How I Quit My Job and Became a Freelance Writer

The trend this week in blogs I've been reading seems to be "How to Sell Your Books" through social media. I've decided to take the blogs' advice as well as pepper in a bit of my own while also shamelessly plugging my self-published book about writing, "How I Quit My Job and Became a Freelance Writer."

I think this subject is worthy of a post because so many writers out there, though the figures are changing more drastically every day, are relying on getting picked up by publishers. Yes, I still buy a lot of physical books, but e-books are gaining in popularity and are arguably much more accessible and convenient than physical books. For example, in an article from the Huffington Post in 2012, over 21% of Americans had read an e-book and they read an average of eight more books per year than those who didn't. 

What am I getting at?

Anybody can be a writer!

The One Rule to Being Successful: Keep on Keeping On

I want to become a successful blogger, writer, teacher, student of the world, friend, wife, and mother. Every one of these goals is earned through perseverance, hard work, and a lifetime of practice and improvement. But, as humans, we rarely think in terms of decades. For example, we have a hard time with "I'm going to give up every Friday night to write from now on and then ten years from now I might have one or two really great books." Instead we lose sight of our goals temporarily, decide they're not feasible, or convince ourselves that they're just not that important to us. For now.

But then what happens? A few months pass and you realize you haven't posted a single blog post. You realize how  much fun you had writing a blog, the rush it gave you, and the sense of accomplishment you felt when you increased your readership from a measly one to a whole two people. Now you have to start all over.

Making the Time to Write When You're Busy

As the summer ends and the school year begins I am faced with too much to fill my plate and nothing I can give up. So what do you do when you're faced with these dilemmas day after day? You still write. You write in any spare moment even for just a few minutes.

I'd be a hypocrite if I said I've never put my writing on hiatus, but this post is just as much for me as it is for everyone else out there. We need to stay pumped, focused, and...sane.

So how do you make the time to write when it seems like every minute of your day is spoken for?

Building a Twitter Platform from Scratch

Confession time. Until about a week ago I was kinda sorta anti-Twitter. I'm not sure why I never got into it, I think it was a cross between hating the constraint and the perceived neediness of it all. I hated feeling like I was trying so hard to connect with people and be witty.

*cough* circle-jerk *cough*

But about a week ago my boyfriend talked me into re-activating my Twitter account. I'd made one about a year prior but never got the hang of it, so it sat unused like a pair of roller skates after the 80s.

I digress. But it's worth pointing out that no one roller skates anymore. Blades are where it's at.

So I stumbled through six or seven of my most used passwords to try and resuscitate the feeble thing and after only a few minutes I was in! With...2 followers, who I didn't know. Now is the point of my journey that I share the fact that I'm basically a closet writer. I write for me and it's a part of my life that is semi-private from my friends and family. I like that I get to be someone else  and not have to worry about someone not liking what I have to say. I feel like a teenager that is just growing in to her body and developing her own personality. I'm still in that awkward hone-your-voice stage.

My Facebook page is where I keep in touch with people from past lives. My Twitter page is my attempt at building a platform from which to strengthen my own writing career, but also to network with important people in the business.

Staying Motivated After the Excitement of Beginning Your Novel Wears Off

Starting a novel can be an incredible rush. New characters, an idea that just seems so original, who wouldn't want to pick it up? I begin each of my books so confident that I convince myself this will be the book that I get published. This will be the first of many chart topping successes. And most importantly, this will be the one that lets me quit my day job.

A few days in to writing and the infectious excitement inevitably wears off and you have a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde moment. The demon on your shoulder whispers convincingly in your ear, "You think this is good? Your characters are all watered down versions of what you had in mind. Your story is boring. And you don't know how to fix any of it. Maybe you should just step away for a few days to think about it."

No!

Coming from someone who has listened to that demon, don't do it. Sure, the story may be turning out different than you expected, you may have trouble finding the right words, and your characters seem a little blah but (let's see how many cliches we can apply) Rome wasn't built in a day, each journey starts with just one step, and..that's it. Two. I could only think of two.

The important thing here is that we remember that this feeling is going to come and we prepare ourselves to face it head on. I'm about 7,000 words into a new novel right now that doesn't have a clear arc or direction. There are three main characters and I am having an incredibly hard time staying focused. The demon on my shoulder whispers for me to give up because if I'm having a hard time focusing on my own book how can I expect anyone else to want to read it? Touche, demon. But I'm not going to give up, instead I'm going to ride myself a little bit harder.

I think I'm having trouble focusing because I haven't really given myself undivided time to think through my story. I got the initial idea, I rushed through some basic outlining and character development, and I jumped into writing.

All Writers Are Narcissists

Don't get me wrong, I think we're all a bit narcissistic on a basic, human level. But narcissism is the life blood of writers. We, and I include myself to be generous (To me, not to other, more talented writers. Though that would be narcissistic of me, so...), think we have something so unique and profound to say. I don't write to add to the piles of unread material out there, though likely that is where most of my stuff will end up, I write because I have something to say. Or at least I think I do. Sometimes I get half way through and ask myself "What was this supposed to be about again?"

