FEW 2 | - Freelance Writer
Sep 07, 2015 | #1
Being a professional academic writer is like being a super-villain: Some little jerk is always trying to foil your evil plans. But the difference between a writer and a super-villain is that as a writer you are your own best nemesis. Super-villains are notorious for being destructive, but writers are notoriously self-destructive.
The most self-destructive aspect of the writer's dark and damaged soul manifests in the form of the Demon Muse. This terrible little bastard whispers in our ears while we are sleeping, trying to trick us into committing professional blunders. I will expose his secret strategies.
Read all the way to the end of the article, and you'll discover the secret identity of your terrible adversary, the Demon Muse.
1. The Demon Muse disrupts the writer's professional momentum.
Sometimes it's hard to start the writing into motion - but after a long work session, sometimes it's hard to stop. That's just inertia. Some people identify themselves as 'perfectionists' and others as 'workaholics', but really it's just a matter of momentum.
As professional writers, we know how to manage our momentum when the work is done. When the paper is already finished, it's great to give it one extra coat of paint with a bit of revision while proofreading, and solidify its meaningful theme or message - but don't allow yourself to get fixated and tinker with a paper that's already well-written. Instead, use that momentum to catapult you into the next paper. As you know, the hardest part of any writing project is getting started, so it's great when you can finish your work day by getting a head start on tomorrow's paper.
A great way to manage momentum is to move on to the next paper before you edit/proofread the paper you just finished. Edit them both later. If you finish a paper and still have that special state of mind that cranks out content steadily, there's no need to immediately stop the mind from creating content and ask it to format a reference list. Keep it going for a while.
2. The Demon Muse tempts writers to wait for the perfect state of mind.
If you break the barrier between ordinary consciousness and transcendental bliss, and you write something that comes from that sacred place where artists travel to excavate bits of the Truth beneath the surface of things... that's not really what the client needs.
Sometimes writers don't allow themselves to start typing until they're in that rhythmic writing trance, that meditative mind-state all writers know. Don't wait for that. This is just typing up a paper. There is no need to procrastinate and wait until you feel that writing state-of-mind. The rhythm starts to happen after you've already been typing. Instead of waiting for that trance rhythm, and refusing to let yourself type until you have it, start typing! Feel the rhythm rising while you tap the keys.
3. It tricks us into trying to make each paper the best thing ever written!
People who operate academic writing websites favor writers who consistently get good results. Their confidence in you = a better variety of opportunities for you = more time and money. But good results do not necessarily reflect the 'best' writing, whatever that is. People have preferences, so even the 'best' writing has some people who love it and others who cannot appreciate it.
Here is a sticky clump of irony: Academic writing does enable us to apply our talent, but it's not where we fulfill our potential as writers. If we waste our best work on essays for strangers, we are getting it wrong. Many people who buy academic papers do not even know how to recognize good writing. They buy papers because they don't like writing, and they don't understand it. Let's not be sending them material of Shakespearean depth and sophistication. Even if they do appreciate it, they will still just feel more conflicted when they try to use it.
4. It challenges the writer to keep a distinct style.
In academic writing, tinkering with the style is a form of procrastination. If college papers were supposed to be Pulitzer-worthy literary breakthroughs, then maybe the clients would care about the profound truth reflected in the nuances of your sublime writing style.
You'll get more complaints if you try to give of yourself by sharing your style. Here's the secret: Most clients feel disturbed by a distinct writing style, because material with a distinct writing style is more difficult for them to use.
5. It tempts writers to underestimate the value of an established essay website.
Writers who freelance through websites share earnings with the other people who work behind the scenes. Writing papers is only one aspect of the actual work stream. The people who make the academic writing processes possible include web developers, promotions experts using social media and other marketing resources, and people who deal with legality and collections to protect our time and money against idiot clients who would defraud us.
Forgetting how much work is involved in the other aspects of the business, it's typical for writers to want to go around the websites and collect all the money ourselves; we don't realize how much work was being done by the well-established essay website that was sending us all our business and functioning as a sort of escrow service to protect us.
I'm not saying you should never seek private clients - especially if you find some who seem truly reasonable. But be prepared to spend a lot of time doing things other than writing - and you'll notice that the other tasks involved in the business really require a different sort of thinking, so you need to keep switching back and forth from the meditative state of mind you use for writing to the sort of thinking that is needed for chores associated with payments, talking on the phone to needy and nervous customers, blah, blah, etc.
