writing

Why apply for a marketing job when I hate marketing?

In the past month or so, I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a job. Don’t get me wrong: I’m definitely not bored. I love my routine of writing in the morning, working out, and writing in some cafe for the rest of the afternoon. I get home between five and six, just like a regular job, and practice piano till MB comes home.

But I do miss having a paycheck and some social interaction, even with coworkers I hate.

I applied for a position recently, as a marketing content writer for a local university, and was surprised to get a call last week.

I used to work in marketing, except it wasn’t really marketing. I don’t even know how to describe it. Basically I worked on educational programs for organizational health care customers. I did some content and strategy, but mostly implementation. I also managed our internal website.

I liked those aspects of my job, but various bosses didn’t think it was enough. They thought I should do “more,” ie, strategic platform bullshit. I wasn’t interested, hence my library science degree.

So why did I bother applying for a job in marketing? Because of the writing side of it. If all I had to do was write marketing copy, that’d be fine.

But no. It seemed they wanted someone who was really into marketing, not who answered when asked why I decided to pursue my library science degree, “Well, I knew that marketing really wasn’t for me. . .except the writing part of it of course.”

That’s the incredibly annoying thing about marketing. It’s not enough to be a hard worker and to have skills and experience – you have to drink the marketing Kool-Aid, shave your head and chant marketing mantras at the airport, aspire to marketing Operating Thetan Level 8.

The girl said she’d call by 5 PM on Friday if I got an in-person interview. Five PM on Friday came and went. No call. In fact, maybe no one got a call because I saw the same position posted on Craig’s List at 5:01. Well, maybe not 5:01 exactly, but you get the picture.

It was really a blessing in disguise. When she asked what I ultimately wanted to do, I said, “Write. Write anything,” which I thought would fit with a marketing content writer position, but I guess not. Still, that made me realize, I want to write! Write anything! Well, duh. Any of you could have told me that.

That realization solidified my desire to freelance. Right now I’m doing little things here and there, but I want to be a full-fledged FREELANCE WRITER, which means I need to bust my ass to get jobs.

Over the weekend, I applied for a couple of positions on Craig’s List, one as a beauty journalist on skincare, the other writing about local events, restaurants, etc. We’ll see what happens.

Also, I need to be more active in terms of submitting. Sure, I’m doing my itty bitty articles for eHow.com, and my essays for The Nervous Breakdown, but there are other online magazines and tons of contests.

I’m used to writing short 2,000 or less word essays, but the contests call for 5,000 to 8,000, or around 25 double-spaced pages. I haven’t written an essay that long in a while. The contests will give me the opportunity to do so, which may the germ for my next memoir. I just have to figure out what I want to write about.

writing — 3 Comments
06
Jan 10

The Nervous Breakdown & the memoir

My next Nervous Breakdown post is up. Some of you may remember the original blog post it’s based on.

I also wanted to catch up my most recent memoir installments, since I haven’t written about the memoir in some time. They’re basically Part 11 and the beginning of Part 12. There are several more posts coming up for Part 12, and then the last section, Part 13.

Although hearing Joe’s confession and dealing with the aftermath were horrible, even harder was dealing with the actual birth of the child. It was a cold, stormy weekend in January, and so incredibly bleak. Only slightly worse was stupidly going to my parents’ house a week later (which you’ll read about soon).

Now that my memoir will be finishing up in the next couple of months, I’m wondering what I should write about next. I was very gung ho about my murder mystery set in the corporate world, but I’ve written it for NaNoWriMo and feel disappointed. I’ve yet to look at it, but I think because I only had a month to do it, I didn’t try very hard. I based a lot of it directly on my life, which ironically tends to suck the life out of the story. It needs more of a voice.

I always assumed my next memoir would be based on my post-divorce dating misadventures, and would be called Single Asian Female (SAF), or something to that effect. But I’m not sure. If I were to write a straight recounting, it might be boring, or at least I’d find it boring to write. Blogging about dating works because it’s in the moment.

If I went to write SAF, I’ll have to think of a different angle. And there are a million dating memoirs out there. How would mine be different?

tcob / what i'm reading now / writing — 2 Comments
04
Jan 10

Amusements

I’ve been working on a few small projects for this blog and the writing one.

Clips

Now that I’m publishing a bit more, I’ve organized my pieces by category. You can find all my Nervous Breakdown posts under Personal essays (as well as older works). My published and/or recognized fiction and children’s books are included too.

I love organizing shit!

