Interview with Amy of Amalah

Can I just say? That was AWESOME. I had no idea she knew I existed. She’d lost my site when I’d changed my blog name, and was happy to hear I was still blogging (I was totally going “squee!” inside the whole time we talked). I cannot exaggerate how incredibly lovely she is in person, and how tiny! And dainty! And the cutest pregnant person ever! We had a lovely chat, and as a result of our mutual fandom she agreed to be interviewed by me for this column.

First off, Amy can be found at four different spots on the internets: her personal blog Amalah , the pop culture blog Mama Pop , Advice Smackdown , and Zero to Forty , a weekly pregnancy calendar (the last two blogs are both part of AlphaMom). All four blog columns have one common thread: Amy’s honesty, sharp wit, and acute eye for the absurd. Amy’s sense of humor is spot on—in fact, it caused (in one of her first brushes with fame) Dave Barry to say her blog was perfect for “For those who enjoy sobbing helplessly at their desks.”

For this interview, Amy and I chatted online like teenagers—and in between self-centered moments where I needlessly injected myself into the conversation, I learned a bit more about her.

Amy started her blog in November of 2003. When I asked her about the early days, she said, “I'd been reading online journals (not blogs! No one called them blogs!) for a few months and decided to give it a try. But I totally did not know what I was doing. I was just very bored at work and figured that the Publish button would force me to write SOMETHING each day. It truly and honestly never occurred to me that...like...people would READ it.” She pauses a moment then adds, “Except for my mom, of course. My mom thinks I'm way smart and awesome and stuff. Although she hates the cursing.” Amy has always use Typepad as her blogging platform finding that (as I do) “Six Apart has always been awesome to me -- the service is cheap, 100% hassle free and dependable.” (No, that wasn’t a plug.)

So I asked Amy how she got so damned famous already (according to one of her advertisers , Amalah.com receives just under 300,000 hits a month).  She replied, “I HAVE NO EARTHLY IDEA. The decline of civilization and literacy, I guess.” She laughs. “I guess it was a combination of good timing, organic growth and a couple lucky breaks. The Washingtonian did a really awesome profile on me right before Noah was born, so people got to ‘join the story’ at a really good starting point. And then I did this goofy little photo essay thing that DAVE FUCKING BARRY linked to right before Noah was born and suddenly I had seriously MILLIONS of people visiting. While I was sitting there bitching about my thrush infection. It turns out Dave Barry is HUGE with the moms. HUGE.”

But Amy credits getting most of her traffic to “the old fashioned way.” She says, “Other bloggers linking to you, writing about your writing, blogrolling you, being plugged into the community. I do think the community has a huge say in who gets (oh, gag) "popular" and who doesn't. You can't always predict it or just do X, Y, and Z to get readers and advertisers.”

We moved on to discussing the label “mommy blogger” since technically this column is about Mommy Blogs, and I knew from reading Amy’s entries after the birth of her son that she hated the term. I pointed out that we are basically losing that battle; those of us women who blog about parenting are being called “mommy bloggers” no matter what else we blog about. Amy says she’s gotten over her discomfort with the title. “I am a mommy blogger, a personal blogger, a (hopefully) a humor blogger, a writer, a freelancer, a diarist, whatever you want to call me. But yes, I write about motherhood, because that's my life now, and you know? I LOVE BEING A MOTHER and WRITING about being a mother and writing about my son and I think I am so incredibly lucky to be able to do this and be part of this community. I would NOT be the mother I am without the support I get online, cheesy as that sounds.  So...mommy blogger! Sure! Terrorist fist-jabs all around!”

We also talked a little about advertisers, a subject that is sometimes touchy in the Momosphere. “I actually didn't add ads until my maternity leave in 2005, and it was like, four text ads and I felt SO GUILTY and kept APOLOGIZING for them, but my leave was mostly unpaid and I was freaking out.” I asked if she felt like getting paid to blog made being a blog writer feel more legitimate. She said, “Oh sure...but I don't think I really felt that way until someone ELSE hired me to write. (ClubMom, AlphaMom, etc.) Which... I don't feel that way now, but back then I still mostly thought amalah.com was just me being a jackass for other people's amusement. Now I'm a little more willing to step up and say that I'm proud of (most, anyway, we all have crap days) what I write there too and I'm not embarrassed to tell the story to strangers of ‘how I get to do what I do,’ and I even use the word ‘blog!’” She laughs, “Luckily people seem to mostly know what a blog is these days. Back when I quit my job everybody was all... ‘bllawgg’? Do you need like, a prescription?’”

