The Struggling Writer

No, I haven't quit Examiner

2009-06-23T10:16:00.003-07:00

Despite my lack of updates both here and at Examiner, I'm still (in my warped mind at least) working for them.

Memorial Day week both my personal and professional commitments disappeared. I had no pressing obligations so it ended up turning into a vacation week. I got back to everything else, but I've found it hard to get back to Examiner.

My income is still a laughable $0.40 per hour. Examiner didn't seem to care that I wasn't posting because I never got spanked for being a slacker. So I have neither the carrot nor the stick to motivate me. Plus every time I think about posting, I think of that awful publishing tool (have I ranted sufficiently about how much I loathe that insert-your-favorite-expletive publishing tool?) and I find other things to do.

The work is still personally important to me and I really do want to get back. In fact I'm miffed at myself for missing my Father's Day post since I feel the needs of fathers of disabled kids are distinctly different that those of mothers. I'll have to do a late Father's Day post.

I'm going to try getting back this week, but I'm going to be working 12-hour days all week between actually-paying writing and caring for my niece so it's going to be hard to find time for pro bono work. But, as I say every week, next week will be different.

Are your charitable donations going where you think they are going?

2009-05-03T11:43:00.001-07:00

Today's Arizona Republic reports that a network of charities getting donations from the Combined Federal Campaign has been using that money to pay for vacations in France while supplies they claimed had been sent to hospitals sat in warehouses. The worst part is their actions are entirely legal.

Read more...

Not posting to Examiner = bad

2009-05-02T14:16:00.004-07:00

With my badly organized schedule I went three days without posting and my hits dropped to 6-7 per day. Regular posts are important.

An interesting posting experiment would be to post an article but not network it and see how my hits rise. Then share it the next day without posting a new article and see if I get a bump. Although I'm sure the whole Digg, etc. thing is important it would be nice to quantify how important. I might do that sometime.

Today's article took flocking forever to get up, mostly because I was fighting with how to embed the Google map. My biggest problem was that damn information bubble which goes outside of the window since the map is small but I couldn't figure out how to get it to default to off. In case anyone is interested, the answer is to look for the parameter "iwloc=<something>" and change it to read "iwloc=near". The answer used to be to remove the iwloc parameter entirely but that's apparently no longer true, one reason it took me so long to figure it out. The problem with the whole "internet is forever" thing is there is a lot of outdated information out there, most of it without dates so you can't tell it's old junk.

One more rant about how much I hate the Examiner publishing tool. I'm now at the point where I just write the whole thing including HTML offline then cut and paste into the source window, which at least keeps me from wanting to throw my computer out the window every time I post an article. However the stupid tool likes to mess with my code even if I put it directly in the source window. It removes white space, closes tags, inserts non-breakable spaces and more. I really wish there was an option to just paste HTML and have it posted without the stupid software second guessing me. 99% of my unhappiness with Examiner comes from the awful publishing tool.

Finally a couple of useful tidbits. I found an AP Style Tipsheet which is useful because Examiner uses AP style. I'm sure there's a more comprehensive one, but that's a nice quick collection. Plus I found one way to locate pictures is to search on the Examiner site itself. For example search for "dog" then when the results come up click the AP Photos tab. These are Associated Press photos that Examiner has already paid for and examiners can use, with proper attribution of course.

Telephone Pioneers of America Park, a park built for people with disabilities

2009-05-02T14:14:00.000-07:00

Parents of disabled children in Phoenix have an exceptional recreational resource and yet few seem to know about it. Telephone Pioneers of America Park is a facility designed from the ground up for full accessibility. It was the first barrier-free park in the country.

Read more...

Please, please, please stop using Snap!

2009-05-02T10:13:00.002-07:00

There is a special place in hell for webmasters who use popups and an even worse place for those who use Flash popups since they exist specifically to bypass popup blocker. One of the new blogging fads is to use Snap to provide flash popup previews of links. In my book this is one of the most annoying things ever invented for the web since it's just popups masquerading as a supposedly useful tool.

The previews are useless since they are too small to read. You still have to click on the link so the popups just waste time and bandwidth. Blogs become minefields where you have to carefully navigate your mouse between links so you don't actually set off an explosion of preview windows.

Thanks to PSA: How to Turn Off Snap Pop-Up I discovered getting rid of them is easy. When you get one of the windows look in the top right corner to see a gear symbol. Click on the gear and then on "Disable" from the dropdown menu. Another dialog will appear asking if you want to disable for all sites or just the current site. Click all sites, then Save. You'll get a message that tells you to reload the current page to turn off Snap and you are done.

The instructions above might be a little off since I already turned off Snap so I can't look at the dialogs to be sure of all the steps. I don't see a way to turn it back on, but why would I want to?

Death to popups!

Examiner stats are weird

2009-04-29T13:07:00.004-07:00

When I posted my state budget article, I saw a big bump in traffic just ten minutes after doing all my Digg, Twitter, etc. stuff. When I posted my swine flu article yesterday I expected the same but I got virtually nothing. Hours later I still had only about a dozen hits. I assumed that there were so many people talking about this swine flu nonsense that my voice was lost in the crowd.

Then today I pulled up my stats for yesterday to see the damage, and I see 126 hits compared to 38 for Phoenix and 49 for the channel. I've noticed discrepancies like that before. Examiner stats for today seem to be wonky but they clear up at the end of the day. The lesson is don't pay much attention to the current day's stats.

Now that I've done a couple of blatant Google-bait articles, I'd like my next one or two to be more useful informational resources. However, I need to get my real work done first. I find I have to tear myself away from Examiner to do the stuff that actually pays my mortgage. It's hard to get interested in writing about business accounting practices or taking telephonic legal depositions, but I need to do that before doing the "fun" writing.

Swine flu hysteria strikes again

2009-04-28T12:23:00.002-07:00

It's been my experience that parents of special needs children have a different attitude than other parents toward incidents like this swine flu scare. Either they get philosophical about it, too busy with actual problems to worry about media-invented ones, or they panic unreasonably. I'm hoping Phoenix parents are in the first group rather than giving in to the frenzy.

Read more...

[Yes this is a blatant Google bait article. It's the frenzy of the moment and at least marginally relevant to my topic.]

I beat the averages

2009-04-28T08:34:00.004-07:00

My article on the state budget cuts attracted more traffic than usual, just as I expected it to. Yesterday I got 79 hits while the average Phoenix examiner got 37 and the average Family & Parenting got 75. I was a bit reluctant to post it since I don't like controversy and there was enough in there to annoy both liberals and conservatives (the voice of reason usually angers extremists) but no obnoxious comments yet.

If I were brave I'd go bait the conservative and liberal examiners hoping to drive their traffic over to my site, but nah. I really hate arguing politics.

My channel manager has sent a number of emails on how to generate hits, like one about good keywords for Earth Day. Yesterday she let us know about an article done by the Seattle Xbox Examiner on a website that educates parents on game ratings, suggesting we F&P examiners do stories on it and get some good crosslinks.

I'm still hitting my stride so I'm not doing as much of the marketing as I should be, which is the story of my professional life. That's the lesson for today, kids: be a better marketer than Uncle Andy. I plan to post another entry on this blog later today about sharing articles using sites like Digg.

ETA Oh and I should mention the surge in traffic brought me to my second dollar with about 2.5 hours of additional work. I'm getting there!

Arizona state budget cuts: Help disabled kids or help abused kids?

2009-04-27T10:49:00.000-07:00

Parents of special needs kids in Phoenix and throughout Arizona are protesting attempts by the state government to cut programs providing therapy and other services to their families. The common cry is care for children with disabilities is a necessity not a luxury. While true, other programs are necessary as well.

Read more...

How to protect kids against Phoenix summers

2009-04-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

With the first 100-degree day of the year less than a week behind us, this is a good time to review the dangers our kids face from the hot Phoenix weather. Heat is insidious and the dangers it poses can creep up on us. The risk is magnified for many special needs kids.

Read more...

My first dollar with Examiner

2009-04-26T07:42:00.003-07:00

I've made my first dollar with Examiner. Whoopee. I've spent nearly ten hours to make that dollar.

Up until now when I've seen examiners report monthly statistics I assumed they were saying these were the average page views for each day of the month. Nope, they are the views for the whole month. As an example, for March 2009 the average Phoenix examiner got 1,118 views and the average Family and Parenting examiner across all markets got 1,301 views. In other words the average person makes $11-$13 dollars per month working for Examiner.com. Combine this with Examiner's claim that the typical person spends 3-6 hours per week or about 20 hours per month writing and promoting their work and that means you can earn about $0.50/hour doing this.

To be fair, the average examiner is frankly pretty lousy. Most people don't post enough or make any effort to market their work. In the Absolute Write Examiner thread one examiner says "...I should pull down over $200 this month. Granted, I worked my butt off for it, but at least it was writing fun stuff." It is possible to make a reasonable monthly income but I'm getting increasingly concerned over the time investment.

So far, except for my first posting, each day I've posted I've met or beat the Phoenix average and come close to the F&P average. I certainly think beating the minimum is the least Examiner writers should aspire to. I have got to find ways to streamline my publishing process though.

I've decided I'm not going to waste time looking for graphics. I'll post photos if they are relevant to the article but not just for the heck of it. I've never liked the attitude that web surfers are illiterate boobs and won't read books without pictures. Whether or not it's true, I don't believe the extra time poring over Creative Commons photos to find a decent one results in enough traffic to matter.

I'm also going to step back from keywords. Yes keywords matter, but I'm not going to obsess over it. I'll tweak on the text a bit, but some articles just don't lend themselves to keywords. For example I'm planning to write an article on how kids with cognitive or communication delays are at greater risk in Phoenix summers because they can't ask for a drink of water. That's a "push" article, information I push on my readers, not information someone would actually search for.

My last article was posted much more quickly than my first ones because I bypassed the crappy, crappy publishing tool and just wrote the HTML code myself and pasted it into the source box. I'm old enough to remember the rise of WYSIWYG word processors and how great they were compared to the old "switch to the preview window" method, but the whole point is the WYSIWYG tool has to be better than typing the code by hand. I don't see that with the FCKeditor Examiner uses.

The other thing I've decided is that each week I will come up with four evergreen ideas so I get at least four postings. I will also keep an eye on local and national news to look for tie-ins I can use for three more articles, ideally posting every day. However I have two non-writing days each week that I care for my niece and I need to write those pieces in advance so I can just post, share and walk away in a few minutes. One of those days is today and I may or may not get my piece up. I'm still getting my schedule down.

Still, I remind myself that I enjoy writing this and I feel I'm doing a service. As I've said many times, this is my charity work so it doesn't have to be massively lucrative.

PS I can't decide whether to use title case or down case on my blog titles. I have traditionally, and inconsistently, used title case but I think the standard, certainly the one Examiner uses, is down case. Sometimes it looks silly to me and other times not. Life as a writer is so complicated.

Shortening URLs from Examiner.com

2009-04-25T11:56:00.004-07:00

I imagine a conversation going like this.

Parent: I have a child with disabilities.

Me: What a coincidence. I have an online column about raising special needs children.

Parent: Great! What's the address?

Me: Examiner dot com slash x dash eight seven nine three dash phoenix dash...oh, you've walked away.

Those long Examiner URLs are fine in an email, forum post or other medium where people just have to click, but are useless for business cards or conversation. Luckily sites like TinyURL and bit.ly exist to convert long URLs to short ones.

Using them is easy. Go one of these short URL sites and paste the long URL you want to shorten. It will give a shorter URL that anyone can use to reach your site. These shorter addresses don't expire or get used by anyone else and the service is free. Users are taken directly to the destination without going through ads or anything else.

I use bit.ly for my Twitter posts since their URLs are a few characters shorter than TinyURL. With Twitter, every character counts. However I don't like using them for other purposes because people would find them confusing. "Where's the .com?" would be the reaction I'd expect.

So I use TinyURL for my main Examiner page. You can specify your own alias with TinyURL (bit.ly does this too) to create an address easy to remember. I may be http://www.examiner.com/x-8793-Phoenix-Special-Needs-Kids-Examiner but I'm also http://tinyurl.com/phxspecial - which one do you think is easier to remember?

AMC Theaters settles discrimination lawsuit in Arizona; Harkins continues to fight

2009-04-25T11:55:00.000-07:00

In order to settle a lawsuit filed by Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, AMC MultiCinema Inc. has agreed to increase the number of theaters fitted with digital captioning and descriptive video services. This makes their theaters more accessible to hearing and vision impaired customers.

Read more...

How to advocate for children with disabilities

2009-04-23T18:09:00.001-07:00

You are an advocate for your child whether you know it or not. You don't have to be standing outside the Arizona Capitol holding a picket sign to stand up for your child's rights. Every time you take him somewhere you are saying he has the right to be at this shopping center, this park, this school or this airport just like every other kid. Although the law requires reasonable accommodation for disabled children, sometimes we have to ask for that accommodation. The most effective technique is "Be firm but don't be a jerk".

Actually, I don't use the word "jerk" but this is a family site.

Read more...

Are You Using Business Finance Software?

2009-04-22T14:13:00.002-07:00

One of the clients I write for distributes financial software for small business. A common theme I use is that many small businesses use cobbled together bookkeeping. They combine consumer financial applications, spreadsheets, scribbled notes and shoebox filing systems because they feel their business is too small to need a complicated financial package. I respond that a business of any size needs professional bookkeeping software.

Don't you hate it when you are too dumb to follow your own advice?

Yes, I have a system that combines Quicken, two Excel sheets and my failing memory to keep track of my massive *cough* business empire. It has worked well until today.

My primary client was reconciling her 2007 taxes and asked how much she had paid me that year. I looked it up on my project spreadsheet and got one number and then on my tax spreadsheet and got another number. Uh oh. After some investigation I realized I over reported my 2007 income and overpaid my taxes by nine whole dollars!

If I had underpaid I'd file an amended return but I'm not going to bother over $9. Like so many things it comes down to hourly rate. The time it would take me to file the amended return would eat up the $9 in no time. I can't imagine the IRS will send me to jail for giving them too much money. There is a lesson here though. A real financial package would have prevented that mistake by correlating invoices with income. So one more thing to add to my to do list is "Buy financial software".

Is Examiner Worth It?

