Accidents will happen
 When you least expect them
 Accidents will happen
 Time and time again

 You think you’ve got it planned
 You think you’re in command
 But accidents will happen now and then

 I didn’t mean to be a fool for you
 I didn’t mean to love you
 But I do

 I only wanted to have some fun
 for a week or two
 Then do it all again with someone new

 But accidents will happen
 When you least expect them
 Accidents will happen
 Time and time again

 You think you’ve got it planned
 You think you’re in command
 But accidents will happen now and then


 I never thought that you could thrill me so
 But you must reap whatever you may sow
 And after playing my games with you
 A lesson I have learned
 That she who plays with fire will soon get burned

 I don’t need a crystal ball to see
 You’ll never ever give your heart to me
 I must be crazy to ever dream
 You’d love me in return
 But better men than you have had to learn

 That accidents will happen
 When you least expect them
 Accidents will happen
 Time and time again

 You think you’ve got it planned
 You think you’re in command
 But accidents will happen now and then
 

 

The post Accidents Will Happen – Patsy Ann Noble — Lyrics appeared first on The Obtuse Observations of a Wistful Writer.

My Journey to Make Money Writing Online

In the spring of 2017, I embarked on that journey, and I set off without a map. I didn’t take any special courses. I didn’t spend money on books. I just decided to wing it. I signed up for a freelancer account on Upwork and set up my profile. Then I needed to figure out what I was going to charge for an hour of work.

I didn’t know what the heck to charge, so I just calculated what I was earning at my corporate job as a recruiter and adjusted for having to pay my own taxes. It came out to $20 an hour.

Then I bought a copy of Writer’s Market 2018.

Is Writer’s Market worth it?

Boy, do I wish I’d bought it earlier. Even though I’ve now increased my rate to over $45 an hour, I’d spent around nearly a year fumbling around, trying to figure out how to structure my writing business, how much to charge, what kind of services to offer, and what kind of Upwork jobs to look for. Once I bought it, I spent a few minutes flipping through it and wondered whether or not it was even worth it. It seemed a touch confusing at first. But then, I flipped to the best part.

There was a chart full of prices that writers charge for different kinds of services. This itself, to me, was enormously helpful for a few reasons.

1) Writer’s Market Shows you The kinds of services that people pay for.

I had no clue that there was all this writing that people and businesses paid for. For example, it never occurred to me that there was a market for press kits. Sure, I’d written an EPK for a musician, but I thought it was more of a one-off, an unusual project. But apparently there are a fair amount of musicians who need a writer to write them an electronic press kit that concisely summarizes who they are and describes the music they create in a fantastic way.

There are loads of other services listed in there too. Basically, it gives you an idea of what kind of writing you can do to make money. And isn’t that the question we’re asking? How can you make money writing? Well, that chart gives you all the answers.

2) Writer’s Market tells you what the market rates are for all kinds of writing

Not only does that chart in Writer’s Market provide you with an exhaustive list of writing services that you can charge for, it’ll tell you the average price that writers are charging for each service, as well as the high and the low end. Armed with that data, you can just fill out a spreadsheet to determine how much you think you’re worth and set that dollar amount as your standard rate.

I said that I’d started out with an hourly rate of $20. Well, it turns out I was short-selling myself. On average, I think that the writing I was getting paid was valued at somewhere around $28-$30.

Remember that in a marketplace, you’re going to be questioned about why you’re charging so much. Business is business. A lot of businesses will try to get you to lower your rates. And if you don’t know what the market rate is, you may be tempted to. Know what your writing is worth. Remember that they’re in the business of making money, and that your writing is going to play a part in their profit-making. Don’t get greedy, but don’t be shy about asserting your worth either.

Knowledge is power

Anyway, the point is that it pays to arm yourself with market knowledge. Just make sure that whatever it is you’re charging, you can justify it. By now, I’ve increased my minimum rate to $45; and I charge up to $100 an hour for some projects. Knowing the market rates will give you the confidence to set your rates at a certain level. Having that confidence will help you make money writing because you won’t be second-guessing yourself and wondering if you should charge less money.

I’ll continue to go through the book and share more about how I’m using it to make money writing online. In the meantime, educate yourself: click here to grab your copy now and charge the right price for your writing. It’ll give you some focus on the keywords to search for when looking for writing gigs, and you’ll know how much to charge for services like ghostwriting, copywriting, and more.

