Get Motivated To Write - Issue 45 Fab Freelance Writing Ezine
August 21st, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed
This week, our freelance writing article is about writing motivation. You need motivation as a writer, and money isn’t enough. Your writing has to come from a deeper place than a desire for money - although wanting to make money writing is a good start. 
Scroll down to read the article.
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Includes:
* Editorial: Writing for yourself equals CASH: Writing for self-promotion
* Article: Get Motivated To Write - Eliminate Procrastination, Have Fun And Become A Better Writer
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You Can Become A Web Publisher Too: Become A Web Mogul
For the past year, I’ve been receiving messages from writers who want to create their own Web sites. They’ve heard how much money there is in Web publishing, and want a piece of the action.
So, I’ve written a new ebook, “Super-Fast Money-Making Web Sites For Writers: Join The Web-Publishing Bonanza”.
The ebook (and its fabulous bonus ebook) outlines step by step, with images, how to create Web MONEY-MAKING sites fast. What could YOU do with an extra $300 a day?
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[Editorial] Writing for yourself equals CASH: Writing for self-promotion
This week, our article is about writing motivation. You need motivation as a writer, and money isn’t enough. Your writing has to come from a deeper place than a desire for money - although wanting to make money writing is a good start.
You’re worth more money
Many freelancers have a real challenge with the concept of charging what they’re worth, so yesterday I wrote a blog post on the Fab Freelance Writing Blog at fabfreelancewriting.com/blog/ about why writing for yourself is vital. I’ve included it here, because the concept is important to your motivation too. When you understand that your writing ability makes money for others, then you’ll have no qualms about asking for what you’re worth, you’ll take pride in your writing, and you’ll get motivated, because your writing is helping others.
Here’s the post:
Writing for yourself equals CASH: Writing for self-promotion
If you’re a freelance writer, you’re in business. Writing for yourself - for your writing business - is a vital part of running your freelance writing business.
The more attention you pay to promoting yourself, more your name will become known; the more authoritative you will seem to your clients; and the more credibility you will have as a writer.
Patsi Krakoff nails it in this post “Core Message of this Blog: Writing Great Ezines & Blog” www.coachezines.com/2007/08/core-message-of.html . She says:
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When I started this blog (September 4, 2004), it was to have a platform to write content for an ebook, Secrets of Successful Ezines. Since then, I discovered the power of blogs for professionals who want to get their message out to people. Blogs or ezines, blogs AND ezines - it doesn’t matter if you do one or both, as long as at least one is a blog!
In the next phase of evolving an online business, I realized the importance of interesting, relevant, keyword-rich content: articles, information products such as special reports, tips, white papers, and ebooks.
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Patsi knows that copywriting writing, writing for your own business, is vital to any business’s success, and as a freelance writer you’re in business. Ergo, you’ll have to tap your little fingers raw in promoting your business - by writing… writing for cash. (BTW: writing for self-promotion is a form of copywriting. Learn how to write copy: it will improve ALL the writing you do.)
You need to build your platform: when your name is known, you’re a recognized professional writer, and you can charge appropriately. You’re a price maker. If no one knows your name, you’re a price taker.
Writing for $5 an hour? That’s what YOU think you’re worth
Over the past year there’s been a fuss on freelance writers’ blogs about low payments for writers, and even a movement toward “minimum payments” for writers. I got a lot of amusement out of this. Who, precisely, was forcing these freelancers to write for tiny sums? Did someone hold a gun to their head?
The fact is, YOU set your writing fees, no one else. YOU decide whether you’ll write for $5 an hour or $150 an hour, no one else. YOU decide whether you’re a professional writer, or an inhabitant of a virtual sweatshop, no one else.
These blogging writers were tip-toeing in the right direction: I give them huge kudos for self-promotion, because it’s necessary. However, blogging about the low payments they were receiving was wrong-headed. It would have been much more effective if they started blogging about the value their writing services provided to their clients. It would have made more sense, too.
You add value to your clients’ businesses - you’re making money for them
As a freelance writer, you have a way with words. You add value to your clients’ businesses. In many cases (book publishing, magazines) your clients’ businesses would not even exist without writers.
