Hey, anyone wanna do my homework for me? Of course, you do!

Thanks in advance.

When you win NaNoWriMo, you get a coupon code for a free proof copy of a self-published book at CreateSpace.com.

CreateSpace is a print-on-demand publisher, meaning you submit a digital copy of your book (in PDF) and they print out a professionally bound copy every time someone orders one. The price is very reasonable, making my free proof copy kind of a moot point, but I'm a sucker for a freebie.

Last year, I used my coupon to print up a collection of twenty years of my poetry, just to have it around to pass on to my kid(s) and to hand out to family.

Since that's been done, what am I going to do with this year's free proof copy?

Well, I was thinking: Maybe some sort of Hobo Mama book!

But I'm stumped, and that's where you come in. I can't think of a good topic for the book.

If this were strictly an essay or a photo site, I could collect my posts as-is or with minimal editing. But there's so much variety, in terms of tone and subject matter and format that I can't imagine how to make a cohesive book by just copying and pasting.

I'm thinking I'm going to have to do some hard work and write something, more or less, from scratch. But what?

And I don't want to work too hard. I don't want to sound super lazy right off the bat here, but I have only till the end of June to finish this sucker, so it can't be research-intensive or require a million interviews. I'd rather it be something I can just write from the gut.

Who's the audience? I have no idea. Some of that will depend on the topic. My poetry book's audience was a personal and limited one. But for this book, it could be much broader. The audience could be my readers, or it could even extend out from there.

Here are some ideas I've had so far, but please chime in with brilliant new ones, because I'm not blown away by anything I've come up with:

• How to be a Hobo Mama: A primer on getting started with natural parenting — birth, babywearing, cloth diapers, gentle discipline, etc. This wouldn't be (couldn't be) comprehensive, more of a hand-out-at-baby-showers sort of book to spark some ideas of alternative ways to parent.
• Life of a Hobo Mama: My personal experiences with natural parenting so far, replete with my own photographs so I don't have to worry about copyright permissions.
• Book on a specific natural-parenting topic, such as breastfeeding or babywearing. What, exactly? I haven't the faintest idea. Help!
• Children's book, on something crunchy. Long-term breastfeeding, babywearing, cosleeping, etc. Ooo—maybe A Day in the Life of a Hobo Baby. Does anyone do illustrations?
• Songbook of children's songs about breastfeeding, babywearing, cosleeping, etc. Would require writing said songs. I would also like to record them, which would require recording space. Maybe this is too ambitious for a June deadline.
• Something else I'm not thinking of?

Thank you for your editorship! No idea will be discounted. Clearly mine are stupid, so don't feel shy. Please pitch your ideas on over here!

And if I do write a book, let me know if you want to be one of the early feedback readers for a free proof copy of your own.



And if it so happens that you want to make your blog into a book, I've done a rundown of some available blog-to-book options at LaurenWayne.com. Hope you find it helpful as you, too, explore FAME and FORTUNE in print!!

There's a lot of bloggy kerfluffle over the mommy blogger article in the New York Times. In case you were thinking it wasn't condescending and misogynistic, gawk with me at the title:

Honey, Don’t Bother Mommy. I’m Too Busy Building My Brand.

Stand agog at the illustration, showing mommies transfixed by screens to the detriment of their screeching children.

Wince at the snarky wording slathered throughout: "Heed the speaker’s advice, and you, too, might get 28,549 views of your tutu-making tutorial!"

Witness in disbelief its inclusion not in the business section, not in technology, but … wait for it … Fashion & Style.

But don't take my word for it.

Check out these rebuttals that are doing a more eloquent job of saying what I think than I could reproduce here:

Mom-101: Honey, Don't Bother Mommy. I'm Writing a Mildly Annoyed Letter to the New York Times.

I guess it could also have been titled "Honey Don't Bother Mommy. I'm Making Ends Meet for Our Family in a Tough Economy" but that doesn't seem as enticingly condescending. Also, then it would have to go in the business section and not fashion + style and that would just mess up everything!

