How to become a professional writer

If you’ve drawn a breath in the past 50 years, you know about the woes of an aspiring writer – head hanging low, buried in a diary or a laptop, constantly starting a story but never progressing past the first paragraph. The inspiration seems to be just outside of the aspiring writer’s grasp, yet it is as elusive as a dream’s lunch. Do you want to become a professional writer? Here is how to do it.

Show me the money

First, I will define “professional” as someone who makes money doing something. You are a professional chess player? Congratulations, you can make a living playing chess. Note that this doesn’t necessarily mean you’re the best chess player who ever lived, but simply that you’ve found a way to monetize your skills through playing chess. The same thing applies to being a writer – it’s not about being the best writer ever, but simply finding a way to cash in your writing skills. That doesn’t mean you won’t publish a bestseller book of your own some day, it just means that today won’t be that day.

Starting off

Though we all have unlimited potential when we are born, life and its circumstances soon hew down this potential into a certain form, mandating that we choose a particular path and stick to it. As such, you as a writer should have a distinct niche that you want to write about. This can be anything: cosmetics, fashion, food, pets, woodworking, fishing; you name it, there is a market for it. It’s much better if you are an expert in one field than a mediocre writer in a dozen.

Infinite demand

The good news is that, no matter which niche you choose, there is practically infinite demand for it. There are several reasons for this, the most important one being that we humans love storytelling and this yearning for a proper story will most likely never go away. Another reason is that Google search results reflect the regularity with which the content is updated, meaning that more content generally equals more views, better search ranking, more social network sharing etc. Note which sites are at the top of the search rankings and note how much fresh content they are getting: BBC, New York Times, Wikipedia, Reddit, they all have hordes of writers who supply the site with content and keep the site relevant.

Infinitesimal earnings

The bad news is that the pay will most likely suck, at least in the beginning. You will enter the professional writer strata only to find out all the good jobs have been taken and you’re left with scraps. “Wanting a professional writer for $1 per 1,000 words”? Yeah, right. Though these types of jobs seem very demeaning, there is probably no other way to climb out of the beginner purgatory than to grind these low-paying jobs until you’ve built your resume and found what you’re good at. Besides, no matter how little you earn, once you start making money through writing, you’ve officially become a professional writer and have the bragging rights with friends and family.

Papers please

If you have any type of English certification or have majored in English, this is your time to shine. This also applies if you’re a financial expert or can do any type of structured work (programming, Excel, Word, PDF); as long as you have a degree to prove you’re qualified, it gives you a huge boost in the online freelancing market and helps you skip around 90% of unqualified applicants. I dare say that having a degree that’s related to the project is the single most significant factor of success in any type of freelance writing.

Stuck in a rut

What you probably wouldn’t expect is that you can actually land what seems like a decent job only to have your fistpumps turn into palmfaces. It sounds ideal to be able to work from home and do the job you’re certified for and yet you can come to hate it and detest yourself for doing it. This is perhaps the biggest downside to doing remote work for a company rather than a single client: you will be expected to provide copious amounts of content and do the same work over and over and over again, all under tight deadlines. Individual clients may show leniency and extend the deadline; companies may not.

Negotiating through life

I’ve mentioned the way men fail to sexually negotiate their desires, but this ought to confirm that both genders sorely lack negotiation skills in general. When it comes to freelance writing, you should always try to stick to your guns and demand respect, no matter what. If the client doesn’t respect you and your work, it’s time to move on despite the (promise of) money. Respect can be seen through little signs, such as if the message or e-mail sent to you by the client is properly addressed, uses decent grammar and so on. You might be too overjoyed with the prospect of making money writing to think about this, but my experience has shown me that sloppy clients invariably try to cheat you out of your hard-earned money. Conversely, you should always strive to have impeccable grammar, professional/friendly demeanor and do what you promised to do.

Header and footer

There are plenty of these little tricks of the trade that can only be self-taught, but one of my favorites is to always address my clients by their first name. This is a factoid I gleaned from one of my projects in which I rewrote a management training handbook. If you want to get someone’s attention, use their first name and use it often. You should also sign off after each message or e-mail by using your own name. In this way, everything you write will appear professional, friendly, with a clear start and end, so there is absolutely no confusion on the client’s side if you’ve omitted something.

Rockstar status

If all goes well, you can expect to become a well-known writer in your virtual and actual community within three years or so. After that, you should be able to set your own terms and pick clients that know what they’re doing. This means that you will no longer have to take jobs that have a fuzzy scope or unreasonable expectations with little or no guarantee of payment. Honest paying clients who know what they want and with whom you have a professional and friendly relationship in your field of expertise – now that’s a match made in heaven!