6. It entices writers into a leap-of-faith on marketing websites for writers.
One upon a time, I started getting serious about marketing my writing service to degree candidates in my local area, because I live in a place with a lot of prestigious schools and professional people who can actually afford to hire a writer. I was excited about an opportunity, so I wrote several pages for free to impress a guy who I thought would hire me. I had to make it my best work since my purpose was to make a good impression, and it took all day to write those free sample pages. In the end, he got sidetracked and put the project on hold indefinitely, so that was the end of that. There's no need to wonder if he was a con artist or if he just has a short attention span, because it's human nature to get side-tracked - especially when they owe us money!
It's just not a great idea to spend any significant amount of time catering to the expectations of a client you find through Craigslist unless they give a deposit. Usually, a few more steps are needed when clients find you on Craigslist. A lot of them will want a face-to-face meeting, which takes up enough time to significantly diminish the value the project can have for you.
7. The Demon Muse tricks writers into using brevity in academic papers.
Brevity doesn't just grow on trees, you know. Efficiency is not efficient when you're trying to reach your word count. If there is one stylistic principle we can compromise when writing papers, it's brevity. We need to be succinct when we write our own stuff, not when we're writing some rat bastard's thesis paper.
Writers love efficiency/brevity - writing sentences that express ideas in the fewest possible amount of words. Yoda says, "Do, or do not. There is no try." This is the perfection of concision. In eight words, he expresses something that an academic would only be able to express in a comprehensive thesis paper. It's okay if the ideal of brevity is something you hold dear, but remember not to use it when you are writing an academic paper.
Clients think good writing = long sentences. It's a blunder when writers refine the material to express ideas in the fewest words possible; it makes great writing, but the client will hate it because it's not what they expect. Spread your writing out so that each sentence uses a few more words than necessary, and you will reach your word count sooner (which is the same as earning more money, because time is money) and the client will think it's what an academic paper is supposed to look like.
Let's be succinct in our own work, the writing that actually represents us as artists. In academic papers, it's good to ensure clarity by making sentences and paragraphs a bit long. The reason you always feel dead inside is that you give away too much of your essence - instead of using appropriately flowery, formal academic language that gets you quickly to the word count you were commissioned to reach.
8. It tempts writers to drink coffee when they're not working.
This is a blunder made by coffee drinkers. (If you abuse other substances, the same principle probably applies to them as well. It's sometimes a blunder to start drinking coffee before you start working. Coffee timing is of critical importance for me. Even a single sip can inspire a thousand words of content. It stops working so well after a writer drinks too much of it, so writers who use coffee might do well by using it in the same moment they begin their work. I ritually drink coffee at exactly the same time I start working, so I always look forward to my work. I associate my work with that moment of caffeination.
9. It tells you academic writing is writing, when it's actually typing.
Academic writing is not writing. It is typing. Let's consider the various elements of our work as freelance academic writers. We are studying assignment instructions, replying to email, bidding on projects, researching databases of professional journal articles, typing words on the screen, revising for quality, proofreading, formatting a reference list - and you know all these elements are necessary, so you trick yourself into using them as opportunities for procrastination. The only time you are making progress in your work is when you are typing words onto the screen. Keep typing. Your advantage as a talented writer is that you can type quickly and still produce above-average content.
Expressing ideas through typing involves a real exertion of energy. Sometimes a writer becomes so fatigued that s/he can hardly muster the strength to type another sentence. If that happens, take a break. But don't make the mistake of endlessly editing, or doing a lot of unnecessary research, as a way to avoid typing words on the screen. If you spend a lot of time on the stuff that is not typing, you'll keep yourself fatigued and unable to get back to typing.
10. It whispers in your ear: "Try to be brilliant!"
Try to be brilliant, and you'll end up feeling unappreciated. You'll end up even more neurotic than you already are.
You wanted to be a writer so you could write something brilliant, but this is neither the time nor the place. If you try to be brilliant when writing academic papers for your clients - your work will take twice as much time, and your clients will get confused. Academic writing is not supposed to be brilliant. It's supposed to have a clear thesis statement, references to support every claim, and paragraphs that begin with topic sentences relevant to the main idea of the paper. Be methodical instead of brilliant.
11. The Demon Muse pretends academic writing is an art, when it's a craft.
Be as artful as possible while maintaining an acceptable rate of progress-per-hour. How much time are you allowing yourself for this project? Keep on typing, even if it's not coming out as artfully as you'd like. If you get fixated on some idea, and you do a lot of Internet research or a lot of thoughtful revision, I will punch you in your procrastinating face. Academic writing is a craft, not an art.
