Am I starving or just foolish?

So I am bemoaning my state of poorness. I have over $1000 in invoices out right now and the people have not paid me. So I am starving. One of these invoices is scary to me. You see, I did not use safe pay and it is the first time working with the person. Oh, and instead of the $25 which is what I would normally risk, he owes me around $470. Um... and I invoiced him around two weeks ago. So, I am biting my nails on that one.

Why did I do it? Because it was a large job and paid per word. It is difficult to set up SafePay on a per word basis. You do not know how many you will have until the job is finished. I have usually required some sort of downpayment into SafePay, but the person want the immense job done in two weeks, so I did not want to waste time and money waiting for him to make the deposit. I would have never been able to complete it.

Everyone else either has worked with me before, so I am pretty sure they will pay, or has the funds in SafePay. But still, it is a lot of money. My bank account right now is $0 (at least I hope it is $0 and not negative.) I have gone four weeks without receiving a payout of more that $25 here or there. So I am starving.

This is one of the biggest dangers of freelancing, and it is pretty much resolved with SafePay. After all, if they have already paid, why don't they release it? But my income is not steady at all. Which is bad, because my income feeds us. Sigh.

Anyway - this is why I have been grumping about money lately. Four weeks without real pay is a long time...

The starving artist

People who are single can easily be starving artists. Before we were dating, my husband and his friend came over to my house to pick me up. While I was in the bathroom (because I was taught you always go to the bathroom before you leave), they both (who apparently had never been taught the manners of visiting someone's house) looked through my freezer. At which point my husband joked, upon my exit from the commode, that they could not give the $1 Kroger's pizzas away to employees for free when he worked there.

However, I was single. It is very easy to be single and live off power bars and $1 pizzas topped with frozen spinach. Not so much once you get married to the gourmet that I did (I say this in jest, if you give him 1/2 pound of grilled beef, some potatoes and canned corn, he is happy). Now that I have children, one of whom shuns peanut butter and bemoans the fact he is not deathly allergic to it so he would no longer need to smell it in the air or on our breath, and others who complain because I forget to tell them in the drive through that this sandwich gets no lettuce, this one no pickles, and this one no tartar sauce, now I have found living on the shoestring required of an artist (or in this case author) is not acceptable.

Thus, I have also decided that selling my own work may cost me money in the beginning - for pictures in the case of all the children's books I have written over the years, for editing in the case of the book I co-wrote with my husband, and for help getting past writers block in the case of most of my other works - but it will in fact bring in more money that is steadier if I can build a platform.

I have also decided that in order to keep the delicate balance of money coming in now - i.e. freelancing money - with money that will sustain me in the future - i.e. money I will make as a small time author once I have self-published - I will begin to limit my posts to once or twice a week. Although I feel I was faithful to the every other day posting that I initially set up for quite a while, it has been very difficult to sustain that. This has created two to three week gaps sometimes, that is not fair for people who are actually interested in finding out what it is like to be a freelance author or any sort of writer at all.

Building your platform and self-promotion

I enjoy freelancing, I really do. But as I have previously posted, it makes it difficult to do my own stuff and it of course pays much less. However, if you want to make it as an author you must build a platform. Sadly, the days of giant publishing companies looking over your book an sending you a wonderful acceptance letter are pretty much gone. Now, you have to promote yourself before a publishing company (and sometimes even agents) will look at you.

At first, I resisted the urge to self publish. But as I work for others and see job posts for people who have set up their own online "publishing companies" I began to crack. Like any author, I have a voice. I do not see why it must be silenced because I have not promoted myself. Based on some of the books I have gotten from the library that were recently published, I tend to cringe. Surely, I write better than that - why do I have an entire folder of rejection letters?

One person recently posted a job for be exclusively and asked if I would write their book. When I agreed, they then asked if I would find a publisher for it. I am not an agent. I have only a few minor contacts in the publishing industry and these are feeble acquaintances more than anything else. I think it a true honor to have any contacts at all, don't get me wrong. But my influence had not been able to get any of my books published so I do not think it will work for others, either. This is why I also do not write queries. None of mine have succeeded.

Now, I have become an employer as well as freelancer. The irony being that I do not farm out other work that people have assigned me (for the most part). Instead, I have hired an illustrator to get my children's book published (there will be a promotion on here for this as soon as he is done). I have also hired someone to complete an existentialist adult novelette for kindle, and an romance I will be sending to Harlequin. Well, the romance will not be completed exactly, just a boost of 15,000 words to help me over my writers block. But whenever I make a push to get these done myself, it seems I do not make enough money from freelancing to support my families affinity for eating three times a day.