Some people claim they want to be successful freelance writers yet one quick look at their business and writing practices and you quickly realize they are actually pulling the old Jedi mind trick on you. Their every move is designed to make fail look awesome. Are you one? Want to be? Here are five ways to be super unsuccessful. Here’s to failing! Ya!
5. Don’t bother with research.
When you start out your freelance writing career you really should just focus on interviewing or emailing successful writers. Pick a few and ask them to regurgitate and hand feed you all the information they’ve learned over their long writing career. Be sure to offer NO pay for any of the information, those consulting fees are simply suggested donations. If you really want to make a splash, ignore everything they say if they do agree to talk with you. Make sure to make your disinterest plain while you are still in the meeting, especially if they talk about stuff like say, work or paying dues or the ‘r’ word. Perk up when you hear about all expense paid vacations.
4. Lie.
When you’re starting out it’s all about the publications and connections right? Well, who’d know if you really didn’t write for Writer’s International? Just put that info on your site, and your bio and well, wherever else you like because Writer’s International won’t check. It’s not like they have an alert that pings the site or sends an email whenever their name is mentioned online.
3. Be an expert regardless of your credentials.
Instead of blogging about how you are navigating your way through beginning and establishing your career, speak with authority and tell people what they should do, regardless of whether you’ve been in their situation or not. Declare yourself a guru and after a few tweets, call yourself a social media expert as well. Oh, and on your tweets and Facebook status updates be sure to use ALL CAPS – IT MAKES YOU STAND OUT.
2. Pick a fight.
It doesn’t matter with who just so long as it’s with someone who is established and has a large following. Check their followers on Twitter or their Feed stats and write a scathing blog post on how they are completely wrong about, well anything really, and be sure to email blast/spam a few of their followers. Nothing like a good cyber-war to bring in the hits…for a while. Like that day…
1. Keep dreaming.
Let’s face it. Dreaming is sure easier than sitting in front of a computer all day, writing articles, making contacts, submitting queries and perfecting your craft. In fact, all that stuff sounds a lot like W-O-R-K. Why do something when you can do nothing and complain about how the internet or blogging or magazines or newspapers or whatever is “so over” anyway.
Bonus: Absolutely DO NOT work on becoming a better writer.
As long as spell check works their is know reason to work on your editing skills; punctuation knowledge or to even make sure that that that you’re work sounds good enough.
Being a professional writer is tough, so tough many people give up at trying to be successful at it and instead settle for nice, passable mediocrity. The whole wide web is out there ripe for articles to be”re-written” or blogs built on controversy or the puffed up resumes and credentials. Why worry about doing it right? That’s so mainstream.
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