Writing and Stuff by Anthony Chatfield

So, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with this site for a while now. I even bought a new domain name (anthonychatfield.com), but I took a look back through the old web stats and it seems like it would be a bit of a waste to move everything over when I have a decent page rank and a whole lot of links (however old they may be). So, I’m going to stick with the good old goofy domain name and see what can be done with it.

Up to now, it’s been a jumble of just about everything you can imagine having to do with me. I’m going to give it a bit of a jump start in the coming weeks, mainly because I’ve been spending so much time lately working on my career and all things writing.

Hopefully I can offer some halfway decent insights about writing, freelancing, and marketing in general (at least from my semi-newbie point of view).

Observations and Thoughts freelance writing, Freelancing

I have wanted to be a writer for a while now. Not “since I was a little kid” while, but a good long time nonetheless. Of course, when I had these visions of literary wonder, I was going to be sitting around a massive house with a few hundred words a day to write for a major magazine, newspaper, or novel. Of course, it’s not the same thing as what I’m actually doing – that is being a pen for hire, the guy who does all the dirty work for websites across the globe. 

I’m not complaining about my job of course – being a freelance writer is probably the best job I’ve ever had or will ever have and I don’t plan on stopping any time soon. That said, there ends up being a huge difference between writing because you love it and writing because you have to do it to pay your rent and keep the Simpsons DVDs up to date. 

When I wrote in college, I wrote because I loved it. That’s about all you get out of it when you’re paying thousands of dollars for someone to “teach” you how to produce a short story. Right now, I write because it pays the bills – all sorts of bills by the way; more than I ever thought would be possible. This isn’t a new realization by any means. I have seen the effects of work in action many times before. When I was a kid, there was nothing I wanted more than to ride the lawnmower around the yard – I’ll bet you can guess how that turned out. 

And in the last two years or so, I’ve had plenty of jobs that I thought would be a lot of fun, but the longer I worked on them, the less fun they became. Writing guides for video games? That should be awesome right? Turns out that when you start looking at everything in a game as a sequence in a technical manual, it’s pretty dull. Eating out and writing reviews? Well, it could be fun if A) the food was good everytime or B) you didn’t have to think of new and exciting ways to describe the word “spicy”. 

Again, I’m not complaining. My job is great and if you’re getting into freelance writing, I can guarantee that you’ll be happy with your new lifestyle. But, if you’re getting into it for the love of writing, you’re going to be pretty crestfallen pretty quickly. 

My advice – get a really relaxing, mindless hobby. It helps to balance out how much you use your brain when writing all day and allows you to clear the slate so you can work on private projects – things like short stories or that great american novel. I like to read cheesy fantasy novels and play guitar hero. My brain gets to shut down for an hour or two and I don’t feel like writing more is only another chore when it is really something I dream about doing most every day. 

You’re going to have enough trouble already separating your personal life from your work if you start working freelance – create barriers and good ways to wind down and you can avoid feeling like the writing you do for the love of writing is the same as all that other stuff you scribble out to pay your gas bill.

Freelance Lifestyle freelance writing, Freelancing, make money online, writing career, writing for money

Freelance writing is, by definition, anything but a business. You scavenge for work, pander to your clients, and spend more time worrying about how you’ll pay your bills than actually doing work to pay said bills. That said, if you are moderately successful at all that juggling, it will eventually turn into a business, whether you want it to or not. 

When does that fateful moment occur though – that your long time hobby, and short-time means of feeding yourself grows into something more substantial. It’s going to happen whether you like it or not. First off, the goal is almost always to make more money so that your freelancing career isn’t so hard to maintain. When you manage to pull that off, you’re halfway there anyways. You have the clients, you have the drive, now just comes the fun part – all of the finances and paperwork. 

We’ll skip that part for now though. I don’t much want to relive the terrorizing part where I spent so much of my time this last year, but I will say that eventually it just makes good financial sense to upgrade your resources. It saves time on taxes, helps you find new clients in your area, and makes it much easier to find help with your work when you get a bit behind. 

Keep an eye on things though if you’re looking to keep your freelancing as a side hobby. If you get too good at what you do, it will balloon into something much more in no time.

Freelance Lifestyle freelance writing, Freelancing, make money online

Every now and then when you’re a full time writer – and especially when you’ve started your own writing business, things happen that make it to where you have to work entirely too much in any given week. This is just such a week – there are no specific reasons why it happens. Maybe I want to take a vacation soon or maybe I bid on too many projects. Maybe I’m just trying to catch up on bills – whatever the reason, it happens about every month or so for at least one week and while it may be balanced out by those slow weeks, that’s never the first thing on my mind.

