More NAPOMO Activities

Market your poetry, or write something just for fun.

April is now officially halfway over, but there is still plenty of time to get involved in National Poetry Month and National Poetry Writing Month. I’ve been playing catch up myself, and I ran across a few new ways to participate for those interested, such as…

Write a Dekaaz. This is a new style of poetry that is similar to the haiku, but it has a syllabic style of two, three, five. It’s a fun way to experiment with poetry and I’ve been taking a stab at it throughout the weekend. The Dekaaz is also meant to be read aloud and shared after it is written—or you could simply try speaking in Dekaaz. I know that speaking in haiku is a lot of fun, so I am sure it would be worth trying!

Enter a free contest. There are all kinds of free contests available for writers if you seek them out. If you visit Winning Writers, you can not only browse some of these, but also sign up for newsletters (also free) that will notify you when there are more contests available for you to enter. Many of these offer publication and money prizes, but the writing itself is where the fun is!

Write bad poetry. If writing a poem every day feels like a challenge, why not try writing a bad poem every day? Take the pressure off and just rhyme like a child, make a new jump roping chant, write an ode to a hot celebrity that you’ll never ever show another human being as long as you live, or write a guilty pleasure, like a limerick about someone who really gets on your nerves.

Host a writing contest. I am thinking about doing this with our homeschool group and letting the kids vote on their favorite poems at our next meeting. But you could really do this at any event, whether it’s with work friends, family, or even a party, like a bridal shower. (Imagine how the bride would feel getting so many beautiful notes from friends and family; that would be better than gifts to me!)

Use magnetic poetry. We used to keep magnetic poetry all over our house; I think we ultimately got rid of it when my daughter, then two, kept putting it in her mouth! Buy or make your own set and put it wherever you want—your fridge, filing cabinet, wherever. How about making poems on your car? (I wouldn’t drive with your poem on your car, however!)

Craigslist Ads

Why No Response?

Craigslist is one of the primary places to find work online as an affordable writer, and I have found work that way before. But there's one thing I don't really understand about a lot of the jobs listed on Craigslist. Even if you check it religiously every single day and respond to every single ad that looks promising, it can still take you several months to find any work.

Why is that? Because the vast majority of them won't even write you back at all, for reasons that you will never be able to find out. This is the case even if you have a very strong resume as an affordable writer. I was told point-blank at one job interview for a magazine that I was one of the most qualified candidates they had interviewed for the position. This was for a job paying about $40,000 a year. I didn't get that job, but I did get as far as an interview. Now, if I'm one of the most qualified candidates for a serious magazine job, how can I possibly not be one of the most qualified candidates for a content farm or some other “extremely affordable” writing job? Yet despite this fact, I only get about one email response for every hundred or so jobs I apply for. The other ninety-nine don't even write me back at all.

 

It doesn't make a lot of sense, but there it is. Are there actually so many people applying for these positions that even a really good resume just gets lost in the pile? If so, what does that say about the economy?

 

 

Is Your Writing Income Diverse Enough?

One of the things that concerns me about my current writing situation is that more than half of my income is from a single source.  That can be a major issue if that particular source should change its policies or no longer need my writing services, because I would be left with a substantial hole in my budget.  In writing, or any other business, diversity is the key to staying afloat when things change.

If you have been relying on only one or two sources for your income, now is the time to start considering backups.  Even if you don’t do regular writing work for your backup companies, having them available is an excellent way to hedge against any income losses.  For example, if you work for one big private client, why not complete testing and signup processes for a couple of the major content mills, so you can have at least a little income should your client move on.

It is a good idea to develop passive income streams as well, because those can help pad your savings account while you focus your efforts on paying work in the present.  Spending a little time each week to build up your passive income can be a big boost down the road.

Another good idea is to develop income that is not related to writing, such as craft sales, consulting work, or other income that won’t be affected by things such as Google updates.  It has been said before, and bears saying over and over: diversity is the biggest factor in staying afloat when markets change and needs evolve.

Great Yet Affordable Writers: Raymond Chandler

He Didn't Stay Affordable Forever!

These are the words of Raymond Chandler, describing what made him decide to seek work as an affordable writer after losing his job in the oil industry during the Great Depression:

“Wandering up and down the Pacific Coast in an automobile I began to read pulp magazines, because they were cheap enough to throw away and because I never had at any time any taste for the kind of thing which is known as women's magazines. This was in the great days of the Black Mask (if I may call them great days) and it struck me that some of the writing was pretty forceful and honest, even though it had its crude aspect. I decided that this might be a good way to try to learn to write fiction and get paid a small amount of money at the same time. I spent five months over an 18,000 word novelette and sold it for $180. After that I never looked back, although I had a good many uneasy periods looking forward.”

