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Freelance writers don’t plan to fail.

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Planning to become a blogger or freelance writer? Plan well.

While some people do strike gold quickly and make a ton of money, it’s best to assume that these folks are outliers. Entrepreneurship is chancy at best and sometimes downright frustrating.

For part of my own freelancing career, two words too often applied: feast, famine.

Too much work, not enough work. A fair amount of work but knowing that in a week’s time I’d be finishing up my final assignments – and no editors seemed interested in my current pitches. More rarely (and usually at the beginning of this journey) I’d have no work at all for weeks at a time, and be mighty glad that I had some side hustles.

Then again, I started freelancing full-time way back in 2002, when blogging wasn’t a big thing and when companies didn’t have to have major online presence. I’d get some magazine or newspaper gigs, and then a whole bunch of rejection slips. Again, thank goodness for alternate income streams (and a super-frugal nature).

“To break in you need to be willing to be broke,” notes Lamine Zarrad in the Freelancers Union blog.

Zarrad suggests that would-be entrepreneurs (including freelance writers) become “scrappy and creative.” He also offers some pretty useful tips for doing so. I’m listing some of them here, along with a few of my own.

 

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You’ve been given a gift.

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th

(Happy Throwback Thursday! This article was originally published on May 3, 2016, but its sentiments remain fresh.)

Ever question why you need to write? Not want, need. According to Gary Garrison, it’s because you have “The Gift.”

That’s the name of a short essay that Garrison sent out to fellow members of the Dramatists Guild of America. A friend sent it to me because she found it inspiring and, well, true.

Although Garrison was referring to playwriting, his words apply to bloggers, short-story writers, novelists and others of that ilk. All of them “have the ability to create whole, intricate, dimensional worlds and to people them with infinitely interesting, complex beings.”

Wait…Bloggers create worlds?

 

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Freelancers: Jury duty can cost you

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Earlier this week I spent six hours at the courthouse, listening to multiple potential jurors be dismissed and anticipating every moment that the next name called would be my own. Jury duty seemed inevitable.

Fortunately, it wasn’t – and as a freelancer, I was mightily relieved.

To be clear: I know how important jury duty is in a democracy and I do take it seriously. It would never occur to me to try and weasel out, e.g., to make up a story about how I didn’t trust lawyers and could therefore never be impartial. I’ve been called for jury duty several times and actually served once, in a robbery trial.

But the very words “jury duty” make even conventionally employed people flinch. They grouse about the hassle of parking, the boredom of waiting, the bad coffee in the jury pool room. (That is, if there even is coffee.) A much bigger potential problem, though, is the potential loss of income.

If you’re lucky, your employer will keep paying you even if you spend a day or two (or a week or two) serving on a jury. I got called in the late 1980s, when I worked at a newspaper, and my pay was not docked.

Freelancers don’t have that option. Back in 2010, when I got called to a Seattle jury pool, I sent a letter explaining my situation: How could I do interviews and research if I were in a downtown courtroom all day?

They ordered me to report anyway. And when I got there, I found people who were a lot worse off than me.

 

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The flexibility of the freelance life.

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Sometimes the freelance life is frustrating: isolation, long hours, dry spells between assignments, no paid time off.

Sometimes, though, the freedom to order your own days makes it all worthwhile.

A few days ago I was just about to tackle a current deadline when my teen-aged nephew, M, called from the school counselor’s office. He’d just learned that a friend had committed suicide, and was too shaken to finish out the day.

His mom had okayed his leaving but could not break away from work (she’s a teacher) to come get him. Was there any way that I could?

You bet there was.

 

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Vanilla freelancing.

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A post by Suzan St Maur had me laughing out loud recently. In “Vanilla sex: Here, have another helping,” the writer, coach and humorist applied the idea of “vanilla” (boring) to concepts other than sex.

Such as:

“Vanilla Politics: Politicians, usually at local government level, who … hate cutting ribbons and are useless at kissing babies – and expect to justify their existence merely by represent the interests of their electorate.”

“Vanilla Friends: Friends who offer you absolutely nothing in the way of valuable social contacts, wild nights out on the town, parties straight out of Hollywood and air-kissing companionship … and simply exist on the basis of always being around when you need them.”

But it was her “vanilla blogging” example that got my attention. 

 

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Freelancers: Prepare to get sick.

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Two days ago I had cataract surgery on my left eye. Although the outpatient process is fairly simple, it has affected my ability to work.

This reminded me, once again, that freelancers should always be ready to deal with illness or injury.

Independent contractors don’t get sick days. If we don’t work, we don’t get paid. That’s just one more thing to think about if you’re planning to go freelance.

As someone who hasn’t had a square job since 2002, I have a year-round readiness plan in place. If you, too, are your own boss then you need a plan of your own.

 

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What I learned from writing ‘Your Playbook For Tough Times.’

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YourPlaybookForToughTimes3DFirst it was five months of researching, writing, self-editing, having friends read the manuscript and paying a professional proofreader. Next came weeks of tech glitches and waiting, waiting, waiting for review blurbs. But my long-simmering project is finally done.

“Your Playbook For Tough Times: Living Large On Small Change, For The Short Term Or The Long Haul” ate up a ton of my time, most of it in hurry-up-and-wait mode. By the time I hit “publish” I was nearly snatching myself bald-headed with frustration.

Oh, and then I had to un-publish temporarily. More on that in a minute.

But you know what? I’m going to do it all over again, probably within a few months. Knowing what might go wrong during self-publishing will, I think, make it easier the next time.

 

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A writer’s leap of faith.

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thRecently I attended the 8 x 10 Alaska Playwrights Festival, an annual event that showcases homegrown talent. Writers submit 10-minute plays for blind judging, and the best eight works are presented as an evening of short attention span theater.

The Fairbanks Drama Association reports that the number of entries grows each year. That’s exciting, but what I think is even cooler is the fact that several of this year’s winners had never written plays before. How’s that for getting out of your comfort zone?

Learning to write in a new medium might have been exhilarating, but I expect some terror was involved. Isn’t the roller-coaster ride part of being any kind of writer?

 

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60-second tip: The phantom deadline.

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thToo tired or uninspired to start writing? Maybe a little pressure will do the trick. I call it “the phantom deadline.” You can do this in a couple of different ways.

1. Make believe that you have an editor. Specifically, pretend that he’s an editor screaming for copy. Choose a topic, sit down and start writing. You should get into the flow within a few paragraphs and be able to create something readable.

And if you don’t? You’ve got something to edit later on. Point is, you’ve got something.

 

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Things to say to writers.

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th-1(Note: A version of this article originally appeared on www.donnafreedman.com.)

A Twitter hashtag called #TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter really got my attention a while back. Bet you can imagine why.

Some well-known writers (Jodi Picoult, Harlan Coben, S.E. Hinton, John Scalzi, et al.) played along with the rest of us lesser-known and unknown scribes. Collectively we whirled and howled about stuff like:

  • Low pay and no pay
  • Folks who question why we have to use so many cuss words
  • The assumption that we’ll never get published, i.e., be “real” writers
  • People who treat what we do as a hobby
  • Those who swear they could do this too, if only they had the time

Were we being thin-skinned? You be the judge. Here’s the kind of thing that writers report having heard:

“It’s pretty impressive that you spend so much time on something that has so little chance of success.”

“I downloaded your book for free online. Could you please sign this printout of it?”

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