2009-04-22T09:24:00.004-07:00

Aspiring writers out there maybe be wondering if they should follow my example and write for Examiner or similar ad revenue sharing sites. To misquote Reverend Lovejoy from The Simpsons, "Short answer no with an if, long answer yes with a but."

Short answer: No. If you are serious about being a writer, low paying sites like Examiner are not effective ways to make money or build your clips. Buy a copy of The Renegade Writer and skip the entry-level assignments.

Long answer: Yes, but know what your real goals are and be prepared to do all the work involved, not just the writing.

There is more to life than money and there is more you can get from an assignment than a paycheck. I'm excited by this opportunity and I am happy to have the chance to provide advice to parents of special needs kids from Phoenix or anywhere else. However I'm fully aware this is going to be a junk income stream which will pay less than half my minimum writing fees. I can't devote much of my time to it.

If you write for Examiner, maximize your hourly rate. I looked at the Phoenix Special Needs Kids category and immediately a hundred ideas popped into my head. I can write article after article with no research, banging out each in matter of minutes. This means I can easily keep up with 4 articles per week and ideally I will do one a day.

Don't ignore marketing! This means networking with people face to face or through forums. You don't have to be obnoxious, but be prepared to tell people about what you can offer. I meet with therapists and doctors every week and can spread the word through them to Phoenix parents. I plan to attend meetings and classes where I can find other parents. I allow people to follow me through Twitter and email alerts. I share my articles through sites like StumbleUpon and Digg.

Learn SEO and by that I mean the whole thing, not just keywords. Learn about cross links, about how to write for the web, about how to build interest in your site. This is not just about writing a few words and waiting for the money to roll in.

Think of other ways to generate income. Become an Amazon affiliate and provide links for products you mention. Write articles on flat fee sites like Demand Studios designed specifically to drive traffic to your Examiner site. Revenue sharing jobs require you to squeeze every penny out of them to be worth your time.

Overall, have a plan. Don't just join for the sake of joining. You don't have to be a full-time writer to take your writing income seriously.

If you do decide you are ready to to join Examiner, tell them http://www.examiner.com/x-8793-Phoenix-Special-Needs-Kids-Examiner sent you.

First Examiner Article Up

2009-04-21T11:39:00.002-07:00

I posted my first piece on Finding a pediatrician for children with disabilities. I just want to say I HATE Examiner's authoring tool. It's so "for dummies" that it's harder for those of us who know HTML. Ugh! I think once I get it figured out and make some of my own templates I'll be fine but it took me forever to get my first article up.

I'll detail each of these later but I'll point out that I did keyword research to find the right title, put in a creative commons photo because people love pictures and added a Twitter link (yes, you too can follow me on Twitter). I know I should go in and Digg, Reddit and so on my article but I'm spent now.

Live On Examiner

2009-04-21T09:02:00.002-07:00

I am now the Phoenix Special Needs Kids Examiner. Although I haven't posted my first article yet (I'll do so later today) I've already made $0.02! Easy Street, here I come. I suppose I should point out that I'm being sarcastic since I've seen some people post those kinds of statements as proof they are "prufesshunal riturs".

For those who want to know the timeline, I applied on March 18. I got an email on April 16 asking me to confirm my interest over the following two days. This email mentioned a few interesting facts:

Must write 4+ articles/week
Average examiner spends 3-6 hours per week writing and promoting
I retain full rights to my work (unlike most sites that take all rights)
Pay structure varies on traffic and ad revenues but runs about a penny per page view. Other examiners report the same.
Examiners must submit to a criminal background check. It seems like an odd requirement but I have had a more thorough one done as a respite care provider so it's nothing new.

I replied and got another email on April 17 asking for my headshot, bio and PayPal information to be sent within the next three days.

On April 20 I got my login information, my URL, and was introduced to my channel manager. I am to post my first article within three days then wait for it to be approved by the channel manager. Future articles can be posted as fast as I can write them. The email ended with a list of style notes and tips for building traffic. They also need me to complete a W-9 form.

I'll post my first article in a bit and let you know how long it takes to get approved.

New Gig: Phoenix Special Needs Kids Examiner

2009-04-16T15:11:00.002-07:00

I just got accepted to Examiner.com as the Phoenix Special Needs Kids Examiner. It's one of those "we pay you a part of the revenue sites". I've been reading about it and my hope is that I can swing $10-$15/hour writing for them.

"Wait a minute," I hear you say. "Didn't you quit a $10/hour writing assignment? What's going on, you big hypocrite???"

To which I reply, "Shut up!"

But seriously, folks, I thought a lot about the low pay. This is WELL below my usual writing fees and it's exactly the kind of job that I don't think writers should take as a rule. However, sometimes there's more to life than money.

I've talked occasionally that a big part of the reason I'm a freelance writer is it allows me to help care for my niece who has many neurological disabilities. All this time I've looked for an outlet that I can write about special needs kids but I have to balance that against the fact this is a job and I need to make money. I can't afford the time to write just for the heck of it.

This is a subject I know well and am passionate about. I can bang out postings with a minimum of research, thus improving my hourly rate. I don't expect this to be a lucrative assignment, but it's something that's important to me. After a few months if I'm not making some minimum rate I'm going to have to seriously consider walking away from it, but I'm hoping I can make this successful enough that I can justify my time.

The problem with LTK was that I didn't care about the subject. I had little control over content or keywords. The time spent formatting and cross linking and other nonsense was absurd. I'm excited about Examiner, not for the money but for the opportunity to help people in Phoenix and elsewhere deal with the issues surrounding raising a child with disabilities. My only regret is that I didn't get this assignment a couple of months ago because there have been some rather disturbing events surrounding state benefits to families with disabled kids but that's not going to end soon.

I plan to write about my Examiner experience a lot here, talking about techniques I'm using to generate traffic, find article subjects and so on. My plan is to openly discuss my earnings but I need to double check that with Examiner first. Some places forbid their people from discussing earnings, usually because they don't want people to realize just how little their authors make. In this case I think an earnings discussion is necessary because if you do take an assignment like this, you have to make it as lucrative as possible.

Cross Fertilization Makes Writing Stronger

2009-03-22T09:29:00.002-07:00

One common thing new writers wonder about is where we get our ideas. Like a lot of things, the more you write the better you get at it. In particular as you write about multiple subjects, you find ways to link subjects to come up with new ideas and interesting perspectives on otherwise dull subjects.

Months ago I wrote a number of articles on window blinds and in the process learned a lot about how blinds help control the temperature in a room. Now I'm writing about portable air conditioners and am struggling to find good ideas. I can use what I know about window blinds to talk about supplementing air conditioners with good quality blinds. If I still had that blinds client, I could then write an article for them on how to supplement blinds with portable air conditioners.

I've written dozens of articles for a company that provides training on Microsoft software. I have a client now who trains on HAZWOPER certification. Many of my Microsoft articles can be repurposed for this new client since the basic concept of training is the same no matter what the subject. Less research = faster articles = more money.

Although the blank page is never fun, as you expand your background you will have a broader knowledge base to draw on when creating new work.

Possible Resurrection

2009-01-11T13:18:00.004-07:00

After months of letting this blog languish, I'm cautiously optimistic that I might start posting again. I'm certainly not promising anything but I'm hoping to integrate updates into my schedule.

My downfall really started with my How's This For Motivation? post. Losing a significant pillar of future financing didn't motivate me; it swept my legs out from under me. It's only very recently that I've started to feel any kind of incentive again.

This has been complicated, as always, by my niece. As I've mentioned before, a big chunk of my life is dedicated to helping raise my niece, Maria, who has many severe neurological disabilities. She's had some issues and her other caregivers have had some issues so it's all been a mess. Then again I remind myself that Maria's mom has a "real" job and still managed to show up at work now and then through all of this so that's really not much of an excuse.

I'm grateful to the writer I'm subcontracting to. She has steadily provided work for me every week for a couple of years now and having work appear in my in box certainly has helped me keep writing. It's not enough to live on by any means, but it's been a big help financially and emotionally.

However as I look back on the last year I haven't grown at all. I did the same amount of work December 2008 as I did December 2007, and that's not a good thing. Part of the problem is that I build my work schedule around the workload I receive rather than the workload I should be doing. That leads to stagnation which is death for the self-employed.

So I'm trying to get back to sticking to a schedule. Yes I know I'm not suppose to say I'm "trying" I'm supposed to say I am. However, although I respect the psychological power of those kinds of semantic distinctions, I'm far too much of a smart ass to take them seriously and I mock them mercilessly. But I digress.

That's why I'm posting today. Posting here is work time. As I remind myself, the reason I found this subcontract opportunity was through this blog and it's one of many marketing tools I should be using more. I've done some articles this morning and I should pop out 1-2 more to meet my goal but I just don't feel like it, so instead if I spend some time doing other work-related things I meet my goal, expand my marketing efforts and break out of my rut.

I Can't Write in the Cracks

2008-08-08T10:05:00.004-07:00

It's really too bad I haven't been able to keep up with blogging. Many things have happened lately that would be good object lessons to fellow struggling writers. Rather than try to remember them right now, I'll just jot down a thought I've been chewing on.

Several months ago a WAHM writer posted an essay entitled something like "Writing In the Cracks". I haven't been able to find it again or I would link to it.

Her point was that being a successful writer while taking care of your family meant seizing opportunities, an hour here and there, to write. Getting up early and working before the rest of the house is up, getting some things done while Junior is napping, and so on. You aren't ever going to have "writing days" so you need to aggressively find slices of time.

Her essay was well received by the WAHM community as a lot of writers agreed. Often it's the difference between succeeding and failing as a writer.

As a WAHU (Work At Home Uncle) who takes care of my special needs niece two or more days per week, I can sympathize. Even as we speak, my niece is napping and I should take this opportunity to get something done. However after many months of trying, I've come to the conclusion that it just doesn't work for me.

I'm a momentum writer. It takes me a while to get going but then I can keep plugging away for hours. When I have a clear day I get a lot done, but I just can't write in erratic spurts.

I also find it hard to write outside of my comfort zone. A while back I moved my desk out of my office because of noise from the neighbors but I couldn't get anything done working from the living room. So I moved back and learned to just filter out the noise.

Of course the problem is that I don't often have clear days. I'm still not sure how I can balance this need with my current erratic life. I do the best I can to pile errands on one day so I can have dedicated writing days. However often one distraction can destroy the whole day.

I need to hold myself to more rigid schedules to give myself the luxury of writing days. Each week I struggle, barely meeting deadlines, and each week I swear that next week I'll do better.

Today I got up at 4 am to bang out two quick articles to meet my Friday morning deadline. Next week I'll do better :)

How's This for Motivation?

2008-06-01T13:23:00.000-07:00

My business plan all along has involved slow growth. I wanted to give myself time to get used to the unique needs of working from home as well as adjusting a fluid work schedule to an insane personal schedule. I had a schedule of steadily increasing goals to get me to profitability and, though I'm a couple of months behind where I expected to be due to the economy, I'm still happy with my progress.

This plan hinged on my second mortgage line of credit supplying income until my business was profitable. Unfortunately, the company holding my line of credit is struggling and they have recently closed about 90% of their lines - including mine.

This makes things a little...awkward. It means I don't actually have enough money to pay my bills any more.

So, between bouts of blind panic and paralyzing depression, I've been figuring out what to do. I called my mortgage broker and found he doesn't work at the same company any more! I tracked him down and he's going to see if we can squeeze any more money out of this house. Unfortunately, my house has lost a lot of value so I'm not sure we can get much if anything.

The next step will be to try for a business loan, which requires writing a business plan. I bought a book on business plans a couple of months ago and after reading it I decided not to bother. I have a plan, it's just not a formal document. It's a spreadsheet, scribbled notes, an erratic writer's journal, and lots of stuff in my head. But it's a plan with goals and financial analyses and contingencies and all that. Now that I need one I think I can put one together in a day or two.

In the spirit of lemons->lemonade, once I've written mine then I have experience writing business plans and that's another income stream I can add.

Of course I'm a bit worried about a business loan. I've written articles recently on how all loan products are tighter because of the mortgage disaster. Currently I'm carrying a fair amount of debt, which as I understand it will both hurt and help. High debt is a concern to a lender but it also shows personal commitment to my business, which they like. It shows I'm sharing the risk and am serious about success.

If that falls through, then I start looking for other sources. I might be able to convince my credit card to bump me a couple of thousand and then I start hitting up friends and family, always a fun endeavor. I've been reading articles on entrepreneur.com on how to approach personal relations for business loans.

If all else fails, I can plunder my retirement. I hate to do it, but I should have enough there to carry me to profitability. The problem is it uses up all my resources so if I have a couple of bad months, the whole thing comes crashing down.

This incident has caused me to increase my rate of growth a bit. I don't want to set it too high because impossible goals don't inspire hard work - they inspire surrender. I'm also a bit more serious about actually getting my marketing plan going, although I'm wasting so much time hunting for money it is interfering with my hunt for clients.

Dependability vs. Skill

2008-04-07T15:09:00.001-07:00

I am constantly trying to turn my experiences as a consumer into lessons as a business owner.

Early in my writing career I decided to hire someone to take care of my yard, freeing me to focus on work. Phoenix has four million people and approximately three million of them offer yard services. How was I going to narrow the field?

The first thing I decided is that I wouldn't consider someone who didn't have a web site. Huh? I hear you saying. A web site just for someone to mow your lawn? Yup. Any idiot with hedge clippers and a truck offers yard work and too many of them are appallingly unprofessional about it. It is a field that attracts far too many people who play at working without treating it like a business, something that is also true of freelance writing. Web sites are cheap and easy and there is just no excuse for any business not to have one. Even a one-page website with an email address under your own domain creates a professional image.

Despite this, I certainly still had my share of unreliable people. Phone messages to dozens of providers went unreturned. One guy showed up for the initial cleanup and did really nice work but was spotty on the follow-up work until he just stopped coming.

The one I finally used was very business-like. His wife stayed home to answer the phone and do the books. I got invoices every month rather than the pay-as-you-go most of them do. He showed up promptly every two weeks like clockwork.

It's a pity his work was lousy.

