Hello Readers,
I don't know if you recognize the picture above, and if you don't, that's fine. I barely remember the movie myself. When I went to write this post today, I wanted to touch on something very painful for me, and I decided not to. I didn't do it because I was afraid to talk about it, but because I couldn't find a picture I was looking for. Does that make me lazy? Nah, it just makes me tired. Okay, maybe I'm a little lazy, but I just got back from a long walk with Christina and I's dog, Jak.
On to the picture above. It comes from an old movie and this particular scene is from a song. The lyrics go, "You just put one foot in front of the other, and soon you'll be walking out the door, door, door!" and so on.
Well you see, writing is a lot like learning to walk. As I said in the title, you've gotta learn to stumble before you can walk. I think anyone whose written anything (so everyone) can understand that the first time you go to do it, it's usually pretty crappy. I mean, when you're in school and cramming for a paper, you can bet every word on there is complete and total B.S, but that doesn't mean I didn't try. Lucky for me, I had the inherent ability to completely lie through my teeth while writing and still get a good score.
When I first started doing Freelance Writing, it was scary. I made this whole profile on Elance, after creating an account, and I filled out all this tax information, and put a picture on there. Once it was set up, I didn't know where to go from there. I started applying to jobs, just anything that I thought I could do. It wasn't easy, and in most cases I didn't hear back, but there was that first time that someone replied. I had a client who wanted to pay me for my writing. This is how it started.
I think the biggest thing you should take away from this post is this: you need to write out of your comfort zone. Sure I love horror, and science fiction. But, if someone asks you to write in a genre you're not familiar with, or completely comfortable with, you need to try and become okay with it. When you're first starting out, you're at the bottom. There are tons of people who will do what you do for less money and less time. You need to stand out.
It helps if you're like me and you spent years writing your own stories that just sit on your computer. Stuff like that makes for great writing samples that you can use to make your application stand out. The other thing is not to use the same damn cover letter for each job. Read the description, get to know what the client wants, and appeal to that in your application. This is when the B.S stops and the real passion needs to show through.
I've hand plenty of jobs through Elance alone and now I'm getting work through Odesk as well. I even have clients that I met on Elance and work with independently now. Anyone who loves to write can do this, it just needs time and effort.
One final note, and I'll discuss this more in my next post. When it comes to ghostwriting, you need to just do it. At the beginning, if you're doing this full time, you can't be obsessed with getting published. You need to make money before you can do that.
That's all for now folks, thanks for reading and as always, be sure to tell your stories in the comments!
Regards,
Bradley "Yeldarb" Ramsey
