adrift in Northern California
enjoying a private Edenic retreat
listening to Bob Marley's One Love
on S's play list
contemplating generations
and anticipating the soft sweetness
of the freshly picked blackberries
I plan to add to my next pot
of Twinings green tea
Showing posts with label becoming a freelancer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label becoming a freelancer. Show all posts
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Friday, May 8, 2009
Thoughts on Being a Freelancer Supplemental
Writer and Editor
A couple of week ago, I said a writer is "someone who knows words and knows language and gets turned on by using both well (and by seeing other people do the same thing). A writer is someone who is curious about a lot of different things, and knows ways to satisfy that curiosity--how to research, who to ask, and what to ask in order to get the right information to share with readers."
An editor is a lot like a writer but different. While a writer's passion is words, an editor's passion is text. A writer uses words for a lot of different reasons--to convey information, to explore ideas, to persuade, to incite, to define the world the writer inhabits, to create meaning. Text is what results from the effort to do those things. But text usually is not an end in itself.
An editor understands there's a special relationship between text and its intended audience. Text without readers, that is text that exists outside a community, has no power. It can't inform. It can't incite. It can define nothing. (Just an aside here. A writer can also be the sole audience for what is written.)
The editor is like a bridge between writer and reader. The editor's first task is to make the effort to understand exactly what the writer is saying and what the writer is trying to do by saying it. And the second task is just as important. The editor needs to understand how the audience is going to respond to the text and whether or not that response is going to be the one the writer wants. Then it becomes the editor's job to bring the two things -- the writer's intent and the audience's response -- as close together as possible.
The jobs are different. But one quality identifies both -- a passion for language, including a passion for using it well. It's no surprise that the best writers and the best editors often do both tasks very well.
A couple of week ago, I said a writer is "someone who knows words and knows language and gets turned on by using both well (and by seeing other people do the same thing). A writer is someone who is curious about a lot of different things, and knows ways to satisfy that curiosity--how to research, who to ask, and what to ask in order to get the right information to share with readers."
An editor is a lot like a writer but different. While a writer's passion is words, an editor's passion is text. A writer uses words for a lot of different reasons--to convey information, to explore ideas, to persuade, to incite, to define the world the writer inhabits, to create meaning. Text is what results from the effort to do those things. But text usually is not an end in itself.
An editor understands there's a special relationship between text and its intended audience. Text without readers, that is text that exists outside a community, has no power. It can't inform. It can't incite. It can define nothing. (Just an aside here. A writer can also be the sole audience for what is written.)
The editor is like a bridge between writer and reader. The editor's first task is to make the effort to understand exactly what the writer is saying and what the writer is trying to do by saying it. And the second task is just as important. The editor needs to understand how the audience is going to respond to the text and whether or not that response is going to be the one the writer wants. Then it becomes the editor's job to bring the two things -- the writer's intent and the audience's response -- as close together as possible.
The jobs are different. But one quality identifies both -- a passion for language, including a passion for using it well. It's no surprise that the best writers and the best editors often do both tasks very well.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Thoughts on being a freelancer, lesson two
Last week's commentary on becoming a full time freelancer was about setting reasonable expectations at the start. This week I want to talk about a piece of advice every aspiring writer hears at one point or another.
So, Lesson Number Two in How to Become a Full Time Freelancer: What do you know--not that it's really all that important.
One of the most common piece of advice beginning writers hear is write what you know. To some extent, that makes sense. After all, if the closest you ever came to understanding a particle accelerator is watching coins disappear down a spiral coin wishing well funnel,
you may find it tough to explain what happens inside the Large Hadron Collider. (And what all the fuss was about -- Some kind of fear that black holes would suck up our world and everything in it from the inside out.)
But why would you try? Well let's see. My first writing paycheck was for $35 from United Way for an article I did for them on the Arthritis Foundation to use in their annual campaign. It had something to do with new treatments and helping people learn about them so they could make informed, competent decisions. My second pay check was also for $35, again from United Way, for an article about a program from the Diabetes Association to help people understand the importance of controlling blood sugar levels.