I stuck with him for about a year. I cut him loose recently because I really can't afford the luxury at this point. I went back and forth over that decision because it's smart business to outsource things like that. I would have kept him if the work had been better but I couldn't justify the cost for him to do work no better than I can do myself.

His professional demeanor got him the contract and certainly put him ahead of the competition. However without the skill to back it up, the monthly cost wore thin.

I'll still need someone to come back about once a year for cleanup. So who am I going to call: the unreliable one who does a great job or the dependable guy who does mediocre work? I'm going to go for dependability and I think most customers feel the same way. I'd rather have second-rate work done than great work not done.

Anxiety

2008-04-03T14:07:00.001-07:00

I've had a recurring nightmare lately. I'm trying to make my way through an airport. Sometimes I'm going home, sometimes I'm trying to get to a plane, sometimes I'm in the parking lot but usually I'm in the terminal. And I'm lost. Everything keeps twisting and I end up in odd places. Stairs lead up to the 2nd and 4th floors, but not the 3rd where I need to go. There are lots of people around who all know where they are going. The more I wander, the more annoyed I get, occasionally getting so angry I wake myself up.

OK, I'm no dream expert but this one doesn't seem hard to interpret. Fear of change. Or at least fear that change is getting you nowhere.

Not surprisingly, these dreams started as I changed my business plans.

As I think I mentioned before (I blog so seldom that I forget what I've said and what I've just mumbled to myself about) I'm at the point where my goals exceed my actual work. I use these unrealized goals to pay myself for non-writing work tasks such as sending queries, reading about business plans, and doing my taxes. This has forced me to make decisions about what the next step in my career is.

Until now I've been depending on a single client who gives me keyword articles to do. It's not the most fun I've ever had, but it pays a good hourly rate and is steady. She does the marketing and subcontracts to me so it's easy for me to get complacent. However I need to diversify.

My original plan had been to start offering services to non-profit organizations. I decided recently that with the economy in its current sorry state, this would be a bad time for that. Nonprofits are tightening their belts and probably not interested in hiring services.

My goal now is to send letters of introduction to a number of trade magazines. Before I do that I have a few other tasks I want to get done such as getting some clips together. I also need to rewrite my website. I've never been happy with the text there and it's not a good sign when a writer's website is badly written. I was trying too hard and I need to go back and write it in my own voice.

But as I move out of my comfort zone, I experience anxiety. I was reading a book on business plans today and my stomach was in knots. Once I put the book down, they went away. I've always been pretty transparent.

The cure for anxiety is desensitization. The more you do something, the less nervous you get. I need to keep to my goals, get some of those letters out, and get moving.

Once I do that, maybe I'll find my way through the airport.

Motivation for Freelancers

2008-03-08T10:42:00.001-07:00

Every freelancer needs motivation. Some people are just naturally ambitious but they are rare.

The rest of us need a kick to get going. Different freelancers use different methods: goals, rewards, motivational plaques, or whatever. Each of us needs to find our own way. It's great to get inspiration from other people's methods, but if something doesn't work for you, drop it and move on.

I've found two good motivators: deadlines and numbers.

Deadline pressure gets me to work, but only at the last minute. I have a history of submitting minutes before the deadline even if I've had weeks to work. Until the end is near, it's easy to make excuses. The flaw is that inevitably everything goes to hell the day before, and suddenly I don't have any time. I've had weeks that I wake up at 4 am to finish things on time. I've also rare occasions that I've handed things in late, which is inexcusable for a freelance writer.

The other flaw with deadline motivation is that it doesn't help with marketing and without marketing there are no deadlines.

The second motivational system that works for me is numbers. I'm a geek and I love charts and statistics and it's always good to use your strengths. I track my work on a spreadsheet, look at monthly performance, and set goals accordingly.

That system works well for me and has changed over time. At first I was just trying to match performance. Well that's just silly because then I never grow. So I set monthly goals to beat past performance by 10% and that worked better.

That was fine for a while. Most of my work is subcontracted web content. I get plenty of work handed to me, I get paid quickly, and it was easy to track the work performed. But I struggled with how I should track things like career development or applying for new contracts. These are important but don't pay, so how do I include them in a payment-based system?

The answer is that I pay myself my hourly rate for these tasks. Of course there's no real money changing hands, but it makes it easy to convert hours to money and keep my existing goal system.

This is the first month that I've had a goal high enough that I've had to start using it. It gives me the chance to read books on writing and business planning. It rewards me for hunting down contracts or getting involved in writing forums again. Even updating this blog has now become a paying proposition, even if that pay is all in my head.

I've said before that most motivational techniques don't work with me because I see the man behind the curtain. This method is still hand-waving and smoke, but it's a sleight-of-hand that I'm willing to suspend disbelief for. I don't know why it works on me, but it does and that's all that matters.

The curse of the lazy freelancer

2008-01-07T09:09:00.000-07:00

I’ve talked several times about my biggest limitation as a freelancer: I’m basically lazy.

I’m careful that my indolence hurts only me and not my clients. I meet my deadlines but I’m seldom early. However even this can be a problem if your client assumes you are working to capacity because you hand things in at the last minute.

This happened to me recently. My primary client had been turning away work because she assumed I couldn’t handle it. I assured her I could take more and we set a weekly goal equal to about half what I need to be making to survive.

Why half and not all? There are a couple of reasons. I think it’s dangerous to depend on all of your income from a single source. Even though I’m subcontracting so technically the work is originating with dozens of clients, it’s still all funneled through one person. If she suddenly runs off and joins the circus, all that work disappears.

Another reason to limit work from one client is for diversity. Right now all I do is web content. The pay is good, the work is steady, and payment comes sometimes mere hours after a piece is submitted.

However I can certainly see how someone could get burned out on it. If I reach that point I want more than just content experience to show for it. By limiting the amount of one type of writing I do, I force myself to get broader experience.

Hmm, I’m reading back over this and I seem to have misplaced the point I had started to make. That’s the problem with stream-of-consciousness writing. I have several subjects I’ve been meaning to post about (and I really hope to get back to posting more often) and they all get muddled together.

Now I could list my ideas and check each one off off as I post about it, but I’m basically lazy ;)

Not dead yet

2007-11-15T10:51:00.000-07:00

The struggle to get back to my life continues. Not only am I still not making the income I was back in June, I'm not going to any of the forums, reading other people's blogs, or (as you may have noticed) keeping this one up.

I keep waiting for things to calm down and get back to what they were like before July and I've finally realized that they aren't going to. This is my life now - more complicated, more busy - and I need to start getting used to it. It really shouldn't have taken me four months to figure that out.

It means that I no longer have the luxury of "writing days", at least not as often as before. I need to get better about stealing hours here and there to get work done rather than waiting for long blocks of time. For example, in the past if I had a 4-article assignemnt, I'd try to find time to write them all together. Instead, I need to get used to writing one here and one there until they are done.

This leads to another of my annoying habits. If I have a one-day project and a one-week deadline, it ends up taking me a week because it's not a priority until the deadline is looming. I still get it done but it gives the illusion that I'm busier than I am, which is a bad thing. I had my main client the other day say she was holding things back because she assumed I didn't have time to do them. I told her I could easily take a lot more work, but that just reinforces that I need to get things done faster.

For the first time in a long time, I've spent the last few days thinking about expansion. Right now I do web content that I subcontract from a single client. Not only is it not enough, it's not all that I want to do. I have been kicking around ideas for other income streams from diversified areas. This protects my income in the event of wild market changes, and it keeps me from getting bored.

Unfortunately, this blog is low on my priority list. I really would like to update it more but often by the time I finish things for the day, I'm just too tired. The focus of this blog is my own personal lessons learned, but I keep forgetting to get over here and take a couple of minutes to document them. I hope to get better about that in the upcoming months.

I'm aware that I'm getting my momentum back right before the holidays, and everything tends to drag from Thanksgiving to New Years. Last year I frittered away the time. This year I plan to use the down time to nail down plans for future projects. As I keep reminding myself, if I don't get my freelance career on track, I'll have to get a real job and few things fill me with dread more than returning to the horrors of the 9-to-5 cubicle zombies.

Slowly getting back to it

2007-08-28T09:19:00.000-07:00

I am trying to get back my momentum after my disasterous July. My personal drama has abated (for now) and it's now just a matter of getting back to it.

The situation was complicated by the fact that my primary client was going through her own stuff during this time so I had no steady workflow. I had periods over the last six weeks that I could have gotten some work done but didn't have the energy for the marketing side of things. It would have helped to have a trickle of articles to keep me focused . Still, I guess it's better that our respective personal disasters were in parallel rather than in sequence. Imagine coming out of this nonsense just to have her go through another couple months of it.

This whole situation again underscores my biggest weakness as a freelancer: marketing. When I have work, I work hard and hit my deadlines. When I don't, I make lots of excuses to avoid self-promotion. It's not insecurity; I know I'm a good writer and have a lot to offer a client. I simply find marketing tedious, which is why I like subcontracts when I can find them.

July = total bust

2007-07-26T09:01:00.000-07:00

From a work perspective, I've been a bad boy this month. Last week was the only clear week I had in July. I should have been out there pounding the pavement, but instead I caught up on non-work stuff and took a lot of "mental health" days - probably more than I really needed. This week has been a total farking nightmare and I've had to learn all kind of new medical words. I actually had to turn down the only work I've gotten this month.

The next day I will have clear will be Tuesday, which is the last day of the month. My main client thinks she'll have work for me so maybe I can make a few dollars before the month is over.

Ooh, that was interesting. While I was typing this up, I got a call about a possible ghostwriting opportunity. He caught me off guard so I already can't remember who he was. He asked about rates and I stalled a little because I prefer bidding by project. He was insistent so I quoted him an hourly and a per word rate that may prove to be completely wrong once I find out more the work. Still, it's nice to see past efforts showing some results.

No rest for the weary

2007-07-11T13:59:00.000-07:00

Freelancers learn very quickly that balancing personal and professional lives is very tricky.

Over the last three weeks, things have been quite...eventful for my niece, Maria, and therefore for me. There were good things like flying back home for a few days. There were bad things like medical tests and substantial therapeutic setbacks. There were other things like my sister getting her kitchen remodeled and the nanny dealing with her mother's brain cancer. It's been busy and stressful and I'm utterly exhausted.

We have a running gag that when I don't go along to one of Maria's doctor visits, it turns out to be bad news. Twice in recent weeks that has proven true.
I have more flexibility than other caregivers in her life so, of course, I'm always the one who's available when others aren't. However as a freelancer, I don't get paid vacation.

Here we are nearly halfway through the month and I haven't done a single minute of work. I might have next week open, but the week after that Maria goes into the hospital and the week after that I have a friend visiting. July is clearly going to be a total bust.

It's taking me ten times as long as usual to write this entry because I can't keep a coherent thought in my pretty little head.

I don't really have a point to this; I'm just ranting. Things have been hard enough recently and not making money makes it harder. I need to be out there chasing down projects but I just don't have the energy. Whine, whine, whine.

I did get one piece of good news today though. I'm trying to network with Maria's therapists and doctors. I finally got a chance to schmooze her speech therapist, who comes from United Cerebral Palsy. He is pretty sure they need someone to write grant proposals, newsletters, etc. so he took two of my business cards to pass on to people there. That's certainly not a guarantee of work, but it seems like a decent future prospect.

Behold the Treadputer

2007-06-27T15:53:00.001-07:00

I read an article in the paper yesterday about a Mayo Clinic study involving having office workers walk on slow treadmills while working at the computer. The discovered that, contrary to their assumptions, there was no trouble typing, reading, concentrating, etc. After a day or so to get used to it, they were all doing their jobs normally.

I poked around and apparently it's old news. The Mayo study is from 2005 so I'm not sure why it was in a recent article, unless maybe there have been more conclusions from the study. I don't have the paper here anymore to re-read it. Anyhow, lots of people are doing it. The treadmills run at 0.7-1.1 mpg depending on the user. It burns a ton of calories and these people are losing weight and getting healthy.

Some people build sophisticated integrated systems. Some people just slap a piece of plywood across the handles of the treadmill and put a laptop on it.

I want one.

Here are a few links I found:

I Speak of Dreams - The Walking Desk

Walking While Working

workandwalk.com

Feld Thoughts - The Treadputer

Coolest Workspace Contest: The Treadputer

Personal projects

2007-06-16T11:58:00.000-07:00

I've often heard the same lament from writers: we have to spend so much time doing projects that pay the bills that we don't have time to work on projects that are important to us.

A while back, a group of people from a neurology support forum I used to frequent decided to try writing a book on hydrocephalus. As those who follow this blog know, that's a subject with a lot of personal relevance. There is only one hydrocephalus book out there aimed at adult laymen and the market could use another.

Recently the woman overseeing this emailed me to ask if I was still on board. I had to say that I wasn't.

Part of it is that I can't devote the time it would take considering the small payout that would likely be waiting at the end. When I'm a little more secure in my career I can take a few more chances, but not right now.

Another problem is that it's a group effort by a bunch of people who as near as I can tell have no professional writing experience among them. They are doling out chapters willy-nilly among people of wildly disparate backgrounds and writing ability. The project will require extensive editing to turn it into something publishable and with a common voice. The whole "hey, kids, let's put on a show" attitude doesn't work in publishing. If they want to produce a professional piece, they will need a ghost writer and will need to come up with a hefty chunk of money for that up front.

I suspect it will end up at a vanity publisher and circulated only among the members of this support group. That's not a bad thing, mind you, but that's not the same as a commercially viable work.

I hope that a couple of years from now I will be kicking myself for bailing out. I hope they put together a good book that contributes good information to people with hydrocephalus and their families and friends. I hope the book is a huge success, widely circulated, critically acclaimed, and makes tons of money.

I also would be thrilled to hear they all won the lottery.

Opportunity knocks

2007-06-02T15:00:00.000-07:00

I've talked occasionally about my pending grant writing opportunity. My niece's ophthalmologist needs funding for a research project and wants me to write the grant proposals. It's been on the back burner for a while, but it looks I will be starting it this summer.

Recently my niece was getting fitted for new ankle braces. I was chatting with her orthotist and mentioned I was a freelance writer. She asked me what kind of writing I do and I mentioned that I'm doing mostly website content now but I'm expanding into other things such as this grant project. Guess what. She has a website she's been waiting a year(!) for content on, and she wants to start a non-profit organization and doesn't have time to do the grant writing herself.

