Writers Unbound

How to keep writing even when your brain is mush, your fingers are numb, and your eyes are bleary…me, right now.

Two cups of coffee later… it’s still me.

You Threw Off My Groove

It’s been a dead couple of weeks, inspirationally speaking. Do you know what I mean? I’m used to the day or so like that every now and then, but I can usually get excited about blogging by stopping to plan, getting some titles and outlines and series ideas together. Once I have a page or two of notes, I’m ready to write again.

Usually.

Squawk

I have about 10 pages of notes, both handwritten and on my computer, and I’m still just staring at the screen with that one feeling I hate the most… the parrot feeling. I’m just squawking out ideas and tips and lists and pointers that have already been said, in much better ways, by people much more qualified than I am. That’s how I feel as I force my fingers to keep moving, and it sucks the little bit of inspiration that’s left right out. There’s a little pile of it on the floor beside me now. It’s not very useful there, but once it leaves it’s hard to gather up again.

Sometimes when I feel uninspired to write about writing, I take the time to browse other writing sites, the really big, chock-full of amazing and helpful information sites. They tend to perk me up to topics I hadn’t thought about covering, or perspectives I want to discuss. This time all they did was reinforce the parrot sensation. Squawk.

If they are already saying everything that can be said about this freelance writing subject, why do I keep writing?

Why Do I Keep Writing? No, Really… Why?

I keep writing because I’ve made a commitment, more to myself than to anyone else. I considered and I made a decision: Yes, I will do this/blog about this/write this/commit to this until I am successful. Not until I quit enjoying it or until something distracts me or until I have a better idea or until I run out of ideas. Success is the benchmark.

I have a definition of success as a freelance writer and a plan for reaching it, and a plan for what to do as I get there. I love blogging, but I don’t want to have to blog forever. My goal as a freelance writer is to reach self-sufficiency, by which I mean… well, here’s the long version:

Working toward self-sufficiency as a freelance writers means reaching success in the following ways: creating steady sources of income, including passive income; setting and maintaining practical work standards; creating and marketing your brand; eliminating client codependency; understanding and choosing the right publishing options; being prolific and producing consistent quality of work; refusing to participate in scams, get-rich-quick ideas, and other ways of avoiding hard work; working hard and loving it; maintaining balance; setting and reaching goals; operating as a small business; planning for the future.

At this moment, I don’t feel anywhere close to success in any of those areas, but I know that the more I write the closer I get. Sometimes progress is so subtle that you can’t track it while it is happening. Sometimes we do feel that we are just walking in place, and it takes time before we gain the perspective to see how far we have traveled.

Let Me Sum Up

Let me summarize in a more standard Tuesday Tips format. If you’re stuck, if you’re uninspired, if you’re wondering why, if you’re ready to go back to the day job, if success feels unreachable, if you’re squawking like a parrot, remember this:

1) You made a commitment. You can’t break it. It will hurt who you are.
2) You are moving toward success. You can’t feel it, but it is happening.
3) The more you write, the closer you get toward success.
4) Once you reach success, you can quit writing forever if you want to!
(Sometimes #4 helps more than anything else…)

Keep writing, for now… and that will

make it a good day.

Answer to this week’s question from Booking Through Thursday:

The question:

What was the most unusual (for you) book you ever read? Either because the book itself was completely from out in left field somewhere, or was a genre you never read, or was the only book available on a long flight… whatever? What (not counting school textbooks, though literature read for classes counts) was furthest outside your usual comfort zone/familiar territory?

And, did you like it? Did it stretch your boundaries? Did you shut it with a shudder the instant you were done? Did it make you think? Have nightmares? Kick off a new obsession?

And my answer:
I grew up reading “safe” (picked out for our library by my parents) books through my early teen years, then I branched out. Into classics. Poetry. Jane Austen, Jane Eyre, Sir Walter Scott, Rabindranath Tagore, Emily Dickinson. And I have a fierce preference for happy books, books that tell a story, that make some sort of sense, that leave me feeling better than when I started. My basic book philosophy is this: there’s enough unpleasant stuff really happening in the world. When I venture into the make-believe of fiction, I want it to be better than the real world.

