The Writer's Journey

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Where to Get Freelance Jobs and Some Ranting
2007-09-24 09:43:00
I keep finding more and more freelance writing job sites. There's one in particular that does very well among the freelancers I'm acquainted with- Freelance Writing Jobs . It has an excellent reputation among freelancers for finding jobs and gigs that pay well and aren't morally questionable. The only problem I have with the site is that I've never gotten a thing that I've applied for through there. Some of them are great projects- ones that I am more than qualified to do, but for some reason am never chosen. I do have a theory about the reason, though.Another interesting one is Writer's Weekly. Most of what I see there is for print publications. I don't write for print anymore, but I plan to again someday and love to see what the market is like. Their listings are a great reminder of how high the price is for print publications compared to web writing. Of course, so much of print writing is on spec, which I don't have the time or the finances to do right now.The Writer's Re...

No Time for Fiction
2007-09-21 05:31:00
I'm making a living by writing, which is more important to me than just about anything else, other than offspring (and husband is running a distant third). But, I always thought that by the time this thing happened I would be writing fiction. There isn't much time for fiction these days, though I still have every intention of having a fabulous line of fascinating novels on the racks and a few hundred fan letters in the mail each day. And bagels. Fans send bagels, don't they?I plan to eventually find a fixed, regular time for writing fiction. Someday. Eventually. But these days, the number of projects I take on has reached a dizzying pace, and none of it has anything to do with fiction. I can't seem to even get a gig editing fiction, much less time to write it. But on the bright side, I'm buying a new bed. What does that have to do with it? Nothing. Non-fiction, beds, offspring- my life in a nutshell.
More About: Fiction , Time

Suite101
2007-09-19 02:49:00
Yesterday I was accepted by Bella, and today it was Suit e 101 who came knocking. Ok, I had to apply to them. Twice. But, I'm in and that's what counts. It's a site as old as the hills that has some extremely interesting topics available to its contributing writers. They aren't limited to 10 or 15 or even 100 topics- there are 3,000 separate topics and subtopics there for the taking. The subject matter includes topics as diverse as archaeological digs, motorcycle repair and the paranormal. So what to write about? Shall I be good and write about Regency literature as I had envisioned, or shall I delve into that one time I thought I saw a ghost? The answer, so far, is unclear. Where's the Magic 8 Ball? Maybe there's a topic about that...

BellaOnline
2007-09-18 05:00:00
I have been hearing a few things about a site called BellaOnline recently, and everything I've heard has been favorable. They claim to be the second largest site for women on the internet, and the number of topics and readers is quite impressive. Yesterday I saw that someone who frequents a writers' board that I visit had been accepted to be an editor there. I decided to check it out and found that there were several interesting topics available- including classic rock. Now, I freely admit being a nerd, but I adore classic rock. I love doo wop, hippie music, the weirdness that was the 70's and the New Wave and punk of the 80's. I flipped at the thought of being able to write about those topics, and applied for the editor position.This morning I was accepted and I have my own BellaOnline site! It is located at: http://www.bellaonline.com/site/ClassicRo ck As of right now, there is nothing on it but my name and the name of the topic. But, I hope to get it going into something that...

The Trouble With Ghostwriting
2007-09-17 02:20:00
I love ghostwriting- I really do. I like being able to match my tone and style to someone else's site and challenge myself to write something that fits right in. People take my ghostwritten items and use them as their blog posts, as content articles and as sales copy for their websites. When I sell the rights, they have every write to do that and to use it any other way they like.The trouble comes when someone posts a great gig writing about something that I have written about many times before. But, uh oh, all of that writing was ghostwritten. I can't link to it and point to it as being mine, and I can't show it to a potential client and tell them that I wrote it. I take the sale of rights very seriously and have never pointed out something that I have ghostwritten to anyone (except my husband). So how do I get any credibility as having experience in that genre? I wish I knew. I just don't have the time to write out original samples about every single thing that I have experien...

Holy #%$@!
2007-09-14 02:01:00
It started to get very dark this afternoon, far before nightfall. Thinking there must be a pop-up thunderstorm on the way, I checked the local radar maps online. Um, no, it isn't a pop-up thunderstorm- it's a pop-up hurricane. Working on back-to-back Elance projects all day, I had no idea that during the night an entire hurricane had formed and then hit the coast. It's the fastest forming hurricane on record and is now an hour or two away. Very, very surreal.
More About: Holy

