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I’m Making a Terrible Mistake and I Don’t Care (or Why I Won’t Auto-Tweet About Business on Weekends Anymore)

23 Monday Apr 2012

Posted by in Freelance Writing

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There are hundreds of web sites and experts giving all kinds of great advice to people who want to improve their social media skills. Any topic you can think of, from web analytics to Pinterest, Instagram, web development, blogging, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum, you can find it.  There’s no doubt that virtually every single advisor will tell you that Twitter should be an integral part of any social media plan, whether you’re a tiny one-person business (like me) or a huge corporate entity like Coca-Cola. And I agree. 100%.

Experts will tell you to find the movers and shakers in your field and start following them, in the hope of developing some kind of a dialogue (even if it’s a one-way dialogue in which the only communication is you re-Tweeting them). Maybe they’ll notice you. And it DOES happen, there’s no doubt. I’ve actually met and interacted with some great people and movers and shakers in my field, like Sean Platt of the Digital Writer. Sean told me that many of his most important business relationships have been conducted virtually. So there’s no doubt that Twitter can really help people at all levels connect with people in their respective fields, or who have similar interests (or even dissimilar interests).

One of the main pieces of Twitter advice that I hear over and over again is that it’s very important to Tweet about business all seven days of the week. Many advisors say weekend Tweeting is important because that’s when people are trying to catch up with what they missed during the week.  Of course, with Twitter management apps like Buffer and TweetDeck, Tweeting on the weekends is practically a no-brainer. I use Buffer myself during the week when I am working, to keep my Tweets organized and on an evenly-spaced schedule.

In the past, I’ve used the app on the weekends to keep my feed alive with business Tweets, except to me, it seems disingenuous. It’s easy to feed all my Tweets into the app before I leave the office on Friday, with Tweets coming out all weekend long, but I don’t really think I’m all that precious.

I know the world continues to move at an ever-quickening pace, and those who snooze will likely be among those who lose. However, I am a big believer in making sure that my work fits into my life, and not the other way around. It seems a slippery slope to be pretending to be “on” all the time, even if we’re just talking about automated posts. Over the Christmas holidays, I was appalled at the number of business Tweets on Christmas day, even though I know they were mostly all automated. I suppose I am just old-fashioned, but I like it when the office is shut down, the lights are off, and days off are spent doing the really important things in life, not the presentation of a persona that works 365 days a year.

Some people may think I’m naive, or shooting myself in the foot, but I think on weekends, if I do Tweet, it won’t be with an automation app any more.  It will be either because I’m actually working, or because I’m doing something fun or interesting.

What do you think? Do you think I’m crazy to want to slow things down and to leave work at work on the weekends (or whenever my days off are), or do you wish you could do the same?

5 Rookie Mistakes That May Sink Your New Freelance Writing Career – And How to Avoid Them

09 Thursday Feb 2012

Posted by in Freelance Writing, Job Hunt, Work

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5 Rookie Mistakes That May Sink Your New Freelance Writing Career

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Freelance writing seems like such a sexy and perfect job. You get to wake up whenever you want, wear your pajamas all day long, and write about whatever strikes your fancy.

Well, or not. Freelance writing is actually one of the most challenging (but rewarding) jobs I have ever held (and I’ve held a lot of jobs). I’ve often needed to work with people in time zones that are hours different than mine, so you can forget about always being able to make your own schedule – and I’ve never been able to exclusively write about whatever strikes my fancy, because that usually leads to unemployment, or at the very least, extremely low wages. As for the pajamas, I’ve found that wearing your pajamas all day long generally leads to low self-esteem, and slovenly ways. I try to avoid it at all costs. The mythology of enormous success for freelance writers has never been more prevalent in our culture than it is today, because the Internet has opened the doors for entrepreneurship of all kinds – including freelance writing. Unfortunately, mythology often leads to failure, because reality can be far different than the fantasy we’ve built up in our heads about our new and sexy freelance writing career. Here are five ways new freelance writers unintentionally sabotage themselves – but don’t worry, there are also five solutions to help you avoid rookie mistakes.

