HOW TO MAKE MONEY FREELANCE WRITING // MINNEAPOLIS
SoooOOooo, you want to make money freelancing? Great! I often have writerly friends ask how I started (and this is where I explain my start as a freelance creative writer) but after that question another quickly emerges: How can I make money freelancing?
I’ll answer this question to different people depending on where they are currently in their “career” as a writer. Some people have lost a job and need to make money. Some people have had a powerhouse corporate career and are taking time to raise their kiddos and want to earn a little money on the side. Other people want to blast into the world of writing and take control of the reigns with a full-fledged business.
Today’s post is talking directly to the super-newbie, the rookie writer, the green freelancer. And here is the big shocker piece of advise: Get your online presence in order. Read More
MY WEIGHT // MY AGE // MY NUMBERS
This all started after my kettle bell workout tonight.
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So, my husband just had a birthday yesterday. He is now 44. When birthdays roll around in this house I am all about announcing and reiterating the newest age milestone reached. For instance at a Christmas Pageant after-party I loudly announced the new age of my dear husband to a crowd of about sixty people.
The news was met with laughter and applause.
(Here we are at the Walker Art Center for the British Arrow Awards for his birthday):
Since I have an old soul I love the turn of the age calendar and feeling as though I’m getting closer to the age I am sure my cells echo into my body. I was so relieved to be 30 and now that I’m 35 I’m already looking forward to being 40. It isn’t that I want life to speed up. Not at all. I just love living into a fresh age and learning about how it feels to be 32 and 34…and saying goodbye to my old age (ha!…34 is my old age, I like the ring to that).
Old. Worn out. Yesterday’s news. Yawn. Boring. Nonexistent.
The time to enjoy an age is so short, really.
I knew a man who was so destroyed about turning 40 that he spent his 39th year of life telling everyone he was “40 minus 1” so he had an entire year to get used to saying he was 40 years-old before he actually was 40 years-old. Besides being relatively insecure about aging, his attempt at a trick backfired because his body didn’t resist biology yet simultaneously heightened everyone’s awareness of his nearness to the very age he was desperately trying to avoid.
And speaking of…while I may have no qualms about aging I realize others do, so when I inquiry about some’s age instead of saying, “How old are you?” (which can be misconstrued so easily depending on the inflection):
How old are you?
How old are you?
How old are you?
How old are you?
Instead I ask: “How young are you?” OR “What is your age?”
This is also why I don’t ever say my child is “2 and a half.” He’s 2. I’m 35…not 35 and a half. I feel people want to push children into a place other than where they are right now. Can my son just be 2? Can you just enjoy him at the age he is? Do you have to have a benchmark to place him?
I hear a lot: “Oh so he’s almost 3, well, then, that explains why he’s a genius…” (But he’s not 3! He’s 2! It is just like my running mentor said once, “You’re not a marathoner if you almost finish a marathon.) My son is 2. He’s 2 for all 365 days of a year. He was never “barely 2” or “almost 3.” And when he’s 3 he’s just 3 (not 3 and a quarter, not 3 and a half, not 3 and ten twelfths). Consider basking in the age someone is. Consider your age and those of your loved ones.
Because I take care of my body by eating ridiculously delicious food and traipsing around one of these 10,000+ lakes we have in Minnesota every few days I love to share my age knowing I’ve lived it well. And I know other people proud of their age because of the writing they’ve accomplished or the books they’ve read.
I encourage you to share yours, too. Flaunt your age, you only get it for a year.
Now on to my weight.
Also something I don’t mind sharing. As a model I have had tape measures wrapped around my body and even though my waist is a 26 (and I barely know what that even indicates socially, if anything, beyond inches) the response once was, “Oh you can get that number down.” Down to what? What is the goal, here? It sure is not runway modeling, my friends. I’m usually cast as a mom shopping at Target (which is practically typecast because I actually am a mom who happens to actually shop at Target on occasion…AND I have a 26-inch waist, apparently).
I wish there were a tape measure to wrap around a life to indicate the abundance contained therein. Some way to hug a group of loved ones with a measurement tool that is all about what goodness you do have and respond to the results with, “Oh wow!”
But I digress.
Tonight I was at the gym doing some kettle bell reps and I stopped to ask a trainer a question about heart rate and intensity workouts and the like. I said,
“So, I’m 140 pounds and I’m 5 foot, 8 and a half and I just wonder about where my heart rate…”
and then he interrupted me with wide eyes to say,
“Excuse me? Did you just say your weight out loud!?”
And my first thought was, “Geez, is this your first day?”
But instead I slowly said, “Uh, yeeeeaaaahh…”
And he said, “I just have never had a woman share her weight so freely and right away!”
Before I could be proud, I was annoyed. Annoyed that women can’t share their weight or don’t or aren’t safe to do so. What does it even mean, weight? Sometimes I’m 135 pounds. One time I was 88 pounds. Another time I was 160 pounds (okay, I was pregnant, but still). Then I spent another pregnancy never weighing myself a single time.
