Writing Resources - R - Renegade Writer

Welcome to the Insecure Writer’s Support Group Website! Our A to Z Challenge theme – Writing Resources!

With a freelance focus, The Renegade Writer is a site which has a great collection of articles to help with your pitch or query.

The Renegade Writer concept is that to have a successful freelance career, you need to do what works for you — instead of blindly following the “rules” you see set forth in books, in magazines, and on blogs.

There’s lots of great advice such as - how to develop a querying style that works for you, overcome freelancing fear, get motivated, figure out your own systems for getting and doing work, earn more money as a freelancer, and basically boost your freelance writing career and reach your writing dreams.

Why Every Writer Should Freelance

By C. Hope Clark

Let’s say you’re working on a book. It engulfs you, dominates your every waking hour. This story is the reason you became a writer. Problem is, it’ll take you at least a year to write, edit, and publish, assuming you indie publish, but if you go the traditional route, expect two to three. How are you supposed to pay the bills in the interim?

Every single writer should know how to freelance.

A solid writer should be able to write just about any gig in the freelance arena. Magazine features, blog posts, corporate copywriting, and journalistic pieces. All it takes is a firm grasp of the language and craft, and a writer’s eye for a storyline. If you’re writing a book, you already profess to have that hand’s down under your belt. So why not write short nonfiction pieces, anywhere from 500 to 5,000 word pieces, for editors of periodicals and websites?

And no, you don’t have to write for free to break in, one of the largest myths in the industry. There are ample markets out there paying ten cents/word up. There are plenty of others who don’t and they often make the most noise when seeking writers, but hold out. You want to respect yourself. Don’t forget, this freelance effort is to subsidize your effort to write that novel, so you cannot afford to give it away.

Where to find the gigs:

1) Run a search for “magazine writers guidelines;”
2) Purchase a current year’s Writer’s Market, published by Writer’s Digest Books;
3) Subscribe to writing sites like: Freelance Writing, Freelance Writing Gigs, Funds For Writers, The Write Life, Writers Market and World Wide Freelance.
4) Subscribe to job finding sites like Indeed, Simply Hired, and especially LinkedIn.. Consider the paid subscription with Linkedin for the best opportunities.

But how do you get started? Where do the ideas come from? First learn how to query or pitch at sites likeThe Renegade Writer and Make A Living Writing. Your query is the first introduction between you and the editor. Make it powerful. It even doesn’t matter that you haven’t freelanced before as long as the idea is solid and a good match for the editor’s needs.

For instance, I once pitched a piece to Landscape Management Magazine because a landscaper came to my door to talk to me about my yard after I’d built a new house. He treated me like a “little lady of the house” and assumed I knew nothing about grass, plants, or irrigation. After I let him finish his spiel, I informed him I had a degree in Agronomy, aka plant science. He was mortified, but I let him start over and talk to me on a different level and we did fine. Immediate after he left, I pitched the piece to the magazine with no mention of my writing experience. All they saw was Agronomy degree and the story idea. They paid $150 for 500 words, thirty minutes after I pitched it. Keep a notebook because ideas will come at you from nowhere. Look at the world as if it were nothing but story material. Your silly daily experiences will prompt remarkable angles and spins on very simple topics.

Also, start pitching local, soliciting the regional and local publications in your area. Editors prefer local. Your dentist, real estate agent, nursery, bakery, or local diner may do a newsletter once a month, too. Offer to write for them, or even offer to create and deliver said newsletter. Same goes for nonprofits and charities. Join your local Chamber of Commerce and become the only freelance writer in the membership and watch the requests come in.

You may think you’re shortchanging your book. Just remember that freelancing not only provides interim income as you write your novel, but it also hones your writing skills. Every word you write, edit and publish helps you climb that ladder to becoming a more polished, entertaining and marketable writer. And your novel will thank you in the end.

C. Hope Clark is founder of FundsforWriters.com, selected for Writer’s Digest’s 101 Best Websites for Writers for the past 15 years. Her weekly newsletter reaches 35,000 readers. But to show Hope practices what she preaches, she is also an award-winning mystery author of two series, the sixth release due out Summer 2016. She continues to freelance, produce newsletters, write novels and speak at two or three dozen venues per year.
 C. Hope Clark
 Funds For Writers

On Becoming... A Freelance Writer For MTV by Jocelyn Rish

I recently started writing about YA books for the MTV News website, and Michelle kindly invited me to talk about the experience at IWSG, which is perfect because my insecurities almost kept me from getting the freelancing gig.