My freshman year in college, first writing class. I loved my teacher, and took him for as many courses as I could over the next four years. But I did not love the book he assigned. We read through what he selected from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and I hated all of them.
From the carefully chosen library of my childhood to the discreet classic works I read to the vague and subtle references of poetry… in I stepped to Ovid’s world, where sex was described in perfect clarity and discretion was the real myth. Then, of course, I got to sit and squirm through the class discussions.

I did shut it with a shudder the instant I was done, and then sold it back to the university bookstore for a very small fraction of what it originally cost. I was happy with the exchange, and though I still don’t want to venture back into Ovid’s world, that class was the mark of a change in my reading choices. I learned to cope with (and even discuss) things outside my comfort level; I learned to look for what I could learn in every book; and I learned to set my own standards for what I would read, assigned or not. Later in college, I had assignments that I did not complete due to the content of the material. But I had learned through that first class how to determine what was part of a cultural context (pleasant, moral, or not) and what was just crass. I still apply those standards to what I read today. And I still have a preference for happy books.

The Dream Quest One Poetry & Writing Contest is open to anyone who loves expressing innermost thoughts and feelings into the beautiful art of poetry or to write a short story that is worth telling everyone! And to all who have the ability to dream. Write a poem or short story for a chance to win cash prizes. All works must be original. Visit the site.

Guidelines:
Write a poem, thirty lines or fewer on any subject, style, or form, typed or neatly hand printed.
And/or write a short story, five pages maximum length, on any subject or theme, creative writing fiction or non-fiction (including essay compositions, diary, journal entries and screenwriting). Also, must be typed or neatly hand printed.
Multiple poetry and short story entries are accepted.
Postmark deadline: December 31, 2008
All winners will be announced on January 31, 2009
Prizes:
Writing Contest First Prize is $500. Second Prize: $250. Third Prize: $100.
Poetry Contest First Prize is $250. Second Prize: $125. Third Prize: $50.
Entry fees:
Writing Contest entry fee: $10 per short story.
Poetry Contest entry fee: $5 per poem.
To send entries: Include title(s) with your story (ies) or poem(s), along with your name, address, phone#, email, brief biographical info. (Tell us a little about yourself), on the coversheet. Add a self-addressed stamped envelope for entry confirmation. Fees payable to: “DREAMQUESTONE.COM”
Mail to:
Dream Quest One
Poetry & Writing Contest
P.O. Box 3141
Chicago, IL 60654
Visit DreamQuestOne for details and to enter!

Just a quick review of the previous work principles we’ve covered in the last two weeks:

1. Imitate high quality
2. Learn from successful people
3. Ignore cheaters, scammers, and get-rich-quick promises
4. Never think you know it all
5. Help other writers
6. Don’t pick fights

Today we will add the next three principles to the list, but first a little more review: What is a principle? To my favorite source for word definitions, Webster’s 1828 dictionary, and we find the following among the list of meanings:

• Ground; foundation; that which supports an assertion, an action, or a series of actions or of reasoning.
• A general truth; a law comprehending many subordinate truths; as the principles of morality, of law, of government, &c.
• A principle of human nature, is a law of action in human beings; a constitutional propensity common to the human species.

I am presenting these work principles as the grounds for the actions you take as a writer, as general truths applied to a specific area (freelance writing), as tenets derived from principles of human nature. For example, our first principle for today is

7: Be diligent in your work to succeed

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There’s nothing new or unknown to successful people in this idea. You know that if you want to get beyond the scraping and pinching that so many of us freelance writers are stuck in, you have to work regularly, diligently, sometimes (it seems) ceaselessly. It’s easy to forget though, easy to put aside, easy to procrastinate, easy to look for another perfect job that won’t require you to be so darn diligent all the time.

That’s why this principle is out there: it’s true, and if you print out the list and tape it by your computer, or copy and paste it over to your desktop, you can remind yourself that you have to be diligent to succeed. Yes, you know it’s true: but sometimes you need a concrete reminder of the truth, something to stand on, a visible foundation for the action you already know you need to take.