The post How to Make Money Writing Online: One Way to Use Writer’s Market appeared first on The Obtuse Observations of a Wistful Writer.

To be fair, I haven’t the slightest clue whether I can sustain that for any length of time. Truth be told, I didn’t even look for any gigs. The gigs came to me through direct hires and invitations from either Upwork’s Talent Specialists or job posters themselves. But hopefully, through effective marketing, I can continue to have well-paid gigs show up in my inbox. I’ve worked hard to earn stellar feedback and a great rating, and I’m hoping that my reputation will pay off.

Finding Your Niche

I think that I’m finally starting to understand the niches that I can occupy with confidence. My unique selling points amount to three main factors. First, I’ve got a boatload of sales experience, which is capped off with an effective degree of management and leadership experience. Second, I’m a pretty decent writer (at least most of the time). Third, I have a remarkable ability to empathize with another person, which means that I can quickly understand their needs and how I can best fulfill their needs through my writing.

With all that said, it makes sense that I’m making a fair amount of money from writing a few things:

• Product descriptions for eCommerce, including Amazon and Shopify
• Website copy and electronic press kits (EPKs) for musicians

I love working with musicians and I hope to continue writing for musicians. There’s something extremely satisfying about listening to their music, listening to their artistic vision, and creating a piece of writing that really puts all of that into words. It really puts my strengths to good use. As for product descriptions, this would seem to be a natural fit. My background in sales has trained me to see products in terms of benefits and solutions, and my education as a writer has equipped me to tell a story well.

Building a Freelance Income: A Dream

My goal is to build a career as a freelance writer, meaning that I have enough income to support at least myself, if not a family, through that work. It won’t come easily, that’s for sure. A professor of mine told me that his 40-year-old son only recently started getting enough work to support his wife and children. So I guess I’m going to take after Ray Kroc and keep at the grind. After all, as he describes in his autobiography, he built McDonald’s after decades of grinding it out.

The post Making a Full-Time Living as a Writer: A Milestone appeared first on The Obtuse Observations of a Wistful Writer.

I’ve seen a lot of professional ghostwriters start their pricing at $5,000 for a full-length book (25,000 words and up). Pricing is based on the complexity of the book and the experience level of the writer. In the world of ghostwriting, you really do get what you pay for. Cheap ghostwriters are rarely native English speakers, so the writing you’re paying for will just sound strange to the average reader. And even if they do speak fluent English, they most likely don’t have the training or education that’s required to really make a piece of writing flow and connect with the reader. So if you’re a writer negotiating with a indie Kindle publisher, keep that in mind.

I myself have different pricing structures, varying between rates by the day, the hour, the word count, and flat rates. With my background in management, I pride myself on being able to offer high quality writing at fair and flexible prices. Because each book is unique just like the site on which every building is built, it’s always best to just reach out for a custom quote. The more work that a client puts into the book, the lower the pricing should be. For instance, if a client has a very detailed outline that includes what happens to who, when, and where, the ghostwriter spends less time fleshing out the story and should therefore charge less for his or her services. Fair enough, isn’t it?

The bottom line is this: Writer’s Market has done its research and the starting figure for ghostwriting rates in 2018 comes in at $30 an hour, or 50 cents a word. Want to know how much to charge for writing all kinds of things? Get the Writer’s Market Deluxe Edition today and charge for your writing with confidence.

How I Got Started in Ghostwriting

I got my start writing video game guides. They were extremely time intensive because I had to actually play the game and write down tips. The earnings per hour of work were abysmal. I eventually struck a deal with the publisher for a much more reasonable payment for another book. In fact, I actually looked him up and paid for his Kindle self-publishing course. And that’s how I came to understand so much about the Kindle publishing industry.

Information is power. Arm yourself with the right information and you can increase your earnings as a writer. Right now, there are two major pieces of software that entrepreneurs use to find profitable books to commission and publish. They use this software to determine topics in which they can currently make money. You can use this software to set your ghostwriting rates.

The great thing about all these software tools is that you only have to purchase them once. I did it myself and never looked back. I consider it a small investment in my future. And heck, when the day comes that I want to publish eBooks myself, it’ll come in real handy.

How to use KindleSpy (KDSpy) To Make More money

If you want to know how much to charge for ghostwriting a particular eBook, you need to get this software.