Yay!

One grant project under my belt would have been nice, but if I can get two then I've got a solid foundation to start pursuing other grant opportunities. I guess that helps me narrow down the kind of writing I want to do.

I'm smart enough to know that casual chit-chat is not the same as a firm commitment, but at least I've got some good possibilities. I'm getting better about mentioning to people I'm a writer and following up on hints about jobs.

Consider my cousin, who is a very talented painter but doesn't have a business-oriented bone in his body. He could easily make a living but he's not willing to play the games he'd need to. OK, I respect that, but you can get silly about it. He did a wonderful portrait (on commission) of my brother after he died. At my mother's wake a few years later, I approached him about doing a companion portrait of her. He blew me off and changed the subject. He just wasn't in a business mood. I never bothered following up (nor did he) so he missed an opportunity for an easy commission.

You never know when a job will pop up. You don't have to be smarmy about it (I think of Robin Williams in Cadillac Man, giving his business card to a widow at her husband's funeral) but you have to keep your ears open.

When good (or mediocre) writers go bad

2007-06-01T13:04:00.000-07:00

Recently there's been a bit of a kerfluffle over some writers who are sabotaging online ads in an effort to minimize the competition. Other writers have been getting angry at this, which is certainly understandable, but this practice doesn't bother me. I don't even feel a little irritation. Pity maybe, but not irritation.

Why? Well, I have two reasons.

First of all, these sabotaging writers aren't real competition. People who resort to these kinds of tactics do so because they can't compete on a level playing field. I'm a lot more threatened by talented writers who act professionally and are good at marketing themselves (you bunch of bastiges). The saboteurs, I suspect, are the types who play at freelancing for six months, then go away mad complaining that a) it's all luck, b) it's all a secret society, c) it's all the outsourcing to India, or d) it's all a government conspiracy.

I firmly believe that anyone can make a living, and a very good living, as a freelance writer if they take the right steps. That includes becoming a better writer (even if you've been at this 20 years you can still improve), aggressive marketing (every writer's least favorite part of the job), treating clients with respect (if these people backstab other writers, how do you think they are going to treat their clients?), and generally behaving like a grownup.

The second reason I'm not bothered by this is that online ads, while a nice source of occasional income, shouldn't be your only source of projects. It's just like hunting for a real job. If all you do is open the paper every morning and circle a couple of classified ads, you are going to be out of work for a long time. Active marketing is a key part to long-term success.

Am I good at active marketing? Heck no. Am I getting better? Slowly. I'm not one who likes to talk about myself, but I'm getting better at dropping into casual conversation that I'm a freelance writer. Two of the most lucrative projects I have on the horizon came from having people say, "Really? Well I need some writing done. Let's talk."

I honestly do feel sorry for these people because they are missing the point. They will end up as corporate cogs someday because they blew their freelance opportunity. I want other people to succeed at writing, that's the real reason behind this blog. If my silly mistakes and limited experience can help someone step out of the crowd of writing hobbyists into the realm of writing professionals, that's great! There is plenty of work out there for all of us and we are all stronger writers when we help each other.

Cash in on cheap content

2007-05-31T13:05:00.000-07:00

I recently had a project where I had to rewrite the content of a website. When I looked over the site, I could feel the brain damage setting in. The content was...well, I can't think of a word that adequately describes how unbelievably bad it was. It was obvious to me that this site had hired one of these "half-cent a word" outfits. Every page was just keyword-stuffed, redundant gibberish.

I tried rewriting it, but there was just nothing useful there. I ended up punching out a bunch of original content. It was easy work and required no research, but I probably spent more time on it than the pay justified. And seriously, I'm pretty sure I killed off a few thousand brain cells.

My point is that freelancers shouldn't mind all the cheap outsourced material. As long as companies buy cheap content, there will be work for genuine writers as we go in and clean up the mess.

More musings on goals

2007-05-30T08:40:00.000-07:00

I set my monthly goals by submissions rather than payment. As a freelancer, I can't depend on regular payments. All I can do is put out increasing effort each month until I am earning a level I am comfortable with.

Last month it occurred to me that there is a problem with this system. I near the end of the month, realize I'm nowhere near my goal, and have to scramble to get a couple of submissions in. I added a daily tracker that gives me an increasing target over the month. For example, on May 17 I should have met 17/31 of my goal for May. My monthly goal is to at least match my previous best month.

This month two new problems came up. One is that if I keep just meeting my best month, I never grow. My long term target is to be self-sufficient by August 2008, which will be my 2-year anniversary. I need to make 4x what I'm making now to meet that. If I set my monthly target to 10% over my previous best month, then I should just about meet my self-sufficiency goal. Yes, I realize that the flaw with that is that I'm equating submission with income. I will continue to tweak the system over the coming months.

The other problem is - how do I count project bids? I've bid on several projects this month so I'm out there trying to drum up business, but how do I count that, particularly when I'm bidding on a project of unknown size, and simply quoting an amount per piece, per word, or per hour?

For May, I'm just a hair behind the 10% goal for the entire month. I won't be able to write tomorrow, so I should try and find something to pop out today. Again, that ignores my project bids so if I include those I'm well past my goal. Still, that doesn't make it OK to slack off today.

That's one of the problems with these kinds of goals. If you hit your goal for the month on the 20th, does that make it OK to take the rest of the month off? Heck no, but it's tempting.

How not to "how to"

2007-05-28T15:01:00.000-07:00

I gleaned another nugget of writing wisdom from my recent flooring project, and that is the difficulty of finding decent instructions.

I spent a lot of time looking around the web for advice on how to install laminate flooring. I found quite a bit and it was helpful, but I consistently ran into the problem of steps that weren't well enough explained. For example, you have to use spacers to leave a gap between the floor and the wall to allow expansion. However not one how-to article mentioned how the heck to keep the little buggers from falling over all the time! Every person I've talked to who has done laminate flooring had the same problem. All of us ended up just not using the spacers and hoping for the best.

When writing instructions, it's tricky to know the level of your audience. In a case like this, it is likely that the person needs explanations of even simple concepts. These instructions are generally written by people with a lot of experience and they tend to omit things that have become second nature to them.

I'm not immune to this. Once I was training a couple of employees. I was explaining that they needed to click on the such-and-such icon to start the software. This one woman looked absolutely baffled until the other one leaned over and said, "Icons are the little pictures on your screen," and the light dawned. It never occurred to me to explain the term, but it's not like we come out of the womb knowing what "icon" means.

The whole point to writing for the web is hypertext. That means you can give basic instructions with links to in-dept explanations for each step, definitions of words and acronyms, pages of tips, lists of tools needed, and anything else you can think of. That's the whole point of hypertext.

Of course, I realize these articles aren't written with that in mind. These are probably the "I need someone to write 500 words on how to install laminate flooring" types of projects with no real attempt to make use of the strengths of the web.

It's the cool thing nowadays to trash Wikipedia, but that is a good example of a hypertext document done right. Every article contains link after link, embedded in the main text, to allow the reader to explore every angle of a subject. It's great, unless you get caught up on one of those stream-of-consciousness explorations while you are supposed to be researching an article.

In a perfect world, every how-to article would actually link to a massive database of information, allowing readers to decide for themselves the depth of explanation they need. Then again, Wikipedia works because it has several gazillion people working to maintain it and most sites don't have that level of support. Still, I would think some sites dedicated to home improvement (or any other subject) would set up a more heavily cross-linked database.

Freelancers shouldn't DIY

2007-05-25T08:45:00.000-07:00

After my last liquid disaster I had to figure out what to do with the floor in my office. I finally decided to install laminate flooring because it's something I could do myself and save money.

Well, no. Freelancers don't save money by doing it themselves. If you work a normal job, you don't lose income by tackling your own projects. For a freelancer, every hour you spend doing something else is time you should be writing. Not only that but, since I have no freaking clue what I'm doing, it took me a lot longer than it would have taken a professional. So it actually cost me more money than having someone else do it.

It's still not quite done. The floor is there and turned out fairly nice, but I still need to do all the cleanup: putting the baseboards back on, rehangning the doors, etc.

I'm facing the same problem with my yard. I have spend months trying to find someone competent and reliable to come by once a month and tame the wild flora. I've been looking so long I've even given up on "competent". I just want someone who just shows up occasionally. I'm still looking for that. In the meantime I waste time (and money) doing yardwork I despise, and I hate it even more since I'm being forced to do it. And I waste time calling another round of people who won't show up. And I waste time being mad about it.

April = best month ever

2007-05-07T13:22:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned before, February was a record month for me. You may notice I didn't talk about March. I didn't do so well. I'm getting into the bad habit of coasting on this one client and that's bad. She doesn't give me enough work to live on and I want to diversify anyhow.

April was a new record month, though not by much. At the last minute I submitted an essay to Common Ties so that I could beat February. I'm now tracking a daily submission goal so that I don't have to scramble so much in the last few days of the month.

May is turning out to be great! I'm at nearly twice my daily goal so far with plenty of work over the next couple of weeks. In fact I'm a little concerned that if May goes TOO well it may set a goal I can't easily beat. Ambitious goals are great, but if they are too ambitious then you just give up. Well, I do at least.

I hope to have more posts up in the next few days, including "How Pergo Flooring Relates Writing" and "How I'm Cashing In on Low Paying Jobs".

Incidentally, you know you're a writer when the top application on your start button is Word.

"GoDaddy Stinks" and other press releases

2007-04-23T09:27:00.000-07:00

I continue to battle with GoDaddy. I sent my eighth unblock request today. Of those eight, only one received an autoreplay acknowledgement. It seems obvious they are never going to unblock me. I've scanned my server for viruses. I've checked the blacklists at robtex at least once a day and I've never been listed there. I've checked for open relays at AppRiver and I have none. Basically there is no reason for them to block me, no reason for them to CONTINUE blocking me, but there's nothing I can do. I don't have any business to take away from them. My client seems indifferent to the fact that her web host is throwing her email away without her knowledge or permission, so doesn't seem likely to move her sites. I can't threaten them with legal action because there are no laws protecting email. Basically, I'm hosed.

I'll have to make occasional use of my personal email address when I come across future clients with GoDaddy, which I dislike because it seems unprofessional. But I also need to just move on and stop wasting my time with this.

I also spent last week dealing with a non-paying client. It's not a writing client, but rather the company I work through providing respite services for my niece. I left four voicemail messages over two weeks about a missing paycheck. This morning I finally just worked my way up the chain of command until I found someone who actually answered her phone. It took minutes to resolve once I found someone who would actually speak with me. Of course we'll see if the money actually ends up in my account.

But last week wasn't all bad. My main client started me writing press releases. They require a bit more effort than articles since they have to be objectively accurate. For example in one on cell phone donations, I mentioned that you should erase personal data from a cell phone before donating. She took that out because it's subjective advice. It's an interesting new type of writing - and the fact it pays a little better is nice as well.

GoDaddy must die!

2007-04-18T10:25:00.000-07:00

I know many of you have business web sites hosted with GoDaddy. MAKE SURE YOU POST YOUR TELEPHONE NUMBER because at some point GoDaddy will block your clients from emailing you and they will need an alternate contact.

I continue to fight with GoDaddy to convince them I'm not a spammer. After I filled out their online unblock request, they emailed me several hours later asking for more information. That request should have been on the online form. I tried responding to the email but, of course, it bounced because they think I'm a spammer! I tried filling out the online form again but it won't take it because a ticket is already open on my IP address. I could call their support line (not toll free of course) but I don't think I could be anything remotely resembling civil at this point.

So I forwarded the message through my personal email and, assuming they haven't blacklisted that as well, I still hope to have this cleared up sometime before I reach retirement age.

I never considered using GoDaddy for my websites because I don't base my choice in web hosts on their ability to get busty women to take off their clothes in commercials. This incident certainly puts them on my "no way in hell" list of businesses.

Down with the anti-spam witchhunters

2007-04-17T14:55:00.000-07:00

You heard me - I'm not sick of the spammers, I'm sick of the people fighting them.

Several months ago I lost a project because my web host decided the client was a spammer. His emails weren't bounced. They weren't directed to my spam folder. They just disappeared. He thought I had flaked out and gave the project to someone else. OK, it was a piddly project, but it was still lost work. Needless to say, I moved my site to a new web host immediately.

Today I have the same problem from the other end. This time my client's host has decided that I am a spammer and bounces all my emails back. At least I'm getting a bounce so I know what is happening. I'm lucky to send one email a day so I hardly qualify as a spammer. I've checked the email blacklists and I'm not on them. I've scanned my server for viruses and found none. There is simply no reason for my email to be blocked. I've put in a ticket to get them to clear me but that could take 24 hours.

In the meantime I was afraid I'd miss my deadline since I couldn't send her my articles. I'm lucky that I had her phone number so I could call her and tell her what is happening and she could provide me with another email address. There's a lesson - always have a backup means of communication.

I will gladly take ten thousand messages about male enhancement over the loss of one dollar of business. Spammers are annoying, but the anti-spammers are quickly becoming worse in my book.

The Creative Process

2007-04-11T14:37:00.000-07:00

The creative process often fascinates me.

I sometimes get articles that are very specific, like how to get a better sale price on your home. Thatn was a pretty straightforward article that I banged out in no time, mostly based on my own knowledge so it required very little research.

Sometimes, I get more open ended assignments like, "write me two articles on Excel". I go through the "deer in the headlights" phase, where there are so many possiblities I just can't narrow it down. My favorite technique is to start poking around the web, not for research just for inspiration. Eventually I stumble across an idea that inspires me and the more I think about it, the more excited I get about it until the article just pours out of me. In this case, I came across a forum thread where people were listing unusual ways they were using Excel. This led to, "Crazy Things I've Done With Excel" and "Crazy Things Other People Have Done With Excel" (the latter were much more crazy than anything I've done).

That blank page syndrome is tough for any writer, and we each need to find our own ways past it.

