I’m happy to announce that I am a new blogger at Blorge.com. Stop by and visit!

Yes, most freelance writers enjoy getting paid to write. I just landed a writing gig for “Bright Hub,” a website that features science and technology articles for the common people. (My words, not theirs.) We write about our subjects from the heart, with passion and honesty. If I am writing about a technology product and find that it sucks, I’ll say so. This is so much better than those other “writing opportunities” where you get paid to write nothing but positive endorsements.

So now I can add another website to the list of sites I write content for! My first article isn’t earth shaking, but it’s a start. My specialty on this website (for now) is going to be Desktop Publishing, something I have been doing since the early days when Okidata came out with a “color printer” that was actually a dot-matrix printer with color banded ribbons. Those were the days. To read my article, visit: HERE

Don’t worry - I won’t be using my blog to hype every article I write. I just wanted to share my excitement.

photo credit: twenty_questions

Since this is my own personal blog, I don’t have to worry about any mandatory number of posts per week with a specific number of words for each post. I’m glad.

As a freelance writer looking for ways to supplement my income, I often take a look at various freelance writer’s job banks. With the preponderance of new blogs popping up, freelance bloggers seem to be in high demand. Today I found a request that was unfortunately a good example of what is available out there.

This particular company wants a minimum of 3 posts per week of at least 400 words each. The posts had to be “lively” and “enthusiastic” and required a significant amount of research each week in order to come up with the type of content they are looking for. The pay offered was $84 per month.

Here’s the math. At 3 posts per week, we are talking about 156 posts per year. $84 per month = $1008 per year. That means a pay rate of $6.46 per post.

In order to earn an annual income of say, $40,000 per year (before taxes and expenses), a writer would need about 40 similar blogging jobs. 3 posts per week x 40 jobs = 120 posts per week! In order to do all that research and writing, I figure I would have to write 24 posts per day if I want weekends off. In a normal 8 hour work day, I would have to write and submit 3 posts per hour. That is only 6240 posts per year.

Excuse me, but that’s INSANE! The sad part is - this was one of the better offers. I’ve seen many companies that want bloggers, but only offer a penny per word (or less), and they want larger articles with photos and/or video - and they want you to send them two examples of posts you would write for them!

My understanding is that there are a few very rare bloggers that are making a living by blogging, but I suspect even these writers are living on a shoestring and have no life of their own. It’s all really pretty sad.

photo credit: jchessma

I’ve been taking a creative writing course in order to help me broaden my writing skills and to move beyond writing only non-fiction. One of our assignments was to create a “Personal Universe Deck”. We were to make a list of 100 words - 80 words of sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste (16 of each), 10 words of motion, 3 words of abstractions, and 7 miscellaneous words such as parts of the body, times of the day, places in the universe, hero &/or heroine, animals, birds, colors, invented words, and foreign words. We then took 100 blank index cards, and wrote each word on one index card. We were to shuffle the cards and randomly select 10 cards from the deck. Using those ten words, we were to write a poem. It was a fun exercise, and I was quite pleased with what I came up with, as silly as it may be.

The ten words I pulled from my deck were: sigh, buzz, hawk, flavor, sour, dark, shove, siesta, shake, and whisper. Here are the results:

Far, far up in the dark blue sky,

I see a hawk, then let out a sigh.

In my mouth, a sour taste.

The flavor of my life, oh what a waste.

My ears are ringing, I hear a buzz.

Yet I lay here, just because.

First a shake, then a shove -

A looming face appears above.

Then a whisper, I know that voice.

You need to move now, you have no choice.

The siesta is over, time to go.

How much I drank, I don’t want to know.

***

Susan Bono, publisher of “Tiny Lights” (www.tiny-lights.com), a local literary publisher, invited writers to submit a response to the question, “Which is better, fame or fortune?”

When I sat down to compose a reply, I realized that my response and rationale could push the barrier of the 500 word limit, and would still be pretty boring. So I decided on a different approach. Here is my submission:

Which is better, fame or fortune?

Define better.

I’ll rephrase the question. Which would you rather be, famous or wealthy?

Can’t I be both?

Of course, but the question is which would you rather be, given a choice between the two?

Oh. How famous and how wealthy?

Whatever you wish.

Well, there’s a difference between being famous locally and being famous world-wide. There is also a difference between being doctor or lawyer wealthy, and being Bill Gates wealthy.

This is true.

Can you be famous but not wealthy?

Certainly. The guys in New York City that caught a falling baby are famous, but not wealthy.

Can you be wealthy but not famous?

Can you name the guys who created and sold YouTube?

Point taken.

Your choice then?

Well, if I had to choose, I think I would choose fortune over fame.

Why is that?

Famous people lose their privacy, but wealthy people can buy it.

That makes sense. Thank you.

So, do I get to be wealthy?

That is entirely up to you.

But you’re a genie! Don’t I get my wish fulfilled?

It was a rhetorical question.

With a poof of smoke, the genie disappeared. Stupid genie.