chaos Chronicles.” Based in Pasadena, California, Lian is the parenting expert at oprah.com and author of the novel, Helen of Pasadena, an LA Times bestseller. Her motto is: “Embrace Your Chaos.”
  • Sheila Hill, Pieces of a Mom (because motherhood is a little bit of everything)
    Sheila Hill started her blog in coastal New Jersey to keep faraway friends and family in the loop. She soon realized that she had a lot to say. From daily life to fun activities and day trips for kids to product reviews, “Pieces of a Mom” has evolved into much more than just a daily diary.
  • Sarah Mock, How I Pinch a Penny, Helping you save one penny at a time
    Saving money is important. Sarah Mock’s family in Pennsylvania has cut back on many items, and she blogs about creative ideas for increasing value and reducing cost. She is also is proudly ‘green’ in that she recycles, composts, and buys local when possible.
  • Randi Chapnik Myers and Mara Shapiro, momfaze, the real scoop on raising teens
    From Toronto, Randi Chapnik Myers and Mara Shapiro dish about the joys and challenges of parenting teens and tweens, from stalking kids’ Facebook pages to sharing their clothes to teaching them to stay safe – all while walking the tightrope between Mom and Friend. Frank, funny and honest, these two midlife moms aren’t shy about telling it like it is.
  • Jill Nystul, One Good Thing by Jillee, Sorting through the beautiful clutter of life to find that “One Good Thing” each day and sharing it with you!
    Jill Nystul’s website is based on a simple promise — to deliver ‘one good thing’ to her readers everyday. Her background includes work as a Utah television journalist, and this blog is a return to her roots in that respect. Filled with practical tips and beautiful photos, she calls “One Good Thing by Jillee” her life-saving passion.
  • Marci Rich, The Midlife Second Wife, The Real and True Adventures of Remarriage at Life’s Midpoint
    Marci Rich started her blog after discovering that there really is life after 40, after divorce and after cancer. Readers find inspiration, comfort and humor at “The Midlife Second Wife,” which she defines as “a literary lifestyle/relationship blog with recipes and a medical memoir.” A graduate of Oberlin College, Marci is also a special correspondent for the Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch.
  • Kathy Zucker, METRO MOMS Network, Consulting Network + Biannual Expos + Magazine = Parenting & Career Answers
    The “Metro Moms Network” is more than a blog. Kathy Zucker is founder of this one-stop shop to help families juggle career and parenting. From childcare solutions to expert advice to products that moms can’t live without, the “Metro Moms Network” is a valuable resource for New Jersey parents.

BlogHer ’12: What I Saw at the Revolution

06 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by in Special Events, The Writing Life, What's the Buzz?

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The BlogHer logo on the floor of the Hilton in New York City, site of the BlogHer conference.

—UPDATED Aug. 15, 2012 to include links to video coverage of President Obama’s address and interviews with Martha Stewart and Katie Couric.

After six hours spent rumbling along the Amtrak rails and three days of total, intense, and heightened immersion in all things related to blogging and social media (Emphasis on social. Emphasis on media.), I’m back home in Richmond, Virginia. I’ve just attended my first BlogHer conference, and I’d like to share with you glimpses from what can only be called a revolution.

Since this was my first conference, I have no precedents with which to compare. But an informal poll, taken over brunch with a fellow blogger and friend (Hi Nancy at Dating Dementia!) suggests that this conference in New York City, held August 2-4, 2012, was unlike any of its antecedents.

Using their credit cards, three journalists and media experts—Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort Page, and Jory Des Jardins—launched BlogHer in 2005. These women—bright, motivated, and prescient—were early adopters of social media. They recognized that blogging was not a momentary dot-com fad, but something profound and paradigm-changing. And they wondered where all the women bloggers were.

Boy, did they find them. (And a few men, too. BlogHer is nothing if not inclusive.) More than 5,000 bloggers attended BlogHer ’12.

At the closing keynote address of this eighth and most successful conference, Stone and Camahort Page reported that over the last three years, BlogHer paid out $17 million to writers. This is just one benchmark achievement—there are others—indicating that BlogHer is fulfilling its mission: to create opportunities for women in social media to pursue exposure, education, community, and economic empowerment.

A wonderful essay by Darryle Pollack in the Huffington Post explains how BlogHer got to be such a player. Here’s one of her insights:

In a world where the Kardashians are the gold standard of success, for me, BlogHer represents a kernel of reality, a source of inspiration and an island of sanity where people are appreciated not for what they look like or what they have, but for who they are. Sometimes that feels like a rare thing.

