How to use this Page

Earlier this week I was giving advice to a freelancing friend of mine who was having a bad day, and I heard myself say, “If this assignment violates your code, then don’t do it. It’s as simple as that.”

It made me wonder how many of us have a code, personal rules or standards we won’t break as freelancers. For example, last year an editor who often gives me stories based on her ideas, assigned me a feature based on an idea she’d said I sent to her. When I read the idea, though, I knew I hadn’t sent it to her and told her so. My editor was grateful that I spoke up because the idea did end up belonging to another writer. Poof went a well-paying assignment — the money for which I could have really used — but the cost of breaking my personal code would have cost me more. However, I’m pretty sure many freelancers would have rationalized this by telling themselves, “I won’t say anything because she usually assigns me her own ideas, and besides, I need the money and it’s my editor’s fault if it’s a mistake.”

I’m not sure if honesty is my code. I’m not one of those folks who’ll tell a friend, “Your butt looks big in those jeans” or a student, “My seven-year-old can spell better than you can.” There are times when honesty isn’t a good policy, and it’s better to be diplomatic or even mute. It’s more like if I know something’s wrong and someone’s going to get screwed or hurt because of it, I’ll speak up, even if it’s not in my best interests. Maybe it’s the concept of playing fair that’s my code.

Other writers I know have different codes. I know a recipe developer who’s a vegetarian, and she runs from any project involving meat … indeed any project that doesn’t align with her food values. Another writer I know won’t work weekends. Weekends are for her family and nothing, not even an assignment, can interfere. And another acquaintance won’t write for a magazine that’s sold in a store she believes to be unethical.

So I’m curious … do you have a code as a freelancer? If you feel like sharing it (or want to admit that you don’t have one!) add your comments below. [db]

Share This

I was recently on a writer’s forum where a writer posted that he was writing articles for a penny a word and wondering if that was wise. The other posters shared that they also write for a penny a word, and boast that they can bang out the articles quickly so it’s worth it for them on a per-hour basis.

I decided to run some numbers. Keep in mind that these are all estimates and based on my own sketchy knowledge of how much my expenses are, how many weeks people work per year, etc. Also, keep in mind that freelance writers typically aren’t working on paying work 40 hours per week, so the income I figured for freelancers would be even lower.

The minimum wage here in New Hampshire is $7.25 per hour. If you work 40 hours per week at minimum wage for 49 weeks (leaving some time for vacation and sick days), that’s $14,210 per year.

If you could research and write, say, a 1,000-word article in an hour, that would earn you $10 per hour. If you work as a writer for $10 per hour for 49 weeks, that’s $19,600 per year. But wait…being a freelancer, I pay $1,800 per year for my own (crappy) health insurance, and let’s give a conservative guess of $5,000 annually for expenses, including computer equipment, office supplies, mortgage and utilities just for my office space, etc. If I subtract that from the yearly freelance pay, that’s $12,800 per year — less than minimum wage!

Now, I realize that some people do freelance writing as a supplement to their full-time jobs, or they’re supported by a spouse and their freelancing income is fun money. For me, though, working at a penny a word is simply not sustainable.

Also, why write for a penny a word when, with some thought, you can easily earn 10 times as much: 10 cents per word, which you would earn at some small trade magazines? Then you’d be making $100 per hour.

Writing is undervalued by many. But if businesses that use writing value the work, skill, and knowledge that goes into a 1,000-word article at a measly $10, it’s partly because there are hordes of writers willing to write for that much!

However, I don’t believe that if people weren’t working for these bottom-feeders, wages for writers would rise. There’s no way that someone currently paying a penny a word would raise rates to a much more reasonable $1 per word (or even 10 cents per word!) because writers refuse to work for a penny a word — he would simply disappear.

If you’re a good writer, persistent, and professional, you can earn $50,000, $100,000, $200,000 per year and more. And yes, I do know someone who earns $200,000 per year writing magazine articles and corporate communications.

You also don’t need to start at a penny a word and “work your way up.” My first assignment, back in 1996, paid $500. And no, that was not a fluke, and no, I was not just lucky. I pitched magazines that paid a reasonable amount because it never occurred to me that the effort and skill I put into an article would be worth mere pennies. I wrote a query that sold, and I deserved to be paid a decent sum for my idea, skills, time, effort, and knowledge.

Of course, I’m not at the top of the pay scale by any means, though I make a very comfortable living as the main breadwinner for our family. My minimum rate for articles is 50 cents per word, and those articles have to be fairly straightforward and easy. My top rate so far is about $2.50 per word for national magazines. But there are probably people out there earning $6 per word wondering why I put up with such low wages! So the bottom line is that you need to figure out what your work is worth and what’s economically sustainable for you. Just don’t sell yourself short!

Do you have a minimum rate? Have you ever worked for pennies per word? Do you still do it? Why or why not? Please post your experiences in the Comments below. [lf]

Share This

Brazen Careerist Penelope Trunk took aim at The 4-Hour Workweek darling Tim Ferriss last week on her blog with a post called “5 Time Management Tricks I Learned From Years of Hating Tim Ferriss.” And she’s not coy in her post. She came into the ring throwing punches and didn’t stop for 700 (or so) words.

I’ve read the 4-Hour Workweek and had mixed feelings about the book when I put it down. I liked it because helped me figure out a way to do the types of stories I wanted to write.

On the other hand, I rolled my eyes at how Ferriss won his kickboxing world record (he played a loophole in the rules), and after subscribing to his blog for a few months, I decided to drop it from my feed reader. It might have been the fact that he made scrambled eggs in a microwave oven. I’m just not sure I can take food advice from someone who’d cook an egg this way. And besides, I wasn’t reading his blog to get his egg-cooking tips, any more than you’d give a rat’s ass how Linda and I pluck our eyebrows or exfoliate our elbows on our how-to-make-moolah-writing blog.

