Freelance Writing – ArcticLlama

Lately, I can’t help but notice the sudden proliferation of WordPress themes for writers.

Want to know what to look for in WordPress Themes for Writers?

I first came across “The Erudite.”  It claims to be a free theme for writers (their emphasis) which is funny on at least one level since there is no such thing as The Erudite.  I can only assume that this is an attempt to create a noun out of an adjective.  That’s fine if you are writing song lyrics, but you might be missing the point if you are pitching writers who, theoretically, have a solid command of grammar and vocabulary.

Erudite means scholarly or educated. Writers can be those things, and they can also be uneducated lunkheads. Being a writer does not make one erudite and being erudite does not make one a writer.  As far as I know, nothing makes one part of the erudite.  If you are going to aim a project at us, do it correctly.

Today I came across Dispatch which is some sort of child-theme / add-on for Mimbo Pro which is the version of a magazine-type theme that you pay for.  It is a theme for “writers and journalists.”

The common element of both themes is that they are sparse, non-graphic intensive, themes that make maximum use of white space, whatever the heck that means.  The unspoken commonality is that these are themes for those people who care too much about their content to actually want any fancy-pants bells and whistles on their themes.

Normally, I’d just shrug and move on, but I’ve been around WordPress just long enough to remember when the so-called magazine themes first started coming out.  If you are wondering, no they don’t look like magazines at all.  They sort of look like a very specific subset of trade magazines that deliberately attempt a newspaper look on the front of their magazine in an attempt to seem more journalistic and authoritative and less like a free publication that shows up every week if you claim even a tangential connection to the industry being covered.

Despite the inaccuracy of the term “magazine theme” it has stuck and it has basically become a de facto standard in WordPress.

In an attempt to head the so-called writer theme off at the pass, as a professional writer, I’m going to disavow these themes as having anything to do with writers.

Next, I’ll point out for the edification of all, that the people who actually care about white space and readability as it pertains to the overall layout and ability to intuitively read and follow text are typographers, not writers.  Call these typographer themes, not writer themes. (You better get the fonts right if you do though.)

If WordPress developers want to create a theme for writers, I’m all in favor of that.  However, I would ask that such a theme really be of benefit to writers, and by writers I do not mean some imaginary writers who are lower level website owners that don’t want graphics or SEO or whatever because we are either too attached to our words or too stupid to understand the value of those things.

As writers, we care very much about how our work looks and is presented, and as PROFESSIONAL writers, we care very much about how our writing can and does make money.  If anyone is looking for an ad-friendly, SEO optimized theme, it is writers.

We are the ones who are sick and tired of junk content, poorly-written-article filled, websites ranking ahead of us in Google.  Of course, they generate higher advertising revenues because the techies at Google think more like other techies who mass produce thinly developed websites using all the right HTML tags and Dreamweaver CS-PriceGouge-4.$$$ plug-ins to make the computerized robots that crawl the Internet happy.  Who cares if the information they provide is useless to most who visit. (That is, after all, the goal.  If you help with a user’s needs, you diminish their incentive to click on an ad for a product or service that they could buy that might help instead.)

Meanwhile, those of us who write useful, well-developed, fully-researched, content that people would actually want and need to read get ranked 43 because we dare to write something over 800 words.  We might also use a catchy title that people would find interesting instead of one with the right keywords in the right order, which we would only know about after paying some other techie at shell-out-your-cash.com to get access to the data and research that shows what these magic keywords are.

In other words, if you can build tricks and bells and whistles into your WordPress theme for writers that would let us write while the PHP takes care of all that Google-required crap, we would really appreciate it.

In the meantime, stop assuming that writers spend their time wishing the Internet was just black text on white backgrounds with plenty of “whitespace”.

You can read about my rant at the Windows Live blog when a developer said that search engines are designed to look where writers put important words.  (Like in the HTML title tag?  Yeah, us writers do that by instinct.)

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People always ask me what the hardest thing is about being a full-time freelance writer.  When they ask, I usually think about it for a second or two and come up with something about keeping yourself on schedule, or finding new clients, or marketing yourself.  Sometimes, I might mention that some topics can be pretty dry.  But, the truth is that the hardest thing about being a full-time freelance writer is making yourself write when you just don’t really feel like it.

Unlike a part-time freelancer, or a non-professional writer, a full-time writer doesn’t really have the ability to "make it up" later. That is what full-time is.  I’m not saying that it isn’t possible to work a few extra hours here or there, but no matter how early you start in the morning and no matter how late you work at night, Thursday the 23rd always comes at the same time.  If that is your deadline, then that is the deadline.  There is no making it up.

