The Competition from India

I see a lot of freelancers mentioning the competition from Indian writers and how that has made it necessary to write for very little in order to stay competitive. Many writers believe this, and I think in some cases it's true. But, I've never considered myself to be in competition with Indian writers. I am not competing against them, or Eastern European writers, to get the low paying, quantity-over-quality assignments. I am competing with other writers who are experienced, well versed in nuanced English and dedicated to high quality, and that's all.

I know that many, if not most, freelance writers get insulting offers like I often do. Sometimes they are aggressively insulting, often implying or outright stating that they have writers overseas who will work for less. It doesn't concern me what people overseas will write for. I wasn't concerned when a potential client insisted that he had writers who would write his blog posts for $1.50 apiece. He should be concerned that he's spending money on something that no one, anywhere, will ever read, but I'm not. Probably 80-90 percent of buyers are looking for the cheapest writers they can find- period. They don't concern me. My concern is finding the other 10-20 percent who will challenge me to offer my best work in exchange for reasonable pay. Indian writers can do what they do, circus performers can do what they do and cowboys can continue to ride across the plains. I'll stick to my own market.

Doris Lessing- Alive

There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.
-Doris Lessing


I was amazed today to hear that Doris Lessing was just announced as 2007's Nobel Prize winner for literature. I found this amazing first because I thought she was dead and second because apparently she's been writing science fiction for the past few years. Don't get me wrong, I love me some sci-fi, but it's rare to see the genre taken seriously as literature. I hope this signifies a change in its literary reputation. I took a creative writing class once, and the professor announced on the first day that science fiction was not allowed in her class. Really? What if a Nobel laureate was taking your class? Ha!

The thing about Doris Lessing, besides having some interesting short stories and essays, is that she has always been able to come up with these amazing quotes that sum up everything so neatly. Anytime you see a collection of interesting quotes, one of them is usually hers. Her ideas about writing and fiction are just as interesting as her amazingly accurate and sucinct observations about the world around her.

Uncharted Territory

It's weird, but I may be writing a screenplay. How did this come about? Funny you should ask. It's a long story, but it involves a bunch of people, some guy I've never met, a $35,000 camera and a new movie studio. The thing is, though, that I've never written one before and I'm not entirely sure how it's going to play out. Apparently there is screenplay software that can make it easier to get it all down. Normally I hate stuff like that, like novel-writing software that just takes a bite out of creativity. But a screenplay has to be in such a specific format, one that I'm unfamiliar with, that I'm likely going to use it.

My first strategy, however, is to study the way a written piece differs from the same item on film, since it's based on a work that I wrote years ago. That sounds pretty challenging, but basically I'm watching movies based on books that I've read and noting the differences. There are obviously many things left out of a book once it gets translated into film, but its amazing how pretty large plot points can be taken out, even when they are deeply intertwined with the main plot. Other things I've noticed:

• Visual shorthand. There are numerous ways to make a point visually that time won't permit a deeper exploration of. One example is the latest movie version of Pride and Prejudice. In the book, the family wasn't poor, per se, they just had many components of the middle-class lifestyle that wasn't quite fashionable at the time. You can't very well annotate a film, nor can you spend 10 minutes describing how their lifestyle differed from those they were trying to impress. The visual shorthand was chickens. There were chickens and a few other farm animals running around, signifying that the family wasn't considered wealthy.
• Tertiary characters. A book may have room for them, but a movie usually does not. I may keep a few tertiary characters in the background in non-speaking roles, or even give them a few lines, but there isn't room for a lot of background information on them. J.K. Rowling had a tremendous amount of background information on several of her bit players. She kept trying to find a place for them but there wasn't room for it even in her huge novels and they were reduced to extras in the films. To keep key plot points, these guys have to go.
• Exaggerated settings. Books have a tremendous amount of room to let the settling subtly interplay with the plot and characters. Small aspects of the setting can be introduced throughout the book, making the tone of the setting and the tone of the plot become increasingly intertwined. In a movie, the setting is actually the first thing you see, and it's rarely possible to introduce aspects of that setting later in the work. The setting has to get attention right away and has to transmit a lot of the information. One of the guys has been going on and on (and on) about set design, and I'm probably going to have to listen to it eventually.
• Movie people will want to expand the scope and add in a bunch of crap for different demographics. That's pretty noticeable in movies now that I'm looking for it. I've already been given a speech about adding in elements for different demographics, which is fine.

