How writing skills are treated with disdain!

There are several web-based platforms like GetAFreelancer.com that bring freelance service seekers and providers together. This is undoubtedly a valuable effort in the interest of those buying and selling scripting services. As a freelance writer, I registered with this site a couple of months ago. Ever since, I have made my bids on a few select projects that pay relatively better. What is disappointing and shocking is the deplorable trend of offering dismally low pay to writers by most service seekers, who are often no more than brokers taking a cut from wherever they can along what has become a 'value chain'. I write this article to share my thoughts on the subject.

I have been writing in English for the last 40 years in various roles and capacities. After taking to freelance writing, I have scripted for a variety of assignments like business writing, project proposals, creative writing, company profiles, CVs, short stories, radio talks, product reviews, web content, articles, article re-writes, translations and many more. With my background, long experience, writing skills and the quality of writes that I provide, what they offer me is peanuts – not even in real; they are picture peanuts!!!

Let me elaborate on what exactly I mean. If you read the project announcements, what you will see in many of them are predominantly three things: Stingy fee offers, demand for 'quality' writers and an arrogant articulation of terms.

Here are two typical project announcements by most seekers of writing services:

Case 1: Re-writing of articles. Pay 50 cents for re-writing a 500-word article!!! He wants a ‘top notch’ re-writer, to re-write 5 articles a day.

Case 2: ‘Top quality’ article writers to write 10 original articles every day. Pay $ 1.00 per 500 words article.

Now look at a writer’s earnings. For me, it takes about 30 minutes to finish a neat re-write of 500 words. If I spend 30 minutes of mental work I earn 50 cents!! If I do 15 re-writes in a day of eight hours with no break, I earn $ 8.00. And, it takes anywhere between 75 and 90 minutes to write an ‘original’ article, after doing some ‘research’ on the net looking for specific key-word driven articles. If I write 10 articles a day going through 12 to 15 hours of intellectual drudgery, I earn $ 15.00. This is about $ 8.00 for an eight-hour workday. If I work five days a week, I earn a grand $ 160.00 a month!! That I have scornfully dismissed all such mean and meaningless offers is another matter.

Another amusing thing is the language of these project announcements. They are loaded with all kinds of errors. These terrifying lines, delivered with unparalleled arrogance, come from people who say, “I want top notch writers with chaste English to work for me and pick the nickels that I throw around me.” And it is these people who evaluate your sample writes and 'qualify' you. It is an awful irony.

Not to forget, most of these seekers are middlemen. They are either incapable of getting the original seekers to pay decently; or they are cheating the actual workers of their due by paying off dust and keeping the gold chunk for themselves.

Think of a grocery store that pays its clerks several times more than what these seekers of scripts pay to writers. The point here is not about how much one should pay or even how appalling these service seekers are. But, I am convinced that this is a point that should snowball into an issue of widespread debate. If intellectual skills are the best paid across the world in all other domains, why do these sites in question encourage all kinds of cheap offers thereby debasing the whole community of freelance writers? These sites should encourage only dignified service seekers who show due diligence while making fee offers to writers. That brings respectability to these sites. Writers belong to a category that deserves respect. They should not be beckoned to collect alms; they should be invited and paid honorarium.

Why is this aberration going unquestioned? We, as self-respecting freelance writers, should come together to correct this aberration - or be happy with picking up the nickels and dimes that are thrown in return for hard work.

Build Your Self Confidence

Lack of self-confidence is a common phenomenon. Self-confidence is at the root of all accomplishments. Lack of self-confidence makes you somber. Your enthusiasm slowly dies down. You indulge in self-denial.

Lack of self-confidence can be overcome by an introspection and determination to build self-belief. This self-belief soon grows into self-confidence. Self-confidence facilitates prosperity. As a person of self-confidence, you are an invaluable component of the society. Otherwise, you become insignificant to yourself as well as to the society.

How to gain Self Confidence

Self-confidence is driven by how you see yourself. First, you need to believe in your ability to do things. That helps you take well-deliberated decisions all by yourself. You will meet adversities squarely. You know you can be responsible for what you do. Building self-confidence is easy, as long as you are willing and determined – much like a horse’s willingness to drink water.

Each is talented in one’s own domain. So are you. You lack in self-confidence because you have never looked at yourself as a person of talent and potential. To get over the problem you need to be positive and earnest. Remember, you are a pack of energy in a state of idleness. Evaluate your own self as critically as you would evaluate others.

If you want to build your self-confidence, just do a little exercise. Compare yourself with an achiever of your choice. You will see that his first attribute is his courage, which stems from his knowledge of whatever he does. When he ventures into something, like others he too is apprehensive of losing, of being laughed at, of failure. But he is unlike others where his self-belief encourages him to just move ahead, unmindful of all possibilities.

You can see failure in two ways. When you have no self-belief, you feel bad about what went wrong and feel discouraged. With self-belief, you see failure as a step closer to success. You look at why things went wrong. What went right reaffirms your ability to do things right. A failure gives you more knowledge. It is a chapter well-learnt for you. It implants self-confidence in you.

Now you know that the difference between success and failure is self-belief. Believe in yourself; in your abilities; and you will be a stunningly different person, who is out to conquer the skies. You will be self-confidence personified.

Ramblings on the Paradox of Cheap and Best

The other day, a friend of mine and I were in the marketplace. I told him that I was looking for something that was ‘cheap and best’. He raised a serious objection to this. I tried to explain that I had a thin budget and could afford only something that was cheap and best. He clarified that the point of his objection was to my using the expression.

Having known him as a self-proclaimed linguist who ate and drank lexicons, I should have seized the point of his objection. My using the expression cheap and best had galvanized his aptitude for using correct language. It was his millionth objection to what he believed to be “poor language usage”. He was convinced that whether you are in the middle of luxurious linguists or languishing souls, it was important to use literally correct language. Every time he starts this, I would invariably grab the opportunity to flaunt my knowledge of language theories. Now, this was yet another mission for me to propound that the nature of language is arbitrary and hence not necessarily logical. In an instant, our casual shopping exploit turned into a serious language conference in that marketplace-privacy and comfort. Here, I am placing what ensued, for you to agree with or argue over.

Apparently, for him, the expression cheap and best was too absurd. He derided that the phrase was being used by people too often without understanding its paradox. He felt agonized that English was being murdered. Quoting what the lexicon defined, he said if cheap means inexpensive and best means unsurpassed, how could both of them be the qualities of the same thing at once? Is it realistic to expect the best things at cheap rates?

I put forth my interpretation that the qualities cheap and best are to be inter-related. Here, cheap meant being reasonable and best meant good enough. Suddenly, he looked to me like the Socrates of English language. He quickly threw in and said, “Then why can the expression not be recast into good and best? This should mean you want a good product and the best possible bargain. Good and best being the low and high points on a quality scale, the phrase sounds interesting too! This expresses better than the expression cheap and best.

To me his argument sounded like a revelation. Yes. Why not good and best? Why don’t we reason things out and rationalize expressions like the one in question? Is it necessary that we retain these expressions untouched and unmodified?

Just what circumstances could’ve given birth to an offbeat phrase like Cheap and best? This phrase must have been born as an expression by someone who always wanted the best things in life but could never afford them. He decided to be content with a belief that what he had was the best he could get for the money he could pay. So, he always bought cheap and best things. Today, most of us have adopted this unknown man’s favorite brand – Cheap and Best. But I believe that we could perhaps re-brand it as Good and Best, which is a better expression. Any takers?