8: Work ahead, even when there is no immediate “need”

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It doesn’t happen often, but every now and then I get through the first half of the day and realize that I’ve done everything on my schedule. My to-do list is just a pretty row of check marks, my drafts document is caught up with my editorial calendar, and I still have a beautiful afternoon in front of me. What’s my first instinct? What would yours be?

I want to take off, take a nap, take a drive, play Tetris, call friends, take a walk, do anything but move ahead on the work waiting for me. It’s a general truth that when we get comfortable, we start getting lazy, a little apathetic. It’s another general truth, though, that opportunity comes unexpectedly; if you’re not ready, it keeps on walking.

When you get caught up, don’t make that illogical leap into feeling that you’re automatically ahead. You’re not, yet. You’re just at the breaking-even point, and if you want to be more successful than you are right now, you have to push past that mark. So when you finish a project early, don’t go nap. Keep working on and be ahead of schedule on your next project. You’ll see three benefits from this action: first, if you run into a need for more research than you thought or trouble with some portion of an article, you have a little extra time to deal with it; second, if you complete the project and send it to the client done well and finished early, your reputation with that client is forever in the highest ranking; and third, when you finish work early and have a clear afternoon or day, you are free to find rush jobs that otherwise would not fit into your schedule.

9: Do good work, always, for every client

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When you were growing up, did you have one parent who was kind of a stickler for details and another who just wanted the job done? I did. I knew their preferences, and you can be sure I never did more than I had to in order to make either one happy. If I were cleaning up the kitchen for Mom, I washed those dishes until every part gleamed: otherwise, I would be going back and doing it again. If I were helping Dad in the yard, I did what had to be done to get the job finished: he just wanted it done, not perfect.

It’s easy to fall into the same set of varying standards with clients. We humans tend to discern pretty quickly what the minimum requirements for “survival” are, and then we set our mark there and never push ourselves further. And I’m not suggesting that you provide a 1000-word article with 3 referenced sources when all your client wants is a 500-word, opinion-based article from your perspective. Certainly, you can stay within the guidelines of each project. But certainly within those guidelines you can produce the best 500-word opinion-based article that it’s possible for you to write.

Even if you know a client will accept something less than high quality, don’t produce it. Don’t lower your standards. Don’t accept mediocrity from yourself. Mediocrity spreads like cancer, and soon you’ll be trying to get away with less than your best for clients who won’t take it. You put your writing reputation in jeopardy.

If you can’t force yourself to maintain high quality standards for “low-quality” clients, then don’t take those jobs.

Make it a good day.

My home office is a space in the corner of my living room. My desk is about 2′ by 2′, as far as surface area goes. My paper processing systems consists of two wall-hung magazine racks and a pretty file box which sits on the floor by my (also pretty) trash can. This office doesn’t get a choice about efficiency: it’s all-efficient or die.

Efficiency gurus have a lot to say about systems and productivity, and streamlining, and time management. I won’t add to that load. Some of my systems work and some need to be tweaked. Some days I am far more productive than others. Some days time manages me… However, even on the worst days, my lack of productivity isn’t due to an inefficient office set-up.

I’ve learned that less is more, if the less that you have is what you really need and use. Yes, you need office supplies like paper clips and tape and maybe you do use those fluorescent labels, all four colors. But if it’s something you use, oh, once a month, don’t clutter up your daily work area with it (even if you have the room). Keep within arm’s reach only the items that see daily use, and put them where it makes the most sense for them to be, i.e., where your hand reaches automatically when you think “stapler” or “cell phone charger.”

Don’t box yourself into a standard-operating-procedure if it doesn’t work for you. Filing, for example, doesn’t work for me. Almost every organizing book I’ve read says that I should file my papers every single day. That would be the height of inefficiency, as my large filing cabinet is in the basement and I often need to use the same papers three times within a week or so before I’m done with them. So I set up my own standard operating procedure. I have a small file box at my feet that keeps things I use regularly for reference, and the most recent copies of larger projects. I have a couple of magazine racks hung on the wall that hold my notebook, calendar, a few folders with project notes and papers, a reference book or two, and a few magazines. I clean these out regularly; they cease to be efficient if they are loaded with papers that I don’t need.

