Beautiful Porto

The transition from freelance to full employment can be a bit of a challenge. It’s one I’m facing at the moment as I take on the role of Creative Content Editor for a new travel website, basically writing, editing, overseeing, commissioning, and generally project managing the whole production.

So far it’s been a fascinating journey. The sheer volume of work to be done is quite daunting, but I’m realising that that’s exactly how it was with EssentialWriters.com to begin with, except that I was my own boss then and took things one day at a time rather than having a boss present the entire list of objectives to me on a sheaf of A4 pages.

Being part of a team is enjoyable though - I share a small, wonky-walled office in a historic building in one of the nicest areas of Bristol. Each morning I have a lovely walk in to work over bridges, past a turret-towered church and across a park, which wakes me gently and happily, and far more effectively than my walk from my bedroom to the living room ever did.

There’s as much coffee as I can drink, and just the right balance between silence and noise so those things are all fabulous. Plus I’m doing lots of travel-writing - my favourite kind of armchair travel! This week I’ve revisited Geneva, Spain, the Alentejo and Porto, if only in my mind. Bliss!

The structure of a normal 9am till 5.30 day is harder to handle though. I’m having to relearn how to sit and work for several consecutive hours instead of bobbing, working, wafting, working, meandering, working, from around 7am till 9pm as I’m accustomed to.

But I’ve only on experienced one week of my new working life. I’ll let you know how the job, and I, develop as the days go on.

After the emptiness of January, I’ve suddenly been hit in the face with an influx of work, from days in-house on publications to feature commissions and requests from a clutch of artists and galleries to produce their press releases. I even had to turn down work for the first time, because I noticed my sanity slipping as I tried to meet an excess of deadlines!

It’s all good - money coming in, lots of interesting things to do, but I really think the biggest challenge of the freelance writer is surviving the extremes. Forget sub-zero temperatures and searing heat, the vacuum of an empty inbox (if you ignore the spam) in contrast to the one that’s bursting at the seams is more than most fragile journalist minds can handle.

Today it’s Saturday, which is completely irrelevant from my point of view, as I will be slogging on, coffee within in reach and TV remote firmly out of reach, in an effort to tick a few things off my growing list of priorities.

Funnily enough, this blog was top of the list, followed closely by reminders to update Twitter and Facebook. The key is to updte fast and get out before you discover you’ve been sucked into the social networking vortex and an hour or more has passed.

Once that’s achieved, however, I’ll have the satisfaction of scrawling a big fat tick, and feeling a sense of progress, however small.

On the opening night of Barry Lewis’ Monsters exhibition 13 out of 40 pieces sold, which is pretty impressive. Sadly all the ones my hubla fell in love with went within moments, but I managed to get a red dot onto a rather lovely one of a pegasus, very similar to the horse of spoons, but with an elegant pair of fish-knife wings. I can’t wait till the end of Feb when I can take it home.

The exhibition gained loads of media attention, partly, I’d like to think, due to my press releases. I picked up a copy the Evening Post and found that one of the journalists had used paragraphs from my release word for word. Nice to know I’m making life so easy for them, but odd to see my words credited to someone else…

A selection of my words are also currently taking part in an art and poetry exhibition called Exploding Poetry. It’s being held at Bank Street Arts Centre, and is on the topic of women and warfare. I wrote short piece called Not War, Nor Peace, inspired by my time in Israel, and it got accepted! Love it when that happens – it almost makes all the rejections worthwhile.

© Stock.xchng

As I get into the swing of the new year, I’m finding my week is naturally dividing itself into patterns, with two days devoted to creative writing, two days to the website and two days to sourcing and carrying out the freelance writing work that keeps a roof over my head.

Yes, that does add up to around six working days a week, but while I’m doing what I love, I really don’t care. Besides, some days that simply means logging on to check in on the forums (which are currently suspiciously quiet – where are you all?) and delete spam, while creative writing days can include long strolls and longer chats with like-minded people who inspire me.

This week has been particularly fruitful creatively, as I completed a short story yesterday, sent off an entry for a short story competition, submitted a short story to a literary magazine and sent off some query emails to agencies offering support to selective mutes, as the protagonist of one of my novels suffers from that particular social disorder.

Ooh, and then today I found out that a poem I entered for a creative writing competition run by Sense has been shortlisted, which is fab news!