Ah, liquid, my old nemesis

2007-03-27T10:20:00.000-07:00

I have once again been chased out of my writing comfort zone by a spill. This one came from my water heater, which has apparently been leaking into the padding under the carpet in my office for quite some time now. I found it only because I finally decided to try and find the source of that faint but nasty smell that's been around for a couple of weeks. Now I'm poorer by the cost of a new water heater and I need to figure out what I'm going to do about the moldy carpet padding. Plus I have a friend coming in to stay the weekend. Oh, and I need to write and earn some money, just not in my office.

I got tagged by Brian Westover for the "Habits for Success" meme which reminded me that I got tagged for another meme a while back that I promptly forgot about.

There are good subcontractors out there

2007-03-16T13:34:00.001-07:00

Yet another post I’ve had on my “blog about this” list was about subcontracting. It was directly in response to a post on another blog, but I can’t remember where it was so I can’t backlink.

This blogger was a writer who was overwhelmed with work and was debating about the merits of subcontracting. There were several comments from other writers who talked about how disappointed they had been when subcontracting their work. It is hard to find good, reliable writers. It is a problem when the primary writer spends as much time proofing the subcontractor’s work as it would take to write the article from scratch. And it’s frustrating to find a good writer then have that writer leave in three months to pursue an independent career.

Some writers, I suspect, are simply too controlling to subcontract their work effectively. When you subcontract, you are putting your name on someone else’s style. Some writers just can’t stand that, so spend all of their time massaging the contracted piece into their own personal style. Part of the art of successful subcontracting is learning to use a very light editing touch.

Personally, I love being a subcontractor. Before I started my writing, I subcontracted as a programmer for several years. It was great! This guy handled looking for new clients, collecting payments, and all the administrative nonsense. I just wrote code. Ultimately, though, it fell apart because he wasn’t very good at marketing. He was riding on a couple of big clients and when they both suffered major financial setbacks, he suddenly had very little work. We lost touch and I don’t even know if he’s still in business anymore.

I don’t want to do marketing. I don’t want to do collections. I just want to write. And I’m quite happy to let someone take a piece of the pie to handle those things.

Incentives that aren't incentives

2007-03-15T17:02:00.000-07:00

I’m always trying to find good incentives to motivate me to work more. “Paying the bills” only goes so far. Recently I thought I had one, but I realize now it wouldn’t work.

I believe I’ve mentioned my niece one or two (thousand) times in this blog. Her father is Greek (meaning here-on-a-green-card Greek) and has to go back home for several months this summer to keep his sailing credentials up to date (for some reason there aren’t a lot of sailing jobs in Phoenix). He wants my sister and my niece to go out and visit him for a couple of weeks in September. My sister is a little concerned about taking a special needs child on an international trip all by herself so she’d like me to come. She’s reluctantly offered to pay my way, but she can’t really afford it.

Aha! What a great work incentive. I set some goal about how much money I have to make between now and September and if I make it, I go to Greece. Yay!

The more I thought about it, the more I realized this just doesn’t work.

Let’s say I set myself goal of $10,000 (which would be too low a goal, but is a nice round number for this example). What if I make only $9,999? Do I really cancel a trip to Greece, hosted by a local so I get to see the “real” Greece rather than the tourist stuff, because of one dollar? OK, so let’s say one dollar is close enough. What about two dollars? Ten dollars? A thousand dollars?

This may very well be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He’s close to retirement and she can’t afford to run out there every year he goes back, so this might never come up again.

If I missed my goal, I know damn well I’d go anyhow. And I know I know that, so the incentive is gone. That’s the problem with being a cynical smart-ass like me. A lot of motivational stuff doesn’t work because I see through the psychology. I see the man behind the curtain and realize it’s all just a trick.

I read a lot of the advice on freelance success, but much of what I read just makes me roll my eyes. Obviously these ideas work because they are written by people who’ve used them, but I know they wouldn’t work for me. I keep searching because every now and then I come across something that strikes a chord.

(And I don’t know why I used so many parenthetical phrases today.)

Avoiding burnout

2007-03-14T11:28:00.000-07:00

I’ve been meaning to write this post since before my computer disaster but I haven’t gotten around to it. Recently, Deb Ng wrote her Put a Fork in Me post and that reminded me about this.

Her post brought out the usual real-writers-don’t-do-SEO crowd who are willing to use any opportunity to abuse that equine corpse. I don’t feel her post was about the evils of SEO. It was about the ignorance of clients who don’t really understand what SEO is, what keywording is, and how the web works. Mostly, though, it was about career evolution.

People get burned out in every career. Whether you shovel cow manure or do brain surgery, some people just get sick of the grind. At that point they can spend the rest of their life being miserable, or they can find a change. It could be a simple change of duties or a completely new career.

Freelancers run a great risk of falling into that trap. If you become known as a SEO writer, you keep getting offered SEO jobs. Your clients might think you could do more, but all they have is SEO. All of your job searching is focused on sites that specialize in SEO. It’s easy to keep doing it because it’s easy.

A while back I began to realize that I am getting a bit dissatisfied with my current work. The stuff I’m doing now is technically SEO, but it’s meatier articles that happen to have a key phrase in them. Generally I get assignments of 3-4 articles rather than 300. Most of what I do is basically copywriting. I just don’t really like copywriting.

Since I have at least one client who reads this blog, let me emphasize that I don’t hate copywriting by any means. It’s a solid way to bring in some money and I think it will likely be a core income stream for a good part of my career. I just don’t want to get trapped in it.

At heart, I’m a technical writer. I’d much rather write something like, “Although analytical solutions to this simple partial differential equation exist for simple boundary conditions, the time-dependent concentration boundary conditions at the inlet and outlet reservoirs in the diffusion cell experiments demand a numerical solution.” than “We don’t want you to find just a paycheck. We want you to find a career that will give you the lifestyle of your dreams.” (I’m rolling my eyes as I paste that last line, even though I’m the one who wrote it).

Right now I’m pretty much coasting on what this one client is giving me and that’s bad. I need to get out and do more self-promotion, including updating this blog more regularly. I need to find a wider variety of work so that I don’t get burned out. And, of course, I need to generate more income.

I paid my mortgage!

2007-02-28T19:31:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update because I'm tired. I just finished my last article for February and I managed to make enough from writing to pay my mortgage! By three whole dollars no less. Quite a milestone.

I've been fighting a vicious cold for a week and haven't been sleeping so I'm going to go drug myself up and hope I can get some sleep tonight. I'll do a better update later (yeah, I know I keep saying that).

Busy busy

2007-02-20T09:49:00.000-07:00

I've been pretty busy catching up and got my first chance to take a breath today.

My over-caffinated laptop had to go through a full reformat and reinstall, so it's usable but everything's gone. Since I'm suspicious of ever trusting it again, it will become just a play laptop. I ordered a new writing laptop because heaven knows I need to own four computers (two desktops, two laptops). Since this will be a dedicated work laptop, at least I can claim depreciation on my taxes. My new laptop shipped but has been stuck in "clearance delay" in Indianapolis for nearly a week since it shipped from China.

I was able to (sort of) finish that big project. My disaster was complicated by the fact that I had misinterpreted what the client wanted. I was writing meaty technical articles; she wanted light advertising copy. No only was I putting WAY too much effort into each article, I had to put in WAY too much effort a second time to rewrite them. She was getting restless with how long they were taking, but once she saw them and corrected me I was able to put out most of the remainder by the deadline. She had to write a few herself, but her client is happy, so she's happy, and all is right with the world. She's given me a lot of work since then so it looks like she still trusts me :)

I continue to meet my "make more money than last month" goal. January beat December as well, plus meeting my "make more from writing than anything else". This month I had already beaten January's income by the 11th! I haven't had any work for several days and I know I should be doing the self-promotion thing but as long as my income keeps growing it's hard to get motivated to do that.

I keep having ideas of more informative lesson-type blog entries. I need to write them down since I forget them quickly. I hope to start updating a bit more often.

Small mistake, big disaster

2007-02-02T12:26:00.000-07:00

Several months ago I was shopping for a desk for my home office. Since I write on a laptop, normal desks or even computer desks don't work because they are too high. Eventually I found desks that allowed you to adjust the height. I got it narrowed down to two: a desk and a table. They were exactly the same except for one difference. There was a support bar running from one side to the other underneath. On the table, this bar was in the middle (looking front to back). On the desk, it was shifted toward the back. But the desk was about $20 more so I figured I'd get the table instead.

The table arrived, I set it up, sat down and my knees hit the support bar. Not a big problem, but a little irritating. I should have spend the extra $20 on the desk but no harm done.

Monday I got a good-sized project that I've been working on this week. Thursday I started my workday by turning on the laptop and setting my mug of coffee down next to it. I sat down, scooted in, and my knees slammed against that support bar. Did I mention the coffee mug was one of those with a narrow bottom and a wide top? You know, there's a special place in Hell for people who design cups like that. The table wobbled, the mug wobbled, and in slow motion it tipped over and deposited its contents into my laptop. Poof. All gone.

Insert your own stream of profanity here.

No problem - I backup my documents every day. Every single freaking day. Except since I started this project.

I should also mention that this is a subcontract. It's the first project from a new and lucrative client for my client, so I not only screwed up my end, but I make her look stupid to her new (and hopefully not ex-) client.

I think of all the things that had to come together to make this happen. This was my third cup of coffee and I almost never drink more than two. Heck, I don't even work on Thursdays! Normally that's a day I take care of my niece, but her father had the day off so I figured I get a day of writing in instead. I didn't even own that particular coffee cup six weeks ago (Christmas present).

The laptop dried out overnight but wouldn't boot up this morning. I took it to a computer shop, but I don't expect them to be able to do anything with it. Even if they do, I would be reluctant to trust it. I did my taxes this week (the day before in fact) and I'm getting a substantial refund; guess where that is going. Every single time I get a windfall, some disaster happens within days that eats it up.

My weekend will be trying to recreate the articles I lost. Some types articles can be rewritten in a heartbeat, but not these. They were very technical articles with lots of screwy acronyms and such. All of my research and links was on that computer too so I'm really back at square one. My client appreciates my efforts and understands that these things happen so I haven't shot myself in the foot too badly.

But I really wish I'd spent the extra $20 on the desk.

I'm back

2007-01-28T12:55:00.000-07:00

It's been a while, hasn't it?

Over the holiday break, projects dried up but I still wanted to work. Did I channel that energy into self promotion or something useful? Of course not. That would have been smart and responsible. Instead I spent a lot of time pacing around like a caged tiger. I lost my momentum right about the time the holidays were over and more projects were out there. I wasted a lot of January and it was looking like I wasn't going to meet my "make more money than last month" goal.

But as I started to get my motivation back, I got a bunch of work dumped on me. I just finished 40 short keyword-stuffed articles on job hunting that have left me with carpal tunnel of the brain. But it's a decent amount of money which pushes me past what I made in December, so I'm happy. And there are better projects on the horizon.

I have a lead on an editing project that I'm not sure is going to pan out. I would be editing a very large federal policy document. I've actually done that before and, though not fun, that kind of stuff pays the bills. The problem is that there is a payment threshold. They can't pay more than that amount without putting the project out for bid. I'm debating about whether I can do that for the threshold amount or not. Part of the problem is I'm not sure how many hours it would take and it would almost certainly bring in less than my target wage. But it wouldn't be peanuts either, and it's not like I'm earning my target wage from anything else.

While I'm writing this, I did some Google searches for editing fees. I see anywhere from $5-$25/page or over $100/page for quick turnaround. This job would be well below even the bottom of that range so probably isn't worth it.

Well, the last time I turned away low-paying work I got a new client out of it so we'll see if it works again.

December scorecard

2006-12-31T10:47:00.000-07:00

Even though December isn't technically over, I suppose it's close enough for me to evaluate the month. How did I do?

Note that all references to "make more money" should really read "submit a higher dollar value of work". Although getting paid is certainly important, at this point I'm more concerned with the amount and value of work actually done. This keeps out such complications as getting paid next month for work done this month or not getting paid for an article done on spec.

One of my ongoing goals is "Make more money this month than last month". I did that, thanks to my new client. Hey, there's another goal: "Get a new client".

One of my milestones is "Make more from writing than from any other source". That didn't quite happen. December is a wacky month as everything but the retail industry shuts down from Thanksgiving to New Years. I'm hoping this new client will be able to provide more work in future months than December which will go a long way to meeting that goal.

My goal of "Do one thing every day" didn't work out so well. I still think it's a good goal for me, but I need to get more disciplined about it. I have applied for several new projects in the last couple of weeks, so I haven't been wasting TOO much time.

Right now all of my goals revolve around money. Once I am more financially stable, I can focus on things that are more fun.

That's one of the reasons I don't update the blog more. On days I feel like writing, I feel like I should be writing for money. I mentioned some time back that I was part of a group who was going to write a book about hydrocephalus. That project has languished and I have come to realize that I will be of no help. The book won't make a lot of money and, although I have a lot of personal interest in the topic, the return on my time investment isn't high enough to justify it right now. Later, when I have the luxury of picking my projects, I will revisit the idea.

I want to write about special needs, and that is something I want to develop this year. I just need to think of a way I can add that to my workload while making enough money that I can pay some bills.

That's why I like my "make more money each month" goal. It lets me ease into things, but it will force me to become more focussed and efficient in the future. I will re-evaluate my career choice this fall and, although I don't need to be self-sufficient by then, I need to be a large step closer by then.

The obligatory "resolution" article

2006-12-23T10:34:00.000-07:00

Angela Booth recently wrote about setting tiny writing goals. In this time of New Year's resolutions, it's easy to set grandiose goals that will do more harm than good. Although I understand the "Aim for the stars; settle for the moon" philosophy, it more often becomes "Aim for the stars; realize it's impossible and go back to bed".

I'm definitely a "tiny goal" kind of guy. I'm not making anywhere near the money I could be making, even this early in my career, and I'm fine with that. I'd rather ease into this, making sure I take on only what I can handle, and building to a solid career over time. I'm here for the long haul, not to win the lottery.

I'll add my own advice to goal setting.

It's OK to recognize a goal isn't going to work. Sometimes an idea that seems good at the time turns out to be unrealistic. Rather than futilely chasing rainbows and getting frustrated, get out the eraser, get rid of the goal and replace it with a new one. For example, one of my attempts at motivation was "Lock myself in my office X hours per day" hoping that I'd write out of boredom more than anything else. That worked fine...until I realized that the door wasn't actually locked and I could leave any time I wanted. I ditched that goal and replaced it with "do one thing every day", whether it's write an article, respond to an ad, research a magazine, or read a chapter in one of my writing books. That is working much better.