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Men suck at negotiating their sexual desires

One thing that struck me recently is the utter inability of men to have their sexual desires fulfilled in a sensible and timely fashion. Men overpay for sex – dearly. To explain what I mean by that, I will first have to explain some things.

Zug zug

Sex is one of the most basic human needs. We as a species need sex to reproduce and continue the humankind but we also need sex to feel loved and accepted. At least this is the case with men, most of which would like to have sex on a daily basis. The random erections are pretty good indicators of how often the man’s unconscious mind is getting ready for action, yet the matter is much more complex than simply sticking a USB into any nearby fitting port.

Male vs female sexual strategies

The crux of the male romantic suffering is that they yearn for sex yet have no idea what to do to get it or how much it is actually worth. While men would like to have as much sex as possible, simply to raise their confidence and the feeling of self-worth, women look to cash in their sexual privilege as best as they possibly can. There is a good reason why a woman can be stingy with sex yet throw indicators of interest or flirt with everyone in sight. It’s about maximizing her sexual options while limiting sexual options of men who fall for her seduction. If men become obsessed with a woman, she’s virtually eliminated all her competition and can set any price for sexual access.

Sexual calculation

The supreme sexual secret women have is that they are sexually calculating and they are always looking to extract as much value as possible from the fact that men are always hungry for sex. The tragedy in all of this is that men aren’t taught that sex is actually dirt cheap and they shouldn’t be paying an arm and a leg for a few moments of indifferent sexual contact with a woman. The worst case scenario is a prominent man marrying a women that does not appreciate him or his success and simply wanted to cash out through a divorce. In such case, a women gave away perhaps a dozen hours of sexual access for a lifetime supply of money, a car, kids, house, pets etc.

Terms of access

This shouldn’t come as a shock but as a revelation that will help men build up their lives into something better. Women can be horny or give out sex for free, but in most cases a woman will have a certain set of terms that need to fulfilled before she allows sexual access to a man. The important part is that these terms are generally not spoken of or mentioned in explicit terms, since that might ruin the woman’s reputation.

How to negotiate

Your job as a man who wants sex is to pay attention to both the words and contextual clues a woman gives that tell what she expects before she will have sex with a man. Then, you can estimate her sexual value and compare the two – is fulfilling her terms worth the time spent with her? Once you start doing that, you will generally find women have a hugely overblown sense of self-worth. Of course, negotiation goes both ways and you can certainly try to get the price lowered, but you would never think of that unless you knew women negotiate sexual access, wouldn’t you?

Lagging behind

Now it’s time for some bad news: by the time you’re reading this, an average woman of your age has had at least 10 years to practice her sexual negotiation skills, mostly by learning from her friends and family, which means you will look like a complete amateur if you try the tactic suggested above (listening and looking for contextual clues). Girls start off extremely early and I’ve witnessed with my own eyes little girls aged 4 or 5 that showed some bizarre behavior that in retrospect confirmed they were becoming little masters of sexual negotiation even at that age. On the other hand, if you truly want to master the skill of sexual negotiation, you can do it even when you’re 60.

Getting freebies

There is also an unexpected benefit to knowing all of this – women can simply tell if a man is an expert sexual negotiator and will give up sexual access to such a man for free or virtually free. This sounds incredible but it’s actually true; women will flock to the guy that can talk or charm them into giving what they would never give to another man without marriage or several years of conditioning. Of course, afterwards a woman will tell that “it just happened” and the charmer tricked her in some way, but the core secret of sexual negotiation will at all times remain a secret.

I don’t know you, but I want a secure life

To illustrate what I meant by “contextual clues”, I can mention what happened to me on two occasions. At one point, I was having back massages at a girl’s apartment and I offered to take both her and her boyfriend out for dinner. They agreed and on the way to the diner we walked past a wedding dress boutique. The 32-year- old girl grabbed my sleeve, pointed at dresses and told me: “Look, aren’t they gorgeous?” and significantly stared into my eyes while her boyfriend was just a few feet away, completely oblivious to what just happened. Another girl, this one 30 years old, got a hold of my phone number and started sending me unsolicited baby pictures of her sister’s. In both cases, this was a clear sign – I want to get married with you, with the implication of regular sex. In both cases, I decided the prize was not worth the hassle and left them to their own devices, continuing to work on myself in order to become the best possible version of me.

Thanks for reading!

 

Hello world

This is my first post on what is about to become my regular venue of expression, ZMI. I intend to share many interesting thoughts and facts with you, so let’s start our wonderful journey without further ado!