KDSpy is a browser extension for Google Chrome and Firefox. When you’re looking at a Kindle book on Amazon, you click on the KDSpy button and key information will be revealed to you within a matter of seconds.

There are a few ways you can use this negotiate money from the publisher. For instance, let’s say you see an Upwork gig to write a romance novel. You can do some market research yourself and figure out how much the top 10 books are making in daily revenue. From there, you can extrapolate how long it’ll take for him to recoup his investment.

For example, let’s say you check out the top 10 books in a certain niche and calculate that the average daily revenue is $10 a day. That means that in 30 days, the publisher will earn $300. Amazon takes 30%, leaving 70% for the publisher. That means they’ll get $210 in 30 days. In my opinion, that’s the bare minimum that you should be asking for. Sure, they have to pay for a book cover and other things, but it’s still a solid starting point for negotiations.

That’s just one way that KDSpy can help you get the most money for your writing. It also has keyword research tools, but the next tool I’m writing about is better for that.

Want to get more cash for your writing? Click here and learn more about KDSpy.

How to Use KDP Rocket To Get a Lucrative Book Deal

This one’s a really great tool as well. KDP Rocket enables you to dig into what potential customers are searching for on Google and Amazon. This is a much more polished app than KDSpy. Rather than residing in your browser, it’s a standalone app on both Windows and Mac (I personally prefer that over a browser extension).

The theory of keyword research in search engine optimization (SEO) is simple. If you want to be profitable, you need to know what people are looking for. That’s because people search for things they want. And if you can show up in their search results, you stand a good chance of making a sale. After all, people don’t search for things they don’t want.

KDP Rocket beats KDSpy in keyword research. If you want to publish your own books, this will help you with your book title. If you’re ghostwriting for a publisher, this will help you get another data point on what to charge for the book that they’re commissioning.

Do you want to ensure you’re getting top dollar for ghostwriting a book? Click here and start arming yourself with hard data using KDP Rocket.

Make More Money From Ghostwriting

If you want to make sure you’re getting top dollar for your writing, it pays off to check out the competition and have hard numbers to back up your negotiations. Remember to never undersell your work. While there will always be other people who will write that book for less money, I don’t see any reason that decent writers should sell themselves out. The KDP market is huge and publishers can make plenty of money. If the publisher hiring ghostwriters has such a tiny budget and can’t come up to your price, you can bet that there’s a better publisher out there who has the business savvy to pay for the quality that you’re offering.

The key is to arm yourself with as much factual information as possible so that you’re equipped to negotiate. If the Kindle book is in a lucrative niche, there’s no reason to sell yourself out. If they really can’t pony up the cash for the book, work out a deal with the publisher and come to a compromise . For example, you can ask them to give you a detailed outline to execute. This saves you time and effort on coming up with things to write. You can ask them for verifiable credit for writing the book. You can ask them for an open deadline so that you can write it in your spare time.

Whatever it is, just remember to make it a good deal that’s set on your terms. Remember, they’re the entrepreneur and they’re the one responsible for reaping the rewards of the risks they take. But not every business decision will work out in their favor. They (should) know this. Protect yourself and value your work properly. KDSpy and KDP Rocket are just a few tools to help you do that.

Disclaimer: I receive a commission if you buy the tools listed here. I’ve personally purchased and used these tools myself to negotiate for more money for my writing.

The post Ghostwriting Rates in 2018: How Much Should I Charge for a Book? appeared first on The Obtuse Observations of a Wistful Writer.

I don’t want to name names, but one KDP publisher I worked with (let’s call him Ozzie) published a YouTube video talking about why he prefers to hire writers with a ‘passion over profit’ mindset. The first reason he mentioned was that he could pay them less, though he did recover and say that he ends up paying them more.

I was rather disappointed in Ozzie’s business philosophy because I’d originally liked him on account of his earnestness and approachability. But Ozzie is in effect saying that he’d rather hire a writer who would be willing to do more work for less pay just because of their personal passion. In other words, his ideal writer would have no business sense.

The truth is that any writer who is charging money for their services should be concerned with dollars and cents. After all, the publisher purchasing your work and intellectual property is concerned with profits too. Rest assured that they aren’t doing this out of the goodness of their hearts for free. Their prerogative isn’t to participate in the gift economy like many artists. No, their goal is to, well, make art make money.