The last point I’ll make regards location. I set up a nice office for myself in the basement of our home. I painted a long, fold-out table, set up the filing cabinet, gathered all the office supplies and organized them within arm’s reach, and had an inbox, an outbox, and a rolodex. I had plenty of space for a computer, a printer, and a notebook and a bunch of papers to be spread out on the table. I never felt crowded, but I just didn’t work there. I ended up at the kitchen table. Why? Because I’m a Mom of two small children. I don’t want to haul them down a flight of stairs every time I need to check my email. It was a good location but it wasn’t convenient for my lifestyle.

Now I work out of, literally, a fraction of that space I had set up downstairs. But the difference is that I actually work here. I don’t have as much stuff around, but I can start dinner, set the kids up with a few toys, and punch out a few paragraphs before going back to take dinner out of the oven. The bulk of my writing occurs in the wee hours of the morning and in the afternoon when the kids are sleeping, but those extra ten and twenty minutes here and there add up.

Make it a good day.

I don’t know anyone who really enjoys it, but for some of us it’s nerve-wracking to the point of trauma. Cold calling. We hear the term and break out in hives. We start fidgeting and twitching, and our hands shake so much we can’t even hold the phone. Cold calling just isn’t always the best option.

We need clients, though. We need new jobs, new gigs, new projects, new people. Freelance writing is a job that requires constant marketing. The flow must keep flowing, and I don’t just mean creatively speaking. The financial aspect is (just as?) important.

I spent a little time brain storming to come up with alternatives to cold calling. We love the job boards, but that’s the first place we all go look. Too often there is either nothing that is a fit, or it’s a great job except for the pay rate, or two hundred other freelance writers are also applying for the great job with the great pay rate at the same time, so chances of being the chosen one grow very small. In the meantime, we eye the phone nervously. Must we? Oh, please no, must we?

Try one (or all) of these ideas instead:

• Rework your current clients.
  No, I don’t mean double charge them. I mean look at what you’re providing for them and think about what else you could do. Are you producing website content? Maybe they also need a newsletter. Are you writing catalog descriptions? Maybe they need a flyer. Don’t just wait for your clients to come up with all the ideas. Make proposals, offer suggestions, throw around a lot of (good) ideas. They may not all bite, but some of them will.
• Create a flyer highlighting your writing services, expertise, and experience,
  and leave it everywhere you can, mail it to potential clients, air drop it over island nations… Make it professional, catchy, and clear. Put your rates on there, or at least some inkling of your rates. Offer free consultations (thirty minute maximum) for potential clients. And pass those little jewels out everywhere you can.
• Create customized sample writing packets and send to potential clients.
  Be proactive, but do more than be just another voice on the phone wanting something that involves money. Instead, give before you ask. Produce a few paragraphs, or even a few pages, of sample writing specifically for the potential client. Print it out nicely, along with a cover letter (and a flyer?) and send it on.
• Follow job boards past the initial leads. Go a little deeper in your digging for jobs. Find the parent companies behind those great (or not-so-great) blogging offers and see if they have other writing needs. If there’s a great-sounding ad but it is area-specific, and not in your area, look for similar businesses that are in your area and check them out.
• Read the local want ads.
  Seriously. When was the last time you did that?
• Network constantly.
  Don’t be a brag or a conversation hog, but talk to strangers and mention what you do for a living. Most people are very interested in what it means to write for a living. Dazzle them with the vast array of possibility inherent in the freelance writer.
• Listen well.
  No illegal phone taps or overt eavesdropping. Not good. What is good, though, is really listening to the conversation you’re in, or, when you’re not in one, to the conversation flowing around you. Inspiration - and information - come from unexpected places. Be ready to hear it instead of caught up in the roar of your own voice.
• Get business cards made with lots of contact options.
  And, of course, once you have them, pass them out. Pin them on bulletin boards. Send them in letters. Leave them in coffee shops. Nah, on second thought, don’t leave them in coffee shops because it’s just a lot of other freelance writers coming there…
  Okay, okay, you get the idea. Use them appropriately, and be sure you provide multiple contact options to make it as convenient and comfortable as possible for your potential clients.
• Find a need in the businesses you frequent.
  You go to the same restaurant every weekend with your spouse, and every weekend you think there menu looks terrible. But their pasta con broccoli is exquisite! Well, hello, freelance writer: how much would you charge for a menu rewrite? Ask. Propose. Do up a little sample (not the whole thing). Offer. See what happens.
• Do something for free.
  I’ve done seminars and taught writing classes for a local home education group for, yes, free. No money. A pretty significant time commitment. I didn’t walk away with cash then, but I was repaid later through the people who followed up with me, wanting tutoring sessions, manuscript critiques, and seminars (paid) at other school groups.
  Don’t disregard opportunities from non-profit or small organizations which can’t afford to pay you. Many times the service you provide brings you in contact with a lot of other people who will be impressed with the quality of your work and the goodness of your heart.