When you understand the value you provide, you will take a great pride in what you do, you will charge appropriately, and you will write for yourself for cash - for self-promotion - understanding that.
Writing for yourself equals cash. When you understand that, you will be amazed at how much more comfortable you feel promoting your writing services. And when you start promoting your writing services, you will make more money.
Resources
* “Seven Days To Easy Money: Copywriting Success, new 2007 edition” - discover how to create and promote a copywriting services business. All writers are copywriters - discover the skills you need;
* “You CAN Sell Your Writing Now: Marketing Skills For Writers” - how to market your writing so you make more money .
New Web writing network Ð join and get connected
Social networks are an integral part of Web 2.0: if you’re not connected, you’re nowhere. I set up the Web-writing network. Join, and get connected to other Web writers - and get found by people looking for Web writers.
You get your own page, your own blog, and much more. There’s a forum too. Over the next few months, I hope Web-writing will become a valuable resources, not only for Web writers, but also for people looking to hire Web writers. If you’re on MySpace or Facebook, check out the badges and add a badge to show you’re a Web writer.
Affectionately,
Angela
P.S. The “Top 70 Writing Tips To Help You To Write More” is a great companion to this weeks article on writing motivation. It’s your ultimate toolkit to eliminate procrastination and writers’ block for good. The ebook contains just about everything I’ve learned about the writing process and how to make it easy for yourself in 30 years of writing.
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** Imagine… $1,000 A Week For Just Ten Hours **
You can get paid to blog. The current rate for experienced bloggers is around $1,000 to $1500 a week for from two to five posts a day - VERY nice writing income.
Find out how to blog with the blogging best-seller “Blogging For Dollars: How to become a career blogger — in your PJs, if you want”. It’s my complete new ebook package, with free coaching/ consultations as well.
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** Get Copywriting Clients In Seven Days **
My ebook/ course “Seven Days To Easy Money: Copywriting Success” has been taking the mystery out of copywriting for new copywriters for five years.
I love it when writers call me and say “I got a client!” or “I’m booked solid for three months” Ð I expect that, so it’s very satisfying.
The fact is Ð if you can write copy, you can write your own ticket. You WILL get clients, you WILL make as much money as you want to make. Copywriting is a necessity for every business. In just a week, your life can change.
“Seven Days To Easy Money: Copywriting Success” is your key a great lifestyle and security for you and your family.
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* Article: Get Motivated To Write Ð Eliminate Procrastination, Have Fun And Become A Better Writer
© 2007 Angela Booth. All Rights Reserved.
“Writer’s motivation” sounds grim. Get motivated, achieve, write! Unfortunately, placing this kind of stress on yourself doesn’t work. You can’t force yourself to write using your willpower. If you try, you will decrease your motivation to write.
I’ve discovered that forcing yourself to write doesn’t work: it can’t work, because when you’re under stress, you’re choking off your creativity. Forcing yourself to write leads to procrastination and to writers’ block.
The more you can relax about your writing, the more motivated you’ll be, because you want to write. This desire to write is a gift.
The power of the act of creation: you’re happier writing than not writing
Writers write because they have a deep impulse to write - they’re compelled to write. The impulse to write is very strange: there’s even a scientific a name for it - hypergraphia. A recent book called The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain by Alice Weaver Flaherty discusses this. However, I’m not comfortable thinking of the writing impulse as an illness, I’m happier thinking of it as a gift - a touch of grace.
However you define it, the impulse to write is real: you ignore this reality at your peril.
If you have this impulse, and you ignore it, you will lead an unhappy life, because writers are much happier writing than not writing. I’ve learned this, too. Whatever the writing impulse is, when you give in to it, you feel better after you write. When my children were young, I got up at 4 am to have time to write. Giving myself this time kept me happy.
If you’re living with people who don’t understand this need you have to write, you’re unmotivated because you’re torn in two. You need to write, but you’re made to feel guilty for having this need. If this applies to you, accept yourself and your need to write, and explain it to the people with whom you share your life. Writing is as necessary to you as oxygen.
Getting motivated again: you don’t have to write, you can choose not to
The easiest way to motivate yourself to write is by telling yourself that you don’t have to write: you can choose not to. The freedom NOT to write, releases you to write. Another paradox This probably works because you get rid of stress, so your natural impulse to write can take over.
