Today I am pleased to present my career
interview with Norine Dworkin-McDaniel, the co-creator of Science of Parenthood, an illustrated humor blog for parents. Norine’s passion for writing shines though as she chronicles her career as a writer while sharing lessons she’s learned along the way:
How did you decide to become a writer?
I always knew I was going to be a writer. Writing is the
only thing I’ve
ever wanted to do. As a little girl, I was always writing stories. And I
suppose I was a very early blogger, though back when I was in grade school in
the ‘70s, we
simply called it “journaling,” since there were no
laptops back then, and the Internet didn’t exist. But, like bloggers, I’d write stories/essays
about the things that happened in my daily life, then I’d staple the notebook paper pages together like a “book.” If only I’d had Create Space back
then! Growing up, I was very influenced by the newspaper humorists Erma Bombeck
and Dave Barry. That was my dream —
to write funny essays in my hometown newspaper. Now newspapers are
suffering and I write funny essays on my own blog.
You have an interesting background. Can you describe your career history?
I think I’ve
worked in all written media save for papyrus and parchment! I started as a
newspaper writer in high school. I’d
go to class in the mornings and then work for the neighborhood newspaper in the afternoons.
During summer breaks when I was in college, I worked in the
features/entertainment sections at several large regional dailies, like the South
Florida Sun Sentinel, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Orange
County Register. I started writing for alternative papers, like the Village
Voice and the gay weeklies, when I was a grad student at New York
University. After grad school, I made the leap to magazines, starting in the
trade magazines as an assistant editor. Eventually, I worked my way up the
masthead, landing bigger jobs at bigger magazines. My last staff job was as a
senior editor at Vegetarian Times, a monthly magazine and managing
editor for the sister publication Natural Remedies, a bimonthly.
But since I wanted to write more than I wanted to edit, I
freelanced for other magazines as well. I pretty much spent every spare moment
writing freelance articles. I got my big break in the late ‘90s doing a health
feature for Good Housekeeping
— on pet massage, of all things —
and then I gradually segued into women’s health, children’s health, nutrition and relationships. I quit my job
at Vegetarian Times to write freelance full-time in 1999. I’ve written for many of
the magazines women read: Family Circle, Ladies Home Journal, More, Fitness,
Parents, American Baby, Redbook, Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, Woman’s Day, Shape,
Prevention, Readers Digest, Health, All You. I’ve written for websites as well: Lifescript,
iVillage, Everyday Health, AOL.
What kind of experience and preparation helped you the
most?
I wrote for my college newspaper all four years I was in
school and was the Arts & Entertainment editor for three. That’s where I started
learning how to plan a section, how to work with and edit other writers, how to
do page layout. I also interned at newspapers every summer. By the time I was
finished with graduate school, I already had a sizable resume, with jobs at six
newspapers — and I
had great clips (writing samples) to show for it. I worked with some really
wonderful editors, who helped me become a better writer. This on-the-job
training, some of which was paid; some not, was invaluable.
Would you recommend this same path to someone starting
out today? Why or why not?
It
’s
different today because blogging has really opened up publishing to everyone.
Anyone can jump on Blogger or Word Press and start writing, and if they
’re doing interesting
things on their blog, and promoting it well, they
’ll find an audience. But what I would say, though,
to anyone who wants to write well, and/or professionally, is to get some kind
of training, whether that
’s
in high school or college or adult continuing education courses or through the
many seminars/online classes/conferences/coaching offered by organizations like
Writers
Digest University, She
Writes or
Mediabistro. My friend Sarah Burns, who
’s been my editor at
four magazines over the years, is getting set to teach a Mediabistro course on
Breaking Into Health & Fitness Reporting.
