Quick Tip: Recycling Research

Sometimes when you’re working on an article you’ll end up with more information than you need for that article. Maybe an interview subject went off on an interesting tangent, but it’s not really appropriate for the article you’re writing. Or you found out way more than you needed to know about a particular aspect of the topic you’re covering that will never make its way into the story you’re writing.

Always save all of this research and information in an accessible place (like your idea file, if you have one) and remember to revisit it when you’re looking for new story ideas. Using information you already have is a great way to make good money writing articles, because a lot of the research is already done when you get the assignment.

Remember, of course, to get back in touch with any sources you plan to use in a new article and make sure it’s OK that you use their quotes and information in a different story. Who knows, they might just give you more information that sets you on the path to yet another story!

Preventing Plagiarism

I really hate the idea of unintentional plagiarism. I’d like to think that it’s just an excuse made up by people who got caught and aren’t willing to admit their mistakes.

But there are so many different sources of information these days, it can, admittedly, be tricky to keep track of exactly where you got a piece of information in order to properly attribute it, or you might forget if your notes were word-for-word from a source or paraphrased, so they might not get attributed that way.

These things shouldn’t happen if you’re a careful reporter, of course, but it is still possible.

A Bad Example

I recently read a book that I was reviewing for a website (not the same one I wrote about the other day), and the book was just littered with plagiarism. The author even used the phrase “I stole this from” a publication. Another time he said he couldn’t remember where he got the information, but he used it anyway.

(This was a self-published book. I like to think any legitimate publisher would laugh such a work out of the building.)

The book, otherwise, was actually kind of good. But this blatant ripping off of other people’s work made me so angry I trashed the book.

I felt a little bad about it, writing my editor and saying I could be less harsh if she didn’t feel as passionately about the issue as I did. But she let it ride (thanks!).

Why Plagiarism Sucks

I come from a journalism background, so I’m probably more sensitive to plagiarism than most. Any violation of intellectual property bothers me; stories of journalists who steal from others hurt me to the core.

Plagiarism to me is a sign of laziness, at the very least a lack of intellectual rigor and at worst malice and stupidity.

It should be your goal as a writer never to give people room to even question you on the grounds of plagiarism.

Defending Against Plagiarism

The issue of people stealing from you is separate from not being a perpetrator of the crime, and we’ll get to that tomorrow.

In the meantime, make sure that you aren’t committing plagiarism by being as careful as possible to take good, detailed notes, to always put things that are direct quotes — whether from an interview or other research — into quotes in your notes, and keep your note-taking separate from your writing by using a different document when you start to write your story rather than composing the story in the same document you transcribed your notes into.

Columbia Journalism Review’s Craig Silverman has a great roundup of tips to prevent plagiarism that it would do any writer good to read and commit to memory and common practice.

In particular I like the notion that if something sounds particularly witty or clever, or uses words you wouldn’t normally use, double check it, because you probably didn’t come up with the concept yourself (just as I didn’t come up with that concept myself).

This is one of the many areas of writing where you literally can’t be too careful. A plagiarism charge can ruin a career or at least ruin a relationship with an editor and/or a publication that could cause you problems for a long time to come.

The Good and the Bad of Writing Jobs, and How to Tell the Difference

Yesterday I wrote about finding freelance writing jobs and the fact that having more regular writing gigs is a great way to build your income and to feel more stable so that you can get out of your day job, if that’s something you want to do.

But the trouble is, there are a lot of awful job opportunities out there, and it’s important to be able to sift through them to find them gems. Here are some of my thoughts on finding the best freelance writing jobs for you.

Know Your Priorities

I’ve talked before about charting your path to freelance writing success, which doesn’t mean specifically knowing exactly what you’d like to do in what order, but does mean knowing what the end goal might be (whether that’s full-time freelancing or just some extra money) and what you might need to do to get there.

Knowing your bottom line in terms of pay and time is great, too, because it’s easy to take a bunch of the freelance writing opportunities off your list right away if you know that they pay less than you’re willing to take for the time involved.

There are many, many jobs out there that pay just a couple of bucks per article, which may be fine for you if you can churn out good-quality articles quickly, but it probably won’t do if you’re trying to pay the rent from your writing money. Knowing what you need up front makes the sea of available writing jobs much smaller.

Read the Ads

You can learn a lot about which freelance writing opportunities you want to go after just by reading the ads. I tend to skip ones with obvious, horrible misspellings and grammatical errors. Sure, those people need help, but it doesn’t scream “I’m professional and will always pay you promptly” if you can’t spell the words in a basic CraigsList ad.

I also skip ads that are vague, simply saying they’re looking for freelance writers but not describing what kinds of topics they’re looking to cover. (I want to know I’ll be writing something I’m actually interested in.) I take a pass on ads that don’t indicate the website or publication you’re pitching to except in very rare circumstances, again because these ads are often written by unprofessional startups who don’t have anything on their websites yet.

And if a website is listed but the link doesn’t work or there’s nothing on the site, I’ll skip those, too. I also usually don’t respond to ads that don’t give at least a vague price range, because so many who don’t include an idea of what they’re willing to pay either don’t want to pay anything or want to pay so little they don’t want to mention it.

As you read through ads you’re sure to come up with your own criteria for which ads merit a response and which ones don’t.

Go With Your Instinct

A big part of knowing which jobs are for you and which aren’t is really a matter of instinct. All those things mentioned above play a role, but if you get a weird feeling when you read an ad, or if you get an e-mail back from someone that sounds fishy, pay attention to that.

If an offer sounds too good to be true (like a startup offering hundreds of dollars a month), it probably is. That’s not always the case, but more often than not you’ll find it to be true. It’s easy to pretend to be someone else online or to lie to someone when it’s not face to face. There are tons of scammers out there, people who take your content and disappear without paying or who say they’ll get your money at the beginning of the month, or whenever, but it never materializes.

The fewer of these people you deal with in your career, the better. I hope you’ll read each ad you’re considering responding to carefully, do what research you can on the website and/or the person behind it, ask questions and think carefully before accepting a job from an unknown quantity.

And if you do come across a scumbag who treats you wrong, I hope you’ll tell other people about it. It’s the only way to stop the creeps.