Reinventing the Writing Career

Let’s continue our thought from yesterday. We’ve determined our ultimate goals and we’re now fairly certain of what it is we must make annually in order to pay the bills, feed the family and put aside money for retirement, college expenses for the kids, savings, and that nest egg for your shore house down payment (or if you’re really aggressive, the entire amount needed to buy it outright).

Got your number? Good. Now let’s look for more work. And let’s be really picky, because any low-paying job that sucks up all our time is going to keep us from our goal, which is to increase the income. So let’s aim high.

Think about the things you could do as a writer. Articles, yes. But only if they pay a fair wage (which I consider to be at or very near to $1/word). How about ghostwriting? Yes again. But let’s not stop at mere books. Why not ghostwrite articles? There are plenty of companies out there who have experts with lots to say and no time to write it down. Make friends with PR people. They’re your source for all the execs in the company, and they know what projects would benefit the company. There’s a ton of work waiting inside nearly all companies, and someone somewhere is willing to pay you to help with it.

How about writing manuals? Dull, you say? Sure, if you aren’t creative. How many times have you opened a user manual and thought, “I could’ve written this!” So why don’t you? It takes only a curiosity and an ability to translate functions into “people speak”. I’ve written three of them. They’re actually kind of fun, for you get to explain the way you would have in all those other badly written manuals how to best use this product. Not only that, not all manuals are for products. I wrote one once that was a sales training manual. It was a great experience because the added benefit was my learning some insider sales techniques that I still use.

Let’s say you’ve been writing and editing since Hector was a pup. So why aren’t you teaching? You can’t? Why not? There are several things you could be teaching, some of which include holding writing workshops for executives and improving their writing skills, writer’s workshops helping fellow writers just starting out get a better jump on their careers, classes at community colleges for budding novelists, etc.

One more thing – whatever jobs you are working on now, look at them. Really look at them. Is the payment you receive adequate for the output? Is it enough? How much do you make in one day at one of those gigs? Now’s the time for some hard examination of what it is you’re really doing in a day. If you’re not charging enough, it’s time to decide if that job can be salvaged with an increase in rates or dropped to make room for bigger and better. One thing I will say is any ongoing job that takes relatively no time to complete is one you should consider keeping to balance out your lean times. I know that goes against all we’ve just talked about, but the reality is there are some gigs that are so rudimentary that they really do warrant their existence in your project pile.

The marketing info from last week makes it easy for you to put together a better financial picture. So get going!