... I wish it had opened with the yearning of bloggers for the community to return to good writing, and the evidence that in the end, that's mostly what pays off... .

However I'm afraid that in our ADD world, most readers won't get much past the opening snark, which continues to affirm all the negativity surrounding the word mommyblog. In other words, more silly mommies and their silly "expensive hobby."

Liz talks, fairly, about what was right in the article, too. But she finishes with an inspiring list of all the varied and honorable actions mom bloggers have taken, from partnering with colleagues stricken by family sorrows to heading up charity drives to promoting healthcare to influencing politicians.

Kelby Carr: Newspaper Bias Against Mom Bloggers

Kelby discusses why it is entirely appropriate for women to try to earn money (how utterly sad that this needs to be said) and points out all the ways the traditional media has been and still is trying to marginalize women.

Why is it so shocking that moms would discuss something besides parenting? How ridiculous. Why was this even in the Style section? If it were a tech conference for men the tone would be entirely different. ...

Yes, mom blogging is an industry. It isn’t something cute we adorable widdle mommies do to share diaper stories. Whether we’re making money or not ( mostly not), it is an industry. There are plenty of industries in which many workers in it make little or no money, such as writing, fine art and acting.

...

We are trying to make a living by creating content, and for that we get demeaned, criticized, talked down to, made fun of, and stereotyped as unethical money and swag grabbing whores.

Raising My Boychick: This is kyriarchy in action: the New York Times on "Mommy bloggers"

This is perhaps the most salient objection to the article.

But in addition to portraying that group offensively, as vapid and concerned more with appearance than parenting, more with parenting-as-competition than politics and cultural change, this leaves out vast numbers of bloggers who are women with children. It leaves out those of us who are not white. It leaves out those of us who are more concerned with getting food on the table than getting it all organically grown. It leaves out those of us who are not straight, not married, not male partnered, not partnered all all, or partnered with more than one other. And it leaves out those of us who are trying to build a revolution instead of, or along with (as though that were such a sin?), a brand.

I hope you'll click over and read all the response articles through, because my quotes only scratch the surface of their messages.

I'll just focus on one aspect of the Times article:

Whereas so-called mommy blogs were once little more than glorified electronic scrapbooks, a place to share the latest pictures of little Aidan and Ava with Great-Aunt Sylvia in Omaha, they have more recently evolved into a cultural force to be reckoned with. Embellished with professional graphics, pithy tag lines and labels like “PR Friendly,” these blogs have become a burgeoning industry...

I hate that all mommy blogs (and I hate that term with all of my being) are being tarred with the same brush. Are all blogs by men daddy blogs? Are they all the same in tone, in content, in readership, in style? It's ridiculous.

I have no problem with giveaway blogs; I enter giveaways on them. I run one myself. But it seems like that's the type of blog this article is describing, and it's grossly unfair to extrapolate from one type of mom blog to all blogs by women about parenting.

It speaks to what Arwyn at Raising My Boychick is talking about, as well.

Because I read plenty of parenting blogs that do not fit the stereotype outlined in the article. (Let's set aside for the moment that some of the blogs who fit the stereotype's broadest strokes are much more nuanced than the stereotype as well.)

I read parenting blogs by men. I read parenting blogs by people are trying to keep their blogs small, or private. I read parenting blogs that are ad-free and whose owners have no desire to monetize or optimize SEO. I read parenting blogs whose owners wish for great financial success and put a lot of effort into creating that. I read parenting blogs by people who are Latino-American, who are African-American, who are Asian-American, who are not American at all: writers from Canada, Germany, Australia, Sweden, Italy, Aruba, Romania, and on. I read blogs in English where English is not the writer's primary language. I read bilingual blogs. I try to decipher blogs entirely in languages other than English. I read blogs by rich people and by people who can barely make ends meet and who tell me how to. I read parenting blogs by married parents and single parents, parents who are divorced, and parents in a new relationship. I read parenting blogs by lesbian parents and bisexual parents and straight parents. I read parenting blogs by raging conservatives and raging liberals and everything in between. I read blogs by parents both younger than I am and older — and some at precisely the same age. I read parenting blogs by Protestants, atheists, Mormons, Catholics, Jews, and no religion I can determine on reading. I read parenting blogs that still are a "glorified electronic scrapbook" of their children's everyday and extraordinary moments — and you know, they are glorified, as sarcastically as that adjective was originally intended. I read other categories of parenting blogs I can't even think of here.