In “Writers’ Block: Losing (and Regaining) Writer’s Hunger” at hollylisle.com/fm/Articles/wc1-4.html Holly Lisle makes these points:
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At the heart and soul of writing is the desire to write. And your relationship with writing, like all other relationships, can atrophy from the day-to-day wear of disappointment, from lack of support, from lack of feedback, from lack of incentive, from just plain exhaustion, and from a thousand other things. It can be as tough to maintain love in a long-time marriage to writing as it is to keep the love alive in any other relationship. Maybe that sounds improbable (after all, how can writing be both your job and your romance?) but it’s true.
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Getting motivated to write step by step
The first step in getting motivated to write is to relax. Give yourself permission not to write. Let go.
Then see what happens.
If you’re like most writers, the moment you say to yourself: “OK, that’s it. I quit. I’m not writing,” a very strange thing happens. That day, or the next day , or next week if you’ve been forcing your writing for a long time, you will get an impulse to write.
At this stage, don’t give in to the impulse. Ignore it. You’re not writing, remember? Watch and discover how you feel. You will start to feel uncomfortable, and the longer you put off writing, the more uncomfortable you will feel.
Finally, you won’t be able to stop yourself: you will write. Then, think about what you learned about yourself, and realize how deep your writing motivation is, when you just allow it to happen.
Your motivation comes from a deep place. It’s a part of you, and you can’t lose it, although you can muffle and distort it when you become stressed.
So there you have it: the secret of getting motivated to write - allowing it. Once you realize that letting go is the secret of motivation, not only will you eliminate nasty challenges like procrastination and writers’ block, you’ll also have much more fun. Try it.
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End your writing procrastination: become a prolific writer TODAY
Are you procrastinating? If so, you’re feeling frustrated and guilty. You know you can write, and you know you should be writing, but you can’t.
Now you can. You can end writing procrastination for good. Discover how you can become the prolific writer you were born to be with my bestselling ebook “Top 70 Writing Tips To Help You To Write More”.
You’ll discover 70 ways in which you can write more, no matter who you are, or what your level of writing experience. The 70 tips will help you to plan your writing time, stick to a writing schedule, and get more energy, so that writing is a pleasure for you.
End procrastination for good today, with “Top 70 Writing Tips To Help You To Write More” - you can make writing easy and fun.
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* * The Unlimited Writing Market, The Web **
When you write for the Web, you’re never out of writing work. All Web sites need writers, and as the competition online grows, site owners hire writers to improve their sites.
The writing world in general hasn’t caught up with the Web. Now, YOU can — and you can cash in. Freelance writers just don’t realize how much money there is to be made by writing for the Web: many writers use the Web as a research tool, they don’t see the Web as a mass of millions of markets. They don’t realize that Web sites are STARVED for good writers.
Want to get paid REAL money to write? How does $150 an hour sound to you? Discover how to write for the Web today.
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** New Writing Opportunity “Beat Your Paycheck! Web Writing SECRETS” **
“How Make More Money With Web Writing Than You Ever Will With A Paycheck… In A Month Or Less”
Even if you’re a new writer, you can make enough money from Web writing to leave your day job Ð fast.
As a writing teacher, I work with new writers every day. Many would love to leave their day job, but they don’t yet have the skills to write copy for corporate clients, or for national magazines. Writing in your home office seems like a dream. Many promising writers give up writing because their lives are too busy - with a full-time job and family, they’re too tired to write.
If this describes YOU, I’ve found a solution. I asked a new writer who’s making great money writing for the Web to share his secrets. He’s happy to do so. Read my new ebook.
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** ANGELA’S BLOGS **
Fab Freelance Writing Blog: fabfreelancewriting.com/blog/
Fab Web Writer: www.fabwebwriter.com/
Top Ebook Writer: www.topebookwriter.com/
Angela Booth’s Writing Blog: copywriter.typepad.com/
Seven Days Copywriting Blog: sevendayscopywriting.com/
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Beat Your Paycheck! Web Writing SECRETS: How Make More Money With Web Writing Than You Ever Will With A Paycheck... In A Month Or Less By Angela Booth
Seven Days To Easy Money: Copywriting Success
Fab Freelance Writing Ezine