It was something I had been turning over in my mind for several months, but getting stranded in Europe by volcanic ash and then a cross-country move prevented me from acting on it. After that, it was fear.

Yes, even though the idea had been growing in my mind and generating sparkles and rainbows and all kinds of other good things signifying its wonderfulness, I was afraid to actually do it.

Then, I got a haircut.

It was the first time I’d done so since I moved here, so the stylist and I had the standard getting-to-know-you conversation. She asked me what I did for a living. I told her,

“I’m a freelance writer and editor.”

Then, she said,

“Oh. So what do you do, exactly?”

After I spent five minutes explaining what I did, I realized that it was confusing. How can I expect to be awesome at something I can’t even succinctly explain?

That hair appointment made me realize, more than ever, that I had to focus. I had to specialize. I had to take my favourite parts of my business – the ones I was the best at – and do nothing else. Easily managed job description = easily managed job.

Then, a randomly-found blog post gave me validation.

I don’t even remember how I found it, but the other day I stumbled upon a blog post called Copycats & lessons we can learn. I had it open in my browser for several hours and I read it a couple of times. The video, a TED lecture about the lack of copyright in the fashion industry, was interesting, but what I really liked was the blogger’s commentary. This part, in particular, stuck with me:

What does this mean to you? Artists, illustrators, and designers can now freely do what they please and practice what they do best. They can now search and target their specific audience instead of trying hard to fit into a particular mold. And with it comes the work: your ability to challenge, innovate and make new things. And if you have your own business, you have to keep things fresh for your audience.

Now, I’m not saying being a generalist is a bad thing. In fact, it can be the perfect thing depending on your career goals and personality. But for me, focusing my freelancing business on three key areas was the best thing for me and I’m happy I finally did it!

Yesterday, I read a post on Web Worker Daily titled, The Billable Hour Trap. If you’re a freelancer, you should have a look. It’s something I’ve been turning over in my mind for a few months now for future work. I also think packaged services are much more appealing and valuable to both parties than the hourly method.

Anyway, I won’t go into it more now, but check out the post!

It’s all happening quite quickly – we’re moving in May. I can still work for my clients virtually. I didn’t expect to be able to pick up my freelancing business and transfer it to Toronto, so I’m very lucky. We’ve even got an apartment. Now, the next hurdle is finding a Canadian moving company that is BBB accredited and gets generally good reviews – a harder task than it seems. If anyone has a recommendation, I’m all ears!

I’m excited to move but, at the same time, a little nervous. Toronto is my home (in fact, I’ll be living a nine-minute drive from the first place I ever lived), but I’ve lived in Calgary for so long. I’m such a Calgarian about some things. My initial reaction to learning there was no independent cafe in my neighbourhood was, “UGH. I’ll have to drive!” That’s just not true in Toronto! It’ll be interesting to see the ways in which Calgary has made me regard city living.

Well! In writing news, my husband has a short story of mine in his hand right now, ready to mail to a literary magazine. That makes two stories I have out in the world, something that hasn’t happened in quite a long time. I feel good about it. I had actually given up on one of the stories for several months until, inspired by my last post, I decided to read it again. I liked it! Very little work was needed, which is always exciting.

Lastly, I want to share a video my friend Gail posted on her blog, called The Future of Publishing. As Gail describes it, “If you are at all concerned with the future of publishing, or think that books are a thing of the past, then you need to watch this video.” And speaking of Gail, she was actually interviewed by The New Yorker! Here’s her blog post about it. Congratulations Gail! When I’d heard about the interview, I joked to her that I should’ve given her a story to sneak into the slush pile – that’s ethical, right?

(Photo from Flickr user yorkville.)

• Are Your Clients Really Getting Your Best? from Men With Pens.
• Teri Vlassopoulos blogs about choosing the name of her new short story collection.
• Lija at The Writer’s Pet writes about Fifth Business, a favourite novel we have in common!
• An article about the writing advice industry at the Globe & Mail.

So. What education is needed to become a copywriter? My subjective answer is: absolutely none. And here is why I say this: I am a copywriter and I have no education.

Well, not no education. I did graduate high school, but that’s about it. I know now that I can hold some out-of-date opinions about how to move through the world. This was evidenced when, upon graduating high school, I decided it would be more logical to spend my post-high school years in the working world. I would enter at the lowest level and work my way up, just like in the wholesome ’50s! At the time, I dreamed of working in publishing. I sent my wee resume along to every publisher in Toronto, with a cheeky letter saying, essentially, “I love books and will sweep floors if I have to.” I was surprised at the time that nobody took me up on this too-good-to-miss offer.