Use your own goals, not other peoples'. It's fine to use other people for inspiration, but everyone is different. A goal that works for one writer may not work for you. You know your personality, you know your strengths and weaknesses, and in the end you are the only one who can find realistic goals.

When you meet a goal, set a new goal. I know Angela already said that one, but it bears repeating. I see writers get stuck in a rut after meeting some moderate goal rather than improving themselves professionally. One of my goals is "Make more money each month than last month". That is really a path to the goal "Become self sufficient". When that happens, I will replace it with "Become self sufficient +X%" so that I can start building up my retirement. Even once I make enough money, that's still not the end because I can replace that with a goal like "Make the same money but work fewer hours" so that I can have more time for other things. This, of course, is all leading up to the goal "Be a millionaire working only five minutes a day" that so many not-a-scam-at-all businesses offer me.

Goals are not just for the new year. It's better to evaluate your progress regularly. I do a mental checklist about once a month and find that it keeps me on track. A set of shiny and new resolutions can be a great way to start the new year, but resolutions tarnish quite quickly and need constant care.

Libraries - What Happened?

2006-12-17T11:46:00.000-07:00

Recently I was thinking about writing an article for Learning Through History, a print magazine aimed at middle school students. For something like that, online research won't cut it. You have to break down and use those old fashioned book things. So I headed down to my local library.

Other than my stint over Thanksgiving, I haven't been in a public library in probably twenty years. My how things have changed since my day. Back then libraries were places to study. That meant you were supposed to SHUT THE HELL UP!

On my left I had a woman on her cell phone. That's not bad since, contrary to popular belief (and practice), you can have a quiet cell phone conversation. She, however, was using the speakerphone feature.

On my right I had two guys carrying on a conversation while standing over fifty feet apart. Downstairs was the woman with the screaming two year old. The real kicker was when I heard someone shriek, "Woohoo!" I looked up and realized that was one of the staff. I can accept that the visitors might not know to keep quiet, but the freaking library staff should behave better.

My experience was further enhanced by their Wi-Fi. I wanted to complement my book research with some online work. I understand that the library has to lock sites out to avoid abuse. But I'm a little confused when I can get to Blogger, but not to two sites about the history of the Byzantine Empire. I'm also confused when I can't access the library's own website to use their online card catalog.

I lasted about a half hour before giving up. It was pretty close to deadline and I figured it was only about 50-50 that I'd get it done anyhow. Plus it's writing on spec which is always a little shaky.

I'll try again next month. I won't go back to the same library. Instead I'll drive into Phoenix and use one of the "big city" libraries in hopes my experience will be better. If not, I'll have to break down and get a library card so I can take the stuff home. I was hoping to avoid that since that just means a second trip to return the books and maybe more trips to get additional titles. Plus, of course, you can't check out the reference books anyhow.

I suppose if worse comes to worse I can just take my Walkman to blot out my noise. Oh, wait, it's "take my iPod" now. Well, something with headphones anyhow.

Am I a flaky writer?

2006-12-12T15:59:00.000-07:00

I've talked often about procrastination. It's a terrible curse for a freelancer. I deal with it as best I can by setting short term goals and trying to trick myself in various ways.

I've also occasionally talked about my niece, Maria. I try not to mention her too often because that's what my other blog is for, but she's a big part of my flakiness. She's not a typical two year old. She has a number of serious neurological problems and the two days a week I take care of her are nonstop parades of therapy appointments, doctor visits, exercises, as well as the usual eating, drinking, and sleeping. This is complicated by the fact that she can't do anything herself yet; she hold her own bottle sometimes but that's about it.

There are four of us who take care of her: her parents, me, and the nanny who is a retired nurse. But when one of us can't work their time, the rest of us work extra days. We're happy to do it, but it's exhausting.

On the other hand, my clients don't care. OK, maybe they care, but they shouldn't have to. I have commitments and I have to meet them.

Freelance Rule #1: If you don't treat writing as a business then it will never be more than a hobby.

On the third hand, no one lies on their death bed wishing they'd spent more time at work.

Let's consider two recent examples.

I have my new client who gave me my first batch of work last week. I finished it but made a stupid blunder that rendered much of it useless. She asked me if I could fix it before the deadline. Normally I could have, but that week I pulled an extra day watching Maria and I just couldn't. She either did it herself or pawned it off on another writer.

I'm not annoyed about the blunder. It happens. It was just ignorance and, now that I know, I won't do it again. But I am annoyed that I couldn't correct the blunder in time. She was nice about it, but she shouldn't have had to figure out an alternative.

Before that, during my brief tenure at LTK, my editor had to extend my training deadline. It was in part due to Maria, part the holidays, and part my own stupid self. Again, she was nice about it, but shouldn't have had to be.

I'm a good writer. I'm a good researcher. I work fast and I take the work seriously. But I am and always will be a flaky writer.

That doesn't mean I can't do this job. As a freelancer it is important to recognize your limitations and find ways to work within that framework.

Today, at least in the US, you're not supposed to admit you have flaws. If you do you're being negative. Um, no. To say the glass is half-empty may be pessimistic, but to say it's completely full is just delusional. If you never see your own flaws, you can't fix them.

I have to work within the context of being a flaky writer. For me that means taking on less work than I'm capable of to ensure that I have some maneuvering room when real life intrudes. It means setting short-term goals. It means meeting those short-term goals rather than just ignoring them. It means occasionally, though not very often, saying "no" to my sister. Just because my family comes first doesn't mean they have to eclipse the job.

Even flaky writers can make a living.

Busy, busy, busy

2006-12-04T18:32:00.000-07:00

I'm both pleased and annoyed at how busy I've been lately. I'm pleased at the writing work I now have, but I'm annoyed at how much non-writing stuff has chosen to pop up. Plus the usual, "Stop calling me - I'm working!" thing that all freelancers go through.

I mentioned before that I might have an opportunity to write a grant proposal. My niece's eye doctor is starting a study examining her type of vision and hearing impairments (cortical vision impairment and auditory neuropathy if your interested) to determine why they often occur together. He told my sister that the project needed a grant writer and she mentioned me (the weak network strikes again). I was going to follow up with him but got sidetracked when my niece was hospitalized, then came Thanksgiving, and so on. I made a point of tagging along to her appointment last week so I could give him my card. He seemed quite enthusiastic and said he has "several projects" for me. Good money and a strong personal interest should make this a terrific opportunity.

I've started my other new project. The articles are pretty straightforward. The keyword-heavy content is certainly a new experience. It requires a whole different style of writing to cram a lot of keywords into text without making it sound like you are. The first one took me an absurdly long time because I was trying too hard. Once I got the first one I could use it as a template for the others. I'm almost done but I can only do one or two before I have to take a break. Once I pick up the skill, I should be able to pop these out pretty quickly. It's not what I want to do eight hours a day, but it's kind of brainless and sometimes I need brainless.

My last three LTK articles

2006-11-30T15:59:00.001-07:00

Since I know you just can't live without knowing, I've posted the last of my LoveToKnow Business articles: How To Start a Home Based Business, Search Engine Optimization Services, and Sales Reports.

Behold the power of the Internet

2006-11-30T07:59:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time there was a woman who needed a writer. She fired up her computer to post an ad on craigslist. Before doing so, she decided to check her RSS feeds. She saw Tom Chandler had updated his blog and read his latest entry. She followed that entry to the blog of a struggling writer. "Hmm," she said to her self, "I need a writer, he needs work, he seems to be able to string words together. What the heck." And she called the struggling writer and offered him the work.

Yay!

Some of it is keyword stuffing: taking existing web pages and adding keywords without making it look like I'm deliberately baiting search engines. Boring, but easy. Some of it will be original content, but at a better rate than I've made from past projects. If she's right about the projected workload, it will cover about half of what I need to be making every month.

When it comes to business, your strong network is the people you have direct contact with. Your weak network is all of THEIR friends and contacts. I remember reading an article long ago that people get most of their work from the weak network. You don't get jobs from your friends; you get them from your friend's hairdresser's brother-in-law's dogwalker. The Internet is the ultimate weak networking tool.

A followup to my previous post

2006-11-29T13:12:00.000-07:00

Considering some emails I've received, perhaps I need to clarify something about my last post.

I'm not trashing LoveToKnow. I'm not trashing web content or low paying gigs. My point was merely to illustrate the kind of cost-benefit analysis any freelancer needs to make when evaluating a project. I had considered couching it in anonymous terms, but anyone with an IQ over 5 would have been able to piece it together from my previous posts so I didn't see the point.

I was shocked when I saw that I had a HUGE increase in readers after posting that entry. I was afraid I had become the center of a firestorm; personally I hate controversy and have no interest in being mired in it. It turns out that Deborah Ng had accidentally put my blog address in one of her job links, so a bunch of people stumbled over here by mistake. Maybe I picked up a couple more regular readers.

Tom Chandler was one of those accidental readers, and he used my post the basis for Writing Cheap? The Five Steps Every Struggling Writer Should Take.

He brought up the point of intangibles, which is an important one. My LTK decision didn't come out of a calculator. The money was merely one aspect. I already mentioned that I had a good editor and was learning from her, which made me hesitant to leave. Tom also mentions that this kind of assignment can help you build a portfolio of clips, which was another one of my motivations to give them a try. In addition to writing for them, I was training to be site editor. That credential might have made people think I actually know what I'm doing (the fools!).

Studies have shown (I have no reference to back this up - this is a piece of trivia from my own brain) that employees will rate salary fairly low in priority compared to intangibles such as being treated with respect, advancement opportunities, or simply having fun on the job. Everyone talks about salary because it's easy to quantify and compare. Job A pays more than job B so must be "better".

In the end, I listened to my gut. I learned a long time ago that my subconscious mind is much smarter than my conscious one. I just knew this was the right decision for me.

Tom has some other good points in his post. Many of them you probably already know, but they bear repeating so go take a look at what he has to say.

A Hard Decision

2006-11-27T11:56:00.000-07:00

One of the hardest aspects of being a freelancer is knowing when to walk away from the work. This is particularly true when you haven't got any backup.

After a month at LoveToKnow, I've decided to leave. When I first looked into them I was put off by the pay ($15 for a 650-word article), but Deborah Ng talked them up in her blog so I decided to give them a try. They seem like a good crowd and Betsy Gallup was a great editor. I learned a lot from her and that was one reason I wanted to stay.

But it's $15/article.

I have a mortgage to pay. I knew that the secret to success in that arena was learning to pop the articles out quickly enough to earn a reasonable amount per hour. I managed to get my time down to an hour and a half per article. That's $10/hour which is too low to pay my bills, and yet my quality was really starting to suffer. It was the worst of both worlds.

After agonizing about it over the weekend, I walked away today. I let Betsy know I'd finish out my articles for the month but then I'm done. It was steady work, but if all I want is steady I can go flip burgers.

I want to pursue other article opportunities, probably in the print media rather than the web. I want to follow up on that grant writing opportunity. I talked with my cousin over the weekend who writes grants and she says NIH grants are a real specialty and some writers do nothing but. I should also push the technical writing more. I need to revise the front page of my website because it's, well, crap. I tried too hard to do the marketing thing and it sounds just awful.

I've probably said this before, but it bears repeating: a freelancer who forgets about career development is dead. It is important in any job, but absolutely critical for the self-employed. It is too easy to get stuck in a safe job and never make what you are worth. I know this was the right decision, but it's still a tough step to take.

Writing on vacation

2006-11-23T07:58:00.000-07:00

My writing experience has been interesting this week. I'm out of town so I've been camped out at the public libraries (which have free Wi-Fi) to get some work done. It's been a different environment than my usual work at home. I'm more focussed since I have nothing to do but work. Then again, it's harder to work for a long time because there isn't really any good way to take a break. Each day I wrote two articles in about three hours and I'm pleased that my production rate is getting better. Each day I got very antsy as I neared the end of the second article. I don't know if three hours is my limit or if my brain started to get excited that my work day was almost over. At home if I start to get restless, I get up and do something and get back to the writing later (maybe). At the library there wasn't anything to do but pace the aisles. I knew if I ran out and got lunch or something, I'd never make it back.

I've also been a good boy and reading writing books during down time at the house.

The next few days will be tough writing-wise. Today, of course, I have plans. Tomorrow we drive back. Saturday will be a day to catch up on things at home and recover from the trip; as I get older I find I need a day to recover from any travel. Sunday and Monday I will be able to work and get those last three articles out for LTK. Then the rest of the week is a bust. The nurse who cares for my niece most of the time is with her mother who is very sick, so I'll be pulling three days instead of a day and a half watching my niece. Sometimes I can get work done if she takes a long nap, but rarely. Then the month is over, so I absolutely have to get those LTK articles done Sunday and Monday. Nothing like a deadline to give you a kick in the pants.

I still would like to punch out a Learning Through History article before the end of the month, but I doubt that will happen.

2006-11-22T13:52:00.001-07:00

Posted articles on expense reports and business reports. Electrifying as always.

Two more business articles

2006-11-21T14:32:00.000-07:00

I got two articles done after all: Annual Finance Reports and Payroll Tax Reporting. I'm hoping to do two more tomorrow.

The Procrastinator's Lament

2006-11-21T11:13:00.000-07:00

What a week! It's the usual thing we procrastinator's face - we put stuff off until the last minute, then something blows up and we don't have time to do it all. And yet I do this over and over and over.

I had planned to have all my LTK articles done by yesterday. I don't. I have to have them done by the end of the month, no excuses. Although I'm out of town, it turns out all the libraries here have free Wi-Fi so I have a good work venue and an excuse to get away from the relatives. My hope is to finish...oh, who am I kidding? I'm not even going to set goals at this point, other than "get lots done". It probably means I won't get the Learning Through History article done this month, but the deadline is December 15 so I could get it done early next month. That means it won't count on this month's submission record, but that's my own darn fault.

I'm pleased that my editor at LTK is being patient about this. However I certainly can't do this again next month.

OK, enough wasting time. To work!

