Category: Topic Workbooks

Reinvention Time

Balloons, dirigibles, and cogs on parchment above a book flanked by a candle on each side.
image courtesy of Dorothe via pixabay.com

The break on this blog was certainly longer than just August. The aim is to post on the first and third Wednesdays of the month, moving forward. The first Wednesday did not work, since there was some kerflamma with WordPress. So, here we are.

The WGA Strike hit me hard, at least as far as income is concerned. It’s worth it, since the studios want to destroy this particular art form both as an art form that communicates to hearts and souls, and as a viable profession. The strikes that have happened across the country this year are necessary.

But that doesn’t make the day to day and month to month demands on bills any easier.

And it doesn’t make roll my eyes any less and forward to the Guild all the predatory scabbing attempts that try to workaround the strike that regularly land in my inboxes. And delete all those crap emails about “full-time freelance” (for a single employer) or “20 hours, but you must be available to work 37.5 hours” emails that also land in my inboxes. That’s called an unbenefited employee, and nope, not doing it.

In spite of that, the bulk of my work has not been in the typical nonfiction independent contractor field over the past few months, and that’s okay.

I was fortunate to be a part of the Dramatists Guild’s End of Play program in April, in which I wrote the first draft of FALL FOREVER, a full-length play that was born in June of 2022 in a playwrights’ workshop hosted by the Williamstown Theatre Festival. I was even more fortunate to have it chosen for a virtual reading in early May with some wonderful, dedicated actors. The play has gone through a few rounds of thorough revisions in the interim, and is now out on submission. Fingers crossed.

At the end of May, I attended a local small business expo. I had a wonderful time, exchanged a lot of cards, and have had a lot of fun following up, chatting, and planning future projects with fellow entrepreneurs.

In July, once again, I was part of Word X Word Festival’s Very Large Poem, where 51 poets created a collaborative poem that flowed around the audience seated in the center. It was an amazing experience. In August, I was part of their Poets in Conversation series, creating a piece around the topic of book banning and gun violence. In October, I create another poem for that series on the topic of work.

In late July, I was able to begin a year-long project at the Clark Art Institute creating ekphrastic poetry, flash fiction, and plays inspired by various art pieces, both in traveling exhibitions (such as their PROMENDADES ON PAPER and  EDVARD MUNCH: THE TREMBLING EARTH) along with work from their permanent collection. I go about once a week and spend time with various pieces. Later this autumn, I will do some research in their library.

In August, I was finally able to go down to research in the Westchester Archives about my Playland Painters (the five women who painted the props at Playland Amusement Park from 1928-1940). I found names for the original painters, and I am in the process of tracking them through libraries, archives, and census records around the country, to see if I can prove if any of them are the women in my photo. I also learned some fascinating information that fed into a project mentioned later on.

From August through early October, I’ve been honored to be a part of Nightwood Theatre’s Creatryx 3.0 unit. Nightwood is a feminist theatre company in Toronto, and they put together an amazing group of theatre artists to create and support each other’s work. I’ve worked on a full-length stage drama with the working title of FROZEN AT THE PALACE THEATRE, again born in the 2022 Williamstown workshop. I also shared the opening of THE WOMEN ON THE BRIDGE, another full-length stage play, inspired by Munch’s 1904 painting of the same name (also sometimes referred to as THREE GIRLS ON A JETTY). The feedback on both has been enormously helpful. The plan is to finish the first drafts of each of them by the end of the year.

Through all of this, I’ve continued with the serials. Legerdemain, the fantasy/mystery, continues to drop episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It’s structured to be ongoing (not a book released in chapters) for as long as it’s viable. It even has its own website. Welcome to Legerdemain, a city of magic, misfits, and murder.

Angel Hunt, the urban fantasy about a witch, an angel, and an impossible task, releases new episodes on Wednesdays and Fridays. It is finite and completely written; I’m still uploading it and expect it will end in Spring 2024 after around 140 episodes. If it continues to be viable, I have several more seasons planned, and have started writing season 2, called The Lighthouse Lady.

Deadly Dramatics, the retro mystery about love, lust, theatre, rock and roll and murder, set in 1996 New York, launched this past July. It is completely written and uploaded, with new episodes going live on Wednesdays and Saturdays until October 5, 2024 (it runs 128 episodes). If it continues to be viable, there will be more seasons. I have some outlines, and I’ve started writing season 2, The Vicious Critic.