All of these parenting blogs could be lumped into the single identity of "mommy blogs" because they are primarily by women about family. But they are not the same. They are not vapid and interchangeable.

I guess what got my goat most about this article was this sense not that it was insulting me, though it was. It was that it was insulting my fellow (mommy) bloggers — my friends.

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ETA: I meant to reference the latest episode of House, which we watched last night on Hulu with me snickering all the while. It was about a blogger so obsessed with airing every detail of her life (every conversation, every decision) that she failed to connect with the person (lover) standing in front of her. Oh, noes! Extreme blogging!

I kept expecting them to find she had a disease where one of the symptoms was — an addiction to blogging! And apparently I have it, too...

So, just in general, the media is totally on target with realistic impressions of bloggers. (Ha!)

I will say I did like Julie & Julia's portrayal of blogging. The emotional curve felt real to me — but that's probably because it was based on real life!

Can anyone else think of media depictions of bloggers, well or badly done?

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Hey, speaking of building my brand... [cue delirious laughter for putting this in this post, but it's stuck in my brain like a burr]

Can you (any of you) do me a favor? If you're on Facebook and have the application NetworkedBlogs or are willing to get it, go follow me on NetworkedBlogs. And, then (this is the actual favor part, though it sounds like I'm taking a long time to get to it), please click on the link that says "Author(s): Pending confirmation. Help us confirm the author."

For some reason, this lack of resolution is irritating me beyond belief.

I know some of you have already confirmed me, and I thank you muchly. I can't find any way to see who did and who didn't, so while I can send invitations to ask people to confirm me, I might be double-blitzing people who've already come through. So I thought I'd put my plea here instead. Thank you for helping soothe my irritation at NetworkedBlogs for not believing in my authorship. (For those who know I could put a widget to verify, you can see that I have one over on the right sidebar there, but it keeps failing verification. So I'm stuck bothering nice people to help me out.)

As long as you're being friendly on Facebook, might as well be my friend. You can also feel free to fan my page. Love ya!

All right. Gotta get back to SEO optimizing my tutorials and neglecting my child.

A hypothetical: Electrical storms are going to wipe out the Internet (perhaps forever). You have one day left to write about your passions: what do you want to say to the blogosphere in 300 words or less?



If I could sum up my parenting philosophy in — well, it's me, so I won't say one word, but a few words — I would say it's about respect and exploration.

Respect is about listening to your child's needs and honoring them. Exploration is questioning how things are done and being willing to break new ground — or return to ancient.

Respect: Listen to your child

Listen to your children's needs before their arrival, preparing your body and home. When you hear your baby’s first cries, respond to expectations by holding to your skin and feeding.

As your children grow, respond empathetically to their joy, grief, pain, adventuresomeness. Don't see conflict where there is none, but honor their emotions and seek to understand.

See in them not the seed of a person but a real person already — with wants, needs, preferences, and rights. Respect those rights, and meet those needs as you are able.

You won't parent perfectly, but take even mistakes as opportunity to listen harder.

Listen to your own intuition and honor its whispers.

Explore: Question yourself

Even as you seek your intuition, it might be clouded by indoctrination into a path not honoring your children or yourself.

Think about the way you were raised — adopt only what is beneficial.

Think about the way the culture around you treats children — research and challenge. It may be you come back to the same conclusion you started with, but at least you will know why.

Continue listening to your children — individually — and be willing to change anything, even new parenting beliefs, to meet particular needs.


You will grow, respecting yourself and honoring your children's true selves. Your children will grow, confident of your love and their foothold on this planet.

This is my passion for both of us.


This post is an entry for Mabel’s Labels BlogHer ’10 Contest. Stay tuned to see if I get to go...