It’s true that as freelancers we take abuse. We are at the mercy of a cruel, cold, bleak world of shitty rates, batshit crazy taxes, and isolation. All around us mediocrity reigns, whether it’s the latest reality hit of So You Think You Can Be A Crazy Cat Lady or the less than coherent diatribes of news anchors or the crap bestsellers that seem written by committee.

So yes. It sucks. The world hates us. Naturally, we’re frustrated. We rant. We get annoyed. And we blame the big bad mean cold filthy ugly backasswards world.

But that’s not the whole story.

Remember as a kid, when you’d get heckled and bullied and ignored by the cool kids, and mom and dad would explain it as best they could, talking about how those meanies really just had low self-esteem? …Remember? Ok, so maybe that was just me. The point is – I think we have the low self-esteem.

When it comes to our freelancing career, we’re big old doubters running on the fumes of esteem. We’re consumed with doubt, anxiety, and even anger. We’re freaked the fuck out about our freelancing. And so we do what any big old hormonal teenager does instead of focus on ourselves: lash out at the perceived enemy.

How does our low writing self-esteem manifest? As blatant disrespect to ourselves and our careers. And then lots of bitching and moaning. Here’s some specifics:

• Shooting ourselves in the gut with procrastination
• Illogical, irrational planning for deadlines
• Taking on enough assignments to kill a whale
• Allowing editors/clients to take advantage, in all the ways in which you can be taken advantage (but not that way, you perv)
• Accepting low payments or no payments
• Spending poorly (not reinvesting, not saving)
• Refusing to own up to mistakes or shitty, hurried results
• Not maintaining relationships
• Getting intimidated
• Ranting and raving, naming names, and burning bridges

So how do we solve this conundrum?

Uh…I dunno.

What, you thought I had all the answers? Silly, silly QRW readers. I’m as clueless and low on the self-esteem as any of yoots. But as a member of Writers with Low Self Esteem Anonymous (which isn’t so anonymous anymore, or, um, real), I’ve made some small steps to maintain my freelancing success and respect myself in the morning:

• While I’m open to fee negotiation, I have limits to how low I’ll go.
• While I can procrastinate with the best of them, I plot out my work as far in advance as possible. I schedule my days and weeks so that I never, ever, ever, miss a deadline.
• When I fuck up, I try my best to own up.
• I try to keep my clients happy, and build those relationships to keep the work coming.
• While I might bitch and moan, I keep the details (and names) to myself.

Small steps. But focusing on these makes me happier and more secure as a writer. And that makes the tough environment for writers seem a little easier to swallow.

What about you? How’s your writing esteem? And how do you protect it?

Like this post? Sure I may have inadvertently insulted you and your mental health, but all in good fun, right? If you did like this post, tell us about it in the comments. Spread the word. And don’t forget to subscribe for free updates with the link below.

RANDOM LINK of the day: You know how Judd Apatow is the king of comedy? It took him awhile to get there. His first attempt was the brilliant-but-canceled Freaks and Geeks, chock full of today’s stars when they were nobodies. First ep, first scene, right here. Love it.

Hello and welcome to the week, one and all. Hope your weekends were filled with dry land, sunny skies, and some well-deserved indulgence.

On to business. If you take a look around at these internets, you’ll see a few prevailing themes surrounding freelance writing. Beneath all the articles and posts lamenting the sorry state of freelancing fees, bitching about disrespectful editors and PR folks, and pushing us to have the balls and boobies to get what we need and want from our clients, there’s a throbbing pulse of barely disguised self-flagellation. Sure, as freelancers we take more than our share of abuse. We fight against an environment not often conducive to quality and dedication. But doesn’t this smack a little bit of an inferiority complex, one so ingrained we’re lashing out at everyone but ourselves?

In this week’s posts, we’ll take a look at ways we can disrespect ourselves as freelance and creative writers. There’s some great writers out there looking at how we disrespect our time, pave the way for editors and clients to walk all over us, allow business concerns and money to make us a sniveling pile of goo, and generally sell ourselves short. We’ll take it bit further, and see if we can’t find some rebel-like ways to combat our lack of writing self-esteem.

So tune in!

