The Paris Review Interviews

First up, the Paris Review is looking for submissions. Short stories, manuscripts and poetry - From new writers.

Richard Eder, writing a book review for the New York Times, "For 50 years The Paris Review has been talking to writers, in one long session, or several sessions, or recurring sessions spaced years apart. The first talk in this collection - there are to be two other volumes - is with Dorothy Parker, from 1956; the last, from 2006, is with Joan Didion. In between we get Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot, Jorge Luis Borges, Rebecca West and Elizabeth Bishop, among others."

Reviewing the book review, it would have been great if the above paragraph had been the first one, but it's prefaced by a bucketload of magnificient prose just to show us that Richard Eder is a great writer himself. Sad to say, but this highlights the accusation that the NYT is a hotbed of elitist urban windbags. So here's what I propose. You go read the NYT book review. Then you come back here and read the excerpts below.

What does The Paris Review have to say for itself? "Welcome to the DNA of literature - over 50 years of literary wisdom rolled up in 300+ Writers at Work interviews, now available online—free"

What the Paris Review Interviews do have is a collection of fine wit and acerbic advice for writers, dripping with sarcasm and destroying any and all delusions of grandeur. Here's a few samples:

"I like to stay up late at night and get drunk and sleep late...The afternoon is the only time I have left..." - William Styron

"I don't believe for a moment that creativity is a neurotic symptom. On the contrary, the neurotic who succeeds as an artist has had to overcome a tremendous handicap. He creates in spite of his neurosis, not because of it." - Aldous Huxley

"Once in college I...got to going to the library and reading what I wanted instead of what was required. I got behind....And I still have bad dreams about that. It must have cut a very deep channel." - John Steinbeck

"...whoever you are, you've got to start from where you are. If you're a sailor, and only know sailor's language, well, write in it, for God's sake" - Peter Levi

"At the age of eighteen all young poets are sure they will be dead at twenty-one..." - Marguerite Young

"After my best friend jumped off the bridge, I knew that I was next. So—Paris. With forty dollars and a one-way ticket." - James Baldwin

"[There’s] the idea that by birth you are born a sinner. Why? I didn't ask to be born. Why do I have to be born on a blacklist?" - Max Frisch

I'm really sorry, but I have to cut in here. I believe that I have made my point. That since you're trying to introduce great writers to your readers, there are no better words than those of the writers. So, without making a horse's ass out of myself, I end this post. These are the books - The best of the Paris Review in hardcover and paperback. And you can get it all for free here - The Paris Review.

Update: Uhh...At the risk of screwing up this post, I'd like to post this link to an interview with Philip Gourevitch, editor of the Paris Review.

Working Hard - To Get Work

What's freelancing about? Depends on which stage of evolution you're in, as a freelance pro. What I'm going to do, is list the stages of evolution of a freelance writer. The growing up curve, you can call it. By the end of this piece, you will have a very clear idea of where you are, what you need to do and if you're any good at freelancing.

Stage I - Baby Freelancers

So you just gave up that cozy job and you're shaking and quaking in your boots thinking about whether you'll ever see a single penny in freelance work. You review job postings, begin to write appications and scratch them out half-way, becuase you think you won't be able to do it. Now you're having second and third thoughts about eating crow and going back to beg your old boss to give you back your job...
How to get over this stage? Two things you can do to get your confidence back. Firstly, scale down your demands. If you're thinking about jobs which pay in dollars, start thinking about gigs which pay in pennies. Easy to get, requires no qualifications and it will keep the engine ticking while you prepare yourself to earn the dollars. Secondly, you can start networking. Believe me, it makes things a lot easier when you realize that you're not alone. Besides, you can get a lot of advice and job leads if you hang out online and make a few friends.

Stage II - Fishing For Stability

Assuming that you're already past the newbie pangs, this stage is a tumultous time. You can see the jobs, you can see the potential. You think you can do it, and you're starting to get responses from employers, if not actual work. One day you think you've found a great gig and the next morning, you bump into something even more lucrative. What's required here is an understanding of what you are good at, what you want to do and what's available. Finding the right balance, which satisfies all there criteria, is a tricky affair. Don't stop the penny work. At least not until you're onto the next stage. And yes, you can start buying the home office furniture.

Stage III - Less Searching, More Working

What you've been doing until now has basicaly been fishing for jobs. You've been spending more time searching for work than actually doing the work. This is part of the job description of a freelancer. But it's time now to scale back the job-hunting and focus on keeping a solid base of 4-5 clients very happy. You need to select the best employers, criteria being the long-term viability and payment terms. For example, an employer who lets you do as much work as you can handle on a specific subject, and pays you lump sums every fortnight or monthly based on how much you did would be a good choice, provided you're sure the employer isn't going to dissapear overnight.
This does not mean that you stop looking for new clients. An ideal situation would be one where you devote about 80% of your time to your regular clients and spend a couple of hours each day to search for and complete work for new clients.