The Demon Muse sometimes even goes as far as to make us believe that we truly want to approach academic writing as an art. We find ourselves wanting to splurge our inspiration writing academic papers, because we think we're quirky enough for controlled folly, or enlightened enough to see the equanimity and impermanence of everything - so we tell ourselves that we really want each paper to be brilliant. But approaching work as art instead of craft is just another way writers use their academic writing (craft) to procrastinate about the real writing (art) they intend to do.
12. It lulls the writer into lethargy.
Do not fall into the trap of thinking your work as a freelance writer makes it necessary or acceptable to be sitting all day long. Writing is not inaction. Writing is action. Physical and mental stagnation happen simultaneously, so it's a good idea to write for a while and then go jogging or something.
Many research studies have demonstrated that aerobic activity enhances creativity. On the other hand, a stagnant body leads to a lethargic mind. One of the nice things about being freelancers is the ability to make our own hours and incorporate exercise into our work days. You do not need to be trapped in an office, damaging the body by sitting for hours and staring at the screen. You can 'pick up the slack' in your body by doing some aerobic exercise as a break between work sessions.
Let your intuition conjure the image of an experienced, successful academic writer. To me, that's a person who usually goes jogging part way through the workday. If you freelance online from home, try this experiment: Wear jogging shorts and a tee-shirt as your work 'uniform' and, after you finish half of your work, run out into the world. Notice if you are significantly more productive on days when you exercise. (It worked for me. One of the nice things about being out of shape is that exercise only takes a few minutes!)
13. It wants you to play it cool at times when you should seem eager-to-please.
Getting good results means clients are satisfied when writing projects entrusted to you, so don't let the Demon Muse rationalize neglecting the psychological aspect of your work as a freelancer. It's best to portray yourself in the way that gets the best results and saves you time: the eager-to-please personality.
Some freelancers have personalities that make them 'eager-to-please', and they always give extra effort because they want to be appreciated. These are the freelancers customers love most. You don't need to actually develop the sort of neurosis that makes some people feel desperate for appreciation, but you can attend to the customer's expectation by acting like you're 'eager-to-please'.
One way to portray yourself as eager-to-please is to include a note with each paper so that before the customer opens the file they see a message with your comments about how you fulfilled the requirements. It only takes a minute or two to type a message and instills a feeling of confidence in the customer in the moment right before s/he sees the paper.
- Most customers respond by giving the praise they think you need, and seeing praise from customers makes the operators of the website more confident in you.
- The customers who would typically complain about a paper might not complain, because they believe you are so eager-to-please that you already have given your best effort - so instead of complaining, they might actually use their own minds and make the best of the situation.
If you are too proud to present yourself as 'eager-to-please', you will seem uninterested in customer satisfaction that the customer will have a negative expectation in the moment when s/he opens the file.
14. It gets all righteous about 'what your writing is worth.'
For a freelancer, negotiation is a tricky challenge. When you present yourself to private clients as a tough negotiator, you alienate them and make them hesitate to email you. It's important to be direct and maintain clear boundaries, but negotiation should be done with a kind of finesse that prevents you from having to use an attitude like, "I am going to remind this person that I'm a professional who deserves to be paid what s/he is worth." It is never necessary to use a righteous tone with customers, but freelancers do it all the time.
Too often, freelancers feel the need to affirm themselves to customers or colleagues in self-destructive ways. A freelancer once said to me, "This isn't a hobby, you know!" This is not helpful. It might have been helpful if instead he had said, "I wish I could match that price, but for me the job would just take too much time." Saying that, he would be forcing me to question whether the other bidders even understand what the job requires. But to say that, he would need to be humble and mild.
15. The Demon Muse wants writers to use empty assertion in negotiation.
Instead of trying to negotiate through empty self-assertion, it's best if you use creativity and innovation to gain real negotiation capital.
- Example of empty self-assertion: Sending an email that expresses an idea like, "I feel that I'm worth a higher rate per page."
- Example of using real negotiating capital: Spread your roots to be involved in multiple sources of income so that you'll have more options and opportunities.
When you freelance through an academic writing website, it's important to remember that they don't care if your writing is particularly sagacious or eloquent. Their customers - the people who buy papers - don't even want writing that is sagacious or eloquent. They want writing they can understand. Therefore, you do not actually add any real value by writing in a way that is brilliant. From the perspective of the websites, by asking for higher rates, you become less valuable to them.
So, what is the way to earn a higher rate by applying your talent? Be a soldier about your work, and be sure to average a high number of words per hour.
