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I think that every writer will go through writer’s block at some point or another. I believe I am suffering from it right now. As I type this, my family is arguing in the living room while the Reds game is on, which can be quite a distraction.
The problem with writer’s block when you are freelance writing for a living, is that if you don’t make a hundred and eighty bucks by next Friday, they aren’t really going to understand or give a shit if you just didn’t feel like writing anything for the previous week.
How I am trying to get around my writers block is to write something for this blog. It isn’t work for hire, and I really don’t make any money of note from it, so it doesn’t really matter if it is low quality work. I think it is working, because as I type this the words I need to put down are flowing through me.
I think this is enough for now, I need to get back to work.
I write SEO articles for a living. I can’t say that it is extremely lucrative, but I do enjoy what I do, and I am very good at it.
I have also tried my hand at writing fiction. Writing fiction is more fun than writing fact based articles, but thus far I have not found a venue that I am comfortable with, nor have I found a way to be compensated for my work as well as I am compensated for writing SEO articles. It isn’t that my fiction writing skills are not good, it is just that I am afraid to put so much time into something that might not make me what I need to survive.
I have talked to many writers, and read many interviews with writers that say once a story gets moving, it takes off on a life of it’s own. It is almost as if the writer is “channeling” the story.
I agree with Alan Moore that writing is a form of magic. When a writer creates a world for the reader from nothing more than his imagination, there is no other explanation besides magic. Do not forget that a fictional work can effect the real world in wonderful ways. Even the fact that you are reading this is a testament to the works of science fiction writers of the past.
But I like to eat every day, and my baby needs a new pair of shoes, so I write SEO articles for a living. However, as I keep writing I will be looking for ways to expand my craft, so perhaps one day you may read a work of fiction with my name underneath the title.
I started this blog about 5 years ago, because I needed to find a way to make money online. While I thought that the people who wrote blogs made more money online than the people who followed their advice, at first I did find a couple of ways to make money online. I found a company that supplied an item that I could buy, and I could sell it online at a much higher price. This process was time consuming, and I was burned more than once. Often, I wouldn’t make much money by selling the item, and I would have to scramble to cover the shipping costs.
Being a fairly intelligent individual, I found that I could make money online by writing. While I did make some money doing this, it wasn’t very cost effective. I would spend a lot of time researching an SEO article, writing it, and then getting paid a pittance. No matter how hard I tried, I could not make a living.
I eventually went back to commissioned sales away from the home. This lasted about 3 years, and I once again found myself unemployed. While I drew unemployment, I kept searching for ways to make money online. I found that I could write comedy articles for sites like Listverse and Cracked, and they would pay me a 100 dollars per article. I did end up getting one article accepted and published, and ten other articles that I pitched ended up on the cutting room floor. I couldn’t make a living doing this.
Meanwhile, are illustrious leaders in the congress decided that they were paying out too much money for unemployment benefits, and I had my checks cut by a third. Fueled by desperation, I finally found a way to make a living online.
I write short, SEO articles for three bucks a pop. It doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but I can crank out an article in about 10 minutes. With the distractions of working from home, I make about 300 bucks a week. It isn’t a lot of money, but I don’t have to put up with the favoritism you will find in any place of employment, and I am saving money on gas and lunches. It took me a lot of searching on and off for about 5 years, but I am finally making a living from home. Now, I just need to increase the three hundred dollars per month, and I will let you all know how it turns out.
BTW, if you want to rent this blog, or hire me to write something for you, drop me a line.