It’s
easy to do a blog. Doing a well-written blog is harder. But if you’re hoping to use your
blog to attract brands and earn money or to become a blogger for your favorite
magazine/website, you’ll
need a good grasp of grammar/punctuation basics and a sense for how stories are
told. All too often, I’ll
read what could be a funny or engaging story on a blog, but the blogger has
approached the post like a diary entry, starting at the very beginning of
her/his day (“Well,
first I woke up ….”) then plodding through
every tiny thing they did till the funny thing happened. The post would be much
stronger if they’d
just started with the funny bit, then perhaps filled in the backstory for
context. So, taking some writing courses
to learn about how to structure a story, can be helpful.
What do you like best about your work?
My work is fun. It makes me happy. And I make others happy
by making them laugh. Or at least smile. When I was strictly a freelance
magazine writer, I learned a lot about health conditions, preventive care, good
nutrition, what makes for good parenting, good relationships, etc. And I felt
like I was giving back or providing a needed service by communicating
information that women needed about their personal health, their families’ health. But after 15
years of doing that, I started to get tired of just writing magazine articles.
So I created Science of Parenthood and work became fun again. My day is all
about making parents laugh about the craziness of raising kids. There’s “work” there too. My partner
and I have a schedule for posting; we have deadlines; sometimes things don’t always go as planned;
we’ve had some
disappointments. But overall, I feel supremely fortunate that I created
something that people enjoy; that I partnered with a friend who has
complimentary talents and a similar sense of humor; and that I am excited about
going to work every day. Although, to be honest the only “going to…” I do is from my
bedroom, up the stairs to my office, so it’s not like I have a long commute.
What is your biggest headache?
It’s
not really a “headache” per se, but what my
partner and I are focused on now is growing our audience. We’re constantly exploring
new ways to get people’s
attention because we know that people enjoy our cartoons. We’d like to have more
people enjoy them.
What are the important personal qualities or abilities
necessary for a person to be a successful writer?
- A love of reading. You become a better writer by reading good writing. I love writing essays, so I’ll often flip to a magazine’s back page essay and read that first. I tear-sheet a lot of those essays, not only because they’re enjoyable to read and re-read, but because I can read them for structure to get a sense of how the writer told their story in 750 words. I also like to read essay collections. Two of my favorites are Paris to the Moon
by Adam Gopnik, which is a collection of his New Yorker writings from when he was stationed in Paris; and I Wanna Be Sedated: 30 Writers on Parenting Teenagers,
a collection of funny and poignant essays by well-known writers about the ups and downs of dealing with teenagers.
- Self-motivation and discipline. One of my favorite quotes on writing is from Nathaniel Hawthorne (The House of the Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter): “Easy reading is damn hard writing.” And that is the honest to goodness truth. Writing is hard. You need to be able to motivate yourself to sit down to write even when you don’t feel like writing, even when you feel intimidated by the blank page/screen. And you need to have the discipline to edit and re-edit and polish what you write until it’s as perfect as you can get it. Some people are blessed with the ability to write perfect prose in 20 minutes. I am not one of those people. I am a very slow writer. I need a lot more time to really make my work sing. How do I know when one of my stories is finished? I know my writing voice. When I hear it as I’m reading, then I know I’m done.
- A thick skin. Part of writing is rejection. By editors. By readers. By Internet commenters. You need to be able to brush it off and keep going. Case in point, an agent approached my Science of Parenthood partner and I a few months after we’d started publishing with the idea of turning the blog into a book. We were incredibly excited at the thought. And we put together a book proposal and our agent sent it around to every conceivable publisher … and we got universally turned down. There were publishers I never even heard of who turned us down. But we didn’t let it deter us. We know we have a great book idea and we’ll simply produce it ourselves. The publishing industry’s loss is our gain. I’ve also had my share of Internet haters leave nasty comments about my work. It used to bother me. Now I just don’t read the comments.
How many hours do you work each week?
It’s
hard for me to keep track. It feels like I’m always working. But sometimes “working” means I’m writing and
rewriting, or editing my partner’s
work. Sometimes that’s
reading and commenting on other blogs, looking for potential guest posters.
