Freelance Writing

I Think I’d Rather Be A Paidlance Writer

2012-02-01T18:51:48Z

One of my favorite sites out there is Clients From Hell. If you’ve not been there, you really need to go have a look. Be prepared to laugh your fanny off. Oh, also be prepared to shake your head in horror, wonder and amazement.

Here is the snippet that inspired me to write this post:

“After sending two invoices for payment, I sent another and called the client when the receipt that they had received it came back.

CLIENT: Why are you calling me?

ME: You haven’t paid and this is the third invoice I’ve sent.

CLIENT: It’s even more than the last one!

ME: Yes. The contract you signed stated that I would add a late fee for payment.

CLIENT: You mean I have to actually pay you? I thought you were joking!

ME: What on earth made you think that?

CLIENT: You’re a freelancer!

ME: And…

CLIENT: Well, you work for free! If you were supposed to be paid, you’d be called a paidlancer or something!”

Wow. Pretty certain I’d be speechless at that point.

I did a bit of research to try and find the origin of the term and what I found pretty much matches what my common sense had told me.

From Wikipedia:

“The term was first used by Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) in Ivanhoe to describe a “medieval mercenary warrior” or “free-lance” (indicating that the lance is not sworn to any lord’s services, not that the lance is available free of charge).[1] It changed to a figurative noun around the 1860s and was recognized as a verb in 1903 by authorities in etymology such as the Oxford English Dictionary. Only in modern times has the term morphed from a noun (a freelance) into an adjective (a freelance journalist), a verb (a journalist who freelances) and an adverb (she worked freelance), as well as into the noun “freelancer”.”

Well, there are certainly times when I feel like a “medieval mercenary warrior.” Who would have thought that a perfectly developed term from the 1800s would come back to bite some poor schmuck in the 21st century?

I guess we might need to start a movement, a revolt, an uprising. Decry the use of the “freelance” term and insist on being “paidlance writers.” somehow I doubt it would catch on.

The thing is, it sounds like the freelancer in this case did everything correctly. They had the client sign a contract, they invoiced and followed up correctly. I can’t imagine anything else they should have done and now it is likely they will never be paid for their hard work. That is a bummer. I have to admit that I’m having a little difficulty believing a client could be so dense, especially after signing a contract. It may just be a ruse to try and get out of paying a bill, but I bet it wouldn’t stand up in court.

I’ve never had anything quite so bizarre happen with a client. I’m wondering if any of my fellow freelance writers have ever had something like this happen.

LinkedOut?

2012-02-04T15:51:30Z

Facebook on Wednesday announced its IPO. ‘Twas but a matter of time. Mark Zuckerberg is set to personally earn between $21 and $28 billion from it. Billion. Of course billion. He hasn’t spoken about mere millions in many a year. Million schmillion.

It would be churlish to knock the guy. He took an idea (it wasn’t his idea if the movie Social Network is accurate) and ran with it. Boy, did he run. What a genius to be able to recognise such a moment in time and grab it for his own. Well done, Mr Zuckerberg.

I just HATE the product.

Hate it hate it hate it. Whenever I catch a glimpse of someone else’s Facebook page I despair. I have blogged about this before but I’m clearly not done with the subject yet. This endless chronicling of the minutiae of one’s life … why?

Just nipped out for some milk. Semi-skimmed rules!

Like.

People do that. They “like” the most inane crap. You don’t do that in real life. Every conversation would take a day if you rated every comment someone made to you.

The only good thing I can see in Facebook is that it voids the necessity of ever travelling to see people you really should keep in contact with but don’t want to physically meet up with.

For the freelance writer, it is a practically useless tool. There are far better ways to contact people in the work arena. I prefer LinkedIn, although I have no hard evidence to back up whether that’s of any use, either. I keep adding people, and the odd misguided individual will occasionally add me, but unless I find myself needing to network for work due to unemployment, I won’t know how useful it really is. And I hope that time never comes.

