The House of Words - The Official Site

Hey!

The House of Words is opening its doors to the world.
In a near future, I'll migrate all the posts from this blog to the official site, so go do your bookmarks and similar stuff with the new address. Have a look and send me your ideas, suggestions and opinions.

The THOW Official Site will be a showcase for my writings, a business card for clients, and the home of this blog, which will maintain its original name and premise: to be a place to post texts, ideas, thoughts, rants, and to promote discussion about things we stumble upon, as writers and creative people on the Internet.

Go on, have a look and let me know what you think!

Spanish Columnist Rants Against American Dad

A note for the readers: I've changed the title of this post, because the author of said rant is not a Murcia native. But he's Spanish, so, hence the correction.

While I was having breakfast this morning, around 12.00 (Spanish morning!), I bumped into this beautiful piece of journalistic literature in the local newspaper La Verdad.

I believe that most visitors of this blog can more or less manage the Spanish language, but for those who don’t, here’s a recap of the article:

The columnist/journalist/writer begins by saying that if the reader wants his or her children to hate them forever, than make them watch American Dad, with the aid of (insert name of television channel broadcasting the series).

Then, he goes on to give the reader a short description of American Dad: an animation series created by Seth Macfarlane, focusing on “throwing crap into the average Republican voter, and therefore, any kind of traditional values’ lifestyle”.

This inspired and witty author then takes the opportunity to badmouth certain sectors of the Spanish press and society that he names as being “politically progressive”. He explains that he doesn’t understand why these sectors consider American Dad to be “politically incorrect”: in his opinion, the “politically incorrect” would be to create an animation series which would teach children the values of family, religion and fatherhood.

The punch line, obviously, comes in the end, when he insults the author of American Dad and Family Guy by writing the following (direct quote): “In other terms, I’d like to know what is going on inside Seth Macfarlane’s mind (…) for him to have so much accumulated hatred. I suppose his parents named him Seth after Set, the third son of Adam and Eve; however, with this final stroke, Seth, his name resembles the one of a sinister Egyptian god, lord of evil and darkness, god of the drought and the deserts. These sorts of things make one’s character.”

Ok, so my first reaction was a simple and round WTF?????

Even if La Verdad is a local newspaper highly connected with the region’s government, known to be very much into the right wing values, the fact is that the newspaper’s mission is to inform and educate its readers. La Verdad is supposed to cater for all the people who live in the Region of Murcia, and most of these people – unlike this columnist may think – are way over the whole “Nation, Family, Flamenco and Values” motto that lead the most common of dictatorships.

Second, although I agree that American Dad and Family Guy are not children animation series, the responsibility of the airing schedules lies with the television station that broadcasts them at improper times. Such responsibility does not lie with the creator of the series.

Third, I believe it is of extremely bad taste to use a third-party creativity work to criticize groups in society that offend the writer. True, it’s the press, and it’s free press. However, this is an abuse of that right. If this writer wants to rant against the “more progressive sectors of society”, then perhaps it’s more intelligent to do so with facts, not with a TV show those sectors haven’t created.

Fourth, the writer has forgotten that his column has been published not only in paper, but also on the Internet. As a global medium of information, it means that even if his text is in Spanish, a lot of people will read it and, if necessary, even the author of the show. That’s right, his words have a higher reach than he considered. This has two consequences: first, he gets to be undeservedly read by more people than he should; second, he gets to pass off as an idiot for his uninspired rant.

Fifth, and this is a personal one: who do I have to get it on with to get paid for writing garbage in the most read newspaper in the Region? Because if he can do it, so can I.

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…

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.