 

A hundred and eighty dollars back then is about equivalent to ten times as much now, but even so, eighteen hundred dollars is not a lot of money for five months worth of work! Raymond Chandler's writing career may have been a little too affordable at the start. He did go on on to bigger and better things, though. His Philip Marlowe detective mysteries are now considered (along with Hammett's Sam Spade stories) to be the defining tales of the hardboiled noir private eye, and only one of Chandler's novels has yet to be made into a movie.

 

Some of those movies (especially “The Big Sleep” starring Humphrey Bogart) are among the most enduring and successful of the film noir genre, and Chandler even went on to write for Hollywood himself. I'm sure his services became a little less “affordable” in the process- in fact, he could be downright cranky. He flat-out refused to finish writing the screenplay for “The Blue Dahlia” unless the director let him work on it while drunk!

 

But Chandler's eventual success illustrates an important point- just because you start out as an affordable writer, that doesn't mean that's all you'll ever be or the highest you'll ever rise. You could be writing for a content farm today, and creating the next Great American Novel tomorrow. You never know!

 

Great Yet Affordable Writers: Clark Ashton Smith

aka "Klarkash-Ton"

He's not as widely read or remembered these days as Robert E. Howard or H.P. Lovecraft, the other two greats of “Weird Tales” magazine, but he was a pen-pal of both men and his stories are just as interesting as theirs. His name was Clark Ashton Smith, and what he really wanted to be was a poet. In fact, he enjoyed a pretty solid reputation as a poet in his own lifetime, though the fact that his work is openly romanticist and traditional has caused it to be largely ignored now.

Like most other writers, he had to work for a living, so he wrote stories for the pulp magazines to earn money on the side. Clark Ashton Smith's fiction is like Howard crossed with Lovecraft. Many of his stories feature big brawny barbarian swordsmen, like Howard's “Conan.” They also feature evil yet brilliant sorcerers in league with the obscenely horrible Elder Gods. In Smith's stories, the sorcerers always win and the barbarians always lose. Brawn is no match for brain in Smith's conception of reality.

 

Perhaps because he really wanted to be writing poetry, Smith used a lot of beautiful and poetic imagery. And perhaps for the same reasons, his stories are frequently ironic in tone, as if he never took his job as an affordable pulp writer all that seriously.

 

In fact, when you realize that Lovecraft's “evil Atlantean priest Klarkash-Ton” is just his pen-pal Clark Ashton inserted into the Lovecraftian universe as a private joke, you have to wonder how seriously any of them took this kind of work!

 

 

Get It While It's Hot

As most writers will tell you, freelance writing is a feast or famine business.  It can be great sometimes, with more work than you can possibly handle, and at other times, the drought can seem to go on forever.  We all have specific reasons for writing, but most of us don’t really want to dedicate more time than is necessary to writing, because then we can’t pursue the interests and passions that are denied us in a regular job.  For that reason,  it can be hard to motivate yourself to write overtime when there’s a lot of work to do, but in order to stay afloat in the lean times, you need to do just that.

Right now seems to be a great time if you write for some of the bigger content mills.  They have plenty of work at many levels, making it easy to find things to write about and stay busy.  The trouble is, most of us want to just put in our set goals and quit for the day, but what happens next month when the well runs dry?

It’s a good idea to have a reserve fund, and the way to pad that fund without tapping into your budget is to work a little extra.  If you set a goal of say, $50 a week extra, you can spend a little bit more time and start feeding that reserve fund to use when there isn’t as much work available.  We don’t get unemployment insurance, so take advantage of the work available now and save yourself the stress of not having money when there is less work available.
 

Great Yet Affordable Writers: Robert E. Howard

Creator of "Conan"

Robert E. Howard was an affordable writer, but unless you're a fan of old pulp fiction you may not have heard of him. You've probably heard of his most famous creation, though- Conan the Barbarian, the Noble Savage of Noble Savages. Most people associate Conan with a certain former governor of California, or (if they're really young) with that other guy in the recent 3-D Conan movie. But Howard's Conan was really nothing like Arnold. For one thing, he wouldn't have talked with an Austrian accent- Cimmerians were supposed to be proto-Celts, distant ancestors of the Irish.

