Freelance Writing Tip #34: Dream

Dreams can range from the surreal to the fantastic. Your nightly travels can be frightening, exciting, depressing, and engaging. Whatever theme your dreams have, the concept of dreams can be an excellent motivational tool for your fiction.

Dreams work well as tools within your fiction for quite a few reasons. For example, well-described dream can help set mood and tone of any fiction piece. Take Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, for example, where Harry’s inner turmoil was accentuated by Voldemort’s pursuit of his inner consciousness. A good dream can also shed light on a character’s motivation or “inner being,” something that may not be readily apparent to other characters or the reader. Sometimes dreams can be prophetic; the lack of dreams can also be quite telling of a character’s distress or fear.

One tool that you can use to describe and build a character’s dream is, of course, a dream dictionary. Dream dictionaries often claim to shed light on Jungian and archetypal dream symbols. By looking up definitions of different objects in any dream, you can hypothetically piece together what the dream means. Whether or not you buy into the whole philosophy that your dreams are actually subconscious messages is entirely up to you, but the concept can be excellent fodder for characters within your stories.

Another method for utilizing dreams in your fiction, or as a motivation to write, would be to keep a dream journal. Explore what dream journals have to offer your characters by using one for your own dreams. Simply, find a unique journal and keep it next to your bed with a pen. After waking up from your night terror or amazing fantasy, write it down immediately. You may find that when you’re awake, you may not be able to read your handwriting. Diligently keeping a dream journal will take time, but the rewards could outweigh your initial discomfort, simply because you are getting into the habit of capturing something that has motivated you to write. Taking those raw emotions and images and turning them inside out on paper is always a good thing. Always.

As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, you may want to conduct more research and verify your online sources, in order to make an informed decision about dreaming. For more information about sleep, dreams and dreaming, Discovery Health has a really well done sleep and dreams information center that has articles about research, sleep disorders, etc. In one of Discovery Health’s articles, a dream expert talks about why we dream, and her scientific explanation could help shape your opinions about dreams and dreams interpretation.

July 23, 2007
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Freelance Writing Tip #33: The Danger of Over-Inflating Ego

One of the things that is extremely challenging to do is to assess just “how good” your writing abilities are. It can be next to impossible, especially since gaging our efforts is a double-edged sword. On the one side, we want to feel good about what we do, because it helps keeps us motivated to write. On the other, we don’t want to over-analyze our writing because we’ll end up putting down our pens and stop writing altogether.

It’s necessary to find a balance between the two extremes for several reasons, but the biggest one is this: If your ego is over-inflated, you can really damage your career. Risks include:

  • Alienating fans
  • Disputes with editors
  • Late or non-existent payments
  • Exclusions from future contracts or work
  • Bad customer experiences

    • These are just a few of the reasons why you have to manage not only your writing, but the resiliency of your personality and your ego. Remember that you are selling yourself as an independent contractor, and any time you fall into one of the common traps that many authors seem to do–you are limiting the amount of income you could potentially make.

    July 20, 2007
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    Freelance Writing Tip #32: Use Competition to Your Advantage

    Out of all the networking activities that you can do, the hardest concept to deal with is the green monster. I’m talking about jealousy, of course, that destructive force that can sabotage your career and take down other talented people right along with it.

    While there is healthy and unhealthy competition, a lot of times what jealousy boils down to is not necessarily whether or not you’re jealous–but how you react to different situations.

    For example, say you have a fellow writer who perhaps isn’t as experienced as you are, or doesn’t have as many publications as you do. For whatever reason, you are on an unlucky streak, unable to get anything published–or written–for weeks. Then, your comrade-in-words announces they’ve signed “the” deal, the one you’ve been waiting for.

    It is absolutely normal to feel jealous of other people who advance their creative careers. There is a lot of competition in the creative fields, and it has become increasingly difficult to break into those areas successfully. In order to devote yourself to a creative industry, you have to be passionate and dedicated about what you’re doing–something that can take a toll on relationships with other people.

    You can turn your jealousy around by channeling that negative energy into something positive. Instead of calling your fellow peers a host of slurs, congratulate them on their success and motivate yourself through their “wins.” Remember, the more time you spend ranting about someone else’s work–the less time you have to think critically and be smart about your own efforts.