Eats

I’ve tried so many different restaurants here in San Francisco, I thought it’d be fun and useful to create a page summarizing them all. It’s a bit obsessive, but that’s how I roll.

I thought it might be good for anyone visiting the area, though where I’ve eaten is very particular to location (ie, near my abode). Of course I still need to try Ti Couz for crepes and The Pork Store for breakfast or whatever.

I plan on updating the page regularly. You can find it to the right under Amusements.

Movies & Books

Under Amusements, you’ll also find What I’ve Been Watching, which is just a list of films I’ve seen (I also like keeping track of stuff), once in a while with a review. What I’m Reading Now is a list of books. It began as a way to make sure I was reading at least one book a month, and now it’s just another obsessive thing.

Speaking of books, I’ve barely made a dent in the BBC 100 Books list. It took me three months to read the Lord of the Rings triology, which is listed as just one item on the list. They’re great stories but for some reason I took a long time to slog through them.

Now I’ve given myself a break and am reading Little Women, which I’m sure I’ll be done with soon. After that, I dunno: Midnight’s Children? The Godfather? The Stand? So many choices.

food / holidays / san francisco / writing — 3 Comments
26
Dec 09

Two french hens

MB and I had a lovely Christmas.

Christmas Eve MB made a yummy pasta dinner with a spicy puttanesca sauce and spicy Italian sausage. Afterward we just bummed around. Watched a few episodes of the Ghosthunters marathon, as well as The Empire Strikes Back and part of Return of the Jedi. Too much TV! MB crashed around one, but I had had Vietnamese coffee in the afternoon so I was up till almost three.

In the morning, we called my parents. My mom liked the Snuggie though it’s a bit big for her, and sounded happy and not worried for once. My dad thanked us once again for the wine, then kept MB on the phone for quite a while, just chatting, which makes me laugh because he’s not usually a big talker.

I was also delighted to find out that my father is reading my copy of The Secret History. I was surprised since he doesn’t usually read contemporary literature. Such a good book! He said at first it was boring, but now he’s very interested in unraveling the mystery.

In the afternoon MB and I saw Sherlock Holmes at the Sundance Kabuki theater. It was packed! I guess the movies is the place to be on Christmas Day. The movie was fun but not amazing, not like Avatar. Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law were great, as were the sets, but I didn’t find the storyline too exciting.

My popcorn was delicious though. Splurge!

For dinner MB cooked up a couple of cornish game hens. They were smoked but he also bisected them and fried them in peanut oil. As well there was wild rice and shitaake mushroom stuffing and a lovely arugula and tomato salad.

Everything was yummy. Those little hens have a lot of meat on them. I was only able to eat half of one.

Later in the evening, we wanted some dessert. We expected to find nothing open, but quite a few restaurants were, surprisingly. We stopped at the Vietnamese place near us – where we get our evil and delicious cafe filtre – and MB got fried banana a la mode. By then I decided to be healthy and just had some yogurt instead.

Today most places are open again. I worked out – yay! – then we had lunch at Mel’s, this kind of cheesy, ’50s style diner on Van Ness. The food was decent though. I had pancakes, a fried egg, AND bacon – oink! Now we’re back at one of our favorite cafes, Wicked Grounds.

I applied for a job this morning. This art school is looking for a marketing writer. The idea of doing marketing again isn’t ideal, but it’s writing copy as opposed to developing bullshit strategy. I’m also going to apply for a temporary librarian job at SFPL. That may be a better fit for me: it’s no more than twenty hours of week, and I’d be filling in at whatever branch needs a substitute.

Today I need to:

Revise Corporate Celebrations article – For my freelancing gig. After several years of scheduling a variety of celebrations at my old company, I have plenty of material.

Revise “The Beautiful Girls” – For The Nervous Breakdown. It’s about my junior high/early high school years, and the friends I had then.

Revise/submit “Buzzed: My Love Affair with Coffee in Nine Parts” – For another publication.

Getting to work!

writing — 1 Comment
13
Dec 09

New TNB post: Cyberstalking

My newest post for The Nervous Breakdown is up. There’s also a great interview with Margaret Cho. She rocks.

It seems the SF fall is here. Although it’s not as cold, it rained all day yesterday, off and on. Aournd noon the sun came out, and MB and I hurried out to get some food. But so did everyone else so all the good restaurants were crowded. We ended up getting huevos rancheros at Nick’s Crispy Tacos. Spicy and good!