Make it a good day.

You’ve developed an area of expertise, or, I hope, multiple areas of expertise. If you’ve become known as an expert, it’s time to take advantage of that status and expand.

What else can you call it?

Meet Suzy Q. Writer. She’s been a freelancer for three years. She has developed a strong expert status in the area of “women’s health,” and now she has her pick of several well-trafficked women’s interest and health websites that would welcome her writing. It’s been lucrative, but the material is sounding stale and she would like to expand. Her resume is too full of clips that sound like simplified pieces from a medical journal. She sees great blogging jobs and social sites and magazines calling for parenting and nature articles, which she would love to write, but she doesn’t think she sounds qualified.

What should she do? First, she should think of other angles from which to present her expertise in women’s health. Has she done pieces on natural health? Has she written about psychological well-being? The effects of stress? Those can be presented as (respectively) articles addressing a natural lifestyle, self-care and personal growth, and the importance of good time management. She may need to rework those articles a little to emphasize slightly different points, but the bulk of the material is there. Now she has three more areas in which to market her writing skills.

What are the related areas?

Another natural step from women’s health, for Suzy, is the more general women’s interest. If she is interested in writing about nature and parenting, she can use her knowledge of women’s health to write a great article about how outdoor activities create a healthier lifestyle or about the importance of Mom exercising good self-care in order to care for her children. Both of those articles are equally related to women’s health and to nature or parenting, respectively.

From there she just needs to keep taking small steps toward those other areas in which she has interest. She might have to write a few articles unpaid to present on her own website or on article databases (which might pay; some do, some don’t), but that small amount of time will allow her to walk into a new area and find new clients.

How can you expand your services?

The other option for expansion is not to change your area of expertise, necessarily, but to look at additional services you can provide in that area. If Suzy can handle writing more on women’s health, she can look for a health-oriented blogging job on a women’s interest site. As she gains blogging experience, she can use that on her resume to gain entry to other blogging jobs which may have related but slightly different subject areas.

Suzy can also look at reworking her old material into reports, fact sheets, and ebooks, which she can market and sell herself or sell to clients. She could begin a women’s health podcast, and include a two-minute section on Nature and a two-minute section on Parenting with each podcast.

What other markets can you reach?

The last option for expansion (at least, the last one I’ll discuss today) is the look for new markets. Suzy could take a step back from the online world, print out her best clips, and approach a local newspaper about doing a weekly column on women’s lifestyle and health.
Suzy could call non-profit organizations and women’s shelters that might be able to make use of pamphlets on basic hygiene, sexual safety, and self-care during pregnancy. She could being submitting articles on women’s health to national magazines; once one of her articles is accepted, she can submit articles, using that clip as a sample, on any other subject she desires. She will have the publication status; she just has to work with it a bit.

So what can you do to expand your area of expertise? If you have more than one, you’re already a step ahead. Don’t box yourself in! Get out there and

Make it a good day.

