Canadian Freelance Writing Jobs

If you are a fan of the bard, like many writers are, you probably know a bit about his life. Most of the plays he wrote, he wrote for money. That is why he appealed to the poor, the working class, and the nobles with each play all in one go; he had to in order to make money.

I don’t doubt that he loved the art, but that doesn’t get rid of the fact that he was pimping his work out for cash. He wasn’t some gentried noble that just tossed off a play in between hunts when he was bored; brother had to work it.

If you are ever getting discouraged and feel that you won’t write that novel or that script one day because you are spending too much time “writing for money”, don’t worry; some of your best pieces will be ones that you write for money. Just like good old Shakespeare. Every day you spend writing is another day that you spend working out those literary muscles and getting yourself in shape for “the big one”, whatever that may be. In the final summation, your “big one” may just be your life’s work, and that is good enough.

Don’t worry about the subtext, the metaphors, the grammar use, the word substitutions, or any of that within reason. If it is good enough to get paid for, it is still your art.

If you happen to be in the Stratford, Ontario region this summer, Christopher Plummer will be playing Prospero in The Tempest. Which really, you can’t miss if you’re a Shakespeare fan. It may actually be illegal in some alternate dimension to miss that performance. So don’t.

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In the golden days of the dawn of the internet, marketers were looking down the barrel of a giant gun at something called “transparency” and quaking a little. Since those heady days, an entire industry has grown up around maintaining the image of a company on the internet, and they are doing it in ever-increasingly nuanced ways.

Recently, a colleague of mine asked fellow writers to have a look at his post and to tell him why nobody was reading it; I came back with the fact that “This article is sponsored by” was highlighted so prominently at the top of the article that most people wouldn’t even bother reading it. In order to get it read, his employer would have had to ask the site that was hosting it to remove the graphic and just express the “Sponsored By” in a less apparent line of text.

Too frequently, we don’t even get the courtesy of seeing “sponsored by”. We have to conclude from the content of the post or article that it was sponsored by a company, and this happens all the time.

As writers, we are essentially reputation management agents, so we can’t exactly throw stones at our own glass house. However, we should always keep in mind that comments and articles may be paid for by a third party, and we should always base our own articles on solid research with proper sources rather than taking the internet’s word for it.

Wikipedia is especially bad for this. Whenever you are dealing with Wikipedia as a source, use their source articles listed at the bottom and the article itself as a launching point only. It is unfortunate that the very thing that makes Wikipedia so accurate – open-source editing – is also responsible for Wikipedia entries that make a company seem much more glowing than it probably should be. You will save yourself a lot of headaches if you follow this simple, yet necessary step to improve the calibre of your research.

When you are doing your own research on a company or person, look at both negative and positive things that have been posted about them, even if positive things seem to be the overwhelming majority. Eventually, you will learn to spot reputation management; the glowing, positive things will lack the substance of the negative comments, and they will outweigh the negative comments 2:1.

That isn’t to say that complete idiots don’t write negative comments about a company because they didn’t use a product for the purpose it was sold for, or similar circumstances. However, these are usually pretty easy to sort out for yourself just by reading the story and drawing your own conclusions.

A reputation management agent will also be smart about it; they won’t simply write an advertorial piece. They will include references to 2-3 other companies to make the piece seem genuine.

Do I have a problem with a reputation management agent? Depends if they are reputation managing one of my sacred cows or not, but in the end we are all reputation management agents as writers. The only objectionable circumstance for reputation management is where someone is paid to take a certain viewpoint and represent it as their own; you’ll frequently see this in comments on “hot topic” items with a lot of money at stake (i.e. oilsands, political commentary, larger internet businesses) where you can trace commenters back to think tanks and similar organizations. Also remember that if someone has “reputation management” listed in their list of business offerings, they may not be making a heartfelt comment on your blog, but a paid one.

In the end, if a product, service, or website looks like a bad deal, it probably is, regardless of whatever else you see on the internet about it.

Tags: reputation management, reputation management freelance writing
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If you are a freelancer that has been used to writing for magazines, you’ve no doubt noticed diminishing returns on your efforts, unless you are in extremely tight with a well-paying consumer publication or are so legendary in the profession that you can command whatever rates you want. This article is not for you, nor would I expect you to be actually reading my blog.

At a seminar last night put on by PWAC Toronto, it was struck home to me that corporate writing was the clear financial winner over writing for magazines for anyone looking to break into the profession. Magazines have slashed budgets for freelancers and won’t pay a cent more than they’ve budgeted for, as a rule. They are also paying the same rates, for the most part, that they paid twenty years ago.

Corporate writing, on the other hand, is on the increase. Businesses need web copy, letters, video scripts, and just all kinds of writing more than ever. Writers that can produce these well are scarce enough that they enjoy virtually unlimited employment, as long as they know how to market themselves.

