Archive for May, 2009
1. You need to keep a regular (or at least semi-regular) schedule. Discipline and freedom are two sides of the same sword. No boss is here to fire you or throw you out if you dont’ keep up with work. You have to either discipline yourself or start loking for a homeless shelter.
Keeping a regular schedule has a productivity-increasing side effect: it sets your brain in a pattern. Your brain will start to focus better just based on it being…well, being whatever time you start work. Which in my case, was often not early enough.
I’ve been at this a year and am still working on it. It’s gotten better–and so has my writing.
2. The work day goes better when you work first. It’s so tempting to do everythign else first, when you work for yourself. After all, I quit my J.O.B. so I could do things like sit around in my underwear and read 100 pages of fiction every day.
Two things are wrong with this. One: some days I didn’t get as much done as I meant to. Two: I always felt like I was putting work off. Which I was.
Treat your freelance online job much like an offline job in at least this way: start it early in your day! Then you’ll get done all you need done, AND you’ll enjoy the other things you want to do a whole lot more.
3. Don’t waste time with Associated Content. Or for that matter, any other mostly-automated site. Why? The pay is crap.
I messed around with AC for a while. In fact, I quit my job delivering pizzas largely because I thought I could make the good bulk of my income from that site. But it just ain’t so.
Yes, sometimes those actual human clients can be a pain in the ass. There’s really no other way to say it. But overall, you’re so much better working for real people than for Associated Content and other sites, that you might as well not even waste your time.
(I’ve heart slightly different things about Textbroker.com. I’m told the pay is a little more livable. But none of my friends who’ve worked for that site have stayed around there very long.)
4. Outline. I doubled my writing speed when I started outlining my articles. ‘Nuff said!
5. Get some sun. Seriously, you need to come out of the house every once in a while. Sunlight has vitamin E and the radiation won’t turn you into the incredible hulk or any such thing.
6. Don’t forget to sleep. Seriously, sleep is important.
Actually, that’s what I wish I would tell myself right now…
You don’t have to understand the technology from the ground up (unless of course you’re required to write about it from the ground up…)
You just have to understand the interaction between the parts your client wants you to write about. Get that down and you’re fine.
It’s still a bitch.