And while you’re thinking about freelancing and creative writing, let’s take a look around the web for links to love:

• 7 Ways to be a Frugal Freelancer
• Staying up in a down economy
• Seven Powerful Tips for Maximizing Your Freelance Writing Business
• Using Paper to Scaffold Your Productive Motion
• Warning: Narcissistic Marketing Can Be Dangerous to Your Business Health
• Home Business Marketing Lessons from the Homeless Dude
• How Batch Processing Made Me 10 Times More Productive
• 100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media

But let’s not stop there. As you may have noticed, I’ve been including some RANDOM LINKS each day for your enjoyment. Here’s some recent winners in case you missed them:

• In this week’s Time Out Chicago, locals hit the tourist scene and hilarity ensues. In this article, a bearded Middle Eastern man hits American Girl Place, and freaks out the ladies in the bastion of weirdass femininity.
• Like yogurt? You have to if you’re a woman. Check out this gem of women philosophy.
• RANDOM LINK of the day: Holy crap, this looks good. Coen Brothers returning to violent nuttiness. (P.S. - NSFW)
• Been digging on the Best Of album put out by Radiohead this week. Here’s a blast from the past. Holy cripes, Thom Yorke looks 11.
• I do enjoy my Mo Ryan. The Chicago Tribune’s TV reporter/blogger posted an insanely comprehensive and thought-provoking post on the season finale of Lost last week. Check it out.
• Nothing inspires confidence like a little ludicrous humor. Just thinking about this sketch makes me laugh, so now I bequeath it to you.

Keep on truckin’, everyone, and tune in this week for some themed posts, random links, and nifty surprises.

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Welcome one and all to a Friday the 13th that is (so far) free of freakish mass murderers who like to use farm implements. So we got that going for us. Not all is well in the world, of course - my hometown is under water, as is pretty much the entire state of Iowa. Ah, it brings me back, far back to the summer of ‘93 when I turned 16 and two days later an old testament flood knocked out city water and power for weeks. Good times.

Nothing like a little word porn to keep the dastardly demons and spit showers away, right? Let’s dive on in.

Numismatic

Whoo wee! At first blush this doozy sounds like something espoused by Caddyshack golfers, or the qualities ascribed to (ahem) female massagers. But that’s the sheer joy of word porn. What you expect and what transpires are often entirely different and entirely pleasurable (!). Numismatic actually means of or relation to the study or collection of coins and money. Fascinating. Let’s have it in a sentence please!

Rhonda could put up with her 33-year-old son still living at home. She could even deal with his insistence on his laundry done just so, his sandwiches cut just so, and his utter lack of rent payments. But when she discovered that her son spent a good portion of the day dedicated to numismatic pursuits, rather than making actual usable currency, she responded in rational fashion: a bonfire of all his belongings followed by forced removal from the premises.

Salubrious

Ah, it’s finally summer-type weather out. While so far that’s meant a preponderance of rain and wind, there’s still enough sunny (or overcast - hell we’ll accept that in these parts) weather to allow for some (gasp!) enjoyable outdoor activities. So this term fits well. Salubrious means favorable to or promoting health or well-being. Let’s see how this works:

Angela greeted the new summer weather with a renewed commitment to internal and external health, running four miles a day, eating light, and taking walks. Of course, all her salubrious activities were negated by the weekends, filled with an ludicrous excess of alcohol, cigarettes, sloth, and gluttony.

[Full Disclosure: Angela = Amy, otherwise known as your QRW. Healthy by week = very bad by weekend. Ah, such is life.]

Xanthic

Holy crapoley! It’s not often we get to extol the virtues of a word starting with X. And what a decadent sounding specimen this one is. Could it be some variation of it’s rhyming sister in sin, tantric? Could it be the title of the long-awaited and completely, regrettably unnecessary sequel to the cheesetastic Xanadu?? Unfortunately, this little one is ultimately rather boring in the definition department. Xanthic means tending toward a yellow color. Hmm. Perhaps a sentence can spice this yearning-to-be bad boy up?

Towards the end of the night, Jeremy was left alone as his bros all found hos. But as his desperation and inebriation rose, so his standards lowered. His future set as he spotted the target, and used a line so stunning as to leave him thereafter speechless: ‘Yo baby, tho your teeth are xanthic, your body mammoth, and your style tragic, I’m all about getting tantric with you.”

Coolness. Hope you enjoyed.