As Darryle notes in her essay, Martha Stewart and Katie Couric understand this, too. Both media icons attended our conference, engaging in lively and informative keynote conversations; Camahort Page interviewed Martha Stewart, and Stone spoke with Katie Couric.

You can experience some of the revolution yourself by visiting BlogHer’s Virtual Conference site. Here’s a glimpse from my perspective:

  • A live video address by President Barack Obama, acknowledging the importance of all women in our society. (BlogHer extended an invitation to Governor Mitt Romney, but he declined, although a member of his campaign staff participated in one of the sessions, as did an Obama staffer.)
  • The aforementioned keynote conversations featuring Martha Stewart and Katie Couric.(If you click on their names you’ll see videos of their interviews.)
  • An extraordinary display of talent as 15 bloggers read their winning posts at the Voice of the Year Keynote awards. There was hilarity from the humor category, heartbreak from the heart category, and keen insights from the op-ed, parenting, and identity categories. (Full disclosure: BlogHer honored 110 bloggers as winners of the VOTY awards. I’m proud to be one of them.)
  • Women from across the globe, making their voices heard in their own countries, were drawn to attend BlogHer. I met Ludmilla Rossi of Brazil, creative director of MKT Virtual Interactive Marketing. She came to discover ideas and find ways to encourage and inspire older women from her country, underrepresented in the blogging community, to share their voices.
  • Information. Information. Information.
  • New skills and tools.
  • New friends and contacts.
  • The BlogHer hashtag, #blogher12, trending on Twitter.

  • And finally, most importantly, inspiration and a tremendous sense of pride. It’s an honor to be associated with such a dynamic, influential, and game-changing organization.

To everyone who worked so tirelessly to make this conference happen—and to Lisa, Elisa, and Jory—thank you for the revolution.

The Midlife Second Wife Honored by BlogHer as a ‘Voice of the Year’

05 Tuesday Jun 2012

Posted by in The Writing Life, What's the Buzz?

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After considerable trial and error, one of the most important discoveries I made when I was a creative writing student at Oberlin College was finding my voice as a poet. Until I could tap into that intrinsic, pure, uniquely identifiable me, all I was doing was stringing words together with interesting line breaks. Over time, as a prose writer, I learned that my voice had different colors and tones, and that I could dispense with line breaks and keep sentences flowing, one after the other, to tell a story. This past year, as a relatively new blogger, I’ve experienced the twin thrills of immediacy and intimacy—by expressing my voice as The Midlife Second Wife, I began hearing from readers all over the world for whom, for whatever reason, my voice was compelling. Last week, I experienced another thrill: out of nearly 1,700 entries, readers and editors at BlogHer chose one of my posts and selected me as a Voice of the Year (VOTY) for 2012, in the category of Heart. (The other categories are Humor, Identity, Op-Ed, Parenting, and Visuals.) All in all, the jurors selected only 110 bloggers for VOTY. The awards will be conferred at the Community Keynote of BlogHer’s annual conference, held at the Hilton New York in August.

This is extraordinary recognition from an organization for which I have the utmost respect and admiration. As I begin reading through the other winning blog posts, it’s clear that I’m in phenomenal company. I extend my warmest congratulations to the other honorees, my deepest thanks to the judges, and my heartiest appreciation to you, my loyal readers.

You can read my winning post, “A Tale of Two Deaths: Losing My Mother to Alzheimer’s, Part I,” by clicking this link. As difficult a subject as this was to write—I posted this last November and found it was too painful to go on—I will be completing the series. My mother deserves to have her story told, and I dedicate my BlogHer VOTY award to her memory.

Where in the World is the Midlife Second Wife?

21 Saturday Apr 2012

Posted by in The Writing Life, Transitions

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MorgueFile Photo (Credit: Reto Stöckli, NASA Earth Observatory --NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

What do bloggers do when they’re not blogging? Do they travel to Antarctica, where Internet connections are spotty? (I’m assuming this is the case. I’ve never been to Antarctica.) Do they assume new identities and start life anew with a clean blackboard slate in the analog world? Do they suffer from blog withdrawal?

In my case, the last statement is true. But there’s a good reason I haven’t been posting.

I’ve been on assignment for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. As a special correspondent for the paper (which is a nice way of saying that I’m a freelancer and therefore not on staff drawing a reliable salary), I’m working on a high-profile feature article. It’s kept me pretty busy, what with research, preparation, and an hour-long interview with my subject last Saturday. I’m now keeping my head down and my fingers on the keyboard, writing and writing. And writing. I expect the article to come out sometime in May, and I’ll post a link on the blog once it’s been published.