I suspect it will be like a bank cancelling your credit card when you become bankrupt. The bank teller who used to greet you with a ready smile will now look anywhere but at your face. You will be persona non grata.

The old acting adage that you need to be in work to get work may well apply with LinkedIn. The problem is that when you have enough work, there’s not much point touting for extra work that you won’t have time to do.

Despite my suspicions, I am building my network. I think people accept my link requests because I have a good job and I am a published novelist. But I think without the good job bit no one would know what to do with me. Need a novel writing, mister? Be off with you.

“Freelance writer” is a somewhat more useful descriptor, but who isn’t a freelance writer these days?

Does anyone have any experience of finding work through LinkedIn? Or, when you’re unemployed, is it more a case of LinkedOut?

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Uuurgonomics

2012-01-27T23:34:02Z

Someone I know – we’ll call her Miss X – told me a story a few days ago. This person’s best friend – we’ll call her Malingering Twat – has been swinging the lead on her job for years, claiming all manner of mysterious ailments that no medical practitioner can diagnose. She has been on full pay all this time. Miss X likes her friend but hates what she is doing. Actually, she doesn’t like her very much at all any more. Who would?

Malingering Twat is very obviously a lazy, psychosomatically-deranged hypochondriac. I have only met her once many moons ago and she was clearly barking then. That her employer has been kow-towing to her ridiculous whingeing all this time is down to unions and human rights and fear of lawsuits etc. I’m sure they would ideally just like to fire her. Or fire at her with a large-calibre handgun.

Attempts to bring her back into the fold culminated recently in a farce. Perhaps sensing she was nearing the point where her employer would sack her and to hell with the consequences, Malingering Twat had discussions with the HR people and it was agreed that she would come back if her workstation was made ergonomically-friendly to her so that her fantasy ailments might be alleviated.

Fine. Ergonomics are important. Having the correct physical environment to work in does ward off aches and strains and legal claims.

So, Malingering Twat went home and waited for her workspace to be redesigned and new furniture manufactured to her exact specifications. When she returned, however, there was a problem. The new desk chair she had ordered at great expense wasn’t right. The structure was okay, but they had covered it in blue upholstery. She had ordered purple. Blue made her depressed. She couldn’t possibly sit in a blue chair. She went home in a huff and the chair was sent back to the manufacturer to be re-upholstered.

Where the hell is a large-calibre handgun when you need one? Not just for her, for the idiot who didn’t just tell her to sit down and get on with her work before she was packed off to join the growing ranks of the world’s unemployed. Personally, I would have tied her to the damn thing until she decided to top herself. Good God, you can’t even see a desk chair when you’re sitting in it – it’s under your arse.

Purple upholstery is not ergonomics. It is insanity.

Despite this, I do have a lot of time for ergonomics. Freelance writers, and anyone else who sits at a desk for extended periods, must pay attention to their physical state and positioning. I don’t mean you need to avoid being positioned opposite a colleague in blue clothing. I mean you should create your best chance of being able to work your designated hours pain-free. Problems from poor ergonomics can manifest in just a few hours or they may take many years. Unfortunately, they very rarely disappear in just a few hours.

Last Easter, I had to work for two weeks at the dining room table on a laptop rather than at my desk on my desktop. My wife and daughter were away and I needed to keep an eye on our two new puppies downstairs. Seat height, table height, wrist and forearm angles etc were all different. At the end of the fortnight I had developed a severe pain and weakness in my right elbow and wrist from mousing – tennis elbow and its effects. My grip vanished. I could barely hold a cup of tea. I had felt its onset but thought it would go when I returned to working in my office. It didn’t. I had to make several ergonomic changes just to be able to work even in modest pain. I swapped my desk chair for a kneeling chair, bought a wrist rest, installed a roll-out shelf underneath the desk top for my keyboard and mouse, and used trigger point therapy daily. Now, nearly a year later, my tennis elbow is much better but it still troubles me.

