Holy cow, dudes. I just spent, like, an hour writing an article on sectional garage doors. Maybe one day we will all get on the internet and search for this moribund bit of literacy and laugh over it, but for now I’m not divulging details. Hey, it may be the greatest thing I ever write!
Seriously, I decided a little over a week ago, seemingly out of nowhere, that I was going to seriously dip my toe/foot/self back into the waters of freelance writing. I’ve been doing fiction work for a few years now, and I’ve even had one or two articles published of nonfiction, but I haven’t pursued it seriously at all. Some of it was fear, some of it was lack of interest. Okay, most of it was fear. Given the right topic, I have plenty of interest!
A week ago Sunday I came home from church and was like, “Hmm…breakfast. And while I’m eating breakfast I’ll…look on Craigslist for freelance writing jobs!” Now, I have no clear idea why that popped into my head at that moment, but it did. I’d done a bit of poking around on Craigslist before, and I’d even placed an ad stating that I was available for work, but I’d never gone after anything, never sent any emails off to anyone, applied for gigs, nothing. For some reason, last Sunday was Zero Day, and the clock started ticking.
For the past week I’ve submitted so many writing samples, emails, notes, resumes, and on and on that I’ve forgotten who all of them were. That’s actually pretty awesome, given that in previous years I could count all my applications for work on one hand, maybe even one finger! The game seems to have changed for me now, though, and I’m busting my hump trying to get work.
The very first thing I solidly shot for was an ad for content writers. I have since been told that content sites (these are essentially “article mills” that ask you to write those whippy little things you find in a Google search when you look up things like “how to organize a party” or “picnic blankets that double as flame-proof parachutes” or some other common item or task) are sites formed from the flames of Hell itself, and that they dilute the quality and content of the interwebz and writing in general much the way reality television destroyed the glowing, warm, warming glow that was Quality Programming, or at least Somewhat More Arguably Quality Programming, or maybe just Less Crappy Programming.
Look, anyway, these sites just post jobs that say something like, “write 300 words on diapers, focus on Scotland, Ediburgh,” or maybe “blu ray players” or “children with low sodium who like to eat oatmeal at every meal.” Or sectional garage doors. So you just pick something from the list, go look up the other billion sites that already list the same stuff, and then you try to make it sound totally original as if you did anything but get the info from three or six other sites with the same info that someone else paid two dollars and eighty cents to have someone else write.
You’d think the world would be full of these things, that the web would explode with ludicrously repetitious content, but such has not happened, and it doesn’t seem that it’s likely to either, which I find very odd. Be that as it may, this was work, and I wanted to do work, and it didn’t take more than submitting a sample article (“write a 150-word article about ‘wrapping Christmas presents’ use the key phrase at least twice”), and then waiting.
It took me two hours to write 300 words on Christmas present wrapping.
I’d like to tell you I’m a seasoned pro, and that the idea of regurgitating semi-advertising-like swill was something I did while I watched part of my DVD of Springsteen: The Promise, but that didn’t happen. What happened was that I researched and searched, and re-researched to a ridiculous degree, and then I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote, and then I finally got hold of myself (barely), stopped writing, cut out a bunch of stuff, tried to identify the very diamond-like essence of my flash-Shakespeare piece on Christmas wrapping, realized I was being kind of an idiot and that I just needed to get the job done, and I hit “Send.”
Two or three days later I got my reply. I was accepted! Woot! I was accepted by a robot from a nameless somewhere telling me that MY words on Christmas wrapping were good enough for me to earn 1/4 or a cent per word! Oh, the joy!
Look, man, confidence can be a shaky thing, and yours truly is feeling just a wee bit out of the game on this whole “write many words and feel good enough about it to get paid” sort of deal. Thing is, this is so small, so middling an assignment, that it was the easiest and surest way to guarantee that I was going to accept some work, do it, and then send it in and get paid. This was all about going through the motions and making something happen from beginning to end. It was the micro version of my first year with NaNoWriMo. It was doing it to do it, so that I could say I did it, so that I wasn’t afraid to do it again, so that I wouldn’t be afraid to do it better and bolder next time, do some more, do it bigger, and eventually work my way up to writing, well, stuff that didn’t suck and paid something resembling a living wage.
So tonight was the first time, post-acceptance of trial writing, that I actually accepted an assignment and wrote one. Sectional garage doors. Riveting, isn’t it? I thought so. And I tell you, I put every ounce of creative swing I possibly could on that bad boy! I used words like, “door” and “garage” and “sectional.” (Mostly because that’s part of the assignment.) But I also used words like “torsion” and “joists” and I think maybe even “arming!” Yeah, the arming thing was pretty crazy. I got dizzy from that one, myself. Wish you could have been there.
The site says that you can sling out these word hashes in “ten minutes with good research.” I think it took me an hour, maybe longer. I guess that’s better than two hours on Christmas presents, but at not even three bucks, I’m not going to get rich soon. Still, the end result was what I wanted: article submitted. I win! Now I have to sit and wait for it to be accepted, and I have been duly informed that, as a first-time writer, I may not bid on any more articles until this initial one has been accepted. I accept my meager status at the moment, but I do believe that my article will reached the vaunted “approved” status in some 24 to 48 hours, and then I shall go on to greater heights! Perhaps a piece on “online gambling” or “used batting cages” (I’m not making that one up), or even “plumbing, plumbers, plano tx.” Yeah, then the REAL magic is gonna start! You’ll see.
Seriously (again, because I think I failed at the first “seriously” attempt), this is all about practice, about getting my footing back, getting familiar with new technology (not only did they not have content mills when I was in college, they didn’t have Google, or the interwebz – at least not like we have it now with a kazillion results from “girls with slingshots” or “how to rid your home of ant eaters”), and just plain doing some good old fashioned WORK! Once this article is accepted, if I’m ever asked, “Have you done any SEO writing?” (SEO means “search engine optimization,” btw), I can say, “Yes,” and that, lowly as it may seem, is kind of cool.
All right, enough rhapsodizing about nonfiction for low pay. I do believe I have greater things to create, and I’m going to go take care of some of them now.