Tips & Tricks for Freelancers!

This is part two of my Freelancing series for clients and freelancers, with a special focus on freelance writing. (Last week I posted 5 Basic Do’s and Don’ts for Clients.) If you’re not a freelancer, don’t fret! This is about what anyone (especially any writer) can learn from my experiences, so just jump down past the section for Freelancers to the section for Writers. The first section is fairly universal, so whether or not you’re not a writer, you might want to skim the first few paragraphs anyway.

I’ll be very surprised if there’s only one edition of this. Every job teaches me something new that I can apply to work going forward. This is only my first attempt at writing such a blog post, so keep an eye on my blog for periodic updates as I find new things to share. I apologize in advance for the wall of text.

If You Are Considering Freelancing

When I mention my ghostwriting to other writers, I often get two questions. The first is “why would you ghostwrite when you could just write yourself?” and shortly afterward comes “how did/do you make that happen?”

The first one is simple; I’m in debt and the covid-19 pandemic isn’t helping anything. I need the money. So as a means to an end, I can get paid to write a novel (my dream job) while using that money to get out of debt and figure out things like my website upgrade (coming very soon) and how/where/when to start querying agents with a manuscript. The short answer to the second question is that there are freelancing sites like Upwork, which I use, that will link up clients and freelancers for a fee – I thought Upwork’s fees were steep, but then I compared how much easier the work is when I don’t have to worry about the contract and payment details outside what I agree to do. Especially when your goal is long-term work with clients, it definitely works out. (Consider this a recommendation for Upwork.com, I have really gotten a lot out of it. And it’s not just for writers, either.) There’s a lot more to the answer than that, however.

Let me first say that freelancing isn’t for everyone. It’s lonely. At least now, in the era of coronavirus and digital work, you do all your work for people you may never see (though I do video chat with my clients occasionally), and you don’t have the same sort of feedback you’d be getting if you were able to walk down the hall and ask your boss if he has a second to discuss your idea. Sure, you can reach out to your client, but sometimes they don’t actually know the answer to what they’re looking for. This is especially true in the creative industry, I think. When I did some programming in the past, there may have been more than one way to reach the end result, but there wasn’t a question about getting there. Creative endeavors aren’t quite so straightforward. What is moving in one novel may sound cliche in another, or come off flat in a third. My job isn’t just to give them a story based on their concept, but also to give them a compelling and enjoyable one.

If you think you’d still like to try it, be aware that when you start out on a site like Upwork, you have no reputation as a good freelancer. Unless you can upload proof of certifications (notoriously hard for creative writing without spending tons of money on expensive courses), it’s going to be hard for clients to trust you. Due to this, your first couple gigs are going to be $5 or $10 jobs where your goal isn’t the money, it’s the feedback. As soon as someone posts 5-star feedback on your profile – preferably with a glowing recommendation, but not all clients have time or energy to write lengthy feedback – you become a more legitimate worker. I use the word legitimate not to suggest you weren’t, to begin with, but simply because now clients can see you are at least easy to work with and do the job you’re contracted to do; someone who paid you said so. My first jobs were to read and review books on Amazon and Goodreads. I will freely admit I enjoyed most of them, but felt like it was work with another that I would normally not have picked up because it was heavier subject matter. I may go back and read that one in more detail later, however, because it had a lot of good information I just wasn’t entirely able to process when I was reading it. (Remember when you read a book in a week for a book report in school, wrote the report, and then promptly forgot the book? Like that.)

I got lucky. I’m fully aware of that. I saw a ghostwriting contract in my feed of job requests that stood out to me. I’m not sure if it was my proposal, the two unrelated short stories I sent as examples of my style, or what it was that stood out to my client, but even though they decided to hire someone else for that job, they turned right around and offered me a slightly different one. I asked, and my client said the following: “I found a project for you because of your professional presentation. You communicated well with me and you were timely.” (Note the three key points: presentation, communicated well, and timely.) I can tell you that I was honest about my skillset, up to and including the information that I have written erotica, not just romance. I felt this was a fair full disclosure statement, and I think it helped in the big picture because they were able to more directly focus on what I could do. (No, my project is not erotica; it does have some steam.)

For Freelancers

When I asked about my ghostwriting proposal for the purposes of this blog, my client also informed me that the person they hired for the original contract wrote some and disappeared. This is a big NO! Do not take any contract you cannot complete. I can’t make a bigger deal of this. All it takes is one comment that says you can’t deliver and you’re done. No one will take you seriously from then on. Err on the side of not filling up every moment in your schedule. Even if something unexpected comes up and you can’t finish, do not just disappear. Communicate with your client and make sure to apologize if this means they need to find someone else to finish the project you started.

