Author Archive

Book week: Interview with Fiona from The Waiting Game

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

Fiona McPhillips blogs over at The Waiting Game and has a book out in March about fertility issues. The book is called: Trying To Conceive. Fiona will be one of the people on the panel discussing blogging and writing a book on the afternoon of the Blog Awards. She was kind enough to answer some questions I sent to her. As well as being nominated for the Blog Awards, her blog has been shortlisted for the Digital Media Awards on February 7th. Best of luck to her. (Transparency: I’m judge for the DMAs)

Tell me a little bit about The Waiting Game, why did you start the blog? I sometimes blog as I find it thereaputic and sometimes I feel I have to blog to get the word out about something, almost like I have duty to inform people. Do you feel the same?

I started the blog after I had my first miscarriage in September 2005. I called it the Two Week Wait because that’s how long I thought it would last. The “two week wait” refers to the time between ovulation and when you can test for pregnancy. It can be a very long two weeks and your mind can go into overdrive imagining pregnancy symptoms. If you google “two week wait symptoms”, you get hundreds of thousands of pages of women discussing symptoms and potential symptoms and trying to work out if they are pregnant. The idea behind the blog was that I would document my two week waits for a couple of months until I became pregnant again and then someone else could take over and so on until we could build up a good resource of bona fide two week wait symptoms for others to obsess over.

Well, two weeks came and went, and another two and another two and before I knew it I had unwittingly documented the slow descent into infertility. Most infertility bloggers start out at this point but mine begins in a much more hopeful place and slowly slips into despair.

I didn’t tell anyone in real life about it for a long time. I mentioned it on parenting and infertility boards and that’s where most of my traffic came from at the start. Then I started reading other infertility blogs and we swapped links. There’s a great network of support around the world and some brilliant writers in infertility blogland. It’s not a subject that people ramble about indiscriminately and I think that most bloggers tend to choose their words carefully, which usually makes for interesting reading. And of course there’s the soap opera element of month in month out fertility treatments, doomed pregnancies and fraught personal relationships with the outside world. The lack of understanding of the fertile world is often something that is turned into comedy by bloggers and, despite the difficult subject matter, infertility blogs make me laugh out loud a lot of the time.

When I got nominated for the Irish Blog Awards last year, I started to mention my blog to close family and friends. I was also going through an IVF cycle at the time and realised it would be easier to explain myself in writing than face to face most of the time. It really has worked. Most of the time when you try to explain how you feel, the reaction is something along the lines of “Oh, it can’t be that bad, you can’t possibly feel that bad”. Followed inevitably by “You seem very stressed, maybe you just need to relax”. Stress does not cause infertility any more than it causes diabetes or myopia. That is because it is a medical condition that needs to be treated or cured. But popular opinion tends to believe otherwise. As does the media. So you tend to get a torrent of advice (or assvice as bloggers prefer) every time you mention the subject. Writing a blog means that you can say exactly what you want to say without the fear of assvice. And when you say it often enough and consistently enough, it starts to sink in. I get considerably less assvice today than I did a year or two years ago. Maybe people still think I need to relax/get over myself/move on/be thankful for what I’ve got but they no longer say it to my face so that’s good enough for me!

Blogging is also useful for answering the Sunday supplement type reports on infertility and miscarriage that raise their ugly heads periodically. Whenever such a lifestyle piece is published, you can be guaranteed that come Monday morning, you will get several emails telling you the good news that going on a cruise or drinking red wine or playing tennis will indeed help you conceive. Infertility is not taken seriously as an illness in the media and a blog is a useful outlet to answer back with scientific facts when necessary. I have a reasonable readership (400-800 hits per day depending on where the soap opera is at) so I hope that someone somewhere is persuaded every now and then. I get a lot of googlers, often asking the specific question I am addressing, i.e. “does swimming cause miscarriage?”, so I hope I can be of some help to them too.

I find your blog a tough read at times, there’s so much to deal with. What kind of reaction do you get from friends, family and strangers?

I generally get a really positive reaction from people that mention that they read it. They are usually very sympathetic and supportive and nearly always mention that they had no idea how difficult infertility/IVF/miscarriage can be. That is the most satisfying part of writing the blog, that I have managed to get the word out about what one in six couples goes through. I think that’s one of the ways in which blogging is truly revolutionary – the fact that you can now get a first-hand insight into how certain events and situations affect people’s lives. It’s a job that was previously left up to authors, playwrights and scriptwriters and that usually meant compressing the information into a specific format. Now people can read about almost any issue, no matter how difficult or personal, as it happens and in whatever format or style the author wishes.