The stipulation for the poem was that it had to be written from the point of view of someone who is both deaf and blind. It was an interesting challenge, but one that meant a lot for me as Diabetic Retinopathy is something that’s looming alarmingly on my horizon.

So I engaged all my other senses and wrote a poem about a deaf/blind person being taught about colours by their lover. I enjoyed the challenge, was pleased with the result, and am now tempted to go through some of my old short stories and see what happens if I remove one of the protagonists’ senses. It could alter the whole slant of the tale, which might utterly revitalise some of them.

So 2010 is looking (and sounding) good already. Now all I need to do is maintain the momentum…

© Eric Feldman

When working as a freelance writer, there’s always the issue of balance. The issue between work and play, between home time and work time, between paying the gas bill and not paying the gas bill…

Working from home means that boundaries get blurred and I sometimes discover I’ve inadvertently worked a 12-hour day. Even when there’s no paying work available (which happens more often than I’d like!), there’s always EssentialWriters.com to focus on, or the art book I’m collaborating on, or the novel I’m mid-way through, or the many proposals to send out for the novel I’ve completed.

Oh, and then there are the endless pitching of ideas to magazines and websites, and short stories to write and enter for writing competitions or submit to literary mags, all of which takes time and effort, but in chunks so small that they’re akin to erosion. Before you know it, the entire day is gone and the cliff has collapsed.

But the finest balance to master is that with regards to the features that pay well, and the features with benefits. For example, in the past two weeks I’ve received two commissions, both of which pay but on vastly different scales.

One was on a subject I knew nothing about, which required lots of research and constant communication with specialists in Scandinavia. I knew I’d learn masses through writing it, and the pay was well over £200. I accepted the commission.

The second, however, paid well under £100, but was on a subject I knew well – pampering – and would involve research that included an afternoon at a spa being gently massaged into semi-consciousness. Mwahhh…

So half the money, but also half the effort plus a heavenly afternoon I would never have felt justified in paying for myself. I accepted that commission too.

It’s the same with travel writing. It’s a genre that very rarely pays well, but results in some fabulous trips to places I might never otherwise have seen.

So it’s always about balance and money is only a small part of the equation. Apart, of course, from the opinion of the gasman.

A couple of weeks ago I went to a PGC networking event at Holland House Hotel in Bristol.

Previously I’ve only ever attended networking events aimed specifically at journalists, and it was interesting to meet so many people from so many different sectors, all with tips and advice to share.

One of the first things I learnt was the value of introducing what you can offer, rather than your name, rank and number. So instead of saying: “Hi, I’m Judy, I’m a freelance writer and editor, and I write for all sorts of websites and magazines…” I found myself listening to other people talking about the websites they build and then saying: “That’s very interesting. How do you gain content for the sites? Because that’s the kind of thing I do…”

After the preliminary mingle we were ushered through to the main room, where a panel was ready to discuss pressing issues with us. Rather marvelously this began with Colin Butcher, the event organiser, asking us what we wanted covered, personalising it to our requirements.

The main concern was the financial challenges, or as one attendee called it, the need for ‘eating strategies.’ We were asked to consider how we find work, how we market ourselves and how we leverage our networks. LinkedIn was flagged up as a crucial tool, and made me vow to update my profile at the first opportunity.

One delegate reminded us that: “You are your brand. It’s how you dress, how you speak, the business cards you give out.”

I wriggled with shame when it was pointed out that the freebie business cards I’d found online were tantamount to saying you don’t think your brand is worth paying for. It was a good point, though, and I certainly agree that you need to present a professional image if you want people to see you as a professional, regardless of your field.

As social network sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter were discussed, suggestions began to fly, ranging from the importance of getting involved with professional forums to ensuring our CVs are laden with keywords.

It was encouraging to hear that all kinds of freelancers are finding it challenging at the moment, and to meet people with the same concerns. I gleaned lots of valuable tips about making connections with people, and some of them may even lead to paying work.

© Richard Mallinson

Last Tuesday I joined a scriptwriting group held at a local pub. Scriptwriting is a medium I’ve never tried before, but I’m always looking for new writing challenges.  I’m currently writing a short story that seems to be morphing into a script, so I thought it would be a good idea to find out more about the art before I attempt to tackle it for real.