Because it’s all about business, the exploitative small businessperson tries to lower his or her costs (and risks) by finding “passionate” writers, thinking that people who are passionate about a particular niche will ask for less money to write something about that topic. It’s a reasonably effective recruitment tactic, and it’s one that I’ve seen used quite effectively throughout my career, both in the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Of course, I find it to be a rather distasteful and exploitative way to do business.

Write for passion and profit

I abide by my own business philosophy that’s informed by the exalted Toyota Corporation. During the first phase of my hiatus from traditional employment, I did a lot of business reading and learned a wealth about management, leadership, and entrepreneurship. One of the most impactful books I read was The Toyota Way, and one key concept that I took away is “yet” thinking. Rather than constraining themselves to designing a car that’s either luxurious or affordable, Toyota sought to create a car that’s luxurious yet affordable—thus creating the Lexus series. In the same way, why not hire writers who have both passion and a desire for profit?

There are a few possible reasons that these small Kindlepreneurs don’t want to hire writers who have good business sense. The first reason I can think of is that they have small pockets and are barely eking out any profit for themselves. A business-savvy writer would eat into their tiny profits. A second reason is that, if they really are making a good buck off your work, they wouldn’t want to share it with you. It’s one reason why these Kindlepreneurs keep you in the dark as much as possible. They don’t tell you anything about the book, including when it’s being published, the title it’s published under, the sales performance of the book, or anything else about it for that matter. The writer can use all of this information as leverage in negotiations.

How to Get Top Dollar for Your Writing

Anyway, whichever way you slice the cake, the bare truth is that writing for passion should never interfere with the profits that your passion can bring. Passion belongs in the personal realm. Profits belong in the business realm. The two should never be confused. If you’re writing something that will profit someone else, the dollars and cents you get for it should matter to you just as much as the characters in your book.

My recommendation to writers looking to be a ghostwriter is to take a hard look at the KDP ghostwriting gig. Most of the time, you’ll be expected to come up with the entire book itself—the idea, the outline, the actual writing. A quality book will rarely ever take less than a day’s work, especially if you’re just getting started. The value of your creativity should never be underestimated.

Now, to be clear, it’s perfectly okay to generate an idea and sell it off for cash. But make a plan on how to maximize the money you’ll get from that idea. In the fiction realm, there’s nearly always room for a series. So build that assumption into your narrative structure. When you write the first book in a series, make sure you end it with a cliffhanger. Then, keep a close eye on the performance of your book. I use KindleSpy (KDSpy), a Google Chrome browser extension that lets you track the estimated daily revenue of any Kindle book. For instance, one book I wrote is making an estimated $5 a day (though to be fair the data isn’t necessarily the most reliable on account of the fact that I haven’t tracked it consistently, and the book hasn’t been out for long enough).

How to Negotiate for More Money

I can use this information to negotiate with the publisher for a higher rate. At $5 a day and a 90-day break-even period, I can justify asking for $350 to $400 for the next book, which will sell for more than the first one. I also have leverage because I’m the one who created the intellectual property—having a different writer take over the series runs the risk of a reduction in quality in both the content and the writing. If you speak in the language of risk and reward in a negotiation, you stand to stack the odds in your favor. After all, if you’ve produced a book that does that sold fairly well, would your publisher want to risk switching to some unknown writer?  The hand-off has the above risks, and hiring a proven writer will cost more. So long as you don’t ask for more than a more established writer, you ought to be in a good position to get what you ask for.

What’s Fair is Fair

Passion doesn’t put food on the table. Money does. You can’t put a price on passion, so the price should be based on the market value of what the publisher is trying to sell. Writers should be fairly compensated for the work that they do for publishers. After all, writers play a crucial role in turning a profit for them. So don’t let yourself be exploited. Passion will feed into the quality of your writing, and that translates to more profit. After all, quality work outlasts the competition, meaning your work will continue to sell well down the line (what KDP publishers call ‘evergreen’ content). And when a new book in a series does well, it boosts sales of the older books too.

I urge all writers to negotiate for more money. The more creation you have to do, the more you should be compensated. Set up a plan for yourself so that even if you don’t get a good deal on the first book, there’s room to get a better deal in subsequent books. Whatever the situation may be, always look for ways to increase your earnings as a writer. Don’t let publishers exploit you. Educate yourself about business and you’ll be glad that you can put food on the table as a writer.

