My husband keeps insisting that I find a way to make money using my writing skills, so here goes:
I would love to have some kind of an at-home editing job, or writing job. I have had articles printed in both newspapers and magazines. I've written advertorials and manuals. I've written up policies for websites. I taught high school creative writing for a year. I type incredibly quickly (90+WPM)
I would be happy to do nearly anything on a Freelance basis.
I'd be happy to send writing samples to anyone who wanted them.
Last edited by allrgymama on Sun, Jan 09 2011, 5:53 am; edited 1 time in total
Sorry for the delayed responses -- I didn't realize I hadn't checked off the box to be notified about replies!
@statenislander: what is Demand Media?
@alwaysgrateful: I like to write about my daughter and her allergies, and how it impacts our family. I think most people don't realize that mothers raising children with allergies need constant chizuk -- maybe not to same degree as those going through shidduch, pregnancy or shalom bayis issues, but certainly similarly. The one article a publication puts out once a year reminding people that this exists isn't enough for me and it isn't enough for the other mothers that I know.
I've also done the LAP-BAND; most women my age (I was 23 when I did it 8 months ago) haven't done it and I think I provide a unique perspective.
@jawscience: I have no idea of what these sites are?
@merelyme: whoops! Corrected.
@theworldsbestmom: if I was submitting work to a fantasy or science fiction field, I'd be rich! Sadly, I don't think the editors of the Binah or the Mispacha or Feldheim or Artscroll (or similar publications) or looking for Judaism set in another century quite yet! And as far as more current work? I find the other constraints of Jewish story telling to be impossible. When I read the stories about husbands gone missing or accused of crimes they didn't commit I roll my eyes -- these things don't happen to the majority of us and are not believable. We lead (comparatively) boring lives and I cannot suspend my disbelief that much. So I don't really write Jewish books.....
I disagree. I can give you names of men and women who have gone through divorces and have been accused of crimes they never committed. Basically, the best lawyers win.
In one case, the woman falsified information about the husband, and she got custody, but she beat the kids, so the kids chose to live with the father.
In another case, there was one little girl. The father made up false stories about the mother in court. After the court case, the husband said, "I'll give you custody if you pay me $250,000". My friend said no (she didn't have the money). After a few years, the husband lost interest and gave my friend custody.
There are lots of true interesting stories in the frum community that you can write about.
I have a friend who is Chassidish. She stayed with her first husband until they had 7 or 8 kids. When he pulled a knife on her, she left. Then he refused to give her a get until he ended up in jail for being a pedophile. At that point, he gave the get thinking that the Rabbis would get him out of jail.
If you are interested, I can give you these stories in more gory details.
I think there are lots of things you'll find if you look around. Based on all the topics on Imamother, you'll learn:
1. There are pple on this site with abusive mothers/fathers
2. There are pple in abusive marriages
3. There are pple with difficult kids
4. There are pple with difficult jobs
5. There women who got divorced
6. There are women who are mentally ill or have a mentally ill spouse
@the world's best mom: I think my great-grandparents would turn over into their graves if I published books in the not-so-Jewish-genres that I'm interested in. I mean, really -- I'm not going to publish a romance novel or sci-fiction novel or fantasy novel and even pretend that I could get my kids married. I live in Lakewood. So I have to take what I can get based on what my community will allow.
Also: so not fun to have a conversation that goes:
"What do you do for a living?"
"I'm a best-selling author"
"Really? What have you written? Serials for the Mishpacha? Binah? Yated? Ami?"
"Umm....."
@Opinionated: I'm not saying that interesting stories don't exist. They do. But they're either terrible to imagine (as in the examples you gave) or not believable. I also don't want to make a career out of writing about terribly people.
Writing books (especially novels) is absolutely NOT a reliable way to make money. Jewish publishers will publish your book if you write decently, however it will be heavily censored and the most you can hope to make is from 10-20 thousand. Over the years, you might keep earning money from the sales. Or the book might go out of print. But it takes, on average, ONE YEAR to write a book, and on average, Jewish books make 2-8 thousand. That's for a whole year's work.
As for the non-Jewish market: Agents on average receive tens of thousands of queries per year, and in a good year, less then TEN of these are accepted to be published. Out of all the books that are actually published, very few are bestsellers. Again, for a year or more of work you get very little pay.
After a year of writing your book, and two years of sending out queries, and two years for the book to sit in queue waiting for its turn to be released, you'll make 50k if you're very lucky. And that's just 10k per year. Pennies.
I don't mean to discourage you. Just trying to inject a dose of realism here. You can write a book anonymously if what you want to do is write books. Some authors are very private, for whatever reason. You can be one of them. You can do it for fun. For the joy of seeing your words in print. For the knowledge that maybe your words will make a difference in someone's life. But not for money.
Demand Media is a content mill. Tha means it hires writers and editors to churn out articles for websites. Pay is decent but nor great and is a very good place to start. There are a few other content mills out there but I find demand media the best to work with.