At first read, I was impressed at how honest Trunk was with her feelings about Ferriss and his book. Then I felt weird about it and uncomfortable for her. I cringed when she wrote what she learned about Ferriss through her book editor; I’d be annoyed if I were her editor for letting that confidence out. Let me rule out right now: it’s not a gender thing. I love reading the rants of angry women. I applaud women who take a stand. Trunk’s a terrific writer and I respect her honesty. But there’s honesty and there’s offering your readers free reign to pick through your dirty laundry basket, and that’s how I felt after reading this post — I saw too much of Trunk’s dirty underwear here.

On the other hand, Trunk and Ferriss, being master marketers and all, are probably giving each other virtual high fives this morning. I bet Ferriss’s amazon.com numbers went up, and so did Trunk’s, and they both got a bunch of new blog subscribers. So what do I know?

What do you think? Would you ever publicly skewer another writer in the way Trunk did, decide to play nice, or say nothing at all and keep your opinions about a professional colleague you dislike to yourself? Why or why not? Add your comments below. [db]

Share This

Let’s just admit it: this world economic meltdown really sucks. It sucks for everyone, and it sucks for us writers, as we watch magazines fold, pages shrink, websites shut down, editors getting their pink slips (and we all know, another name for a laid-off editor is a new freelancer).

Although times weren’t nearly as bad then as now, this actually reminds me a lot of when I first started freelancing. It was the mid 1990s, it was a recession, and I was living in upstate New York with its perennially struggling economy. I had graduated from college in December (early), I had intended to go to law school, but in last week of school, I decided that wasn’t what I wanted after all. So I woke up on New Year’s day, and I realized that, for the first time in my life, I had absolutely nothing to do. For the rest of my life!  I had no school to go to. I had no job. And I had no money.

My work experience consisted of: monogramming towels at Bloomingdale’s, selling shoes at Payless at the mall, and, in high school, a few newspaper internships.  So I cracked open the yellow pages, flipped to “P” for publishers, and started making some phone calls. It’s a long story, but I eventually got offered freelance work from a small publisher in town. I didn’t know what “freelance” was. I thought that there were maybe 100 freelance writers in all of America.  But took the gig, and thought maybe I could get another and another, and so it went, and here I am, thirteen years later.

I’ve told that story a lot, but the part that I don’t usually tell is how little work I had during that first year –I could have made more at McDonald’s, my husband and I hunted for change in the couch to buy groceries.  And I don’t often talk about how I filled my days. There were a lot of long walks. There was a lot of writing in my journal, about things that interested me and the kind of writing career I thought I would have. I went to the library to use their magazine database (remember going to the library?) and I sent out so many queries that by the end of the first year, I had a file four inches thick. (This was all done by mail, in those ancient days, and with that relic we used to call a SASE.) I was rejected constantly. I mean, every single day, my mailbox would have at least one piece of bad news.

I’d stand at the mailbox about 18 seconds after the mailman had delivered, and open each letter with my heart in my throat.

But here’s the thing that I marvel about, looking back at my 21 year old self. When I’d open those inevitable rejection letters, I’d laugh. I’d say, okay, at least I’m in the game. I shake my head thinking about that, because I don’t feel like that now. I hate rejection! I feel like I’m far too experienced to not have every single one of my ideas greeted with enthusiasm, champagne, and a bouquet of my favorite roses. If I’d had that attitude at the beginning, of course, I would have never gotten my career off the ground. I constantly have to remind myself of that. But I digress.

Here’s the other thing that I think about, when I think about those days, and it’s what’s relevant to the current moment: I eventually built up quite the freelance career, and by the late 1990s, was making a six figure income writing for magazines. I was so busy that I felt like my brain was leaking out of my ears. I looked back on those early days –of taking long walks, and writing in the journal, and thinking of new ideas, and I’d miss them.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t miss rolling quarters, but I will always miss the less frantic pace of work. That time was an essential period of incubation for me and my writing career.

So if you’re facing a slow time right now with your work –a hard time –I want to encourage you to think of it as a time of incubation, not a time of stagnation. If you’ve been too busy to think and you’ve suddenly got time on your hands, try to think of it as a gift. Re-focus. Set new goals.  Remember: nothing good ever came from a place of panic. If you have a “passion project” you’ve been putting off, here’s your chance. It’s better than watching House re-runs on TiVo, (or at least watching more than one!). If your workspace isn’t what you’d like, take this time to reorganize. Evaluate yourself as a writer: where are you weak? Make a plan to improve. More great ideas from Diana here and from Monica here.

One of my favorite professors in college told me that there were only two things in life that are true. The first thing is “this too shall pass”.  Our economy will find its floor, times will get better. The second truth?  “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”  Focus on what you can control– and decide that you will emerge strong from these hard times. All you have to do is figure out how. [Alison Stein Wellner]

Share This

I’ve been struggling with a book proposal for going on two years. Every couple of weeks, my husband asks, “How’s the X book coming?” and I feel the pool of despair inch out a little farther in my gut. This weekend he asked again and I snapped, “It’s not, okay? Lay off!” I rarely snap, so we talked about it. I told him how anxious his inquiries made me feel, and he pointed out (rightfully) I’d done so much work on this proposal that it was a shame not to finish it and put it out there in the marketplace. I admitted I felt stuck with the book — I didn’t feel connected to the material — and that connectedness was important to me. He recommended I hire someone to look it over for me — another writer or a book doctor. Immediately, I perked up.

I did a little research on book doctors, found someone who looked good, then did my due diligence by asking some trusted writer friends for their opinions. I talked to one friend on the phone who said, “Diana, she’s great — but I don’t think you need her. Let me look at your proposal. Maybe I’ll see something that can be easily fixed.”

