I haven’t posted anything in a while and it’s been killing me. So here’s just a taste of what’s been on my mind.
I hate freelancing!
I know it pays the bills but I hate it because it takes up too much of my time. Articles are easier to write and I never get stuck when writing those because those come from memory. Information you stored before. Writing fiction is harder because you write from fantasy and the truth is sometimes the ideas which the clients put forward are just that. Some ideas need to stay as ideas and not be put on paper.
Here are some of my experiences for fiction. When I say fiction I mean adult stuff..lol
A couple month ago a client invited me to bid on a project with a pregnancy theme. So here I thought that I would write a nice adult story and someone would get pregnant. I thought that maybe the guy would sleep around and deny the baby with a girl he could not show off to his friends or something. The client specifically told me that he would supply the the theme so I accepted. The client’s only idea was that a rich old dude would drug a young girl and have sex with her on a date. Isn’t that date r&pe? (the word r&pe is not a typo. You know Google and their filters, I have ads running).
Now back to the story! So when I got this thing I said okay maybe I can spin this a certain way to not sound like what it is but it kept bothering me. There was no way I could write that. If the story was longer than the 4000 words then maybe I could write it with a resolution/outcome in the girl’s favor but this was not a novel. It was a short story highlighting the one sexual act. I turned it down.
Late last year I started working on oDesk. One of my first gigs was a story for $20 for 12,000 words. Was I out of my freaking mind? There is one thing you should know, I hardly ever apply for these jobs. 90% of my gigs are by invitation or repeat. Anyways, somehow I accepted the job without checking the amount so I decided since it was my fault I should just take my medicine and deal with it. It was one of the best stories I ever wrote so the client wanted to repeat. I had made it clear to the client during the process of our relationship that the cost was a mistake on my part and what my usual cost was. After submitting the story the client told me that she had other people wanting the same kind of work for the same price. Do you know how hard it is to pen a quality 12,000 word story? No way Jose, I turned it down.
Here is another client with a friend fall in love story for 8,000 words. She wants at least three explicit scenes and of course a story must have a beginning middle and end. I submitted 9,000+ words. Honestly I did feel like the story should be longer. Her complaint was that there wasn’t enough conflict. So I explained to her that an 8,000 word story with lots of emotional and external conflict would look too cluttered. You can’t add too many characters to a story like that nor can you add too many conflicts with only 8,000 words so I brought it up to 18,000 words and added the ex girlfriend.
Oh, I forgot the most interesting one. Theme given in by client. A girl name Abby goes into the forest and gets lost. It’s supposed to be with three guys. It’s fantasy based so I placed it in Medieval times. War between the Rebels and England. Three princes of the underworld. These princes are anything but bad, one thing for sure they are lovers, not warriors, yet bold and strong.
Now back to why I hate freelancing. Well, other than the bizarre plots and story ideas clients want me to pen, I have been feeling like I am short changing myself to the point where I can’t write for myself anymore. It’s true. I have been writing for other people so long that it has become a part of me.Now I am going to have to untrain myself from that and retrain my brain to write for me. Even my own article writing is suffering.
Sometimes I don’t feel like writing at all and I know it’s because freelancing/ghostwriting is not what I really want to do.
Blabbering too much. Tell me what you think.
Peace out!
Carolee
Hi Carolee,
Hope you did have a happy Friday! We all have to do some tough things to keep the money rolling in, but personally I wouldn’t take on projects where you have to write about stuff like r%pe in that way. It’s just going to end up twisting your soul too much, so it’s not surprising you are finding it hard to take pleasure in your own writing.
It’s hard to turn down work when you really need the money, but sometimes it really pays to trust that something better is on its way. I feel that there is a big difference between disciplining yourself to write an article on a subject that bores you, like teeth whitening, and forcing yourself to cross what feels like a fine moral line.
You are a wonderful, talented writer, so stay true to yourself and it will all work out!
I loved this article Carolee! As a freelancer myself some customers just don’t get it. We should charge extra for teaching them. lol. I get so frustrated sometimes that I have a response already made on a Word doc. I just copy and paste it into a message. One client got really angry with me because I wouldn’t put in his keyword 30 times in his 500 word article. I explained why and a week later he apologized and has been a repeat customer ever since. lol.
Sarra