You can watch intro videos on all the serials on my serials page, and there are new episode videos on TikTok for each episode drop.

I’ve written some short stories, two of which will appear later this year. “Lavender” will be in New Zealand’s FLASH FRONTIER in October, and “The Forest Library” will be in DOES IT HAVE POCKETS? In December.

One of my ekphrastic poems was chosen to pair with a woodblock print out in Easthampton, and I was able to attend the show’s opening and read, with my fellow poets.

I’ve had conversations with several radio producers and have more radio plays out on submission.

I still release a new column of The Process Muse every Wednesday over on Substack.

I’ll be part of Llewellyn’s 2025 Spell-A-Day Almanac; since we write two years ahead, those 25 short pieces went out the door a few days ago.

I’ve been lucky enough to attend art openings and open studios and see some excellent theatre over the past few months. I enjoyed meeting fellow artists, got inspired by their work. One of them even taught me how to work with Gelli plates, and now I am obsessed. I’m also experimenting more with clay, textiles, and mixed media.

Where does that leave the freelance contractor work?

The demise of Twitter meant I took a hit in sales for the Topic Workbooks, the other books, and negatively affected the serials. As I mentioned in previous posts, I’m experimenting with different social media channels. I posted in January and June about my experience, and will do another post in December of this year.

I need to spend more time in the Kindle Vella promotion groups on Facebook, but I can only do so when I can commit the time to read others’ work.

I’ve loved the work I’ve done these past months, and it makes me rethink the kind of work I want to do as a freelance contractor. Opportunities that I would have jumped at even a year ago no longer have an appeal. And that’s okay.

It’s about redefining how I want to work in partnership with other businesses and communities moving forward. Between weather and rising COVID numbers, it will be a pretty isolated winter of remote work again, and I need to seek out partnerships that will carry through the winter into spring and be fulfilling on both creative and financial levels.

I have some irons in the fire for next spring going into next summer, and we’ll see what does and does not pan out, and make further decisions from there.

I’m maintaining my decision not to take on social media work for clients at this point. With the fractured social media landscape, I do not believe I am the right person for that job. And my refusal to use AI in any of my work informs a lot of my decisions with whom to work.

I’m not counting on the strike to be settled before the end of the year, and am therefore looking at other work. If the strike ends earlier, and the script analysis and/or scriptwriting work picks up again, I can make decisions on a project-by-project basis.

I hold the boundaries of no unpaid labor as part of the interview process. That includes project specific samples, tests, or introductory/interview videos. All of that should be paid labor, and any “business” who expects it for free is not someone with whom I’m interested in working.

I’ve noticed a lot of businesses are trying to revert to pre-COVID policies and marketing strategies and then they act surprised when no one (neither customer nor potential employee) is interested in buying what they’re selling. I’ve had several “why aren’t you interested in working with us?” and “why won’t you do this for free?” questions over the months, and I have been straightforward in my answers.

We don’t live in the same world as we did at the end of 2019, and the same old strategies are not going to work.

That is as true for me personally and professionally.

I have no idea, at the moment, where this will all lead. I’ve reworked my resume and my LOI template. I’m preparing to go into residence in The Studios at MASSMoCA next week with the Boiler House Poets Collective; soon after that, I have jury duty.

In the meantime, I’m compiling a list of potential clients to whom I plan to send either project proposals or LOIS.

What are your plans for fall and winter? How are you changing your focus in your work?

Ink-Dipped Advice: Fake Pitches That Alienate

The new websites are working. So are the contact forms, which makes my life easier, although I’m still getting too much spam. I’m getting positive feedback and informational requests from possible clients.

I’m also getting lots of demands to host paid guest bloggers and for re-design.

That’s right, not a pitch or a request. Demands.

Not only do most of these idiots make it clear they can’t write a coherent sentence, they haven’t bothered to look at the site, comprehend the content, or craft a reasonable pitch.

What they guarantee is that I won’t have anything to do with them, and if anyone else asks me about them, I won’t have anything positive to say.

“what content to do you post and how much do you pay?” is not a pitch that gets you the work.

First of all, look at that sentence. All in lower case. No salutation. At the bottom, was the individual’s first name only, again in lower case letters, and no website. No credentials, no pitch.

If this person took a look at this particular website, he would see that Fearless Ink focuses on the business and marketing aspects of my writing. Reading the Welcome page and the Navigation Menu give an idea of what the site is about and what I do.

