Freelance Jobs 2nd Feb

This you need to read, if you came here looking for freelance jobs. "Use a little common sense when looking for writing work, and don't think you have to accept whatever posters are offering. Set your rate and stick to it. Emphasize that you offer quality work at a fair price. Clients who bargain don't necessarily have bad intentions; they just don't want to pay more than they have to, and you can't really blame them for that. If one writer throws out one quote and another specifies an amount that's three times higher, of course the client is going to focus on the numbers."

Without further ado, here's the jobs:

Let's start small. $2 for one article. If you want it...

This gig doesn't pay squat, but I'm still listing it, beacuse the words 'Al Gore' and 'Presidential Campaign' are written all over it. If you want to end up as a foot-soldier for Al Gore, this one's for you.

Political blogger? Got blog? Got visitors? Want $200 / week?

Ghostwriter for blog wanted. I did fire away an email, but nothing yet...

Designer handbag bloggers wanted. Whatever...So long as they don't ask you to go around hunting crocs in Florida...

TV addict? Here's the perfect gig for you.

Gossip reporters (paid). This gig is right up my alley. In fact, I just fired off an email. You know, what I really want to do is opposition research for political campaigns.....Sigh! Well, never hurts to dream, huh?

Freelance press release writer wanted.

Are you a ghostwriter? Seriously? Not just a wannabe? Then you need an agent...

I wanted to make a seperate post for discussing foot-in-mouth serial plagiarist Joe Biden's articulate comments. Unfortunately, this is not a political blog, and I don't have the time to maintain two blogs, so this brief comment will have to do. It started off with a ruckus over 'clean', but it's gradually shifting over to 'articulate'. I predict that this is not the end of the fall-out. Neither for Biden, nor for Obama. It's going to drag on and on until the MSM squeeze every last drop of life out of Biden's campaign.....

Telecommuting Meet Career Advancement

Brian Reid, a.k.a RebelDad, writing for the WashingtonPost about this survey, asks a couple of good questions. "So if this is an arrangement that could work for so many, why the conviction that telecommuting is a career-imperiling choice? Is this just a matter of changing attitudes, or is there some hidden truth to the anti-telecommuter argument?"

I guess it depends on your definition of what a career is. If you're a writer, or columnist, and you get to work from home, are you going to be able to go up the food chain and become an editor if you still stay at home? Publishers expect their editors to report to the office and make sure that everything's hunky-dory. Let's say that you and one of your co-writers, who continues to commute everyday, both apply for an editorial position. All other things being equal, who's the one with a better chance of being promoted?

Your job definition may be to perform a set of particular tasks, but there are some things which you necessarily have to prove you can do, before you get promoted. One of them being the ability to take care of stuff which falls above your pay grade. That is something which you can't do or generally won't do, if you're sitting in your mom's basement. I mean, a telecommuter's notion of a job is to complete assignments. You have no idea what's going on, or what problems who is facing in the office. How are you supposed to help out if you have no idea that something needs to be done, which is not being done, and which you can do.

End of the day, a telecommuter's future prospects are limited because you do not take the time to listen to your boss. Listening might involve being at the receiving end of a tantrum, offering support over personal problems or just offering to help out with something. This is something which a telecommuter is unlikely to do. So, if you're a writer, a writer you will remain. Unless you develop a close working relationship with your immediate boss and your co-workers, which enables you to tackle all the above mentioned points, in your pyjamas.

So now you what you need to be, in addition to being a telecommuter, if you expect to get that raise....An agony aunt.

Browser's Wrist

What happens when you spend too much time typing in front of your computer? Your wrist gives up on you. I'm typing with my left hand, and it' a pain in the ...wrist. So if you wandered in here looking for some freelance jobs that aren't stale and a week old, you can curse my wrist. I've been doing the same since yesterday. And I have a deadline for 4 articles by Sunday....

Anna Quindlen - Uber WAHM

Anna Quindlen's biography in brief:

• 1981-1994 - New York Times Columnist and Op-Ed writer.
  
• 1992 - Pulitzer Prize for commentary.
  
• Author of 4 best selling novels Object Lessons, One True Thing, Black and Blue and Blessings.
  
• Another book A Short Guide to A Happy Life has sold more than a million copies.

And she ain't done yet. She's still a prolific scribbler. But that's not why I zeroed in on her. Any one of the above listed achievements would be enough to make her a success story. I mean, how many work at home moms you know are columnists for the NYT or Newsweek? And how many of you have sold over a million copies of your book? And any talk about a Pulitzer would be a pipedream.

But is this enough for Anna Quindlen? Nope. She wants to deliver some more, and she's does it. In spades. Everyday, for the past two weeks, I've read at least 5 columns about the 2008 Presidential elections. What's McCain doing, what's Hillary not doing, what Obama should be doing, and what the heck is Biden doing?

Today I bumped into the first truly sensible column focusing on the wannabe Presidents. And the writer is one Anna Quindlen, writing for Newsweek.
"As winter turns to summer, Iowa to New Hampshire, candidates to nominees, many myths could be dispelled, or harden into the stuff of conventional wisdom....

Print and broadcast are full of pundits, most rooted deep in the Metroliner nexus of Washington and New York, who are asked to say what it all means."

What's impressive is that inspite of being trapped in the ivory tower amongst the NYT and Washington bloviators, in spite of being a best-selling author, she's prefectly attuned to reality. I'd like to see her debate Hillary....

Man Of Letters

Are you a script writer? Maybe a non-fiction writer? Novelist? Essay writer? Copywriter? Uh...Blogger? Why do you have to be any one of these? Can't you just be a writer?

This is British writer Jonathan Raban's main gripe against the new century, as told by Anna Mundow, writing for The Boston Globe.

He seems to take particular joy in being a 'man of letters'. Well, I looked it up a bit, and it seems that it's meant to refer to anyone who doesn't want to ( at the risk of sounding like John Kerry ) end up as a grunt in Iraq.

But I do get the point. Writing is not like building a furnace or assembling a microchip. There's no defined methodology. If anything, writers are rewarded for breaking the mold. So today you have the urge to respond to the latest thesis on middle east politics and neocon principles, put out by the Council on Foreign Relations. Tomorrow you may have the urge to write about spaceage ninja turtles. End of the day, you're still a writer.