On a personal level, it means that I don’t have to explain myself all the time. If we are going through a particularly difficult time, then friends and family can have a look at the blog and decide for themselves if it is a good time to call. I think it has helped them deal with me and vice versa.

How big an issue is fertility in this country and in the developed world as a whole? Is it one of the many unseen, yet common issues of modern times?

It affects one in six couples and this figure is rising all the time. Everybody knows somebody who is going through it, whether they know it or not. Some people prefer to keep quiet about it, others try to talk about it but whether or not they are open, everyone comes up against the cruel, thoughtless comments that are bandied about on a daily basis. “Maybe you weren’t meant to have children”, “You’re so lucky you don’t have kids, mine are a nightmare”, “Why don’t you just adopt, then you’ll get pregnant”, “It’s because you drink wine/drink coffee/exercise/don’t exercise/work too hard/obsess too much/live in the city/are too fat/are too thin/don’t eat meat/eat red meat/don’t eat fish/need to relax that you haven’t conceived yet”. You really have to have an answer for every thoughtless comment and after a while, you gather quite a portfolio.

The bottom line is that it is a very, very common medical complication and it is rarely spoken about very misunderstood by the fertile world. It’s bad enough that you have to watch your friends and family have so easily what you would literally give your right arm for, without having those same people betray their lack of understanding with an insensitive comment. You’d think, if most people know how much joy a child can bring, that they would understand how much pain not being able to conceive or carry a child might bring, but no. There needs to be a lot more discussion about how stressful it is (studies have shown infertility patients to have stress levels equalled only by cancer and AIDS patients) and how family and friends can support those suffering.

So the book. How did that come about? Did you consider writing a book for a while? What else is there out there in this area?

I thought about writing it when we had been trying for about a year (I thought I knew it all then – ha!). Then I got pregnant by IUI and everything seemed to be going well and the book fell on my list of priorities. When I miscarried again at three months I thought, right, I’m going to make something good come of this mess and so started to write a proposal. That was October 2006. About two months later, I sent the proposal to four publishers and two got back to me straight away. I spoke to both of them for a couple of months and eventually signed a contract with Liberties Press in March 2007.

The book is called Trying To Conceive. It’s a guidebook that takes couples through every step of the process, from the heady early days right through to IVF and beyond. It’s not autobiographical but I do offer a lot of insight into all the processes and suggest coping mechanisms for everything that infertility can throw at you. Coping with infertility involves about 10% of going through the motions of treatment and 90% of dealing with the emotional side of it, something that is not discussed much in other books or in society in general. There is nothing else out there like it, and nothing at all written from an Irish perspective.

I didn’t get the book deal because I have a blog but it certainly helped to have an existing profile, an audience and a substantial body of work. It is also a useful means of publicising and verifying my status as someone who has been there, done that.

What’s the work ethic for a book? Make a plan, do it, chapter by chapter or gather all data and then sort it all out?

I got some great advice from a friend who was about a year ahead of me in the non-fiction writing process. She had done a huge amount of preparation before sending in a proposal and suggested I do the same. I already had most of my data in my head so I did some market research, wrote detailed chapter plans and a substantial amount of background information, which all went into the proposal. I also wrote one complete chapter. When the time came to write the rest of the book, I didn’t deviate much from the original chapter plans. There was a certain amount of research to be done as I wrote but the main story didn’t change much.

How long have you been working on this?

Almost a year in total.

When do we get to see the fruits of all this effort? Has it been worth it, do you think?

It is due out at the end of March. It has definitely been worth it and I hope it’s going to help lots of people. At the very least, I hope it sparks some debate about infertility in this country.

Do you know how it will be marketed and promoted, will you be actively doing so?

I’m hoping to do lots of media when it comes out. It’s such an emotive topic and it’s rarely out of the limelight for long so I think there will be plenty of people willing to talk about it.

What’s next after this?

Well, I’m hoping to have a baby in May!

● Fluffy Links – Tuesday January 29th 2008

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

Fluffy

This is cool. Seán made a nice plugin for WordPress that makes images zoom in and out when you click on them in blog posts.

Staying nerdy. SoggyJazzbiscuit made an nice plugin that allows you to find creative commons photos (mostly they allow free use) on Flickr and provies code so you can embed them on your blog or website.

There’s a rumour going around that there’s a video up somewhere showing which Blogs got listed for Best Popculture Blog. Just thought you’d like to know.

The Limerick Blogger does it again. Now wanting to collaboratively subtitle videos. Great initiative.