I ended up working in restaurants, pursuing web and magazine writing opportunities as they arose in my free time. As always, I read a lot and wrote as much as I could, getting used to adapting my voice and tone to the subject matter. After a few years I moved to Calgary and began working office jobs, including my first marketing & communications job, which I held for five years. The rest, if I may be cheesy, is history.

Now, I’m not advocating shunning post-secondary education in the least. In fact, by rights I shouldn’t have even got that job I just mentioned – the posting called for someone with a BA. It was just luck that they overlooked that. I’m merely saying that, with copywriting, all you really need to succeed is a good grasp of spelling and grammar and a way with words. I have those things naturally (tooting my own horn, yes). I like to think that early employers took a chance on me because they liked my writing (I still hold the record for best speller at the aforementioned marketing & communications job), and sensed how much I love writing.  As a freelance copywriter, I’ve not had a single prospective client ask about my education. They only care about how awesome I can make their project sound. In the end, experience spoke louder for me than any degree I could get.

What do you think? Is higher education necessary to become a copywriter?

(Image courtesy of stock.xchng user tsunei.)

I decided to continue once I realized my mistake. I was disheartened at the beginning because it started out so confusingly, Lessing listing her grandparents and talking about them in a way that was hard to follow. I almost gave up, especially since the book was volume one of two and not at all short. But, happily, it got loads better. There wasn’t really a structure to the autobiography. I mean, yes, she does tell her story chronologically, but she digresses into stories and memories that might not have to do with the “plot,” at least not obviously. And she does this in such a compelling way; her stories are so interesting and her tone is so engaging. She was born in Iran and grew up in Zimbabwe, the daughter of British parents who were farming in “the colonies,” and was also a Communist. Though she seemed to like living there (even if her childhood wasn’t perfect), she has a pretty realistic view of this time in history; she leans towards the side of “this was a kind of ridiculous time and I tried to change it in my own way.” Also, I love when people branch off into side stories, especially elderly people who often have a lot of great stories.

Anyway, I read the book eagerly and am now reading the second volume, starting after she leaves Zimbabwe for England with her young son. She writes about her writing process and I thought it’d be useful to share. She writes:

Impossible to describe a writer’s life, for the real part of it cannot be written down. How did my day go in those early days in London, in Church Street? I woke at five, when the child did. He came into my bed, and I told or read him stories or rhymes. We got dressed, he ate, and then I took him to the school up the street . . . I shopped a little, and then my real day began. The feverish need to get this or that done . . . had to be subdued to the flat, dull state one needs to write in . . .

And now, on the little table that has been cleared of breakfast things, replaced by scattered sheets of paper, is the typewriter, waiting for me. Work begins. I do not sit down but wander around the room. I think on my feet . . . I find myself in the chair by the machine. I write a sentence . . . will it stand? But never mind, look at it later, just get on with it, get the flow started. And so it goes on. I walk and I prowl, my hands busy with this and that . . . I walk, I write. If the telephone rings I try to answer it without breaking the concentration. And so it goes on, all day, until it is time to fetch the child from school or until he arrives at the door . . .

So that’s the outline of a day. But nowhere in it is there the truth of the process of writing. I fall back on that useful word ‘wool-gathering.’ And this goes on when you are shopping, cooking, anything. You are reading but find the book has lowered itself: you are wool-gathering. The creative dark. Incommunicable.

She then goes on to recount how different publishing was back then, in the ’50s, how there used to be a close relationship between writer and publisher/editor, and books were sometimes published even though they wouldn’t make any money – just because they were good. Thoroughly depressing. This is why I like small/independent publishing. For the love! Or any other, less cheesy, phrase you’d like to substitute.

Anyway, this was long but I hope it was interesting. Personally, I can’t get enough of reading about the writing/creative process!

