So you want to be a freelance writer

There is something romantic about writing. Something that speaks to people on a variety of levels.

You may want to be a freelancer to supplement your income, or you may be a fresh journalism grad afraid of the current business climate. Maybe you just love reading and want to get your ideas out there. Whatever your reasons, there is one truth you’re going to have to learn. Writing isn’t romantic, at least if you want to get paid for it.

Freelance writing can be down, dirty, and downright hard.

If you’re just starting out, you’re going to have to prove to editors that you have what it takes to write great copy. You’re going to have to maintain a high level of professionalism in every professional and online interaction. And, you’re going to have to live against the grain of society.

If you’ve been at this for a while, you’re going to have to start shifting the way you think, begin building your brand, and learn a new bag of tricks for the digital age.

On top of all this, you’re going to have to deal with perpetual rejection while maintaining an ego on steroids, because in becoming a freelancer, you’re going to be a lot like a used salesman. Except, you’re going to be glossing over your own dings, scratches, and faulty transmission to convince others that you’re a great investment.

No matter where you are in your dive into freelance writing, I have three tips you can implement into your life today to give you an edge in the modern freelancing market.

Ditch the text/ IM speak.
Do this immediately. If you text message or IM your friends, start spelling out words and using punctuation. If you sneak an LOL or emoticon into an email to an editor, you’re not going to make a good impression. Go through and edit your Myspace and Facebook pages while you’re at it, because a good editor is going to Google you if they’re thinking about hiring you.

Start a blog today.
This is especially important if you don’t have a portfolio. And, keep in mind your professional blog isn’t going to be your bitch log. Write good copy and write it often. Post pictures if you want to get into photography. Present a wide range of what you can write, from book reviews to news articles all relating to a specific topic you choose. But, understand that if you want to get into writing for Catholic publications writing about sexual fetishes probably won’t fly, and if you want to write about the horror industry or movies in general you should have some way to contact professionals in the field. I will write more about blogging in later posts.

If you don’t have a professional blog, do some digging into free blog hosting. Blogger and WordPress are good choices, Google them for more information.

Read as much as you can.
Read the paper. Read magazines. Read fiction and nonfiction. Read short stories. Read advertisements and advertorials and the backs of cereal boxes if you have to. Read greeting cards and bumper stickers. Read to try to figure out why what you’re reading does or doesn’t work, and then read for fun. Read websites, blogs, and physical print items. Read for hours a day or for as much time as you can fit into your schedule. Because, believe me, if you’re not reading, you’re not going to be a compelling writer. As a writer, you’re going to have to be an expert on everything from religion to superheroes, and all of that knowledge should somehow make its way into print. That’s the way to surprise and delight readers, because it brings them into the cosmic joke that everything’s related. Just to give you some insight into a writer’s mind, while I was writing this paragraph, I was thinking of the “Choose Life” speech from Trainspotting. If you’ve never heard of it, go out and buy the book and the movie because you’re missing out.

That’s all I’ve got for today, but come back soon. The next post I write will be about keeping emails professional.

New project in the works

As some of you who read this may or may not know, in life I am a giant nerd. I play a live action role playing game in a national organization, and up to this point I haven’t been able to find any real blogs or guides to the game. So, I’ve decided to start my own.

This is a way for me to delve deeper into the game community and to delve into monetizing blogs at the same time. Up to this point, I have been unable to successfully monetize my blogs. I have affiliated with Amazon and Drive Thru RPG (a site that sells downloads of game manuals) and am trying to use Adsense more efficiently.

If anyone has any advice on what I could do better, please let me know. In some ways I’m flying blind, and in others I’m not sure I entirely trust the advice I’ve been given on making money through blogging.

Here’s a link to the new blog about Vampire: The Masquerade.

Welcome to my guide on freelance writing

For the past few weeks, I’ve been throwing around the idea of revamping this blog. Trust me, it was a lot of hard work and hard thinking.