16. It suggests an 'us against them' attitude.
Writers can be temperamental, so the people who operate academic writing websites give more opportunities to the ones who stay goal-oriented about creating real value. What do you say to them when they email to tell you a client complained about a paper you wrote? Real value is created with the customer actually achieves her/his goal and feels good about the money spent on the paper. Sometimes that is not possible, but it should always be the goal.
Real value can also be diminished, and one of the ways it is diminished is if you respond to problems in ways that create a lot of work for the people who run the website. How you finesse each situation is up to you, but as the person who wrote the paper you're the one in an excellent position to find a creative solution for problems. It's possible to stay goal-oriented if we control our emotions.
17. It distracts you so you miss the morning energy.
It is arrogant to think we can write at any time of day. Writing is a delicate process. Academic writers quickly become familiar with frustration of being blocked, with a scattered mind and crippled reading comprehension. This is a matter of timing. For me, it's best to write in the morning. Some writers get that energy at night. I personally believe the best energy tends to come in the morning, when the planet wakes up, so I suggest you try to harness it even if you usually identify as a night owl. According to Chinese medicine, the energy moves inward toward the center-line at midnight night, so the body feels some stillness, some coolness, and the central nervous system is energized - so midnight is the best time to attain spiritual enlightenment. It's not necessarily the best time of day to write a thesis paper about mongoose mating habits.
- In the morning, the energy is moving outward again, so the body is compelled into movement, you feel some warmth in the body, and you're ready to do the work of the day - including exercise, writing a paper, doing errands, etc.
- At night, the energy is moving inward and it's time to go into stillness and contemplation. If you write at night, it's good to work on your own project at that time - following your own inspiration and writing what you want to write.
18. It makes writers think good writing flows slowly.
Those of us who want to "be writers" feel passionate about it because we found that our brains work in a way that enables us to achieve a deep, profoundly satisfying state of mind when we write. Freelance academic writers often make the mistake of getting lose in that magical, timeless state of mind when they work. Professional academic writers can go there, but we have to move quickly.
Some meditation practitioners use the term 'flow' to name the special state of mind in which they are effortlessly effective. You're doing some kind of work, but it doesn't feel like work, and it seems like you are watching things happen on their own. Writers crank out content in a flow of creation, with the fullness of their attention pouring over the present moment. But does it have to be slow? Writing is meditation, and meditation is action. See if you can get into that meditative, writing state of mind while you type fast, with rhythm, and crank out a lot of content.
The Demon Muse sends you reeling into timelessness. Go ahead and visit that timeless place, but at least set the timer on your phone before you go there. The correct way to write papers for strangers is to use your talent to maximize efficiency. That means you use math to figure out how much you want to earn per hour, and you give yourself a time limit. I use the alarm on my cell phone. If you resolve to finish a paper by a particular time and then you fail to finish it on time, you still will finish it much sooner than if you had allowed yourself to forget the clock.
19. The Demon Muse thinks the writer should be a special forces soldier.
Some writers try to be elite. They try to bid on the most difficult and time-consuming projects to show that they can do what other writers cannot do. So, they make a higher than usual bid, and the bid amount does not nearly justify the amount of time spent. Yet, the writer will do this over and over again, pretending to be a special forces, freelance killing machine. But the result is that the operators of the website might give the easy/efficient projects to the less effective writers and keep you on reserve for the most difficult, problematic, time-consuming orders!
20. It demands that friends and family should understand you.
When you're trying to write meaningfully about some particular topic, it's necessary to meditate on that topic all day instead of getting carried away into something your roommate is talking about. So, you explain to your loved ones that when you're working you cannot talk about other things or you lose your focus.
But sometimes part of your creative process might involve deliberate procrastination, or taking a break, or playing the guitar. How are you going to explain to your partner that you cannot talk to her while you work when you have time to stop and play the guitar, or do some other quirky ritual? People are not going to understand your creative process. They'll say they can, but they get their feelings hurt every time. Write with the door closed.
This is especially important if you have kids at home during the times when you work. They should never have to see you while you are pacing back and forth, brainstorming, carrying out your weird writing rituals. It's not healthy to have to literally ignore your kids while you work, and it's also not healthy to have your work disrupted, so it's sometimes best to sneak out of the house while they're still sleeping.
By now, you may have noticed the true identity of the Demon Muse.
All of the blunders discussed above involve egotism. The freelance academic writer's arch enemy - the personification of the writer's self-defeating habits - is neither a demon nor a muse. It is the writer's own conceited sense of grandeur disguised as the Demon Muse! Recognizing that the interests of the ego rarely coincide, in any particular moment, with the interest of being productive and effective, the writer's work suddenly becomes easier and more manageable.
