Mia Freedman is in the Fibro

Mia Freedman's latest book launched into bookshops around the nation today. Mia Culpa: confessions from the watercooler of life (Penguin) is the newest installment in her series of books about her life, her thoughts, and, always, her opinions. She has discussed magazines, motherhood and mistakes. She now takes on pubic hair, social media and that moment in life when you go from being cool to being... not. Among other things, of course.

All of which provides the perfect excuse to drag her into the Fibro to answer a few questions.

The disclosure: Mia and I first met 1000 or so years ago (mine, not hers, because clearly she is not as old as I am) when she was editor of Cosmopolitan and I was dabbling in freelancing for the first time. I remember sitting in her office, surrounded by smiley Cosmo covers, wondering if I was wearing the right shoes. (In my defence, the Cosmo offices have had that effect on stronger women than I.)

She was bright, smiley, clever, gorgeous... the kind of woman you'd find reasons to dislike given half a chance. But she was also warm and friendly and, as she remains, incredibly supportive of other people's talents, insecurities and efforts. It was thanks to her that I got to write the now world-famous Hairy Armpits story. The rest, as they say, is history.

So yes, thanks for asking, I have great admiration for Mia's work. I don't always agree with her, but I respect her for tackling the big issues head-on on her website Mamamia and most weeks her Sunday Life column makes me nod in acknowledgement and laugh out loud.

Plus, she has graciously agreed to answer my five questions about blogging, branding and the boundaries of personal writing. So what's not to love?

You often draw on your own experiences for your columns, blogging and writing - what are your boundaries for your personal style of writing?
Mia Freedman: "Well, it's always changing. I have to be careful. Just when I thought I was very clear about my boundaries in writing, I recently told a story at a dinner party which completely embarrassed my son. Not that that's particularly difficult - he's a teenager - but his age is problematic. So much great material for me to write about and much of it is about my own experiences and reactions as a parent of a teenage boy, but I'm on eggshells there...

"Generally, I try to have a rule that everything is okay so long as I'm the punchline. I go to great lengths to protect my friends and family - I'll never put my writing in front of their feelings or their right to privacy. But mostly they're very accommodating. Which is lucky, because otherwise I'd have nothing to write about!"

I remember reading somewhere that you'd rewritten parts of Mama Mia, your memoir about magazines, mistakes and motherhood, because you felt you'd crossed over the line into 'too personal' - can you explain what 'too personal' means?
MF: "Memoirs are extremely difficult and sensitive because you're not just writing about your own life - you're writing about the lives of everyone in your life. So there were some things in there that were not mine to share and needed to come out. My choice. They didn't affect the story.

"The first draft would have been a bad book, actually - too raw, too emotional and just a bit all over the place. I kept probably 80 per cent of it and the end result was more balanced. Just as personal, but more layered and thus, in my opinion, a better read."

What do you see as the difference between blogging and writing for other media such as books and magazines?
MF: "I haven't written for magazines for years, although my column appears in a newspaper magazine... Still, that's different. It's not a monthly glossy or a weekly tabloid. Every type of writing I do - from Twitter to books - is different. It requires a slightly different approach and, often, a different tone. Since I'm constantly flitting between social media, Mamamia, my column and books, I barely even have to think about it now. Although, books can be a bit of a gear shift. You need to lengthen your concentration span, which is reduced constantly by tweeting and blogging.

"The slowness of books is both my biggest frustration and greatest joy when it comes to that medium. I'm into a pretty fast turnaround and short deadlines - with Mamamia, we often post within minutes of having an idea and Twitter just publishes practically before you've even thought something through (danger! danger!). But taking it slower and having more time to refine what you're going through to say is a luxury. I've come to see writing books like that."

Bloggers and writers are often encouraged to 'build their brand' - but is there a downside to your name becoming a brand? Do you think people fail to separate the 'brand' from the person, resulting in personal attacks?
MF: "The brand is the person in many ways, at least it is for me. It's too much effort to have to turn a brand on and off. I'm just myself, flaws and all. Hence the name of the book! I am inextricably linked with what I do and what I say and I'm fine with that. I don't take on any commercial arrangements that I don't believe in and I'm always transparent about them. You have to be!