Originally, I was going to change my focus to freelance journalism, moving away from the traditional student journalism I started this blog on.

Instead of choosing a topic so narrow, I finally decided to focus on freelance writing. Most of the information is going to be about freelance journalism, but I will also focus on getting jobs in the business, taking care of your finances, finding markets for fiction, and networking.

I hope the people that read this find in it a valuable resource.

Basic web sleuthing 101- web searches

Whether you’re a seasoned journalist learning more about what the web has to offer or a freelancer trying to figure out how to navigate the changing sea of technology, proficiency in web searches are pivotal to your success. Through trial and error and a few essential tips, it isn’t that hard to find a wealth of information on just about anyone who owns a computer and regularly surfs the internet.

I’ve realized that one of my biggest gifts for journalism is being ahead of the curve when it comes to online research. In Jschool, I used to get blank stares from other students when I would come up with information about article subjects, just from stumbling around the internet for a few days. So, this will be the first in a potential zillion part series entitled “Basic web sleuthing.”

The first step for any journalistic sleuthing is the basic web search. My preferred engine is Google; it’s where I start before I branch out to other search engines and sites.

In the increasingly digital world we live in, people put their entire lives online to be viewed, and it’s usually easy to figure out who they are, even if they try to be sneaky.

Let’s take the hypothetical subject “Jane Doe.” For a search on Jane Doe, mother of two and an internet business owner who lives in Dade City, FL, I would type “Jane Doe” Dade City FL into my Google search box. I would hope for a personal site, some other articles written about her, a social networking page (Myspace, LinkedIn, etc.), a blog, and other sites with general information about her.

Let’s say I find a page for her business with her email address on it, but not much else. Her business is flying under the radar a bit, so it hasn’t garnered media attention, and she’s done a pretty good job of keeping her extracurricular online activities under my radar.

Except, her email address is from yahoo, and instead of being professional, it’s something like cookieroflmacopter22224545. Now, I can type her email address into yahoo and see what I come up with.

I find a deleted Livejournal, a private Myspace, some message board posts for an online game that may or may not be from her, and a personal ad.

One nice thing about Google is it offers cached results. So, from her deleted Livejournal’s cached pages, I find out she goes to Central Florida furry meets all the time under the name Janey Cat.

All of the sudden, it’s possible I might have an entirely different story on my hands. And, information like this begins to snowball after pulling a person’s layers of history on the web apart.

This is why some of my friends should fear me. I really would like some feedback on this post and the future series, so if you loved it, hated it, or didn’t care, please let me know.

Tips for covering the next Anonymous protest

According to my sources and some internet research, the next worldwide Anonymous protest is going to be August 16. Unfortunately, I have to work my day job and won’t be able to make it. Both sides of the protests fascinate me.

While trolling the internet for more information, I found an Anonymous training video.

Because the Anonymous movement is the first group of its kind, I thought it would be good to provide my own training/ tips to cover their protests. I have been to a few, and covering the group and their picketing has provided interesting challenges.

Tips for covering the Anonymous movement in your area

1. Bring a digital or video camera, a sound recorder, and a notepad and pen to take notes.
While this is a basic commandment of reporting, the camera and recording device are essential. Chances are, you won’t find anyone willing to share their identity for your article.

2. Find the centralized meeting location of the protest. This will be the best place to conduct interviews.
Protesters will probably congregate in one location to rest, get out of the sun, drink water, and eat pizza and cake provided by organization members. This is also a good place to find the “leadership.” Chances are, this is where members will be talking about topics like the group’s applications for nonprofit status and insider information about everything from advertising to wide held beliefs about Scientology.

3. Make yourself very visible and make sure protesters know you aren’t one of them or a member of Scientology.
Make sure Scientologists know the same thing. From my experiences, Scientologists won’t be willing to talk to you during the protests, but at least a few of the protesters will. I’ve heard that Scientologists hire detectives to track down everyone at the protests, but I haven’t experienced it. It’s just something to think about before you go.