A brief note to all devotees - no full rant today, as this QRW mismanaged her time on an epic scale this week and still has shit to do. But herewith, a short rant, directed at me, myself, and I.

There once was a girl from the Windy City,
Deadlines aplenty, she worked herself into a fatigued tizzy.
As the weekend neared she made a vow
“Never again will I fuck up my time and have a cow”
But next week looms, and it ain’t pretty.

And I’m spent

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RANDOM LINK of the day: In this week’s Time Out Chicago, locals hit the tourist scene and hilarity ensues. In this article, a bearded Middle Eastern man hits American Girl Place, and freaks out the ladies in the bastion of weirdass femininity.

Remember Tuesday? Glorious good times. It was on Tuesday that we talked rebellious resources for freelancing. We talked about being realistic freelancers, and our occasional need to scrounge up some background/research/inspiration pronto when we’ve promised the world, and must deliver. And then I showed you the goods, the resources under the hood and skirt that I use to rock the freelancing results.

Well now it’s Thursday. If you’ve been keeping track at home, that’s when I take this weekly theme of ours and examine it from the perspective of us sadists who insist on writing creatively, and even aspire to one day publish our creative writing.

Creative writers are even more dependent on themselves to produce. Real resources, then, come at a premium, and are infinitely valuable. Now here’s where I get blasphemous. Right about now is when I should extol the virtues of a writer’s group, or a formal writing program, or even subscribing to the blogs/emails of writing “experts” in order to help get the words from your noggin to the page. But I think a lot of that is crap. Writer’s groups are paralyzed by politics; formal writing programs are expensive and unsatisfactory; and writing “experts” are often anything but.

So where do I go for guidance, inspiration, and help?

Blogs
As a blogger myself, I know the beauty of a blogging community. Here’s where you can find camaraderie, answers to pesky questions, and more. But I’m also very skeptical for blogs from “writing coaches” or “writing experts.” Why? More often than not the actual writing from these experts is highly disappointing, and the blog is focused on spitting out quick, commercial, popular fiction that will make a mint. Is it so revolutionary to actually want to write well, and write from the heart and soul, not the moneymaker? Guess so.

Instead, I find solace and support in blogs that offer real journeys, real experiences, that I can feel a part of. There’s no experts here, but merely other writers following their quickly typing hands on a voyage. I learn more from these cats than I ever would with the experts.

• Becoming a Fiction Writer. “One girl, one dream … and a whole lot of procrastination.”
• Publishing Curve. Insight from inside the beast.
• Practicing Writer. Also sign up for weekly emails.

Books
Here’s where I get my expertise with a dose of reality. There are just as many crap books on the Borders and indie shop shelves focused on writing for a dumbed-down market. But I’ve found a few winners, books that give you the goods and give you realism about your prospects. I like this tack much better than blind optimism and encouragement. Find them at Amazon or your local store.

• The Portable MFA. Awe. Some.
• Beginning Writer’s Answer Book. All sorts of goodies in here, arranged in logical fashion.
• Agents, Editors and You. A great rundown of the essential relationships with publishing.
• How to Write a Book Proposal. Used this for a non-fiction book proposal, and it was extremely helpful.

Conferences
Never been to those conferences constantly shilled by writing communities where you can supposedly find your agent with a 5 minute spiel. Perhaps they work. What I’ve focused on is a conference where I can get a bit of that formal instruction in an informal, much less expensive setting.

• Iowa Summer Writing Festival. TONS of topics, from writers who know their shit and write well. And it’s at my alma mater, a delightful place to spend a week/weekend.

Publishing Avenues
Ready to start the cycle of pain? Yay ceaseless rejection! But if you want to get published in the traditional sense, you gotta run the gamut. Here’s where I found people to hound.

• Preditors and Editors. A great list of agents both helpful and dirty/suspect/cheaters.
• AgentQuery

Have some more? Well damn skippy, share with the class!

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RANDOM LINK of the Day: Like yogurt? You have to if you’re a woman. Check out this gem of women philosophy.

We’re alone. But we’re not. See, freelancers, in many ways, have only their little ol’ selves to depend on when it comes to getting work, doing that work, getting paid, and staying sane. But you know what? This internet thing - it could just catch on.

