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The prospect of becoming a freelance writer is both exciting and a little bit scary. Let’s face it: the freelance writing community is a big ocean full of bigger fish (a.k.a. experienced writers) and you as a newbie have to somehow manage to take a deep breath, jump in and hope you don’t immediately sink or become a larger fish’s dinner. The mere thought is enough to make any newbie cower in fear of the unknown.
As someone who has spent a majority of time dangling my toes in the edge of that proverbial ocean, I can wholeheartedly say that the experience is well worth it. However, I have also spent a fair share of time in the freelance ocean struggling against the undertow. There are a lot of things I wish I had known before I started, that would have made my journey a little smoother. But I suppose that’s the blessing of hindsight.
If you are just starting out, I’d like to share with you some things that I learned that just might make your experience a little easier. Before you dive into that intimidating ocean of freelance writers, take some time to familiarize yourself with some life rafts that dot the water.
1. Freelance writing will not be easy, nor will you become rich. Every newbie freelancer has aspirations of becoming the next Carrie Bradshaw or the next assistant at Vogue. These are great fantasies for when you are standing on the line at the bank daydreaming, but they are not reality. Dream jobs do not fall out of the sky. An editor from Conde Nast will not call you at home and ask you to pen a piece on the new Manolos. Not going to happen.
What will happen is work, and a lot of it. You will work on copy for things you have never imagined writing about. Pieces on such varied topics as hybrid vehicles, male enlargement devices and rhinoplasty, will begin to fill your portfolio. You will be paid for these gems, but you certainly won’t be running out with your new found millions and quitting your day job (not yet anyway).
Expect to write about a wide range of subjects, and know how to use the internet to search for reputable sources of information (note: Wikipedia is not a source you want to rely on for your information).
2. You need to know your worth as a writer and you need to know what rates are acceptable. Sure, you’re excited to write and you will take on any project that comes your way. However, it is important that you know the going rates for particular kinds of freelance writing, editing and proofreading jobs so that you are getting what you are entitled to. You wouldn’t be willing to work at McDonald’s if they paid you $2 for every 200 hamburgers you flipped, would you? Well there are a lot of freelancers out there who sell themselves short by taking on writing jobs that require 10 articles at two dollars a pop.
We all have to start somewhere, but being taken advantage of is never a good way to begin. If you are worried about lack of experience or published clips, try writing for a site like Suite101. You will be able to get some web-published clips and some good experience writing for the web. Another good way to build up your portfolio is to offer your writing services to volunteer organizations. While these are commonly non-paying, they are quite reputable and will give you great clips and references for future projects. Even better, you will get to feel all warm and fuzzy inside that you did something nice for someone!
To get an idea of acceptable rates, check with the most current version of the Writer’s Market book. This book will become your bible and it is advised that you spend the $25 each year and pick up the newest version. The book offers a wealth of advice from market listings, freelance market rates and helpful articles pertaining to all things freelance.
3. Providing samples of work means you are giving away your work for free. Working hard to write a quality piece, only to have someone take it from you with nothing more than a thank you is unacceptable. Do not work for free. If a client wants to see how your write, provide him/her with clips of your work (see #2). Freelancing is a job, just like any job, and when you work you are expected to be paid for your services. If a potential client will only work with you under the context of a freebie, walk away.
4. It is much easier and satisfying to write about what you know and what you are interested in. Chances are high that the first piece of writing advice, solicited or otherwise, that you were given regarding your freelancing endeavor, sounded something like this: write what you know. This is a very good piece of advice and should be something you try to adhere to when you can. Of course there will be times when a client wants copy written about colon cleansing or forex trading, and of course you have to write about these topics that you no nothing about and have no particular interest in whatsoever.
However, when pitching ideas, stick to the things you enjoy. It is much easier to write about something that you are personally interested in, not to mention the research behind the piece will be less time-consuming. You are more likely to produce more work of a higher caliber when it is about something you know.
5. Freelance writers who are not organized and cannot manage their time should consider another career path. You will be juggling multiple projects at any given time. It is essential that you keep track of all your deadlines on one central calendar (I find the large desk ones work best). You also need to keep track of payments from clients. You should create a system, even if it is a simple notebook where you devote one page to each project/client, in order to keep up with billing out clients and recording payments.