The post Don’t Let Your Talent Be Exploited: One Nasty Way Indie Publishers Exploit Writers appeared first on The Obtuse Observations of a Wistful Writer.

What would you do for $20? Let’s take a look at one of the more questionable gigs that’s available on Upwork.

“Show me you want this assignment by submitting a cover letter that compares the Casper mattress vs. the Leesa mattress in 500 words or less. I need to know you have native English + want something long term. Bid: $20 and below. Expected delivery: 2-3 days. Long-term work potential: 50,000 to 150,000 words.”

First of all, Upwork has a nifty feature. When you decline a job, you can list the reason. One of them is, “Client asked for free work.”  This, my fellow freelancers, is free work. You can also flag postings that you haven’t been invited to yet.

I’ve submitted proposals where they ask for sample work just like this. I haven’t once gotten a paying gig out of it.

Instead, point towards old work that you’ve done. Go and find a small business you like and offer to do free work for them in exchange for a reference. Do anything but put pen to paper for a measly $20 (which comes out to $16 after Upwork’s fees). Any client with half a brain should be able to see the quality of your previous work and that you can produce similar results for them.

Second of all, the tone is suspiciously arrogant. “Show me you want this assignment,” he says. Excuse me? There are tons of other jobs out there paying much more than that. Why would I want this assignment? “I need to know that you have native English…” he says. These are red flags that this client will not only be demanding and domineering, but also has an attitude of entitlement. As for the native English bit, if someone wants to know that, all they have to do is have a chat with you or ask you to go on their website and talk about anything—the design, the content, the business model, anything. There are so many different ways to get a feel for someone’s command of the English language.

I’ve seen this kind of attitude quite a lot in my dealings with small business owners. They have huge egos and grandiose whims, but don’t have a commensurate amount of money. In other words, they demand the best all while insisting on paying bottom dollar—the want everything for nothing. Stay away from these people. They’re going to be nightmares and can tarnish your reputation. They also have the typical MO of dangling some imagined big reward in front of you. Who knows if you’ll get it. Most likely not, to be honest.

Bottom line: Spotting bad clients on Upwork is a crucial skill for success. In the long run, passing on these low-quality gigs will actually benefit you. Don’t fall for the quick buck. It’s never as quick as you think it’ll be anyway. If you need money, find it in other ways. If you start take low-paying gigs from questionable clients, you may end up getting stuck in that vicious cycle.

The post Don’t Get Ripped Off On Upwork: How to Spot Bad Clients on Upwork appeared first on The Obtuse Observations of a Wistful Writer.

I really enjoyed writing the LitRPG. It’s about a virtual reality training system called VERITAS, developed for the military. The KDP publisher was kind enough to be flexible with the requirements of the book. Even so, it took longer than I thought it would. A lot of it had to do with the fact that it was my first LitRPG, and the fact that I was kind of winging it. So here are 4 tips on ghostwriting fiction for money.

Budget for more time than you expect

I took on the SciFi LitRPG gig at 8,000–10,000 words, thinking I’d knock it out in a day’s work. In my head, I thought, “I’m ghostwriting fiction, how hard could it be? I’m making it all up!”

I was dead wrong.

The first 3,000 words were a breeze. I set up the reality of the situation, introduced the main character, and started building his world. It was fun to set everything up because I already had a decent idea of the world I needed to help the reader enter.

I only got to 4,000 words before I ran dry. That’s because all I planned for were the beginning and the end. It took me time to research the topic and come up with more ideas for the middle. And, being that it’s a LitRPG, I actually needed to also come up with the RPG system itself—how many experience points (XP) it would take to reach a certain level, how many hit points (HP) it would take to kill a certain enemy, things like that. All of this brings me to my next tip.

Write a Detailed Outline

First of all, I personally find that a detailed outline is very important. I find that no matter the topic, I can write about 5,000 words rather quickly without issue. But beyond that, writing becomes a struggle because I just don’t even know what I want to say or where I’m going. For that reason, I highly recommend making not just a basic outline (like I already made), but a detailed outline. In the beginning, I drew on my beginnings in writing screenplays and mapped out the key plot points. But I didn’t fill in enough of the gaps. That’s why from now on, I’m going to ask myself a number of key questions of each plot point.

