A freelancer's gotta hustle

Hustling is a life skill you need to learn if you're self-employed or writing on the side and hoping to get published. With savvy tactics and persuasion you'll rustle up opportunities when your inbox goes quiet. Sometimes gifts from the universe do drop into your lap – work offers, surprise tax rebates, awards – but for the most part you get out what you put in. As a freelancer it's up to you to create your own success, income, publicity and reputation. As Truman Capote famously remarked, 'a boy's got to hustle his book.' For most of us, this applies in some way.

1. Do something to promote yourself online every weekday. A daily practice is key. Even if you merely commit to one daily tweet in your field of interest, for example, it's a whole lot better than doing nothing. It's similar to the compounding effect of saving: within a few months of repeated small actions, you could have a substantial and growing following. Keep your message and offering consistent, and ensure it's of high quality. This requires discipline, but once you're in the habit these 10 minutes devoted to online marketing are just a normal part of your day.

2. Up your Google rankings. Use long-tail keywords in all your online text, from blogs to tweets, advised Paula Wynne, author of Pimp My Site: The DIY Guide to SEO, Search Marketing, Social Media and Online PR, during a talk at the Cape Town Book Fair. A few relevant, specific words strung together to form phrases that describe your work (such as 'online creative writing course, The Peacock Book Project') should be used whenever you write something on the internet. Do this, and your Google ranking will climb. Ensure these keywords feature in your website’s metadata – the description of your product or service that comes up under your website’s name during an internet search. Read more tips at  http://thepeacockbookproject.blogspot.co.za/2012/06/how-to-become-googles-no-1-website-for.html)

3. Keep producing new material. Short Sharp Stories Award convenor Joanne Hichens was gratified to see writers who'd entered the competition a few years in a row make it into the 2015 shortlist and Incredible Journey anthology – proof, she said, that as a writer 'you've just got to keep churning out new material'. Submit work to new competitions, offer new stories to both previous buyers and new buyers. If one short story doesn't get published, move on and write something new instead of getting hung up on one item you desperately want published. You'll feel more creative, productive and successful, and increase your chances of getting published.

4. Pitch new ideas when things go quiet. When there's no work flowing in, don't panic; use the time productively. Think about the sort of work you'd like to do next, then approach publications with outlines of your ideas. See step-by-step instructions on how to find article ideas and pitch then to publications in my book Writing for Magazines: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know. http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Magazines-Absolutely-Everything-Need-ebook/dp/B0058OJL4Y

5. Constantly build your network of contacts. Don't only use social media for personal purposes; make use of Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest to connect with others for work purposes. LinkedIn in particular is a worthwhile business tool, especially for keeping abreast of new freelance contracts around the world. Post a good photo of yourself and keep updating your profile with recent contracts, publications and achievements. Consciously grow your social media contacts: track down interesting people in your field you've met, heard interviewed, seen on TV or read about. When you need a case study, idea or answer for work, putting it out to your social media contacts is the fastest track to a solution.

Catriona Ross is a journalist, author, and creator of The Peacock Book Project: Write the novel of your dreams (www.peacockproject.net). Her books are available in the Kindle Store: Little Diamond Eye, The Presence of Peacocks or How to Find Love and Write a Novel, The Love Book, Writing for Magazines: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know, and The Happy Life Handbook.

5 tips to get your novel written

Now that we're over halfway through November – NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month – how's your word count looking? While NaNoWriMo enthusiasts try to crank out 1,667 words for 30 days straight, completing a first draft by 30 November, I prefer writing rather more sedately. I'm at the 55,000 mark on my new novel and it's taken me some months to get there, but my plan works and it doesn't require me to press pause on the rest of my life for a month. Here's how.

1. Set aside two writing sessions a week

Just two. For two afternoons a week, I commit to sitting at my screen for at least an hour, opening up my manuscript and typing something. That's it. I write fiction because I find it fun, creative and relaxing, so I allow myself to spend an hour writing whatever part of the book I feel like. But I try to make an extra half-hour to an hour available, in case I get on a literary roll and want to write more. I aim to write 1,000 words at a session but usually write more.

2. Switch off distractions

This really, really works. The time when I'm working on my book is sacred, so before I start, I crawl down behind my desk to unplug my internet cable, then switch my cellphone onto flight mode. People, it's frigging miraculous what you can achieve in an undisturbed hour. A single email or social media check-in can bomb an idea, derail a train of thought, vaporise that mood that could have been the beginning of an amazing scene. Try using a tool such as Freedom to lock yourself out of the internet for pre-set durations, say 90 minutes.