Magazine writers, on the other hand, must spend a good amount of time on crafting individual queries, landing interviews with busy executives, meeting with publishers, meeting with editors, and all kinds of things that do not justify the paltry wage that they are paying. Even if you are lucky enough to land a $500.00 story, the amount of work you do from query to final edited copy is epic. $500.00 in the corporate writing world, on the other hand, is about ten hours worth of work.

While the seminar wasn’t presented this way, the lessons were clear in the subtext. How do you feel about the changing landscape of the freelance profession?

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Writing jobs that have been posted to Craigslist or any other public venue require a bit of finesse when you are applying to them. Here are some things that I have learned:

1. Take The Time
An editor or business owner can spot a form letter a mile away. Take time to research the publication before composing your application, unless of course they provide very little information. If they don’t provide much information, send in what they ask for and ask them if you can have more information on the project so that you can send more relevant examples of your work.

2. Rework Your Resume
Many writing positions that are freelance are starting to ask for resumes. I used to respond to these with a “see my portfolio”. Problem is, they don’t want to see your portfolio. They want to see a resume, structured like a resume. Do it and you’ll notice an uptick on your response rate. Structure it so that it lists any relevant work experience but focuses on your writing. Update the resume once every six months with your most recent works.

3. Be Up Front
If a job ad isn’t listing a critical piece of information, such as how much it is paying authors, ask. Reputable companies and publications will tell you, others won’t even get back to you since you are obviously a “troublemaker”. This is a huge time saver to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

4. Follow Your Instincts
While we can’t all be Jedi mind readers, we do all have instincts about people, publications, and potential clients. If you get a bad feeling about something, there is likely something fishy going on. Just make sure your bad feeling is based on something you can give a concrete example of, such as a potential client making odd statements or taking too long to get back to you.

5. Stand Out
You have to stand out from a sea of about one hundred to one thousand applicants to land any writing job that is listed online. If that intimidates you, you’re in the wrong business. Use humour, cleverness, and wit to get your application to the top of the pile. You’re a copywriter; figure out something “zingy” to write to get your prospect’s attention.

Tags: tips for applying for freelance writing jobs
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When I first found out about James Chartrand’s mythical gender in the Copyblogger post, I was transported to a bit of a dark place. I wrote a post with the title “Why Tits Still Matter” and was generally gobsmacked by the revelation that Chartrand earned more money as a male than as a female writer.

Some time has passed and I have mulled the issue over for a while now. What I came out with on the other side is something very different. I believe it was the experience and confidence, and not the gender, that got the gigs. While I don’t want to argue with James’ assertions, I do believe that experience and voice had a lot to do with her uptick in business.

When I first began freelancing full-time, I had been writing website copy for ten years as a side dish to the many duties of a web designer. I had been formally educated in Creative Writing at a University, even though I did not graduate my near completion of the program at three years gave me a solid grounding in grammar, theory, and how to write clearly for your audience. While both of those things gave me a good start, I was still a babe in the woods when I began my career. In many ways, I still am and probably will be for the next decade or so.

It took me a good couple of years to make the mistakes and garner the experience that it takes to really hit your stride as a copywriter. I would argue that even six months of experience at it full-time will make more of a difference than even four years at an institute of higher education.

Generally if you are a woman, you think that a male voice is a voice of experience, confidence, and authority. I am aware that this is a generalization, and some women may think a male voice is a plaintive baritone that wonders where it put its keys. In any case, if you start writing in the authoritative voice, you are bound to get gigs.

I recently landed a gig writing for a traditionally male market, but a market that I’ve been an active participant in for most of my life. If Chartrand’s object lesson was 100% correct, there would have been no way that I would have landed it. I did, and I have to take it as evidence that women can succeed as female copywriters regardless of market. They just need some experience in that market, and a pair of figurative cojones that allow them to speak decisively about their chosen subject.

Another thing I was doing in my early career was using a passive voice. Self-editing my writing for its use has led to an overall uptick in the quality of my writing. I believe that if you write from a place of lower self-esteem, which you will as a beginner, you are more likely to default to the passive voice. Writing in a “male” voice guarantees that the passive voice will not be used.

Chartrand also mentioned in a CBC interview that she grew up in Quebec, where people who were English were perceived to be more successful than those who were French at the time. She is used to these skewed views on who you are based on the language that you speak, so why not take the logical step to gender? It made sense. It also made me smile because my upbringing in Ottawa made me think that as an Anglophone with just a basic grasp of French that there was no way I could ever work in my home city, an assertion which led me to choose school and permanent residence in Southern Ontario. In effect, I had been brought up with the opposite view and had the poo end of the stick.

In the end, my belief is that you have to have faith in the inherent goodness of the human race. This goodness will nip sexist, racist, or otherwise unpleasant thoughts in the bud and allow talent and not gender to shine through. The final object lesson for me in the whole thing is to write aggressively, write often, and write well. I wish you every success as you try to do the same and thank Chartrand for the opportunity to reflect on some very important questions.

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