In the meantime, I see we’ve now surpassed 18,000 visitors to the Midlife Second Wife. Thanks for reading, y’all!

Finally, a word about something different you might have noticed about the site. There are a couple of banner ads now appearing on the Midlife Second Wife, and here’s why: My blog is part of an exclusive group approved by WordPress to help beta test their new WordAds program. I hope you don’t find the ads too distracting. In fact, I hope you’ll click on them, because if I understand the idea behind AdChoices correctly, this allows you to have a say in the kind of ads you want to see on the web through interest-based advertising.

In the interest of full disclosure (and revealing my self-interest), I earn a little something each time a visitor clicks on an ad on my site. It might not fund a trip to Antarctica, but it could go a long way to helping me fund this blog. And pay the Internet bill.

I’ll be back soon with new articles, new recipes, and—as promised—a link to my article when it comes out. In the meantime, enjoy beautiful weather, wherever you are.

Love,
The Midlife Second Wife

2011 in Review … And Happy New Year to You!

31 Saturday Dec 2011

Posted by in What's the Buzz?

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for my blog.
Wasn’t that nice of them?

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed more than 10,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Thank you, WordPress!

And thank you, readers, for welcoming The Midlife Second Wife into your inboxes, onto your readers, and in your Twitter feeds.

Happy New Year!

xoxo,
Marci

The Shortest Blog Post Ever: An 11-word story in honor of 11/11/11

11 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by in The Writing Life

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—MorgueFile Image

 

Evelyn would never forget the day when people stopped recognizing her.

If you would like to read more, please drop me a line in the comments section below. (It can be more than 11 words.) I’ll write the story and post it here at a future date.

Why We Write Even When We Have No Time

01 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in The Writing Life

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NaBloPoMo 2011

I’ll tell you. The things you learn when you begin blogging.

November, it appears, is National Blog Posting Month, or, in blogging lingo, NaBloPoMo. Well, at least it is on a site known as BlogHer. For those like me who are new to this wondrous phenomenon, BlogHer is a rich and robust destination on the Web where women who blog (and the men who love them?) can find inspiration, community, and, it appears, nifty badges like the one shown above.

About this badge. I’m going to try and earn its keep on my own blog this month by making an effort to post something every day. Yes, you heard me. Every. Day. This. Month. This is an ambitious undertaking because, as we all know, November in America features that delectable holiday of food and gratitude, Thanksgiving. This is immediately followed by the chaos known to American retail commerce as Black Friday. Oh, and I’m starting two fairly substantial freelance projects in November.

Madness, indeed. Believe it or not, I had planned on writing this week to tell you that I would be curtailing my postings, reducing my output from three to two missives weekly while I turn my attention to my freelance work. Hah!

Did you hear that? We make plans, and God laughs.

What motivates a person to write? More specifically, what motivates a pressed-for-time blogger to take on such a commitment during the portal month to the holiday season? I’m rather embarrassed to admit it, but in this case there are prizes involved. Now I’m not saying that I can be had for the price of a free book, but there exists a part of me that thrills to the idea of someone calling my name and handing me something. Lottery winnings, for example. And since we all know that’s never going to happen (well … maybe if I started buying them …), this is as close as I’m likely to get to that rush of adrenalin.

Oh yes. And there is the matter of the creative process. Each day BlogHer will post a  NaBloPoMo “writing prompt,” a question designed to stoke the imaginative engine. Today the question is:

What is your favourite part about writing?

(Apparently the person who drafted this question is Canadian. Can I hear a huzzah from my readers up in Canada?)

My favorite part about writing, aside from affixing the final period to an essay or article, is the roll-up-your-sleeves hard work of it all. Paradoxically, that’s the part I also love the least. And yet … I love the way that I manage to disappear into the world of whatever it is I’m writing, whether it’s a poem or prose. It’s a world that I am creating and one that I alone am responsible for ordering, so I consider it a grave assignment, even when I’m writing something that I hope will elicit a laugh or a smile.

It is also a world of play. I love to play with language, with words and their sounds, which is probably why I began my writing life as a poet. One of the first college textbooks I ever bought was called Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry. I loved it then, and I love it still. It’s actually to the right of me now, on my bookshelf. I love the fact that editor Laurence Perrine chose to give primacy to the word sound. Sense will come, but later. For me, sound has always been the lure that will bring me ’round to my senses.