1. Where does this take place?
2. Why are they in the situation?
3. What’s at stake? What do the characters stand to gain? Lose?
4. Who can help them move towards the gain? Who/what is a threat that can prevent them from getting there? What can
5. How do they get out?

It’s not so different from an action plan. This is a great self-management tool, and I can’t believe I didn’t use it before I started work.

Negotiate better conditions for yourself

Make sure that you have a thorough chat with the KDP publisher before you take on the gig. Just like any other job you get paid to do, you want to find out as much as you can about the publisher’s expectations. I typically ask my prospective clients some standard questions, such as:

• When do you need this completed?
• Do you have any samples of what you like? Anything that you dislike?

Remember that, as entrepreneurs, KDP publishers are taking a risk. They place small bets by commissioning books and marketing them on Amazon, checking the results as measured by sales and reviews. Most of these small publishers have a tiny budget and they can’t really afford to take chances on a relatively unknown ghostwriter. After all, would you put down two to four hundred dollars of your own hard earned cash without any idea whether or not you’d get it back? Didn’t think so. But I’ve personally written a book that made $1,500 in sales on its first day, so that tells you how much a book can be worth. (Granted, the publisher has a great niche and that wasn’t his first book, and he had some very fortuitous timing.)

As a ghostwriter, you’re selling your intellectual property. And if you’re any good, those ideas are probably worth more than the bit of cash that small KDP publishers offer. It’s typically a hard constraint, so negotiate for something else that matters to you. You might open up the discussion to profit sharing. Or perhaps a mention in the credits might be worthwhile. If you can swing it, see if you can list yourself as the author and frame the proposition as you selling the rights to publish your work, but not the rights of authorship and recognition. (This does get into some sticky lawyerly territory, yes. But truth be told, the amount of money on the table just doesn’t justify legal representation. I work on a gentleman’s agreement and trust the people I work with to do the right thing; at the end of the day, use your own best judgment). Or buy yourself more time so that you can just work on it in your spare time. Which leads to the next question.

Make it worth your time

We may not always get the gigs we want, the ones that excite us and pay well. The truth is that, in the beginning, ghostwriting isn’t going to pay very well (at least, that’s the way it plays out for me). So if it doesn’t pay off in terms of money, make it pay off in other ways.

If I remember correctly, Steven Spielberg made a living at the same time that he made art (as did Jim Henson, whose career is dissected in the book below).

Spielberg was able to entertain the audience, which earned him the right to sneak in his own messages. Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets and Sesame Street, was able to balance turning a profit and making art through his Muppets. In my case, I took some liberties with my science fiction LitRPG and snuck in some of my disdain for the modern workplace as well as my interest in industrial engineering. They’re just minor additions that are well-integrated into the story (no talking heads here), but I had fun writing it. In that sense, I’m getting paid to put my ideas out into the world.

You can make it worth your time in a monetary sense too. Treat the relationship as a long-term business relationship. Think of it like this. If you write a great first book, and it starts to sell well, don’t you think the KDP publisher will want more of those books from you? In that case, you can negotiate for more money at that time, for future books. Of course, you should probably interview your prospective publisher and get some information about whether they’re committed to making a profit in that niche.

Anyway, those are my recommendations. I was invited to apply to a gig that paid a whopping $5,000 for a series of 5 romance novels. For me, that’s a decent amount of money, anywhere from three to five months of living expenses. Sadly, it had to be set in a setting that I hadn’t the slightest idea about. But with time, I aim to ghostwrite a Kindle book that can justify a $1,000 price tag. Heck, with a 90,000-word minimum, it might even teach me a little something about finishing a novel, even if it’s not a grand piece of literature.

The post 4 Tips on Ghostwriting Fiction: My First Science Fiction LitRPG appeared first on The Obtuse Observations of a Wistful Writer.

As my brother’s high school English professor famously said, all art is about identity. And right now, I’m struggling—yet again—with identity. The Emoji Movie resonated with me because of the positive message that it sent. In a nutshell, it encourages people to just be themselves. In fact, the main character Gene has a love interest who tells him very directly that she likes him the way he is. It strikes a chord with me because, for my entire life thus far, I haven’t had the satisfaction of finding romance and acceptance from a woman for just being myself.