Alastair Duncan was in Vegas recently and Jeremiah did a vid with him. Nice philosophy:

1. Listen to customers. Those that don’t are dying, those that won’t will. 2. Listen to yourselves. If what you’re saying isn’t credible, don’t expect consumers to believe it either.

What will we do with all the phoneboxes in Ireland? BT in the UK want rid.

This is why Ryanair has the best PR in Europe.

Inside the Airbus A380. Woah.

How to present like Steve Jobs. God knows techies need to learn better presentation skills.

Tom Petty – Free Falling:

Last dance with Mary Jane.

Pixies – Where is my mind?

Book week: Interview with Twenty Major

Monday, January 28th, 2008

The past 18 months have seen some very interesting things happen in terms of blogging. More and more blogs are being discovered and created and a lot of existing bloggers are upping their game and producing some fantastic stuff. Another very interesting thing to happen was that many bloggers started getting book deals. How about that? Already one blogger, the Bitter Pill had a book out for Christmas and we have the likes of Fiona from The Waiting Game, Grandad from Headrambles, Twenty Major and Kieran Murphy from Ice Cream Ireland getting deals. In the next few months we should see all their books come out. Twenty’s book is right around the corner.

As part of the build-up to the blog Awards, Fiona, Grandad, Twenty and Kieran have agreed to be on a panel to discuss their blogging and their book writing. It should be happening the afternoon of the Awards in Dublin City Centre. More details about this to follow. Really for my own curiosity and maybe it will also interest you, I did interviews via email with all of them. I only needed to strongarm them a little bit for them to agree. The kittens as a result will go unharmed. The first interview is with Twenty:

How long has the Twenty Majorfa blog been going now? Why did you decide to blog? You obviously have a lot to say, is it good to use the blog to unwind? Is it therapy?

It began in September 2004. As for why I started – good question. Almost impossible to answer as well. I just had an idea for the character and took it from there. There was no great plan or anything.

I think the blog does give me an opportunity to say things you might not normally be able to. I suppose it can be therapeutic in some ways although I’d never considered that before. It’s certainly cheaper than going to see a regular therapist – so perhaps the mentally ill should be forced to blog or we put them back behind 50 asylum walls and zap their brains with electricity. On live TV.

One blog post a day (at least), 5 days a week. It’s a tough thing to do. I don’t think I know many bloggers they are as dedicated. Why all this dedication?

Why not? I suppose many people blog for themselves and keep a fairly random schedule but I think part of the appeal, initially at least, was that people knew there’d be a new post every day so they’d come back and check. It’s something I still really enjoy so it’s not a burden (although there are days when it’s more difficult than others). Plus I suppose you have a responsibility to your readers too. If the blog is a success then they’ve played a bit part in that so it’s important not to slack off or lose sight of that.

Where does this inspiration come from?

That is the million dollar question and I don’t have any real answer. It just sort of spews out of my brain and through my fingers. I’d hate to try and find out more though. I remember once reading a short story by Isaac Asimov (I think it was him anyway) about some bloke who tried to discover why jokes were funny or what was the funniest joke ever, or something. He managed it but in the end nothing was ever funny again. Therefore if I find out where the crap all comes from I’ll never have any ideas ever again. Possibly. You can see how dangerous it might be to try though.

You’ve done extremely well at the Blog Awards the past two years. Were you surprised at how well received your blog is? Do you find there’s more pressure now with the awards, the book deal and a great deal of attention every single day?

It definitely was a surprise, yeah. I never thought it would be as widely well-received as it has been, nor was it my intention when I started to write a “popular” blog. I was just writing what I wanted to write, the way I wanted to write it. I have a good laugh writing it and thankfully people enjoy the writing and the content. The wide range of people (in terms of age group, interests etc) that like it is the biggest surprise though.

With regards to pressure I suppose there is a bit because it feels like there are standards to maintain but maybe that’s a good thing. If you get complacent with anything, whether it’s a blog or work or feeding your cat, that thing will suffer. Especially the cat. The book was a different kind of pressure though.

Twenty Major isn’t afraid to call a spade a spade. That’s rare, even in blogging. Is there something wrong with the world and us Irish when we are glossing over things and being too flightfully nice?

Well, you don’t mind complaining, do you? But I think it’s a very Irish thing not to cause a fuss, which is a shame when there’s so much to give out about. I think we’re getting better though, people seem more prepared not to just blindly accept things. I think the introduction of broadband helped. There was so much to complain about and so many people to do it that it just seems to have caught on a bit now. It’s the new craze that all the kids are into. Yeah.

What blogs does Twenty Major read? It’s a given that I’m first on the list, but what about the others?

