Guide to Pizza by the Slice in North Beach San Francisco

As you walk around the North Beach area - from the heights of Coit Tower to the beat hangouts of City of Lights - you may start feeling a little peckish. If you don't have a lot of time, and want an affordable meal you can enjoy in the park, or wherever - get some pizza to go! Here's a quick guide to help you pick the place to grab a slice.

Best Value: North Beach Pizza - Grant and Union

Big slices of greasy pizza with a thick crust. Tastes fairly decent, but not amazing. Reminds me a little bit of the pizza I used to get in Middle School - which I always liked.

A slice of Golden Boy Pizza - To go.

Best Taste: Tony's Pizza - Stockton and Union

It's right on the corner of the park too, which makes for a great place to get it  to go. The crust is thin, but still somehow crisp and the cheese and sauce blend together perfectly without one overpowering the other. The one downside is it's a little pricey - over $4.00 for a basic slice. Ouch.

Most Convenient: Golden Boys - 542 Green Street

Just up the street from the main thoroughfare of Columbus Street, their square slices are definitely grab-n-go material and the taste isn't half bad either. But for $3.50 it's a little small and a little unworthy. 

If you discover any other places worth mentioning, let me know! I'm open to suggestions.

~CJ

Pros and Cons of Living in North Beach - San Francisco

North beach, the neighborhood known as Little Italy, with it's delicious smells, hills, expensive rents, tourist traps, hidden gems and historically beat haunts, that is where I'm living right now and I consider myself lucky. If you're thinking of moving to the area, too, or even traveling through, here's a few things to keep in mind:

Pros:

Walking Distance Of:

Downtown financial district, Union Square shopping area, Galeria Mall etc - all 25-30 minutes

Pier 39 - 20-25 minutes

Bay Street Shopping Center with Safeway, Trader Joe's, Cost Plus, Ross and more - 10-15 minutes

Coit Tower/Pioneer Park - 5-15 minutes
China Town: 5-10 minutes

Views like this:

You might also have a view of:

TransAmerica Building

Coit tower

Bay towards Oakland

Downtown/Financial District

Amount of Cafes
There are plenty of local places to discover your favorite blend of espresso. The Cafes can also include great gelato, sandwiches, breakfast and sometimes wine and beer.

Beauty:
There are a lot of great views, trees, and Washington Square Park to enjoy. Buildings can be colorful and often in Italinate style, which is lovely.

Amount of restaurants 
There are a lot, some of which cater to the tourist, sure, but many that are authentic. And though it's Little Italy there is at least a moderate amount of variety. You can also find Thai food, Sushi and the Taqueria.

Cons

Rent Availability
Renting a room is likely to cost $1000 per month. There don't seem to be a lot of studio options and a one bedroom flat will run at least $2000 per month. Most offerings are subleases with rooms available that get snatched up very quickly.

Prices

Medium to high. Some of it is worthwhile, and other stuff is more of a tourist trap.

Tourists:
There are places that are too riddled with tourists like Mama's Cafe and Tony's Pizza. I don't know that I would wait 2 hours for those places, and I haven't yet. But I would love to try it if they weren't so busy!

Parking

Yeah, good luck. There is not much in the way of street parking. There is a garage on Union, and if you're willing to walk a bit you can park in several garages near Embarcadero or in the Bay St. Center and come on up within 15 minutes.

Difficult to get some places

Golden Gate Park - 45 minutes by public transportation though it's only five miles, which is far too far to walk, especially with the hills in between.

Difficult to get to or from these places late

Mission district.
Sunset District

Anyone else living in North Beach, let me know your pros and cons!

~C.J.

Getting the First Writing Assignment

The latest update on my journey to write for a living, including my first article assignment, and a plan for getting more writing assignments.

The original plan was to find local businesses I could contact about being a content writer and website-spiffer-upper, but I am still not sure how to go about that. Nevertheless, I have found a couple of opportunities that I am very hopeful about and are better than either CrowdSource/Mechanical Turk or Content Divas, because well, they actually pay more than a pittance (see previous article). 