Five Rookie Mistakes that Freelancer Writers Make to Sabotage Themselves

Rookie Mistake: Bad grammar. As Matt Gartland of Ghostwriter Dad expounds, bad grammar leads to one of the Internet’s most feared adversaries: grammar trolls. If you do not know (or at least familiar with) the rules of grammar, please do not try to become a professional writer until you learn them. It makes the rest of us sigh with despair and embarrassment. While we understand that occasional mistakes do occur (and sometimes are necessary for the flow of the story), bad grammar really only does bad things for freelance writers who haven’t mastered the art: it makes them look unprofessional, and it makes them unqualififed for hire, except by the lowlife of the Internet who don’t pay competitive wages.

  • Solution: Learn the damn rules. It’s not complicated, but it does take study and practice. And guess what you will find? Some rules are made to be broken, or at least bent. But like a skilled metallurgist, you must learn where to apply the heat in order for the bend to be correctly placed. I always start with the absolute basics: Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. Yes, the reading is somewhat dry, but it is as basic as it gets, and when you boil it down to the essentials, there are only 14 pages of actual “rules”. The rest are merely guidelines. The book is older than most people alive (the first version of “Elements” was published in 1935), but it remains essentially relevant for writers in print or online. If you can’t stand tradition, Matt Gartland recommends Grammar Girl, a more modern and online version of grammatical nuance.

Rookie Mistake: Not taking care of the bottom line. Let’s not ever forget that we are freelance writers not merely for pleasure, but also to make money. Many new freelance writers are so anxious to get their first paid writing gig that they will work for pennies, or worse, for free. There are thousands of content mills out there, just waiting and ready to exploit freelance writers who aren’t looking out for the bottom line.

  • Solution:  Although it’s tempting to take any old job that comes along and pays a penny a word, it’s not worth it. Not even to build a portfolio. It’s far better to build portfolio pieces yourself and feature them on your writer website than to write 500-word articles for a $3 payment from a content mill. Trust me, you will end up hating your job and hating yourself. Take the advice of Carol Tice (hey, that rhymes!), and don’t write for content mills. Concentrate instead on building your personal brand. Remember, you may not be able to become a full-time freelance writer at first. You may have to start out writing on a part-time basis in order to save your sanity and your budget.

Rookie Mistake: Working without a contract. While this may seem like a no-brainer, you would be amazed at the number of people who get ripped off because they choose to begin work on a project before signing a contract. It’s a common happenstance, and it can destroy not only a person’s confidence, but also their desire to keep writing.

  • Solution: I personally tell all of my potential clients that I never work without a contract, period. I’ve never had a bit of resistance from any of them, and in fact they are generally very happy that I can actually provide them with a clear and concise contract that spells out each of our responsibilities and expectations. On a side note: Although in the past I have signed contracts that have non-compete clauses, I no longer do. As a freelance writer, it’s imperative that I maintain the freedom to work in areas in which I have built up a level of expertise, and having a non-compete clause in place completely eradicates that freedom.

Rookie Mistake: Writing posts that have no relevant links. It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you first start writing online. Just figuring out the blog platform that you’re using can be confusing enough, let alone trying to work in relevant links. However, back links are super important, especially when you are starting out. Since you probably won’t have much traffic when you first start blogging, (your Mom REALLY liked your first post, though), you’ve got to find ways to drive traffic to your site, besides your Facebook page.

  • Solution: Do your research before you start writing. Try to find movers and shakers in the topic that you are writing about, and give credit (and links) where credit is due. Not only will it possibly let the movers and shakers see that you’re talking about them, it will also give Google an opportunity to see that you have quality back links (vs. low-ranking poor back links). It’s far better to have a few quality back links in your article than 42 crummy ones.

Rookie Mistake: Trying to build a massive Twitter following before you’ve really established yourself. It’s very tempting to follow a lot of people when you first get started with Twitter, because when you’re new to the service it makes you feel sad to have only your sister following you. *Tear* In fact, one of the prime tips for spotting a Twitter spammer is if they have very few tweets, and very few followers, yet they’re already following hundreds (or thousands) of others. Better than trying to amass a ridiculous following, is to start small and work your way up, according to the experts (and I do mean experts) at TMG Media.

  • Solution: Work on strengthening relationships that you already have, slowly building up to new relationships on the Twitter format by re-Tweeting relevantly, on subjects and with people germane to your writing niche.

It’s true that when you working on a new endeavor, there is generally a steep learning curve. In today’s fast-paced world of communication, there’s little to no time for rookie mistakes. Do you have a rookie mistake to add to the list? Let us know in the comment section.