When I first saw the listing, it sounded so awesome, but that tiny voice in my head immediately convinced me to forget about it. It reminded me I had no experience as a freelancer. I didn’t know enough about YA books to put myself out there as an expert. They’d never hire me anyway so why bother.

And stupid me listened to that voice and decided not to apply.

But for the next two days, I couldn’t stop thinking about the job: ideas for my application, ideas for articles, picturing myself with a byline on the MTV website.

But as I’d get pumped up about it, that tiny, nasty voice would intrude again, and I’d let insecurity and doubt take over and shove the idea to the back of my mind.

But the itch for the job refused to completely go away.

So I finally said, “Screw you, tiny voice! I don’t have anything to lose by trying!”

If you’d like to read more about the application process and even see the gif-tastic application that landed me the job, click here.

http://jocelynrish.com/content/how-i-got-my-job-mtv

 

I couldn’t believe it when I got the email telling me I was hired. I was so thrilled I even teared up a little.

But of course those excited feelings only lasted a little while before doubt crept back into my brain. Oh no, I had fooled them into hiring me. Now I was going to be a complete disaster and embarrass myself. And not just on a small scale, but on a HUGE platform with tons of people reading.

It didn’t help allay my fears that my editor didn’t like any of my first fourteen pitches.

The way it works is that I come up with ideas for articles and send my editor a potential title and a sentence or two describing what the article would be about. If he likes the pitch, he gives me a due date. Unfortunately, I wasn’t getting anything approved and became convinced the whole thing was a mistake and that I should quit.

But I shared my fears with a group of awesome friends, and they helped calm me down. Together we went through past articles on the MTV website, and they helped me brainstorm new ideas. I picked four of them, fleshed them out, and sent them to my editor, and he approved three of them. Whoohoo - I finally had my first stories to write!

And once again, the elation only lasted a short time before the paralyzing fear of actually writing a story for MTV hit with a vengeance. But I was also determined to do a good job, so I ignored those fears and got to work.

My first story was about Nancy Drew, and even though I had read a ton of the books when I was young, I didn’t remember a lot about them. So I got to googling. I found out all kinds of stuff I never knew about Nancy and her legacy, which was a cool bonus.

Once I wrote the article, I started looking for gifs. I’d never done much with gifs before, but they are a big part of MTV articles, so I’ve been learning a lot on the fly. But the gif hunt (or making my own gifs) has turned out to be a lot of fun – pretty much my favorite part of putting these articles together.

I was so nervous when I emailed my first article to my editor - I even felt a tad nauseous as I pressed Send. But he loved it and said it was a lot of fun. Whew! And then once it was published on the site, it did well and got a lot of shares. Double whew!

With a successful article under my belt, I had a lot of confidence going into the next ones. That nagging, doubting voice still rears its head occasionally when pitches get rejected or the writing feels boring and flat, but I press forward anyway. That’s the key for me: I can’t stop the voice of insecurity, but I can try to prove it wrong. And because I eventually managed to dismiss what the voice had to say about applying for the job, I’m having a ton of fun writing these articles, and it’s a complete thrill seeing my name on the MTV website and knowing so many people are reading my words.

Here are two of my articles if you’re interested:

13 Reasons Nancy Drew Is A Kick-Ass 85-Year-Old Teen http://www.mtv.com/news/2259420/nancy-drew-awesome-teen/

The Brooding YA Bad Boy Of Your Dreams Finally Opens Up http://www.mtv.com/news/2289546/brooding-ya-hero-opens-up/

I haven’t been doing this long enough to feel qualified to give advice, but I will say if you decide to freelance, make sure you’re organized. I have a spreadsheet where I track article deadlines, when I turn them in, whether I’ve included them in a timesheet, and when I get paid for them. Otherwise, I’d be a complete mess.

I had never considered freelancing before this opportunity came along, but I know there are a ton of resources out there for finding freelance jobs. So if you think you’d be interested in freelancing, GO FOR IT! Don’t let that tiny voice that likes to be so negative talk you out of it.

You have nothing to lose by trying, and you might end up with a very cool job!