I felt my heart race, my cheeks flame. “Okay,” I said weakly. I sat there after the call feeling a bit ill. It had nothing to do with my friend being an amazing writer, someone who gets her essays selected for The Best Food Writing compilations and whose third book is coming out next year from a major publisher. I can take criticism from the best of them.

What it was is that I hate hate HATE asking friends for help. I don’t mind paying for help, thus why I was ready to shell out $500 for a book doctor, but ask a friend to read 50 pages of (what I thought was) sheer drivel? I’d rather pull my own toenails out, thank you. Maybe it’s the eldest child syndrome, or that I’m an incorrigible control freak or that I think, “They’re busy with their own work, they don’t have time to help me.” I’m simply more comfortable helping someone than to be the one accepting help. In my moments of utter self-honesty, though, it has mostly to do with an excess of pride.

I did it. I fought the urge to “forget” sending the file and I sent it. For many of you this might be a “What’s the big deal? Whoopie … you asked a colleague to read your work.” But it was a revelation for me. I’ve been thinking about how, in a way, not asking for help is selfish and keeps a relationship unbalanced. Asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness. If you’re always doing the giving, it doesn’t give your friends or colleagues the chance to give back. The relationship becomes a one-way street, with the chronic giver in this quasi-Godlike benefactor role while the chronic receiver gets stuck playing the mere mortal.

I’ve decided that I’m going to lower my guard and start asking for more help. So my writing friends out there, watch out.

How about you? Do you have a hard time asking friends to critique your work and such? How do you handle it? Add your comments below. [db]

Share This

After a lazy and stagnant summer workwise, I kicked myself in the butt last month and decided to tackle some projects on my to-do list. One of them was finishing the 3-week story idea workshop I wanted to teach through this site. Done!

Next was an idea I’ve had brewing for ages. I’m an incurable Anglophile, but I’ve never been able to find a website or blog to feed my addictions. I thought, Why not start one of my own? All hail Britannia! (The fabulous Reese of DesignbyReese did the header for me.)

If you’re fascinated with British food, culture, style, and/or history, do check it out. I’ve only had it live for a couple days and it’s definitely a work-in-progress, but it’s already getting some good traffic. If you prefer to read blogs through a feed reader, there’s a link up at the top of the main page to help you out. Thanks! [db]

Share This

Courtesy of WorldHum, I chuckled this afternoon over an article in the UK’s Telegraph, which tells us which English words sound the ugliest to Italians.

Topping the list was “weekend.” Those crazy Italianos are kidding, right? Out of all the words we Anglos wield, the Italians alight on weekend? (OT, but I love how the British say weekend, with the stress on the 2nd syllable. Week-END.) What about unguent? Phlegmatic? Pus? Or if we can consider the profane, how about bypassing Saturday and Sunday for C U next Tuesday?

What English words irritate your eardrums? Add your comments below. [db]

Share This

(Back in 2006, Linda wrote a post about health and the freelancer. These odds & ends are a continuation.)

Watch your butt

This is an indelicate subject, but I’m an indelicate person, so here goes.

The more successful you are as a freelancer, the more you sit on your ass. Sitting for hours a day at a keyboard = unhappy heiney. Unhappiness begins with a spreading posterior. You’ll notice as the years pass, your butt cheeks spread. Then, you hit 40 or, if you’re female, pop out a few kids, and whoa, it’s Preparation H time. Combine the spreading-butt phenomenon and the horrendous hemorrhoids with a terrible diet — lots of coffee and diet soda, not enough fruits and fiber — and the butt expansion/hemorrhoidal hell only gets worse.

We writers fuss over our wrists, necks, and lower backs, but it’s the butt that bears the brunt of our profession. Make your butt a health asset:

• Do butt squeezes throughout the day. Not only does this help tighten your glutes (the heiney muscles), it gets blood moving and flowing “down there.”
• Aim to eat 25 to 30 grams of dietary fiber every day. Fiber keeps you “regular,” as grandma used to say. When you’re not regular, you’re constipated, and chronic constipation is one cause of those nasty hemorrhoids. Most Americans don’t get anywhere near this recommended amount of fiber in their diets, due, in part, to a love of processed food. There are so many easy ways to sneak extra fiber in your diet:
  • Look for the breakfast cereals out there that have anywhere from 5 to 9 grams of fiber in every serving (preferably cereals that don’t have a lot of sugar and/or artificial sweeteners).
  • Eat raspberries: One-half cup contains a whopping 20 grams of fiber!
  • Include a huge, vegetable-rich salad every day for lunch, and sprinkle it with wheat bran or ground flaxseeds.
  • If you can’t get all your fiber requirements from diet alone, then look to supplements. The Vitamin Shoppe makes a product called Miracle Fiber that I really like. It’s inulin, a natural vegetable fiber, that dissolves completely and flavorlessly into any beverage. A teaspoon has 5 grams of fiber. I add it to my tea and water to boost my fiber intake. I even sneak it into my kid’s hot cocoa.

Aren’t you glad you asked? Ooops, you didn’t.

Play with your diet

When I worked in a cubicle, I used to read a lot of diet books. Not just books to help me lose weight (God knows all those trips to the vending machines took their toll!), but books about vegetarianism and general health improvement. Most of these books required a new way of eating and thinking about food. They also required a lot of time to shop, prepare food, and cook. Or the plan would require me to eat at certain times of the day — and those times were usually when I was trying to get a package out the door to Fed Ex or was suffering through a boooooring meeting.