The cynic in me, of course, scoffs at that idea. After all, the only time that I’ve ever gotten anything in life was because of my willingness and ability to become something other than what I truly am. At many points in life I merely shapeshifted into the most expedient character that the situation demanded. As such, I never really quite knew who I was because I was capable of being so many different kinds of people—the positive cheerleader, the stern boss, the witty charmer, the outgoing schmoozer. I did so because I didn’t figure that I’d be accepted for just being me.  In order to get dates, I had to become a playful, winking flirt. In order to get a job, I had to transform into an outgoing, charismatic man with a broad beaming smile.

Of course, the truth is that I am none of these things. To be frank, I find it tiresome to socialize with others. Describing myself as an exciting man who knows how to have fun would be a complete fiction. I am neither witty nor flirty. Being seductive and sexy is completely foreign to me. I’m a steady, simple, and honest man—a pleasant and mellow person for most of my waking hours. Can I get passionate? Certainly I’m no milquetoast. Can I be charismatic? Yes, at times, under the right conditions. Get me in a conversation about management and leadership or writing, and I’ll talk your ear off with enormous exuberance. But none of these are qualities that attract women, at least it hasn’t so far.

I’m particularly sensitive to The Emoji Movie’s progressive message of acceptance because I’ve yet to find my place. I think that it’s important to be yourself. I’m living proof that if you bend yourself to suit the situation too much, you end up not knowing who exactly you are and you end up not carving out a life that takes advantage of your strengths. Instead, you’ll end up living a draining life in which every day is a lie.

The post To Be Or Not To Be (Yourself) appeared first on The Obtuse Observations of a Wistful Writer.

It was a thoroughly entertaining speaking point, but there was one thing he said that really resonated with me. Later in his speech, he said that it takes a lot of courage to commit to an MFA in writing because it’s a declaration of your seriousness as a writer. I’d never thought of the act of attending an MFA program in such a way. And as I’m prone to do, I sat there, apart from the other attendees, awkwardly and silently introspecting. For once in my life, I felt at home—yet, I questioned whether I had the courage to pursue a writer’s life.

The Open House

With a fog of confusion in my mind, I went through the event with heavy questions in my mind, thoughts that clamped down on any instinct to connect with others. There were a few students from some rather prestigious schools, like Bard and Vassar. There were also two Hunter College alumni there, an older woman who teaches at Hunter and a young woman who just recently graduated. They were having a happy chat amongst themselves and I ended up not connecting with them. It wasn’t long before the attendees broke off into separate groups.

Guiding the prospective students who were interested in the fiction track was a lanky fellow named Patrick, a second-year student. We went off to meet a current instructor named Carolyn Ferrell. In room 104 of the Andrews building, Ms Ferrell facilitated a conversation among the group. There were a number of people who were interested in speculative fiction—also known as science fiction. There were a few young women from prestigious colleges and who seemed rather well-educated as well as a few middle-aged men, one of whom was the sort of seemingly easy-going man who wore long hair and a white silk shirt with a rose print. Quiet as I was, I felt comfortable to be amongst like-minded people with similar interests, and it reminded me of the satisfaction that I felt when I was back at Hunter College in Susan Daitch’s class. I was drawn in by a strange feeling of tribal familiarity, and it was one of the finest and rarest pleasures that I had in recent times.

The sample class concluded and we all returned to Slonim House for lunch, after which there was a campus tour. I loved the campus which, being that it was a Saturday, was quiet and quaint. The Tudor architecture, the woods, and the fresh air were everything that I imagined for myself as a writer. It was the very environment that brought out the pensiveness that I feel that I need in order to create.

What’s Next?

I loved the campus, and I loved the nurturing spirit of the program. With biweekly one-on-one conferences with your instructor and their willingness to be accessible to students, I felt that Sarah Lawrence College was a good fit for my needs. I’ve sensed for a while now that I’m the type of person who suffers from a deep handicap—that I won’t reach my potential unless I can secure the help of some mentors.

Sadly, the core issue that has always plagued me is still at play. What do you do with an MFA after you get it? How do you build a career as a writer, one that pays reasonably well enough to pay off your student debt? If money were no object, there would be no doubt in my mind that I would be pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing. But of course, in the real world we do need to earn a living.