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Four Indispensable Tools for Modern Freelance Writers

31 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by in Freelance Writing, Work

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Four Indispensable Tools for Modern Freelance Writers

Office of Emergency Management War Production Board

Today is a great time to be a freelance writer – or a freelancer at just about anything. The Internet allows anyone who has the gumption and guts to forge their own career out of nothing to go ahead and do it. In the beginning, as many of you know, it can be scary, especially if you are relying on that income to feed, clothe, and house your family. Sean Platt, author of the Ghostwriter Dad blog, knows that experience first hand. He and his wife, Cindy, even lost their house last year, but he didn’t give up. Now he’s one of the most successul Internet writers around, with a following of thousands. His secret (well, one of his secrets) is his ability to be ridiculously prolific. He’s written children’s books, how-to books, mystery novels, short stories, poetry and more. He’s even going to open his own e-publishing house this year.

Lots of us are working our way to being successful in the freelance world. For those of us who are treading the writer’s path, times have really, really changed. Freelance writing is no longer merely about doing research and making phone calls in order to get a pertinent quote for your story. No, today, writers have a whole new set of tools that they have available to them – and I would even venture to say that if freelancers ignore these tools, they will probably find themselves looking for a full-time office job because I think it’s nearly impossible to make a serious go of being a freelance writer without them. Here are my picks for four indispensable tools for modern freelance writers.

  1. Your Own Personal (Professional) Blog. It’s true that pretty much everyone and their brother is blogging today, but very few people are great at it. If you want to blog, you need to leverage what you know (anything from plumbing to horseback riding), and then write about it. Here’s the really important bit: remember who you’re writing for (hint: unless you’re keeping your blog as a personal journal, that means you are writing for an audience who is there to learn something). So make sure that every time you sit down, you have a lesson to impart – a good one. Don’t commit The Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging. One of the best blogs about blogging is copyblogger. I’ve found it to be pretty much always relevant and interesting (Sean Platt guest blogs frequently on copyblogger), and I never fail to take something away from it.
  2. LinkedIn. If you are not using LinkedIn, you really need to get out of the last century and get on board the Starship 21st Century Enterprise. Although LinkedIn doesn’t necessarily have the most user-friendly interface, once you get the hang of it, it’s really not that difficult. Here’s a really great infographic from Mashable that will give you the basics of getting started on LinkedIn. And for journalists (including freelance writers), there’s something even better: free LinkedIn training when you join the LinkedIn for Journalists group. You have to be a bonafide journalist or freelance writer, to get the training, though (that means your LinkedIn profile needs to show that you are, in fact, a writer). Here’s how to do it: once you have created your LinkedIn profile, in the search bar on the upper right hand corner of your home page, click on the drop down menu and change it from “People” to “Groups”. Then in the search bar, type in “LinkedIn for Journalists.” You will have to ask permission to join the group. After they have checked out your credentials (through your LinkedIn profile), they will send you a link to complete the LinkedIn journalists training. When you have completed the training, you get a FREE one-year premium membership upgrade. By qualifying for the premium membership, you are eligible for additional training that will show you how to use the incredible search capabilities to enhance your writing career. You’ll be amazed, I promise. I was.
  3. Twitter. In a nutshell,  Twitter is kind of like hundreds of tiny, 140-character Haiku blogs in your feed, and they’re all on speed. Here’s what I love about Twitter: you can create a feed of Tweeters who are specifically tweeting about your area of interest or expertise. If you are writing about horseback riding, simply type “horseback riding” into your Twitter search bar, and you’re off to the races (I came up with @HorseListening, “thought-provoking, conceptual musings about horses and riding”). If you click on the Tweeters that @HorseListening is following, you will come up with 1,044 (and counting) other people who may have something interesting to say about horseback riding. You can choose whom to follow, and you’ll be secretly happy inside when you see how quickly people start following you, too (if you are tweeting interesting information, that is). Crazy Side Note: I highly recommend the documentary movie Buck. ”Your horse is a mirror to your soul. Sometimes you might not like what you see.” Everything to do about horses AND being a good human being.
  4. HARO. One of the best places to get the source information you need for your blog or other articles or stories, and it’s FREE. HARO is short for “Help a Reporter Out,” and it was founded by media guru Peter Shankman, whom I suspect to be just a little bit of a nut job (but in a good way that makes him incredibly productive and a probable social media genius – also his tweets are often highly amusing). Basically, HARO is a repository of thousands of sources – experts in their respective fields who would LOVE to be quoted in the media. If you’re writing a story and you need an expert in any field, HARO can hook you up. However, it’s like LinkedIn somewhat. You have to prove your credibility as a journalist or blogger in order to register. Once you are registered, Voila! You have instant access to experts in just about anything – whether it’s an industry expert or someone who has experience with a certain aspect of life, HARO can help you get the information you need.