Maybe you’ve been thinking about going vegan. Or you’d like to cut sugar or caffeine out of your diet. If you’re freelancing, you have the perfect job, the ideal setting, to make these kind of dietary changes (changes to your exercise habits, too!). You have flexibility to plan your schedule. You have no boss who’s going to raise her right eyebrow if you need to chop vegetables at 10:30 a.m. Moreover, sometimes dietary changes make you cranky. I remember giving up caffeine when I worked in an office job. It was horrible. I was snappy, my head hurt, but I still had to perform at 100 percent. If you’re doing this at home, though, you can take it easy for a few days, maybe even sneak in a couple naps. Then there are some of the unpleasant side effects some dietary changes create. Think about what happens when you increase your fiber intake or start eating more legumes. It’s really nice not having to share this part of a new diet with co-workers. (Cats and dogs don’t seem to mind strange noises and smells.)

Set up an HSA

A lot of self-employed folks think HSAs, or health savings accounts, are bennies for those who work for an employer. Not so. You can easily set up your own HSA. (An HSA is tax-exempt money you set aside in an account to pay for things like doctor’s visits, insurance deductibles, prescriptions, eyeglasses — even stuff like sunscreen and massages!) Last week someone on a writers’ board I belonged to posted about a company that offers no-fee HSAs for consumers. I haven’t set one up through them, fwiw, but it looks promising.  [db]

Share This

I finally got around to watching No Country for Old Men through Netflix last night. I love gritty films like this, where there’s not necessarily a neat, tidy ending. Plus, my expectations were set high because of so many recommendations people had given me.

The acting was superb. I could barely stand to put the movie on pause while I did laundry and took bathroom breaks. I loved the scenes where Javier Bardem’s character asks other characters to call a coin toss. Brilliant. Near the end when he comes out of Carla Jean’s house and checks his feet? Wow. Tommy Lee Jones? Oh my gosh, love him. I even thought Josh Brolin was wonderful, and I stopped thinking of him as “Barbara Streisand’s stepson” about five minutes in. The cinematography was stunning, the pacing relentless, etc., etc.

But then there’s the last scene and the screen goes blank and I’m left sitting there thinking, Is this it? I’m a movie goer who loves ambiguous endings, but I was so confused here I went to a couple movie spoiler sites and read the detailed plot summaries so I could see if I’d missed something. I hadn’t. I just didn’t get it.

What about you? What movies have you seen that you just didn’t get? (I realize this isn’t freelancing related, but heck, we all need to loaf creatively now and then.) [db]

Share This

Last week Linda and I conducted a telephone mentoring session with the writer who’d won the drawing for the free half-hour of mentoring for signing up for our Renegade Writer e-courses. Both of us were impressed with this part-time writer’s magazine credits. We’re talking top-of-the-heap consumer publications that have a certain cachet.

One thing that struck me was this writer telling us how surprisingly straightforward it was dealing with the editor at a particularly snazzy pub. The editor had gotten right back to her, it sounds like edits (if there were any) were painless, and –gasp– the editor was quite nice! Like many of us, she’d assumed that dealing with a magazine of this caliber would be a royal pain in the tush. We wondered aloud that one reason why this writer had such early career success with this market (besides her obvious skills and talents!) is that her competition looks at the masthead and thinks, “No WAY could I ever get in there. I’m sure there are thousands of other writers with more clips/better educations/nicer hairstyles/(fill in meaningless superlatives) they’d want to work with.” So only the audacious grasp the opportunity.

We seem to have some backup with this theory. Last week I was reading The 4-hour Workweek blog and I was struck by Tim Ferriss’s post about why bigger goals equal less competition. I loved this: “If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.” I’m going to put that up on my office whiteboard since it’s too long to tattoo on my inner arm. Good advice. [db]

Share This

Tonight I got an e-mail from a self-help guru announcing that for the low price of $597 (which I could pay in three installments), I could learn the secrets of staying up in a down economy — and get some free CDs as well. Smarm factor aside, something in the sales pitch got my attention. A simple question: “Who says you can’t make money during a recession?”

A couple months ago, I noticed I got really anxious every time I read our local newspaper.  It seemed like every day, there was more glum news about our tanking economy or stories about middle-class folks in my neighborhood shopping at half-empty food banks. The classified sections were filled with foreclosure notices, sometimes a dozen a day. I’d put the paper down and feel bad for the rest of the day — not a good place to be when your job requires a can-do attitude. I began to think stuff like, “Why bother pitching? They’re probably not buying anyway.” Yikes!

One night it hit me, that I was actually having a pretty good year despite the economy. I’d actually had to turn down some work a few times. I decided to stop reading the paper. When I told my mother, she was shocked. “How will you know what’s going on in the world?” she sputtered. “There are the elections! The economy! Iraq!” To which I answered I’d have to be living under a copy of Finnegans Wake on Britney Spears’ bookshelf to miss any news about the elections (Obama’s in/Clinton’s out) or the economy (bad day on Wall Street last week) or Iraq (hey, one of my brothers just got back from northern Iraq, best news of all!) I notice that on my media diet, I’m feeling less stressed and anxious, and that old can-do Burrell spirit is back in spades.

So back to that huckster’s question. Who says you can’t make money — or sell a book or crack a dream market or make enough money to move to full-time freelancing — during a recession? It’s not your local paper, although it can contribute. The answer may be staring back at you in the mirror. I’m certainly not advising you to stick your head in the sand or to jam your fingers in your ears every time there’s bad news about magazine ad numbers or layoffs on Madison Avenue. Just notice how information like this affects you and your marketing efforts, and think about how you can use the information to support your work, not bring it down. All around you, writers are selling book proposals to publishing houses — subscribe to PublishersLunch if you don’t believe me. Last I heard, the New Yorker is still buying. I know dozens and dozens of writers who are having anywhere from a stellar year to a pretty darn good year, considering the E word. Hearsay, yes, but tale a look around yourself. Not everything is doom and gloom, as much as newspaper editors would love you to believe. [db]

Share This

I’m sure a lot of you have seen or heard about a new trend in magazines, asking readers, i.e. nonprofessional writers, to provide all the stories in an issue.

