Invent Your Own Work, Parth Three, How I Got Paid to Become a $100 an Hour Freelance Writer.

“Well, you’re a great writer, it’s easy for you.” I get this a lot. But, I didn’t get this way sitting around waiting for skills to fall in my lap, and I’ve got a long way to go toward being a truly great writer. For instance, I like commas waaaay too much. My punctuation kinda sucks and I have tendency to use runon sentences and make up compound words like runon.

If you want better payouts, it’s simple. Write better content. No, it’s not easy for me to say. Let me explain how I got where I am.

First, I started writing when I was a kid, got to page 58 of a novel at the age of 14, before my typewriter ribbon broke and I never got another one.

Then, I wrote for the stage, starting with sketch comedy and working up to full length plays and musicals for 20 years. When my theater company went bust after the housing crash in 08, I needed a gig.

So, I wrote home improvement, marketing, theater, parenting, furniture repair, and blogging articles for $15 a pop on Ehow for a year and a half. Not just a few, either, over 2700 of them. I was fast at it, earning over $40k in about a thousand hours of writing.

Then Ehow got eaten by the Panda update and things started changing online. I got into social media marketing and blogged for over a dozen clients each week, to the tune of $300 a month each. A nice little bump in pay.

That lasted about two years, and by then I’d established enough of a portfolio to go after private clients. As I’d done previously, I did some research. I looked at the going rate per word and determined where I fit. I decided to aim for the high middle.

There’s a bit of strategy to pricing yourself in any kind of bid work. First, if you’re going to earn minimum wage, work for someone else. Let them have all the headaches. It’s not worth it. Then, figure out what you need. No, not what you’re worth, what you need, not joking.

So, here’s what I did. I figured what I wanted to make a month. Then, I decided how many hours I was willing to work to get it. Then, I calculated how many words I could write in that time (about a thousand at that point) and I calculated my per word rate of 10 cents.

I’m fast. I realized this pretty quickly and used it to my advantage. While other writers might make $20 an hour at my rate, I’ve made as much as $250 when I’m in the mood. Once I know my topic, my actor’s brain develops a voice for that client and away I go.

So, you’re thinking, how am I ever going to do any of that?

Well, my story is pretty specific to me. I developed my writing in a very unorthodox way, the way I do most things. And I got paid to learn it. But, there were a lot of duplicatable things I did along the way, and as a teacher, I can break them down for you. So, want to be a better writer? Here’s how!

Write a lot

When I started writing full time, I was writing 5 to 6000 words a day, everyday. Now, I write that much just to warm up. I can write 2500 words in an hour when I’m on a roll. It takes consistent practice.

• Keep a blog
• Write a journal
• Blog on steemit
• Write articles for money

The more you do it, the easier it gets. It took me about six months to really get into a steady process and I’ve been building on it ever since. I can write an entire book in one or two weeks now, without really feeling like I’m putting out that much effort and so can you!

Write things you know about

When you first get started, especially, it’s important to write what you know about it. It makes it easier to establish a flow, without having to stop and think or look things up every five seconds. You’ll establish your voice easier and you’ll enjoy your work more.

But, that doesn’t mean you’re stuck with what you know now. The world is at your fingertips, and if you’re like me, in a couple of evenings of research, you can be a semi-expert on almost any topic using Google and the other amazing resources of the WWW.

Get an editor

If you can, work for a service that has editor that check your work and give you feedback. This will help you sharpen your skills. After 2700 articles, I knew what was expected and could even write to suit different editors, if I knew who was taking my stories that week. It forced me to shape my craft.

Barring a human editor, at least get some software. There are many editing softwares, but I like Whitesmoke. It’s a bit pricey, the cheap option is Hemingway, $10 for a great little app that will help you get rid of some bad writing habits.

Share your work

Whether it’s here on steemit, or on other social media, or through critique sites like Scribophile, get other eyes on your work, besides your mom and your boyfriend. They’ll lie to make you happy, or worse, they’ll never say anything positive. Get some honest, outside opinions from people who don’t have to live with you.

Sell something.

I don’t care who you are, your opinion of your own work goes up when you get paid for it. You start to think of yourself as a pro and developing the craft becomes part of your job. This one thing right here, did more to convince me to pursue it full time than probably any other factor. Selling that first story was like a switch getting turned on.

Steemit votes are great, but I’m not sure it has the same impact. For one thing, you often get more votes than views, so they didn’t necessarily read your post. Secondly, there is no editorial standard here and the community’s standards are all over the map, which is great, but doesn’t do much to confirm your writing talents.

Publish a book

Nothing says, “I’m a writer” more than asking someone to read your book. It’s a lot less daunting than it sounds. Many of you already have enough blog or steemit content to produce one if you know how. If you can publish on steemit, and cash your steem into fiat currency, you have more than enough computer knowledge to learn self-publishing on Amazon. Trust me, compared to Steemit, Amazon is a walk in the park.

Having at least one book to point to adds a lot of credibility to your claim of being a writer, something many will want to challenge based on your use of language. It really doesn’t matter what the critics think, almost to a person they are either wannabes who will never write and publish, or frustrated authors whose books don’t sell, because, for all their “craft” and grammar skills, they suck.

Call yourself a writer

The difference between an author and someone who wants to be one is very simple, an author has finished at least one piece of work. That’s it. Sure, there are author’s guilds that have bigger requirements for membership, but the dictionary, you remember that book, right? Says an author is someone who writes a book, article, or report.

This hurdle is a big one for some. They feel they need to achieve a specific level of success before claiming to be a writer, or an author. Forget it. Success in the publishing world is one part hard work, one part talent, two parts skills and about a million times luck. So, call yourself a writer the minute you finish something and don’t let others tell you you’re not.

Keep writing

Once you’ve started, hopefully you’ll want to continue. Remember, without consistent practice, it will be nearly impossible to improve much, and with it, it is nearly impossible not too, especially if you keep sharing, find an editor and build your skills.

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