It’s been a while since anything of remarkable excitement happened with regards to my writing. However, over the weekend I had the pleasure of interviewing two “subjects” (for lack of a better term) for an upcoming piece. I had a lot of fun with the subject matter and I really enjoyed crafting the questions as well. I don’t want to give too much away yet, though I’ll fully disclose the details once I write the article(s).
What I found to be most enlightening about the experience was that the interviewing was something I had been really intimidated by. Just goes to show how important it is to not let preconceived fears prevent you from attempting something.
Click here or scroll…Palm Sunday (New York: Dial Press, 1999), 65-72.
How to Write With Style
by Kurt Vonnegut
Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink-stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to readers. We call these revelations, accidental and intentional, elements of style.
These revelations tell us as readers what sort of person it is with whom we are spending time. Does the writer sound ignorant or informed, stupid or bright, crooked or honest, humorless or playful– ? And on and on.
Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you’re writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead — or, worse, they will stop reading you.
The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don’t you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.
So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head.
1. Find a subject you care about
Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.
I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way — although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.
2. Do not ramble, though
I won’t ramble on about that.
3. Keep it simple
As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. “To be or not to be?” asks Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story “Eveline” is this one: “She was tired.” At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.
Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
4. Have guts to cut
It may be that you, too, are capable of making necklaces for Cleopatra, so to speak. But your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.
5. Sound like yourself
The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was Conrad’s third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.
In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand.
All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens to not be standard English, and if it shows itself when your write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue.
I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.
6. Say what you mean
I used to be exasperated by such teachers, but am no more. I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say. My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable — and therefore understood. And there went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint or what any number of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledy-piggledy, I would simply not be understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing, if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood.
Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.
7. Pity the readers
They have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don’t really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school — twelve long years.
So this discussion must finally acknowledge that our stylistic options as writers are neither numerous nor glamorous, since our readers are bound to be such imperfect artists. Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient readers, ever willing to simplify and clarify — whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales.
That is the bad news. The good news is that we Americans are governed under a unique Constitution, which allows us to write whatever we please without fear of punishment. So the most meaningful aspect of our styles, which is what we choose to write about, is utterly unlimited.
8. For really detailed advice
For a discussion of literary style in a narrower sense, in a more technical sense, I recommend to your attention The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. E.B. White is, of course, one of the most admirable literary stylists this country has so far produced.
You should realize, too, that no one would care how well or badly Mr. White expressed himself, if he did not have perfectly enchanting things to say.
In Sum:
1. Find a subject you care about
2. Do not ramble, though
3. Keep it simple
4. Have guts to cut
5. Sound like yourself
6. Say what you mean
7. Pity the readers
Ok, so we want to be taken seriously as writers. We want to command big pay and reputable jobs. We need to come off in all aspects as professional. We need to ooze serious, professional and business-mindedness at ALL times. So how to we do this?
Create an email strictly for business use. No more cutesy email address when dealing with anything and anyone with the potential to see us as less than serious about what we do.
I’ve FINALLY gotten around to creating a “for business use only” email account that sounds 100% professional.
Do any of you have multiple emails for your different “personas”?
It may be entirely possible that I am the only person who does not Twitter. I am also kind of ashamed to admit why that is. Truth be told, I don’t really get it. I mean I know that it basically lets your friends or those who “follow” you, know what you are up to, but how does that really help me? Socially, it’s a way to let people know quickly and concisely what’s going on, I get that. But why else would a person Twitter?
Let’s discuss:
1. Do you Twitter?
2. If so, what is the purpose of it for you?
3. What should I know about Twitter?
UPDATE: I am now twittering (as an experiment, of course). If you want to follow me click on my Twitter link on the bottom left hand side of this blog, or here.
Querying Exercise: Make a list of all the local publications that you can think of, both printed and online. Browse them and see if any fit your style. Do they publish the kinds of articles that you are interested in writing? Study the publications you are most interested in. Do any of your ideas fit the publication? If so, this is a great place to begin your querying practice.
Goal: Find 5 local/regional pubs (print or electronic) and read cover to cover, paying special attention to what kinds of articles they publish and their voice and target audience. Brainstorm your idea files to see if any ideas would fit into the publication. Also notice while reading the pubs if you come up with any new ideas, which is likely to happen (take notes!). Research the pub’s submission guidelines. Draft a query letter. Polish letter. Send it.