I think we’d better get used to this, since my prediction is this isn’t just going to be a one-off experiment. People are really becoming comfortable with telling their own stories, and they’re doing a good job of it. Of course, we all think about blogs as being the prototype –which of course is what we’re all doing here right now! But blogs are actually only a contributing factor to the change that is coming, or the bare beginnings of what we will see in the way information is distributed in the future. The new paradigm, I think, will be computer games, which are more and more popular among young people both here and abroad.

For instance, last year, there was a highly popular game called World Without Oil, which asked players to imagine what their lives would be like during a genuine oil crisis. I heard its creator speak about it yesterday at a conference, and blogged about this and what it could mean for writers on my site.

In that post, I said this:

The value a nonfiction writer brought to the world used to be easy to describe. We go forth in the world, and find out what people think, and know, and tell everyone else these stories. But I think that way may be finished, or, to be more accurate –it’s finishing….In these new forms of media, people are telling their own stories, without mediation.

The difference between a game and a magazine, or a blog and a newspaper, is the interactivity. People aren’t readers, they’re participants, they have a goal, they have something at stake. They don’t need us writers to tell them what to think, to interpret, to mediate –what they want is something to react to, something to absorb, and moreover, they want to tell us (by which I mean the entire world) what they know.

Obnoxiously quoting myself further:

The new value of a nonfiction writer I think will be to tell our own stories, the stories only we can tell, based on some unusual experience or expertise. And, the knowledge and the application of actual narrative craft. [Which, I’ll add here, most “real people” don’t know very well and do not need to know very well.]

What do you think? Am I nuts? Have I had a swig of new media spiked Kool Aid? If not, where does all of this leave us writers? [alisonsteinwellner]

Share This

This morning one of my editors let me know that a project I had pitched them had been reshaped and she invited me to work on part of it. Suffice it to say that the part she offered was the least compelling part of the project, the recipe development. I was also annoyed because she’d either forgotten or ignored that I’d told her I was no longer doing that kind of work unless it was part of a total package she assigned to me i.e. an article with three recipes. I’m not a straight recipe developer. I like creating recipes for my own stories; this skill sets me apart from food writers who can’t cook, just as a travel writer with photographic skills has the edge over a writer who doesn’t. Doing six or 12 recipes for another writer, though, brings my hourly rate down. It also makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a citrus reamer to break up the monotony. It’s. Not. Fun.

I stomped around here for a few hours, then I thought about my options. I could suck it up and accept the work. A quick kick of annoyance whomped me in the gut. Why should I do that when I brought them the package? And I didn’t leave an office job with shitty work so I could be independent — and take shitty work. I’m no prima donna artiste, but I’ve learned that I do a much better job — and I’m happier — when I’m fully engaged with a project. If it doesn’t rock my boat, I don’t stick around for long, and that’s probably a good thing for everyone involved. Another option was to remind her that I don’t do straight recipe development. This option felt better … still, I was miffed that they’d taken a good chunk of my idea, run with it, and tossed me a bone. A gnarly bone, at that.

The other option didn’t come to me until a few hours ago, and this one settled over me like the softest gossamer, as good ideas are wont to happen with me. This magazine didn’t own my idea, they couldn’t pull it off like I’d envisioned it, and there was nothing stopping me from developing it myself. In fact, I’d probably make much more money off the idea on my own than I would through the magazine. The second this option revealed itself, my brain started going in fifty directions at once. I suddenly felt powerful and energized, light-years away from the demoralized and angry freelancer I was this morning. I dashed off some e-mails, made a few calls, and researched what to do next. I’ll keep you posted what the outcome is, but for now take heed: sometimes the world will scream No at you. But keep listening and you might hear the universe whisper Yes. [dianaburrell]

Share This

I’ve been reading Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers. The main point of the book is that if you’re afraid of something, the goal is not to remove the fear…the goal is to do what you’re afraid of despite the fear. The people you envy — those who seem to courageously face down fears to do what they dream of — are as afraid as you. They just do it anyway.

I can see how this would relate to writing. Many writers are afraid of rejection, which causes them to stall on marketing themselves and sending out queries. I can try as hard as I can to dispel your fears: I can tell you that if you’re not getting rejected, you’re not trying hard enough. That the only way to fail is not to try. That every writer experiences rejection. But maybe, instead of trying to allay writers’ fears, I should just tell them, “So you’re afraid of rejection. Suck it up and send out that query! Feel the fear, but do it anyway.”

What are you afraid of in your writing career? For me, I get nervous before interviews. Please share your experiences in the Comments! [lf]

Share This

10. My American accent offered no clues to my nationality. Four times I was asked if I was British. Once, Canadian. Another time two guys in an elevator inquired “Australian or American?” The rest of the time, after some polite conversation, I was always asked where in the world I was from. Point 10A: I learned how irritating it can be to be asked three or four times a day, “Where are you from?”

9. It’s not wise to use the “I’m an underpaid writer from the U.S.” excuse for not buying a pashmina shawl or a silver bracelet. I was a Westerner in the middle of Rajasthan, ergo I was rich. I quickly learned to blame my penury on a cheap, controlling husband back in Boston. This earned me a smidgen of sympathy. Sorry, honey.

8. I can put up with anything for a night, sometimes two. Sleeping 50 feet away from a snake-infested lagoon, midnight tinkles in an outdoor toilet, cold showers, five-hour car rides on single-lane roads pockmarked with brain-jangling holes, power outages, lack of Internet access … bring it on.

