Writing and Stuff by Anthony Chatfield

The space between each house was minimal at best, but it did bear the benefit of having no windows as men and women like this had no desire to look into the home of their neighbor. Brutus writhed his way into the space and started shimmying down the alley way, trying to remember which street actually connected to the central district where the royals would be living. He was not sure where Sarina would actually have her abode though so he would first need to find out where she lived. At first he assumed it would be in the inner city, but with a few more moments to consider, it could easily be one of the homes next to where he was standing. Her parents were the richest in the city, but they were still just outer royalty and a merchant.

Brutus considered for a few more moments, drawing upon what had once been an encyclopedic knowledge of the Upper City aristocracy. He finally decided that regardless of how they felt about merchants, even Willemshire’s nobility would allow someone with as much money with Sarina’s father to live within the richer quarters of the Upper City.

He did a quiet loop back out of the back end of the alley and almost screamed in pain when he kicked a can lying on the curb – it shouldn’t have been there. The sanitation in the Upper City was unparalleled, constantly maintained to ensure the utmost cleanliness. It was not like them to miss even a can – it must have just been dropped there. Instinctually, Brutus jumped back into the shadows of the alley just as a man coughed from above, hanging his half drunken, half naked torso out of the third story balcony of some lonely widow’s much too large house. Brutus cursed softly and winced again as he leaned back against the brick of the alley way and the muscles in his body that had only a few hours before been battered and bruised called out in pain.

Waiting in the sliver of darkened alley as he was, Brutus had a few minutes to think things through, to consider what had happened to him already that day. First, he had taken on a case solely because he needed the money and without thinking about what it was the woman in the slick dress had needed from him. That wasn’t like him at all. It was almost too much unlike him. Second, he had been beaten over the head and then battered by Under City goons twice within 24 hours. Third, he had gotten a nice old merchant killed simply by talking to him a little too long about something he wasn’t supposed to know about.

This was not the kind of case Brutus liked to take and it was already giving him a pretty good idea of just how much trouble he was probably going to run into before he got anywhere meaningful with it. Shit, right now he was crouched into a bruised up ball in the side alley of the Upper City where City Guard patrolled four times each hour, on the quarter hour. One false move and he’d be strung up in the central square for everyone within a two mile radius to walk by and poke sticks at. This was not his idea of a good time and he was already running dangerously low on options.

After what seemed an eternity, Brutus edged his head out from the shadows and looked up. The window had been closed and the candle light extinguished. He was free to move and he’d better do it quickly because he hadn’t seen or heard a guard in almost ten minutes – they would be by any time now on their quarterly rounds and if Brutus wasn’t out of the way by then, his return trip would be all too short indeed.

Running his hand over a two day layer of stubble (damn, he kept forgetting to shave) and shuffling as quietly as he could, he stumbled out into the street and up around the bend, into the inside ring of the city. Within seconds he was able to find the old passage ways he’d used when he was in the guard, what looked like basement entrances with elaborate hand locks on them built into one in every six houses on the inner ring of homes. The guard was not appreciated walking around the Inner City at night – it made the nobles uncomfortable, so one of the Guard Captains had installed a series of tunnels under the city about a hundred years or so ago so that rounds could still be made in accordance with the law without routinely angering the men and women who the Guard was trying to protect. It was silly and Brutus had routinely completely about having to climb underground to protect the ingrate slobs who slept so comfortably above them when he was a patrolman.

Rubbing his hair with a sweaty palm and slipping down the moldy stairway into the tunnels below, he touched down none-too-gently and immediately slipped into a nook he somehow half remembered. The tunnels were not lit – it was up to Guard members to bring their own torches – and so Brutus was going to have to operate on memory alone – something his alcohol addled brain was none too keen on – to get to where he needed to be.

Running his hands along the walls and finding the notched he remembered – small pinky sized square notches that told him where to turn and which direction he was walking – he started down the tunnel, trying hard not to step into the often times puddle-damp floor between him and the next stairway. He carefully picked his way along, trying hard not to stumble with his bad leg and hoping that he could avoid any guards.

A sudden splash as someone dropped down into the light pool followed by a shout behind him told Brutus that he wasn’t about to be so lucky this evening. “Hey, you! What are you doing down here?!”

Brutus bit the inside of his cheek and made the only choice he had – he ran.