The thing about scriptwriting, as opposed to many kinds of writing, is that many of the people who end up doing it aren’t writers at heart. Often they’re people who want to act or direct. It’s also relatively social form of the sector – you may write alone, but then you might redraft and revise in the company of actors, directors, producers, or even, if you work in TV, be part of a team of writers. So much for writing being solitary!

When I interviewed Mark Ravenhill about it, he commented that he became a writer by default – he wanted to be a director. And he also said that one of the major challenges is that “to work in the theatre, you have to be a person who enjoys collaborating with others, who enjoys working as part of a group. But writing is a solo experience. I don’t like that. I get it over with as quickly as possible.”

I think I have two sides to my personality – I need my own space to write and create, then I need to get out there and talk to be people to drive me forward, keep me inspired.

The scriptwriting group proved to serve the latter part enormously well, as we all gathered together in a room upstairs, and one writer handed out her script for us to read through. Anyone who was willing was allocated parts and I ended up with four small roles, which scared me slightly until I got into it and remembered how much I’d enjoyed acting as a child.

The script was really interesting, and after we’d read out the first episode of the writer’s eight-episode TV series, the critiquing began. I felt like taking notes. Some comments seemed harsh, but all were useful, making this as valuable, if not more so, than any scriptwriting course.

I can’t wait till next week to see what more I can learn – and what role I’ll get to play…

Jerusalem © Bill Silvermintz

Many, many years I spent a few months on the kibbutz in Israel, and I’m now deep into writing a novel loosely based on some of my experiences there.

Writing fiction inspired by real, lived experiences is always an interesting challenge. As a country in constant flux, Israel has changed immeasurably since I arrived in Tel Aviv aged 18, explored Jerusalem’s market stalls, watched the sun rise over the Dead Sea… Borders have shifted and many of the places I knew well may no longer even exist.

Although Israel will mainly be witnessed via the main characters’ flashbacks to the time when I was there, I want to check my recollections are accurate (particularly as the underlying theme in the novel is the fallibility of memory), so this is an exercise in fact-checking as well as finding out new facts.

But my most important job may be to make my fictional kibbutz sufficiently different to the real one, Kibbutz Sha’ar Ha’amakim, to ensure I don’t cause offence to the kibbutzniks who live there, and the first step of this is to give it a new name - but I have no idea how to do this.

Creating a fictional village name for my novel Anna Speaks was relatively straightforward - I researched place names and looked at how different words from different historic and live languages slot together - so we get Fen, from the Middle English word Fenix meaning phoenix or the old English word for marsh, and Celli, from the Welsh word meaning grove.

But there are more than 200 kibbutzim in Israel, with no obvious pattern to their names. I haven’t been able to break down the individual words into any Hebrew meanings, so the lexicographic logic is a mystery.

In these situations I always think it’s a good idea to go to the experts, the Kibbutz Program Center, the Israeli Embassy in London, and even a journalist working on the Jerusalem Post, and English-language newspaper I used to read when I was there.

So the preliminary query emails have gone out. I’ll let you know how I get on…

© Rodolfo Clix

I’m coming towards the end of a three-month stint on a magazine. Long-term contracts like this are gold dust, and a curious reminder of what my life was like when I was features editor for a particular magazine rather than being freelance.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working as part of a team, getting to know the way the mag works, seeing and contributing to its development… These are the things I miss when I’m flitting from job to job, and I know I’ll be sad to leave.

One of the perks of this time has been the break from wondering where the next month’s rent is coming from. There’s something delightful about having a regular income, even if it means daily commutes and spending most of my time in an office. All in all, I’ve enjoyed having a something of a routine for a while. I’ve liked coming into a place where people know my name (like the pub in Cheers, ahem) and chatting by the kettle and going for bagels on Fridays, as well as the satisfaction of working on an issue from beginning to end, planning future issues and giggling over the more bizarre requests from readers. It’s been interesting to gain a deeper insight into a specialist subject, learn new terminology, come to understand the needs of a very picky readership and suss out this particular company’s way of doing things.

That said, moving on after three months was always the plan and I’m hoping it will open me up to new possibilities.

As of October 19th I’ll be available for writing, editing and PR, so give me a shout if you need a hand. I’ll be happy to oblige!