4. Get both sides of the story.
While most Scientologists won’t talk to you, their PR people will. When I called one of the Clearwater offices, it only took me a few minutes to get transferred to the appropriate spokeswoman. At worst, you’ll get some press releases relating to the protests. At best, you’ll get a few good quotes about what the individual you’re talking to thinks about Anonymous and their own experiences with threats, pranks, and hackers.

5. Do not partake of the cake, pizza, and water Anonymous provides.
There are a couple of reasons why you shouldn’t, the biggest being that if you’re eating and drinking with them, it can be construed as support. It also makes you look less professional.

6. Stay long past the protest has ended.
This is when you might actually be able to talk to members of Scientology about the events. Try to talk to the locals in the area about what they think. And, see if you can follow some of the protesters as they leave. During the last protest I covered, I saw a policeman stop a group of protesters as they left Clearwater, and I still regret I didn’t turn my car around to find out what was going on.

7. Do your research.
Any coverage of religion is going to be complicated. Make sure you learn what each side believes and why they believe it. An in-depth story of any cultural event is worth tons more than a shallow explanation of what happened.

It’s official: I’m a curmudgeon!

It was only a matter of time. I’m probably the only member of Generation Next (Generation Y, cusp of Generation X, whatever) who loves sitting at a kitchen table with a cup of coffee or a pastry and the daily paper, who reads novels and creative nonfiction for fun, and who keeps online chatting to the minimum amount where she can pretend that she’s actually networking and not wasting the precious hours of her life away.

What convinced me of a bleak future, shaking a cane at people and mumbling about how “That’s not how we do things around here, I don’t like these new-fangled changes” under my breath?

It was an article in the St. Pete Times by my friend, Arleen Spenceley.

What makes it worse is I have a blog post similar in style (conversational, extolling the virtues of my intended subject, etc.) in Sticks of Fire about a local chocolate shop. (If you love chocolate and live in Tampa, you should definitely check it out, even though it may pack a death blow to your wallet.)

What originally put me off about Arleen’s article was that it was too friendly towards the reader. Arleen’s general writing tone since college has been “Hey there, good friend! Sit down, enjoy a cup of tea, and let me tell you about this awesome singer/ organic food/ boot camp exercise class!” Arleen doesn’t have a mean bone in her body, which stands out in her writing. (With my multitude of mean bones, I’m not sure how we get along so well.)

My thoughts while reading her boot camp article were that it would be better off as a blog. From the first couple of paragraphs, I’d written the article off because I’d seen it in print instead of online.

I glared at my alarm clock through tired eyes.

4:45 a.m.

Worst set of numbers a half-asleep Arleen had ever seen. But I asked for it weeks earlier, when I signed up for boot camp. I slapped the alarm, slipped into some athletic garb and dragged a bag of dumbbells across the floor.

I hate boot camp.

Then, I realized how many minutes I read the paper every day versus how many minutes I read blogs with conversational tones like Arleen’s. Or, like my favorite sections of my own blog posts.

I’m not too proud to mention my chocolate addiction. Out of all the addictions to have, chocolate’s one of the most tame. I’ve been known to hide Mounds bars in my office at work and buy a Hershey’s bar on the way home. But, these are mass produced chocolates diluted with wax and milk. The chocolate offered at Choxotica is pure chocolate art.

Oh yeah, there have also been all of the times I’ve screamed at other writers to stop making every story a “Who cares, this is boring, I can’t get past the first paragraph of this generic drivel” story.

So, while I continue to plunk away at my unjournalism design/ marketing job and scrabble for every freelancing gig that comes my way, I should probably relax and enjoy the writing of the next wave of journalists who actually get it; I’m beginning to think I’m already falling behind.

Why the press should pay attention to Dr. Horrible

There’s one day left. One day left to watch Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog for free. At midnight, July 20, the streaming miniseries will be gone.

So, why should the media care about a fictional singing supervillian doing his laundry and writing blogs? Because, this experiment in broadcast proves how popular some innovations can be.

