Researching freelance writing

Bottom line: if you’re not getting paid, it’s not freelancing.  I’m reading through the 2019 Writer’s Market and underlining publishers that might be possibilities for a manuscript submission when I get one ready.  I’m using a red ballpoint pen and noting at the bottoms of the pages what subject areas and topics I was interested in when I read the pusblisher’s description of their needs and what they accept.  I’ve run into a few that might be worth submitting a manuscript to already and I’ve only reviewed a few pages.  It’s tedious work in itself to try to wade through all of the information and try to process it and sort it out as to what is useful to me at present and what isn’t.  That doesn’t mean that other things won’t be relevant in the future, either.  It just means that I’m doing this right now and not to the exclusion of other subjects that may come up at a later date.

I want to give freelance writing a try, though, because I like writing and I’m good at it.  I like writing about climbing, in particular, and that’s a niche where I could find a potential home in my writing.  I’ve got all kinds of material to draw from.  Over two years’ worth of blog posts are a good start!  My blog can at least give me ideas, if nothing else!  When I begin to get some feedback from my readers, then I’ll really be on a roll.  I’m not sure how to get my readers to respond, though.  I’ll have to work on that.  I’m also reading a book by Moira Allen titled Starting Your Career As A Freelance Writer which is very helpful.  It walks you through the process from start to finish (or it has thus far, at least), and doesn’t leave you wondering how on earth to get this or that accomplished.  It’s a goood step-by-step guide by a successful freelance writer.  I want to find a good mentor in this area, but so far, I’ve come up dry.   I’ve asked one of my good buddies that I know writes for a popular app website and I’m sure he’s just busy and hasn’t had time to respond to my plea for him to be my mentor yet.  Either that, or he’s avoiding me.  Oh, well.  Six of one, half a dozen of the other.  He’ll get around to answering in some fashion eventually.  Maybe.

I hope that I’m able to write something that will get published someday.  That would be ideal.  I’m already “technically” a freelance writer because I’ve been paid for a few articles and reviews that I did for an app website, even though I haven’t seen them “published” yet.  That’s okay.  Getting paid for them was a really great feeling!  Someone actually thought they were worth purchasing my writing services for!  If you think of freelance writing as a “service” to a publisher, it makes more sense than cranking out a “product” of some sort for them.  Services are much easier to work with because they entail quality and professionalism, whereas a product is just a thing to be tossed back and forth between  parties.  It’s an important philosophical distinction to make, especially in freelance writing.  This idea was proposed and explained in that book I’m reading by Moira Allen and really opened  my  eyes to  a different way of looking at freelance writing!