7. When I’m traveling, my native bashfulness vanishes. This may be hard for some of you to believe, but I’m morbidly shy. However, armed with a notepad, pen, and camera, watch out. I’ll ask anyone anything (much to my travel companion’s amusement) and even jump in harm’s way to squeeze off a good shot of a 4-ton elephant.

6. I like squat toilets. Especially if you’re wearing a kurta and loose-legged pants, they’re clean — no bottom on toilet seat issues — and efficient. However, it’s really a good idea to bring toilet paper if you’re not into the bucket-of-water-and-left-hand method of personal hygiene.

5. Don’t tell people I’m a travel writer. Travel writers are as common as mosquitoes in India. It’s better to say you’re a food writer and recipe developer, or that you write about a spas, or your beat is emerging economies. When you specifically tell people what you’re after, they’ll fall all over themselves to help you get your story.

6. Dry humor and sarcasm are best left at home. I had to learn this the hard way. Eventually, I learned to count to five before speaking, but it took me until day 10 of a 12-day trip.

5. Blackberries work everywhere, even in the backwaters of Kerala. I was really impressed with my friend’s unit. Unfortunately, they don’t do well when they’ve been splashed by cumin water (see point #2).

4. Your bag can make or break your trip. Spend money to get a bag that does what you need it to do. I was very happy with my Overland Equipment “Loie” bag, which I purchased from EMS. It held my business cards, wallet, passport, tickets, notebook, pens, DEET, reading glasses, an energy bar, a small bottle of water, cell phone, PDA, and even a trade paperback, but it was never bulky, heavy, or difficult to find what I needed in the bag. No fanny pack required! I’m going to buy more in different colors for upcoming trips.

3. Your travel companion can also make or break your trip. I felt blessed that my travel partner, also a writer, and I got along so well. We had some moments during the trip where moods could have gone south fast (declined American Express cards, ruined Blackberries, lost reading glasses) but we managed to get through these moments with compassion, understanding, and humor.

2. When it comes to reporting, stick with the basics. While I had my laptop with me, there were times the battery needed recharging or we didn’t have Internet access. My travel companion had been taking her notes on her Blackberry, but when it met with a dousing, it gave her trouble for the rest of the trip. My best tools were the pens and steno notebook I carried everywhere with me. Even when one of my pens started leaking, it was easy enough to get my hands on another pen.

1. It sure is nice to be home. [db]

Share This

On a writer’s board I belong to, journalists are buzzing about the latest scandal to hit the memoir-writing industry, the story of Margaret Seltzer a/k/a Margaret B. Jones, who wrote a book about her foster childhood in south central LA running drugs for a gang. Minor little detail: Margaret was raised by her biological family in a comfortable LA suburb, attended private schools, and probably wouldn’t know a gang hand symbol if it slapped her upside her pageboy. Her older sister, bless her soul, blew the lid on her sister’s tale.

I’ve gotten to the point where when I read a memoir, I do so with a willing suspension of disbelief. Sad, isn’t it? Last year I read a memoir that was not only poorly written, but so unbelievable and filled with stuff I knew could be relatively easy to factcheck, I was sorely tempted to invest the time to do so. I’m curious: have any of you Renegade readers picked up a memoir recently and thought, “No way can this stuff be true” or “I wonder if this story has been factchecked”? I’m thinking it would be interesting to put my sleuthing skills to work and start some kind of blog where I look at these books, do some basic factchecking that obviously publishers aren’t doing, and see what happens. [db]

Share This

My husband and I recently co-wrote an article for a trade magazine. When I happened to look at the text weeks after we turned in the article, I noticed that one of the subheds read, “Insert snappy subhed here.” And we had turned it in that way! When the article came out, however, the editor had indeed inserted her own snappy subhed. Hmm…could this be a way to get editors to do some of your work? “Insert catchy title here.” “Insert compelling quote here.” “Insert supporting paragraph here.” [lf]

Share This

It’s finally done…the site for my new organization, Creative Professionals for Animal Welfare (creativePAW). The organization’s mission is to help animal welfare organizations find creative professionals (such as writers, editors, illustrators, and web designers) who are willing to do volunteer work to help with the orgs’ marketing, education, fundraising, and PR efforts.

Please check out the site and join the database…it’s free (obviously) and simple, and you can choose to take on only the volunteer work you have time for. You don’t have to worry about spam if you join the database, as animal welfare orgs have to join and be approved before they can search the database.

According to the Humane Society of the United States, a homeless companion animal is euthanized every eight seconds in the U.S. creativePAW’s mission is to help animal welfare organizations publicize their causes and educate the public about homeless pet issues. So please, sign up and get involved! Also, please do send this note on to the other creative professionals you know: editors, proofreaders, translators, voice talent, illustrators, photographers, PR people, etc.

Thanks so much!

Linda

Share This

It’s funny because it’s true!

Share This

If you’re anything like me, you’ve got a to-do list that’s a foot long, filled with a variety of tasks — everything from the mundane to the critically important. The critical stuff always gets done, and I notice that the mundane does too. It’s all the stuff in the middle that languishes from day to day. And that stuff in the middle tends to be stuff that, once done, could make my life a whole lot better.

I’ve preached before about the virtues of a streamlined to-do list. Here’s a strategy to make it even more effective. Rather than list tasks that you know you’ll get done today because you have the flames of hell toasting your buttocks or just adding stuff like “do laundry,” “buy new file folders,” and “organize paperclips,” write down the three tasks you’ve been putting off. Go on, try it. The tasks can be anything, personal or business-related, as long as they’re creating even the vaguest sense of dread in your stomach. For me, this week, some of my to-do list tasks included sorting out an invoice for a client, figuring out a glitch on our server, analyzing a bill from a vendor and calling him to correct it, picking up my office for 10 minutes (seriously, it was a horrendous mess and I couldn’t think with the clutter), saying no to a friend, and writing for 30 minutes on a new project. Completing just three such items every day has given me an incredible boost of energy and cleared up my mind to focus on tasks that had to be done on a certain day, such as assignments, interviews, or appointments.

