Repeating Myself…Almost

So I started writing this blog about my hiatus from writing and right when I started the second paragraph of my long drawn-out explanation, I experienced a strange surge of déjà vu (no, not the Beyoncé song, although that is now stuck in my head). So I looked to my blog, and yup, I’d already poured my heart out and begged forgiveness. And that was a month and few days ago. So now I’m at it again. So let me tell you a little bit more about my freelancing gig. You read the previous blog and found out a little about how I stumbled across the job. It is truly a part-time gig and it pays merely pennies, but the experience I’m gaining has been pretty helpful. While I don’t have an exact count of how many articles I’ve contributed to the world wide web so far, I can tell you that I have submitted content 64 days this year. Considering that we’ve had 186 of those days so far, that means I’ve submitted for roughly 35% of the days of the year. (I’ll do a full tally of articles and words in the coming days so that you be in awe of the full magnitude of what I’m saying). But for now, bear with me as I catalog some of the lessons I’ve learned:

Accountability in Writing. Writing for this company means adhering to deadlines. If I pick up an article or multiple articles, I have 48 hours to complete them (additional hours if I pick up a block [the term for articles]) on a Thursday. Sure, 48 hours may seem like a large range of time, but after you factor in things like work, sleep, husband, dad, son and the rest of the huge laundry list of life that gets in the way, we’re talking 5-10 hours at most. And while the company editors pretty flexible if you are a little late if you let them know in advance, it’s not something I take for granted or abuse. This accountability forces me to focus, and to finish, while at the same time to recognize my limits. If I’m tired, my writing and typing for that matter are garbage, and I put it away for the next day. After I’m done, I send them in and someone else reads and critiques them, which leads to my second lesson.

Humility in Writing. I’ve always considered myself a pretty decent writer. I can turn a phrase. But then I turn in my articles and for the first month, I’m getting feedback on every article, and at first the criticism stings like alcohol on an open wound. Maybe I’m not as good as I think I am. Or maybe I am, but I’m careless and I rush through pieces. Teachable moment! Isn’t this the same shit I’m telling my grown college students in my English 1010 class? Double teachable moment, because then I started telling my students that even the more experienced writers—the ones that know better—make mistakes, and that it’s only by taking the time with something that we get better, which endears us to each other even more because now I’m with them and just telling them. And this of course leads me to my final lesson. But before I get to that let me add on the importance of proofreading as part of that lesson in humility. I was at the end of this blog and proofreading when I realized that I’d neglected to add this. No matter how good you are, or think you are, look over your stuff. As a result, I now only get periodic quality checks and received a 4.5out of 5 two weeks ago. But I still have to remain humble, since I just received a 3 out of 5 today.

Improvement in Writing. The purpose of all this is so that I can be better. As I sit here typing this, I am toying with the idea of setting deadlines for myself with this book. Sounds simple right? And just like I learned to set small increment goals with my weight loss (totally another blog), I should probably set concrete ones with this writing thing, not just for my gig, but for my book, which I did pick up again in May. I gave myself a general deadline that by the end of the summer I would review the whole thing, but I can tell you that in the past month, I’ve only picked it up three times.

Another overarching lesson that touches all three of these areas is conquering my own fear of writing, or more accurately that of letting people read my writing. Isn’t that what I’m doing this for, you may ask, and the answer is both yes and no. Yes, I would love for others to read my finish work and enjoy it, but I don’t write expressly for others. I write for the same reason so many other writers do: because at any given moment, there is a story swimming around in my brain and the characters are crowding my head.

I’ll be back tomorrow with another. Tomorrow’s blog is totally different and for commercial purposes, but again bear with me: you might learn something.