Status Update: February Report

It's been a while since I posted here. February was a rough month for me on a number of personal levels, and this blog sort of fell by the wayside.

On the bright side, I had a very good freelance month in February. I'm still employed full-time, so my freelance earnings are pretty limited so far. But in February, I landed ongoing gigs with two clients, both online content producers. I made $100 last month, and this month I'm pacing to make $400.

It's definitely not enough to live on (not even close), but it's a start. Before last September, I'd never been paid for my writing. I'm still getting my feet wet in this business, but I'm pleased with what I've accomplished so far this year. (And it's very exciting to see my name in print...and on those checks!)

For any freelancers who read this blog---how did you feel the first few times you were paid for your work?

Setbacks

So it's been a rough week.

First of all, the New England Patriots lost the Super Bowl to the New York Giants. As a die-hard Pats fan, that loss hurt. And it was only the beginning of what shaped up to be a pretty terrible few days.

My husband and I both caught this nasty cold that's going around, so we've both been a barrel of laughs the last few days.

Tuesday night, my guinea pig Max died. Bit of backstory here: I'm a huge animal lover. I have three guinea pigs (well, two now), and they are spoiled rotten. They have huge cages that---no joke---take up an entire room in my house. My husband and I don't have children, so our pets are our babies.

Max was only two years old. We're still not sure what happened---he was fine in the morning, but Tuesday night he was limping, breathing funny and refusing to eat. His condition deteriorated and he passed away in the middle of the night.

I took the day off from work Wednesday because I still wasn't feeling well, and staying up almost all night worrying about Max hadn't helped. I spent part of the day reconstructing the guinea pigs' cage to fit two instead of three, and spent the rest of the day recovering.

Then, my husband's mother called to tell us that his grandmother had passed away.

I'm sorry, universe...exactly what did I do to make you hate me this much?

So this week has pretty much been a wash as far as work goes. I'd gotten three of my 10 articles for eHow written before Tuesday, planning to bang out the rest of them over the next few nights. Obviously, circumstances have gotten in the way. I just emailed the editor asking for an extension of a couple of days. I hate that I had to do that. I pride myself on meeting deadlines. And I'll totally understand if they can't grant me an extension...I'd hate to lose them as a client, but I'd understand.

I hope the rest of February turns out much better than it's shaping up so far.

February Goals

I'm a little slow out of the gate posting my goals for this month, but I have good reason---as I mentioned last week, my goals from January resulted in regular paying work!

As a result, February has been a busy month for me so far. Since it's a short month and I can only take on so much freelance work on top of my full-time job, I'm aiming low this time:

• Research and write 2-10 assigned articles a week for MoreFocus
• Research and write 10 articles for eHow
• Blog at least three times a week

Like I said, I've been busy. I spent most of the weekend (well, when I wasn't watching Super Bowl coverage) researching and writing two wedding articles. I submitted them last night and they were accepted this morning.

The 10 articles for eHow are due Friday, but they're not coming along quite as quickly as I'd like. So far, I've only got one written. The good news, though, is that they're very easy to write, since I'm limiting my topics to subjects I'm already familiar with. My first article, "How to Nail Your Audition Song," took under an hour to put together. The trickiest thing is coming up with topics that aren't already covered on the site.

So it's certainly not a bad month. And I'm thrilled to pieces to have regular jobs coming in every week.

January Goals Revisited

Can you believe it's the end of the month already? I'm already starting to work on my goals for February, but before I do that, I need to take a look at the goals I set for myself at the beginning of this month.

1. Blog at least five times a week.
2. Spend at least an hour a day researching markets, sending out queries, and applying for freelance gigs.
3. A little more specific...send out one query a week and apply for five freelance gigs per week.
4. Be more proactive about leaving comments on blogs I frequent and contributing to discussions on boards like these (AW) instead of just lurking.

I didn't meet all of those goals. Obviously, I haven't been blogging as often as I promised, although I have been trying to keep it fairly up-to-date. I haven't sent out any query letters, and while I've applied for freelance gigs, it hasn't been the five a week I originally aimed for. I have been better about establishing a more vocal presence online, though, and I've definitely been doing plenty of research.