I had been a political science major before dropping out of college and going into restaurant work. I knew nothing about health care or medicine or managing chronic diseases. But the editor liked the pieces and I had my first professional credits. The key is, I did know something. I knew how to find out what I needed to know, and I knew how to ask questions and listen to the answers; so I could interview people and get the information I needed to write the piece the editor had asked for. In a sense, I did write what I knew. I knew how to learn and I wrote what I had learned.
Now there's all kinds of caveats attached to that. Notice, I wasn't writing for an audience of doctors. And I wasn't writing patient education pamphlets. I've done both those things multiple times throughout my career, but there was no way I could learn enough in a short period of time when I first started out.
So there are really two lessons to learn here. The first is that a would be writer cannot be handcuffed to the admonition to write only what you know. If that's all you do, you'll have a very small niche in the writing world indeed. And will you become a writer? Probably not. You'll be a barista who writes articles about double mocha lattes. Or a rocket scientist who knows how to make space travel interesting to audiences who read your occasional articles in Discover. But you'll always be a writer second.
A writer is someone who knows words and knows language and gets turned on by using both well (and by seeing other people do the same thing). A writer is someone who is curious about a lot of different things, and knows ways to satisfy that curiosity--how to research, who to ask, and what to ask in order to get the right information to share with readers.
That's not to say a writer doesn't specialize. For the last 13 or 14 years, I've made a good living writing about and editing works on health and health care for both health professionals and health consumers. And even though articles about health was what I got paid for when I first started, this one time college drop out glorified waiter and bartender wrote articles about beekeeping, running public parks, building a career as ceramic engineer, opening a general store, how books are bought for the library, subversive curriculum, literacy, writing a collaborative novel.
My first article in a national publication was about crepes. Even though I had worked in restaurants, I had never done anything with crepes (except for crepe suzette). But I was curious, and I created 20 crepe recipes. I even took pictures of the dishes and got paid for the photos. It wasn't that long after the Arthritis Foundation piece. And it made me feel really good about what I could do.
Now the second big caveat (the first was don't let yourself be limited by what you know) is know your limitations. For those of you who are still with me, lesson three will be The Great Hotel Fiasco--Don't bite off more than you can chew. (I'll tell you about my first real failure.)
So, Lesson Number Two in How to Become a Full Time Freelancer: What do you know--not that it's really all that important.
One of the most common piece of advice beginning writers hear is write what you know. To some extent, that makes sense. After all, if the closest you ever came to understanding a particle accelerator is watching coins disappear down a spiral coin wishing well funnel,
you may find it tough to explain what happens inside the Large Hadron Collider. (And what all the fuss was about -- Some kind of fear that black holes would suck up our world and everything in it from the inside out.)
But why would you try? Well let's see. My first writing paycheck was for $35 from United Way for an article I did for them on the Arthritis Foundation to use in their annual campaign. It had something to do with new treatments and helping people learn about them so they could make informed, competent decisions. My second pay check was also for $35, again from United Way, for an article about a program from the Diabetes Association to help people understand the importance of controlling blood sugar levels.
I had been a political science major before dropping out of college and going into restaurant work. I knew nothing about health care or medicine or managing chronic diseases. But the editor liked the pieces and I had my first professional credits. The key is, I did know something. I knew how to find out what I needed to know, and I knew how to ask questions and listen to the answers; so I could interview people and get the information I needed to write the piece the editor had asked for. In a sense, I did write what I knew. I knew how to learn and I wrote what I had learned.
Now there's all kinds of caveats attached to that. Notice, I wasn't writing for an audience of doctors. And I wasn't writing patient education pamphlets. I've done both those things multiple times throughout my career, but there was no way I could learn enough in a short period of time when I first started out.