Before the thing gets written, I have to do a "treatment," which is just a long synopsis. If they like it, I get the go ahead for the long format. It's a little scary, but I've had scarier projects. I can do this. I hope.

The BellaOnline Classic Rock Site is Up

My BellaOnline site is now up! The site is going to be populated with information about classic rock- namely bands that I like. I set up an entire subject just for Donovan and began that content this morning. I think the Classic Rock site has a lot of potential and I just hope that people find music there that they wouldn't otherwise have heard of. Finding a "new" band that you click with can be exciting, even if that new band has been around for 40 years. Oh, and you get to see my ugly mug in bad lighting and in a weird sepia tone.

Not About Writing

I wanted this blog to be about writing and the struggle to constantly improve writing skills while taking on an incredible variety of projects. But, what's with those wet wipes everyone uses now? I keep seeing these in people's bathrooms, and now they've appeared in two of my bathrooms. When did adults start using what are essentially baby wipes? Have I been too stuck to a keyboard to notice the technological advancement of the flushable wipe? I must have missed the general consensus that decided toilet paper is no longer enough. But you know what? It is. I am perfectly happy with toilet paper. If, in a few decades, I need Depends, that would the only scenario in which I would use those stupid wipes. Viva la toilet paper!

Niche Niche Niche Niche Niche Niche Niche

You can't go anywhere in the writing world these days without hearing that word incessantly. I am seriously sick of hearing about niches. Everyone wants to serve a niche, which is perfectly fine. I just wish they'd stop using that word. I am not a niche writer and I never will be. I'll write about anything and I'm proud of it.

I went into journalism because it meant doing something new every day. Being a reporter required constant exposure to new topics. I went out to a logging company and learned all about logs and the timber industry. I went to a factory that made grocery store freezer doors, learned all about them, and wrote an interesting article about those suckers. Even if you're a beat reporter, you learn so much every day and that's still the type of writer I want to be. An unfamiliar topic doesn't scare me. A client wants me to write about vacuums? Sure. Furniture? Absolutely. Fungal infections? Bring it on.

Where to Get Freelance Jobs and Some Ranting

I keep finding more and more freelance writing job sites. There's one in particular that does very well among the freelancers I'm acquainted with- *nevermind, I hate this site*. It has an excellent reputation among freelancers for finding jobs and gigs that pay well and aren't morally questionable. The only problem I have with the site is that I've never gotten a thing that I've applied for through there. Some of them are great projects- ones that I am more than qualified to do, but for some reason am never chosen. I do have a theory about the reason, though.

Another interesting one is Writer's Weekly. Most of what I see there is for print publications. I don't write for print anymore, but I plan to again someday and love to see what the market is like. Their listings are a great reminder of how high the price is for print publications compared to web writing. Of course, so much of print writing is on spec, which I don't have the time or the finances to do right now.

The Writer's Resource Center freelancing pages are quite thorough. You can search by type of writing or even by which state you're in. The quality of jobs looks great, but there are so many that I can spend forever looking at them and then I rarely get around to applying for anything.

This brings me to one of my biggest issues with web writing- the first-come-first-hired mentality. When I look through Freelance Writing Jobs, Elance and some of the other sites I frequent, I've developed the habit of either emailing the job to myself to look at later or opening a tab for interesting projects and applying for them when I have time. What happens, almost every single time, is that the job is taken by the time I apply. Sometimes the job has only been posted for a matter of hours. I can't fathom hiring the first person who applies, but apparently that's the way people are doing it. I don't get it, and I don't see how it can get them the best work possible. Isn't that what they want? Sometimes not. All too often people just want content quickly and for as cheap as they can get it. That's what is populating the web right now- cheap crap. I see Elance projects that I wanted going to people with portfolios filled with the worst imaginable copy. This is copy written poorly, full of errors and with no discernible style of any kind. I may be going back to print quicker than I had planned to, now that I think about it.