How Freelance Work is Dominating the Job Market

I got a nice email from Elance today informing be that there are now over 53 million Americans doing freelance work! Granted, I believe the number includes people who may only do freelance on the side or a couple of times a year to earn some spare change, but still....okay?

With this huge shift in workforce setting, what does that mean for those of us who freelance for a living vs those of us who don't?

Companies are relying more and more on utilizing freelancers, they often only need them for projects or jobs that have a finite time frame, so it ends up being much cheaper to hire a freelancer rather than a full time employee with all those pesky benefits. 2% of the standard work force positions are being awarded to freelancers.

Sprucing up my blog

I got a lot of feedback from my boyfriend and from people in my Blogging 101 class about ways I could spruce up my blog and make it better in general. I may not have taken every suggestion but (I HOPE) it is more focused and less sloppy than before. Here are some of the things I found important to change, and you may want to consider adjusting your blog too if you made some of the same decisions that I initially did.

Feedback: My layout was a little sloppy and not user friendly.
The picture in the heading didn't extend as far as the content of the blog did -- I used a photo editing site to adjust the length of the picture. The widgets in the banner on the side were oddly laid out, they were adjacent to each other as opposed to above/below each other (they looked too close together and one hung off the side of the banner) -- I changed the template layout to a single column display option. There were  two rows of topics in my "tags" banner (6 on top and 2 on bottom, leaving it feeling unfinished and unprofessional) -- I edited what tags could be displayed so a full single row is now being displayed.

Teen attracting blog, or not?

I received some very good advice on my first blogging assignment from the Blogging 101 professor. Essentially, the feedback was that what I'm currently blogging about is not directed toward my ideal audience.

I identified that I am starting a blog to build my author platform and attract potential readers. The books I am writing are YA, so my ideal audience is teens (in my case, late teens, early twenties). Thus far my blog has mostly been about my journey to becoming a writer, including learning how to blog - and it has been SUCH A BLAST! What I thought would feel like homework has grown to be my favorite hobby!

SO I have a dilemma. My ideal audience for this blog should be the people that will most likely buy my book (and, as the professor pointed out, my current blog is directed toward aspiring writers who may buy my book out of support but will most likely not be fans of my work). So I have a choice here with a few different options.

1. Continue the blog as I have been, because I really really like what I've been writing about and it has been incredibly satisfying and FUN. BUT, I may not gain much of a relevant audience, amounting to not a whole lot of help to my author platform.

Blog Class

YAY!! I'm so excited that yesterday was the first day of my Bogging 101 class. I have been researching the topic like crazy over the past several weeks, researching myself down a little blogging rabbit hole of sorts.

I think I really just need an organized way to think about blogging and this should help. I will be researching the basics of blogging and notice that the writer already assumes I have followers. WRONG! So then I research how to increase traffic to your blog.

When researching how to increase traffic, all this talk about RSS feed was popping up, so I had to research what exactly RSS feed was and how I should use it. Then, of course, I got sucked into a tornado of all the cool widgets offered for blogs. After I spent some time pimping out my blog, I was ready to start back where I left off. Which was where again? Oh yeah, generating traffic.

One of the major things you're supposed to do is be present to other relevant bloggers. Many new bloggers will leave relevant comments and links on blogs in the hopes of getting a link back from the big blogger to their small blog (sending all their traffic to you!). So I then have to read a few blogs to find something that I can give valid input to, I don't just want to go throwing my name on something meaningless.

So I end up getting in to writing a Flash Fiction of about 1,000 words. Now this flash fiction was a subgenre smash and took quite a bit of research for me to understand what my two subgenres were (Weird West and Haunted House). 

Then I think, I wonder if I could sell this flash fiction? And I get into another downward spiral of researching how to find magazines that buy these sorts of stories. How much do they pay? What's the submission etiquette? PLEASE HELP! I'M STUCK IN THIS HOLE!

And on, and on, and on...

So I'm really hoping that this course will not only teach me enough about blogging to really get me going, but I'm also hoping it will organize the little ambitious gremlins in my head that just want to know more NOW!

The first course is already calming my nerves, asking me questions about my blog that I should have asked months ago. I have been struggling with what to write about. I think I can attribute this to not really knowing who my desired audience was.

I have two desired audiences (I think). I really want to blog about my journey to becoming a writer, sharing what I've learned, both the easy and hard way, and also what I learn about blogging on the way. Then I have the real purpose of my blog, to establish a platform of potential readers. But the novel I'm writing is YA. I don't really want to blog about the interests of typical teens. I wasn't a typical teen, whatever I have to say would come off as forced, I think.

So, I'm really just hoping that my scatter-brained posts will resonate with someone, somewhere and we can get this show on the road!