So there are really two lessons to learn here. The first is that a would be writer cannot be handcuffed to the admonition to write only what you know. If that's all you do, you'll have a very small niche in the writing world indeed. And will you become a writer? Probably not. You'll be a barista who writes articles about double mocha lattes. Or a rocket scientist who knows how to make space travel interesting to audiences who read your occasional articles in Discover. But you'll always be a writer second.
A writer is someone who knows words and knows language and gets turned on by using both well (and by seeing other people do the same thing). A writer is someone who is curious about a lot of different things, and knows ways to satisfy that curiosity--how to research, who to ask, and what to ask in order to get the right information to share with readers.
That's not to say a writer doesn't specialize. For the last 13 or 14 years, I've made a good living writing about and editing works on health and health care for both health professionals and health consumers. And even though articles about health was what I got paid for when I first started, this one time college drop out glorified waiter and bartender wrote articles about beekeeping, running public parks, building a career as ceramic engineer, opening a general store, how books are bought for the library, subversive curriculum, literacy, writing a collaborative novel.
My first article in a national publication was about crepes. Even though I had worked in restaurants, I had never done anything with crepes (except for crepe suzette). But I was curious, and I created 20 crepe recipes. I even took pictures of the dishes and got paid for the photos. It wasn't that long after the Arthritis Foundation piece. And it made me feel really good about what I could do.
Now the second big caveat (the first was don't let yourself be limited by what you know) is know your limitations. For those of you who are still with me, lesson three will be The Great Hotel Fiasco--Don't bite off more than you can chew. (I'll tell you about my first real failure.)
Friday, April 17, 2009
Thoughts on being a freelancer, lesson one
A long time ago when I was reliable, meaning when I could be counted on to post regularly, and when people left comments, a few readers asked me to blog about my writing career. Truth be told, it's not that interesting. I write and I edit because I like working with words and meaning and ideas, and I like getting ideas across to other people. I'm also good at it. Plus, I don't know what else to do. Everything else seems boring.
[Well that's not exactly true. What's boring is reporting to someone else and letting that someone else dictate how I spend my time. If I'm going to screw up, if I'm going to miss out on life, I want it to be my fault. I don't want it to be because I didn't have any choice but to do what I was told. And there are a lot of other things that are not boring. I miss being an English teacher. I miss running college writing centers. I miss sharing ideas about how people learn with other professionals. And I really miss helping students realize what they're after. I also like to draw and play the piano. I'm not very good at those things, but I like doing them. And I like punching the speed bag. (There was a time in my life when I wasn't bad at that.) And if I could figure out how to make money doing any of those things, I'd give it serious thought. But I digress.]
Next, several people have asked me for advice on becoming a freelancer, and it occurred to me that I could do both, talk about my history as a writer/editor while talking about what it takes for one person to do it.
So, Lesson Number One in How to Become a Full-Time Freelancer: Don't Quit Your Day Job.
In 2006, there were 305,909 people making money as a writer or an editor. That really isn't a very large percentage of the working force. 197, 495 (or 65%) of them were "employed." That means they weren't working for themselves. 108, 413 (or 35%) were classified by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as self-employed or unpaid. For 80,000 of those workers, writing or editing was classified as their primary job. And for 28,000, writing or editing was a secondary job.
Now there are several important things to note in the above paragraph. The first is, given the amount of writing that gets done every day, there aren't that many writers and editors who are working, comparatively speaking.
The second thing is that the overwhelming majority of those who are working are working for someone else. They are not self employed. They are not their own boss. They are not masters of their own time. If you want to write or edit and get paid, your best bet is to find a job where that's part of the job description. There are a number of sites on the Internet where those kinds of jobs are listed. Google writing jobs. You'll find them.
The third thing to notice is what I bolded in the paragraph above. BLS labels self-employed writers and editors as potentially unpaid. There are a lot of people out there who will publish what you write and pay you by sending you a copy. There are even some, who will make you pay for the copy. Other people will pay you by the word--often starting around 2 cents. And I know things have changed since I started, and you can write stuff and post it on site on the Web at a site that will pay you based on how many page clicks you get. Well, call your family. Call your friends. Tell them to click through. Tell them to tell their friends to click through. And then wait.............