Communication is key to functional working relationships. (Okay, it’s key to pretty much all relationships.) This goes from the moment you are interested in a job, all the way through and beyond job completion. Don’t lie about your experience just to get a good job, because if they find you lacking later, you’re likely to get a lesser review, and it’ll make you less appealing as a freelancer for any later work. Everyone tries to make the most of what they do have that is relevant when applying for a job (online or off), so that is fine. Outright lies are not. If you get a vote of no confidence from a client in their feedback, it’s going to impede you getting other jobs with any and all clients, not just that one.

Your proposal might share your resume, CV, or listed accomplishments, but what really catches a client’s eye is attention to detail and personality. This applies to everything from checking if their name is mentioned in any of their feedback so you can address the proposal to them by name to making them smile or find something you wrote interesting. Engage your reader, both with your “I am” paragraph as well as including a “You’ll get…” section devoted to what they’ll get out of this deal. It helps to spin it around and give them a good idea of what that means from their point of view, not just yours.

Ask questions. In the proposal, if you have questions about the position, but keep those limited. Maybe three at most. If your cover letter (which is basically what a proposal is) gets too long, some clients are in too much of a hurry to read a long cover letter and they’ll move on, even if you could be exactly who or what they need. K.I.S.S. very much applies here. (Keep it simple, stupid.) If you get a response, that’s the time to ask your questions. Answer theirs first, because you need to put the client ahead of your own issues. The interview/discussion phase does need to provide you with all the details you need to do the job, however, and it’s going to rely on you asking the right questions. Clients don’t always know what they need until you show them. This includes asking if they want you to do X, where X is whatever potential aspect of the job they failed to mention. Examples from my work might include writing a teaser to go with a book I just wrote, formatting a manuscript after editing so it is ready for publication, or sending the client different file types to upload to various platforms or to import into their own software. They may not consider that ahead of time, but you need to. They’re hiring you because you know what the job entails from beginning to end, whether they do or not.

This is one of the big points of difference between applying to a regular job and landing a freelancing contract. If you get hired, the onus is on the employer to show you around and train you on any parts of the job you’re not already familiar with. Freelancers are selling themselves as experts (or at least professionals) in their field, which means you need to know the ins and outs of the way jobs that you’re applying for work.

Issues That May Arise

One of the biggest issues I’ve run into is getting hired for a project already having assumptions about how much or what the client has to hand me to get me started. Take ghostwriting, for instance. The current project I’m working on was broken down into fleshed-out outline, segments of 10k words, revision and rework, and then a final draft, each with different price tags attached. The client already had the main characters written out, their strengths and weaknesses, the plot hook, and basically what I would consider a complete concept, all ready to hand me as soon as I agreed. So for that client I asked for $25 for the fleshed-out outline.

Most writers are probably aware, the planning can take as long as the writing itself. But my client had everything organized and was so on top of things that I didn’t need to do a whole lot of work. It was easy to rearrange the character information into development arcs, figure out their high points and where they would break down somewhat, and more importantly, why.

My error was assuming another contract which seemed to suggest the same level of detailed organization had been done by the client. Assumptions are going to trip you up. Confirm everything. That client had a lot of ideas, but they weren’t organized well, the characters were cookie-cutter, and I had to keep asking for more information. I ended up cancelling that contract in the end; the final straw was being told the “big bad” was already someone she had mentioned, but not explained. I had to completely revise my entire concept of the story because I thought I understood who the bad guy was and the role they would play in the narrative. That was my mistake. So I contacted her and told her that there simply wasn’t enough planned out for me to be able to do the job, not on the agreed-upon schedule. I provided some resources on a number of the problem points, templates to write out characters, plot worksheets, and so on, and then suggested that she take some time to better organize before she tried to hire anyone else. I’d like to hope she found the materials I gave her useful, and since I didn’t see another job posting, she may have been able to work it out herself.

I have a contract I’m currently discussing where the client is new to writing, and I’m as much book-writing mentor, I think, as I will be the ghostwriter. The client does want a certain concept, and knows parts of it, but there’s going to be a lot of back-and-forth between us to get everything I would need to begin outlining. So while I proposed a similar breakdown of contract milestones (fleshed-out outline, segments of 10k words, revision and rework, final draft), the weight I need to put on the outline is going to be a lot more than $25. Really I need to go update the terms and insert a “working with client to reach fully conceptualized story” milestone first and probably weight it at least $100 so that I get compensated for the amount of work I think we’re going to do before I have what I need for the outline milestone. This contract isn’t immediately a “I’m sorry, I can’t do this by the agreed-upon terms” because I knew up front that it was a different sort of contract. Above all, know what your time is worth. If you don’t, your client certainly won’t.