Of course, it’s always good to keep a running list of stuff to do — I still keep a list like that, only I tuck it into a drawer and work hard to cross off stuff on my list of three.  Try it out, and let me know what you think: good idea or does it make you forget stuff you really have to do today, like buy toilet paper?

P.S. And if you’ve been putting off signing up for one of our Renegade Writer eCourses, please put this task front-and-center of your new handy-dandy to-do list. We’re starting to get a rush of last-minute signups, so you don’t want to miss out. Three of the courses start Monday, January 7, 2008. That’s less than a week! [db]

Share This

Please watch this amazing lecture by Carnegie Mellon University professor Randy Pausch. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry … and it might change your life.

Share This

In her blog Serenity for the Self Employed, Heather Boerner has an excellent post on The Serenity of Saying No. One of her pieces of advice is to tell too-cheap-for-you clients that you just revised your business plan and you need $X amount to give the assignment the time it deserves. Another tip is to negotiate for longer deadlines if you feel crunched.

When I was in Germany this past October, I spent some time revising my own business plan. While working on the plan, I discovered that I was spending time doing lots and lots of tasks that weren’t paying off, like promoting the Renegade Writer wiki, updating the Review Copy Helper, writing long answers to the many e-mails I get asking for advice, and spending time and money traveling to out-of-state speaking engagements. In each of these cases, I was making myself crazy with stress for little return. (I enjoy providing aspiring writers with help and information, but I was doing so much of it in so many different forms that it was sapping too much of o much of my time and energy.)

In addition, I was having trouble saying “No” to writing assignments. The result: More than a dozen articles due in one month this past summer. Talk about stress!

After I wrote out the tasks that made up my writing career at that point, from speaking to book promos to article assignments, I was able to look them over and decide what to say “No” to. I didn’t completely cut out all of the activities that weren’t paying off for me, but I did come up with ways to pare down.

Since returning from Germany, I’ve refused several assignments, telling the editors that I didn’t have the time to give the articles the attention they deserved. And you know what? The editors weren’t offended, and some of them offered to extend deadlines or even get back to me with different assignments when I was feeling less crunched. I’ve also turned down an out-of-state speaking engagement, come up with a plan to do less updating on the Review Copy Helper, and cut down on promoting the Renegade Writer wiki.

It feels good to say “No” and realize that my career won’t fall apart. I love simplifying my home life — and now I realize that simplifying my work life is just as important. [lf]

Share This

This fall I burned out — in a major way. I had tons of assignments due in August and September, and was psyched that I was going to spend all of October in Munich not working.

Well, after a month of café hopping, traveling around Germany, and meeting new people, I got home…and was still so burned out that I didn’t even want to think about getting back to work. I was tired all the time, and the idea of working on a query, doing an assignment, or writing to editors made me want to crawl under the covers and stay there. I wondered, Do I just need a break — or do I need a new career?

I took some career assessment tests, and they all told me that I should be a writer. O-kay. Then I made a list of the things I love about writing, and an incongruity revealed itself: I listed creativity as one of the things I enjoy about a writing career — but I suddenly realized I wasn’t getting any creative expression out of what is seemingly a creative career. My writing had become formulaic, partly because the formulas have worked so well for me, and partly because it’s difficult to let yourself be creative when an editor is telling you how to structure and organize your article, who to interview, and so on. Instead of feeling like I was creating something new and valuable, when I got an assignment I’d uninspiredly do my interviews, sleepwalk through my research, and crank out my bullet-pointed article.

Write article. Cash check. Repeat. Yawn.

Once I realized why I was feeling so blah about writing, I started researching creativity and trying out new ideas to spark inspiration surrounding my work. I decided that I needed not only to bring a sense of creativity to my work, but also to add creativity to my life outside of work. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far. If you’re feeling burned out in any type of work, maybe this will help you, too.

* Jump outside the box. I was stuck reading the same magazines, listening to the same music, doing the same things every day. So I decided to shake things up. At the bookstore, instead of picking up Body + Soul and Natural Health and Yoga Journal, I picked up Birder’s World and High Times (!) and Ham Radio Operator. This week, I plan to go to the library and borrow some CDs of music I don’t typically listen to, and DVDs of movies I wouldn’t normally watch.

* Be mindful at work. I’ve found that I often take the easy way out in my writing by falling back on overused words and phrases. (Here’s the deal: If I ever write “fill-you-up fiber” in a nutrition article again, you can force me to listen to a Bruce Willis CD.) I also lean too much on bullet points with clever alliterative subheads. So my new plan is to really pay attention when I write and try to come up with the best — not the easiest — way to get my ideas across. Okay, I don’t think anyone will read my next nutrition column in Oxygen and say, “Wow, that’s so creative — so unlike anything Linda has ever done before!” After all, I’ve been doing this full-time for ten years, so in most cases what comes easily to me is still pretty good. But I’ll feel the difference.

You can be creative in a non-writing job or in parts of your job that are not related to writing, too. Before starting a task that you’ve done so much that you can complete it with your eyes closed, figure out how you can do it differently to force your mind to pay attention to the task. I imagine you can even do this with filing (is your filing system really the most efficient?), working the printer (how about adding color to your docs?), or answering e-mail (can you answer all your messages in five sentences of fewer?).

* Take a class. In December, I’ll be signing up for an art class at Kimball-Jenkins Art School in Concord, NH. I was always praised for my artistic abilities when I was younger, but I let those abilities shrivel up from disuse. You don’t have to take an art class if that’s not your thing…how about drumming, or improvisation, or poetry?

