BlogFlash 2013, March 3: Innocence

(Running late, but I couldn't think of what to write... until now.)

Being an innocent babe in the virtual woods, I have skipped along into my dream freelance writing career.  A few months into things, I'm beginning to see the reality of it all.

First of all, there are many English speakers around the world willing to accept jobs at pay I'd never consider.  Would you write a 500 word article for $1.50?  Could you imagine writing a few thousand of those a month to pay the bills?  I'd spend it all on suicide.

Second, I just might not be boring enough.  Volumes of work are available to people who can stamp out OMG! entertainment work or fill pages about pharmaceuticals.  If I were a lawyer or a doctor, I could write smart stuff about that.  I'd also be a lawyer or a doctor and wouldn't be looking for freelance writing work.

And third, Craigslist is for scams.  Might as well be Scamlist.  (A good idea, come to think of it.  An online place where you may choose how you'd like to be scammed, since it will happen anyway.)  I feel that some of the blurbs and articles I wrote to audition myself may just be plagiarized.  I've wasted hours on garbage like that.  I consider time to be slightly more valuable than money itself.  I even wandered into a classic give-you-a-big-check-and-wire-some-to-someone-for-expenses scam by someone looking for a "creative writer".

On a side Scamlist note, while looking to sell our van I encountered:

*A buyer who'd send the whole purchase price to my PayPal account, if I'd give that information, and then have someone pick up the van.  He couldn't look at the car first or call me.  He was working on a submarine.

* A person who didn't want to buy the van, but would pay me a couple hundred bucks if I could lock him in the back so he would feel like a little kid.  He wanted to know if this was a "dumb question".

Fortunately, everything in the world that ever happens to us writer types qualifies as useful experience.  I have more imagination than time, unfortunately, but I'm thinking about the story of a freelance writer whose various jobs, contacts and scams begin to interweave.  I'm still thinking of the day I was approached by both a British essay writing firm and a Chinese escort service looking for writers.

Be careful out there.

(Anybody know of any real freelance writing jobs?)