Be careful. It’s no fun earning a living as a freelance writer when you’re constantly in pain.

One word of warning about the kneeling chair: falling asleep on one is marginally less dangerous than falling asleep at the wheel.

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Publish Or Perish

2012-01-04T00:11:24Z

That old axiom that in the old days applied only to college professors could be applied to a lot more professions today. As you can imagine, I believe that freelance writing is one of them. In this instance we are talking about publishing an e-book most likely and not the dry research paper that the poor profs sweated over. The benefits of publishing as a freelance writer are numerous and if you’ve not considered doing this in the past, then now is the time.

The benefits of publishing

An e-book is the perfect place to showcase your talents for any client who may be considering hiring you. An e-book immediately (right or wrong) says that you are a subject matter expert. It says that you are professional and hip to the way things are done these days.
Publishing an e-book gives you valuable experience doing just that. I have taken on several clients who wanted to hire me for my expertise in publishing an e-book at places like Smashwords and Amazon.
An e-book gives you a value-added product that you can offer to clients.
Done correctly, with the proper price point, an e-book could make you a little money

The really good news is that the world is your oyster here. Your e-book could be anything that you think would be useful for potential clients. Or, it could be a comprehensive model of an area you feel particularly qualified about. Make it as short or as long as you like remembering that you need it long enough to be of value and not so long that you scare folks away.

In terms of the actual publishing, there are several ways to go. The easiest by far is to simply convert your e-book document into a .pdf file. Most e-readers can recognize this format and virtually any computer is going to have Adobe PDF Reader installed. This will get the job done for your short, basic e-book.

If you’ve put together something a bit more intensive then you may want to actually consider publishing and marketing your e-book using a service such as Smashwords. Sites like Smashwords take your completed Word document and convert it into all known e-reader formats. You set your price, get royalties and market your book. Using this kind of service does require a bit more work on your part but the extra effort is well worth it. The book needs to be formatted correctly and it needs to have an appropriate cover. At Smashwords there is a style guide that walks you through the entire process.

You can also accomplish the same thing over at Amazon using their Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) site. That is also free and is a fairly simple process.

This probably goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. Before you publish, take the time to get it right. Get as many sets of eyes on your content as possible. Hire an editor if you have to. Nothing reflects more poorly on you as a writer than having a book published that is rife with grammatical and typographical errors. Don’t chance all of your hard work on sloppy editing.

This was a very rudimentary article on self publishing. If you have specific questions, please feel free to get in touch.

Desk Potato

2012-01-19T11:43:54Z

Apparently, although I suspect it’s something of a contradiction in terms, I am a hard-working couch potato. Well, probably not a couch potato because I sit at my desk to work. So a desk-chair potato.

This must be true because when it becomes my time to vacuum the house and my wife unsubtly rolls the Dyson into my room and parks it five inches from my face and I complain I am too tired to do what she wants, she says, “Why? All you do is sit on your arse”.

I know (think, hope) she is just joking, but that is essentially a very accurate descriptor of what a freelance writer does. We all sit on our arses. Americans, of course, prefer to sit on their asses.

I’m not very good at obeying all those very sensible instructions about getting up for a stroll every 20 minutes, stretching fingers and flexing wrists, or refocusing the eyes every so often on something outside the window. When I sit down to work, it’s quite normal for me to not move again for ten hours or more (toilet breaks notwithstanding). Thankfully, my wife also brings me food along with vacuum cleaners, so I don’t have to break to prepare anything to eat.

Sitting on your arse can be exhausting. Non-freelance writers may find that an oxymoron, but it’s true. I have done extremely physical jobs in the past, and they are far less tiring. Not moving very much is more draining than moving a lot. And then you have the mental strain of staring at a computer screen hour after hour and trying to meet deadlines and having clients you know must be kept happy.

I’m not claiming it’s worse than fighting the Taliban. It’s not a boo-hoo plea for sympathy. It’s my career choice and it suits me very well. It’s just not what you expect it to be when you are idly daydreaming about dumping your boring salaried office job and reinventing yourself as a freelance writer.