* Do the twist. I do all kinds of exercise, but I find that yoga — especially the gentle, meditative kind as opposed to power yoga — opens up my heart and brain. It helps me sweep all the daily this-and-that from my mind so I have room for creativity. I signed up for a weekly yoga session, and will likely be adding a second session as well. You don’t have to shell out for a class: You can do poses at home from a book or DVD.

* Say om. I used to meditate for an hour every week at my karate dojo, but since I stopped doing karate I stopped meditating as well. Now, I’ve started up again, starting out with 10 minutes per day and working my way up to 15. I also occasionally do guided meditations from TheMeditationPodcast.com. Like yoga, meditation helps me make room in my mind for creativity, and it quiets the craziness in there so creative thoughts have a chance to percolate.

* Do morning pages. I’ve been reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, and one of the first things she suggests is doing morning pages: As soon as you wake up, write three pages, long-hand, about anything you want. It doesn’t matter if what you write is drivel or even the same word repeated twenty times. What matters is that you do it. I’m not quite sure how it works, but I suspect you’re spilling all the distracting chatter from your head onto the paper so you can redirect your mental powers to being creative. I also suspect that every once in a while, a creative gem will pop out of your head and onto the paper. I haven’t been doing it long enough to see results, but I’ll keep at it.

I only started adding these ideas to my routine two weeks ago, and I feel so, so much better. I realized that it’s not the writing itself that was the problem, but the way I was going about it. I also realized that I shouldn’t rely on my job to give me all the creative expression I need, but to add creativity to all parts of my life. [lf]

Share This

My husband Eric, owner and editor of BoardgameNews.com, is holding his second annual Games for Soldiers drive. Until November 28, Eric is accepting donations of money and boardgames to be sent to units in Iraq and Afghanistan that he located through AnySoldier.com. Donated money will be used to buy games from a local store that has promised to match the game order with an additional 30% worth of games; so, for example, if the game order is $400, they’ll donate an additional $120 worth of games.

Last year, thanks to donations from his site readers and game group, Eric was able to send $600 worth of games to units serving overseas.

If you’d like to donate games or money, please visit the post on BoardgameNews for details. Thanks! [lf]

Share This

I didn’t expect to have a revleation in my kitchen. My kitchen is very small and was painted a pink grapefruit color by the previous owners, so I try not to spend too much time in there.

But there I was, flipping through the October issue of ASJA Monthly while waiting for my tea water to boil. Bob Bittner’s “From the President’s Desk” column made me stop and think about what I’m doing with my freelance career. He wrote about taking stock of where you are as a freelancer, and asking yourself if it was time to look in another direction. Was I letting the work guide my path, or was I setting the path and making the work follow?

A quick summary of my posts here: I was picked for a Renegade Writer makeover on the basis that I wanted to be a book dork for life. I reviewed for a few newspapers and magazines and wanted to turn that into a major prong of my freelance career. So I sat with the galleys, the catalogues and pitched newspaper editors based on my abilities, and on possible reviews. I had success. I started reviewing for the St. Petersburg Times, started a book column at a local paper, placed an essay about one of my favorite books in Paste Magazine and increased my writing-about-books output.

But then I was met with an unexpected windfall: my book proposal was accepted, and I was on my way toward writing a travel guide about the Jersey Shore (The Jersey Shore, Atlantic City through Cape May: Great Destinations). It was a long, tedious and, at times, exhausting project. But now that the manuscript is with the publisher, and it’s scheduled to be published in May 2008, I feel like it was all worth it. I had a blast, and am impatient to see the book in print.

Since I turned that manuscript over, I’ve been puttering around my house. I was pitching articles and reminding editors I was alive, and working on a few regular corporate projects. But I didn’t know what I wanted to do work wise. I was so tired, and the thought of sorting through the fall/winter catalogues felt like a chore. We also had a death in the family this spring, so I helped my family work through the changes that brought us. I replanted my lawn, cleaned my house, unpacked boxes and wrote on my blog — basically got back to life without having to write 10 hours a day.

I also went to the Haddonfield Library Book Sale, like I do every year. And as I browsed the hundreds of books up for sale, I was tempted to grab as many titles as I could. But my practical side kept telling me to put the book back because I couldn’t sell a review about it. Sure, it might be interesting, but I would be better served spending that time reading a book I could review, and be paid to review. That bothered me. Was reading now solely a job? Should I feel guilty because I wanted to read something that interested me because it interested me, not because I could turn a profit? Isn’t reading about enriching the mind, not just lining my pockets?

Add to that the fact that the book reviewing world is changing. Writing for newspapers is not always lucrative — I could spend hours reading a book, reviewing the book and then get a check for less than what I’d make writing for a small regional magazine. I’m not going to wade into the book review argument here. You can read all about that at the National Book Critics Circle blog. But this, combined with Bob’s column, and that family death, made me take a hard look at why I was moving in what directions.

I got into freelancing for the freedom (among other things). I wanted to pick and choose what to write about, but those topics had been getting stale. I felt weary at the thought of pitching another service article, or scrapping to write a book review that paid less than my grocery bill. I’m still taking stock of where I want to go with this writing thing — maybe travel writing, maybe serious nonfiction. I will never stop reviewing books. It’s too much fun. But will it be my main goal anymore? I’ll have to think about that one.

Until then, I’m well into Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction–and Get It Published
by Susan Rabiner. I’m reading this one because it interests me — that’s what reading should be — and because that might be the next direction I turn. I’m also pitching and writing articles based on book research, which has been fun, too, and uploading books into my Goodreads.com account. Stay tuned! [Jen Miller]

Share This