Freelancing blog novel, Brutus weaver

One of the number one things I get asked by people wondering how I got involved in the copywriting field is what I studied in College to get here. To be fair, I’ll admit up front that I was a Creative Writing Major with a focus in fiction and exposition. I wrote a lot and I have a degree to back it all up. It doesn’t really support my argument that you don’t need any formal training to do what I’m doing, but let’s just forget for a moment that degree and take a closer look at the things you really need to be effective as a copywriter. These are only a few of the things that go into writing. I have a few more that I’ll add in future posts. 

A Keen Eye for Language

While I won’t say that you need any kind of formal training to be a writer online, I will say that you need a keen eye for what makes language work and how an English sentence is formed. If you don’t read very often, haven’t written anything since high school and often have a hard time writing the memos on your checks, this job might be a bit hard for you.

But, even then don’t let it get you down. To develop a keen eye for the language, you need only to spend a bit of time understanding how sentences work, how words flow together and what is attractive to the human eye. It might not seem like it, but words are just as visually pleasing as a picture of the sunset or the vase your nephew made for you.

One of the number one things I tell people to do when they start writing for the first time is to read their first couple of articles out loud. This was an exercise I learned in Middle School and it quickly taught me to listen for things as I write. If you practice enough, you don’t have to read outloud anymore and your brain will start recognizing patterns that are effective without having to hear them. We’ll go into a bit more detail on how online copy needs to be structured for the Internet reader later, but things like cadence, white space, sentence length, word choice, and use of punctuation are all vital aspects of the flow of language that you’ll need to master.

Typing Skills

This is just plain simple and is something that anyone can improve upon very quickly. But, no matter how you look at it, you need to be able to type quickly. Not only must you type quickly, you must type accurately, and consistently. In any given day, I might type between 8,000 and 15,000 words. That amount of text will take me between two and a half and six hours of hard typing. It might seem like a lot, but you’ll build up to it over time. When I first started, I might be lucky to write up 4,000 words in a day and 1,500 words an hour.

Not only do your fingers learn to start keeping pace, your brain will start learning how to develop thoughts and put them into position as you write. I’ll discuss this more later but it all comes down to practice, practice, practice. Most of what you learn and become better at in this job is intangible. But, trust me when I say that if you practice you will get better.

Ability to Focus and Self Motivate

If you want to work at home and write for a living, you need to be able to focus on what you are doing and above and beyond anything else, you need to be able to self motivate yourself. You cannot be effective at writing for a living if you spend your time watching the Simpsons or walking your dog, or doing chores around the house during your allotted work hours.

It’s hard to hear that because half of the allure of working at home is having the freedom to take breaks, adjust your schedule and move around at will rather than being stuck in an office for 8 hours a day every day. But, especially when you get started, you need to be able to maintain a steady schedule. The easier you make it for yourself to slack off, the harder it will be to get up to a point where you’re doing a job and not trying out a new hobby.

For the first six months I always recommend setting aside incrementally larger amounts of time every day. This is vital because if you start out trying to work 8 hours a day, you’ll burn out quickly, especially when learning. However, if you start out with 2 or 3 hours a day in the first week and build up to 8 hours a day by the fifth or sixth week, your mind and your body will be working full time before you know it.

Ultimately, this is the kind of job that you can do for 4-5 hours a day, 4-5 days a week and make $40,000 a year doing, but it is going to take anywhere up to a year to get to that point. It takes time to get higher paying jobs; it takes time to build up your stamina in typing (and thinking that much) and it takes time to build up your resolve enough to spend that much time working in your own home every day. 

Freelancing freelance writing, make money online, writing for money

A blog is a great tool for prospective online writers because it is free, easy, and great practice. The number one thing you can do for yourself when attempting to get into a freelancing career is write regularly. That means you need to find something to write about (or someone to pay you).

Since thinking of things to write out of thin air is not the easiest thing in the world and because you’re not going to be able to get people to pay you just yet (we’re still assuming you have no references), blogging is your best bet. Here are a few things that blogging does for a prospective writer:

Builds a Portfolio

When you first start out, you have absolutely nothing to work with. You won’t have any work to draw upon except for some old high school or college papers and if you’re older, you may not have written anything in years. A blog addresses these things by providing you with an outlet to build a portfolio. For this reason, you need to watch what you write about (no profanity and always write with the idea that a potential client might read it someday), and make sure to write constantly – if you write a post a day for three months you’ll have 90 posts to draw from for inspiration and samples later on.

Creates an Audience

When you blog regularly, people will eventually start to read what you write. They will stumble upon your blog through search engines, blog databases, and readers and will either be intrigued or bored by what you say. Either way, their feedback will help you develop your writing style and engage an active audience about your writing.