Stage IV - Profit Analysis

I very much doubt if you have any idea, at this stage, of how you're doing, in terms of money. Are you making as much as you used to do when you had a regular job? Are you working harder than before? What happened to your medical coverage? And the paid holidays? Now would be a good time to write down all your expenses and calculate how much more you need to make than before, just to maintain your life-style.

There's a lot more which kicks in after this, including an online presence, setting the rates you charge and working for yourself. This would in turn include getting published, creating a portfolio, getting certified and turning yourself into the professional freelancer that you claim to be.

Freelance Jobs 4th Jan

Here's today's freelance jobs:

Freelance writers wanted. Click here.
Relaxed blogger wanted. Uh....not exactly. But something like that. Click here.
Product description writer needed. Click here.
Copywriter for direct marketing firm wanted. Click here.

OK. It seems "The world's largest cataloged collection of original jumbo lobby cards from Mexico is seeking a new home". Fine. So do they call a real estate broker? Nope. They want a freelance writer. So click here.

Get $10 for your ePIFfunnies? Click here.
Faith based sketch writer wanted ( $100 per hour ). Click here.
Published writer wanted for a web media company. Click here.
Research writers ( freelance position ). Click here.

Freelance web content writers wanted. Click here.
Note: This is a great gig, if you can do it.

Political junkie? Want to get paid to write your rants? Click here.
Web profile writer wanted. $25 per profile. Click here.

I'm itching to apply for a few of these gigs. Only problem being that I'm already overloaded. If I take on any more work, I'll have to give up my morning news junkie time, which I will not! If someone had told me a couple of years back that it's so easy to get a job on the net ( that's different from finishing the job, which is friggin difficult ), I really would have found it hard to believe. Anyway, fire up those emails, bring out the word processors and let's go hunt down some paypals.

SEO for Writers

The question of SEO comes in only when you are not an expert on the subject, but you still want the search engines to think of you as one. I would rather be an underappreciated writer, than an appreciated SEO who doesn't know how to write. Disclosure here: I was a moderately successful SEO before I was a wannabe writer. Read the entire post before you come to a conclusion.

Brandon Cornett, writing for the Internet search engine database, has a few great tips for writing web content. "If you're a decent writer, you have a powerful search engine optimization tool right at your fingertips ... literally. It's the ability to create quality content, and used properly it can dramatically increase your website's visibility." Read the entire article. It's worth your time.

Mike Banks Valentine, writing for Internet World Stats, continues the discussion about SEO guys who write and writers who do SEO. The best thing I like about his article is the title - 'SEO mercilessly murdered by copywriters.' Well, now you know he's an SEO and he thinks copywriters are trash.

Tell you the truth, I think SEO is an art which is often mistaken as a science. The best results I have achieved, in terms of SEO, is when I produce a work of art, involving a bucketload of knowledge about the subject matter, a strong helping of hard work and a little spice of scientific SEO.

It does not hurt when you are considered to be an expert on the subject, you write a huge piece on something specific, and it's an instant hit in the community, with a lot of sites linking to your article. That's what makes SEO more of an art form rather than a package of SEO nuts and bolts which you put together. Which is why being an expert on the subject matter is more important, rather than being an expert on search engines.

In fact, look at it from an idealistic point of view. What gives a page a higher ranking in the search engines? Your page is considered to be an authority on the subject, and voted in ( linked to ) by your peers to be at the top of the rankings. After a certain period, any article you write is automatically considered important, even if no one has as yet linked to it. Why? Because the search engines know you're an expert. That's true SEO, as an art. Anything else you do to achieve rankings, is, simply put, a fraud.

News For Writers

I can understand regretting writing a book, and symphatize with those regretting reading a book, but writing a book on regret? Seems a couple of odd-ball professors at Mount Saint Mary College are writing a book on regret. I hope they don't end up regretting writing it. Now let's move on to other news before you end up regretting reading this post.

"Like a dark and stormy night, bad writing has long shadowed the business world..." begins the AP's Dave Carpenter. Whatever he's talking about, I'll skip straight to the end, "But there still isn't much of a market overall for business-writing classes, according to Peter Handal, CEO of Dale Carnegie Training.
'I think that would suggest that people are just so happy to get the communications going that they aren't spending the time on how to communicate,' he said."
Memo to Dave: Get The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest out of your mind. And secondly, Peter Handal is right. You know what's the most beautiful prose I ever recieved by email? "Article accepted. Paypal sent."

VOA has an article out profiling a child prodigy writer, whose first book was published when she was 7 years old. Cough! Cough! Ack! "Adora Svitak started writing when she was only four. She published her first book Flying Fingers at seven, and authored more than 400 short stories. 'Flying Fingers' was published in four languages for international audiences. Recently she was invited to New York City's Stony Brook University to speak to aspiring children and their parents at the Charles Wang Center."

