I recently took a survey at the request of Writing Happiness through being a subscriber to their newsletter. At the end of the survey, I was asked to choose one of my biggest challenges as a blogger and writer:
1.) You don’t have a clear goal.
2.) You don’t truly believe you are an expert.
3.) You don’t think you have anything original to say.
4.) You have trouble coming up with ideas.
5.) You have trouble getting readers.
6.) You feel you have what it takes to make it, but haven’t been given a chance to show it.
As I mulled over which one of these to choose, I realized that all of them were my problem. I face these challenges in blogging, and they have hit me especially hard in trying to determine the steps to take to get into freelance writing. A lot of the problem is that I don’t know what kind of goals to set for myself. My blog is really just a place where I want to network, share, learn, and grow. I’ve never set any real goals for it, because it is mostly experimental and by the seat of my pants. One thing I can say for my blog, is that I do have some plans in place for it in the coming year. I want to consistently dole out Monday’s with Madeleine posts and the new Links and Drinks feature I just started. There is also one other feature I have planned, but I’m not ready to announce what it is yet. I guess what I’d really like to do here is to make it a personal/academic blog. I want to stay true to the post I wrote on discovery while, at the same time, making it more structured and communal.
It’s become more obvious to me in the last few weeks that I want to make a living by my writing. I still have a desire to go back to school, get my master’s, and teach at a university, even if it is a small one. But I am open to other avenues that my writing may take me. I’d love to work for a literary magazine or dive full-on into my own freelancing business while writing short stories, novels, and essays. I guess my main goal is to eventually support myself financially through my writing, but the path in getting there seems so meticulous, I can’t take the first step for all the trails I see ahead of me. Which one will take me the right way?
I’ve been reading articles in magazines such as Real Simple and National Geographic Traveler, whose contributors write the kind of stories I long to write and have published. I had the thought today that I could look over what I wrote about my trip to New York and see if I can unveil a travel article out of it, and actually managed to come up with an idea for an article that would pair well with a fashion magazine or blog. I’m also still working on the short story I’ve been writing and rewriting for the last two months and plan on revising a story I wrote my junior year of college. I’d like to query them to literary magazines next year and work on writing more stories and essays alongside my book.
I need to take a day or two in these last few weeks of 2012 to map out everything I want to get done in terms of writing. I’m not even sure I should worry about querying in the beginning until I actually have material to query. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions as to how to get started in freelancing, I would greatly appreciate it. You can leave them in the comments or send me an email at hersilentmusings@gmail.com. I would love to write a post about the feedback I get and feature you in it with your advice.