Dear fellow writers,
We know there is more to write than blogs and website content articles, or magazine articles or newspaper columns. But we forget sometimes, don’t we? We get stuck in a little writing rut and we begin to get bored with what we’re doing, over and over again.
Let’s start thinking again, beyond our usual writing assignments and online jobs. One of these options could be a great new fit for you:

1. A flyer introducing a new business to the town.
2. Biographies for city officials for your city’s web page.
3. Pamphlets covering local history for the museums in your area.
4. College Preparation Material and Info Sheets for college recruiters.
5. Biographies and summaries for local politicians to use on websites and printed advertisements.
6. House and property descriptions for the for-sale-by-owner owners and for smaller realty companies.
7. Articles covering local politics, places to see, and things do in your area for a newspage. Publish it yourself and make money on the ads.
8. Resumes, executive summaries, and cover letters for job-seekers.
9. Poetry, love letters, even song lyrics…
10. Product descriptions and business documents for work-at-home moms, crafters, artists.
11. Press releases for independent films and music.
12. Book reviews for the local paper or library.
13. Brochures with service descriptions for salons, spas, etc.

I’d love to hear more ideas. What are you working on? What is your dream gig? What creative ways have you found to expand your writing business? Share with the rest of us; we’re all learning together.

Make it a good day.

4. Never think you know it all.

Even if you do know it all, you’ll get along with people much better if you think you don’t know it all. Chances are, you don’t yet know it all. “All” is continually growing and continually changing. Even as an expert in a particular area, there is always more you can know.

If you come across as someone who doesn’t have anything left to learn, you turn off potential sources of information. You can’t get a good interview from people who sense that you aren’t really interested in what they have to say. You gain more perspective, knowledge, and empathy by listening than by talking; and you get a whole lot more out of your listening when you do it with a sincere understanding that you still have much to learn… about everything.

5. Help other writers.

and

6. Don’t pick fights.

It can be a mad scramble to get an application in to a new job opening before all the other writers who need work. It’s easy to start comparing. Once you start comparing, you start judging. Once you start judging, well, you start needing a way to make yourself feel better about your experience, your expertise, your know-how, your skills, your presentation, your rates, your hairstyle.

Super. Where does that get you? Nowhere fast. For the most part, the freelance writing community is open, receptive, and warmly helpful. But I’ve seen a few little comments become an ugly spat, and suddenly everyone involved looks unprofessional and petty.

Don’t be one of those people. Be better than that. Be friendly. Be helpful. Answer the same-old questions that people ask, or direct them to a good resource that covers the basics. Share your knowledge and your experience. Be an advocate instead of a competitor.

Two things happen when you choose helpfulness over name-calling. First, you will find that more doors open to you when you start opening doors for other people. It’s a weird little thing called reciprocity that just keeps circling back around. Don’t discount that power. Second, you will become more of an expert in many subjects as you share your knowledge with (and gain knowledge from) others. You will find that you are part of a community, and that the collective knowledge of that community is at your disposal.

Try it, and see if it isn’t true.

Make it a good day.

I have recently compiled several of my beginner-oriented posts, articles, and tip sheets into a free ebook for your perusing pleasure. The book is full of helpful ideas and the basics of getting started in the freelance world. Plus it’s formatted pretty…

So hit that little download link, have a read, and let me know what you think. I’d specifically love to hear two things:
1) If you’re new to freelancing, is the information truly helpful to you? What other information and ideas do you wish you had?
2) If you’re an old pro, I’d love to hear your best advice for new freelancers. What do you consider the “basics” of freelancing? What are your best time-tested tips and tricks? What has helped you most in becoming a successful freelance writer?

To view the ebook online (without downloading), click here:The Get Started Guide for Freelancers. To skip the preview and go straight to the download, right click on the link and select “Save Link As,” then click “Save” in the dialog box that opens.

P.S. This book is a free resource, so feel free to pass it along to friends or link to it from your website. I only ask that 1) you pass it along in its entirety, and 2) you link to the download button from this website (don’t upload it to your own website for distribution). Thanks!
Thanks for reading, and as always…

Make it a good day.