Both of my new options were posted on that old standby Craigslist. The first job is writing articles for a website that is about to launch. I will share the website when it's up and I have some content on there, but for now I'll just tell you what I know. This website will be focused on featuring people and organizations what are making progress and solving world issues. There are a lot of options and angles to be taken. I actually have an assignment, which is strange to think about. And it will be paid a reasonable amount. So now I've done a bit of research and made first contact via email with a person I would like to interview. My only fear is that my old shyness will get in the way. Journalistic pursuits have always scared me a bit because so much rides on talking to strangers in the middle of a situation, and for whatever reason that was not easy for me to do in High School. I have to realize for myself that I am a very different and much more confident person now. And that is why I am actually making plans to write a couple travel articles in the next month as well. More on that later.

The second opportunity is to write content for real estate websites. It's a decent hourly wage for this job, and is something that would start slow before becoming a part-time or full-time position. Now this is more like a normal J.O.B. than a freelance job, but it is beginning as a remote position and has the ability to stay that way, which has obvious appeals because I could use this for some stable income as I do other, less stable writing.

So my plans for this week are:

1.Find someone to interview and put together my first assigned article.

2. Complete a few small assignments via Mechanical Turk and/or Content Divas

3. Research publications that may be interested in the travel articles I have come up with.

4. Draft a Query letter or two about these articles.

5. Talk to someone on the phone about the real estate content job - basically an interview for a position and my opportunity to learn about it some more.

6. I am also going to work on following the advice in "How to Build a Web Copywriting Portfolio Fast" which will help when it comes to contacting those businesses in the future.

I will also be writing about my experience with the Mechanical Turk platform as well as Content Divas and maybe some tips on where to buy used books in San Francisco. Links for those to come.

~CJ

To Freelance or Not to Freelance

When it comes to freelance writing, the questions really are multitudinous:

1. Is freelance writing worth my time? And the sub-questions of that: Could I ever make as much money per hour freelancing as doing a typical job? and Will I spend too much time trying to find freelance work and not enough time actually working?

2. Is it just yet another distraction from my own writing projects?

3. What am I actually qualified to freelance about? 

4. Where do I actually find these lovely freelance writing jobs?

5. Could this actually help make my dreams come true? Those of being able to live where I want, make my own schedule and maybe do a little traveling while writing, and making enough to sustain my fairly minimal needs, that is.

Are the first four questions, and the time they consume, worth the possibility that the answer to the fifth is yes?

All of this has come up because yesterday, when I went down to Columbus Cafe to escape the apartment and get some focus, I didn't get right down to business on my creative endeavors (i.e. my novel), and instead found my way to Craigslist due to my continuing indecision about whether I should stay in the Bay or move back to L.A. (hey rhyming!) where I discovered what looked like some freelance writing gigs. Hastily, I sent over my resume to a company called Content Divas and completed a quick application on Write.com. The wheels in my head started turning: If I could make a few hundred a month freelancing through these websites, build my portfolio and confidence and begin finding other gigs in a more direct way, maybe, just maybe, I could gather enough streams of income to quit the day job, or at least minimize it to part-time and work on my own terms. Such an exciting prospect! 

After the cafe, I was also reading a short ebook (which you can get for free here ) about finding a good business idea. It actually inspired me further, but only in the sense that I am now thinking about trying to find my own leads for freelance jobs and trying to contact them. What kinds of leads am I talking about here? I'm going to look for a business, or twenty, who don't seem like they have in-house marketing and offer my services via email. I may eventually try to set up a decent website, or at least a blog where I can put some samples, but initially I'll likely send them as part of the email. Could this be a horrible idea? It very well could, but who knows, maybe it will work. Maybe I can get some referrals, too. And I don't have much to lose.

So here is the current plan, which I will be updating as time goes along:

1. Write.com (which is actually just crowdsource rebranded, which appears to be a large amount of tiny jobs, paying just a bit)

2. Content Divas (they seem new and like they'll provide better compensation)

3. Offer my services to local/small businesses

Here are some more resources for freelance writing if you are interested:

Freelancewriting.com

The Renegade Writer blog

About.com Freelance Section or Write for About.com

Week One Progress:
Made: $8.20 (sort of, see info on working in Mechanical Turk)
Time Spent: (Estimated, including communication etc.) 5 hours
Written: 250 word article for a dating website, product description for cat food.

~CJ

Photo shout out goes to The Italian Voice on Flickr.