Right about now, other full-time freelancers are nodding their heads while part-timers or those contemplating the jump to freelancing are maybe a little bit dubious.  They are thinking that surely you can just do it tomorrow; and there is the rub.

Full-time freelancing means filling up your project pipeline with enough work to keep you working full-time.  Full-time doesn’t have to mean 40 hours per week.  32 hours per week can be full time too if you make enough per hour to live the way you want to on that many hours.  But, no matter how many total hours per week you work, 90% of the projects you have will come with deadlines attached.  So on Monday morning, whether you plan to work 10 hours this week or 80 hours, that 18-page whitepaper is still due on Thursday. 

If that was it, there would be no issue, and you would be right; just take today off and come back tomorrow.  Chances are, however, that there is a blog post due today, another blog post due tomorrow, a newsletter to be sent for first approval on Wednesday, the white paper on Thursday, and “sometime this week” you have 8 other 500 word articles committed to.  Oh, and by the way, to make the amount of revenue you have projected in your business plan, you need to publish 5 or 6 things to one of your any time, any place gigs. 

And now, taking today off seems absurd, especially if it’s Monday, because freelancer or not, everyone knows that something will happen between now and Friday that throws off your plan for how to spend your time this week and when that occurs, you’ll have to make that up.  Which means, you have to write on Monday.

Summoning the willpower to focus and do something you aren’t itching to do is a personal thing.  What works for one person won’t work for another.  However, I find that certain things that are often recommended will NOT work for almost anyone.  The problem with the usual motivation tactics is that they require one to focus on something out in the future.

Everyone has seen the idea about pasting up pictures of things that represent your goals.  That’s great for long-term motivation, but it doesn’t work for getting yourself going for the day.  Your brain is smart enough to know that we’re only talking about one day here, that doesn’t put the speedboat in jeopardy.  The same thing goes for your kid’s college, that honeymoon or 30th anniversary trip, or whatever.  It just won’t hold up in your mind no matter how hard you try to make it.

So, what can you do?

Write your lamest things.

That sounds counter-intuitive.  If you are having motivation problems shouldn’t you write something that you might enjoy writing?

I have found that when I’m in this mood, my work is wholly adequate, but not stellar.  For low-paying, all they care about it getting something coherent that hits the right word count, gigs, that is plenty good enough.  But, for those projects where I want to be proud my name is on it, or that I hope turn into more lucrative work down the line, adequate won’t cut it.  That means I’ll either be upset with myself about what goes out, or I’ll re-write it again later.  Either way, that isn’t the right move.

But, when you are already trudging through and you pair up your work with your mental state, it actually flows better.  Those dry, uninteresting articles were going to be dry and uninteresting no matter how pumped up you were to write.  So, while they can kill a good writing mood, they can’t really hurt a bogged down writing mind.  Ironically, when you go this route, your brain gets in a groove and before you know it, you’ve punched out some solid work and maybe, just maybe, you’re writing mood has gotten better and you can move on to other projects.

If not, at least you didn’t waste precious writing hours, and you also didn’t waste good writing day energy on low energy projects.

Have a good week.

Do you ever wonder about the people who are new to your blog?

I can’t help but wonder what it is like to come to Arctic Llama for the first time and read some of the articles. If readers arrive via search engine, then chances are they start by reading a specific post, one that does or does not provide what they need depending upon how will their search results matched what they were looking for. 

If readers arrive via a link, either one of mine, or someone else’s, then maybe the first thing they see is the landing page.  Do they like the way the most recent articles are laid out end to end all the way to the end of the page?

It’s set up that way, because that is how I like to determine if a new site I encounter is one that I will come back to.  Generally, I arrive for the first time via search engine and if I like what I find in terms of information, style, and content focus, then I’ll click the Home link or graphic and start reading down the list of posts.  If I end up clicking “Older Posts” or whatever is at the bottom, then I’ve likely found a new friend.  If I remember to move the laundry to the dryer after the second article, then we’ve probably seen each other for the last time.

Regardless of how they arrive, I have no intention of deliberately causing people to stay.  That is for other efforts where the relationship is business and about money.  Here, it’s about fun and helping others enjoy the benefits of quality writing whether as writers or purchasers of writing.  So, I don’t study my Google Analytics or even ponder my rankings in search engines for various queries (though from time to time I find amusement at some of the things I accidentally end up ranking highly for).

Still, I can help but wonder what makes someone click on another link to read more of Arctic Llama?  What makes them leave?  What makes them subscribe to the RSS Feed or make a comment?  Did they find what they were looking for?  Were they entertained, or enlightened?

In the end when you do something for the joy and not for the money, you hope that what you do is worthwhile and well received.  If it is not, then you can take solace in the fact that it was both for yourself.