This blog, Ink-Dipped Advice, is clearly about how I approach business writing. There are no posted guidelines stating I am looking or accepting guest posts. If I want a guest, I’m going to go and invite one. There are no posted guidelines about payment.

At this point, this blog is not a paying market. I’m not trying to lure fellow writers to work without pay. I may do trade invites with fellow freelancers, provided we are all comfortable with the situation.

If this blog becomes a paying market, I will post guidelines and state payment. And any pitches that don’t meet said guidelines will not be accepted and paid.

That’s the way it works.

The above pitch isn’t a pitch — no research, no ideas, no background, nothing. Not someone I would invite to guest or with whom I would contract to guest.

The same individual sent the same one-line post on ALL the contact forms on ALL my sites. If you look around at the sites connected with the books I write, you know that those are sites about the books, not sites that support or invite guests. They are about MY WORK. That is their purpose and their focus — to give readers and potential readers of my books interesting content beyond and around the books themselves.

The sites also have a contact form for the press, which means if someone wants to do a story on something I write, that’s the address through which to funnel it. There’s nothing about hosting anyone.

I host fellow authors on A Biblio Paradise, but that is by invitation-only, and there is, specifically, no contact form on that blog.

No hook, no research, no understanding of what I do, no information. That equals no invitation.

It’s not even the virtual equivalent of a cold call, because professionals who cold call actually dig up information about the business before they call.

It’s insulting.

Other emails, which go directly into the Trash or Spam folders, are from people who call themselves “designers” or say they edit photos. They send short emails berating the look and content of my sites and DEMANDING that I hire them.

No specifics, mind you. Nothing about the specific site. Just a vague email full of insults and demands.

Do I believe my sites are perfect? Of course not. They are a work in progress, organisms that grow and change with my work.

But why would I pay someone who insults me?

Especially, again, when it’s obvious they haven’t done the least bit of research on what I do or what I need.

When you pitch to guest on a blog:

Read the blog. Or, if you’ve come across a website and you want to write content for them, read the site. What is the tone and the slant of the content? What are the topics? What’s the length of a post? How many links or other resources, on average, in a post?

Read the guidelines. Does the blog accept pitches for guest posts? What should the pitch include? What should the post include?

Follow the guidelines. Submission guidelines are there for a reason. They streamline the process. They are a good indicator if the person pitching/querying is a good fit. They are a good way to weed out the unprofessional, who tend to be the ones who think they’re too talented to bother with pesky guidelines. They’re not.

Craft a great pitch SPECIFIC to that market. Include a salutation, hook, one-paragraph ACTIVELY WORDED pitch. Add a few sentences with your credentials, and why you wanted to pitch to that particular site. Sign off with your name and your website.

Be positive and polite. Even if you believe you can write better than those currently writing for a site, don’t insult them. Pitch yourself as an addition to the team, not that you’re so great they should fire everyone they already have. You don’t yet know their story or their dynamics.

Proofread. When I worked for a publisher in NYC, part of my job was to screen unsolicited submissions, aka The Slush Pile. If I found something good, I wrote up a report and sent it up the editorial/acquisitions chain. However, in addition to content guidelines, the rule was that if there were more than THREE errors in the entire submission package (query letter, synopsis, sample chapters), it was rejected. That was especially true of the author obviously didn’t know the difference between a possessive, a plural, and a contraction. I still use those rules.

I know I’ve lost gigs because I sent off the pitch/query package too quickly and, only later when I filed or logged the submission, did I catch the errors. And the editors were right not to hire me. I did not demonstrate the proper care in my pitch.

Track your pitches and submissions. I have an entire Topic Workbook called Setting Up Your Submission System that tells you how. This is important. You need to know when and where you sent material.

Know when to follow-up, how to follow-up, and when to let go. Again, read the guidelines. They often give response time. Do not nag during that time. If you’re doing simultaneous submission and get a bite elsewhere, then, yes, definitely let the other markets know. But if the guidelines say four months, don’t start demanding a response in a week. In fact, because most sites are overworked and underpaid, I usually give an additional two to three weeks outside of the stated response time before follow up.

Be polite when you follow up. That should go without saying, but there you go.

Don’t argue if the answer is no. Arguing, threatening, insulting is only going to get you a reputation as unprofessional and not worth the work.

Precise, polite, professional. That’s how you craft a positive pitch and land the work. It TAKES work to LAND work.