My blogroll is a good indication of the blogs I read. I read as many other Irish blogs as I can as well. I do find I get a bit lazy though as I have so many in my RSS reader it could take up even more of my life so I tend not to add things for ages – then I realise a site I used to look at once a week is one I look at every day so I add it to the list.

I do hate being asked to single any out though. There are so many I’d feel like I was betraying the ones I didn’t mention.

Beardy people like yourself, John Waters and Richard Delevan seem to wind up the public a lot. Do you think it’s the beard that gets to people or is there some other factor?

Are you suggesting having a beard makes somebody more of a cunt? You could be onto something there. I saw a picture of Ronan Keating with a beard and it’s definitely made him more of a cunt.

On to the book. Well done on the book deal. How did that come about?

Thank you. Basically Hodder contacted me because they wanted to do a book about blogging. After some emailing we arranged a meeting, had a discussion about the book they wanted to do then I pitched them an idea about writing a book based on the blog and the characters in it. They asked to me to come back to them with a synopsis and a couple of chapters, which I did, and amazingly they liked it. They then offered me the two book deal. I said I would think about it. So I thought about it for a few seconds and said ‘yes’.

What’s your regime been like? You seem to have a very short time to get the first book out. How did you juggle that with the blog and with the other things you do?

It was very short and I wish I could tell you I was disciplined and did a bit every day so I wasn’t left with a stack of work at the end. I could tell you that but it would be a lie. I reckon about 50% of the first draft was done in the last month before deadline so that meant writing for 12 hours a day. Lots of coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. Thankfully I have a very understanding editor who was a great help during the whole process.

It didn’t get in the way of the blog at all really because it’s usually first thing in the morning or last thing at night when I write it but I did find myself wondering had I used a joke in the book or the blog, or the blog or the book, and it did get a bit confusing at times.

Did you seek out advice from others on putting the book together?

Yep, thankfully I have a good friend who has experience of writing books and their advice was invaluable. I shall follow it more closely for the second book so I don’t end up with loads to do and fuck all time to do it.

Did you find yourself self-censoring things when writing the book or were there times when you thought “holy crap, they’re not going to let this through”?

No, I didn’t censor anything. I thought it was important that it had to be the same Twenty in the book as in the blog. There were things that you can say in a blog that you can’t say in a book however, so there were a few things that had to be changed/modified, but thankfully nothing that detracts from the story in any way.

There were some things that actually got through that I wasn’t expecting though, so kudos to them again. I wonder if they’ve ever published a book with so many swear words.

Your first interview about the books is apparently going to be with Barry Egan. Okay, maybe not but how do you feel about the impending publicity surrounding the book? How much are you involved with marketing it?

Heh, “Barry Egan meets Twenty Major”. Not a chance. At this moment in time I don’t know what exactly is planned in terms of publicity. It’s down to the publishers and the PR company to work that out. They’ll then tell me and I suppose I’ll have to decide what I’m comfortable doing and what I’m not prepared to do at that time.

I can assure you I am not interested in walking naked down Grafton Street with the book cover painted on my arse though. I think most people will be happy to hear that.

You’re one of many now getting book deals. Is this good for bloggers? What advice would you give anyone that wants to write a book, should they start off as a blogger too?

Yes, I think it’s great for bloggers. It’s great for anyone to get a book deal. I don’t know if somebody who wants to write books should necessarily start off as a blogger but what I would say is that blogging allows you to write, publish instantly and gain an audience of people who are reading you because they like what you’re producing.

Not every blogger is going to get a book deal, nowhere near it, but it does give people a platform to showcase their ability and not only that, have instant critiques of what you write (in the comments). There are some very, very talented writers in the Irish blogging scene and I think now that blogging is being taken a bit more seriously ( e.g not being written off as a nerdy pastime anymore) it is a good way for any budding writers to get their stuff out there.

When is the book out?

I think it should be in the shops in the second or third week of February. When I find out the exact publication date I’ll stick it up on the blog

Long List Sneak peak – Best Food and Wine Blog

Monday, January 28th, 2008

The listing is here. Stay tuned to the Awards website to get the full long list on Wednesday.

Praise: John Blackbourn

Monday, January 28th, 2008

I don’t do many of these posts because I’m a difficult person and worse to please but I thought I’d highlight the work of John Blackbourn as I’m quite impressed. I was intro’d via Conor O’Neill to him and had him rebuild Politics In Ireland for me which he did and made a fantastic job of it. I’m really thrilled with it and already have him lined up for the next few iterations. He also built Gastronom.ie for me and again I’m really chuffed at what he did. He was also the person that redesigned and rebuilt Irish Election and is doing a few more projects for others here in Ireland.