The unfortunate thing about that is if you don't have a network (meaning connections), and you don't have a track record (meaning publications), you actually have to write for those people [two cents a word/pay by click]. It's the only way to build a publications list. You need that to get jobs.
So when I was in my 20s, I read everything I could about making a living as a writer. I went to college, dropped out, went back, dropped out again, went back ad nauseum. Finally, I dropped out and went to work in the hospitality industry. I was the youngest maitre d' in the history of Brookside Country Club. And I was damn good. But there was one thing that was consistent. I never stopped reading Writer's Digest. [That is not an endorsement. In fact, for those who are serious about wanting to write for a living, I'd recommend not reading it.] And I focused on the things that would make me an instant success. I settled on syndication. That was the way to go. You write something. You send it to a syndicate. They sell it and split the money with you. It's easy living.
So I was a young husband and father. We traveled. [ha!] We went from Columbus to St. Louis. I talked to people in whatever job I had. So I came up with an idea called From Here to There. The idea was I wrote these little essays about the people I met or the sights I saw. And then the syndicate would sell them. We'd be rich. We'd use the money to go somewhere else besides St Louis and write about it. It would be a wonderful life. I sent it off to syndicates. I got rejected over and over again.
That's not the way it works. [To syndicate, you get get your work published in several different local venues. Then you gather data to show that readers are reading it and responding. Then, maybe a syndicate will be interested. The real way it works is the syndicate finds you.] My approach, though, did work for some people (the ones who wrote the articles for writer's digest). For the vast majority of us who were clueless, it was just one more indication that we were not cut out to be writers.
We like to think of ourselves as Ernest Hemingway or Joan Didion. The truth is most of us are Joe the electrician [the plumber was a false identity] or Rosie the riveter. The Romance of writing catches our attention. The labor of writing somehow never peaks over the horizon. Writing, for the vast majority of us who make our living this way, is hard work. And it's work the uninitiated are never told about. Unless you have a track record, you are not going to make it as a full time freelancer. [There are always exceptions.] So keep that "day" job. Or better still, make that "day" job a writing job.
Enough about you. Let's talk about me. I had publications as a kid. Still, aside from a couple of prizes, I really didn't get paid for anything I wrote until I was in my mid twenties [maybe I'll talk about what happened when I first got paid in lesson two]. I didn't go out on my own to become a full time freelancer until I was in my late forties. I didn't feel comfortable at it until I was in my early fifties. But then again, I'm not all that comfortable right now, and I'm a long way past my early fifties. Still, I make a living. I have money coming in. And I have jobs in hand and jobs on the horizon.
For those of you who are still with me, the next lesson (lesson two) may be called "What Do You Know--But It's Not the Only Thing That Matters." And I'll talk a little bit more about what happened when I got my first paycheck.
[Well that's not exactly true. What's boring is reporting to someone else and letting that someone else dictate how I spend my time. If I'm going to screw up, if I'm going to miss out on life, I want it to be my fault. I don't want it to be because I didn't have any choice but to do what I was told. And there are a lot of other things that are not boring. I miss being an English teacher. I miss running college writing centers. I miss sharing ideas about how people learn with other professionals. And I really miss helping students realize what they're after. I also like to draw and play the piano. I'm not very good at those things, but I like doing them. And I like punching the speed bag. (There was a time in my life when I wasn't bad at that.) And if I could figure out how to make money doing any of those things, I'd give it serious thought. But I digress.]
Next, several people have asked me for advice on becoming a freelancer, and it occurred to me that I could do both, talk about my history as a writer/editor while talking about what it takes for one person to do it.
So, Lesson Number One in How to Become a Full-Time Freelancer: Don't Quit Your Day Job.