The Copyscape Miracle
2007-09-11 07:32:00
I think Copyscape is an amazing site and a concept that is revolutionizing the way people write for the web. Instead of clients worrying that something they are buying might be stolen, either whole or in part, they can check it quickly via Copyscape. Try to wrap your mind round it- it checks billions of websites and lets you know where in the world anything you have ever written can be found duplicated.I love that clients can use it to make sure my items are original. The miracle of Copyscape means that clients will know immediately if anything was copied. It gives clients confidence and lets writers know if their work has been stolen.Case in point: here is an article that I wrote for How to Do Things: http://www.howtodothings.com/hobbies/a443 9-how-to-write-an-editorial.htmlHere it is reproduced by someone else who put their name on it: http://climatechallenge.org/wiki-sources/ media-guide/op-edsIf you will notice, the thief is far from crafty- the date that I wrote it and the date t...
More About: Miracle

The Comma in Hiding
2007-09-10 17:22:00
There was an interesting editorial in Newsweek about a month ago about the comma and its usage. Ok, most people wouldn't find it quite so interesting, but I thought it was fascinating that someone else felt the same way I do about the comma. No one seems interested in the poor little dear these days. The comma separates ideas from each other during the course of the sentence, and I think it's one of the most useful pieces of punctuation.Reading a lot of web writing as I do, I see so many pieces that don't contain a single comma. The sentences are supposed to be shorter and less complex in web writing, hence the need to plow through each sentence as quickly as possible with nowhere to rest. No pausing. No time to pause.When editing other people's work, I also find that the comma is misused often, and more often it's completely absent. I believe that as people get more accustomed to reading web writing, they begin writing that way instead of the way it is most often written in bo...

Writing for the Web
2007-09-09 21:23:00
Even after a year and a half, sometimes I am still struck by the differences between news and web content writing. I remember in one of my early journalism classes a professor was commenting with absolute glee about the leads in the NYT. They were so complex, the words so entwined together that you never noticed that the whole first paragraph was one sentence. It was all put together so skillfully that it never seemed too long or disjointed. And I agreed.I spent the next few years striving for that level of intricacy, trying to weave thoughts and ideas together seamlessly into the whole without any part of it becoming awkward. And then I became a web writer. The pieces that people are looking to purchase online are made up of short, choppy sentences with only one main idea. Many times as I proof my web articles I have to cut my sentences in half to make them more suited to web writing. And that's fine- you have to write to the market, setting your own skills to the task at hand. I ...
More About: Writing

Writing Schedules
2007-09-08 18:30:00
As far as writing schedules go- can you really make one? Writing is a business, yes, but there is a large creative element, even in web content writing. Can you then set a schedule for it? Yes. I do it every day. If I have a week to do a project, and I know how many hours it will take me, I have to schedule for working on it that many hours during that week. I hear from so many writers who say they have to contemplate writing for a few hours before actually doing so. I don't get it. Would you contemplate doing accounting before doing it? Would you think for a few hours about using your nursing skills? So why do so many writers think you have to do that to write creatively?When I was a reporter we had to write the best articles possible, keeping in mind accuracy, creativity and AP style. And it was all done at the speed of light. Sometimes you had less than an hour to gather information and write an article about it. I once had a paper held from the press so that I could wait for a ...

Technorati
2007-09-08 17:56:00
http://technorati.com/posts/tag/beakerwri terI am trying to get the hang of this blog thing, and apparently running to Technorati is the first step. So there it is, my grand profile. It consists of a link and a one-line bio. Woo hoo!

The Folly of Samples
2007-09-08 05:50:00
There's one thing that irritates me a lot about web content writing. Ok, there are several things, but let's start out with one for now. It seems a little strange for so many potential clients to want a sample that exactly relates to their subject. Like, even if I don't have an article sample about vacationing in Sarajevo, that doesn't mean that I can't write one.If someone is a reasonably talented writer, they can write about just about anything. My samples are samples of my writing style and ability. They are not a sample of my precise knowledge on any subject. And even if I do have a sample about a certain topic, it's a sample that I wrote on one aspect of the topic. If it doesn't have the exact information someone is looking for in a sample, that doesn't mean that I don't know more about the topic. It simply means that every article is different and every perspective is different. There is no legitimate reason for writing samples about every possible topic and using the...
More About: Samples , Olly

First Post!
2007-09-06 07:22:00
There are so many things that go through your head when writing- and sometimes they take up residence for longer than you'd like. A certain phrase, a paragraph you wish you'd put in, worrying about having too many commas, it all collects there over time.I'm hoping with this blog I can pour them out into cyberspace and get rid of them all. Well, most of them. Writing full time tends to take over your life. The use of any time that doesn't have some pressing immediacy to it gets sucked into the constant stream of "I should do an article about that!" and "why didn't I get that project? I was perfect for it!"
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