I wrote a lot yesterday. I’m sort of obsessed with writing essays for The Nervous Breakdown. Although I have just two up right now, I have three in draft form, and at least two others pretty well-formed in my head. They ask that we post at least once a month, which is no problem. I just don’t want to post too often so I’m trying to spread my writings out.

The next piece I want to put up is Christmas in China. I’m having my usual trouble – trying to fit in too many themes into 2000 words (or fewer). But I find it’s easier just to write the whole thing, then start trimming (like a tree! ho ho ho).

I also have two short articles to write, one on acne and the other on hair loss. Yes, I picked them. But it was either those or stuff about tanning beds, hair salon equipment, or, get this, puppy acne. Is this a thing? Puppy acne???

Okay, back to work.

random / tcob / writing — Comments Off
03
Dec 09

Literary blogging + random update

I’ve written before about The Nervous Breakdown, a great literary blog which I first heard about from one of my former writing teachers. Well, now I’m one of their authors! Read my first post, in honor of my grandmother.

In other news, I’ve had two lazy and two productive days this week. Monday wasn’t too bad. I finished NaNoWriMo, did some laundry, and started the “Puo-puo” essay. Tuesday I didn’t get out of my pajamas till three in the afternoon. Before that I did do another load of laundry and more writing, but I still felt amazingly lazy. I only left to go to the gym. Then I watched too much TV.

I have to remember that television is the bane of my existence. I should only watch worthwhile things, and if nothing worthwhile is on, read if I’m too tired to write.

Wednesday I wrote in the morning, then left at noon to eat lunch at Honey Honey and do a couple of hours of work there. Afterwards I did some “research” at Sephora for my next mini-article, which is on cleansing milks. Lemme tell ya: $30 wasted. Cleansing milks are only good if you have dry skin, not combination skin like me. I tried it this morning, and by the afternoon, my face felt like an oil slick.

After my research, I hit the gym. Trying to go more regularly now to jian fei, as the Chinese say, literally “cut the fat.”

Today I was awake at 7:30. For some reason, MB was up at 7. It was good: got some writing done, then hit the gym at 10. I was meeting my SF pal at two at Bittersweet (on Fillmore Street) so I knew I needed to get a workout in early. Hanging out was fun as usual. I didn’t spill a cup of water on my computer this time, if only because I didn’t bring my computer.

Tonight, aside from rerun of The Office, I haven’t watched much TV, though now I’m tempted.

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30
Nov 09

Done finally. Sheesh.

nano_09_winner_120x240

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16
Nov 09

Posers

Between NaNoWriMo and feeling a bit under the weather last week, I didn’t get out of the house much. I didn’t even get to the gym! But by the weekend, I was feeling better so MB and I made sure to get out of the house.

Saturday afternoon we went to Wicked Grounds, cafe by day, S&M dungeon by night, supposedly. There’s artwork up of people in various (tasteful, if there’s such a thing) bondage positions, and some evenings they have events like “bring your human pet night” and “steam powered vibrator demos” (I can’t imagine how that works).

As a cafe it was pretty nice. There were lots of tables, and the chairs were super comfy, opulent and nicely cushioned, though I’m sure a bitch to clean. The menu is rather limited though that may be because they only opened in September. Regardless, my steamed hazelnut milk was tasty.

Inevitably some of the clientele was annoying. When we came in, there was this couple at the counter, a kind of dumpy guy way too old to be wearing a backwards baseball cap, and his half-Asian girlfriend with her standard issue hipster-girl glasses and, get this, cat ears. Why was she wearing cat ears? Halloween is over!

I wouldn’t have cared about them except the girl gave us a very weird look when we walked in, like, What are you doing here? and then was hanging all over her boyfriend at the counter, getting in the way of other customers (like me).

Then later I felt like they kept staring at us, but all they wanted were the ropes hanging off our table. She came over and took one without asking (how did she know we wouldn’t want to use them?), and then the guy showed her how to tie knots for the rest of the afternoon.

Also, the boyfriend made it very clear that he was chummy with the proprietress – who was super nice by the way – making comments and talking very loudly to her while she tried to work. Yeah, yeah, you’re an insider, we get it. Now STFU.

On Sunday we went to MB’s co-worker’s house warming party in the Haight-Ashbury area. It seems to be mostly residential, except of course for Haight Street itself. MB’s co-worker has a very cute apartment, nice and big with hardwood floors and good light. It’s cool to see what places are like in other parts of town, though that would be a bit far for MB to get to work.

