We continue our Interview with a Blogger series today with Cinematical's Kim Voynar:

How has it been working at WIN?

Are you kidding me? I get to watch movies, mostly indie and foreign flicks, and write what I think about them. I'm getting paid to do what I love doing more than anything in the world. What's not to like? Perhaps more importantly, writing for WIN has allowed me to transition back into working after taking six years (mostly) off to be a stay-at-home-mom. No one really tells women how hard that is. All the parenting mags say, "Take time off to enjoy your baby!", and it's true - early childhood is a wonderful time, it goes by all too fast, and I don't regret taking that time to just slow down and enjoy being a mom. But the truth is, our work culture doesn't really accomodate well moms OR dads taking that time to be with our kids in their babyhood. When I quit to stay home, I was working in the tech field as a project manager and writer/editor. Getting back into that game at the same level I left, after six years away, would have been pretty nearly impossible.

I was very ready to get back to work, but wanted to focus more on writing than on project management, and working for WIN was a fantastic opportunity to refocus my career. Nobody at WIN ever said - "But wait -- you took off six years to be with your kids?" or "How can you balance your kids with working here?" - they looked at my writing, thought it was good, and hired me, and trusted me to work out the rest. I can't express how fantastic it's been to be able to work from home, be back in a career, and yet still be with my kids. Being the colead on Cinematical allows me to draw on both my project management experience and writing/editing experience, so it's a perfect fit. Moreover, I have to add that I have been so impressed with everyone I work with at WIN. It truly is a horizontal organization, and Jason, Judith, Brian and Barb have been fantastic to work with, even when I've made mistakes and missteps.

When did you first start blogging and why?

My husband Jay Allen (who writes for Blogging Baby) started a blog in 2002, and he was putting more and more time into it. We had a fight, er, discussion, about the amount of time he was spending blogging, which culminated with him encouraging me to start my own blog. I've been writing professionally for over ten years in various capacities, but had fallen out of the writing habit for awhile amidst all the hubbub of having four babies in six years.

In January 2004 I started my blog, Catawampus!; I quickly fell in love with blogging, and I haven't looked back since. I write a lot about parenting, childbirth and homeschooling issues in essays on my blog, but mostly it's just a fantastic way for me to journal these precious years while our kids are small. I suck at keeping baby books and don't have the time or extra money to spend on scrapbooking, but on my blogspace I capture all those little moments that might otherwise be lost. The time we heard the kids in the bath talking about sniffing each others butts, the endearing conversations in the van about eating snot - it's all there, recorded in my blog, just waiting for my kids to be old enough to bring dates home.

What do you love about blogging?

I love the immediacy of being able to write out my thoughts on a subject or capture something sweet about my kids, and push a button and publish it. As a writer, I greatly appreciate what blogging has done for my writing; it's so true that to be a writer, you have to write every single day, and blogging forces me to get off my lazy butt and do it. I love the friends I've made through blogging - the people who follow the stories Jay and I share on our blogs and are interested in the things we write about (which amazes me, really, because our lives are so ordinary) - the people who will email or IM me if I haven't posted in a few days, which keeps me motivated to keep churning posts out and, most especially, those readers who have transitioned from reader to friend. Blogging makes the world a smaller place, and reading other people's blogs exposes me to other ideas and cultures.

When did you start working with Weblogs, Inc.?

I came on board Cinematical in May 2005, just in time to cover the Seattle Film Festival. We got my press credentials at the last minute, I think maybe the day before the festival started, and then I saw and reviewed about 20 movies over 10 days. My eyes were burning out of my head by the end of it. But hey, I survived, and here I am.

What do you do outside of blogging?

Jay and I have six kids between us - our four kids, who are 8,6, 4 and 2; his almost 11-year-old daughter, who lives in NYC and visits here; and my 20-year-old daughter, who is in college and expecting our first grandchild (yikes!). I homeschool the younger kids, at least for now, so my days are very busy shuttling them to their various classes and activities and doing homeschooling stuff at home. I just got a nifty new Audiovox cell phone/personal PC that allows me to connect to the internet from anywhere, so now I can IM, email and publish posts from the checkout line at the grocery store! I get my WIN work done in between kid-stuff, and then I'm on-duty for WIN on the evening shift. I actually get most of my own WIN writing done after 11PM, once the kids are asleep. Wait, this was supposed to be what I do outside of blogging, right...? I watch movies, a lot of them, and read, and sometimes volunteer at our local youth theater, where my daughter (and sometimes Jay and I) perform. We live in Seattle, which has so many great cultural opportunites, and we try to take advantage of as many of them as we can. And I just have to add: I wouldn't be able to do any of this without the support of my mom, who lives with us and helps with housework and child-watching. I'm very, very lucky.