    Overcoming jealousy is essential to networking and, unfortunately, since this is a basic human emotion, some people will get over it and some people won’t. What does that mean for you? It means that if someone shuts you off because they’re acting like they are in the 6th grade, you deal with that situation in your own way, and then find other writers to network with.

    Writing is competitive, yes, but careers are wholly unpredictable and hard to plan. You may think you’re on the path to becoming the next Neil Gaiman, when in fact your book may never see the light of day. On the flip side, you could be the next J.K. Rowling, even with a delay in your career. Because of that, it not only pays to be nice, it is essential that you understand which of your writing peers support you and which ones don’t. Having a basic comprehension of the people around you gives you the opportunity to tap into a support and resource network, something that can exist outside of the competition.

    July 18, 2007
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    Freelance Writing Tip #31: Use Technology Wisely for Online Networking

    In a previous post, I talked about how it’s necessary to avoid flame wars and advised you to exercise diplomacy with editors.

    While it is true, you do have to be careful about what you post, you also need to be concerned with how you publish your thoughts, emails, etc. online.

    What was I talking about here? Emails, IMs, blogs, vlogs and forum posts. When you throw yourself out there on the web, you open yourself up to criticism–especially if you are a writer. It’s essential that you realize this, because every word you type could be read by a potential employer and many do research you online as part of the hiring process.

    The most common complaint that I hear publishers, editors, and colleagues talking about is this: “Why would I hire someone to write for me who can’t spell?” While Human Resource departments have the luxury of screening employees out based on a resume, many freelance writing jobs do not require one. I’ve been hired for quite a few assignments based on networking alone.

    Over the years I have run into several writers who rely on the fact that “someone else will edit their work.” Those writers have yet to be published or, if they were, they quickly developed a reputation as a “hack” writer and were not invited for subsequent assignments. As a manager for a book line, I’ve also received resumes and emails from several people asking for work. Of those resumes and emails, almost a full quarter of them had misspelled submissions, poor grammar, and horrid typing.

    While the idea about improving online communications may sound fairly high-brow to some, try to think about it another way. If you are a writer, words are the tools of your trade and sentences are your building blocks. If you can’t find the right words to put a grammatically correct sentence together in an email, why would someone pay you for your finished work?

    So avoid l33tspeak, typing in all caps, fumbling around on the keyboard, and bad punctuation–represent yourself well so your potential client has no reason not to hire you.

    July 16, 2007
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    Freelancing 101: What does it mean to be a freelancer?

    For a few months now, I’ve been talking about several topics that range from building a freelance writing business to writing motivation to writing employment. As someone was kind enough to point out, I haven’t devoted any efforts to address what freelancing is, why people are drawn to it, and how hard it can be.

    A freelancer, as defined on Dictionary.com is “A person who sells services to employers without a long-term commitment to any of them.” For those of you who enjoy word etymology, according to Wikipedia, the term free lance came from “Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) in his well-known historical romance Ivanhoe to describe a “medieval mercenary warrior.”

    Freelancers tend to work by a “project basis,” rather than on a long term or contractual employment period. Typically, freelancers work for themselves as independent contracts who receive 1099s for their efforts at the end of the calendar year. Some people freelance on a part-time basis; others full-time.

    The appeal of being a freelancer? Well, sometimes it allows a writer, artist or other creative type to begin building a portfolio in their spare time while they maintain an unrelated day job. It can offer an opportunity for additional funds, the freedom to keep your own hours, and the ability to work from home.

    While there is a huge attraction to the idea that you could go into business for yourself, there is also a downside. First, it’s hard work. You have to find your own leads, come up with a writer’s resume and writer’s portfolio, track your income and expenses, figure out how to manage your time, and promote yourself. The easiest way to explain what freelance writing is like, is to compare it to a full time job.

    In a full time job, you have a steady flow of work, a regular paycheck, benefits, and the ability to work with other people. As a freelancer, you have none of that and often keep longer hours to build a reputation. No deposits at an exact date and time, no health insurance benefits, no company. While many people, websites, and movies romanticize a writer’s life–it can be that exact moment of bliss as they describe, but you have to write every day simply, because you aren’t writing for yourself.

    So that’s it, in a nutshell, what freelancing is all about. Whether people are drawn to it for the ability to live a free lifestyle or not–many freelance writers take the good with the bad simply because, like me, they love to write.

    July 11, 2007
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