The big difference between the Arnold movie and the original Conan stories is that the original stories are really dark. Robert E. Howard was not a happy man, and his fiction portrayed a grim world in which larger-than-life characters waged a constant and desperate struggle for survival against overwhelming odds. This is a struggle that Howard himself eventually lost, taking his own life after his mother died- an action that becomes more understandable when viewed in the context of his completely isolated life in Cross Plains, Texas, surrounded by people who thought he was weird just for reading books, never mind writing them.

 

Howard was able to make a living for a little while as a writer for the pulps, and he was also pen-pals with some of the other great writers of that era- H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and others. But as many letters as he exchanged with them, he had no one to talk to in his daily life, and in the end he just couldn't stand it anymore. If he could have known that people would still remember Conan several decades after his death, I'm sure he would be profoundly surprised- and possibly comforted.

 

 

 

 

Setting Rates in Stone

When you set up shop as a writer, you lay out a set of rates that can be used to charge for writing, typically either hourly or per-word.  While it is tempting to set those rates in stone, it might be a good idea to have some leeway in your rates to account for the difficulty level of projects, small businesses with equally small budgets, or even to give a discount for a cause you support. 

If you set your rate a little bit higher than you need, you have the freedom to haggle a bit and still come out with a rate you can be happy with.  If you charge per word, adding a small amount, such as one or two cents, can give you the freedom to offer a discount, which is something anyone can appreciate.  If your rate is per hour or per project, a percentage discount can entice clients without harming your bottom line, as long as you live some wiggle room.

Once you set your rates, however, you need to decide if you will change them for a client.  I recently interviewed for a large project and didn’t get it, simply because my rates were too high.  For me, that was an acceptable loss, because I want to make sure the rate I get is something I will be happy with.  While it is tempting to offer a “quantity discount” on a large project, keep in mind that you will be devoting just as much time per word as you would with a small project, plus you run the risk of burning out if it takes a lot of time.

It is hard to lose out on a job when you could get it by charging less, but when you begin to devalue your own work that way, you risk opening yourself up to resentment of a project because you aren’t getting paid what you feel you should.

Instead of lowering your rate below your ideal, focus on getting more work at the rate you like.  You wouldn’t expect a different service provider, such as a plumber, to lower his rates when asked, so don’t do it for yourself, either.

Publishing Glut

More Books, Fewer Readers

More books are being published today than ever before in human history, while fewer people are reading at all and those who do read are reading less. The result of all this is that it's much easier to get published now than it ever was before- especially with the availability of print-on-demand technology- but it's much harder to have an impact.

Even if you write a really good novel, and even if you succeed in getting it published somehow, it will most likely be read by a vanishingly small number of people. The celebrity authors who write the best-sellers are the lucky (and talented) few, but they are vastly outnumbered by the unlucky (though still talented) many, and the even more numerous would-be writers who are neither lucky nor talented.

 

So what does this mean to a hopeful novelist? It means that you should never write a book for the express purpose of making money, because it probably won't. If money is your thing, there are much easier and more reliable ways to get it. The only reason to write fiction in the current publishing climate is because you have a story you feel genuinely compelled to tell. If you feel you just have to get it down on paper, then by all means do so. But do it for the sake of the story itself, and let the chips fall where they may. If you talk yourself into thinking you're going to be the next JK Rowling, you will almost certainly be disappointed.

 

 

Have Business Cards

While you’re doing all that networking, such as at your local Chamber of Commerce meetings, it helps to have a way for people to keep your info handy.  You never know when you might meet someone who needs the services of a writer, so by being prepared with business cards, you can seize the opportunity to make a new connection and possibly a new client.

Business cards are very easy to have printed.  For just a few dollars, you can hire someone to design your cards for you, or you can use the free design options at places like VistaPrint.com to create your own.  For the super frugal person, creating your own cards at home with a printer and some basic software is a great, affordable option.  That’s how I do my own cards.

You can buy special business card paper with perforated edges so all you do is fold and snap the paper to get perfect cards every time.  Avery is a top brand, and they have downloadable templates on their website to help you create a design that fits their card paper.  With so many choices for getting quality business cards, there is no excuse to not have them.

Having business cards is a sign that you are a serious business, which lends credibility and can turn the tables in your favor when you meet a new prospect.  Make a habit of carrying a handful of cards with you wherever you go, and even pin them up on bulletin boards at local stores to help spread the word about your business.
 

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