When Toni sent me a link to this job advert, I thought at first that the rate was 25 dollars per 500 words . But no. The employer helpfully states:
“Please don’t be one of those that confuses cents with dollars. This is 25 cents per clear written blog post.”
Wow! Twenty five cents ALL TO MYSELF? There’s more, though!
“…we will also increase your pay out too 1 dollars per article in the future once you have successfully submitted up to 1000 unique posts.”
Well, that makes all the difference, doesn’t it? I mean, after just 1,000 posts (of 500 words each, remember), you could be earning a massive $1 per post! Now, I’m no mathematician, but I’ve just worked this out, and for those 1,000 posts, you would make…
$250!
How long do you think it would take you to write 1,000 articles, readers? I’m going to guess “a while”. Worth it for $250, do you think? Again, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess “probably not”.
Of course, you’re probably thinking this “job” advert is aimed at the kind of writers who’ll barely be able to string a sentence together. You would be wrong, though, because if you want to apply, you’ll need to be “intelligent and articulate” – oh, and bilingual. Yes, bilingual. Just think, all of those years studying a second language will be totally worth it when those first 25 cents hit your Paypal account, no?
I’m surprised this particular employer doesn’t just charge writers to work for him. Surely that’s the next step?
See the post below this one? The one about its/it’s confusion, in which I used the example of an error made by a major publishing house as an example of how even the “best” of us get it wrong, sometimes?
You all understood that the “major publishing house” wasn’t me, didn’t you? I mean, I thought I’d made it pretty clear that the advertisement containing the rogue apostrophe was an example someone had sent me, and not a mistake I’d made myself, but apparently not because today I received an email from someone berating me for “my” mistake, and telling me I desperately needed an editor, and should hire them.
The person went on to tell me all about their writing experience and all of the “high points” in their freelance writing career, presumably to covince me they were the right person for the (non-existent) job. Sadly, the email they sent me wasn’t one of those “high points”: it was written entirely in lower case, and the writing quality was poor to say the least. So, not only had the person completely misunderstood my post (always a bad sign for someone who wants to be an editor), they’d also insulted me with their rudeness and displayed the writing skills of a young child.
Clearly, none of this would make me want to employ someone, and I replied to tell them so. It’s OK, though, folks, because, guess what? The person was just joking! Yes, that’s right, they were being “funny”, and had done it in order to “get my attention”.
Well, they got it alright – but not in a good way. When I told them this, though, they replied to say that I have no sense of humour.
Right. Got it. It’s my fault. I just need to get a sense of humour! Whew!
The problem with this, of course, is that the person’s emails just weren’t funny. Not even a little bit. The first one, in fact, was downright rude, and rudeness is never a good way to “get someone’s attention” if that person is someone you’re hoping will employ you. Just trust me on this.
The other problem with it is that unless you’re applying for a job as a humour writer, comedy has no place in a speculative job application. No matter how hilarious you think you are, unless you have a really good idea of what kind of sense of humour the person you’re writing to has, it’s safer to leave the “funny” for future correspondence, once you’ve built up a relationship with the person and can be reasonably confident that they’ll enjoy the joke just as much as you do. For all you know, your “funny joke” could be my “very insulting email”, and if you’re asking me for a job, that’s not really the kind of impression you’re going to want to leave me with.
(Few people enjoy “jokes” that poke fun at them, for instance, especially when they come from a stranger. If I know you well enough to realise that you’re joking, and to know you don’t mean anything by it, you can make fun of me as much as you like. If I’ve never spoken to you in my life, and you write to tell me my website sucks, but would suck less if I employed you as an editor, I’m probably not going to split my sides laughing. Or, indeed, give you the job.)
That doesn’t mean all emails to prospective employers have to be overly formal and totally lacking in personality, of course: quite the opposite. There are ways to write an email that make you sound friendly and intelligent, without causing offence, and if you don’t know how to write that kind of email then you’re probably not ready to start applying for freelance writing gigs.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time I’ve received emails containing some variation of “Oh my God, your website is so bad and you totally can’t write to save your life! You better give me a job as a proofreader, because I’m perfect, and you’re definitely not.” It seems there are lots of people out there who think that being rude to someone is a great way to get them to employ you, and to build your representation as a freelance writer.
They’re wrong.
*Unless, perhaps, you’re going for a job as a humour writer…
As many of you have long since realised, I am secretly only eight years old. So when I woke up on Saturday morning and found this sitting on my desk waiting for me, naturally I shrieked like a child:
And then, when I opened it up and discovered that the big pink box contained some of my Most Favourite Things Ever – jelly sweets – I shrieked even more. I told you I was only eight…
OMG, hamburgers!