Egotism was the enemy all along, but the writer was too egotistical to know it. And who could blame us for being a little egotistical? We are brilliant writers, after all.
Brought to you by FreelanceEssayWriters.com
The most self-destructive aspect of the writer's dark and damaged soul manifests in the form of the Demon Muse. This terrible little bastard whispers in our ears while we are sleeping, trying to trick us into committing professional blunders. I will expose his secret strategies.
Read all the way to the end of the article, and you'll discover the secret identity of your terrible adversary, the Demon Muse.
1. The Demon Muse disrupts the writer's professional momentum.
Sometimes it's hard to start the writing into motion - but after a long work session, sometimes it's hard to stop. That's just inertia. Some people identify themselves as 'perfectionists' and others as 'workaholics', but really it's just a matter of momentum.
As professional writers, we know how to manage our momentum when the work is done. When the paper is already finished, it's great to give it one extra coat of paint with a bit of revision while proofreading, and solidify its meaningful theme or message - but don't allow yourself to get fixated and tinker with a paper that's already well-written. Instead, use that momentum to catapult you into the next paper. As you know, the hardest part of any writing project is getting started, so it's great when you can finish your work day by getting a head start on tomorrow's paper.
A great way to manage momentum is to move on to the next paper before you edit/proofread the paper you just finished. Edit them both later. If you finish a paper and still have that special state of mind that cranks out content steadily, there's no need to immediately stop the mind from creating content and ask it to format a reference list. Keep it going for a while.
2. The Demon Muse tempts writers to wait for the perfect state of mind.
If you break the barrier between ordinary consciousness and transcendental bliss, and you write something that comes from that sacred place where artists travel to excavate bits of the Truth beneath the surface of things... that's not really what the client needs.
Sometimes writers don't allow themselves to start typing until they're in that rhythmic writing trance, that meditative mind-state all writers know. Don't wait for that. This is just typing up a paper. There is no need to procrastinate and wait until you feel that writing state-of-mind. The rhythm starts to happen after you've already been typing. Instead of waiting for that trance rhythm, and refusing to let yourself type until you have it, start typing! Feel the rhythm rising while you tap the keys.
3. It tricks us into trying to make each paper the best thing ever written!
People who operate academic writing websites favor writers who consistently get good results. Their confidence in you = a better variety of opportunities for you = more time and money. But good results do not necessarily reflect the 'best' writing, whatever that is. People have preferences, so even the 'best' writing has some people who love it and others who cannot appreciate it.
Here is a sticky clump of irony: Academic writing does enable us to apply our talent, but it's not where we fulfill our potential as writers. If we waste our best work on essays for strangers, we are getting it wrong. Many people who buy academic papers do not even know how to recognize good writing. They buy papers because they don't like writing, and they don't understand it. Let's not be sending them material of Shakespearean depth and sophistication. Even if they do appreciate it, they will still just feel more conflicted when they try to use it.
4. It challenges the writer to keep a distinct style.
In academic writing, tinkering with the style is a form of procrastination. If college papers were supposed to be Pulitzer-worthy literary breakthroughs, then maybe the clients would care about the profound truth reflected in the nuances of your sublime writing style.
You'll get more complaints if you try to give of yourself by sharing your style. Here's the secret: Most clients feel disturbed by a distinct writing style, because material with a distinct writing style is more difficult for them to use.
5. It tempts writers to underestimate the value of an established essay website.
Writers who freelance through websites share earnings with the other people who work behind the scenes. Writing papers is only one aspect of the actual work stream. The people who make the academic writing processes possible include web developers, promotions experts using social media and other marketing resources, and people who deal with legality and collections to protect our time and money against idiot clients who would defraud us.
Forgetting how much work is involved in the other aspects of the business, it's typical for writers to want to go around the websites and collect all the money ourselves; we don't realize how much work was being done by the well-established essay website that was sending us all our business and functioning as a sort of escrow service to protect us.
I'm not saying you should never seek private clients - especially if you find some who seem truly reasonable. But be prepared to spend a lot of time doing things other than writing - and you'll notice that the other tasks involved in the business really require a different sort of thinking, so you need to keep switching back and forth from the meditative state of mind you use for writing to the sort of thinking that is needed for chores associated with payments, talking on the phone to needy and nervous customers, blah, blah, etc.