The end of the month is always filled with coulda-woulda-shouldas. But being a person who tends to see the glass as half-full, I prefer to concentrate on what I've accomplished in a particular month. I may not have achieved all my goals, but JHS inspired me to put myself out there more than I ever have before. As a result, this month has been the most productive in my fledgling freelance career.

1. I applied for nine freelance writing or editing gigs.
2. As I mentioned the other day, one of them got back to me last week, wanting to see an article on spec.
3. I wrote that article, submitted it, and was contracted to write 2-10 articles a week for them.
4. I heard back from another one today, asking if I'd be interested in submitting how-to articles. They're due February 8, so researching and writing them will be part of my February goals.
5. I wrote and submitted a short story for the 24-hour short story contest at Writers Weekly.
6. While not technically a writing goal, I did set up profiles at MySpace and LinkedIn for professional networking.

So maybe I didn't do exactly what I'd set out to do at the beginning of the month. But my career has taken some interesting turns. I squelched some of my fears and wrote a short story, and I've lined up two decent-paying gigs for myself. It can only get better from here.

I can't wait to see what February has in store.

Writing on Spec Pays Off!

I just landed a sweet content-writing gig! And I never would have gotten it if I had followed my initial instincts and refused to write on spec.

Lots of writers will tell you not to work on spec, because you put all your sweat and time into an article that has no guarantee of being accepted. And in some cases, that's true. The first query letter I ever sent out came back with a request to see the completed article on spec. I spent a month outlining, researching, interviewing, and writing...only to never hear back from the editor after I sent in the completed article. That's frustrating, and I can totally understand why a lot of writers advise against it.

Sometimes, though, it's worth it. For example, the gig that I just landed is an ongoing project...2-10 articles a week, and a decent pay rate for each article. That translates into good things for my bank account. So they needed me to write a spec article to prove that I could provide quality content. So what? The article didn't take me too long to write (I researched and wrote it in a couple of hours), and the payoff is well worth it. If they'd turned me down, it would have been disappointing, but I would have had a decent content article (plus a ton of story ideas on the subject) that I could have sold elsewhere.

Like anything in this business, you have to do what works for you. As far as my business goes, I no longer write for free (unless there's another perk, like a free book or CD from review sites), and I won't respond to insulting ads, like $1 for a 600-word article. But from now on, if the potential reward is high enough, I'll absolutely write on spec...at least until my résumé is impressive enough that I don't need to anymore.

Now excuse me, I'm going to go pop a bottle of champagne and celebrate.

A Writer's Biggest Hangup: Fear

One of the reasons I'm grateful for JHS is because it forces me to overcome (or at least ignore) my biggest reason for procrastination: fear.

I think it's one of those things most writers struggle with. I can always think of a million reasons not to submit a story, write a query, or apply for a gig. I sit down to write, and as soon as that cursor starts blinking at me on that huge blank screen, the nasty voices start to kick in. "You can't do this. You're not imaginative enough. You won't be able to think of anything to write. There's no way you're good enough."

Sometimes, it's really hard to squelch that voice. I have to deal with a lot of my own inferiority issues when I sit down to write. Why would anyone care about what I have to say? And isn't there already enough writing out there, clogging up the Internet, magazines, and newspapers? How will mine ever stand out?

Not to mention the fact that rejection is a huge part of any working writer's life. Sometimes I wonder if I have the tenacity to keep going if editors reject my work.

But what scares me even more is…what if they say yes?

As a beginning writer, the fear of success is even more crippling than the fear of failure. Because once an editor says, "Okay, we want to work with you," that's the point where I have to look like I know what I'm doing. I have to set fees, and I have to produce what I promised I'd produce. And I'm still at the point where that's a pretty frightening concept.

The funny thing is, I'm not a complete newbie at this. I've been Web writing on a very part-time basis for a couple of years now, and I've even had a story accepted in a print mag. (And been paid for it, too.) But I think, no matter how many times you've been published, the nagging fear is still there. You're putting your words, your creations, out there for someone else to judge and possibly say, "No, that's not good enough for us." And that takes a lot of courage.