John built the nomination system for the Blog Awards this year and the judging system, that while is unseen is a really nice piece of technology that will make the headaches of assigning judges and counting their points a hell of a lot easier, especially with over 70 judges and 750 blogs to judge over two different rounds.

I’ve also booked John to do work for me on about three other projects I want to do for 2008. The best bit about John is you explain your idea and he’ll do it but also give suggestions that actually improve what you wanted and make it much better. There are lots of good programmers but only a subset have great creative flare but at the same time he’s far from being a prima donna so work gets done. I have found that some brilliant and creative types are a pain in the ass to deal with because they will refuse to do something which they disagree with. John thankfully is not that type. Maybe that’s why he gets so much repeat business.

● Fluffy Links – Monday January 28th 2008

Monday, January 28th, 2008

Fluffy

Jazzbiscuit, nothing to do with arsebiscuits, has made WikiCraic, a web app that shows you the live changes being made to Wikipedia by people from Ireland.

Klara has a new blog. Have a looksee.

Overheard in Cork.

This is a Facebook event for the 2008 Irish Blog Awards, if you wanted to spread the word via that.

I wonder can we break the 1000 comments barrier on this Twenty Major post?

uʍop ǝpısdn sƃuıɥʇ ǝʇıɹʍ ‘unÉŸ llıʇs ʇnq ǝǝɹƃǝp ɐ oʇ É¥sıplıɥɔ

Fun with record sleeves.

The Dáil ministers’ blog takes down Brian “Leno” Lenihan.

The most disruptive changes come from the high end of the low end.

Via Sinéad, Killer Vaginas

via Metafilter: Slo mo Skater vid with stuff blowing up

Wanted: WordPress plugin to search for and insert Creative Commons pics

Sunday, January 27th, 2008

I’ll pay too.

Maybe it’s out there already but I’d like a wordpress plugin for this blog that will allow me to to search using keywords for apt creative commons pics that I can use in blog posts. I’m tiring of my own text-only blog posts, there’s nothing like a picture to brighten things up but it’s a pain to find licence free pics.

So it would:
Bring me back a few photo options.
I’d pick the one I want.
It would then upload it, trim it (perhaps) and stick it into the blog post and give attribution.

Anyone know of such a plugin. Or want to make one?

Edit: Jazz Biscuit made this.

Which allowed me to do this after searching for “Dublin”:
graffitti.JPG
Taken by: ralmonline

Skype Slapped

Friday, January 25th, 2008

Nice dig at Skype by outgoing eBay CEO Meg Whitman

Skype is doing more business as a four-year-old than eBay, Yahoo, or even Google did. We saw potential synergies between Skype and eBay. The next year or so will prove out if we were right. We’ve only had our management team in there for three months. Prior to that we had the founders, who are brave individuals, but were motivated by the earn-out.

Ah sure, there’s always Joost.

● Fluffy Links – Friday January 25th 2008

Friday, January 25th, 2008

Fluffy

Update: The links to the Examiner articles I dug at this morning stopped working so I’ve now linked to the versions in the Examiner archive.

Free badges.

Via Una The Vast Picture Show. The blog of Paul Lynch who is the film reviewer for the Turbine.

Shame on Rick. His first album purchase was Bruce Willis! Mine was Guns N’Roses. I just know someone has Mr. Blobby though.

Julian is talking about a European Wine Blogger event. Nice.

Kieran is talking about the rising costs of ingredients for his business and whether they should go organic.

Via Mick: Jesus light switch.

This is one to watch. A restaurant review in a paper ends up with them getting done for libel. Appeal happening now.

Corrections Department x2
The Examiner did a baseless frontpage story about facebook costing Ireland 700Million quid in lost productivity. Think about the amount of people in a workplace that read the Examiner every day. Look at all that downtime. Ban the thing! Update: Old link is now dead, how odd.

The Examiner seems to think Google is now spinning off companies such as the DNA analysis company 23 and Me. Wake up gobsheens, 23 and Me has a Google founder as an investor and his missus as the owner. Not. A. Spinoff. (Old broken link)

Cutlery on the top of your pen.

Mitt Romney likes black people. Foshnizzle. Gowl.

Sons & Daughters – Gilt Complex

Not this Sons and Daughters:

Helvetica is on Google Video (not for long I would guess)

Friday, January 25th, 2008

Helevetica, the documentary about a typeface is on Google Video right now. Go and load it up and watch. If you are into that sort of thing. It’s worth buying the genuine DVD by the way.