Let’s back up. Sometimes being rebellious means being realistic. It can be a departure from all the excessively optimistic treatises on freelancing and writing out there, the Marty McFly brand of blogging, and therefore near blasphemous. So let’s get rebel real. Sometimes, especially when we’re starting out, we promise the world in order to get the gig. We talk up ourselves and our experience because we have confidence in our abilities, and know that if we JUST GOT A CHANCE we can blow the underwears off of these dream clients. Sometimes, we get the gig. And then we have a royal freakout, something kind of like this:

Fuck. Damn. Poop. I am so in over my head. I am going to blow this on an epic, unheard of, tale-told-for-generations scale. I need to know [fill in the blanks] like now or I’m screwed. Fuck. Damn. Poop.

As I said before - this internet thing? Could darn well make it. Besides all the pron lovers making it float, us freelancers are finding the inherently life and ass-saving qualities of the web. I myself have found a load of links that help me hone my writing, give me the background I need to back up my ability to write about anything, and provide me some winning inspiration and examples. And when all else fails, when you’re still stuck and frustrated and anxious, there’s the sophisticated art of doing something completely mindless and time-sucking while your subconscious and writing gears kick in.

Here, then, are some rebellious resources for your freelancing success:

Research:
We can write about anything. ANYTHING. That’s the idea, and that’s the goal. But what our editors and clients don’t need to know is that we’re faking it. We don’t have limitless fountains of knowledge within. What we do have is kickass research skills to find out what we don’t know, and to write knowledgeably about it. Here’s the places I go to do this.

• Direct Search. I loves my Googley Google like everyone, but sometimes there’s more to the story. Get all scifi with a trip into the invisible Web.
• Internet Public Library. I mean, full-on interweb-wide library goodness. Glory be.
• Ingenta Connect. Need access to scholarly work? Get your fill of big ass words and jargon here. Another spot or two: Infomine; Medscape.
• Medical Student. So I’ve never spent the scads of years on med school, but I do write on medical topics. And to get myself acclimated, I can turn here. Take that, extra hundred thou of education. Also useful here: Medical Dictionary.
• AllExperts. Know when to hold em and when to fold em. When you need someone far more in the know than you, bring it here.
• Mag Portal. Find articles from a slew of categories (and add feeds to your own site). Additional sites: Find Articles.
• LibrarySpot. The end-all-be-all of libraries. On the web. Ready for you. Bring it. Slightly similar site: RefDesk. Get your fact checking on.

Wordsmithing:
Sure, we know how to write. But gosh darnit, sometimes we need some help. And when it comes to the act of writing, here’s where I go.

• Thesaurus. You know it, you love it. And here it is in it’s online glory. How else would I get my winning turns of phrase??
• World Wide Words. British words, weird words, odd commentary: it’s another little bit of word porn for everyone!
• Daily Writing Tips. Writing instruction without pretension. What a concept!

Inspiration/Instruction/Ignorance-Erasing:
You know what I find most helpful when I’m figuring out how the f to write something? Looking at others I consider experts. Seeing how people I respect and admire write an article or brochure gives me ideas, confidence, and excitement. A few folks that are particularly rocking the freelancing realm:

• Anne Ford. Strong articles with kick and personality.
• Jenni Prokopy. A writer with a strong trade background, a field I am increasingly expanding into. Her samples are wonderful for the variety of straight-man and more carefree approaches. Then, she kicks my ass with her other fascinating endeavors, most notably Chronic Babe.
• Bella Rossa. She’s a comedian, she’s a writer, she’s an endlessly fascinating blogger. Which means a mean resource to draw from.

Random:
Let’s face it. Sometimes staring at a computer is pointless. I may have all my research down, my witty words ready, my idols sparking ideas. But then the actual writing comes, and the mind is blank. So I often indulge, freeing myself from the computer for a time. A bit of random information is often the perfect antidote to dead head, and whilst procrastinating I often find my voice. Try it and see.

• Internet Archive. Check out CNN.com from 1998. Find photos and an archive of live music. Completely random, and completely brilliant.
• Whole Books. Online. Ready to use for research, or for colossal time-wasting. Take your pick from the anthropomorphized sites: Carrie; Bartelby; Alex.
• Mental Floss Blogs. From appreciating art again, to completely random (and humiliating) pop culture quizzes, to fascinating and revolting tidbits of Americana/Human-ana, you’ve got it all.

Have some more? By all means - share, babies!

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