By utilizing these four indispensable tools for modern freelance writers, you can not only increase your public profile, you can also greatly increase the quality of your content – which leads to better jobs, and ultimately the type of career you’ve been dreaming about. Why wait? Get started today.

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Are you Facing the Great Wall of Inefficiency?

17 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by in Family, Freelance Writing, Work

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The Great Wall of Inefficiency

Now that we are firmly into the new year (I’m not even writing 2011 any more; are you?), most of us have realized that we either are or are not going to make a decent go of our New Year’s resolutions. As for me, I didn’t so much make resolutions as I decided to make over certain aspects of my life, but even that nearly didn’t get off the ground. Over the last couple years, I’ve discovered that probably the barrier that most of us have to face as free lancers is the Great Wall of Inefficiency.

It’s damn hard to make time to do your freelance work when you have so many other obligations going on, from your “real job” to kids, housework, a marriage or relationship that will always need tending (if you want to keep it happy and healthy) to a gazillion other things that are far less meaningful (like Facebook, Twitter, television, etc.). Meaningful or not, these are all things that suck time away, suck energy away, and sometimes create that awful black hole of ennui that keeps us from our writing.

“Tried and True” are Tried and True for a Reason

Since I started my freelancing career almost two years ago, I’ve found a few tried and true tricks that have helped keep me focused and on track, and that have also helped me keep money coming in the door. At the beginning for me, the biggest hurdle to writing was time management. I would sit down to my computer, and time would slip away into nothingness. I’d look up and see that an hour had gone by, and oops, I’d wasted it. So I realized quickly that I had to end that model of behavior and switch into something else that was going to help me achieve my goals, not impede me from my goals. Since then, I’ve found five techniques that help me achieve my daily writing goals:

  1. Your Fourth Grade Basic Outline. When I was in fourth grade, my teacher Mrs. Close taught us how to write a basic outline for our reports. Guess what? Outlining really works, because it gives you an immediate focus to your writing. Once you’ve accomplished your research, you should be able to whip off an outline for a blog post in five to ten minutes. Boom! 25 percent of your work is done.
  2. The Seven-Minute Clean Up. When my kids were little, I invented a game called the seven-minute clean up. I’d set the timer for seven minutes and we’d all rush around like crazy people seeing how much we could get picked up in seven minutes. The kids knew that if the timer went off and everything was picked up, we wouldn’t have to set the timer again. We became a model of efficiency when it came to cleaning up the detritus of daily household life. Since then, I’ve found that this technique actually has a name, and lots of other writers use it too. It’s called the Pomodoro Technique, and Steve Scott wrote about it on his writing blog a few months ago. Set the timer for 25 or 30 minutes and write like a crazy person until the timer goes off. Don’t do anything else but write. You may be amazed at what you can accomplish in a very short period of time.
  3. Don’t edit as you write. Just sit down and work from your outline. Don’t try to get it perfectly written the first time out. The idea here is speed, not perfection. Ideally, you should be able to write a 500-word blog post in 30 minutes or less, just about every time. After your timer goes off, walk away from what you’re working on and take a five-minute break. Don’t come back to edit the first piece until you’ve already worked on something else. You’ll have a surprisingly fresh perspective on the first piece.
  4. Mix and Match. I think one of the best things we can do as writers is to bring our own personal perspective to every piece we write. I call it “mix and match.” I try to think about how things from my personal life are often very analogous to my professional life (like the seven-minute clean up). I’ve spent a lot of years being a professional Mom, and that experience helps me to become a better writer; I try to use it as often as I can.
  5. Banana Grams. Yes, I know that bananas are becoming a theme around here, but there’s a reason. One of our new favorite games is called Banana Grams. It’s basically a competitive, free form crossword puzzle that you have to finish as quickly as possible (so you can win, of course!). While the speed relates to the Pomodoro technique mentioned above, Banana Grams can’t be won if the player isn’t willing to switch things up – even starting almost all the way over if you get letters that aren’t working with what you already have. In other words, don’t get married to your words. If you come back after your break and see what you’ve written doesn’t quite work, don’t be afraid to change it. Heck, sometimes you might even have to start over, but if you do it’s not the end of the world, because it’s only going to take you thirty minutes to do a re-write anyway, right?