After the party, we walked on Haight Street a little. It definitely has a different feel at night. During the day, there are tons of tourists, but in the evening, all the druggy scrubby kids and weirdos come out. There were people singing on street corners and the smell of pot everywhere. I don’t think it’s that great. I love street musicians but ones who are actually good, not some stinky kid pretending to be homeless while Mom and Dad sit at home in Palo Alto. And if you’re white, you should not wear dreadlocks. You really really shouldn’t.

We thought about eating in the area, but the only place we wanted to go, the Pork Store, was closed, so we just headed home instead.

Since next week is Thanksgiving, I’ll have to work double time this week with NaNoWriMo. My book is moving forward though I’m not sure if it’s any good. Trying not to think about that right now.

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09
Nov 09

The social experiment

I’ve been trying to be more social, and last week I was actually successful.

I can’t remember if I mentioned this already, but at a recent work party, I met the girlfriend of one of MB’s co-workers. We have a lot in common: we’re both new to SF, originally from the east coast, and interested in writing. We’ve been hitting it off really well. Last Thursday we met at 2 PM to chit chat over coffee and hot chocolate. The next thing we knew it was five hours later. Crazy! I only noticed because I was getting hungry.

On Sunday I went to this writing “marathon.” As you know, I’m doing National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and was looking for a meet up. There were just a couple, and were either at weird times (10 PM to 3 AM) or way the fuck out in some part of town I’d never heard of (which isn’t saying much I guess). But then I saw a posting for a general writing meet up inviting people doing NaNoWriMo.

We met at Jumpin’ Java in the Castro at 10 AM. I’m ashamed to admit I still don’t have a handle on SF public transit and so either walk everywhere or take cabs. Sunday I took a cab.

At first I thought I had the wrong street because it seemed to be all houses. But there nestled on a corner was the cafe.

I got a lot of work done very quickly. It was both comforting and energetic to be surrounded by six or seven other people also writing. You’re buffered from the freaks, and there’s also this unspoken, subtle pressure to KEEP WORKING. The organizers scheduled it pretty well: 10 to 11:30, writing; 11:30 to 12:30 break for lunch; 1 to 2:30 more writing; another break; and then the end of the day. The scheduled breaks keep people from chatting too much, and give you a target to work towards.

As for lunch, when you walked in, they had you write down your order so the cafe could prepare everything beforehand. By the time 11:30 to 12 rolls around, they have your sandwich or whatever all ready, and you just pay. And then to sit there and eat and talk about writing was really nice.

I thought I’d stay all the way till 4, but I pooped out by the 2:30 break.

Afterwards I met MB in Union Square (walked this time), and from there we took a little stroll around SoMA and hit another cafe we like in the area. Thank goodness the game show host barista wasn’t there. It made hanging out so much more peaceful.

By the time we headed home, it was after 5:30. I had been out the whole day, from 9:30 on. Wow!

Today I made up for it by being a bum and writing at home. Around three I decided I really wanted some chocolate, did some Yelp research, and found the Blue Fog Market. It’s a little bit of a schlep, but I thought a walk would be nice, and I wanted to stop at the Macha Cafe along the way, which someone on Yelp described as having Japanese-style snacks.

But they don’t. I was very disappointed to find a totally American menu. I asked the woman about the Japanese snacks, and she said they used to have some, but not anymore. Bummer! I had wanted a green tea and a mochi. Instead I got a peppermint tea and a croissant, which actually really hit the spot. Next time if I want Japanese snacks, I’ll just go straight to Japantown (which is where I hung out and ate my croissant anyway).

The Blue Fog Market was equally disappointing. I mean, they had some fancy stuff, but it wasn’t that great. Plus the chocolate was way more than I wanted to spend. On the way back, I stopped in a random grocery store, and they had just what I wanted. A small bar of dark chocolate for under $3, and which will last me a good week.

I forgot to mention: when I was telling my mother about the writing meet up, she said, “Oh, it’s for other housewives?”

Hunh? First off, I said, “It’s for writers.” Secondly, “It’s on Sunday,” ie, not on a work day. Third, does she think I’m a housewife?

I don’t know how my mom’s brain works sometimes.

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01
Nov 09

And I’m off!

nanowrimo_large NaNoWriMo starts today! I could have started it at midnight but I was way too busy watching the Ghosthunters marathon. I’ll need to do 1,667 words a day to reach the 50K mark by the end of the month.

Today: just 1,667 words to go.

Angela Tung Oversharing on the internet since 2005.