Ultimately, life revolves around money, and that is my main concern. My brother joked that there was a good reason that the attendees were young women and middle-aged men—the young women didn’t have to worry about money because of their well-off families and the fact that they can afford to get married to a breadwinner, and the middle-aged men have accumulated enough money to attend an MFA. Sadly, it’s probably true. As much as I’d love to delve into the deep end and pursue a writing MFA at Sarah Lawrence College, I have to take care of my income situation first. I have no doubt that Sarah Lawrence College would be where I’d like to pursue my MFA in Creative Writing though. The only question is when I’ll apply.

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In my view, being a freelance writer on Upwork is enormously inefficient when it comes to time and money, at least for beginners like myself.

I think that in order to succeed as a freelance writer, you really ought to:

• be a naturally fast worker
• work with a moderate balance between quality and quantity
• and be actually decent at juggling many tasks (even though multitasking has been proven to be highly inefficient).

You probably won’t do very well if…

• you’re a perfectionist
• or if you do your best work when you’re highly focused.

When you’re a freelance writer, there are many threats to your free time. And as we all know, time is money. The causes boil down to two factors.

First, many of the prospective clients on Upwork don’t know exactly what they want. This is problematic because it makes it hard to write a decent proposal—how can you give them the most relevant information about yourself if you don’t know what they’re looking for? If you end up actually talking with the prospect, you basically spend a lot of time communicating with them to learn the details of their project. These are needed to turn out a good piece of work. From there, you might not even get the job. I’ve spent anywhere from 2-4 hours communicating with a individual clients with nothing to show for it. With my sales and management experience, you can bet that it has more to do with their lack of commitment to seeing the project through than it has to do with my people skills.

The second factor that threatens your free time is the need to apply to many gigs. You need to do this because the likelihood of you getting a paying gig isn’t that high. It could be for any number of reasons, including the client’s perception of your fit for the gig, the effectiveness of your proposal, etc. Sometimes—in my experience, many times—the client is just testing the waters and hasn’t committed to hiring anyone.

If you’re spending so much time applying to gigs and getting to know a prospective client, you’d hope that the pay when you finally land a gig is decent. Sadly, that isn’t true.

The truth is that most gigs on Upwork don’t pay very well. In my experience, it’s very rare to find a client who pays well by American standards. There are lots of wantrepreneurs (wanna-be entrepreneurs) who are trying to build a tiny business (less than $100,000 in annual revenue). They want sellable work at silly-low prices. For instance, I’ve seen a steady stream of wantrepreneurs who want to pay a paltry $150 for an eBook that take a decent writer no less than 2-3 days of work. After taxes and Upwork fees, that’s something like $75, which works out to an optimistic $3 an hour. Babysitters get paid more than that. I don’t know any American college graduate who can live on that kind of wage.

It’s even more rare to get a client who has a decent idea of what they want you to deliver. If you ever find a client who has a fair amount of samples and research to show you, that’s a good client and you should be doing your best to secure their business. As with most anything in life, outputs of a system are defined by the inputs. Your work is the output. The input is the communication between you and your prospective client. In order for you to create work that meets a clients’ expectations (high-quality output), the inputs need to be high-quality as well.

When it comes to replacing a living-wage income, I don’t think freelance work is for me. I’m not particularly good at concurrently juggling a number of gigs, and I end up spending most of my free time applying to more jobs. And I find myself having trouble finding work-life balance. One big reason is because of the way Upwork encourages freelancers to reply to clients’ job invitations within 24 hours. A lot of the time, I get sent invitations on Friday night or Saturday, which means I have to reply to them over the weekend. Declining them is easy, but if you like the job you have to send a proposal, which means you’re working on the weekend.

Although I have my qualms about working a traditional job in a poorly managed organization (which describes the majority of jobs available), at the end of the day you’ve got a steady paycheck. I think that my feelings about freelance work would be more forgiving if I had transitioned into it while I had full-time employment. And to be fair, I’ve read that it could take 12 to 16 months for a freelance career to take off. I’ve never been very patient, especially when I’m not being compensated for suffering fools. Instead, I now look at it less as a primary source of income and more as a supplement, and I only take on jobs that meet my requirements, which are simple: a well-defined gig at an acceptable pay rate. So, ultimately, I’m not deriding freelance writing completely. It’s just not an appropriate venture at this stage in my life.

Do you think you’d like to be a freelance writer on Upwork? What’s your experience with freelance writing? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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