All About Being a Writer

For those of you who are new to my blog, and don’t yet know, I am a work at home mom. I am a freelance writer, creating web content for various companies. I stumbled into this career quite by accident during a time when my husband’s hours were being cut way back and we desperately needed some extra income. In two months time, I was able to pay for all off Christmas, half the groceries, and a few bills. Not bad for a few hours a day.

I started out working for content production companies. With one company, they were hired to produce articles for different websites, and then passed the work onto us, their writers. With another company, WiseGEEK, I write articles for their website, choosing my topics out of the over 500 titles they almost always have available. I also write for several residual income websites, such as eHow and InfoBarrel.

Become a freelancer has pushed me way out of my comfort zone. I had to apply to a lot of positions starting out, and face some serious rejection. I didn’t have any experience, no college degree (although plenty of credits) to back me up, and I didn’t have much in my portfolio– just a few short articles that, looking back, were very poorly written. I’ve had to learn a whole new set of skills, many of which I had never even heard of before. I also had to learn to get social on twitter (I’m a very shy person by nature), and promote myself. Which is hard for me. Very hard. Having to write potential clients, and then convince them why I am the best writer for their needs was almost impossible for me at first. Luckily, I’ve improved a great deal, on all of these things. And it’s starting to pay off.

Freelance writing isn’t what I thought it was when I first got started. I originally thought that writing all of those articles, for $10 a piece, was a great deal. It still is, when I can concentrate and not be interrupted every 5 minutes by Mark, Becca, or the dozen other things I usually have going on. I can make $10 to $15 an hour, which isn’t bad for working in your pajamas.

Lately, though, I’ve come to the realization that I need to find some private clients of my own. I can earn a lot more in the same amount of time by working for people that pay a lot better than $10 for 500 words. The problem with switching to more private clients, instead of content companies, though, is that the pay varies. A lot.

About half of the companies and individuals looking for a freelance writer are willing to pay a fair wage. Not great, but not horrible, either. 500 words for $15-$20, instead of $10. And some companies can afford, and are willing, to pay what a quality writer is really worth- upwards of $70 or more for the 500 words.

And then there are the other companies. There are a lot of them. And they seem to think that writers perform work that could be done by monkeys. Seriously. Those 500 word articles? They’ll pay $1.00 a piece. Or less. That equals $1.00 an hour. And they think that this is fine. In fact, because there are writers who, for whatever reason, are willing to work for that rate, these companies think that they are doing people a favor. If they weren’t offering the work, even for the rates that they are offering, then the writers would be making no money at all.

I won’t work for those rates; I value my time, and I know it is w0rth more than what some people are willing to pay.  As I add to my experience and skills, I charge more for my services. My ultimate goals for my career aren’t quite set, but I have a good idea of where I want to be several years from now, and it involves me making a decent wage, without having to work full-time hours. In the past two weeks, I have been responding to 5-6 ads a day. I have one possible position, and I have been hired on as a professional blogger for a local business man.

It’s been a long road, and I have an even longer one ahead of me, but I am so glad that I jumped on the opportunity to become a freelance writer. For the first time in my life, I have a career, and one that I am proud to tell people about.

Beats the heck out of cooking for Applebee’s. (my job before become a mom.)

You can blame it on my Grandmother.

I used to spend a lot of time with her and my grandfather when I was growing up. A lot of time. As in, a few nights a month, and up to a week at a time over the summer. I have a preference for people who spoil me. What can I say?

My grandmother had two types of books around her home- kid’s picture books and romance novels. This was fine with my grandpa, because after all the years married to my grandmother, he read them too. At some point or another, I picked one up just for the sake of having something to read.  And I fell in love. I was probably 13 at the time. Yeah, my mom was thrilled.

Since then, I have read hundreds of romance novels. If given a day to myself, I can read several in one day. When I was younger (and not yet a mom) I often did. Even if the plots all seemed to mimic each other, and some of the writing was horrible, I still read them. I didn’t have much of a social life. Obviously.

I have been nursing the dream of becoming a romance novelist almost for as long as I’ve been reading romance novels. Many of my earlier ideas lacked the plot and characters necessary to making a decent story. But some of them were really good.

There was one male main character (mc) that has stuck with me for years. And I am finally really writing his story. Okay, well, the story really belongs to my main heroine, but you know what I mean. I am now 21,500 words, and about 40 pages typed (so 80-100 pages in a regular book) of my first novel. Which is further than I’ve ever gotten in any of my other novels before this.

My goal is to have the first draft completed by September 1st. I have a little over 75,000 words to go. From there, I have a lot of editing to do, but the ultimate goal is that I can begin querying possible agents by next January. I’m hoping to get to that point a little sooner than that, but I really don’t want to rush the editing process. Because what I’m writing now would never make it in the publishing world. lol. It needs a whole lotta TLC to get it up to the point of being a marketable piece.

And now you all know. Which will hold me accountable. Because, at this point, if I never mention the novel again, or if I get half way through, and then quit, I’ll have to deal with the fact that I talked about my goal of finishing a novel, and then walked away. The guilt will keep me from giving up.

Or something like that. It made more sense before I tried to write it out.

As I get closer to finishing, I’ll probably give you all a better idea of what I’m writing about. For right now, we’ll just leave it at this:

I’m writing.