Consider this: I can watch these free episodes as many times as I want, as long as the site doesn’t crash or my internet doesn’t lag. However, there are also iTune downloads available for a couple dollars each. Being a huge Whedon fan, I had a couple of choices. I could watch the show for free until Sunday then buy the DVD when it comes out. I could, of course, watch the show for free and then never see it again. Or, I could buy the downloads from iTunes and have them to watch whenever I like and keep them after the free viewing period.

Instead, I chose a fourth option. I watched the episodes for free, downloaded them for $2 each, and I plan on buying the DVD when it comes out.

Why? I love Joss Whedon. I love that he gave me choices in how I consume his content. I love that he gets this age. Instead of hemming and hawing about how he might lose money, about how he needed to get a range of opinions and advice before he started, about how the quality of his product would go down if he created something for the web, he did it and was successful. And, yet, all of the papers and studios mired in the old way of doing things are going to continue to spin around in circles until they all fall down.

Whedon even makes it painless to find graphics and other resources for people like us to post content in our own blogs about Dr. Horrible’s blog. Of all the director’s I’ve ever been a fan of, Whedon has always been the most fan friendly, using the internet and anything else available to get fans involved in his shows. (I still have prizes I won for participating in the Browncoats when his movie Serenity came out. Years later, and there’s a still an online community rallying around the film and keeping each other updated on news and events.) Why can’t we do this with our own brands?

After reading the post about the musical episodes on Changing Way, I decided to add my own two cents.

The internet’s Wild West Show and how it pertains to journalism

Welcome to the July Carnival of Journalism, hosted by Doug Fisher of Common Sense Journalism.

Doug posed a question about the future of media law and how it pertains to journalism. My response here focuses on copyright and Fair Use, and how I think laws will relax when it comes to posting other people’s work on the internet. While I deal specifically with photos and writing, I think the same is true of audio and video content.

When the first newspapers appeared in the U.S., it wasn’t uncommon for editors and publishers to take famous poems, essays, and articles and even articles from competitors and dump them on their publications’ pages. As journalists, we like to bring up the rich, ethical tradition of journalism and talk about the internet and popular culture in less than glowing terms, but the truth is media ethics has always been a malleable, changing entity. And, the internet is bringing back a Wild West, outlaw mentality that, at best brings an innovative bent to a struggling industry and at worst hearkens back to days of blatant plagiarism and yellow journalism. At the same time, it’s making us accountable for our actions to a degree never seen before.

In a way, it’s best to see the internet as a foreign country where people from every other country come to work and play. I think this is how it will soon be seen in legal terms. The internet will be a tax free and free speech zone where ideas and content are exchanged. Because the online world has permeated every nation on earth, it is impossible, say, for the U.S. to make the rules for what someone in India is doing on the internet just as it’s impossible for the Chinese government to decide what kind of commerce a British citizen can take part in.

The internet should remain a place where everyone, from celebrities to the kid down the street, has the freedom to publish and sell their ideas. I think the biggest changes, when it comes to the law, will be in copyright and Fair Use. The days when publications (now think blogs and websites) take the words of other people and dump them on their own pages are back, and we should accept this.

I’m not saying we should let our words be published under another writer’s name; thanks to the web it’s almost impossible for someone to get away with this. However, we have to start making allowances for people who take our content and post it with our names and URLs attached. If we do our jobs and write interesting articles and editorials, those two digital compromises will equal more page views and readers for us, even if the audience turns back to the site that took our content at the end of the day.

The digital world can bring people of similar mindsets together in a way never seen before. It’s time to stop guarding our content with a shotgun in hand, waiting for someone to run off with our words. It’s a double-edged sword for both parties; if you write a blog you know how easy it is to grab a chunk of text and a few photos, and how easy it is for the originators of those words and pictures to hunt you down if they don’t want you using their media.

