For those of you who think that I'm
just on an extended vacation, I say to you this: blow me.
This
freelance stuff is going to be a lot more difficult than running
a drugstore. Bethy bought me a few books on freelance
writing for our anniversary ("Happy Anniversary, Sweetie, here's
some work for you to do...") and I've spent much of the last two
days reading them. A couple of the books are reference
books that lists markets and presses, and the others are books
written by established freelancers with do's and don'ts and that
sort of thing (in one of the books there's a chapter entitled Before
You Quit Your Day Job--oops). According to author
Michael Perry, only 10% of full-time
freelance writers make over $30,000 a year. Yeesters.
Although I know a little bit about what it takes to be a
freelancer, the reading material is expanding my horizons by
about 180 degrees; I'm learning about query letters, commercial
writing, simultaneous submissions, mastheads, and First North American
Serial Rights. It sure ain't like figuring out what to
cross-merchandise with Colgate shave cream.
My goal is to learn
as much as possible before I formulate some concrete ideas and shoot
off a couple of query letters. They say that writing an
article is 50% writing and 50% research. So far, I've done
0% of each. But I think figuring out how to go
about this business of freelancing has to be the first
step. I'm just trying to get as much information into my head
as I can. Besides reading 3 books at once, I'm also taking
extensive notes, I've subscribed
to 4 online message boards and 2 weekly freelance newsletters, and I'm
also prowling the internet for any good writing sites.
I have a feeling that my next objective after
the how is
going to be the most difficult one: getting my foot in the
door. At this point, I'm not at all worried about whether
or not I can make a living with my writing (that stress shall
come later), but I am worried about how I can get an editor to
give me the go-ahead on a project when I haven't been published
before. I don't have any clips yet (samples of
previously published works). Many, many, many publications
out there want to see a writer's clips before they will even consider
using that freelancer. That's going to be the tough
part. I suppose I'll be slumming it for awhile. Maybe
I'll take Kenny up on his offer to write his monthly mortgage
loan lending financing whatevering newsletter. Or better
yet, maybe I can hone my chops with online
porno stories. Someone call Eric, I need some material...
So even though I'm not doing any actual writing yet (except for
this and other various noodlings), I am being productive.
Very productive, if I may say so myself. Plus I've found
that even when I'm not reading or taking notes, I'm thinking
about the future: ideas for articles and other projects.
That has to count for something. And do you know what
happened last night? No, no, it wasn't a porno
story. I couldn't get to sleep because everything I had
read during the day was swirling around in my mind. When's
the last time that happened at CVS?