Finally, there's good news and there's bad news. The Philly has the good news that poetry and creative writing are hot and there's lots of new jobs and openings in the creative writing field. The bad news is that these jobs are for teaching students creative writing. Well, if you can't write, teach.

Freedom Writers - Book, Film and Swank

Freedom Writers - Book & Film

1. Movie trailer
2. Photo gallery
3. Hillary Swank talks about 'Freedom writers' ( video )
4. Freedom writers original music soundtrack

Let's get down to business. Which happens to be the Erin Gruwell education project, better known as the freedom writers project. "In the fall of 1994, in Room 203 at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California, an idealistic twenty-four-year-old teacher named Erin Gruwell faced her first group of students, dubbed by the administration as "unteachable, at-risk" teenagers."

Twelve years later, as the sun rises on 2007, Erin Gruwell is a hero. She is a shining example that writers do not live in an ivory tower. That writers can, and do, make a difference, not besides, but because of their writing. I'm sure tons of ink will be spilled on Ms Gruwell, and of course, Hillary Swank. But what about the teachers, writers and activists out there, struggling to light a spark, make a difference? Fear not, I list you here.

Dr. Bob Farmer - Sitting in that call room, I found myself engaging in some serious introspection. The time had come to lasso the sunshine. The time had come to embrace the opportunity the Lord had given me. I had been given the chance to help others who were ailing. Reflecting upon the overwhelming positives of my chosen field, how could I possibly focus on an occasional negative?

Deborah Meier - Meier has spent more than four decades working in public education as a teacher, writer and public advocate. A learning theorist, she encourages new approaches that enhance democracy and equity in public education. Her books, The Power of Their Ideas, Lessons to America from a Small School in Harlem (1995), Will Standards Save Public Education (2000), In Schools We Trust (2002), Keeping School, with Ted and Nancy Sizer (2004) and Many Children Left Behind (2004) are all published by Beacon Press.

Kalisha Buckhanon - After graduation, Kalisha worked a series of day jobs in Chicago and continued to work on her writing at night....she supported herself with freelance writing, temporary jobs and teaching opportunities with non-profits throughout New York City.

Teresa Antonia Broccoli - She is a writer and social worker.

If you think you deserve to be listed in this page, send me an email. Conditions? You're a writer, you do some good, whatever form that may be in, with the help of, or besides, your writing. Who knows? Maybe you could end up as the inspiration for a film after twelve years.

Freelance Jobs 1st Jan 2007

Considering this is the first freelance jobs post for 2007, I wish you all a thumpin success. Work hard, work until you drop and your employers go broke paying you for completed assignments. Here's the jobs:

Novice writer? Want to be paid for writing? Click here.
Translation gig. Multiple languages. Click here.

Want get paid to write for a quixotic quest to restore world peace? Click here. Note of warning: He's a good guy. Pays on time, work is interesting, but most of you may not be able to deliver what he wants.

Need hot copywriter for consumer products. Click here.
SEO content writers for websites wanted. Click here.
Looking for a financial services copywriter. Click here.
Healthcare copy writer wanted. Monthly column required. Click here.
Book transcription gig. Click here.
You think you're in search of a job? Think again. This is a guy in search of a job.
Creative product description writer wanted. Click here.
Freelance writers needed. Click here.
Online mag seeking regional writers ( nationwide ). Click here.

The World Today

Writers are influnced and inspired to write about events and people they come in contact with. Which is why the Iraq war and the dismal state of politics and politicians in the U.S.A. is the subject of tons and tons of spilled ink. Sometimes, the pathos and the supreme stupidity of war and it's shattering effect on young lives, as narrated by writers, starts taking on ominous tones, and reader and writer can no longer hide behind a partisan divide.

Vengeance of the Victors
There may be some truth to all these claims—Iraq is a tough place—but the Bush administration is not quite so blameless. It thoughtlessly engineered a political and social revolution as intense as the French or Iranian one and then seemed surprised that Iraq could not digest it happily, peaceably and quickly. We did not give them a republic. We gave them a civil war.
By Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek

America's Lost 3,000
But as we look backward at our lost 3,000, it's worth hoping one more time that the ending stanza for the paratroopers today will be better than Owen's. He was killed in action trying to take a canal from German defenses, just one week before the Armistice ended the war for good. He never saw his verse published in a book. War can make poets and war can kill them, one by one.
By Nathan Thornburgh, Time

What this basically means is that the the writers, and by implication, the magazines for which they write, have crossed an imaginary line and are now in tear-shedding mode. No solutions, no wise punditry. Just plain and simple grief. Inspired writing - Yes. But terrifying. And if you're not scared, now would be a good time to take off the blinkers. These are hard nosed columnists who have seen and been through a lot. When they start hiding behind inspired prose....