It’s time to relax and ride out the webstorm. There are only two questions you need to ask yourself if you find your work on another webspace: “Do readers know I made this, and can they find me?” If the answer to both is yes, then sit back and wait for increased views. If not, then start using our current legal system to your advantage.

Digital reporting: How local should it be?

Welcome to another Carnival of Journalism.

This month, the carnival is being hosted by Andy Dickinson.

Sorry I missed out on last month’s carnival. I had a stomach virus or food poisoning, and things got pretty nasty around here.

This month, the carnival’s main topic is whether or not digital reporting best serves a local audience.

My answer is no. However, digital reporting does best serve a niche audience already interested in what you have to say. Digital done right will support the growth of an organization, but done wrong will just waste space on the internet.

Let’s say you start a news site, meant to be your community’s modern answer to the small, hometown paper. You plaster local forums and blogs with comments playing up community involvement in the site, write out press releases and send them to local organizations, and even paste up flyers around town. You equip the site with comment boxes, spaces for real people to upload their own stories, videos and photos, and ask for community journalists to help out the small staff you already have. You even set up an events database and invite local businesses to list what’s happening.

You sit back and wait for the stories to come in. You wait for locals to start hitting your site to get their local news written specifically for them and, in some cases, by them. And, nothing happens.

You send out a digital reporter to cover the high school football game. He takes video, photos, and audio to piece a story together. You invite readers to post their own photos and memory of the game. The only comments on the story are of the “Go Bulls, Patriots suck” kind, written by fans of both teams that played. There were about 500 views and three uploaded photos, but one was of a cheerleader that had to be taken down.

What’s going on?

The problem with digital reporting on the web is newspapers still don’t know what’s going to work. And, when they try to come up with ways to involve readers in the process, they don’t go out of their way to really understand their readers; they look to see what others are doing and then emulate it. Even worse, some newsrooms still think of their readers as “those cute little readers who have to be saved by their base desire to read stories about puppies and celebrities.” Also, there are few national resources available to papers right now that would help the quality of digital content.

If you look at multimedia reporting, complete with slideshows, and video interviews, it works really well with niche subjects. It speaks to people who are hungry for information about a particular subject. So, think about the above football game example. You’ve got, let’s say, a town of 50,000. You’re hoping that somewhere around 10,000 will read the story. (To add a little more weight to the event, let’s say it’s Homecoming.) The 500 views on the story are a crushing disappointment. The problem with the story isn’t the scope, it’s a local story that primarily attracted local readers, once you look over the story’s stats.

The problem with the football story is that no one was hungry for the information the next day. A handful of the story’s views probably came from people looking up the score because they missed the game. Another handful might have come from alumni of the school looking to see what they missed. Most of the views probably came from coaches, players, friends, and family looking for pictures and stories of themselves and loved ones. Everyone who had a stake in your story was at the game. There is no mystery. There is no intrigue.

That’s why entertainment news does so well. That’s why digital entertainment news is one of the best examples of how to do digital right. It’s niche. Stars are constantly trying to control their public faces, and celebrity reporters and regular Pauls and Peggys on the street are constantly trying to throw their secrets out into the open. When fans find a new video of their favorite starlet’s drunken caper or their favorite beefcake’s night at a stripclub, they’re sucking up information they didn’t already have or even know they were hungry for. Even a short controlled interview with a few glib outtakes can do very well for this reason.

One of the downfalls of placing national digital media on your site is that chances are Yahoo, Google, CNN, MSNBC, or another national powerhouse has already grabbed their attention.

What you have to do is grab their attention back. But, you can’t think like a newspaper any more. Newspapers are dying, and this will be the last decade of the “Just the facts, ma’am” form of newspaper coverage. The future looks more like tabloid and magazine news coverage. In other words, the future of news is the old guard newsman’s nightmare.

If you’re going to stick to local stories, make sure they’re local stories people want to read. Keep sports coverage, but the old “get in, get out, get a couple of quotes and pictures” style of reporting isn’t going to cut it any more. This is true with all stories. One of the biggest problems with modern journalism is stories are stripped away until there are no compelling elements.