By the end of this exercise you should have 5 queries perfectly catered to a local publication. This will help you to:
1. Study a publication and identify both the target audience and the kinds of stories it covers and articles it publishes.
2. Cater your brilliant idea to fit the needs of the individual publication.
3. Practice writing query letters (because everyone knows that practice makes perfect and lands you paying freelance gigs!).
As a freelance writer, I know that I need to start querying for publication. So why am I so hesitant? I guess because it is my nature to get stuck in a comfort zone and not really know how to advance beyond it. And of course the fear of rejection also is a bit of a barrier.
However, I don’t have anything on my writer’s plate for this weekend, so my GOAL is to query. And I already have an idea and a market in mind. I am ready to put all those lessons I’ve learned to practical use and get some experience. I’ll post progress as it’s made.
Is anyone ready to jump aboard the querying ship with me?
In my personal quest to improve my language usage (and those around me) I propose once and for all that we make it clear to the entire English-speaking world that ‘irregardless’ is not a word. At first it sounds innocent enough to say “Irregardless, I still want to go to New York for Christmas”. However, the correct word choice is ‘regardless’, meaning without regard. Using ‘irregardless’ creates a double negative, essentially translating to “not without regard” which boils down to meaning the same thing as “with regard”.
So, next time you are tempted to use the word ‘irregardless’ or you overhear someone else use it, don’t be afraid to correct them. It is your duty as a card-carrying member of the grammar police.
Do you have a word that drives you crazy?
I am a natural blogger-type. Why? Because it comes easily for me to translate my thoughts into a first person dialog. I like imagining myself typing out the words, conversation-like, and having someone on the other end of the so-called blogosphere interpret them as friendly and meant for them alone. It’ s personable and chatty. The “I” speaking to the “you” seems much more likely to be persuasive, seem much more authoritative and comes across as much less intimidating (in my opinion).
Don’t get me wrong. I also understand about the professionalism that comes across when I write in the third person. In academia and other more serious avenues of writing, third person writing is the only acceptable way to go.
I suppose it all depends on your audience and the medium in which you are writing for. Blogs are perfectly acceptable as written in first/second person. Advertising is only truly effective when you write your ads in the first/second person. Think about it. How strange would it sound it your product’s tagline was addressed to “he” or “she” as opposed to “you”? Chances are strong that the product would flop instantaneously.
Another real wall that has built up against using the third person for me is that academically speaking, I am an English Major. However, while half my college career was spent writing Lit papers (third person, naturally), the other half of the time I was focused on creative writing where I was encouraged to write in the first/second person. My entire creative writing portfolio is comprised of first/second person pieces! I am clinging on for dear life to the only kind of writing I feel naturally more comfortable with.
I guess my biggest worry is that somehow the quality of the articles I write in the third person will lack intimacy with my audience. I have it so embedded in my brain that third person writing is boring, dull and for lack of a better term, “stuffy/academic”.
However, as a writer I must learn to accommodate the “rules” of the medium where I am writing. Specifically speaking as far as Suite is concerned, I need to re-wire my brain to think in terms of the third person. This is going to be a challenge. A BIG challenge, but one that I need to acclimate myself to.
Any hints/exercises on how to train my brain to write in the third person narrative?
Getting back into the swing of things is making me more aware of how I use my time. For instance, it is a given that I will give 40 hours of my week over to my full time job. This is set in stone. With the exception of sick days, vacations or unforeseen circumstances, these 40 hours are accounted for. Simple.
So how can I get myself into a routine where I devote a set number of hours a week to my writing tasks? I say “routine” because I think that is the key. In order to be able to do anything on a regular basis, it needs to become second nature. For example, every Tuesday, I wake up at 6:30 because I have to be at work at 8. I don’t argue with myself or try to come up with excuses for not doing what needs to be done. I don’t even think about it at all. My brain registers that it’s a Tuesday so I get up and go to work.
Unfortunately, new habits are harder to acquire. Especially those that have deadlines attached to them. I have two choices: I can work at night for a few hours during the week or I could devote a large part of my weekend to my writing responsibilities. Either way, I have to find a method that I can stick to and be consistent with.
So let’s share…If you juggle a “real” job (and by “real” job I am in no way implying that writing is not a job, I just mean that you have another job that pays the bills at the present moment) how do you fit time into your week to write? Do you follow a self-imposed schedule? How many hours a week do you devote to your freelance and/or pet writing projects?