This post took me 38 minutes to write, and it’s 869 words long (not including this sentence).

Make Your Writing Stand Out: Do it Differently

22 Thursday Dec 2011

Posted by in Freelance Writing, Job Hunt, Uncategorized, Work

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"Make Your Writing Stand Out"

Steve Hopson, stevehopson.com

Did you know that primates in the wild open up their bananas from the bottom, not from the stem like most humans (that I know, anyway)? It turns out that opening the bananas from the bottom is so much easier than opening from the stem. When I was first told about the bananas from the bottom technique, I didn’t believe it until I saw it for myself. That got me thinking about doing things differently.  As a freelancer, it’s imperative to make your writing stand out.

But when you’re talking about writing for clients, that’s not always an easy thing to do. I was recently talking to an attorney about his web site. He said he didn’t have anything special he wanted, but he had heard that he needed some kind of flash animation at the top of his page. The rest of it he just wanted to be “similar” to another top attorney in his area. “Blarg,” as Liz Lemon would say. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that sometimes, content writing can be a bit of a drudge. It’s not always easy to make your writing stand out. That’s when you need to shake it up, if not for the client, then for yourself.

Make Your Writing Stand Out by Taking a Challenge

One of my favorite things to do is comb the Craigslist ads for writing jobs, even though a lot of prominent writing bloggers say  “Noooooo! Don’t do it!”  But the fact of the matter is that I’ve gotten a few really great gigs from Craigslist ads.  One contract that I gained through Craigslist is with a large national corporation. I’ve written hundreds of articles and blogs for them, and they consistently give me steady work that pays well.

Last week, I answered a Craigslist ad for a freelance writer at Stunt and Gimmick’s, a content marketing firm in New York City.  Their ad was quirky, funny, and off the wall. They sounded just a little crazy, if you know what I mean.  Of course I knew I had to answer it. I pulled out my resume and made sure there were no typos (they mentioned public humiliation for typos or grammatical errors.  Yikes.)  Their ad was so different that I  wanted to do something to make myself look different. Near the bottom of the ad was what looked like a throwaway line: “Bonus points go to anyone who writes their cover letter in the style of an epic poem.”

Holy. Flying. Cheese balls.

I’ve read more epic poems than I care to remember, but write one? I knew was pretty sure they were just kidding, but then I thought, “Why the Hell not?”  After all, if we don’t challenge ourselves, how will we ever grow? (That’s what I’m always telling my kids anyway.) If you’re going to make your writing stand out, you might as well do it with an epic poem, right? Once I sat down to write the epic cover letter, it wasn’t long before I realized I didn’t have as much of a clue about epic poetry as I thought I did.

Do You Know What a Spondee is?  Because I sure as Heck Don’t.

Since it’s been a while since I took that poetry class, I couldn’t remember what makes an epic poem “epic.” I had to conduct some research.  But the research wasn’t making me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, like I should this time of year. I could only find technical terms like dactylic hexameters and spondee.  Gadz.  Eventually, I (very) basically figured out that epic poetry follows a certain narrative form, and is constructed of verses that follow a specific rhythmic scheme.  So I decided to write my epic cover letter using a time honored tradition: counting the syllables on my fingers.  Which isn’t as easy as it sounds.

After about an hour, I finally had a version of an epic cover letter that I was satisfied with.  Before I could second-guess myself, I triple checked it for errors (I hate being publicly humiliated) and sent it off.  I know how these cattle call Craigslist ads go: hundreds of people reply, and unless they want to hire you, you can forget about getting any kind of a response.

But that isn’t what happened.  I heard back from them within an hour of sending the package off.  They were amazed that I had actually written an epic cover letter. If I hadn’t mentioned it in the subject line (which is like a page’s meta tag), they wouldn’t have bothered to open it right then. It got their attention, and they opened it right away instead of letting it die in the slush pile.

