I must have had a life two months ago, before I began work on the project I finished Friday – but what was it? What exactly did I do every morning after I got out of bed?
I’ve heard people express this sentiment after taking the bar exam, or completing similarly difficult endeavors. I’m not comparing the book I just wrote to becoming a lawyer, but it was all-consuming. I’d get up early, get to the computer almost immediately, and stay there for five or more hours, after which I’d decompress for an hour or so before moving on to the mundane chores of the day. Now that I’m finished, and I don’t yet have a new gig – a topic I’ll get to momentarily – I have no idea what to do with myself. During the past two months all sorts of things fell by the wayside, but I can’t even remember what they were. Which just goes to show, a lot of busywork we think is vital can be pared from our lives and eventually won’t be missed.
What’s particularly hard for me are these early morning hours, the time when my mental energy is at its sharpest. I’ve always used these hours to write, whether I’m working on my own writing or clients’. 
Which is what I should be doing: hustling up new work. The rewards of the last job won’t last forever, or even half of forever.
Yesterday I was surfing my freelance sites and found a blog with assessments of various job sites, including one I use regularly, Guru.com. I’ve gotten a few jobs via Guru, one of which led to a connection outside the service that’s been fairly lucrative. Other than that, however, the pickings on Guru are mighty slim. According to the writer’s research,which he describes step-by-step,
It is not worth a freelance writer’s time to be an active member of a site that will generate a whopping 14 projects that do not pay the bottom rate…
I always knew this was true, but since I did get a few gigs from Guru, and there aren’t that many job sites that are any better, I kept using it. After reading this, though, I wonder where I should be looking.
That’s the hard part about freelancing, well, one of the hard parts, maybe the hardest: finding work. It used to be easier, when print media was a hungry maw that needed constant feeding. Now that print’s on a permanent starvation diet, a book review here and a news story there just don’t occur with regularity; the primary outlet for most freelancers is the Internet, which pays abominably. That’s why I try to stick to full-length books. So…
Need book, anyone? Contact me at marquest@earthlink.net.