OMG, fangs!
OMG brains! (The brains were the best ones, by the way. Love them brains.)
OMG squirting skulls!
OMG teeth!
I would say more about this, but obviously I’ve been on a sugar high since Saturday morning*, and I need to go and chase Rubin round the garden or something to work it off. But jelly sweets! Yay!
(P.S. Don’t worry, I have been eating them sparingly. Or as sparingly as I can, anyway. Am sensible like that. Well, sometimes…)
Tagged birthday, surprises, Terry
So, the Calcium Surprise turned out to be, not a carton of milk, but grilled haloumi cheese, cut into hearts and served stacked up, with a handful of grapes:
 Calcium Surprise Best. Thing. Ever.
Tagged birthday, surprises, Terry
I hate Fridays. Hate them. I know all the cool kids hate Mondays, but I reserve my ire for Friday, which is The Day From Hell for me, because, for reasons too complicated and boring to go into here, that’s the day I have to do more work than I do in the rest of the week put together. (Not for much longer, though, of which more later. </cryptic> )
Every Friday, then, I work until my arms ache and my fingers are almost numb. I’m not generally finished until late at night, and when I finally fall into bed, exhausted, it is the happiest moment of my week, purely because it’s the moment at which I’m furthest away from next Friday.
This Friday was an especially bad ‘un, which meant the Surprise Red was particularly welcome:
A bottle of Amarone, aka “Surprise Red”.
No, I didn’t drink it all. I did very much enjoy what I did have, though:
 cheers! Oh, and I think someone else enjoyed it, too:
TED! I don’t know. His behaviour’s been really erratic lately. I think he may be having a mid life crisis or something…
Tagged birthday, surorises, Terry, work
I called in the “Sparkle Surprise“…
…. and discovered that Terry now has to be responsible for all house-cleaning duties (including ironing, yay!) for the next week. So my house will… sparkle. Do you see what he did there?
Of course, what Terry doesn’t know is that I have cunningly hidden the “Sparkle Surprise” card, so I can re-use it over and over again. Double yay!
Tagged birthday, surprises, Terry
It was my birthday on Tuesday. I didn’t mention it at the time because, well, I hate birthdays. And because I was sulking and feeling hard-done-by on account of the fact that, wah, I just got older!
But it was my birthday, and in the evening, Terry took me here:
(It’s a vegetarian restaurant in Edinburgh. We’re not vegetarians, but God, the food is delicious…)
I wore this:
And over dinner, Terry gave me these:
They are “surprises” and there are 12 of them, which I can redeem anytime I want (although some of them require a certain amount of notice, or can only be redeemed on weekends, etc.) They have names like “Sparkle Surprise” and “Surprise Red”, and there’s even a “Rubin’s Surprise, which makes me a little bit nervous, because most of the “surprises” Rubin’s been leaving me lately could be described using the words “pee” and “radiator”.
(The names are cryptic, apparently. I don’t think the “Calcium Surprise” is a carton of milk, for instance, but you never know…)
With this one act, Terry has earned Brownie points that will last at least until the vouchers run out. And birthdays = not so bad, really.
(Oh, and I also got this gorgeous handmade bookmark from Nina:
Isn’t that the prettiest thing? And the book’s not bad either, by the way. Ahem.)
Tagged birthday, dresses, surprises
There’s a full moon tonight. If recent circumstances hadn’t made this fact painfully obvious to me already, I’d have realised as soon as I received this email, earlier today:
—–Original Message—–
From: An Idiot
Sent: 11 March 2009 14:01
To: Amber, Verbal Punching Bag of the Internet
Subject: helpppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp.
dear amber:
i’ve reviewed books for the new york times, discussed the art of writing on npr’s fresh air with terry gross, and many other high points in my career as a freelance writer, and so i came to your site seeking enlightenment if not some freelance gigs, and what did i see, first thing?
do you have an interesting object?
tell us it’s story
ayieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
you need me. you need an editor. you really do.
I’ve removed two words which may or may not have been the author’s name from this literary feast (it was hard to tell due to the basic lack of writing skills) to protect the guilty but the rest is exactly as I received it, including font and funky yellow highlighter.
I think it becomes even more amusing when you realise it was written in response to this post at WritingWorld. Just in case you can’t be bothered reading it, it’s a post about its/it’s confusion, and I used an advert by a major publishing house as an example of how even the biggest companies sometimes get it wrong. It was the advert text that my correspondent is quoting here, and obviously, I’m not the best person to judge my own writing, but I thought it was pretty obvious that the incorrect “it’s” was an example, and wasn’t written by me (although I’m happy to admit that I get it wrong too, sometimes, even although I’m perfectly well aware of the correct use of the apostrophe). Apparently not, though.
