On Dating Articles

I’m a picky writer. It’s a way to protect myself from bad work, and most importantly, bad clients. I don’t go for projects in which you get $1 per 500 words; I don’t write about business and financial topics as a norm, because I don’t know anything about the subject; and I do some SEO writing for target practice, not for the money itself.

In a conversation with friends about the nature of my work, I mentioned that, in desperate cases, I’d go as far as applying to projects writing dating articles. Most of the topics are all about common sense – more than anything, about the good judgment that sometimes people fail to have when they are looking for love.

I’ve bid on such projects on occasions, and I haven’t had much luck on love… ha ha, that was a joke. I know why.

The answer is quite simple: even if I know that these articles can help 1% of the world population getting some, at the same time I don’t believe in their informational capacity.

As with beauty magazines, these articles tend to put someone, who is already fragile in the emotional department, under a lot of pressure, and pile up doubts about one’s self-esteem.

I read beauty magazines bearing in mind that I’ll never be thin, or have the perfect skin, or even that I’ll never afford that Prada bag that will save my life. But, as with most people, there was a time when those “advice” would make me feel more down than up, because they were about things conceived as ideals. I’m all for ideals, but if it makes you miserable, then perhaps you should consider the way you are living your life.

When I pitch my ideas to clients, if it’s about dating, I try to convey a healthy point of view: the articles should be interesting, practical, down-to-earth, and should help clear up certain misconceptions about love and relationships that abound through the Internet, and in the real world. My guess would be that this pitch doesn’t sell, because people really want to believe that they are low-lives who will never be happy with someone else. That’s sad, and I daresay, not true. Everybody wants and deserves to be happy!

Try doing a search on the Internet with the keywords “dating”, “love”, “relationship”, and similar. For someone like me, who is in a steady, six-year relationship with a wonderful person, and who above all, did everything wrong during the courtship period, the results of such search are scary…

Learning the benefits of proofreading

I am an impatient person. Things have to happen now; results must be good and come fast; I tend to love or hate in a matter of minutes; I hate waiting and any process that takes time leads me to think I’m hitting a dead-end. Obviously, that reflects in my writing.

I was always the great student who, in exams, would write five pages in half an hour, and immediately hand them in: my work is finished, so just take it! And obviously, those genially expressed essays would have errors.

Later on, as a journalist back home, I did not have to worry so much about that sort of mishaps, because there was always an editor to revise my texts and polish them. Even as a freelancer, when you hand in your work, someone will do the revision. But that was when freelancing was a traditional activity for traditional media.

Nowadays, in the Era of Internet, freelancers are expected to not only write the text, but also revise it themselves. It saves clients time, and the freelancer’s work is not just a completed task: it is a business card. Adjusting to that mentality takes time, especially if you are like me, an impatient person.

It has happened to me not once, nor twice, but more than that. I write an article or another kind of text, and I submit it. Obviously, as the speed of thought does not equal the speed of writing, the result ends up being good in its essence, but bad in terms of writing quality. So I am finally becoming aware of the need to proofread and revise more than once my writing, because if I do not, I will come off as a bad writer.

First thing I do is to ask for help. I have a colleague at one of the websites I write for who has a look at my work, from a language point of view, and from a content point of view. It is hard to come to senses with the fact that you may be failing as a writer, but it is a necessary step to improving. More than that: before I even have it proofread, I just let the text lay on my desk for 24 hours, and then I come back to it and revise it again.

It is not just a matter of being proud of my work: it is mainly a matter of being sure that what I am delivering is right. In good conscience, I cannot submit bad writing. It speaks badly of my skills and my abilities, and it hurts my clients’ credibility when they use my work publicly.

So now, it is proofreading time! It is great to feel I am improving as a writer and learning new things.

Focus, focus, focus!

Hi!

I've recently handed in an article about Bossa Nova to d/visible ezine. I'm also in talks with the editor-in-chief for another article about music. 
Meanwhile, I've been juggling with more ideas about articles to submit to several other publications and websites, while I'm waiting for the answers to the questionnaire (see How European Are You?).

At the same time, I've also joined the ranks of Constant Content, as an opportunity to showcase my work and sell it through this website. It's possible that I might start directing 80% of my writings towards CC, as it seems a place with potential for me to sell my works. Nevertheless, I keep on doing what I've been doing since I started this process: bid on Elance and pitch articles to magazines I find online that sound interesting.

Apart from the obvious difficulties associated with freelancing, that are more than covered around in different articles throughout the World Wide Web, I'm finding it extremely hard to focus sometimes; hence, the title for this post.
Working from home is hard. It may be even harder sometimes than to work in an office, or generally speaking, outside your house. For starters, managing your own schedule and dealing with the autonomy of being your own boss is a challenge. I find myself oscillating between laxism and authoritarism: on the one hand, I get up early in the morning and plant myself in front of the computer and do research, write, and look for business opportunities. On the other, I freak out because I have to walk the dogs, do the laundry and the dishes, or shop for groceries. Oh, and the red-tape stuff you always tend to leave to the last day and then, bam! in your face it blows!
Some days, I just let it slide a bit and oversleep. And, of course, time has no complacency for late-sleepers: you still have a million stuff to do, but less hours to do it.

Something else I tend to find complicated, and that's part of the job I guess, is managing a bunch of ideas all at the same time.
Writing is like exercising a muscle, in my opinion: the more you write, the more ideas you have, and the more you want to write. Speaking for myself, a month ago I had no idea what I should write about. Now, I have an idea every five minutes. I write everything down in a notebook, as in raw notes about stuff, and I use those notes as a reference for articles. If one day, for some reason, the well seems to dry out, I can always come back and pick something off the notebook.
But still, I can't seem to actually focus on one specific theme.

So, instead of going insane with this thought, I've decided to dedicate my time to a topic at a time, and move on to the next one when I have a satisfactory article written. Otherwise, I don't think I can be productive: sure, my mind is working full-time, but not my writing.
I mean, come on! I'm a good researcher, and I'm confident in my writing capabilities. All I need to do now is to consubstanciate that into paper!

By the way: this weekend, there is a strong possibility that this blog will change. I think we are ready to move into our new address www.thehouseofwords.com. I'm going to have a new website!!!!!!