Musing on motivation

2006-11-13T09:34:00.000-07:00

Motivation is a funny thing. I'm coming to realize that mine comes in bursts. For several days I'll work like crazy, then for several days I do nothing. I can work with that, but I need to take advantage of my up times.

Right now I'm in a low motivation period. Over the weekend I accomplished absolutely nothing constructive except the laundry. I'm now three articles behind my goal on LTK. Today is a Maria day and I'm taking care of her overnight. That means I won't sleep so I'll be exhausted tomorrow. I have a bunch of things I need to get done this week in preparation for travelling next week. That doesn't mean I won't be writing - I can't afford not to write this week - but it's going to be a bit of a challenge.

The end of a busy non-writing week

2006-11-10T13:46:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy week for me. I had jury duty and my usual stuff with my niece so I'm a bit behind. I should have five articles up at LTK Business by now but I have only three. I plan to get caught up by Sunday.

Learning Through History is a bi-monthly magazine for children aged 9-16. They just put out a request for articles for their next two issues and I want to submit something to them for each issue. Those probably requires a little book work rather than just the usual Internet research I do, so that would be a good thing to do over Thanksgiving week when my Internet access will be limited.

My previously stated goal of "do something every day" isn't working out this month. I think it's a good goal, but it's also good to know when to let things go. I imagine things won't settle until January so now it is more a matter of "do something when I can". I will definitely make my goal of "more money this month than last month" and I stand a good chance of meeting my secondary goal of "make twice as much money this month as last month". That more money goal should be "submit a greater value of articles this month than last month" so I'm not held hostage to someone else's payment schedule. If an article gets rejected, it still counts toward the goal of submission. I also keep track of acceptance and payment separately just because I'm a statistics nerd.

One comment about LTK over How To Do Things is that I certainly get more editing feedback. HTDT has asked for only minor changes to a couple of articles. Betsy, my editor at LTK, always finds a number of corrections that improve the flow of the article. She mentioned that I use the word "will" too much. I thought that was silly until I searched for the word in one of my articles. Yikes! She fixed several examples and the text reads better. I'm still trying hard to balance time spend vs. money earned over there but it's certainly a better learning environment than HTDT and that's valuable.

Federal Tax ID Number

2006-11-06T17:56:00.000-07:00

I just posted an article on getting a Federal Tax ID Number for your business. I'm pretty much back on track with the writing. I used my latest gift certificates from HTDT to pick up copies of "The Renegade Writer", "Chicago Manual of Style", and "Grant Writing for Dummies", re-investing my income back into the business.

A new month dawns

2006-11-03T14:17:00.000-07:00

Well, October was an interesting month. I met one goal by beating my income for September - in fact I nearly tripled it. I missed the goal of making more from writing than watching my sister's cat while she was on vacation. The stuff with my niece really blew my production for the last part of the month.

This month I have to put out 10 articles for LTK Business. Because of the holidays I'd like to get them done early, so a goal of one article every two days would work. Which means I'm already behind. Doing that means I will beat my October income, but that isn't my only goal. I'd still like to do more HTDT articles and apply for other positions, such as the grant-writing possiblity I found before. I've sunk most of my October income into books about writing and a copy of The Chicago Manual of Style.

Today is a "catch up on all the non-writing stuff that has gotten behind" day, so tomorrow should be the first day I really get back into things.

Slowly getting back to work

2006-10-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

Deborah Ng did a nice post at Finding The Right Words about working in the web content market. It encourages me to see that people really do make decent money in this market. It's not what I want to be doing five years from now, but if I can make a bit better income in the short term, I'll be happy.

Speaking of "why I don't make better income", I continue to do nothing this week. They moved my niece to the PICU and although she might get out today she might not. Today is the first day I've done anything useful. I suspect I won't get any writing done, but I can catch up on a few other things.

A little "vacation"

2006-10-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

I have a couple more articles up: How To Teach Autistic Children and Wi-Fi Business Advantages.

I decided to take the day off yesterday because I've been so busy lately I was starting to get frazzled. Every time I take a day off, I get a little behind, and then some disaster strikes which gets me even further behind. This time the disaster is my niece, who was admitted to the hospital through the ER last night. It's probably nothing more than a minor infection, but there are complications from her hydrocephalus and the barium swallow she had recently. If you care about the details you can see them on my other blog.

So today I just can't get into working and tomorrow will be one of my regular Maria days, assuming she's out of the hospital. That means I won't get any more work done until at least Friday. Then Friday evening, my father and his wife are visiting which pretty much blows the weekend. The problem is that the longer I go without working the harder it is to start up again. And I was doing so well for a while there.

The dangers of research

2006-10-21T15:23:00.000-07:00

Ah, research - the biggest time waster the freelancer faces. Obviously research is important but only to a point. It's easy to keep going, because it's "for work". When is enough enough? Let's consider two examples.

While researching my article, "How To Recognize Sleep Disorders In Babies," I went off on a tangent as I researched cosleeping. It's a subject I'm interested in but ultimately it was irrelevant to the article. It wasted over an hour of my time.

Today I was researching an article on autism. I instantly found a great resource, an article with all the information I needed, and yet was disorganized and not that well written. It was easy for me to take the information from this piece, organize it better, and create my own article. But I hate to use just one source. So I start looking for another one. This was further complicated that when writing about things like special needs, I'm reluctant to use commercial sites. If I use them I should link to them, but that is an implied endorsement of their product. Eventually I found a piece that I used to add a paragraph to the article, but the bulk of it came from the original source. I could have gotten that article done in an hour; instead it took more than two.

I'm learning, though. I'm slowly getting better at popping out articles faster while still maintaining quality. I think this is going to be important for my gig at LoveToKnow Business. At $15/article, I can't spend all day on each one. I have to get better at popping them out faster so that I can increase my hourly income. If I can achieve 90% of the quality in 20% of the time, that's a good tradeoff. The piece will never be perfect, so learn to accept "close enough".

A good day

2006-10-20T14:12:00.000-07:00

HTDT approved How To Find a Cord Blood Bank. I am also writing for LoveToKnow Business and got my first article up about Internet Domain Registration. They are going to train me as site editor after I get a couple more articles in. And one of my niece's doctors is trying to set up a study and needs a grant writer. It's a good day to be me.

Good boy! You may have a cookie.

2006-10-19T17:26:00.000-07:00

Today is Thursday, which is one of my days to take care of my niece. I usually don't even bother trying to work on those days. However she didn't sleep much last night so took a long nap this morning. I managed to pop out not one but TWO articles in that time! Yay me! Both articles were on cord blood storage, so the same research applied to both articles which is why I did them. Yet another good skill to learn - how to make research yield several articles rather than just one.

One of the articles, How to Understand Cord Blood Storage has already been approved along with an article I wrote yesterday, How To Recognize Dyslexia in Children.

Some nice feedback

2006-10-18T14:01:00.000-07:00

My latest article, How To Understand Special Education Inclusion, is up on HTDT.

I also got a nice little email from one of the editors saying how much she likes my writing. OK, the cynic in me wonders if it's some kind of automatic message generated when they accept your seventh article. But I'll assume that it was genuine :)

Two new goals

2006-10-17T17:12:00.000-07:00

In my last post I mentioned something about making more money this month than last month. Then it occurred to me - that's a great goal! I have to make more money each month than the last month. I know this will get tricky once I start submitting to print publications, since the lag between submission and acceptance can drag on, but I'll re-evaluate later if I have to.

When I first started writing for HTDT I had set myself the goal of writing an article a day. OK, that didn't happen, in part because a lot of the listed topics bore me. I've heard that the best way to make money from them lately is to suggest a ton of articles in your areas of expertise.

I also have the bad habit of perusing writer job lists, bookmarking interesting jobs, then never sending a query.

My basic HTDT goal is a good one, but needs some modification. So my second goal is that each day I will send a query, submit an article, or respond to a job ad.

Time will tell how well these goals work out.

Freelance career development

2006-10-13T11:26:00.000-07:00

My name is Andy Humphrey and I'm a WAHU (work at home uncle).

As I've mentioned before, a large part of my motivation for working freelance is my niece. She has special needs (hydrocephalus, vision and hearing impairment, global developmental delays) and the flexibility of freelance work lets me help take care of her. I love her like she was my own daughter, but she is definitely a high-maintenance girl. I don't even try to get anything done on the days I have her, and by the end of the day I'm exhausted.

She's been on vacation the last few days and I've been getting a lot done, which is great. And I hope I can keep this going when she comes back, but I'm sure things will slip. The thing is that it's hard to write when I'm tired and can't concentrate. Then I don't get things done, get stressed (which makes it even harder to focus), don't sleep (I've been sleeping really well now that I'm working), get more tired, and get even less done. It's frustrating.

I suppose that's one of the things that separates professionals from hobbyists: writing when you don't feel like it.

I saw that Love To Know is looking for writer/editors for their business section. Editors are expected to add 10-20 articles a month. Can I do it? Sure. Probably. Maybe.

OK, yes I can do it. But it's likely to mean that I will sometimes be writing about things that bore me (another skill to learn as a professional writer). And it's scary to suddenly have commitments rather than just write when I feel like it. And that's part of the evolution of my career which is a good thing (I keep reminding myself). As part of my application I had to include two sample articles, but I don't have any business articles at this point. I think they were interested in the quality of writing so non-business articles would have been fine, but relevant clips are always better. So I sat down and popped out two business articles over the course of the morning. Whether or not I get that job, I'm pleased that I was able to crank out two articles on demand. I proved something to myself even if no one else cares :)

My niece starts preschool next fall and will need fewer caregivers at that time. At that point, I could get *gulp* a real job if I had to. But I don't want to. I dread the idea of going back to the wage slave life. But if I'm not making a living by then (or at least making a HECK of a lot more money than I am now) then I'm going to have to make some significant changes. The good news is that I will make more money from writing this month than I did last month. The bad news is that I will make more money from watching my sister's cat than I will from writing this month.

I've seen a lot of freelancers talk about re-evaluating their careers in light of one author's $125k Challenge. It's easy to get stuck in something safe. In any job you have to be constantly evaluating how you are going to advance your career, but that is even more important when you are self-employed. Writing for HowToDoThings isn't going to make me a million dollars. I'm getting valuable experience in the business and realities of writing, but if that's all I'm doing a year from now, then I'm just kidding myself. So I do my little jobs now, but always with an eye on career development.

Two other quick notes before I sign off. With my renewed interest in writing for trades, one of the projects I plan to do today is make a list of experts. Starting with friends and relatives, then extending out to acquaintances and friends-of-friends, it would be good to have a list of potential interview subjects. This may even inspire a few ideas.

Also, I've finally got around to reading "Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer" by Jenna Glatzer. I bought this to show my support during Absolute Write's troubles a few months back and it's been sitting in my to-do pile since then. It's great! I'm getting a lot of good information from it and I highly recommend it.

Trade Magazines Revisited

2006-10-11T14:44:00.000-07:00

I'm aware that I'm not going to make a living writing articles for HTDT (especially as infrequently as I get one out). At some point I need to focus on more lucrative writing and I've been thinking about what that should be.

A while back I mentioned the appeal of writing for trade magazines. That idea has been sitting in the back of my brain for a while and recently I decided to do a little more research.

I have spend the last several days out on my patio in the lovely Phoenix weather perusing the Writer's Market section on trade publications. Previously I skimmed this section and nothing leapt out at me, but this time I read every entry and noted ones of interest. I found over 50 interesting leads paying at least ten cents a word (and several over a dollar a word). Some of them require their authors to be experts, but many of them simply want people who can interview and write for experts. Once I thought about it I realize that my circle of family and friends includes an artist, two nurses, a paramedic, a network administrator, plus several government employees, engineers, and scientists. I also have contact with far too many therapists and doctors because of my niece, plus weaker links to the mortgage industry, real estate, veterinary science, and others. I'm quite encouraged by this and hope this is the beginning of a better path for me.

Don't do me any favors

2006-10-10T11:10:00.000-07:00

I want to say one more thing on my rant from before, then I'll stop and get back to writing about writing (or, more accurately, not writing about writing).

The thing that I see in the writing community that I haven't seen in other communities I've been part of is the condescending expert. These are the people who are successful writers and think that gives them reason to savage all the newbies. People new the the business ask stupid questions (and contrary to popular believe, there ARE stupid questions, though that doesn't mean you shouldn't still ask them) and these self-appointed forum police proceed to tear them to pieces and tell them how stupid they are. Their rationale is always the same: "I'm doing you a favor. You have to get used to this kind of abuse in the writing business." They say this as though the entire writing business is a tank of sharks waiting for some tender morsal to devour.

As a writer, yes you will need to learn to accept criticism and rejection. "You are an idiot" is not criticism; it's insult. And yes, writers will occasionally come across people who mistake insult for criticism. But so do butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. We all learn at a young age that the world is full of people who have to make themselves big by making everyone else small. And all of us, not just writers, have to learn to deal with them.

Kids who grow up with verbally abusive parents don't grow up tough. They grow up to be weak and self-loathing. Employees who are abused by their bosses don't do better work. They are more likely to slack off (or just quit and find a human boss). People are not "helping" by being vicious and nasty. They are just being vicious and nasty.

You deal with someone like this just like you deal with the guy who screams at you in traffic. You can scream back, but that doesn't fix anything. They aren't suddenly going to apologize or turn into nice guys. One of the best ways to deal with a bully is to ignore him. In some forums you can go one better and add them to your ignore list so you don't even have to see their tiresome, venomous posts (though you still have to read about people reacting to their posts).

You've heard the old joke about the woman who says to the stumbling man, "Sir, you are drunk," to which the man replies, "And you're ugly, but tomorrow I'll be sober." I'll get past being a neophyte, but you, sir, will be a jackass forever.

Oh, and in actual writing news, I got another article done: How To Recover Floppy Disk Data.

Can't we all just get along?

2006-10-08T14:09:00.000-07:00

It never fails. Any internet community always has to have trivial issues that divide people and lead to pointless bickering. And there is always some minority that has to adopt the "my way or the highway" attitude.

As I get more familiar with the writing community, the common argument I see is "live to write" versus "write to live".

The "live to write" philosophy is that writing is art and should be pure and unsullied by such things as monetary gain. They love to quote Asimov's "I write for the same reason I breathe" line. At the opposite end we have the "write to live" who see writing purely as a method to make money and if they could make more money shoveling manure they'd give up writing in a second.