There are usually at least two or three days in that particular week where I work from the moment I get up to the moment I go to bed. Those days especially disappoint. I mean, who wants to work that much? I sure as heck don’t. It’s too much, but then again, who gets the option of taking days off at will? Not too many people at this point in life. It’s a great job no matter how you look at it – the only thing you have to remember is that there are always downsides such as the extra time that will get thrown out every now and then when the freelancing week from hell rears its ugly head and plops your butt squarely in a chair or on the couch for hours at a time.

Freelancing freelance writing, Freelancing, make money at home, work online

I get a lot of questions about what exactly I “do” for a living. The truth is that when someone asks me that question there are a lot of possible answers. I could simply say “I’m a writer” or I could elaborate and explain that I own a freelance copy writing business or that I do articles for the web. Any way you look at it, there isn’t really an all inclusive answer. If I said “freelance writer” people would ask me what kind of freelance writing I do. They would say, “Have I read anything you’ve written?” and of course the immediate answer is no. I write articles for digital products and rework website content for Canadian businesses. If someone had actually read something I had written by chance, I’d probably have more questions for them than they’d have for me.

The other day for example, I was talking to one of my girlfriend’s cousins and she asked me if I was writing anythign interesting. As often happens, I was thrown off by the question. I don’t really think of my work in terms of “interesting” or not. It’s not that it is never interesting. It’s just that most of the time that’s not the important part – the important part is that it will convert to a higher pay:work ratio than the last project. I know it sounds crass, but most freelancers work like this. Even the hoighty toighty magazine and newspaper writers that write for the “love of it” are really just thinking of how much they can get done in a short amount of time and pay their bills. It’s the biggest irony of trying to make money with any form of artistic endeavor (and I know I’m stretching the definition of artistic when I use it to talk about my freelance projects), but it’s the real truth. 

I have a partner in all this jumbled writing stuff that does a much better job of describing what he does than I do. He can tell a funny story about it or describe something ridiculously mundane in a humorous way and make people interested. I can’t even get myself interested half the time. Of course, I am by no means complaining. I love my job. I work the projects I choose, the hours I choose and can take off whenever I feel like it. I work on my couch, watching baseball or at a coffee shop while listening to Radiohead. I get more freedom working alone than I could ever have dreamed of anywhere else, but I do loathe those conversations – what do I do? I write stuff…let’s keep it at that.

Freelance Lifestyle freelance writing, Freelancing, writing for money

It’s no secret that there are seemingly unlimited ways to promote yourself on the Internet these days. Yet, it still manages to surprise me when someone does not use them all to their fullest potential. There are just too many options not to actively seek out and take advantage of them.

Starting with the most basic methods of blog promotion, I frequently tell people that they need to start and operate a blog – it doesn’t matter if it is the simplest, least detailed project you have worked on, you need to have a blog. Start one on Blogger if necessary and start posting every day (I know, I’m one to talk, but it’s a good habit to start). Once you have started your blog, you have unlimited options to reach people. You can start memes, contact other bloggers, start conversations with your commenters, and much more.

Another necessary promotional method is to start and maintain social networking profiles with all of the major sites – Facebook, MySpace (unfortunately), Friendster, etc. These sites offer you something no other option does – a built in audience of millions that you can reach with a single click. You can be sly or you can be explicit, but always remember to present yourself as a well polished person. On these sites, you are not selling things, you are selling yourself.

Which of course brings up the matter of salesmanship. I have had this conversation with a dozen other writers and many of them do not enjoy the idea of “selling” themselves to their clients. But, it is a necessary task and when you think about how things break down, it makes good sense. The Internet is full of people who sell themselves before their services. In fact, the Internet is just a bit too impersonal not to do so. If you try to go faceless and tell people that they can trust you when they don’t know who you are, they will often ignore your suggestions. If you tell them who you are, provide ample opinions and open conversation, and draw them into the fold, they will begin to trust you more outright and you will be much more successful in reaching them.

I won’t go into the details of everything you can do to promote yourself just yet. I may continue with a series of future posts about self-promotion, but there isn’t enough room for them all right now. However, keep one thing in mind: you are your best product. Your mind and your ability to write, design, or program are the things that you are selling. If you can sell yourself, you can pick up any project you find and that’s the key to true success as a freelancer.

Freelancing blogging, freelance writing, Freelancing, self promotion, social network marketing