Mamamia, the website, is about to undergo a big change, morphing from blog to fully fledged web magazine by all accounts - what's the reason behind that? Will there be less Mia?
MF: "Mamamia hasn't been a personal blog for a long, long time. There's only so much one person can say! And I never wanted to do a personal blog or a mummy blog. Love them, but it wasn't for me. I wanted to create something for a broader audience, with lots of voices, all as relevant and important as mine. I will assume the same role on the new site as I've been taking for a while on Mamamia - that of editor and publisher. So, in short, not less Mia, no. But more of everything else."

And we danced

The scene: Pitt Street Mall, Sunday morning, restless shoppers swarm between the buildings, scaffolding looms overhead, a man in a tuxedo plays the electric violin, an ever-increasing crowd hums along as 'Memories' (think Barbra Streisand) weaves through the air.

Mr4 takes my hand. He twirls under it, Ginger Rogers style. He turns back to face me, holds out his other hand. I take it. He begins to twirl.

"Dance with me Mummy," he says.

I laugh. Round and round we go, with a couple of pirouettes and an occasional heel-toe polka thrown in. The crowd makes room for us.

We dance.

Weekend Rewind

My, how quickly the weekend rolls around when there's a Rewind to enjoy! It seems like only yesterday that we were singing about silvery moons in June, and now here we are again. July has proved a problematic month for our mixed tape of Rewind pleasures. There are a few songs about July - Google tells  me that Ocean Colour Scene had one out in 2000 that made number 31 on the UK singles chart. It was called 'July'.

I'm not familiar with it.

Nor am I familiar with Katatonia's 'July' or 'The July 4th Song (The Day Kobayashi Went Down)' by McSAPRR (I get the impression not too many people are familiar with this one).

But, undaunted, the Weekend Rewind goes on. And it's easy - follow the Fibro if we are not already friends, and then link up one of those fabulous posts languishing in your archives. Pop around and comment on a few other links, to share the comment love, and there you have it. The prompt this week is July, so your post will preferably be something from July 2010 or earlier. But don't fret if you don't have one - just link up something that you love.

That's it! Let the Rewind begin! This week, I'm offering up the origins of the Concert Face. Oh, one thing, I'll be offline for much of the weekend doing, you know, real life stuff, but never fear - I will visit each and every link upon my return. Looking forward to it.

And don't forget those other Fibro-famous linkys, Maxabella's Grateful and Blog Gems at The King and Eye (Sunday/Monday Aussie time). I'll be there - you should be too!

Now we are four

When I told Mr4 this morning that he would be seeing a doctor today he asked why.

"I'm not sick Mummy," he said. "I'm on holidays." Any day that is not a preschool day is a holiday as far as he's concerned.

I went on to explain that he had to go and have his four-year-old needles. He wanted to know what a needle was. Given how much he screamed last time he had one, I was sure he'd remember. Clearly the two-year-old brain blanks out the pain of the immunisation process. Much as the maternal brain does with labour.

Mr7 was keen to elaborate. "They poke medicine in you," he said. "It hurts a bit."

Mr4 thought about that.

"I thought you went to the doctor to make you feel better," he said. "Not to get hurt."

Much discussion ensued about what kind of pain it was, how much pain there was, did we really need to do it?

Yes, I said, we did.

And so we did. Via a milkshake, and with the promise of a surprise if he was brave. And he sat up straight on my lap and didn't even blink as two nurses approached from either side and jabbed him simultaneously. "That was all right," he said, as he climbed down. "Now, where's the surprise you promised me?"

Four is really very big, isn't it?

{image: cheezelsmurf/flickr}

How (not) to use Skype

For the latest in what is fast becoming a series on How (Not) To Do Stuff, I roadtested Skype. I remember first hearing about Skype a few years ago when the earliest of my Early Adopter friends emailed her entire list extolling its joys and insisting we all sign up. Given that like attracts like, it will surprise no-one to discover that most of my friends are also Luddites and we all screeched with (cyber) laughter (it looked something like this: LOL, LOL, LOL).