6. It entices writers into a leap-of-faith on marketing websites for writers.
One upon a time, I started getting serious about marketing my writing service to degree candidates in my local area, because I live in a place with a lot of prestigious schools and professional people who can actually afford to hire a writer. I was excited about an opportunity, so I wrote several pages for free to impress a guy who I thought would hire me. I had to make it my best work since my purpose was to make a good impression, and it took all day to write those free sample pages. In the end, he got sidetracked and put the project on hold indefinitely, so that was the end of that. There's no need to wonder if he was a con artist or if he just has a short attention span, because it's human nature to get side-tracked - especially when they owe us money!
It's just not a great idea to spend any significant amount of time catering to the expectations of a client you find through Craigslist unless they give a deposit. Usually, a few more steps are needed when clients find you on Craigslist. A lot of them will want a face-to-face meeting, which takes up enough time to significantly diminish the value the project can have for you.
7. The Demon Muse tricks writers into using brevity in academic papers.
Brevity doesn't just grow on trees, you know. Efficiency is not efficient when you're trying to reach your word count. If there is one stylistic principle we can compromise when writing papers, it's brevity. We need to be succinct when we write our own stuff, not when we're writing some rat bastard's thesis paper.
Writers love efficiency/brevity - writing sentences that express ideas in the fewest possible amount of words. Yoda says, "Do, or do not. There is no try." This is the perfection of concision. In eight words, he expresses something that an academic would only be able to express in a comprehensive thesis paper. It's okay if the ideal of brevity is something you hold dear, but remember not to use it when you are writing an academic paper.
Clients think good writing = long sentences. It's a blunder when writers refine the material to express ideas in the fewest words possible; it makes great writing, but the client will hate it because it's not what they expect. Spread your writing out so that each sentence uses a few more words than necessary, and you will reach your word count sooner (which is the same as earning more money, because time is money) and the client will think it's what an academic paper is supposed to look like.
Let's be succinct in our own work, the writing that actually represents us as artists. In academic papers, it's good to ensure clarity by making sentences and paragraphs a bit long. The reason you always feel dead inside is that you give away too much of your essence - instead of using appropriately flowery, formal academic language that gets you quickly to the word count you were commissioned to reach.
8. It tempts writers to drink coffee when they're not working.
This is a blunder made by coffee drinkers. (If you abuse other substances, the same principle probably applies to them as well. It's sometimes a blunder to start drinking coffee before you start working. Coffee timing is of critical importance for me. Even a single sip can inspire a thousand words of content. It stops working so well after a writer drinks too much of it, so writers who use coffee might do well by using it in the same moment they begin their work. I ritually drink coffee at exactly the same time I start working, so I always look forward to my work. I associate my work with that moment of caffeination.
9. It tells you academic writing is writing, when it's actually typing.
Academic writing is not writing. It is typing. Let's consider the various elements of our work as freelance academic writers. We are studying assignment instructions, replying to email, bidding on projects, researching databases of professional journal articles, typing words on the screen, revising for quality, proofreading, formatting a reference list - and you know all these elements are necessary, so you trick yourself into using them as opportunities for procrastination. The only time you are making progress in your work is when you are typing words onto the screen. Keep typing. Your advantage as a talented writer is that you can type quickly and still produce above-average content.
Expressing ideas through typing involves a real exertion of energy. Sometimes a writer becomes so fatigued that s/he can hardly muster the strength to type another sentence. If that happens, take a break. But don't make the mistake of endlessly editing, or doing a lot of unnecessary research, as a way to avoid typing words on the screen. If you spend a lot of time on the stuff that is not typing, you'll keep yourself fatigued and unable to get back to typing.
10. It whispers in your ear: "Try to be brilliant!"
Try to be brilliant, and you'll end up feeling unappreciated. You'll end up even more neurotic than you already are.You wanted to be a writer so you could write something brilliant, but this is neither the time nor the place. If you try to be brilliant when writing academic papers for your clients - your work will take twice as much time, and your clients will get confused. Academic writing is not supposed to be brilliant. It's supposed to have a clear thesis statement, references to support every claim, and paragraphs that begin with topic sentences relevant to the main idea of the paper. Be methodical instead of brilliant.
11. The Demon Muse pretends academic writing is an art, when it's a craft.
Be as artful as possible while maintaining an acceptable rate of progress-per-hour. How much time are you allowing yourself for this project? Keep on typing, even if it's not coming out as artfully as you'd like. If you get fixated on some idea, and you do a lot of Internet research or a lot of thoughtful revision, I will punch you in your procrastinating face. Academic writing is a craft, not an art.
The Demon Muse sometimes even goes as far as to make us believe that we truly want to approach academic writing as an art. We find ourselves wanting to splurge our inspiration writing academic papers, because we think we're quirky enough for controlled folly, or enlightened enough to see the equanimity and impermanence of everything - so we tell ourselves that we really want each paper to be brilliant. But approaching work as art instead of craft is just another way writers use their academic writing (craft) to procrastinate about the real writing (art) they intend to do.
