Rachel Sklar
I wrote small stories here and there, then bigger ones. Some were even written for money. I signed up for a writing class and snuck my first assignment on a yellow legal pad in a partner's office while he read through my memo.Collection: Legal
It is a pet peeve of mine when people throw around arguments citing 'Fair Use' and yet fail to actually explain what a fair use argument actually is.Collection: Pet
New York apartments are notoriously small, and my cute little studio is no exception - space is at a premium, which is one of the reasons that I only have a mini-fridge. Great for leftovers, cheese, and chilling Diet Coke.Collection: Diet
Less than two weeks before my 34th birthday, I bought pots. Most people were amazed that I did not previously own pots, but that was before I explained that I had never used my oven, and used my stovetop for my dishrack.Collection: Birthday
Good advice is just watch what you say on Facebook, on Twitter, on social networks because being sued is not fun. Filing a lawsuit is not fun. And being fired and having to do all of those things is not fun. So just avoid it.
Twitter is an astounding platform for information, but it's a total blank slate - which means it's an astounding platform for disinformation, too.
I have jeggings to wear and worlds to conquer.
I am not an 'unplug' person. I like being plugged in.
As a matter of personal philosophy, I have generally said, 'Why not?' far more often than either 'Why?' or 'Not.'
I feel lucky every day. But I can also trace that luck back to decisions I have made. Frequently, those decisions have been to pay my own way to somewhere I want to be and something I want to do.
I've gone out on limbs, flung far, and Forrest-Gumped my way into the center of the action.
I didn't go to law school to become a lawyer, per se - let's just say I was leaning in to some strong suggestions from my parents - but my nebulous goals of someday becoming a writer were just that, nebulous.
I took a job at a white-shoe NYC law firm, with an office, business cards, and a fat starter paycheck.
I don't fault my former law firm for running their business like a business or expecting their new hire to be worth the obscene rate she was billed out at, but fun it was not.
Women as a raw demographic unit exercise incredible power across every element of American life.
I'm Jewish, but not overly religious, and have certainly never formally observed the Fourth Commandment, other than via the tradition of wearing white on Friday nights at summer camp, which never seemed to dovetail with the fact that Fridays were also the night for grape juice.
I not only work online through my various projects, but I am an avid user of online technologies to connect and engage with friends as well.
My weekends are oases of time and space, where I am able to draw a breath and dive into the stuff I couldn't get to that week - the great article I bookmarked, the friend whose emails I kept dropping, the blog post I'd meant to write on a subject that wasn't timely but was still important.
I find the term 'workaholic' to be distasteful because it reminds me of the harried-looking lawyers I recall chained to their desks through nights and weekends during my lawyer days years ago.
I am pro-choice, but I don't consider that inconsistent at all with pro-life - there's no way that having an abortion, ever, is an easy decision, and it more often errs on the side of absolutely wrenching, not to mention physically debilitating.
Law school and summer camp are the two experiences that inform pretty much all I do.
There will always be women who say, 'She doesn't represent me.' In retrospect, these things are gifts, because it forces me to step up and defend what I'm doing.
What I do want is to be transparent about where I am and how I got here. I don't like the cone of silence - it didn't do me any favors in my 20s or 30s, and I don't see it doing much for other women, either.
'Single' is usually applied to women as though they are a problem to be fixed.
As an expectant mom who is currently self-employed, I'm amazed at just how tied to the workplace maternity benefits are.
For single women, admitting that you want kids when you're still unattached can feel like exposing a vulnerability. It did to me.
In 2014, having children is complicated and daunting and fraught - as much as it's always been, but now we're talking about it. And the more we talk about it, the more of us will realize that we're not going through it alone. Far from it.
In September 2005, I was three things: the media blogger for 'FishbowlNY,' a maniacal Daily Show fan, and the only person to smuggle a tape recorder and camera into a big Magazine Publishers of America event featuring Jon Stewart interviewing five hotshot magazine editors in an unbelievable bloodbath.
What's surprised me most about the demands of blogging - the relentlessness of it. 24-hour news cycle, every media imaginable right here in New York, totally fair game.
I started as kind of an outsider - freelancer working from home, building contacts from the ground up etc. - so I didn't have too many relationships holding me back.
Of course the shrieking desire for the scoop can get really strong, but so is the desire to safeguard connections and keep everyone happy.
I totally consider Fishbowl my full time job - I have to say I freaking love doing this blog. I just enjoy the medium so much; I love the fact that it requires me to read amazing stuff by hilarious and talented people and forces me to know what's going on in the world.
I'm constantly maxing out my Gmail account, and that is hard to do.
I downloaded a Ricky Gervais podcast once at the persistent urging of a friend and found it funny but distracting - if I'm online, I'm surfing, which means I'm distracted from the podcast. So it's a form that doesn't really work for me.
I read 'The Shining' before I ever saw the movie, when I was maybe 12.
What's more important to 'SNL': comedy or buzz? To the writers, players and guest hosts, it's probably the former; to Lorne Michaels and the suits at NBC, it's ultimately probably the latter.
On the Internet, everybody has an opinion about everything, but if you're smart, you know when to keep your mouth shut.
Not only do I not drive, I don't have my driver's license; there's a story there, but the upshot is that I spent my high school years an ardent environmentalist and workout junkie who wanted to save the environment, burn calories, and have my boyfriends drive me around.
I am a pop culture person. And car people have clearly contributed to pop culture, which is how I knew about purple French tail lights and 30-inch fins without exactly knowing what they were.
Seeing how easy it has been to use Twitter for good has exposed the double-edged sword of how easy it could be to co-opt.
Twitter is an amazing public tool with an incredible capacity for public good.
Twitter may have a cute-sounding name, but it exists, it generates a ton of content, it implicates all types of people, and it has nuances that are important to get right. Hopefully, its careless rendering by sloppy journalists won't lead to the dumbification of America.
In university, in a vain attempt to stave off the frosh fifteen, I used to melt fat-free cheese over broccoli, onions and cauliflower in the cafeteria microwave. That earned me few friends.
My specialty was baked potatoes with cheese melted over broccoli. I was also very good at melting cheese on bread.
Reporters do decide what is news, but they don't invent it, even if they sometimes become part of the story by risking their lives in a danger zone, as in the case of ABC's Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt.
Flip through the channels, and there is no denying it: The world of cable news - and their network chat-show brethren - is very, very white.
If there's one thing that 2009 showed us, it's that everything is happening everywhere, across multiple platforms, each one making waves that end up crashing against each other and commingling into one giant media sea.
A strong and enthusiastic niche audience can push a topic into mainstream consciousness with speed and force.
If you care about the news and write what you want to read - not just what you think Google search wants to read - there are people out there who want to read it.
What bothered me most about chick lit, frankly, was how the term was used to dismiss a huge chunk of the bookstore as silly, girlish prattle.