Excitement Thrilled Through My Veins the Moment I Spoke the Words Aloud for the First Time
“I am a full-time freelance writer,” I said to my neighbour.
A quick pre-story
He had wondered what I did because he saw me at my ancient iMac in my kitchen at most times of the day and evening from the communal garden. He shared a few other tidbits about the former renters of my flat. With a line like that, I can’t leave you hanging.
One former tenant was a rule to herself. She took it into her head to feed her neighbour’s chickens. He found out when the eggs he collected developed softshell. He confronted her, and she had the gall to say it was a communal garden and he wasn’t feeding the chickens correctly. To which he countered he fed his chickens the nutrients they needed to be healthy and produce hard shell eggs.
He was very pleased when she moved out. Apparently, before I moved in, most people moved out again pretty swiftly.
The other renter before me, also a woman, also infuriated my next-door neighbour. People rang his buzzer all times of the day and night. Incensed, he watched to see who walked past his window after they used the correct flat number buzzer and the tenant buzzed them in. Young men, old men, middle-aged men trooped past. All shapes, all sizes. When one left, another arrived. Good luck to her, everyone has to earn a living.
I apologise for the side story. Where were we?
The story
As a full-time freelance writer of six weeks, thanks to a platform that pays well enough for me to do no other work, I am reporting a full month of writing. At least one article per day and some days two or three.
Weekends are my favourite workdays. I discovered I had to take some time for myself to wash, eat, clean, and relax. Oh and walk, otherwise, I went a tad loopy. I am taking more time for exercising and relaxing now. And feeling better for it.
Last night, and I mean night because I started writing my first article of the month for the platform that calls me a creator at midnight, I was the most awake I’d felt for months. I started writing at midnight and finished by 5:00 am. Got up at 11:00 am.
I’ve always known I’m a night owl but forced to conform to society’s demands for survival, I had to develop routines. Go to bed at ten, read for an hour, lights off at eleven. Shocked to consciousness at seven. Sleepwalk through ablutions and breakfast. Login and cold-call people from ten to three. Hell.
You know when you are in the right place because everything around you, like a jigsaw puzzle, clicks into place.
Yesterday, I woke up around ten. Took it easy for a few hours in between checking my analytics on that well-paying platform. Went for a walk in ugly, foul weather picked up supplies for the holiday weekend and arrived back home around seven. Made some dinner, relaxed some more.
Then started work around midnight and finished at 3:00 am. Went to bed, read for an hour and went to sleep without effort. Woke up naturally at 10:38 am. Made breakfast, caught up with admin, went for a walk. This is the third night in a row that I’m working from midnight.
When did I know I wanted to write?
I knew I wanted to write in 2009. Wide awake and alone in my dream flat on a barren rock of an island in the Atlantic, because my boyfriend was drinking the night away with his new local ‘friend’, I had little else to do other than to start a blog.
When I escaped the island and went to work in Prague, I looked at my blog and knew I wrote as I spoke. I did not know until then how bad my speaking and writing were!
Since then I learnt (and am still earning every day) as much as I could about writing, and written as much as I could.
A creative writing course, Medium and ILLUMINATION, helped me hone my skills.
Have I found my voice yet?
Sort of. For my book, yes. I can see how much I have to change when I edit the chapters this year compared to the last and four years before. Hemingway and ProWritingAid constantly remind me to improve the quality of my sentences. Commas are the bane of my writing life.
Being given the opportunity to publish my book chapters in the latest publication from Dr Yildiz is another step in the right direction.
Learning to write like a journalist is a whole other kettle of fish to fry.
Am I learning on the job?
Yes, I am.
Am I getting paid to learn and write?
Yes, I am. $2,010 for March, thank you very much. It would take me 20 years give or take a few months to earn that on Medium!
Do you want to try your luck?
If you want to take advantage of a contract that pays you to learn how to write outside your norm, or even if you are already an experienced clickbaity title expert and can deliver a tasty story the readers clamour for, the link to my creator referral is below.
Use this link to sign up and we will both benefit if you meet the qualifying criteria.
Good luck.
Thanks for reading.