12. It lulls the writer into lethargy.
Do not fall into the trap of thinking your work as a freelance writer makes it necessary or acceptable to be sitting all day long. Writing is not inaction. Writing is action. Physical and mental stagnation happen simultaneously, so it's a good idea to write for a while and then go jogging or something.
Many research studies have demonstrated that aerobic activity enhances creativity. On the other hand, a stagnant body leads to a lethargic mind. One of the nice things about being freelancers is the ability to make our own hours and incorporate exercise into our work days. You do not need to be trapped in an office, damaging the body by sitting for hours and staring at the screen. You can 'pick up the slack' in your body by doing some aerobic exercise as a break between work sessions.
Let your intuition conjure the image of an experienced, successful academic writer. To me, that's a person who usually goes jogging part way through the workday. If you freelance online from home, try this experiment: Wear jogging shorts and a tee-shirt as your work 'uniform' and, after you finish half of your work, run out into the world. Notice if you are significantly more productive on days when you exercise. (It worked for me. One of the nice things about being out of shape is that exercise only takes a few minutes!)
13. It wants you to play it cool at times when you should seem eager-to-please.
Getting good results means clients are satisfied when writing projects entrusted to you, so don't let the Demon Muse rationalize neglecting the psychological aspect of your work as a freelancer. It's best to portray yourself in the way that gets the best results and saves you time: the eager-to-please personality.
Some freelancers have personalities that make them 'eager-to-please', and they always give extra effort because they want to be appreciated. These are the freelancers customers love most. You don't need to actually develop the sort of neurosis that makes some people feel desperate for appreciation, but you can attend to the customer's expectation by acting like you're 'eager-to-please'.
One way to portray yourself as eager-to-please is to include a note with each paper so that before the customer opens the file they see a message with your comments about how you fulfilled the requirements. It only takes a minute or two to type a message and instills a feeling of confidence in the customer in the moment right before s/he sees the paper.
- Most customers respond by giving the praise they think you need, and seeing praise from customers makes the operators of the website more confident in you.
- The customers who would typically complain about a paper might not complain, because they believe you are so eager-to-please that you already have given your best effort - so instead of complaining, they might actually use their own minds and make the best of the situation.
If you are too proud to present yourself as 'eager-to-please', you will seem uninterested in customer satisfaction that the customer will have a negative expectation in the moment when s/he opens the file.
14. It gets all righteous about 'what your writing is worth.'
For a freelancer, negotiation is a tricky challenge. When you present yourself to private clients as a tough negotiator, you alienate them and make them hesitate to email you. It's important to be direct and maintain clear boundaries, but negotiation should be done with a kind of finesse that prevents you from having to use an attitude like, "I am going to remind this person that I'm a professional who deserves to be paid what s/he is worth." It is never necessary to use a righteous tone with customers, but freelancers do it all the time.
Too often, freelancers feel the need to affirm themselves to customers or colleagues in self-destructive ways. A freelancer once said to me, "This isn't a hobby, you know!" This is not helpful. It might have been helpful if instead he had said, "I wish I could match that price, but for me the job would just take too much time." Saying that, he would be forcing me to question whether the other bidders even understand what the job requires. But to say that, he would need to be humble and mild.
15. The Demon Muse wants writers to use empty assertion in negotiation.
Instead of trying to negotiate through empty self-assertion, it's best if you use creativity and innovation to gain real negotiation capital.
- Example of empty self-assertion: Sending an email that expresses an idea like, "I feel that I'm worth a higher rate per page."
- Example of using real negotiating capital: Spread your roots to be involved in multiple sources of income so that you'll have more options and opportunities.
When you freelance through an academic writing website, it's important to remember that they don't care if your writing is particularly sagacious or eloquent. Their customers - the people who buy papers - don't even want writing that is sagacious or eloquent. They want writing they can understand. Therefore, you do not actually add any real value by writing in a way that is brilliant. From the perspective of the websites, by asking for higher rates, you become less valuable to them.
So, what is the way to earn a higher rate by applying your talent? Be a soldier about your work, and be sure to average a high number of words per hour.
16. It suggests an 'us against them' attitude.
Writers can be temperamental, so the people who operate academic writing websites give more opportunities to the ones who stay goal-oriented about creating real value. What do you say to them when they email to tell you a client complained about a paper you wrote? Real value is created with the customer actually achieves her/his goal and feels good about the money spent on the paper. Sometimes that is not possible, but it should always be the goal.