Sometimes that’s
doing social media to promote our content and other people’s content. Sometimes it’s networking or reading
a book by an author I’m
going to interview. Sometimes it’s
brainstorming cartoon ideas with my partner … or ways to improve how we present our content to
readers. Sometimes it’s
being interviewed on the radio or webcasts or by other writers/bloggers, like
Savvy Working Gal. And a few weeks ago, it was going camping in an RV with my
family because a magazine wanted a first-person story on what its like to camp
in an RV. So even though I was “on
vacation” that
weekend, I was still working, taking pictures, keeping notes, being hyper-aware
of everything that happened so I’d
be able to include it in the story later. I’m a workaholic. I am always working.
As a blogger, I can spend hours reading and commenting on
other blogs. How do you focus your time to get the best results?
This one is hard because social media is so seductive, you
can get sucked into your feeds on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest and
burn hours before you realize it. And I’m
no more immune than the next blogger. Sometimes I’m more disciplined than others. But I find when I
have deadlines to meet — and
we have a set schedule for posting on Science of Parenthood — then I’m less apt to get lost in
social media.
What do you wish you would have known before becoming a
writer or blogger?
As a blogger, when I first started out — and I had two other
blogs before I created Science of Parenthood — I did not realize just how social blogging is and
how important it is to create community on your blog and encourage engagement
and comment and share others’
work. Coming from Old Media (magazines and newspapers), it was very one
sided — the writer
to the reader. Sure people wrote letters to the editor, but the writer wasn’t expected to respond
to every comment, only if it was something controversial or the writer had to
address some accusation or point raised by a letter writer. With blogging, it’s very communal,
readers want that engagement from the writer. It’s a two-way conversation, and it took me a while to
get that. Now I really enjoy engaging with readers and hearing their stories.
Are there any books you suggest reading, training courses
that would be beneficial or professional organizations aspiring writers or
bloggers should consider joining?
I mentioned a few above — Writers Digest, She Writes (which is like Facebook
for women writers of every stripe from poets to novelists, newbies to New
York Times best-selling authors) and Mediabistro. Strunk & White’s The Elements of
Style is a must-have for grammar. It’s important to know the difference between your
and you’re;
between its and it’s;
to say you’re
doing well when someone asks how you are, not good; to know that
it’s people who…, not people
that. These are common mistakes I see every day in blog posts and poor
grammar really distracts from the writing.
As for the how-to’s
of blogging, bloggers can get a lot of knowledge from joining Facebook groups
and Google + communities where veterans are always happy to support newcomers
and help them overcome blogging challenges.
How much can a writer or blogger expect to earn?
That really depends on the outlets you’re writing for. Print
magazines still pay much better than websites, though articles are getting
shorter, which is reducing payments. I used to be able to make $5,000 on a
2,500-word health story. Now that story is being assigned at 1,800 words, so
the fee drops to $3,600. And with websites, they don’t pay even $1 a word, which is rock-bottom for a
magazine. The most I’ve
ever gotten for a web story is $750. Most are assigned at about $300 or less.
It’s almost not
worth doing the research …
unless you’re
in it for the “exposure,” which is what blog
hubs like Huffington Post offer in lieu of payment.
I’ve
written for “exposure” so that I could add
certain kinds of blog credits to my author platform. I’m working on a couple of books and it’s expected that as a
parenting/humor writer/blogger I would have been featured on sites like Scary
Mommy, BlogHer, HuffPo Parents, Erma Bombeck Writers Workshop. The payoff for
me will come down the line in a book deal or books sold. But without that kind
of future payoff promise, I doubt I’d
blog simply for “exposure.”
Are there any scams, pitfalls or phony opportunities to
watch out for?
This may relate to brands, but I can’t comment because I don’t write sponsored posts.