That aside, I find it both shocking and amusing in equal measures that someone would send an email like THIS to ask me to employ them. Because, oh yeah, I’m going to totally want to take on a member of staff who wrote to me to slag off my website and try to make out that I’m an idiot who can’t spell! Doesn’t everyone want employees like that?
More importantly, though, if I WAS looking for a freelance editor (which I’m not, by the way), I’m thinking I’d probably go for one who wasn’t such a stranger to capital letters and punctuation, you know? One who, perhaps, knew that “ayieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” is not a word, and that “help” only has the one “p”.
Sadly, these kind of emails have become the norm for me recently, and to be totally honest, it’s kinda killing the Internet for me. If it’s not people writing to hurl abuse at me, or treat me as their own personal Google, it’s people commenting here to tell me they don’t like my face and that I should change it, or leaving nasty comments at The Fashion Police because a post from two years ago is now – surprise,surprise! – out of date, and the dress in question is no longer available. (Quite how this is my fault is beyond me, but apparently it is. I’m slowly starting to realise that almost EVERYTHING is my fault. Everything.) And if THAT isn’t enough, people are still confusing me with Rihanna, and writing to me AS IF I AM HER.
(Note: I am not Rihanna. NOT. RIHANNA.)
Tagged email fun, freelance writing, I See Stupid People, OMG internet drama!
People, I am in a book. An actual book, that you can buy:
Yes, I know, I can’t quite believe it either. It’s a comedy book, and I’m still half expecting someone to pop up and tell me the joke is that I thought I’d get to be in it.
Anyway, it’s called Twitter Titters, and it’s the brainchild of the amazing Linda Jones ,who decided to do something for Comic Relief utilising Twitter. (For those of you lucky enough not to live in the UK, where it’s now apparently all-winter,all the time, Comic Relief is an organisation which raises money for charity by encouraging people to do something “funny”). Linda hit on the idea to publish a book full of comedy writing sourced on Twitter, and managed to get the backing of some high profile comedians, such as Dave Spikey and Nat Coombs (who have contributed pieces of writing to the book), plus volunteers to help judge the entries and edit the final product.
The project generated a lot of entries, so, as I say, I was absolutely amazed when Linda told me my contribution had been selected for inclusion in the book. I can only imagine that heavy bribe I promised to send Diane (who was one of the judges) must’ve done the trick. (Diane, I’ll get that money to you soon, ‘kay?). In the interests of transparency, I should say here that my piece is a post from this here blog, so some of you may have read it before – you’ll have to buy the book to find out which one it is, though, and you should totally buy it anyway, because there are some really great writers in it. Oh, and the money goes to charity, so you’ll be doing something good for the world, too.
You can buy it here. Or Rubin will bite your bum.
Tagged twitter titters, writing
Terry has just reminded me that I haven’t yet provided my monthly breakdown of Things I Bought for February and so, because I know the world will surely end if I don’t list these items, here it is…
February was a bit of a crappy month, as you know, but unhappily this extended to shopping as well as to getting locked out of my car and growing a second head. In a way, you could see this as a good thing (Terry does) because it meant that, for the first time in ages, I was a Good Girl and didn’t spend ALL of my salary the second it hit my bank account, but you could also see it as a Bad Thing (I do) because, well, it just wasn’t much fun, really.
The main source of the Not Fun sprang from the fact that I “took a notion”, as my granny used to say, for new gym clothes. It’s a bit of a pain this “taking a notion” for something. It happens to me a lot, and it generally means that I end up spending all my money on lots of the same kind of thing. Like, one time it was pyjamas. I decided I absolutely could not live without lots of new pyjamas and other “lounge wear” items, and so THAT month I was really well dressed between the hours of about midnight – 8am, but after that, not so much.
Another time it was bed linen. I wanted new bed linen, and I didn’t just want one set: no, I wanted MORE than one set, and I also wanted some cushions and nice blankets, too. (Note: I don’t ALWAYS “take a notion” for things related to sleeping. Just a lot of the time.)
Anyway, this month I took a notion for new gym clothes, in the mistaken belief that they would cause me to leap pout of bed every morning with a smile on my face, just raring to get to that gym, by God! February’s shopping, then, consisted of:
GYM CLOTHES:
- One pair of capri-style running pants
- One pair of jogging pants
- Two tops
- One zip-up jacket thing
- One sports bra
OTHER CLOTHES
- One black dress
- One,er, bikini
- One cardigan
- One short-sleeved top.
And NO SHOES.
This month: must try harder. (Kidding! I’m kidding!)
Tagged the gym, Things I Bought
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