I’ve always thought of writing as thinking on paper. To this day, if I want to learn something, I write about it. It used to be that I wrote poems to understand philosophy or history. Or other poems. It’s no surprise, then, that this method would evolve to the point where I am writing a blog to further my education—an education about a life. Mine. And every bit as important as exercising the life of the mind.

Joan Didion, in her 1976 New York Times Magazine essay, “Why I Write,” explains why she stole George Orwell’s title:

Of course I stole the title … from George Orwell. One reason I stole it was that I like the sound of the words: Why I Write. There you have three short unambiguous words that share a sound, and the sound they share is this:

I

I

I

Far be it from me to compare myself to the glorious Joan Didion, but I understand her meaning here. One of the ways in which we differ, though, is the fact that while she views writing as an act of imposing oneself upon other people by the act of saying “I,” I tend to see the act of writing as an imposition of one’s “eye.” I have an eye on the world. (For this reason I have always loved the title of the Christopher Isherwood play, I Am a Camera.)

It makes me happy to observe and explore my subject from various angles—lit by language—and present it to you, my reader. I’m far more comfortable with the “eye” of writing than I am with the “I.” Perhaps this is one reason why it’s taken me until now to make this very real commitment to a writing life.

Writing one post a day might strengthen that commitment. Who knows? We can hope …

Take 2: I Blog, Therefore I Am

28 Friday Oct 2011

Posted by in Money Matters, The Writing Life

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MorgueFile Image

So many people have asked me why I started writing a blog that it made sense to include the query in TMSW’s Frequently Asked Questions. (You’ll see a link to FAQs at the top of this page.) It’s taken me until now, however, to drum up the courage to answer the question publicly. Like so many of the events of these past 14 months—my remarriage, my nominal retirement, my relocation—this blog represents my second act. If my life were a movie, this would be “Take 2.” And as long as I’m on a roll with the “re” prefix and the film metaphor, I guess I could call the act of starting a blog a rewrite. I am literally rewriting my career, and, in so doing, I am rewriting a substantial portion of the life I have yet to live. You see, I thought it would be easy to leave the great job that I had in Ohio and slide right into something comparable down here in Richmond—a swift, smooth, lateral move. I applied for several positions, was a finalist for two, and, for one of them, could have sworn I’d be bringing home a paycheck. I was wrong.

This is tough to admit, given the wonderful successes of my Ohio career—and even tougher to experience, especially in this economy. It was (here come those two leading letters again), rejection. And rejection hurts. I could speculate on whether it was my age, or the fact that I’m a newcomer-Yankee in a Southern, relationship-based town, that resulted in my rejection, but I’ve come to realize that none of that really matters now. This is the way things happened to shake out for me. What does matter is that I’d bloody well better get on with something, because the curtain is clearly going up on my second act and I’d better know my lines. I want to make the most of this—it’s an opportunity for (are you ready? am I?) reinvention. Also, there are bills to pay. And, if we’re lucky, real retirement to plan for.

L., a follower of the blog, commented earlier this month:

While I end my 25 years working for the same company which is closing and laid off everyone recently-my last day will be Friday – it has been entertaining to read your blogs each day with some funny happy things to distract me from the next chapter that I will be facing , finding a new job! So congratulations to you.

It’s tough out there for many of us. It hurts to hear of yet another person out of a job. John and I have our own personal experience with this, which I’ll share, with his blessing, in a future post. At this juncture, it might be helpful for L. and others to know that there are some amazing and smart books, blogs, and websites here on the other side of the looking glass. I’ve discovered most of these since starting TMSW, and have been bookmarking and list-making like mad for the time when I’ll have the time to give them all a careful perusal. For now, here’s a non-comprehensive list:

Websites
Second Act, an online destination published by Entrepreneur Media
AARP, The Magazine
The Legacy Project: Lessons for Living from the Wisest Americans
Marlo Thomas (Yes. That Girl. Author, Actress, Producer, Philanthropist. She’s Free to Be … in Social Media, and you can find her on the Huffington Post.)

Books and Writers
Kerry Hannon, Author of What’s Next? Follow Your Passion and Find Your Dream Job
Bruce Frankel, Author of What Should I Do with the Rest of My Life?
Marci Alboher, Author of One Person/Multiple Careers
Michelle V. Rafter, Journalist
Denise Kiernan, Journalist and Producer

As for what L. wrote about finding entertainment in the “funny happy” things on my blog? Well, this particular post, maybe not so much. It’s not feeling like a real knee-slapper to me. But that’s life, no? There are dark corners; sometimes we try to find the funny and the happy to light our way out of them. Or sometimes we just start writing.