The Advice Smackdown used to be a regular feature of her personal blog. I asked how the move to AlphaMom came about. Amy says, “Well...Isabel (AlphaMom's CEO) is and has always been hugely plugged into the blogging community—she totally respects what mommy bloggers do as mothers, experts, writers, everything—and she emailed me to find out if I'd be willing to just to a quick product review for her. And before I could even get that done, I wrote a post that just killed her (one about locking my keys in the car at daycare and sobbing and just generally failing at life spectacularly) and she said, ‘Screw the article, I want a COLUMN.’”

I went on to ask Amy about her best and worst experiences as a blogger. “Ouch,” Amy said. “Ok, we'll get the worst out of the way. Trainwrecks [trainwreck.net was a site, dead now, that posted entries trashing other bloggers]. Slam blogs. Bloggers who just dislike you intensely for some reason and publicly announce this fact and encourage others to trash talk you.”

I was surprised to find that Amy got ‘trainwrecked.’ “Oh, constantly,” She said. “I lost count how many times. It got to the point where I couldn't post ANYTHING without it getting picked up there. But you know, I learned a lot. I learned to take more care about my words and how to present myself.”

 “People were treating me like a character in a book instead of a person with feelings, and in some ways I WROTE myself like a character in a book instead of being really comfortable with myself and my voice and all that. So I took it as a challenge to make sure that I was really putting myself out there and that I was really, REALLY self-aware of my flaws and total not-perfect-ness. It was either that or just shrivel up and shut my blog down or like...post recipes or some such.” Amy goes on to say, “I had to stop reading after awhile. Jason blocked the site from our wireless router because I was making myself so insane. It was made worse because I'd JUST made the decision to quit my job and make a go of the blogging/freelancing thing, so I felt very trapped. Like I'd just signed a contract with the biggest asshole boss on the planet and couldn't quit.”

Trainwreck.net went down in flames rather spectacularly about a year ago when the creators of the blog were revealed publicly. About their demise Amy said, “Well, it wasn't much of a surprise to hear that most of the writers behind TW were women. And most of their regular targets were women. It's so sad that we haven't been able to rise above the stereotypes that plague any group of women -- that we're catty and high-schoolish and love to tear each other down.”

Amy’s best blogging experience? She says, “Probably this past year, when we were going through the speech delay/SID/early intervention stuff with Noah. NO WAY could I have made it through that without the support and advice I got from readers and fellow special-needs mommy bloggers. I got emails from speech therapists, doctors, moms, dads... unbelievable. It was like my son has a million-plus virtual aunts and uncles who are totally rooting for him and his success. And they HELPED him succeed, through their advice and book recommendations and stuff. His therapists were always so impressed with our ‘knowledge’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, the Internet told me this stuff.’”

This led us to discuss one of the common complaints made about Mommy Bloggers: that we are exploiting our children for cash and fame. “I don't get too worked up over the pearl-clutching that some people get over posting photos and sharing details about your kids online. I mean, I don't share everything and TRY to be smart and think about everything before I post...  But in the end, our kids really can benefit.” She laughs and says, “Besides, before we know it we'll all be begging our kids not to reveal too much on YouMyFaceBookTube.”

As we wrapped up our interview (Amy is pregnant, after all, and was going to need to pee soon), I asked about the name of her original blog. “Ah, boring story! A coworker of mine gave me the nickname. It's a Yiddish term of endearment, to add "alah" to the end of a girl's name. Like...senorita or mamacita, or something. So Amy = Amalah. I thought it sounded great and hey look! That domain is available! Let's start a blog - er, ONLINE JOURNAL. I had no idea that I'd end up pronouncing it for everybody for the rest of my life. Even my mom says it wrong.”

To close the interview, I asked Amy what advice she’d give to new bloggers—what one thing did she think they should know before they get started? Amy said, “If you're starting a blog for any reason other than you really want to start a blog—money, book deals, internet rock stardom—please don't start a blog. Do it because you LOVE it. You love writing, connecting, reading the viewpoints of people who you may never encounter in ‘real life’ and you're willing to keep at it and participate and WRITE, DAMMIT, WRITE! If you're doing it to become popular or famous or rich...well, you're going to be disappointed and people will see through it. Blog readers are WAY SMART.” She pauses; ‘Also, no garish colors or blinking graphics or MIDI music, for the love of Christ.’”

Good advice, that. It was fabulous having this chance to get to know Amy better. Thanks, Amy from all of us at Type-A Mom!