Being a freelance writer is one of the most sedentary jobs you can imagine. If you are the active, outdoor type, you can only do this for any length of time by making sure whatever down-time you have includes some physical exercise. It may be the last thing you want to do after a writing marathon, but it refreshes the system far more than shifting straight from desk-chair to couch for a snooze.

Stay active, folks.

The List of Writer’s Forums

2012-01-03T21:53:53Z

Image from Finance and Economy.com

In my post last week I mentioned that one of the support system components most valuable to a writer is a writing forum. I’ve put together this list and I hope it can help you to decide if belonging to a forum is something you want to do. They are not listed in any particular order and the inclusion of a forum here should not be construed as a whole-hearted recommendation. Check them out. Poke around a bit. Lurk. See if any of them are a good fit for you. After checking them out, get back to us with any feedback or recommendations. Also, feel free to leave info in the comments section about any other writing forums that you have found particularly useful.

The Forums

Writing Forums.org – http://www.writingforums.org/
Writing Forums.com – http://www.writingforums.com/
Writing.com – http://www.writing.com/page/writers_forum/writers_forum.html
The Writing Forum – http://www.thewritingforum.net/
Mythic Scribes – http://mythicscribes.com/forums/
Legend Fire – http://www.legendfire.com/
The Writer’s Beat – http://www.writersbeat.com/
Absolute Write – http://absolutewrite.com/forums/
WriteWords – http://www.writewords.org.uk/forum/
Freelance Writing – http://www.freelancewriting.com/discussion-forums-for-writers.php
Writer’s Digest – http://www.writersdigest.com/forum/
Fiction Post – http://www.fictionpost.com/forums/
Science Fiction Fantasy World – http://sffworld.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=10
Nathan Bransford – http://forums.nathanbransford.com/
Content Writers – http://www.contentwritersforum.com/
Mystery Writer’s – http://mwf.ravensbeak.com/
The Next Big Writer – http://www.thenextbigwriter.com/forum/index.php
Make Literature – http://www.makeliterature.com/forums/
Writer’s .net – http://www.writers.net/forum/
My Writer’s Circle – http://www.mywriterscircle.com/
English Forums – http://www.englishforums.com/
Young Writers Online – http://www.youngwritersonline.net/
The Memoir Writing Club – http://memoirwritingforum.com/forum.php
Faith Writers – http://www.faithwriters.com/Boards/phpBB2/index.php
Cracked.com – http://www.cracked.com/forums/
Writer’s Weekly – http://forums.writersweekly.com/viewforum.php?f=15
Pencil Jack – http://www.penciljack.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?15-Writing

Enjoy!

Write What You Know (You Can Get Away With)

2012-01-14T12:14:43Z

So, just pop it into a preheated oven and cook at gas mark 7 for an hour.

That’s what I’d do to cookery books. I appreciate that book-burning on such a grand scale is frowned upon in polite circles, but I don’t really move in polite circles so I’m not that bothered.

The fascination with reading cookery books is something I fail to grasp. The urge for freelance writers to write a cookery book makes perfect sense to me, of course, because it’s a great opportunity to cash in, but the idea of reading one, or actually applying the instructions within, just bores the tits off me. I have better things to do with my time than spend 4 hours cutting and preparing and cooking something that will be eaten in 10 minutes, probably to not much applause. That seems on a par with saving for 10 years to buy a Ferrari then wilfully driving it straight out of the showroom and into a brick wall.

Most chefs, as far as I can see, are not in terribly rude health. You can watch them over the course of their TV careers increasing in girth, extra chins forming and arms ever more outstretched to reach the frying pan as their guts push them further away from the cooker. I’m not sure we should be listening to these people or reading their misguided thoughts.

Cookery books have made us slaves to our taste buds, which have in turn made us fat. The truth is that “boring” food is better for you. Better and quicker to prepare. More time for your freelance writing, to boot.