Find them. Write them. Add your own style and flair, because the old school journalism we’ve been told to stick by is failing. Write to your own personal quirks with glee, imagining all the times your professors marked up your stories, taking all of the vestiges of your personality out and replacing them with bland copy. Because you’re adding interest to the story, make sure to keep media law principles in mind, because a million page views aren’t going to help you if you’re fighting a libel suit.

Give yourself time to edit video and think of your clip as a mini movie. It would be a good idea to think of your photo as a mini movie, too, and get as many as you can. A 15 second photo slideshow with captions and music is much more compelling than five minutes of shaky video footage thrown onto the site with no foresight.

Find links to blogs and other articles and link to them. If you can’t trust most of your readers to come back to you, it’s not the fault of your readers. If they like what they’re reading or viewing, they’ll come back. If not, you have to find out what they like and give it to them.

And, if you do want to go national, don’t take the lead of most newspaper sites who take AP text articles and dump them onto a site. Find multimedia content that will engage people. Because, chances are, most of your audience can find the big stories without you, and they’re not going to be impressed by the AP logo next to a bland, boring 300 word blurb about an important event.

The biggest thing to keep in mind is to stop seeing your brand as something your audience wants to be part of. I think we forget that most of our readers and viewers don’t want to be journalists. If they did, they would have gone to Jschool. So, when we ask them to be community journalists, they usually think we’re asking them to do our jobs for us. (The exception is when breaking news hits and only members of the public on hand with their camera phones and personal video recorders.) And, when we ask them to submit content to our sites after making them read a ten page agreement about how we now own their stuff and can use it for our own gain without paying them, why should they join our community and start posting?

We need to stop seeing Web 2.0 as a way to create a community we control but as a way to join a greater community. Recently, I noticed that Channel 10, a local Tampa station, was trying to promote user blogs through their newscast. My first thought was that their viewers who blog are already blogging and this probably won’t be a popular service. After 10 minutes of stumbling around the site, I couldn’t even find the blogs they were talking about, besides on a link asking me to join to comment, blog, and share photos.

Promoting a banner exchange with local bloggers would be a much simpler way to build a foundation of blogs around a brand.

I think that’s about the end of my ramble for today. Any thoughts or questions, please leave a comment or two.

The sky is falling and a room with a view

Spring, summer, and fall are always fun times for Florida weather coverage. I’ve especially noticed this in the past few weeks, where drought conditions brought the Hillsborough River, a major river that runs behind my house, down to the point where there’s a large sandbar smack down the middle of it, and there is now a sandy beach extending at least fifteen to twenty feet past my dock. And, thanks to the beginning of hurricane season and summer rainy weather, we’ve been having regular storms pass through for the past two weeks.

The drought (which happens every year) is fun, because the local news outlets panic over which towns and counties are sharing water resources and which are mooching. They cover water restrictions and give a list of local officials and how much their households use in water each month. Now, the big story has been filtering reclaimed water and turning it into drinking water and whether or not the regular folks in Florida would stand for that kind of thing. If it worked in Waterworld, it could work for Florida, right? Instead of drinking other people’s filtered debris, I could just buy a filter and make my own.

Now that it’s raining again, I’ve noticed my local news stations running stories about the horrific storms. I think the local CBS station actually did a story the day after one storm, cataloging the storm damage in a neighborhood, which amounted to some downed branches and lost shingles.

I’m sure Tampa isn’t the only local coverage area where the stations make a mountain out of a molehill on a slow news days.

And, I’m going to apply for the A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Gift of Freedom grant and the scholarship they give every year for a writer’s workshop. If I win the grant, I will focus on my freelancing and a novel I’m working on. If I win the scholarship, I will be going to Georgia O’Keefe’s ranch in New Mexico to attend a workshop for women writers. I’m excited!

If there are any women writers out there who read this, I would suggest you apply.