In 2006, there were 305,909 people making money as a writer or an editor. That really isn't a very large percentage of the working force. 197, 495 (or 65%) of them were "employed." That means they weren't working for themselves. 108, 413 (or 35%) were classified by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as self-employed or unpaid. For 80,000 of those workers, writing or editing was classified as their primary job. And for 28,000, writing or editing was a secondary job.
Now there are several important things to note in the above paragraph. The first is, given the amount of writing that gets done every day, there aren't that many writers and editors who are working, comparatively speaking.
The second thing is that the overwhelming majority of those who are working are working for someone else. They are not self employed. They are not their own boss. They are not masters of their own time. If you want to write or edit and get paid, your best bet is to find a job where that's part of the job description. There are a number of sites on the Internet where those kinds of jobs are listed. Google writing jobs. You'll find them.
The third thing to notice is what I bolded in the paragraph above. BLS labels self-employed writers and editors as potentially unpaid. There are a lot of people out there who will publish what you write and pay you by sending you a copy. There are even some, who will make you pay for the copy. Other people will pay you by the word--often starting around 2 cents. And I know things have changed since I started, and you can write stuff and post it on site on the Web at a site that will pay you based on how many page clicks you get. Well, call your family. Call your friends. Tell them to click through. Tell them to tell their friends to click through. And then wait.............
The unfortunate thing about that is if you don't have a network (meaning connections), and you don't have a track record (meaning publications), you actually have to write for those people [two cents a word/pay by click]. It's the only way to build a publications list. You need that to get jobs.
So when I was in my 20s, I read everything I could about making a living as a writer. I went to college, dropped out, went back, dropped out again, went back ad nauseum. Finally, I dropped out and went to work in the hospitality industry. I was the youngest maitre d' in the history of Brookside Country Club. And I was damn good. But there was one thing that was consistent. I never stopped reading Writer's Digest. [That is not an endorsement. In fact, for those who are serious about wanting to write for a living, I'd recommend not reading it.] And I focused on the things that would make me an instant success. I settled on syndication. That was the way to go. You write something. You send it to a syndicate. They sell it and split the money with you. It's easy living.
So I was a young husband and father. We traveled. [ha!] We went from Columbus to St. Louis. I talked to people in whatever job I had. So I came up with an idea called From Here to There. The idea was I wrote these little essays about the people I met or the sights I saw. And then the syndicate would sell them. We'd be rich. We'd use the money to go somewhere else besides St Louis and write about it. It would be a wonderful life. I sent it off to syndicates. I got rejected over and over again.
That's not the way it works. [To syndicate, you get get your work published in several different local venues. Then you gather data to show that readers are reading it and responding. Then, maybe a syndicate will be interested. The real way it works is the syndicate finds you.] My approach, though, did work for some people (the ones who wrote the articles for writer's digest). For the vast majority of us who were clueless, it was just one more indication that we were not cut out to be writers.
We like to think of ourselves as Ernest Hemingway or Joan Didion. The truth is most of us are Joe the electrician [the plumber was a false identity] or Rosie the riveter. The Romance of writing catches our attention. The labor of writing somehow never peaks over the horizon. Writing, for the vast majority of us who make our living this way, is hard work. And it's work the uninitiated are never told about. Unless you have a track record, you are not going to make it as a full time freelancer. [There are always exceptions.] So keep that "day" job. Or better still, make that "day" job a writing job.
Enough about you. Let's talk about me. I had publications as a kid. Still, aside from a couple of prizes, I really didn't get paid for anything I wrote until I was in my mid twenties [maybe I'll talk about what happened when I first got paid in lesson two]. I didn't go out on my own to become a full time freelancer until I was in my late forties. I didn't feel comfortable at it until I was in my early fifties. But then again, I'm not all that comfortable right now, and I'm a long way past my early fifties. Still, I make a living. I have money coming in. And I have jobs in hand and jobs on the horizon.
For those of you who are still with me, the next lesson (lesson two) may be called "What Do You Know--But It's Not the Only Thing That Matters." And I'll talk a little bit more about what happened when I got my first paycheck.
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