But, hey, it is what it is. They are chefs not dieticians. It’s what they do.

However, anyone who writes a diet book who doesn’t know exactly what they’re talking about deserves to be skewered and barbecued over white-hot coals. Charlatans. First of all, they misappropriate the word “diet”. Your diet is the food you eat every day your whole life. Animals in the wild don’t go on diets. They eat what they should eat and don’t suffer the ills that we do.

I watched a diet programme on TV the other day and this multi-chinned wobbly woman appeared on my screen. My obvious first thought was that she would start talking about her lifelong struggle with food and how she needed help. Then a caption appeared, giving her name and profession: dietician. What the …? Either she knew her stuff but was too stupid to practice it, or she didn’t know her fat arse from her flabby elbow. Either way, I’m not sure who could have given her any credence. That would be like taking self-defence advice from a guy who you’d just seen have the crap kicked out of him by a 5-year-old girl.

I expect she’s written a book. The dietician not the little girl.

There is a lesson here for all you budding freelance writers out there. The old axiom to write what you know does not necessarily apply. If you are appealing to greedy people or desperate people who have been greedy and now want to be appear less greedy as their summer holiday swimwear nears its annual appearance, then you can pretty much write anything you like.

Anyway, please check out my latest offering on Amazon: The Grilled Butterfly Wing Diet: How To Lose A Stone a Week Until You Die of Malnutrition.

I would sign it for you but I don’t have the strength to pick up a pen.

The Guilt of Freelance Writing

2012-01-07T16:37:29Z

For someone who calls himself a freelance writer, I do precious little freelance writing these days. My other work and life in general gets in the way. I don’t feel too bad about that in terms of not being a jobbing freelance writer any more, because I’m still earning a wage, but I do sometimes struggle with the loss of my author status. Not that there has been a mass book-burning that has rid the world of my published works (they weren’t that bad), but there’s now just such a chunk of time separating me from the glory-basking of my former years.

I reconcile myself on that score pretty easily, though, most of the time. I consider whether there might be anyone out there who might be calling up their local bookstore or searching Amazon every week for a new novel from me. I have to conclude that’s probably not happening. Although I had good reviews for my novels and some of those who bought them may well have been looking forward to a third one, it should have become pretty obvious many years ago that I have, so to speak, shot my load. If anyone is still eagerly awaiting a third novel from me, then I never want to meet that fan because they are clearly a psychotic stalking fruitcake. (Actually, I have had a third novel completed for years now and may one day publish it online, if anyone is remotely interested.)

I also consider if my return to authorship would, 1) bring me in more money per hour spent than I’m earning now, and, 2), even if it did, be worth the many extra hours locked away in my office not seeing my family. Probably not and definitely not.

There is a mystique that surrounds the freelance writer that is often wholly unjustified. We are not some bohemian bunch who sit on our verandas scribbling away as the sun goes down with a G&T for company and a whimsical smile on our face. It can be a tough career choice. Wanting to be a freelance writer and actually being a freelance writer can be worlds apart. It’s like the difference between playing Black Ops and genuinely being a Navy Seal. While the latter may appear terribly exciting, it does have certain drawbacks. Most never make it through training, and those that do are then going to encounter people who will try to kill them or at least blow off a limb or two.

As you start off your New Year all full of vim and vigour, try not to beat yourself up about any shortfall you feel exists in your freelance writing career. Seriously, folks, life’s too short.

Getting Back To Freelance Writing

2012-01-03T19:01:26Z

For the past year or so, I’ve been on kind of a freelance writing hiatus. Not that I had given it up completely, I mean there were several writing projects that kept my attention through the year but for the most part I had taken down my freelance writing shingle. Well, things have recently changed.

Please, please, please don’t interpret this post as one of those, “It’s a new year! Set goals! Be everything you can be!” kind of posts. ‘Cause it ain’t. I can’t stand/don’t do those kinds of posts. That’s my own thing – I suck at goal writing/keeping.