Real value can also be diminished, and one of the ways it is diminished is if you respond to problems in ways that create a lot of work for the people who run the website. How you finesse each situation is up to you, but as the person who wrote the paper you're the one in an excellent position to find a creative solution for problems. It's possible to stay goal-oriented if we control our emotions.
17. It distracts you so you miss the morning energy.
It is arrogant to think we can write at any time of day. Writing is a delicate process. Academic writers quickly become familiar with frustration of being blocked, with a scattered mind and crippled reading comprehension. This is a matter of timing. For me, it's best to write in the morning. Some writers get that energy at night. I personally believe the best energy tends to come in the morning, when the planet wakes up, so I suggest you try to harness it even if you usually identify as a night owl. According to Chinese medicine, the energy moves inward toward the center-line at midnight night, so the body feels some stillness, some coolness, and the central nervous system is energized - so midnight is the best time to attain spiritual enlightenment. It's not necessarily the best time of day to write a thesis paper about mongoose mating habits.
- In the morning, the energy is moving outward again, so the body is compelled into movement, you feel some warmth in the body, and you're ready to do the work of the day - including exercise, writing a paper, doing errands, etc.
- At night, the energy is moving inward and it's time to go into stillness and contemplation. If you write at night, it's good to work on your own project at that time - following your own inspiration and writing what you want to write.
18. It makes writers think good writing flows slowly.
Those of us who want to "be writers" feel passionate about it because we found that our brains work in a way that enables us to achieve a deep, profoundly satisfying state of mind when we write. Freelance academic writers often make the mistake of getting lose in that magical, timeless state of mind when they work. Professional academic writers can go there, but we have to move quickly.
Some meditation practitioners use the term 'flow' to name the special state of mind in which they are effortlessly effective. You're doing some kind of work, but it doesn't feel like work, and it seems like you are watching things happen on their own. Writers crank out content in a flow of creation, with the fullness of their attention pouring over the present moment. But does it have to be slow? Writing is meditation, and meditation is action. See if you can get into that meditative, writing state of mind while you type fast, with rhythm, and crank out a lot of content.
The Demon Muse sends you reeling into timelessness. Go ahead and visit that timeless place, but at least set the timer on your phone before you go there. The correct way to write papers for strangers is to use your talent to maximize efficiency. That means you use math to figure out how much you want to earn per hour, and you give yourself a time limit. I use the alarm on my cell phone. If you resolve to finish a paper by a particular time and then you fail to finish it on time, you still will finish it much sooner than if you had allowed yourself to forget the clock.
19. The Demon Muse thinks the writer should be a special forces soldier.
Some writers try to be elite. They try to bid on the most difficult and time-consuming projects to show that they can do what other writers cannot do. So, they make a higher than usual bid, and the bid amount does not nearly justify the amount of time spent. Yet, the writer will do this over and over again, pretending to be a special forces, freelance killing machine. But the result is that the operators of the website might give the easy/efficient projects to the less effective writers and keep you on reserve for the most difficult, problematic, time-consuming orders!
20. It demands that friends and family should understand you.
When you're trying to write meaningfully about some particular topic, it's necessary to meditate on that topic all day instead of getting carried away into something your roommate is talking about. So, you explain to your loved ones that when you're working you cannot talk about other things or you lose your focus.
But sometimes part of your creative process might involve deliberate procrastination, or taking a break, or playing the guitar. How are you going to explain to your partner that you cannot talk to her while you work when you have time to stop and play the guitar, or do some other quirky ritual? People are not going to understand your creative process. They'll say they can, but they get their feelings hurt every time. Write with the door closed.
This is especially important if you have kids at home during the times when you work. They should never have to see you while you are pacing back and forth, brainstorming, carrying out your weird writing rituals. It's not healthy to have to literally ignore your kids while you work, and it's also not healthy to have your work disrupted, so it's sometimes best to sneak out of the house while they're still sleeping.
By now, you may have noticed the true identity of the Demon Muse.
All of the blunders discussed above involve egotism. The freelance academic writer's arch enemy - the personification of the writer's self-defeating habits - is neither a demon nor a muse. It is the writer's own conceited sense of grandeur disguised as the Demon Muse! Recognizing that the interests of the ego rarely coincide, in any particular moment, with the interest of being productive and effective, the writer's work suddenly becomes easier and more manageable.
Egotism was the enemy all along, but the writer was too egotistical to know it. And who could blame us for being a little egotistical? We are brilliant writers, after all.
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