Why would we want to look at each other while we talked? Isn't the whole point of the phone so that you can sit around in your pyjamas and pretend to be professional?

Or maybe that's just me.

Suffice to say that my Early Adopter friend had to make new friends, probably on Skype, just so she'd have someone to talk to.

Fast-forward a few years and the technological revolution has even touched The Fibro. Today I not only conducted my first ever Skype call, but it was recorded and will be available for the whole world to view via the Sydney Writers' Centre website in a few weeks. A situation that combined three of my least favourite things in the world:

a) Answering questions instead of asking them.
b) Being captured on camera (which I abhor, be it still or video)
c) New technology.

Pressure, much?

I did all the right things. I downloaded Skype, read the how-to manual, signed up for an account. Easy. I even tidied up the portion of my office that I thought might be visible via the computer's camera. I was ready. Ten minutes before the appointed time, I attempted to open the application, so that I could work out how I'd work out that I had a 'call' coming in.

No dice. "Your operating system does not support this version of Skype."

Cue: panic stations. It took me five mintues of Googling and faffing to work out that I'd downloaded the latest version of Skype onto my not-latest-version operating system. It took another five minutes to find a version that my not-latest-version operating system would support. Twenty seconds before the appointed time, I had something open on my computer and my fingers crossed.

It worked. I saw my interviewer, she saw me. She asked questions, I attempted to answer them in a meaningful manner whilst determinedly not looking at the image of myself in the bottom left hand corner. Of course, it wasn't until after the interview that I thought of all my best answers. You know, the succinct, witty, intelligent ones. But that's par for the course and can in no way be blamed on Skype.

In hindsight, all that panic and faffing was probably for the best. I was so busy fretting about the technology that I had no time to worry about whether my hair was frizzy or how many chins I was featuring at any given time. I remembered to look at the camera, not the screen, so hopefully people will see my eyes, and not a fab view of my eyelids (thanks Lady Estrogen!). And I didn't even have to take another friend's advice to shut down the computer if the questions got too hard and pretend it was a 'dropped line'.

So here I am. Almost fully functioning member of the 21st century.

Next step: updating the operating system.

Can I ask you a question?

I read today, in O magazine (so it must be true), that asking a lot of questions can help "keep your mind nimble" (their words, not mine) as you age. I was kind of excited by this. Not only because it seems that Misters 4 and 7 will be incredibly sharp 109 year olds (I figure it will take them this long to run out of questions). But because I will be too. Well, maybe not 109 (my Bio Age score at the gym the other day was close to that now). But sharp.

To give you an idea of why, I thought I'd run you through some of the questions I asked today. This does not include the questions I had to answer (which included such gems as "why does that car look funny?" - answer: because it's a hearse - and "where is that story that was due today?" - answer: the dog ate my homework). Just a small sample of the ones that originated from me.

"What do you want for breakfast?"

"Where are your shoes?"

"Where are your shoes?"

"Where are your shoes?"

"Why did you change the time for Reading and not tell me?"

"What do you think of this story idea?"

"What is career resilience?"

"What foods should we eat for more energy?"

"How can I network when I have to pick the kids up after school?"

"How does Skype work?"

"What would life be like for a country solicitor?"

"Would any woman in her right mind drive 1000km to talk to a man who 'needed space'?"

"Do you really need that receipt to finish my tax?"

"What is the difference between a bully and a bitch?"

"When do you need this by?"

"What are the 10 essential things that everyone should know about insurance?"

"Where the hell did I put that receipt?"

"Where are your shoes?"


Of course, I have barely scraped the surface. But, as you can see, I am well on the way to a very nimble mind in old age. Also well on the way to making my children sleep in their shoes.

What about you? Are you asking a lot of questions? Are they meaningful questions?


{image: Jamie'sArt/etsy}