A Good Day Writing

All of what follows is not to say that I’m not normally proud of my work. I work hard, I do the best job that I can, and I stand behind every word.

But that doesn’t mean that every word I write is poetry, or even all that pretty. I write some pretty darn utilitarian stuff, and that’s OK. It doesn’t all have to be poetry.

Good Work

Still, the other day I had a really great writing day. I wrote a couple of book reviews for a publication that I work for from time to time, and they came out, I thought, really well. Better than I expected, particularly considering the circumstances of my writing time right now (mostly during that girl’s naps, which last at most half an hour).

This may be the first day I really just felt “wow, that was some good writing” in a long, long time. Maybe since before the baby was born.

It’s days like this that make you want to keep going, that remind you that despite all the garbage we have to put up with as writers, as freelancers, as human beings, that every now and then we get to do something good, something that makes us smile, makes us proud, reminds us why we wanted to do all this in the first place.

And that’s what it’s all about.

Have you had days like this? I’d love to hear about it.

Oh, and if you wanted to see what I think of as good writing from me, check out my review of The House of Tomorrow (the other one hasn’t published yet).

If I Knew it Then: On Diving into Freelancing

When you’ve been doing something for a while, it’s natural to look back and think about things you might have done differently if you were starting over these days. While we don’t really get the chance to start over, we do have the opportunity to share our experience — and, hopefully, our wisdom — with other people in the hope that they can learn and maybe have success more quickly than we did.

That’s the whole point of this website, in fact. I want to make it easier for people to become freelance writers and make a success of it much more quickly than I was able to.

How I Got Started

When I first started freelancing, I put a huge emphasis on the free part, as in, writing for free. These days I wouldn’t even call that freelancing. It was good practice, of course, and it gave me some confidence to go after paying markets, but I did the free stuff for way too long than was right for me.

(That isn’t to say that doing some writing for free isn’t a good idea, or wouldn’t work for you. Every person and every career is different.)

Once I started seeking out paying markets, I didn’t have a very organized approach (some might say I still don’t, but that’s another story). I’d send a single query to a single market. If they said no, I probably wouldn’t try to send it to another market. I might not even follow up with another idea to the editor who just rejected me.

When I got an assignment I’d work hard and make the editor happy, of course, but, again, I often wasn’t following up with another idea to try to get another assignment. Not the best way in the world to build relationships.

Diving in Smartly

What I should have done was immerse myself more fully in the freelance world. I should have been more engaged with the newsletters I was reading, I should have queried more and sent repeat queries to markets I wanted to break into more often. I should have focused on building relationships both with editors and with other freelancers.

Of course there’s still time for a lot of that, but the number of resources out there for freelancers is so huge these days it’s much, much harder to keep up with than it used to be.

The point is, if I were doing it over again, I’d spend a lot more time networking, and a lot more time actually working than I did in the beginning.

I’d also try to work smarter, paying more attention to building my career, being more aware of where I wanted to go, and just putting more effort into it.

Notice all of the above requires work on your part, work you might not have thought about as being part of building a freelancing career. But it’s not smart to just jump into freelancing blindly. You’ve got to do your research, figure out what you want to write about, where you could write about it, how you’re going to move from your first clips to a more established career.

I didn’t do any of that. I just thought “it would be kind of fun to freelance,” and wandered around until I found opportunities I was interested in.

It was a really inefficient way to go about things, and I’m sure it cost me a lot of opportunities, lost money and lost time.

Don’t work the way I did. Make a real plan for your freelancing. Set up systems to help you stay on top of your business (we’ll talk more about that soon). Do something every day to further your business, even though you’re already so busy you’re not sure how you can fit another thing in.

You can and you must if you want to be successful. Go forth and kick butt.

Know When to Say No

I recently cut back on the amount of work I was doing for a client I’ve worked with for years. I enjoy the work, but not the amount of pay I was getting for the amount of time involved, nor the fact that I had to produce a certain amount of work every day.

I was planning to leave that newfound time in my schedule for doing more blogging, querying and writing articles for other publications, not to mention working on the website that is my main source of income.

When One Door Closes . . .

Then I got a job offer. It’s from a company I used to work for that is changing direction and would like to start a relationship with me again. It’s not writing, but also probably not as much of a pain as it was to work for this company the last time — the reason I quit in the first place.