New Foundations

This is a new beginning. I moved to San Francisco two weeks ago because let's face it, I was going nowhere fast living with my parents and I needed to make a change. Now, with my commute cut in half and no more interruptions from four members of my family on an hourly basis, I can feel my mind opening up to more possibilities. 

Of course, I can't entirely blame my family, or being in the suburbs, or the lengthy commute to the day job for my lack of inspiration. Inspiration, after all, is a frame of mind and I suppose I was just too lazy or weak to put myself there in the past. So now, I am choosing to be different. I'm getting back to working on my writing - both my fiction and my travel writing projects along with this blog, which is also getting reinvigorated with a new, more personal perspective. This is now going to be more about my journey from travel-website-marketing-intern and novelist, screenwriting and travel-writer wannabe to something entirely different. I hope you enjoy the ride - and the pictures of my perfectly located apartment below.

St Peters and Paul Church which is very close to my new place!

I love the ledge and the light fixture
in my old-fashioned flat.

How to Write a Novel on a Cell Phone

Among the best tools for writing while on the go is my smart phone, and a handy blue tooth device.

I'm not one of those people who wants to carry my laptop everywhere, and even a netbook seemed too heavy when I was contemplating what things to put in a small pack I would be carrying everywhere during my six-week trip in Europe. At the same time, I had just gotten to page 50 in my novel, and I didn't want to take such a long break from writing. I also wanted to be able to update my travel blog from anywhere with a wifi connection. So I went on a hunt for the lightest, and cheapest options for writing on the go.

Luckily my whole family needed to upgrade phones at the same time. So we all got a deal on Android-based HTC phones with all those fun apps and capabilities. Naturally I was excited at the possibilities and went on a hunt for tools I could pair with the phone to help me out. First, the word processor. I wanted to be able to make documents that could be easily transferred to my computer, without paying any money. Microsoft's phone-sized software is actually pretty cheap, but I wound up figuring out something even better. I use a free app, instead, called Note Everything (there are others that do the same thing). In this app you can make a text, voice, or paint note. With an internet connection you can upload whatever text you type to your Google Documents, which is even better than Word because it is accessible from any computer (yay clouds!). For my blog, I got the wordpress app, which automated that process pretty easily.

Then I needed to find the hardware. There was no way I could type 500-1000 word blog posts or whole chapters using the tiny touch screen keyboard on my phone. But as it turns out, there is a great portable keyboard that connects via bluetooth to any android or iphone. The device cost me around $75 dollars and the drivers were free. I'm honestly surprised there aren't more of these types of devices offered. Even now, when you search for wireless keyboards, the only ones that come up immediately are only suitable for desktop computers. The Freedom Pro Universal Bluetooth Keyboard, is the only one that folds, connects wirelessly, and is compatible with phones. It's truly amazing. It may be a bit small or uncomfortable, but overall it works. It weighs less than a pound, and fits in small bags. I got it for my trip to Europe, but now I take it everywhere along with old fashioned pen and notepad for when inspiration strikes.

The perfect (and practically only phone-capable) portable keyboard!
Buy it on Amazon!
More companies should really be making these things....

Do Outlines Work for Writing Novels?

How Far ahead can you really plan when writing a novel?

I'd like to start with a quote I came across that made me think:

"Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
E. L. Doctorow

It brought up the question of outlining, knowing what happens next, letting the characters or story take on a life of their own, and everything in between that concerns the process of novel writing. I actually think this quote holds true, even if you meticulously outline, sketch characters, and pre-imagine your story before you actually start to write. Because at the end of the day, if you end up following an outline or plan to a T, you'll wind up going exactly where you expect, and the only real problem with that is that it's precisely what your audience expects as well, and they will be bored.

All the planning and the outlining, however, is still extremely useful. No matter if you deviate from it just a bit, or deviate from it a lot, or scrap it all together at some point. Of course, there are those who work best with no plan at all, but in general this can slow down the process of writing a full novel. It's also possible that this will decrease your motivation. I know this is the case for me. I use outlines to keep me on track, not only in terms of the story, but also in terms of productivity. It lets me know I'm getting somewhere and if I have a sense of progress I am more likely to keep going.

Of course, there is always the point where you better stop planning, and start writing. Otherwise, the absolutely most obvious thing will happen, that is, nothing at all.

"It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end."
Ursula K. LeGuin