The Heymarci Blog is going to be dark for a few weeks as I am going on a cycling trip in Europe and then spending some time at the beach. Looking forward to bringing back reports of workplace trends in Croatia and Fire Island. Or maybe just tips on unplugging.

The first time I saw the word, “meme,” was on Dan Pink’s blog, causing me to realize that it is probably a word I should know.

I like learning words by seeing them in context. Here’s the blog entry where Pink used it:

6 words, 6 sentences, no waiting

The ultra-short story meme continues to thrive. Virginia Backaitis has launched a blog devoted to mini-tales that asks, “What can you say in six sentences?” Also, if you haven’t seen it already, Wired‘s November issue asked a bunch of novelists to try their hands at 6-word science fiction. Margaret Atwood’s is my favorite: Longed for him. Got him. Shit.

Posted on 01/03.

{CORRECTION 08/20 – The “Six Sentences Blog” was actually created by Robert McElivy. Virginia Backaitis is a contributor.}

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Recently, I did something strange. I called a fellow journalist for something we would normally talk about through email. It was so odd that I started the call with a caveat, “I don’t usually pick up the phone, but it seemed about time we had a conversation.” She and I typically communicate by email, my preferred mode of communication with just about everyone in my life. It keeps me productive. But lately I have been so saturated with email that I am starting to relish all those conversations that I long ago relegated to email.

Clearly, my phone call got that colleague (Eve Tahmincioglu) thinking because she blogged about it at her new small business blog at MSNBC.com, which is worth checking out even if it didn’t have something to do with ME!

This week’s Shifting Careers column online at The New York Times, Blogging Your Way Into a Business, is about using blogs to build a business or make a career change. I wrote this piece because I was tired of reading stories about how blogs can harm one’s career — and while I know that blogs can do damage, they are also one of the easiest, most-effective ways to test out an idea, get a business off the ground, or build a following in your niche.

Jeremy Blachman, one of the bloggers I profiled, wrote a great piece (available through Times Select) for the Times about why employees blogging about their is good for the public good. It was a bit off-topic for the column, but it’s relevant to the whole “are blogs good for your career?” conversation.

then you need to get over to Penelope Trunk’s blog and check out the e-storm over her posts about the state of her marriage. This post, and the one she wrote about her first marriage counseling session with her husband have resulted in a rich and interesting discussion on privacy boundaries for bloggers, marriage, stay-at-home parenting, and a grab-bag of other stuff.

On Sunday, I spoke on a panel about freelance writing at a journalism conference with my friends and fellow freelancers, Chris Kenneally and Hannah Wallace. Chris’s new book, The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language, is coming out later this week and during the panel, she mentioned that she is using a private blog (a blog she doesn’t publish) as an organizational tool for her next book. Now that I’ve discovered how easy and useful blogs can be for keeping track of writing thoughts, online links and other stuff you don’t want to lose, I loved this idea.
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Yesterday, my Shifting Careers column at The New York Times online focused on ways to create buzz about your ideas. Based on the flood of reader emails I’ve been getting, I’m not the only one interested in this subject. If you have any tips to share — especially ideas for those who are uncomfortable about self-promotion and/or who can’t afford outside p.r. help, please share them in the comments. (There’s no way to comment on the NYT website yet, so leave your comments on the blog.)

Here’s the article, “Tools and Tips to Create Buzz Around Your Ideas.”

Note: Through some weird URL glitch, the link to the 360 Profiler mentioned in the first paragraph was published incorrectly. If you want to try the tool, click here.

UPDATE:
Just stumbled on this article on Forbes.com “The Single Greatest Marketing Tool” that does a good job of explaining public relations — from both a do-it-yourself and a hire-an-expert perspective.

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This week my Shifting Careers column, “Women Build Businesses Their Way,” will appear in two places, its traditional online home at the New York Times online, and as the Thursday Small Business feature in the print edition of the paper. It’s about Ladies Who Launch, a social networking group for entrepreneurial women, and the bigger subject of whether women run their businesses (and their lives) differently than men. As I reported this story, I could have taken quite a few detours since the topic was rich. And I have a feeling it’s a subject I’ll be circling around for a while.

A few interesting links I stumbled on while working on this story:

• A great post at Blogher, about different approaches to corporate women’s networks: “BusinessWeek Takes a Second Look at Women’s Networks”
• “The Real Reason So Few Women,” a post from Marty Nemko (who has appeared in my Coach’s Roundtable) about why there are so few women at the top. Perhaps it’s just that women want different things than men, or that we have differing definitions of “the top.” Marty’s archives are encyclopedic. He’s got an article or a handful of articles on pretty much any work-related topic you’ve ever thought of. And often, they are smart and provocative, like this one.
• Penelope Trunk, whose archives are also rich with smart posts, wrote this post last week about male CEOS.
  
• Commentary from The Center for Women’s Business Research, that “. . . both sides (of the opt-out debate) ignore what at least some of these women are doing at home in addition to raising their children: they are starting businesses. Read more here.“

I have a feeling we are closing in on a time when referring to a feminine style of doing business might be seen as a compliment.

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Last week I had lunch with Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, one of the best workplace bloggers out there. My intention was to talk shop, grouse about being on book tour and how hard it is to self-promote all time — and frankly, get some advice about being a workplace columnist. We never got to that last part because she whipped out a pen and told me she’d like to interview me about my book for her blog. (I had pitched her ages ago, but when she didn’t write about the book, I didn’t want to press.)

Here’s what she wrote.

If you’re the kind of person who reads my column and blog, you’ll definitely want to keep up with Lisa’s blog. Another interesting fact about her is that she wrote an interesting/wacky book on the business and rituals around death and funerals. You can read more about it (and check out some cool photos) here (on yet another book site that reminds me I have to redesign my website/blog once life quiets down.)

As I was promoting my book, I approached lots of writers I admired. Sometimes I wanted them to think of me as the expert on slash careers. Sometimes I was looking for advice about how to make that move from journalist to author. In other cases I hoped the writer would say some kind words about about my book in the form of a review, a blog entry, a blurb. Because I limited myself to writers I admired, I was sincere every time I wrote which made this process enjoyable rather than daunting.

Penelope Trunk was one of those writers I approached. I had heard of her, and read her Climb column in the Boston Globe; but after a reference in the Wall Street Journal to her blog, The Brazen Careerist, I started reading the blog, which developed into a daily habit. When I ultimately choose to write to her, I didn’t really know what I wanted to happen. I just wanted to meet her. I wrote on a day when something she posted on her blog had pretty much flattened me. I couldn’t get any work done after reading the post, and I was affected by how she took took a horribly difficult moment in her life as a parent and turned it into a brilliant piece of advice. Penelope immediately wrote back and we struck up both a friendship and a professional relationship that was one of the gifts of writing my book. (In the end, she did say some kind words about my book, and that was a bonus.)

Well, now Penelope’s book The Brazen Careerist is out and it is as smart, unpredictable and bold as she is. Perhaps the best praise I can give her book is that it has completely raised the bar for the rest of us who write about careers. Every time I think about my next article, column or blog post, I now think, “Penelope has probably already said something original, brilliant, and smart on this.” Then I run to her blog and realize that she has. So I have to try harder. And she’s the first person who will tell me this.

Thanks for the kick in the butt Penelope! And since we all need a kick in the butt, I encourage you to buy the book.

Since you’ll all ask me, here is the post that made me write to Penelope.