While I haven’t been offered the job (yet) (they’re deciding after the New Year), the fact that I got a shout out and recognition for doing something different feels great.  Even if I don’t get the job, there are a few important lessons here:

  • Don’t write Craigslist Completely Off as a Source for Freelance Gigs. All kinds of legitimate companies use Craigslist to find freelance writers (and other employees).  Automatically rejecting it as a source just because there are a few bad eggs out there doesn’t make sense.  Learn to spot the scammers, and don’t ever take a job that pays a pittance, or worse, nothing.  Legitimate companies are willing to pay for quality content writers.
  • Sometimes, requests that seem off the wall are serious.  The reason Stunt and Gimmick’s asked for an epic poem cover letter is because they want to hire someone with writing chops.  What better way than with an epic poem?  Their request was a way for them to let applicants know they expect only the best submissions.  In other words, as a writer, when you are communicating with potential clients or employers, you’d better learn to read the subtext.
  • Don’t be afraid of a challenge; but if you take one on, do your research.  You know it’s true: challenge really does build character.  It can also be a great learning experience.  As freelancers, we might sometimes shy away from a job or a client because it seems too hard.  I’m not saying you should take on jobs you know nothing about; I took on the epic challenge because after all, I am an English major, and I do have some background in the classics.  But it’s been a while.  In this day and age, you’ve really got to leverage what you know.  Research is easier than it’s ever been; make yourself a research expert.
  • Use your keywords, every single time.  In this case, the keyword tag was the subject line of my e-mail.  Because I alerted them to the fact that I had written an epic cover letter, they immediately opened it.  Search engines act the same way – they are looking for relevant and great content that’s optimized, but if you over do it, you’ll look like a spammer.  If you haven’t learned what keyword strategy is, it’s time to get started educating yourself. Hubspot is a great resource; they offer tons of free material for people who want to learn more about Internet marketing.

I think perhaps the best lesson learned when you’re trying to make your writing stand out, is to keep looking forward.  There’s no telling what’s on the road in front of you.  But keep an eye on that rear view mirror, because you’ve got to learn from what came before.

Keep going. No matter how hard it seems.

20 Sunday Nov 2011

Posted by in Family, Freelance Writing, Marriage, Relationships, Work

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Über-celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz has a new book out called “Pilgrimage.”  It’s a collection of stunning photographs of places that have deep meaning to her; the places depicted within the book are purely American, and in many cases, simplistic yet compelling in their beauty.  Leibovitz began the book in 2009, during a critical turning point in her life.  Her partner, Susan Sontag, had died, as had her father, and she was in a dire financial crisis.  She made the unconventional decision to start the book, even though she was told by some advisors that it was a bad idea and that it wouldn’t sell.  However, she felt compelled to move forward with it, despite the negative feedback.  She has said the book itself was a pilgrimage to “save herself.”  She told writer Dominique Browning of the New York Times that she completed the book because “I needed to remind myself of what I like to do, what I can do.”

Leibovitz has likened a person’s talent to a “big baby.”  She says that talent requires serious attention and care.  Artists and craftspeople have to participate, even when they don’t want to. It may be the last thing in the world a person may want to do at that particular moment, but it is necessary, even in moments of pain and transition.  So it is with writing.  The necessity of practicing a person’s craft on most days is essential. Perhaps it’s because of the way our brains are wired, or perhaps it’s because of the way our hearts are plumbed.  When something like talent is left alone without care, the passion and ability a person may have once had can slowly fade away, like the images in old photographs when they are left out and exposed to light for extended periods of time.

Leibovitz says that talent can be universal; it’s how a person cares for their talent that matters.  ”Talent is something anyone can have.  [But] It can go away. It needs to be nurtured, taken care of.  The best thing about getting older is that you kind of know what you are doing – if you stick with something.  It doesn’t get easier.  But you get stronger.”

Forging a new pathway is never easy.  I’ve certainly found that to be true. I’ve transitioned my career from being a full-time real estate agent to being a full-time writer.  For many years, I believed my dream of being a writer would die when I died.  Now I know that the only reason my dream would have died is because I never did anything to turn the dream into a reality.  But when the economy crashed, I knew that the real estate market wasn’t going to improve for many years. I realized I had to do something, so I decided to go back to school to finish my degree. I had dreamt about returning to school for years, but my life had been “too busy” to pursue that particular fantasy.