On the 2nd day of this new year I put myself in a position where I left a good paying 9 – 5 job that was killing me through the stress imposed by an impossible boss. I should be scared, but I’m not. I’m actually excited to be focusing once again on writing. And being focused on the writing means getting back into writing for money. The folks at Visa are very keen on my doing this.

I don’t doubt for a moment that I’ll be able to get back into the swing of it. I set my to do list this morning and have been flying through it, gleefully scratching things off the list as I accomplish them. With a lot of the clutter out of the way I am able to focus on the freelancing and the first thing I’m doing is getting back to my roots. The first blog article I ever write for my web site was about Textbroker. Textbroker is a great place for beginning freelance writers to cut their teeth and today I’ve discovered it is also a great place to ease back into the whole business of freelance writing.

It had been a good year or so since I last visited Textbroker. What I’ve found is that the folks there have made a lot of improvements to the site. When I first went to log in, I was kinda afraid I had been booted from the site, given how long it had been. Well, all of my stuff was still there as was my 5 star status. Awesome. I discovered that Textbroker had set up a place for writers to add a greatly detailed profile, including a profile image, interests, writing samples and even a resume. I also received a pleasant surprise when I went to the “Open Orders” page. There were literally hundreds of orders available. Textbroker is not a bid site. You choose an order and start writing. You’re not paid a ton of money on most orders but if you can write a decent article in 20 or so minutes, you should be able to pull down $15 to $20 an hour without too much problem.

Textbroker is just my first stop in my quest to get back into the freelance writing game. I’ll probably check out some of the bidding sites today and I’m letting all of my Twitter and FaceBook folk know I’m back in business.

Is Freelance Writing a Career?

2011-12-01T06:06:06Z

image from institutechildrenlit.com

I guess it kind of depends on your definition of “career” doesn’t it? For me, when I think of a career I envision something that one does as their primary means of supporting themselves. In my mind, a career is a long term proposition that doesn’t include using the current job as a stepping stone to bigger and better things.

I wonder how many of us that are freelance writing have no aspirations in terms of moving up. If a career is a job that you love doing, then moving up is not an issue, right? And what does moving up mean, anyway? Does building a big business with lots of clients and other writers working for you equate to moving up? These are all legitimate questions when examining the issue of freelance writing as a career.

Again, each of us have an idea of whether or not our freelance writing is a career. Because the definition changes for everyone, it’s kind of tough to sort out. One of the things I think makes freelance writing a non-career is just doing it part time. This is not the time to open that ageless discussion of full-vs-part time, but in terms of defining freelance writing as a career, doing it full time seems to be kind of a no-brainer for career status.

There are a lot of folks who freelance write in the day time and then work on their novel at night. For them, freelance writing is a way to get paid while they move toward their goal of publishing a book and becoming a world famous novelist. I would say that for these writers, freelancing is not a career.

I think that freelance writing can absolutely be a career. One of the things that is so great about freelance writing is that the scope of projects is nearly limitless. This means that a freelance writer does not need to stay stuck in the same writing rut day in and day out. Expansion to any number of genres (if you will) is possible at any time. When we think about longevity, this variety is key. Unless any of you plan on writing batches of keyword rich articles for the rest of your freelancing days. (Shudder)

Finally, I have to ask, “Is it okay to freelance write and not have it be a career?” I’m pretty certain the answer to that question is a resounding, “Absolutely!” You have to ask yourself if you are receiving any joy from your freelance writing. Does it make you feel alive? Does it provide satisfaction? If the answer is yes, then sally forth and continue to do exactly what makes your writing soul sing.

Career or not, sometimes it’s important to sit down and reflect on your freelance writing. Think about whether or not this is a career for you. If you decide that it is, you probably have a lot more work cut out for you. Treat it like a career and get those goals written. “Professional Up” and do everything in your power to put your freelance writing on a career level.