This past year has been a tough one for everyone. The lockdowns have torn up our economy and caused many creatives to lose their livelihoods. Contracts dried up, assignments faltered, and paychecks disappeared. But there is hope.
Life as a freelancer has its challenges, now more than ever, which is why it helps to be creative in finding solutions. Now is not the time to stick to the usual.
Work is out there. Here are a dozen places to try to find it:
One of the first steps in pre-production, after developing a treatment and writing the screenplay, is figuring out where you can shoot the script. Where can you get those beautiful establishing shots and find sets to bring the story to life? Where in the world can you find places that look like what’s described in the screenplay or novel it is based upon?
Research should reveal more than simple fact. It can offer insights into a time period, an event, a moment. It can reveal hidden depths. The trick is to use these insights to create more textured and layered characters.
The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book on Research for Writers:
There are different levels of research: cursory understanding, basic competence, proficiency and mastery.
There are conversations in life that we expect. Ubiquitous questions we all encounter from “What’s your name?” to “Where are you from?” and “What do you do for a living?”
While, being a military brat, I struggle with the second question, it is that last question that gives me pause. What do I do? Do I cop to it or play it down? The first thing that pops in my brain is “What should I say?”
This two-part series began with the reasons you might choose to write for free. The key word in that sentence was choose. It is fine if it is your decision to provide your talents to a project without payment. But that is not always the case.
Here Are Some Reasons When It Does Not Make Sense to Write for Free:
There is a pervasive idea in freelancing that writing for free is a legitimate avenue to finding paying work. In downturn economies and tough times, like trying to find work during a pandemic, taking any assignment sounds better than turning one down, even if the assignment is on spec or without pay. Don’t fall prey to this idea. It is false.
It’s a new year, finally, and, despite coming off a rocky year, there is room for hope and anticipation for the year ahead. This pandemic will pass and life will resume. It always does. Eventually.
Work will resume too. I know many of us (me included) took a beating last year, losing contracts, work, and facing grim prospects. But this too will change. All you need is patience and some preparation so you’re ready to grab opportunities as they appear. And they will appear. Trust me.
There is no question this has been a tough year for us all. The pandemic. The riots. The unrest. The economic uncertainty. The losses. There have been so many pressures and demands with little relief in sight.
Every year during the holiday season, I have offered up a list of gifts worthy of any writer on your holiday list, or for yourself, should you be the type to reward yourself with a treat at the end of the year. This year, with the tough times and pandemic, I have chosen a different route.
This series on writing obstacles has looked at three of the four main excuses writers use for not putting words on the page: no energy, no motivation, and no ideas. In our final installment, we’re going to look at lack of focus.
This time, we’re focusing on a lack of ideas. This is a big reason why some people stop writing. It’s simply because they can’t think of what to write next. Here are some tricks to get around that: