My Baby!

Hi all!

I've been busy lately with a bunch of projects, which I will now number:

• Computer upgrade: a must for someone who is working online. I needed more speed, a better monitor and, obviously, better sound. It's a work in progress, as most things in life are, but it's going the good way. Hurrah!
• Website management: The House of Words is still under construction, but it is accessible, and I'm doing my best to add new content and to build a decent platform. Turns out Joomla! is quite easy...
• Freelance work: apart from d/visible, I've also landed a couple of projects and I've been quite busy. See, this is what persevering brings - hope and results.
• Networking: I've joined Twentysomethingjournalists, for fun and to meet more people who are into this whole freelance, journalist and writing online sort of gimmick. It needs a bit of animation, so let's see what happens there.

I'll be posting here, as well as in the website's blog, to make a soft transition from one blog to the other. I hope you are updating your links, as I will mine. Plus, think that THOW isn't just for me: it's for all of you who come here and bother to read my words. Hopefully, it will be also a meeting point for many others to come.

And, if you are looking for a literature blog - chick lit, actually - just wait and see...

Freelancing: It’s a Jungle out There!

Freelancing as a writer and a journalist is not a walk in the park: it’s a test to your patience and adaptability. Proving yourself to a potential client can sometimes be a complicated task, and finding the projects that speak more to you is like looking for a needle in a haystack. As a freelancer who has been on this road for about two months now, I felt that it was time I put to words some of the impressions I have gathered so far about this craft. I hope this article may help fellow writers and journalists, and it is my desire that I can be another voice being heard about how some things must change for the better.

The Hot Topics
Most clients wanting to hire freelance writers are looking for people who can write up to 700-word texts on interesting topics, such as real estate, business, finance, mortgages, dating, becoming rich on the Internet, or divorce. Some topics may be eluding me right now, but the core idea is this. These texts are supposed to be Search Engine Optimized (SEO), which means that one or more keywords must be used throughout the text, so that search engines can pick the client’s webpage as high as possible on a search list.

Making a living out of freelance writing
If you are into the topics above, and you’re not itchy about repeating words till exhaustion, then you can perhaps have a shot at this freelancing thing. But of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg: the fees most of these clients are willing to pay won’t buy you candy, not to mention give you a living wage.
Do you value your writing? If you do, then the road will get bumpier, as clients usually ask for a maximum of $2 per 500-word article. This means that if you spend one hour alone writing in your computer, you would have to spend 200 hours to make $400. In an eight-hour day job, you work 160 hours a month, and you can be paid at least the double.
This is the reality a freelance writer stumbles upon when entering the market.

A Global Market
Thinking global is great: you can be in Spain, as I am, and work for clients in the United States or Argentina, if you can write in English and Spanish. That means that you can expand your client network beyond your borders, and meet interesting people. However, thinking global also implies that the competition is beyond your borders, and fierce. You have to take into consideration that the value of the currency you are being paid in is different if you’re a freelancer in, let’s say, India. A European or American writer will charge higher fees than a writer in Africa or Asia, due to the differences in the cost of life. Clients consider those and act as any other capitalistic-minded businessperson: they will choose the worker who charges less and, in their minds, is more eager to please.

Freelance Freebies
This is something that happens more than you may imagine. It is not an open invitation, since websites such as Elance punish these practices. A buyer will scarcely approach you, asking you to perform the project for free. What usually happens is that, in the process of negotiating the project assignment, the client asks you to do an article or more as a trial. A good, committed professional will be eager to please, and he or she will do it in a heartbeat.
The result tends to be the same, all the time: the client disappears, and the freelancer has no option to ask for payment. As a conclusion, you discover you have wasted your precious time – time is money – And you find your nice text sample posted on someone else’s website. It’s one of those moments when you feel like stuffing the Dumb hat in your head, right?


Surviving in the jungle
Use the freelance marketplace websites as means to gain experience, and to create a good portfolio. When you feel that it’s enough, use what you’ve learned and what you’ve written to query magazines and newspapers you want to freelance for.

Do not ever give away freebies. It speaks badly of you, and it’s a waste of time. If your portfolio is already available for clients to see, then they should be able to assess if you’re a good and professional writer. If that’s not good enough for the client, then the client surely is not good enough for you.

Some people’s writing is worth $0.01.
Ask yourself honestly: is your writing worth that?

Read the client’s project proposal carefully. If your sixth sense tells you it’s not for you, then it is not for you.

If you are not into the hot writing topics, write about what you know and love, and publish it in Constant Content, for example. Not everybody is interested in business, real estate, dating and such.

Don’t quit your day job, but make time to launch yourself as a freelancer. That way, you always have something to fall back to if one of the two things goes wrong.

Freelancing as a writer is not a career from which you start ripping benefits in the first month. As with any other business, it takes time to get a place in the market, and sell.
For that, be patient and work.

Last, but not the least – keep you chin up and do not lose your self-respect. If you are good, consistent and hard-working, you will make through the difficulties.

Improving the blog, improving myself

While the website does not kick off, it is important to make this blog a better introduction to my personal project: launch a freelancing career as a writer and a journalist. So if you are reading these lines, you may have noticed that The House of Words’ blog has a new face, a new label organization and offers now the possibility to subscribe to a RSS feed.

These improvements come also with a change in my perspective towards this challenge, due to a couple of months investigating full-time about what it is like to be a freelance writer on the Internet. Launching yourself solo on a business is always difficult, especially if you are doing it in a market full of options for potential clients. I ask myself all the time: what do I have that makes me different from the thousands of writers and journalists who are jumping into the Internet Freelancing World?

At the risk of sounding as if I am selling myself, I suppose that the fact that you are reading these lines already answers, in a way, why my voice is somehow being heard.
I want more people to bump into this blog, and accompany my progress into this world; I want clients and editors to become interested in my writing skills; I want to work, not just for the money, but especially for the gratification it is to do my craft well, and feel great about it.

Last week, I read a great book called Journalism 2.0, by Mark Briggs. I would like to write a post about it later on, but before that, I advise you to go and read it. It really puts the craft of journalism into perspective, and in terms of the new media revolution, it is a manual on how to work with the Internet as a resourceful tool. It is a mind-opening book, and I have really learned a lot from reading it.

Therefore, as a conclusion to this post, by improving this blog, I also want to improve myself as a professional and as a writer. If you are a regular visitor, or if you have just found this blog, please feel free to post comments and help The House of Words grow in quality. Everybody’s feedback is welcome and needed, so I can become better and better.

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!!!!!!

Some doors slam shut, but this brain keeps on working!

Hi.

I must admit: I haven't been struggling in the freelancing jungle for a very long time. I had tried before, but I think this is the first time I actually plunged into it with the right mindset.
And what mindset is that? The one that doesn't take no for an answer.

One thing is to have a loose relationship with a couple of magazines and websites for some free articles every month, while you're living with your parents. Being proactive, pitching texts and articles for a living, now, that's something entirely different...and hard.
It's like moving onto the next level of a platform game, and getting stuck with the first boss you find when you cross the line. Or, more down-to-earth, like going to endless job interviews, and getting the enlightened "We'll call you." answer.
I can say the later example is also a reality in my life, as we speak.

It's been almost a month since I signed up for Elance, Get a Freelancer and similar websites, and what have I gotten so far? Well, lots of no’s, some maybes and a yes.
For an impatient person like me, this is horrible but I’m into this personal project with the right mindset. I know very well that it is hard to get paid jobs as a writer, especially if you are writing in a language that isn’t your own. I mean, I could write all I wanted in Portuguese, that I’d get the same amount of negative answers as I get right now and I don’t really think it happens because I suck at it.
It’s the way things are: it’s more realistic to expect that more doors will slam shut on you, than doors will open wide for you to go through.

When I'm feeling really down, and almost to the point of giving up and taking a full-time job, I think about J. K. Rowling.
Her personal story is an inspiration to me, because it's the story of a life of an ordinary one-of-us who kept going, and look at what she has acomplished.
In a few words, Harry Potter was "born" when she was unemployed - or doing odd jobs, I'm not sure -, a character she wrote about in notebooks, while sitting in cafes and in public transportation.
He wasn't meant to be the most famous wizard from Hogwarts - he, and his adventures, were a means for J.K. Rowling to do what she loved to do, and to forget the hardships she was living in.
When she sent it to a publisher, she got refused. She received at least 10 letters saying that her story wasn't good enough, until someone thought otherwise and gave her a chance.
Right now, when a Harry Potter book is about to be published, there are literally riots the bookstores; people spend the night in the street, wanting to be the first to buy the first edition of her books.
And I think to myself, damn! she must be really happy!
It's not just about the money - it's about the love you have for words. I understand that completely...

So, what's in my mind right now? Many things...

•  An investigation article about depression: I've been thinking about this for a very long time, as I've suffered from depression for a very long time; it impaired my life for almost three years and maybe if people around me knew more about this illness, things out have worked out differently for me, as a person. I'm interviewing a psychologist and a psychiatrist; I want to interview patients as well, and do some research on statistics. 

• A reportage about Murcia: this is a simple task. I live here, and I like travelling. So, the angle is very simple: If I was coming to Murcia for the first time, what would I like to see?

• An investigation article about the immigrants' situation in Spain: As we all know very well, in recent years, Spain became the destination for many emigrants from Europe and other countries around the world. And, as we unfortunately know, there is an economic crisis happening as we speak. I'd like to interview some immigrants, to tell their stories; past present and future.

• How European are you?: This idea stemmed from a conversation I had six years ago with an Austrian friend, while we were in the Netherlands doing an exchange program. I'm not really revealing much about it, because I think the result is going to be really cool :-)

• The Jukebox Kids: This is something else. It's an idea for an autobiographical novel, based upon my personal experiences as a teenager in the 90's Lisbon. God, I miss those years... I'll be shedding some tears writing this one.
  

Other than this, I'll be waiting to see if the maybes become positive answers, and I'm always available for project proposals. And for knocking on every door to see what happens too.

• 
  

Just another freelancer - Introduction

Starting is always the hardest part, eh?

Well then, hello potential clients. My name is Mariana, and I'm a Portuguese journalist.
I guess that, throughout all my professional life, I've been a freelancer. Since I started university, I began pitching ideas and articles to newspapers and magazines in Portugal, and did all my work for free. The constant working and my academic studies molded my writing, and I think I became a good professional, with a plus: I'm fluent in Spanish, English and French.
Nevertheless, the media world in Portugal is quite chaotic, and it's very hard to get a full-time job as a journalist in a newspaper or magazine. Let's not even mention the online press, an area in which I really like working, but it is as fluctuating as the Web itself...

So, I moved to the south of Spain nearly two years ago, looking for new opportunities and perspectives. As with all beginnings, I have been working in jobs that have nothing to do with journalism or writing, because I need to settle in before I can make an actual move in my area.
But I really never stopped writing; I've always had a blog, and I got a few jobs as a freelancer, writing in Spanish and English.

Recently, I began thinking that it was time to move on to the next phase, and start trying harder to become a freelancer. It's OK if you happen to land on a project and do it; but if you're not seriously into it, then you really can't call yourself a freelancer, and advertise yourself as such, right?

Therefore, it's time to take the next step. I'm openly looking for clients who may be interested in my expertises, and I'll be fighting hard in the freelance jungle to get my message across.

How can I write?

• In several languages: English, French, Spanish and Portuguese
  
• In different formats: articles, editorials, reportages, fiction, non-fiction, press releases, reports, academic, translations, shopping lists...
  

I'm a writer with quality and experience. I'm available to learn from clients and, most importantly, able to provide them with they need.

What can I write about?

• Music
• Society
• Cultural topics
• Religion
• Spanish lifestyle
• Literature
• International and current affairs
• Any topic: open to suggestions

I'll be using this blog to post writing samples and information about current projects and ideas.

I'll keep you posted, if you keep me posted too!