One of the problems with working at home is the distractions of small children when trying to use the phone. This is an idea I’ve been hesitant to try because I hadn’t heard of anyone else doing it.

But what is with all the legal threats? Sending a single email that you write to a specific person for a specific purpose should not be an action that invites fear of government reprisals.

SF author and freelancer John Scalzi has recently been blogging about money issues for writers. He just posted a link to this great personal story of how one writer got into the business. She is more of a “pure” freelancer than I am, writing for publication under her own name. What’s odd about this is that she mentions The Well-Fed Writer which, according to my memory, didn’t encourage pursuing magazines. That was John Scalzi’s advice, which is why I now own a copy of The Writer’s Market, which I have never used to find work (Though I have found another project for which it is necessary. No. Not a door jam. Something to do with publishing.)

But maybe her story will convince me to try something new, even though my chance of breaking into the biological sciences journal industry is approximately zero.  Her story is inspiring enough to motivate me to look for some other something else that might fit me better.

RELATED

About books about how to make money writing

Leveraging Literacy: advice to would-be commercial writers in the pastorate or some other job that needs economic augmentation

Another entry Scalzi links is this one about a writer who is thankful for his day job. Since I do have ambitions dreams of writing fiction and maybe even more nonfiction, I can’t read this post without wishing I had what he has. Spending all day at the keyboard and screen does not make it easy to do the same two to three more hours doing the same at night.

Most of this is sobering and borderline depressing. Hey, I didn’t even start my writing business until I had stopped getting income from my day job. And “benefits”? What are those? But I did feel a jolt of pride at this part:

7. When you do buy something, buy the best you can afford — and then run it into the ground.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, an advocate for cheap crap. Cheap crap sucks; it’s badly made, it breaks, and then you have to go buy a replacement, so effectively the cost of whatever cheap piece of crap you bought is twice what your originally paid for it (or more, since having learned your lesson, you didn’t buy cheap crap the second time).

I am an advocate for thrift, however, and in my life, being “thrifty” means that you buy well, and then you use what you buy until it no longer has value. You buy it for the long haul. This was something that came naturally to people of my grandparents’ generation (the Great Depression kind of drummed it into them) but these days, when the marketing folks at Apple strive to make you feel a wave of intense, personal shame that you didn’t pony up for the Mac Air the very instant it was released, this is a virtue we’ve lost track of. And it’s true enough that if every single American thought like this, the economy would collapse even faster than it is doing at the moment. But you know what? Let the rest of America worry about that. We’re here to worry about you.

He says more under point 7, but you can read it for yourself if you want to. While the rest of the post was painful but needful to read, this found a place in the Hey, I’m doing that! department. Why? Because I read the post on the screen of my G4 iBook (which, by the way, was a very generous gift from a friend that cost me nothing).

But I almost slipped.

This summer I thought my iBook died. Since I have a daily gig, and my iMac had already died, I really had to do something quick. I walked into the Apple store not sure what I could do, but in the back of my mind, I confess, was new toy and credit. All that shiny newness and I had an excuse this time, right?

But something hit me by the time I reached the Genius Bar. If these things didn’t last more than two years, then what was the point? I don’t care how shiny it is new, and how well it works until it doesn’t work, two years is too short.

It turned out the only problem with the iBook was the battery (which is extremely expensive in my opinion, but nothing compared to a new MacBook). Even better: they fixed my iMac for free because the problem was related to a recall (The logic board had been replaced but they believed the problem with the logic board could have stressed the power supply and they took it upon themselves to replace it as well though this was a year later).

I walked out of the Apple store more than satisfied with what I had.

I’d love to continue with Mac, especially since they affirmed their value in several ways to me that day. But, truthfully, when it is time to replace the laptop, I’ll probably have to go to PC. Like Scalzi said, you buy the best you can afford.

I was going to post something about this at my work blog, but I thought the content works here, so here it is. Thinking about my post on the problem of trying to make money writing articles and my follow up on how much to expect from how-to books, I want to say something more (or more specific) about why writing can pay and why a pastor needing side income might want to consider this line of work.

It is easy to think that writing should pay almost nothing. Look at blogs! Lots of people like to write. Why should you get paid to do it?

And that is why my instinct is to advise you to avoid articles. When you are competing in a field of writing where writers typically think it is desirable to write, then you will not get paid well. There are too many out there who think writing is fun. They bid down the price you can expect to get for your services.

But as soon as you offer to do writing that no one wants to do, you are in a completely different economy.

On the other hand, when you start writing for hire pieces that have no real attraction to “the artist,” you have a chance to make some real money. The basis for this is that there are people out there who need to produce writing, but whose time constraints make it hard for them to do so. Sure, they could, in theory, write a sales piece or construct direct marketing copy. But they have other things to do with their time.

And that’s where you can step in. Sure, in one sense, “anyone” could do it. But really, that is not true. It requires someone who you can trust to be literate and intelligent and educated. It simply won’t work as a low-paying wage job.

To put it another way, if you are saving a guy time who makes a high hourly rate, you can expect a high hourly rate yourself.

A final word: my biggest regret right now is that I did not try to do this as a side-business back in Oklahoma. Instead I waited until I was out of work and was forced to “hit the ground running.” Yet, while I have a long way to go, it has actually started to work for me. Still, I might be in a much better business position if I had begun earlier developing contacts for part-time work. Don’t make my mistake. Start now.

At Scrollquill.com

So here are five books on writing for a living.

What I find interesting about these authors is that they have pretty different views of where writing for articles fits into the plan of becoming a successful writer. Some think it is essential. The first thing you do is go buy Writers Market, and then start writing and proposing. But for others, writing articles is only helpful in that it distracts other capable writers from competing in the ad copy business. Articles are fine for PR and self-promotion, but they pay far too little to be pursued as a real source of income.

For myself, I did buy a copy of Writers Market in a fit of hysteria, but after looking at it, I couldn’t understand why I did so. The pay is way too low, the time between acceptance and payment way too long, and you are supposed to be motivated enough to work on a proposal without knowing for certain that you have a customer. Maybe some people are able to do this often and fast enough to build a business, but my sense of things is that you would be far better off finding a couple of people who will let you write a brochure for them (for free if necessary) so that you can make a portfolio and try to get some business clients.

I talked to a publisher of a news magazine recently who was an editor about fifteen years ago when I did a few stories and book reviews for his publication. I asked him casually if he still did any journalistic assignments, as he did back when I worked for him. His answer didn’t surprise me. “Writing is for young people.” The people who write for those rates are those for whom writing is still somehow romantic as an activity. For those of us who are trying to make a living, it simply doesn’t make sense.

Of course, I’m sharing my opinion on the premise that I began a writing business earlier this year–that I am a “beginning writer” as of 2007. But I got my first job based on previous work I did part-time while a solo pastor. And I got that work based on relationships I built up before seminary when I did that low, low paying work. So I can’t deny that a history of writing can help–including a history of writing articles.

It all depends on your needs. If you have an income and can do some work on the side part time for awhile, then it might be worth investing a year of barely-worth-it writing so you can get a portfolio going (“Here are my two most recent projects,” is always technically true). My strong advice is to do some non-controversial pieces on health or technology or something that might be perceived as translatable into sales writing.

By the way, I’ll soon be cross posting this entry to my business blog, which I have revamped.

For the record, I personally found all of the above books worthwhile, even if I disagreed with a couple of them about the usefulness of writing articles for magazines.

I find it much easier to blog for personal reasons here or to blog for clients than to blog on my business site. Nevertheless, I have revamped it and will try to keep it interesting from now on.  Promise.