The first year after I graduated was painful, to say the least.  We are a two-income family; my earnings have been important to the well-being of the people who I love the most. With my newly minted college degree, I tried to jump headfirst into a new career that I knew nothing about.  But then reality slapped me hard in the face: no one would hire me.  I (like 9.1% of the population) couldn’t get a job.  So when the poop REALLY hit the fan, we did what millions of people have done in the last few years: we pared our lives down as best we could. We short-sold a property that we just couldn’t afford any more.  We drove old cars because we couldn’t afford new ones.  We quit eating out. Compound all of that with the general malaise of the economy, a near-total loss of a fairly healthy income and two kids in college, plus one more scheduled to go in just a few short years, and you have a potential recipe for panic.  In my marriage, our stress increased to record-high levels. It was the first time that I thought my marriage might possibly fail. Many days, I felt like a ghost, floating around trying to recapture what we once had, but not having the corporeal ability to do so.

The last 24 months have been a true learning experience in so many ways. My husband and I have created a new kind of existence that has far less to do with our material possessions than it does with our willingness to do whatever we need to do to keep the gift of our relationship not only alive, but thriving. Our family remains as tightly knit as a woolen sweater that’s been through the dryer accidentally.  We’re looking forward to what the future holds now, instead of dreading it with the fear of the unknown.

Fortunately, even in the thick of it, I’ve been able to keep my head down and keep going, even when I’ve had to take jobs that paid poorly, or my work was unappreciated.  All of those experiences have led me to recognize that it’s critical for me to keep focused on my talent.  My happiness (and the happiness of my family) depends upon my ability to do what I believe I was born to do.

Through it all, I’ve tried to do what Leibovitz recommends: I’ve continued to practice my craft.  I write most days of the week.  I have clients that continue to ask me to write for them, and I’m gaining new clients regularly.  I’m caring for and nurturing my talent, even when I don’t always feel like it.  As Leibovitz says, “You should always try to do what you love to do.”  The rest will follow.

I’ve got a chin full of gravel. And that’s a good thing.

15 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Freelance Writing, Health, Work

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Well, I promised that I would get back to all of you regarding Carol Tice and her Freelance Writer’s Den.  I’ve definitely worked hard to become an active participant, but even that was a tough beginning because of PayPal’s automatic hold on debit payments (which I wasn’t aware of, but that’s a whole other situation!).  But first, I want to tell you a story.

Today, I worked the vast majority of the day writing (except the part where I was trying to teach Charlie to go in and out of his new doggie door. I was only moderately successful).  I wrote a couple of blog posts and a few content assignments, and then I decided to go out for a run.  I walked for the first mile, and decided to run the remaining 1.50 miles.  It was great.  The sun was setting, I had my tunes in my ears (but not too loud), and I had just turned around from gazing at the waterway over the bridge on Ocean Boulevard.  I was on my way home and running my usual path, behind the new (and virtually empty, even after three years of completion) boondoggle of a 15-story condominium, when two people with their little Yorkies came around the corner.

The dogs began barking at me and their owners were tugging at them to make them stop barking.  It startled me, and I tripped, landing face first in the gravel walkway.  I know it all happened in a split second, but it really did seem like slow motion to me.  I was very aware of the entire 1.75 second trip down to the ground, and my frantic gyrations to keep my balance.  It kind of felt like this:

By the time I got my wits about me and got up, the two people and their annoying dogs were gone.  My chin and hands were full of gravel and bleeding.  I walked the rest of the way home (not aerobically).  And it got me to thinking.  That’s kind of how a writing career is.  One minute you can be feeling great, and the next second you’ve got a chin full of gravel.  But guess what?  You just get up and keep going.  Last week I got rejected by a potential employee client, and it was a real bummer.  But then I participated in the Freelance Writer’s Den workshop, and came up with a concrete list of steps to help me meet my goal.  I re-vamped my LinkedIn page, and decided to use a couple of the tips I had been reading about in the Den.

I made a recommendation on LinkedIn last night for someone I worked with earlier this year (it was a really well-written recommendation btw), and guess what?  He called me out of the blue this morning to talk to me about doing freelance writing for his company. I’m going to meet with him later this week (should I wait until my chin heals up?). After that, I saw my neighbor walking her dogs; I approached her because she owns a wonderful high-end consignment store, but she doesn’t have a web site.  She agreed to meet later this week to get a proposal and contract together.