This could be seen as a matter of serendipity, a one-door-closes-and-another-opens moment.

But it’s not that simple when you didn’t want the door to open in the first place.

I wasn’t sure I wanted this job. And it seems to me that if I have to talk myself into saying yes, that’s a pretty good indication that it’s not something I really want to be doing.

Pros and Cons

The idea of the project intrigues me. If I had unlimited time in my schedule I would probably say yes with no hesitation.

But a specific time commitment at this time in my child’s life scares me. I haven’t yet figured out how to work really well around naps and while the baby is awake.

It could be that having a scheduled amount of time to work for a client would add much-needed structure to my days.

Or it could just add another layer of stress I don’t need.

I decided to turn down the job with the option of rejoining the company if and when I figure out how to work with a little one in the house without driving us both crazy.

Letting go of the Guilt

I’m still not very good at saying no. I feel a little twinge of guilt at disappointing other people. It’s getting better, mostly because I know that I have to say no in order to have a relatively sane life and that turning down even steady, good income is just something I have to do right now.

You’re probably not in the same sort of position I am in, but that doesn’t mean you should say yes to every bit of work that comes along. That’s a sure way to get yourself stuck in a rut of frustration, doing work you’re not really excited about, getting paid less than you could be.

I’m speaking from long experience on this one.

The key is saying a calculated no when you really need to:

• When the project doesn’t feel like a good fit.
• When it’s not something that excites you.
• When the pay doesn’t seem like enough.
• When the time involved seems like too much.
• For whatever reason.
• For no particular reason.

And when you say that no, try not to feel guilty. Or at least shed the guilt as quickly as you can.

It would be nice if we could all accept work as if we didn’t really need the money. Then we would only choose projects that we are passionate about.

That’s not the way it works for most of us, especially in the beginning of our freelancing careers. But every day you can take a step in that direction, every time you can make a decision that supports where you really want to be going in your business and your life, that’s a victory.

I just had a major one. How about you?

Super Bowl Sunday Every Day

Most years I’m not too interested in the Super Bowl. This year was different (Go Saints!), but usually I just watch for the advertisements. That’s strange in itself, because most of the television I watch is recorded on my DVR, so I skip the commercials. If I watch anything live, the commercials are muted.

So why do I buy into watching the commercials on this one day? Because they’re hyped as the most creative, sometimes the most controversial, ads that will be shown all year.

Companies spend millions of dollars to get a few seconds’ eye time, so they know they’d better come up with something interesting to keep viewers from running to the fridge or the bathroom during a time out.

Why Blow it all on One Day?

This year I wasn’t too impressed with most of the commercials, but they did get me thinking about why it is that companies spend so much more time, energy and money to make their ads really creative for this one event, while they largely spend less time and effort on getting people to pay attention to and talk about their ads for the rest of the year.

Every now and then there’s a commercial that breaks through and gets people talking that wasn’t associated with the big game or some other must-watch event, but it doesn’t happen very often. Wouldn’t it be better for a company to introduce a ground-breaking ad, say, in August, when there aren’t a bunch of other fun new ads to talk about?

Write Like it’s Your Super Bowl

This also got me thinking about writing, naturally. Do you write every day like you’re writing for the biggest publications? If not, what’s the difference in your style, your attitude, your level of effort, when you’re writing a blog post compared to an article for a $1 a word glossy magazine?

What difference would it make in your career if you wrote everything with the same level of passion you’d bring to the biggest assignment of your life?

What would it mean to write every day like it’s your Super Bowl?

It might mean you’d take more time and care with some of your writing that you consider as almost a throwaway now. It might mean you’d go the extra mile, call one more source or track down one more statistic. It might mean you’d give that piece one last edit before hitting “send” or “publish,” just to make sure it’s the best you can make it.

I hate business jargon, but the idea of overdelivering is a good one to keep in mind when you’re thinking about writing like it’s your Super Bowl. You want to amaze people with the level of effort and enthusiasm you put into your work.

Your readers will notice when you’re truly engaged with a subject and writing with passion. They won’t know you only got paid 5 cents a word, or that you didn’t get paid at all, when you approach every piece of writing as if you were writing it for an audience of millions.

In time you won’t know the difference either in terms of the level of effort you put out. All of your writing will have more personality and connect better with readers than it ever has before.

And you can bet your editors will notice it, too.