On the same note, your time is worth money, so you need to know how to schedule your time. My current system is a combination of Google Calendar, the Self Journal by BestSelf Co, and the tomato-timer.com website, which runs a customizable 25 minutes on, 5 minutes off timer. When you plan using the pomodoro system, you know you can dedicate yourself to just the one task during the 25-minute period, and then break. I also do 50-minute focus sessions with 10 minutes off. (The timer is running as I write this, in fact.)

For Writers, Freelance or Otherwise

Some of the things I’ve learned from ghostwriting are relevant to any writing endeavor. I’d recommend learning to schedule your time as I mentioned one paragraph back, but that’s up to you. I understand wanting to write when the mood takes you. It is useful to make some time every day to write, even if the words never see the light of day afterward. (Expect a piece on trunk novels or novels ‘for the drawer’ soon, if I can squeeze it in around NaNoWriMo, otherwise it’ll be December.) I hate it when writing advice says making a daily habit of writing is crucial, but I hate it because they’re right. It really does make a difference. I write every day that I’m not confined to bed with a migraine, and even then, I write something if I can stand to look at a computer screen. It doesn’t have to be great writing, but focusing on putting thoughts on the page on a daily basis is a good start.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned recently is to have a plan. I’m normally a ‘by the seat of the pants’ writer, but that only goes so far if you’re being paid. If I run out of material and I don’t know what’s going to happen next, that starts to look like a deadline I’m about to miss. (And my stress level increases to match.) I will be posting some of my planning resources over the next two months as National Novel Writing Month comes closer, so I won’t go into every detail now. Even as a pantser, I need an outline and character details before I start writing if I’m going to be certain to stay ahead of my deadlines.

Journal as you go. This is a big one that I’ve been failing on a lot lately. I use a stream-of-consciousness journal when I’m brainstorming before starting a project, but it’s equally important to keep track of your thought processes in the middle of the project, perhaps even more so. Even within a planned outline, things change. I realized halfway through my first draft that I had underestimated the effect of the black moment on the heroine, and it was going to affect the story I’d laid out in the last half a dozen chapters. I did talk with my client about it, for any ideas, but I also started writing down my thoughts. I have the text file buried in my Scrivener ‘notes’ section for future reference. Sometimes it’s as simple as writing down the question you’re having trouble with and then laying out the possible answers; go through each one at a time and cross off the ones that don’t suit the story you want to tell. Some of my journal entries are silly, just anecdotes of ideas that occurred to me while writing that day. Others, like my Act 3 fix, are extensive. The point is that writing it down helps, if for no other reason than so you don’t forget ideas or concerns.

Focus on the flaws. Of your characters, in particular, since setting and events don’t have the same weight for the reader without characters that feel the ups and downs personally. I’ve found that if I write up a truly complete character from description to motivations to flaws, I can lay out scenes that have to happen for each point to be laid out for the reader or for things to improve upon the preexisting state. For instance, if the character starts out thinking the world is against them for reasons of their own, something has to affect that to make them rethink it. (The first time that view is challenged isn’t going to be an instant conversion, either.) The character development arc is crucial, but when you lay out your heroes (or in the case of my romance novel, the hero and heroine) and the development arc scenes, they fit together neatly and you’ve got an entire plot laid out. If you’re missing something, the plot hole becomes your next flaw to focus on.

For anything that doesn’t seem quite right, ask yourself why. Why doesn’t it fit that the hero goes to a certain place? (Is there a place better suited to your scene?) Why does the heroine refuse the first date? (Does she have mixed feelings, someone else she’s crushing on, or just doesn’t like her first impression?) Why does she want what you say she wants? Nothing can be arbitrary; it must all make sense. If you can’t justify your villain wanting to take over the world, then your entire plot falls apart. There are going to be rules for who wants what and why, and some of them are because your readers expect things to work a certain way. This goes for gravity as well as character motivations. Your readers’ expectations are going to be your boundaries. There are good reasons to push boundaries, and maybe break expectations, but doing it across the board is not acceptable, and you’ve been tossed aside in favor of something else.

More Insight to Come

I know this is a lot. I will work on trying to find a better way to organize it, but I think it’s more important I offer my advice than I get the formatting perfect. I’ll probably keep a list of things to post once I have enough material again, but if you have questions, please ask me! I will answer any questions I’m asked, both directly and in my next Freelancing article.