The "love to write" people are shocked, SHOCKED, that anyone would take a business like attitude to the creation of art. The "write to love" faction get condescending towards the naive attitude that there is anything other than money in the world. And they fight and moan and pollute forums with their endless abuse of equine corpses.

In the end, who cares? If Pollyana Peters wants to create beautiful poetry that she publishes for free, who is she harming? If Myron Moneybags writes junk internet content or scripts for porn movies, so what? Move on with your lives, people.

People can handle disagreement on one of three ways: discussion, debate, or argument.

In a discussion, each side presents their views and that's it. There is not right or wrong. There is no attempt to convert. Person A drives a subcompact because they like the mileage. Person B drives a mid-sized because they like the headroom. No harm done.

In debate, each side is trying to convince each other. It's civilized and mature, but there is the goal of changing someone's mind. Subcompacts use less gas and produce fewer emissions, so it is wrong to drive a larger car. Mid-sized cars are safer, so it is wrong to drive the smaller cars especially if you have children.

Arguments are pretty much screaming and namecalling. If you drive an SUV, the terrorists win. If you don't drive an SUV, the terrorists win.

So in a nutshell:
Discussion - I'm OK, you're OK
Debate - I'm right, you're wrong
Argument - I'm right, you're an idiot

I enjoy discussion and like hearing other points of view. I dislike debate. I detest argument, particularly on the internet. The anonimity factor magnifies the emotions involved and I have seen flamewars of truly staggering proportions. I have walked away from communities (no writing communities so far) where everything gets drowned in the constant roar of argument. I stay out of political and religious forums because very, VERY few people can discuss these subjects calmly, so it's sad when a trivial subject adopts religious importance.

I don't usually rant here, but I've just come across a lot of examples of this today and it's sucked the life out of me. Hey, another excuse not to write ;)

The cat is sleeping in my computer chair

2006-10-07T08:32:00.000-07:00

Yes, that is one of they many feeble excuses I use to avoid working. Other excuses include "I can't work because I need to <insert errand>" (of course, the errand doesn't actually get run which gives me an excuse for tomorrow), "I can't work when the weather is so beautiful", "I can't work when the weather is so awful" (OK, I don't get to use that one very often in Phoenix), as well as a whole lot of excuses involving my niece.

Among all of this not working, I managed to get another article published: How To Understand Infant Cognitive Development.

My internship continues

2006-09-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

This is the time of year that we Phoenicians remember why we live here. It's such a nice day that it causes me physical pain to sit inside and work.

I'm working on another HTDT article, this one on infant cognitive development. These don't pay that well but that's not why I'm doing them. I'm trying to get into the rhythm of writing, particularly writing on a schedule. My original goal was one article a day (except on the two days I take care of my niece). I haven't met that goal, but at least I have a little money coming in. Since I took so long to jump on the HTDT train, most of the subjects have been picked over and the ones that are left are either 5-point articles (not worth my time unless I can write without any research), or really boring subjects. Yeah, I know, as a writer I have to be prepared to write about boring things sometimes. Up to now I have had the luxury of being able to find subjects I have a personal interest in, but those are running out fast.

HTDT is sort of like an internship for me. A few clips, a little money, and (most important) experience being a writer rather than just writing as part of another job. I should hunt down a few other similar sites where there is a pre-approved list of assignments that I can crank out like this.

Remember that book I'm working on? Yeah, that hasn't gone anywhere. The neurology support forums where we all met shut down a while back and may or may not ever return, so that killed a lot of the project momentum. I haven't done any writing on it, and only some very superficial research on publishers to start the query process. In one of the refugee forums someone did a project roll call, and no one else has done much either. When this project started out I was reminded of those old Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland "Hey, kids, let's put on a show" movies. I figured a lot of the people involved would have great intentions but never accomplish anything. I never figured I'd be one of those people :)

Fixed

2006-09-21T15:17:00.000-07:00

They fixed my article pretty quickly. The correct url is now How To Recognize Sleep Disorders in Babies. Yeah, the old link works (redirects to the correct one) but this way the search spiders have the correct url and I get 0.00000001% more famous on Google.

I know this blog has been pretty boring lately. I have a couple of entries I want to make just based on my HTDT experience but haven't found the time. I try and focus my writing each day some paying gig and by the time I'm done I'm all written out. I hope to have something more interesting soon, though.

That was fast!

2006-09-19T13:29:00.000-07:00

It took HTDT only about 1/2 hour to approve my article. I guess they fixed the backlog problem they were having when the first started out. The new article is How To Regonize Sleep Disorders in Babies[sic]. Yes there is a typo in the title which I noticed when I accepted the article. Since I have no control over the title I've sent a note to HTDT asking them to fix it.

Fellow freelancers

2006-09-19T11:59:00.000-07:00

Recently I was interviewed by a reporter doing an article for a small alternative newspaper. It wasn't about me, but rather about changes in Arizona's benefits to disabled children and how that will affect my niece.

She asked me about how I arrange my work schedule around caring for her and I told her I was a freelance writer like she is. And I didn't even stutter as I said it, so I'm making progress. I told her of my usual complaint that it is hard to stay motivated, and she of course has the same problem. It's quite interesting how every freelancer struggles with motivation, even those who have been doing this for many years. It is both comforting and disturbing at the same time.

I had meant to print up new business cards and give her one just because you must always be networking. I don't know if a fellow writer would sympathize with my plight and try to help or see me as competition and throw the card away. Either way, it costs me a few pennies for the card. But I never got around to making the new cards, but maybe I'll do that this afternoon just for future opportunities.

The good news is that I just submitted a new article to How To Do Things that I figure should be approved in a day or two.

Hibernation

2006-09-10T11:21:00.000-07:00

I've been in a real do nothing mode for quite a while now with some legitimate reasons and some lazy excuses. I've whined about motivation before so I won't do it again. However I'm breaking out of it. I've submitted two more articles to How To Do Things that I hope to be up soon, so maybe I'm back on track.

My first publication

2006-08-10T14:19:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update to say that I have gotten my first article published, entitled How To Find Online Resources for Work at Home Moms. It is the first of many I hope.

New blogroll

2006-08-04T10:25:00.000-07:00

I've added a blogroll of Absolute Write members to the sidebar.

About an hour ago I had an idea for a blog entry. It was something about writing articles but that's all I remember. Alas, another nugget of wisdom lost to the civilized world due to the vagaries of the over-40 brain.

Back home

2006-08-02T14:21:00.000-07:00

I've been out of town, and my brain stayed out of town for several days after my body got back, so I haven't done much work since my last update. I did finish an article about online resources for work at home moms for How To Do Things. I had thirty days to do it, and I just finished it...three hours before the deadline. Yeesh! It was an easy article and I think that's why I kept putting it off. I also put in much more time on it than was worth it. It's a $10 article that I spend 2-3 hours on, which is silly. I just couldn't bring myself to do a quick hack job. Still, a lot of that time was research that I could use to write other articles.

My euphemism article got rejected. I know that some writers get broken up by rejections but I don't feel like that. Maybe after I have 100 or so rejections under my belt. I need to turn around and submit it somewhere else though. Soon, before I lose my momentum. But (of course) not today ;)

I'm still here

2006-07-16T11:06:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while because I've been tied up, mostly on personal projects. I'm still going to be busy another couple of weeks but hope to resume my erratic posting soon.

I also wanted to thank WritingWorld for mentioning my blog on their Blogs by Writers page.

My first article leaves the nest

2006-07-01T11:17:00.000-07:00

I sent off my first article today! You know, the one I queried about back in January *cough*. My turnaround should improve soon...

The article is about how my perspective on euphemisms have changed since the birth of my disabled niece. It was submitted to a magazine about language (I'm guessing I shouldn't say which one until I get accepted). The article was based on a very personal issue, but let's be honest -- the editor doesn't care about my niece. The magazine is about language, not about disability, not about cute kids, and not about personal struggles. In my early revisions I definitely got too personal and the final article was a better fit for their magazine. If I had been writing for a magazine about disability, I would have written it in a different way.

I would, of course, have liked to do another revision -- a combination of "I can make it better" and "But if I finish it, someone will JUDGE ME". I decided this morning that no matter what, that thing was going out today. I triple checked that I had spelled the editor's name right and that I had actually attached the article to the email. For that matter, I made sure they accept email submissions and submissions by attachment, because some don't.

So I meet another milestone. I can celebrate by taking the rest of the day off right? No? Aw, man!

Repeat after me: "I am a writer"

2006-06-30T09:31:00.000-07:00

The other day it happened again. Someone asked me what I do for a living. I stammered and stumbled and finally said something weak like, "I do some writing."

Then he asked me what kind of writing. I stammered and stumbled and finally gave a disjointed list of some of the kinds of writing I do.

So what the heck is my problem?

It's not that I'm ashamed or embarassed. I'm lucky in that I haven't gotten that "When are you going to get a REAL job?" thing from people. So why do I stumble?

I guess I feel like I'm lying. I'm not making much money as a freelancer. Without getting into specifics, I can say that I haven't had to pay federal tax the last two years because my income is so low.

But I'm not saying I'm a SUCCESSFUL writer.

But I am a writer. There, I typed it without stammering. With practice, someday I can say it the same way.

The hunt for a publisher

2006-06-24T11:04:00.000-07:00

I spent the morning going through the book publishers at Writer's Market. So tell me, why do searches at Writer's Market bring up publishers who have been delisted? I felt like half of the publishers I clicked on brought up a "no longer on the list" message. I could see maybe if there was some kind of archive reason, but at least give me the option to remove those from the list.

So I've narrowed it down to about 50 publishers to investigate further. Some of them specialize on books about disabilities, but they are also the smaller houses. I also need to do the old "go down to the bookstores and see what's on the shelf" thing.(Wait, you mean there is research that DOESN'T involve the internet?).

In other news, I have been growing increasingly annoyed with the unreliability of Blogger. I finally got around to downloading Wordpress and installing it to my website to play with it. It imported this blog very nicely, but I didn't like the look. For example, I didn't like the categorization of posts and wanted to get rid of it but the default template uses categories in at least three places. Plus I was tweaking on the sidebar and so on and it just was taking too much of my time. I probably will move this blog at some point but I don't need yet another excuse to avoid writing.

Why am I here?

2006-06-23T13:48:00.000-07:00

Recently over on Absolute Write, Teddy Gross offered to do some blogrolling on his blog, Cobwebs of the Mind. OK, I'll add myself to the list, but it got me back to thinking about just what the heck I am trying to do here.

When I first started looking into freelance writing I did a lot of research and learned a lot of interesting things. After a couple of months of this it occurred to me that I could start documenting some of the things I discovered in the hope of helping other up and coming writers. I also could document my daily writing so others could learn from my mistakes and, frankly, because I’m more motivated if people are watching.

In February I made 15 posts. In March I made 4. Hmm. Then I made 8 in April, 4 in May, and this is my 7th post for June. Not exactly the daily update I had hoped for.

I don’t want to turn this into a personal blog. I want to talk about my writing, not the fact that today is my niece’s 2nd birthday (oops, did I slip that in?). That’s why I don’t participate in the AW activities like the Monday Memes or the AWChain.

Then we have the vicious circle: I don't post because I have no traffic, and I don't promote my blog because I don't post.

I know one of the rules of good blogging is that short entries every day are better than a long entry once a week. I need to sit down every day or two and write about my writing, whether it’s some interesting fact I’ve learned or a mention of how many queries I sent out this week (ok, that will usually be “none” but that’s not the point).

So, we’ll see if I actually do that this time...

It's not that I have nothing to say...

2006-06-22T16:08:00.000-07:00

...it's that I never think to post my profound thoughts here.

My home office continues to help me stay focussed, although my cat (in the way cats do) has decided that any time I'm in the office is her "pet me RIGHT NOW" time.

I posted some time back that I was going to do six hours of work per day. Yeah, that didn't work. So now my rule is that I can't "play" before 4 pm. I don't necessarily have to sit at the computer, but I've ruled out certain distractions during that time. It's working out fairly well so far.

I've also hired someone to take care of my yard. I can't afford it, but every hour I work on that is an hour I don't write.

I also have the usual problem freelancers have: people think that since I am at home I'm free to chit-chat. No, folks, I'm working. For my part I need to just not answer the phone during the day if I see it is one of my friends. But I always have that "What if it's an emergency?" thing. Besides, I have this completely pathological thing about telephones. If a phone rings, I get an anxiety spike like you wouldn't believe. I have no idea why. So even if I don't answer, it breaks my train of thought.

My first book proposal

2006-06-14T08:21:00.000-07:00

I mentioned before that a group of people are embarking on a book about hydrocephalus. We've decided on a book rather than a web site, so I've elected to write the proposal and start querying publishers. There is a great threat at the Absolute Write forums entitled Learn The Nonfiction Book Publication Process With Momma Jenna which has a detailed description of how to write a non-fiction book proposal. Should be fun (I am simultaneously serious and sarcastic when I say that).

I added some links to the sidebar last time I updated, and they have mysteriously disappeared. Part of some evil government conspiracy to restrict your freedom of information I'm sure. It couldn't possibly something like I was looking at it in preview and never actually posted the changes. Nah.

Changes everywhere

2006-06-12T11:57:00.000-07:00

I decided to change the template for this blog since the other one I was using didn't have a links section and used images for the sidebar section headers so I couldn't add a links section. Silly, yes?

I didn't mention before, but the home office seems to be helping so far. I'm more focussed and find fewer excuses to avoid writing. I still find them, just fewer than before...

I got a solid outline of the article I've discussed before (you know, the one I've been trying to write for five months now) and hope to have a first draft tomorrow. Here's hoping that I'm finally really on the path.

A big project

2006-06-10T10:29:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned before, the real motivator for freelance work for me was to give me the freedom to take care of my disabled niece. A group of people on some neurology support forums have decided they want to write a book on hydrocephalus and I've offered to help. I also pitched the idea of doing a content website rather than a book and there seems to be some interest. It won't be a big money maker -- in fact it probably won't make money at all -- but I'd feel good if I could contribute something like this to the community. I'm also more enthusiastic about it than I have been about anything in a while.