And that is (one) answer to “Why the blog?” Here are some others:

  1. Because I’m not trained to do anything else, or at least no one has hired me to do what I was trained for.
  2. Because I love to write.
  3. Because I can write. And because sometimes I think that all I can do is write.
  4. Because it’s time to get serious about getting back to my writing dream.
  5. Because I still have so much to learn.
  6. Because I want to feel useful, and be of use to others.
  7. Because I want to contribute financially to our marriage and to our future.
  8. Because maybe something will come of this blogging business.
  9. Because sometimes it feels as though I’m on to something. Or maybe it’s just gas.
  10. Because … maybe … because maybe it’s my time.

To Writers!

23 Friday Sep 2011

Posted by in The Writing Life

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Did you know today is International Freelancers Day?

To mark the occasion, I am going to have lunch with some Richmond writers at Can Can Brasserie, one of my favorite haunts here in the real world. In the virtual world I will be attending a few webinar sessions offered by the International Freelancers Academy. The name sounds rather posh and Oxbridge, doesn’t it?

Up until this week, I did not know such an organization existed. That’s the thing about blogging. One day you’re poking around on the web, looking for kindred spirits online; the next thing you know, you’re a member of an Academy. Well, at least on LinkedIn.

A sense of community is important for writers. There’s a touching moment in the film Shadowlands, when a young student tells C.S. Lewis (played by Anthony Hopkins) that “we read to know we’re not alone.”

I agree. To which I would add: we write to know we’re not alone. And when we’re done writing for the day we often seek other members of our tribe. Sometimes, if we’re lucky (and I am), we’re married to one.

In the essay I wrote for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the one that got this blog rolling, I mentioned some of the places and organizations that I discovered early in my tenure as a Richmonder. One organization particularly close to my heart is James River Writers.

I had been here less than a month and was still getting lost—even when using the GPS. After a few wrong turns in a city where, it seems, every other turn is illegal because every other street is one-way, I found myself at JRW’s office in Richmond’s historic Manchester district. The office is actually a room in the ArtWorks gallery on Hull Street. This is where I first met Anne Bryan Westrick, JRW’s administrative director. If such a thing as friendship at first sight exists, this was it. Warm and open-hearted, she welcomed me into her office even though she was in the midst of work. She made me feel at home, and an immediate part of the JRW community—as though they had been saving a place for me.

James River Writers was my lifeline during that first year in Richmond. It helped ground me, and gave me back the sense of writerly self I thought I’d left behind in Oberlin, where all of my writer friends and former professors were. In this strange land, I no longer felt like a stranger.

At the JRW writers’ conference last October, held at the massively impressive Library of Virginia, which I have yet to explore, I served as a volunteer, escorting understandably nervous writers to their five-minute pitch sessions with a New York literary agent. A slight divagation: The five-minute pitch, which includes the time it will take for the agent to respond, is akin to speed dating, something I have, thankfully, never tried. Regular readers of this blog know about my familiarity with online dating, and how that turned out for me. Think of my husband John as a successful book deal, and you begin to get the idea of what’s at stake for these writers at the conference. They are bringing their carefully crafted “elevator speech” about their novel or non-fiction book to the attention of someone who is not only genuinely interested in what they have to say, but also has the power to change their lives.

But back to James River Writers. Besides sessions with literary agents, their annual conference also features discussions with authors, screenwriters, playwrights, poets, and editors—even lawyers and accountants, who spoke about the business of being a writer. After completing my duties as an escort, I was allowed to sit in on some of these sessions. I learned a lot, met some wonderful people, and made some valuable contacts.

Throughout the past year, I attended many of JRW’s dynamic monthly “writing shows,” where panels of authors talk about specific topics related to the art, craft, and business of writing. I was away from Oberlin, but I had found a new place in which to learn, and it was exhilarating. I had found my people. New people, but mine. I was not alone.

I’ll be sorry to miss the JRW conference this year; John and I will be in San Diego. He has a conference of his own to attend, and I’ll be meeting with a client about a book project. But there’s a symmetry to that—I’ll be putting to use some of what I’ve learned this past year.

So on this Day of International Freelancers, one year after joining James River Writers and one month after launching this blog, I raise a glass to all of the freelancers, fiction writers, non-fiction writers, journalists, bloggers, poets, playwrights, screenwriters, librettists, and editors out there—in the blogosphere and on the Earth’s sphere. To the ones I know, and the ones I’ll never know. To the ones I might one day meet, and the ones I might one day read.

You are not alone.