For me, it's absolutely imperative that I squelch that fear…or at least ignore it long enough to sit down and write that story or article and send it out. My dream is to be a full-time freelancer, and the only way that's going to happen is if I apply for jobs and build up my portfolio (and my bank account).

And I'm getting better about that. Participating in JHS over at Absolute Write this month has helped immensely, because I'm so inspired by the talented and motivated writers over there. I've written and submitted more in the last week than I ever have before in such a short period.

In the last week, I've:

• Written and submitted my final column to Nights & Weekends.
  
• Written and submitted a 1,000-word short story for the Writers Weekly 24-hour short story contest.
  
• Applied for three Web writing projects.
  
• Gotten a positive response from one of them, wanting to see an article on spec. I don't usually write on spec, but I made an exception since this would lead to an ongoing gig. Wrote and submitted the sample article last night.

It's an ongoing struggle, but I'm taking it one day at a time.

Snow.

Ha-HA...I did get something accomplished today. As I was struggling through a particularly nasty, slushy commute home today, I got the idea for a slice-of-life essay. Here's the result. I'm still not sure if it looks as good on paper as it sounded in my head. Feel free to leave comments or critiques. (I love feedback. Even if you just tell me I suck.)

Snow
by Angela Dalecki

It snowed today.

As a grown-up adult with grown-up responsibilities, I hate snow. I hate that it makes my commute home more difficult and twice as long as usual. I hate that I can’t drive easily in it. I hate having to clean off my car. I hate getting home an hour later than usual because the weather slowed traffic to a crawl on a highway.

It’s a shame I have to commute to and from my job. Because if I didn’t have to drive in it, maybe I would have appreciated how beautiful Pennsylvania looks with a fresh blanket of snow.

By the time I left work, it had been snowing for about three hours. When I stepped outside, there was about an inch of snow on the ground, and big, fat, snowflakes were still coming down. There was no wind, no rain, just snow.

If I hadn’t had to drive in it, I probably would have taken a moment to enjoy the beauty of it all. Because it wasn’t a snow I would have wanted to miss.

If I wasn’t so worried about getting home, I might have noticed that the snowflakes were the heavy, moist kind—the type that just clings to whatever it lands on. More than a dusting but not quite a blanket, the snow had covered the lawn to the point where you could just barely see grass tips peeking through.

I might have noticed the leafless oak trees along the streets and the parking lot, and how they were all lined with snow on each and every branch. I might also have noticed the evergreens—how their coating of snow made the branches hang just a little lower than usual, and how the layer of white on green gave them that coveted Christmas look that we never actually get around Christmastime here in the Mid-Atlantic states.

Most importantly, I might have noticed how muted our busy world gets when it snows like this, how quiet and peaceful it is, and what a magical feeling it is to stand outside and just allow the snow to catch in my hair and eyelashes. And if I’d noticed this, maybe I would have gone for a stroll, taking in all of the things I was too busy to see because I was cleaning off my car and cursing Mother Nature for never allowing it to snow on a Saturday.

And if I’d gone for a walk and taken in all of the breathtaking scenery, maybe I would have remembered how, as a child growing up New England, I would wait all season long for a snow just like this one—the perfect consistency for snowmen, snowball fights, sledding, snow angels, and catching snowflakes on my tongue. I’d think about how it’s been entirely too long since I enjoyed snow just for the sake of being snow. And I’d smile and walk a little longer, enjoying the feeling of flakes on my skin and thinking about how, for this moment at least, I’m a child again.

Eventually, I’d go back inside and warm myself up by changing into some cozy flannel pj’s and warm fuzzy socks, and making myself some hot chocolate and maybe baking some cookies. I’d put in an old movie, snuggle up under a blanket with my husband, and think that life is pretty okay right now.

Instead, I had to clear more than two inches of thick, wet, heavy snow off my car—without a brush, since I’m an idiot who doesn’t plan for these things—and endure an hour-long commute on a messy, slushy highway with hundreds of other people who don’t know how to drive in snow and insist in crawling at about 12 miles an hour. By the time I got home and could actually think about enjoying the snow, it had turned into rain. So now I’m inside, ready to eat dinner, just thinking about what might have been.

I think I might still make that hot chocolate.