• My laptop support thing. I have no idea what these are actually called, but it’s pillowy underneath with a flat surface on top. It sits on my lap and my laptop sits on top of it. Good for when my laptop gets warm from the intensity of my writing (or something).
• An empty mug of tea. A friend of mine brought it back from the UK and it’s oversized and lovely.
• A copy of Why Do We Say It?, a book given to me by a fellow word-liker friend. He and I used to sit next to each other at work, and almost every day we would come across some phrase everyone takes for granted, like “flash in the pan” and wonder how it entered our lexicon. We also used to proofread junk faxes our office received, which often had hilarious grammatical errors. Oh, good times indeed! I’m reading it again to harvest the best ones for a blog post.
• The second volume of Doris Lessing’s autobiography – blog post coming about that too.
• My cell phone, battery low.
• A notebook and pen. I bought this notebook to prove to myself once and for all that I don’t like perfect-bound notebooks. I still don’t, but I will power through.
• An Xbox 360 controller for when it’s time to take a break!

A paid-for URL, a few redesigns and some hilarious spam – this blog’s seen a lot in 2009! I took a quick look back at some of my earlier posts and thought I’d share some of my personal highlights from Wordscience. Here are the blog posts I liked the most in 2009:

• My Life With Robertson Davies
• Office Culture for the Self-Employed
• Three Ways my Mother Can Help you be a Better Freelancer
• How the Web Has Changed Since “My Day”
• Three Ways to Find Writing Motivation When You Just Don’t Care
• Quotes on Writing and Art

Oh, this one’s not a post of mine, but I kind of wish it was, given my Spelling Thing: Ten Words You Need to Stop Misspelling from The Oatmeal.

I hope everyone has/is having a great New Year’s Eve!

(Photo from stock.xchng user Staszkinse)

In 2009, I started freelancing full-time. I’d been a freelance writer for several years, but always when I had time left over after my day job. I was always afraid to commit full time to freelance writing. I loved it, I was great at it, but there were always excuses – primarily money-related.

One day this year, my husband and I were walking to our respective jobs. We were almost at the street where we would part ways and I was talking about how the thought of turning down that street was tying my stomach into knots. It wasn’t a new topic of conversation. In fact, it was so frequent it was bordering on annoying for the both of us. Except on this day, instead of listening and trying to calm me down, my husband told me that my happiness was worth more to him than the salary I was working too hard for every day. He told me he would support me if I wanted to try freelancing full-time.

In the days that followed, we worked out budgets and discussed my plans. I revamped my existing website and got started. I was lucky enough to find a few clients pretty quickly, and they were great clients. I got to work with them on projects they were passionate about, projects they were starting to help others. One of these clients even offered me a part-time writing job. That was not only a source of steady income, but made me feel pretty good about the quality of work I’d done for them.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all smooth sailing – I got stiffed on a $30 invoice, for instance – but it’s been worth it. This year, I finally got to do something I’ve always wanted to do but didn’t believe possible.

I’m excited about 2010. I’ve been discovering what I’m good at and what I’d rather not do. I’m making plans for the next year. Nothing earth-shattering, but it does involve a site revamp, because I can spend many happy hours looking at WordPress templates. I plan to have that done as early in January as possible and I’m excited!

Here are a couple of other year-end posts I’ve been reading:

• Annual Review: 2009 Life Lessons at the Art of Non-Conformity.
• Don’t Wait Until January 1st to Plan Your Freelance Writing Strategy for the New Year at the FWJ Network.

What are you planning for 2010?

“For years I set aside daytimes for artmaking and evenings for writing; at some point I reversed that schedule, and months passed before I realized my writing had dried up – not for lack of ideas, but because it turns out I process words better at midnight than midday.”

“Try, if you can, to reoccupy your own aesthetic space of a few years back, or even a few months. There is no way. You can only plunge ahead, even when that carries with it the bittersweet realization that you have already done your very best work.”

“Working within the self-imposed discipline of a particular form eases the prospect of having to reinvent yourself with each new piece.”

“New work is supposed to replace old work. If it does so by making the old work inadequate, insufficient and incomplete – well, that’s life. (Frank Lloyd Wright advised young architects to plant ivy all around their early buildings, suggesting that in time it would grow to cover their ‘youthful indiscretions.’)”

“Only the maker has a chance of knowing how important small conventions and rituals are in the practice of staying at work.”

“The hardest part of artmaking is living your life in such a way that your work gets done – over and over.”

“Only in these moments when we are truly working on our own work do we recover the fundamental connection we share with all makers of art. The rest may be necessary, but it’s not art. Your job is to draw a line from your life to your art that is straight and clear.”

The last three, in particular, were my favourites. I should print them out and read them next time I’m considering taking another fiction workshop instead of writing new stories!