3. Leave judging and editing your first draft till later

Whether what you've written is good or not isn't relevant at this point. Write first; edit later. Your book won't be perfect now, and parts of it may be downright laughable, but it's important to get the story down while you feel that rush of inspiration. Editing and judgement can kill the excitement you need to make it to the finish line of your first draft. As my writing buddy (and fellow swimming-class parent) Byron agrees, unexpected things happen when you're writing. In his case, a sinister character appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. 'I just went with it,' he told me. His book needed this character to the balance the others, he now feels. Half the thrill of writing lies in the unplanned developments that happen while you're writing. Don't think, 'I didn't plan this so it's wrong and it's not going to work.' Leave it in; relook it later.

4. Don't talk about your book too much

Avoid revealing too much about your story to those who ask. Hone a one-sentence description or elevator pitch to give them enough to satisfy them. Don't go into details or they'll give you their opinion, which may ruin the magic for you. It's vital that, while writing your first draft, you stay true to your vision. Once you're happy with your completed first draft, get feedback from trusted friends or colleagues who love reading novels and whose opinion you value, or from a professional editor. But don't open yourself up to criticism too soon, or someone's offhand comment may make you divert completely from the shining idea you really want to pursue.

5. Save your work after every session

I learnt this the hard way. Rewriting a large chunk of my mystery novel Little Diamond Eye that had come to me as if channelled (you know?), three days later, was not nearly as fun as it had been the first time around... Make backups each time you write. Save your work in two different places, ideally emailing the latest version to yourself on gmail.

Let me know how it goes, and share your own tips for getting your novel written, on The Peacock Book Project's Facebook page: www.facebook.com/peacockproject 

Catriona Ross is a journalist and author. Find her books in the Kindle Store: Little Diamond Eye, The Presence of Peacocks or How to Find Love and Write a Novel, The Love Book, Writing for Magazines: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know, and The Happy Life Handbook.

Getting started: what's stopping you?

You know you want to write a book. You have a notebook full of scribblings and 4am insomnia ideas that could just work. You even possess that fabled hour every weekday to write, and the knowledge that if you actually used your daily hour, you'd have written an entire book by the end of this year. And a book might get you a pulisher, and a movie deal, and, and, and.

So what's stopping you?

Truth number 1: Writing is scary.
Yes, uh-huh. You actually have to put words down, and some of them might be crap. A lot of them. Maybe even all of them. The author's ego is delicate. Thoughts of being a writer who writes crappy words causes intense pain. My advice is that it's better to write something than nothing. 'Something' you can at least work with - say, edit it, polish it, give it a nip and tuck or even a whole makeover; 'nothing', however, will remain nothing.  

Truth number 2: Writing is hard work.
I've just finished reading a novel by one of my favourite authors – On Green Dolphin Street by Sebastian Faulks – and a wry passage on the process of writing fiction rang true.

' … From what he could gather from novelists' own diaries and letters, the urge that was common to them all was a need to improve on the thin texture of life as they saw it; by ordering themes and events into an artistically pleasing whole, they hoped to give to existence a pattern, a richness and a value that in actuality it lacked. If after reading such a novel you looked again at life – its unplotted emergencies, narrative non sequiturs and pitiful lack of significance – in the light of literature, it might seem to glow with a little of that borrowed lustre; it might seem after all to be charged with some transcendent value.
These poor writers depicted themselves engaged in this heavy task: from people they knew or met, they gathered characteristics for their imaginary humans; from conversations, they pulled out thoughts that could be developed into themes; houses they had visited were relocated and refurnished; other writers were absorbed, assimilated for what they could unwittingly donate; from some less recognizable source the power of pure invention was mobilized, while over it all the artistic intelligence shaped an entity that would thrillingly exceed the sum even of these rich parts.
To Charlie it looked like very hard work. …’
  

Writing is the best sort of work, if you ask me. A week ago I started writing my new interactive novel, The Last Book in the World (um, hopefully not), and every time I sit down to write – in that precious hour before I fetch my daughter from daycare – I feel anew the rush of creating a whole world, of having the freedom to write what what I like. But it’s still work. I always have to force myself a little to sit and write (after all, it’s not compulsory, not like freelance journalism deadline) but I find it’s always worth the effort because of the way it makes me feel: mischievous, empowered, mysterious, interesting, interested, alive.

The trick to getting started? Start anywhere – at the end, at the beginning, somewhere in the middle, or with a key scene that keeps squatting in your mental space. Go, go, go! Sorry to have to remind you, but one day you’ll be dead and you won’t be able to write. Nope, not at all. So sit at your PC every day. Make it a habit. And start writing anywhere.

Write the novel of your dreams with The Peacock Book Project: www.peacockproject.net