Dear Internet,
I’ve been on a massive pitching frenzy in the last few weeks. I “sold” (no payment) a flash piece to 101words.org and I have an interview and another review on No Flying No Tights, also upcoming. Currently, I have 12 pieces outstanding, including pitches to big name websites. Anything interesting showing up on freelancewriting.com, I snare ferociously. Everyday I find at least one job to apply for, one more pitch to write, and several fingers to cross.
(A magazine I queried, who seemed to love me, reneged when I submitted my pitches. My followup went unanswered. A small note, “Sorry, these aren’t right for our site” would have been appreciated.)
(I know this frenzy of finding freelance work is what I should have done last year when I officially left my job to write full time, but, hindsight and etc.)
Rejection, I know, is all the name of the game.
Here is what I also know: Non-fiction is my strength. Based on what I’ve done so as much as writing fake articles for the applications, I’m good at what I do. It’s not Pulitzer (yet) but it’s pretty decent.
My love, what I want to do, is write fiction. Again, my strength seems to be in short (flash sized) pieces. 1000 words or less, I’m your girl. It’s the bigger chunks of text that perplex and make me nervous. I can do stream of consciousness on Twitter to the tune of 70,000 tweets at 140 characters per tweet is, well, a lot of characters. (Last count approximated about 10 books based on what I’ve tweeted. Holy. Shit.)
So I work hard everyday writing something, no matter how minute, in the fiction world. I have a project I’m challenging myself with by writing 100 stories that are only 100 words a piece. I’ve got 10 so far. It’s a start.
Also in the writing mix, I’ve not worked on any Freyja Thomas stories in quite some time. That’s another thing in my todo pile that seems to get bigger and bigger.
The thing about being a burgeoning paid author is we’re willing to take just about any opportunity thrown at us to get our name out there. freelancewriting.com is a great resource, along with my trusty Google alert which looks for “fiction” and “call for submissions”, ProBlogger, and Writing Career have been great sites for fiction AND non-fiction. Also, I cannot forget my favorite site of all, Duotrope. There is a lot out there and it’s a matter of finding the right niches for me.
I am specifically thinking of sites like UpWork, which is where you barter work for pennies on the dollar. Literally. Lots of the employers have small budgets, want content created with no byline, and created on the super cheap. By cheap I mean $1 for a 300 word piece. Not $1 a word or $1 per sentence, but $1 for 300 words. Fuck. That. I tried it for a week and the amount of work vs the payoff was worthless. Fiverr is another example of this great American capitalism.
There are a lot of other sites out there that prey on the same ideology: Starving writers need to eat, write for pennies, do not receive bylines or able to show their clips. The more you work, obviously the more money you make, but to what cost? Why spend your time giving other people credit for your work when you can use that time to create (and sell) your own?
That, my friends, is the million dollar question. Not pennies, but million dollars.
In other news and world reports, I bought lisa.wtf sometime back and I’m using it as my portal to all of my sites. It was getting confusing on what sites to put on what signature file, hand out, and other tides and greetings. This solves the problem. (For those wondering, no, I do not use this URL for profesh stuff. Let’s be real here.)
Go check out lisarabey.com with its brand spanking new front page and some updating. I’ve been writing so many damned author bios (each site has a different word count), that it seemed easier to have them all in one place.
xoxo,
Lisa
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