Develops a Style

If you have not been writing for a few years, blogging can be an invaluable tool to help reestablish your writing style. Many people don’t spend much time writing in their careers and if they do it’s too dry to count as a style. Writing blog posts and articles will require a certain flare and style that will become uniquely yours.

Fine Tunes Grammar and Spelling

If you haven’t been writing or even if you have and haven’t had to sell or submit anything for review, fine tuning your fundamentals is an essential part of the process. Learning the ins and outs of grammar and spelling will save you a ton of time and energy when you start submitting your work for money.

Develops Contacts

Having connections is a huge part of being a successful freelance writer. Clients will recommend you to other clients, give you repeat work and help you find new clients if you develop a working relationship with them early. Start taking down email addresses, developing contacts and getting to know people online through your blog – you never know when those contacts will come in handy.

Builds Up Typing Speed and Efficiency

By getting yourself to type a certain amount of text every day you will quickly build up a more efficient, higher quality typing speed and efficiency that will allow you to make more money, turn around projects faster and maintain higher quality that will make clients happier. Less edits and fast turnaround equals lots of repeat business and the ability to ask for higher rates.

Freelancing freelance tips, freelance writing, make money online

The Upper City hadn’t changed much in the years since Brutus had been all but exiled from it. The fountains were still shiny enough to scare the birds and the cobblestones were careful done up to look rustic and old when they were replaced every six months like clockwork. Where the Under City always strove to downplay how poor its citizens were, the Upper City did the opposite, creating visions of opulence at every turn. There were no merchants or peddlers of any kind – they had been relegated entirely to the Merchant Quarter decades before and had not returned to the Upper City since – they were occasionally allowed in to see a rich patron or to deal an item upon invitation, but they could not solicit sales in the Upper City or they risked being jailed. Brutus could still remember the first merchant he had jailed when he was a recruit – it was a teenage boy just barely starting his career. He had gotten a cartload of Ice Pears from the North and had assumed the delicacies would sell better among the royals in the Upper City. He hadn’t talked to more than two men and women before he was spotted and arrested. His eyes had been as wide as saucers, scared out of his skull that the stories about the Dungeons were true. Brutus had just shaken his head – he had never seen the dungeons and to be frank wasn’t sure if the rumors were true or not, but he didn’t want to give the boy false hope.
The fact that someone like Sarina’s father had made it in the Upper City was shocking enough. Brutus had seen it a few times of course –a rich merchant is often capable of wooing the last daughter of some rich noble or another merely because of the extra resources and the time to devote. If you have enough money, even royalty will look the other way from your workman’s hands. The merchants rarely fit in though when they arrived. He wondered if McConnell had managed to fit in with the Willemshire elite. He doubted it, but then again, he didn’t want to risk finding out by running into the man. He was in the Upper City for one reason alone. He needed to talk to Sarina.
Brutus tried his hardest to keep from limping too stiffly. The story may have worked on the gate guards but if he pushed his luck, he would soon enough be face to face with a Constable or worse, a Guard Captain. Either would likely find his story wanting and boot him from the city – or worse, they might recognize him and give him a first hand chance to see what the dungeons were really like.
So, he immediately slunk between two narrow row houses. The Upper City was designed similar to how the entirety of Willemshire was laid out, in concentric rings. In the middle was the palace where the King and his family lived along with a few dozen advisers, servants and the occasional outside family member in the King’s good grace. Directly around the King’s Palace were the homes of the highest dignitaries in the land – the Dukes, Earls, and Counts that didn’t have anything to see to outside the city. Most of them did not considering their lack of land but even if they had, they would probably find a good reason to stay in the city and remain busy, if only to stay appraised of the local goings on.
Outside royalty were the homes of especially rich relatives, elevated merchants, and just about anyone that claimed royal lineage but couldn’t claim it but with the coins in their purse. This was a vast majority of the Upper City and their homes were not much nicer than the buildings in the Merchant Quarter. Squared together into long, three story rows, the homes had a short, two span yard in the front with a black steel gate blockading the sidewalk from the entrance. Each gate had a keylock on it to keep out anyone that did not belong. The houses would stretch about a full block back from the street, in a narrow jut to the middle of the double block. Houses were often three to four times as long as they were wide and were stacked upon each other one after another, wrapping around the avenue and toward the royal palace in spiraling circle.

Freelancing blog novel, Brutus weaver

I’ve started working on a book about becoming an online copywriter so I figured I’d start posting snippets of it here every couple of days to see how people like it. Here’s the first posting:
 

Freelancing freelance book