I’m certain that neither of those possibilities would have occurred if I hadn’t decided to spend some money to make some money.  I’ve learned two critically important lessons since I joined the Den:

  1. Utilize the people who are already in your network.  That’s the best place of all to get started, because it’s easier to approach people you already know.  You don’t have to get involved in a hard sell at all.  I made a recommendation on LinkedIn which my colleague was impressed enough with that he called me at 8:30 this morning.  In my conversation with my neighbor, she asked me how my work was going, which was a natural segue into, “Have you thought about getting a website together for your business?”
  2. If you fall down, for goodness’ sake, get up right away.  I’m a writer.  It’s only natural that I’m going to get rejected once in a while.  So what?  In my opinion it’s more their loss than mine.  I know that I’ve got what it takes to go that extra mile, even if I end up at the finish line with a bloody chin and cut-up hands.

I can honestly say that I’m energized and excited, and I know a large part of that credit belongs to the Freelance Writer’s Den.  It’s reinvigorated my desire to continue pursuing my writing career, and to push the boundaries of my comfort level to get to the place I really want to be: living the life of a freelance writer, on my own terms, so that I don’t have to be tied down to a full-time office job.

You’ve Got to Spend Money to Make Money, Right?

21 Friday Oct 2011

Posted by in Freelance Writing, Uncategorized

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One thing I’ve noticed about being self-employed: sometimes the motivation to actually work goes right out the window.  I’m sure that’s true for people who work in a place other than home, too, but they have a boss or co-workers looking over their shoulders, making sure they’re not slacking or spending their day browsing Reddit.  I don’t have anything like that, so I probably spend more time on the Internet than I really need to.  But here’s the thing: the Internet is a big part of being self-employed, especially for a writer.

I use the Internet to conduct research and look for story ideas.  Of course, I also read a lot of blogs, and lately I’ve noticed a trend that I’m not too sure about.  That trend is bloggers who want me to pay them money so they can tell me how to make money writing.  Look, I know that people have to earn money, but it reminds me of those ads that you used to see: “Send us $1 and we’ll send you a booklet showing you how to get rich.”  So some poor sucker sends in a dollar, and he gets a book back in the mail telling him to place the same exact ad, asking people for a dollar. So I’m really wondering if it’s the same kind of thing.

Because the advice I see on a lot of writing blogs is all essentially the same:

  • Make cold calls to local prospective clients
  • Write a blog about your writing experience
  • Link back to other blogs about writing, so you can increase your traffic
  • Use Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to promote your blog
  • Don’t accept low-paying jobs, and limit jobs that don’t pay at all, unless it’s for a bonafide pro-bono cause
  • Write a free e-book to increase traffic
  • Go to seminars, webinars and writing workshops  to increase your skill set and knowledge level

While all of this is good advice, it still leaves writers who are barely scraping by with an essential quandary: “How can I pay you money so you can teach me how to make money when I don’t have any money in the first place?”  It’s a darn good question, and it was recently posed to writer Carol Tice.

Carol is the author of Make a Living Writing, and it’s a blog I follow pretty religiously.  She has a lot of good advice, and a lot of good ideas (including the ones I mentioned above).  She’s also making a pretty healthy living by writing, and by offering solid advice to aspiring writers. Carol recently launched The Freelance Writer’s Den, a place for writers to get information on the freelance life, to talk to one another, get advice, and figure it all out.  Carol is the Den Mother (clever!), and the Den is hosting a 4-week webinar (she calls it a bootcamp) beginning in November called “How to Make Good Money Writing Online.”

I have to say that I am intrigued. While I’ve known about the Writer’s Den for a while now, I’ve never ponied up the money to join, because I wasn’t sure I thought it was worth it.  However, I’ve got to say that Carol has a lot of credibility, and she obviously puts her heart and soul into what she’s doing; I’ve never read any bad advice from her, and she tells it like it is.  Which brings us back to the writer who doesn’t have any money, and Carol’s response, in a (paraphrased) nutshell: you’ve got to spend money to make money, or you’re going to spend a really long time trying to figure out how to be a successful freelance writer on your own.

Which makes me think: I’ve already spent a year working on becoming a freelance writer.  I’ve got a pretty good gig writing for a big corporation, but is there more I can be doing for myself? I feel as though I’ve been stuck in a bit of a rut, and I actually think I’m going to do something about it.  I’m going to spend a little money to see if I can make a lot MORE money doing the freelance writing gig.  I’m going to send Carol my $25 to join the Den (because then the bootcamp is free; otherwise it’s $97), and see what happens.  Good, bad, or ugly, I’ll report back on the results, and let you know what I think. (Addresses and stamps envelope, puts in a $1 bill; waits for miracle reply in the mail.)

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