I guess tonight’s little gym exchange bothered me because a) women aren’t known to share their weight (let along their age) and b) women aren’t even sharing their weight with a personal trainer who’s interest in some basic personal stats actually help them help you train your body.
So I decided: I’m sharing my weight. I’m 140 LBS. There it is. What’s yours? And before I forget…what’s your age?
I HIRED MYSELF // FREELANCE WRITING IN MINNEAPOLIS
I am often approached by friends and even some strangers about how I do this. How I do this writing thing. This word thang. Freelance. Contract. Solo Pro. “Not Working for The Man.” Gigs. Projects.
This is a fair question…how does one get the super awesome life of a freelance writer? (And my version of super awesome might look wildly different than yours, but c’mon, try it on, you might like it!) The answers I give to this innocent question are both simple and complicated. I’m going to cover one answer today and likely a few more several months down the line and definitely more in a few years.
Why the many drawn responses? Duh, because life changes up. If it were static and predictable I’d first want to take a long nap for approximately 100 years and then I’d cry while trudging back to the same-old, same-old life life life. But life is neither static nor predictable but instead brings all that ooey, gooey unpredictability which I love and loathe (sometimes all in one bite).
Professor Woes. Whoa.
My very first reason for becoming a freelancer was because no one would hire me. Well, that’s half true. I was a professor of English for three years at University of Northern Iowa (no, not the Cyclones…that’s Iowa State. Uh, no, not the Hawkeyes, that’s Iowa University…I think UNI is the Panthers, but I know almost zero about sports so back to being a professor…).
I was a professor (loo-li-loo) teaching for two days each week and then having my summers off to hang with my daughter. But then it happened: my daughter turned 3 and then 4 and then…Kindergarten was looming and when I looked around Iowa I wasn’t seeing the kinds of opportunities I wanted for my Latina daughter so I trekked back to my homeland, set down in Minneapolis, put her in a Spanish immersion school and started applying for teaching jobs.
There were no jobs for English professors in Minneapolis. I mean none. I mean there was maybe like a distant relative to an English professor job as a linguistics department office assistant that barely required me to have a pulse in order to be considered. All the jobs had been snapped up! Even with all our amazing networks in the Twin Cities (and the state, really) of private, public, universities, colleges, tech schools and community colleges no one was hiring (not even an after-school tutoring position [I tried everything]).
No one was hiring, so I hired myself.
I figured that since I had been asked by several colleagues to review their dissertations or their master’s theses as favors I could turn my expertise into a career.
I was right.
You can turn your skill and writing aplomb into a career if you choose this life. Choosing to live with realization that there may not be a feast at the end of every month is both powerful and frightening, but if you’re choosing it there is possibility in that.
Choosing. Powerful. Frightening. Possibility.
Now, don’t worry, this isn’t a conversation that will end with tips on how to find your center or a deep discussion about herbal remedies. I actually do mean you will have to choose this life in order for it to “work.”
I could have gotten a different job but I wanted a particular life. I wanted to be a professor because it allowed me to be available to my daughter (same vacation schedules). Being a professor of English in Minneapolis in 2007 wasn’t a possibility so I had to move in to a position that would allow me to continue the particular life I wanted: to be available to my daughter.
Freelance!
I talked to a new neighbor who happened to work as a designer for MRM Worldwide. She connected me with their Creative Director. I went to this man’s office downtown Minneapolis and I had ZERO experience as a freelancer.
ZERO.
NOTHING.
I had ZERO things in my portfolio. I didn’t even have a portfolio. My master’s thesis was a collection of short stories, okay?
He took a chance on me because when he asked me about my stories and what I cared about as an individual he saw potential.
He challenged me to write three ads for products I loved and get them to him in two days. It was a test, yes, but I worked so hard on those ads for the next two days, I can’t even tell you. I was doing writing work I’d never done and LOVING IT.
I turned in my work and BAM: I was hired as a freelancer writing banner ad copy for General Mills Betty Crocker Cupcakes. And then I wrote for Hamburger Helper…and then Simply Potatoes…and then Better’n Eggs…and then Crystal Farms Cheese…and, you get it. (Oh, and check out those first Betty Crocker storyboards below…how fun is that!?)
Easy Writing Life
Did I have it easy? Maybe. But maybe not. Maybe part of the reason I was able to flow into freelance writing is because I had an intention that I stayed committed to.
Sometime I’ll tell you about clients who demanded I work on site for 40 hours each week, no more, no less.
But for now…just consider the possibility that a writing career is available to you if you create the kind of life you want to live into…and then commit to it.
WEBSITE COPY // SEO // HEADLINES
Tasty Details: website copy–one of the single most necessary elements on a business, product or personal page. I’ve written for various genres, industries and personas. Read More
Claire DeBerg // Writer 