I recently read the age of the big blog is over and that
blogging is sweatshop labor. What are
your thoughts on this? Do you see a
future in blogging as a career? What about freelance writing?
Publications, magazines, websites will always need
freelancers because they need more content than what their staff editors can
possibly produce, so in that way, absolutely, freelancing is still a viable
career. Though the freelancers who will be best prepared today are those with
multiple skills
— people
who can write AND take photos AND produce and edit videos AND do podcasts AND
understand SEO best practices AND work social media like a pro. Because publications
are moving online, there
’s
going to come a time when simply providing words won
’t be enough.
If you want to see an amazing example of this, check out the
New York
Times multimedia package
Snowfall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek by John
Branch.
Your statement about blogging being “sweatshop labor,” I take to mean that there are so many blogs now,
bloggers have to work much harder to get noticed. But I firmly believe that
good content always finds an audience. You may need to sharpen your social
media skills to help people find you —
and pick up some publicity skills too — but if you have a good blog and you consistently
deliver quality content, people will read you.
Now, others may disagree with me, but I believe that having
a tight focus or niche for your blog is helpful because then readers know what
you
’re about and
what kind of content to expect from you.
At Science of Parenthood, we do one thing
— parenting humor. That doesn
’t mean we don
’t cover
crafts or
food, but it
’s always through a parenting lens. I find blogs that
take the kitchen sink approach
—
crafting, cooking, recipes, coupons, beauty, social media, parenting,
books, gardening
— to
be very confusing. If you have multiple interests, why not create multiple
blogs? My friend Carissa Miller does this beautifully on her site
Carissa Miller Do You Read
Me? where she has separate blogs for
mothering,
crafting,
cooking
and gardening and
everything
else that doesn
’t
fit into those categories under one URL. This approach gives her great freedom
to write on the topics she loves, but it makes it easy for her readers to find
what they
’re
looking for.
So, can you make a living blogging? I certainly hope so as
this is my plan to send my kid to college. And many bloggers have figured out
how to monetize their blogs by selling ad space on their sites or working with
brands to write sponsored posts. For us at Science of Parenthood, blogging is
what we do to introduce readers to our snarky, cheeky, quirky humor, and we’re hoping that
eventually those readers will want to buy our fridge magnets, coffee mugs,
postcards and coming soon, our books.
How do you stand out from the crowd?
The mommy blog/parenting blog niche is incredibly crowded.
We stand out as Science of Parenthood by presenting parenting humor with a very
unique spin
— through
a lens of faux math and snarky science. No one else couches the trials and
tribulations of parenting in this way. Plus, we
’ve got dynamic, colorful illustrations/memes that
beg to be shared. The marriage of original content with eye-catching images
makes us standout against the field of parenting blogs.
Is there anything else you would like readers to know
about yourself or your career?
We’re
always looking for reader-inspired content. If you or your readers come up with
a “scientific” principle on parenting
and we use it on the blog, we give a shout out to the person who came up with
the idea and a printout of the cartoon they inspired.
Thank you so much for the interview, Savvy! This was
delightful.
I admit it I prefer cynicism and a good negative rant over Pollyannaism any day. My rejection of the happiness movement began when I attended a positivity lecture with a friend at her church while in my twenties. The minister proclaimed acquiring a positive attitude along with donating money to his church would attract good things to our lives. If we believed we would become a millionaire we would become one. If we believed we would find true love we would find it. I remained skeptical while my friend got out her checkbook. Reading Barbara Ehrenreich’s book 
She spent the next two hours trying to persuade me I was wrong insisting changing her attitude had changed her life. The day after she had decided to become a more positive person an unexpected check arrived in her mailbox. I was not convinced. 
In honor of Financial Literacy Month, I selected Helaine Olen’s book 
In Arianna Huffington’s book Thrive she describes a new definition of success, one that focuses not only on career advancement, but on the equally important goals of health and wellbeing, personal fulfillment, giving back and living a life of purpose and meaning.
