Frustration

Ugh...

That's exactly how I'm feeling right at the moment. It's due to many reasons incidentally... Let's begin with earlier in the week. Don't worry, it's not all bad.

I failed to blog post on Tuesday. As it turns out, the one day that I want 'off' from doing stuff is Tuesdays and for whatever reason, it always becomes the day that EVERYONE wants attention. People tend to distract me often on that day and it's meant to be my time. From this day forward, I'm going to start enforcing that one. Please leave my Tuesdays alone.. Besides, I'll be out Tuesday evening because ChiSeries is having their reading night! The authors that will be doing readings are: Amal El-Mohtar, Kate Heartfield, and Tanya Huff. Some of my family members really love Tanya Huff and therefore, they are coming with me. It'll be a nice outing. If you're in Ottawa, you should come! It's 7pm at Patty Boland's in the Market. :D

Step two, the games media site I write for was having weird issues. It led to a delay in releasing articles. Honestly it wasn't that much of a big deal, things need to be updated. I was just randomly frustrated due to some of the technical issues. It's all good now but it was rather annoying at the time. That said, while I was frustrated with WordPress, the people that I interact with daily are amazing. Don't let my weird WP issues fool you, the people with EloTalk are fantastic. :)

The third frustration is that yesterday I dyed my hair, at least it's SUPPOSED to be dyed. Unfortunately, the colour was too runny, allowing half of the stuff to come out of the hair WHILE STILL PUTTING IT IN! Imagine how impressed I was when looking at my hair when it dried. The purple turned into a more light pink colour, most of it came out leaving the bleached hair to be the most dominate of colour, and it's just hideous. Needless to say, I'm re-dying it this evening and not leaving my house. After this one and only time of bleaching my hair, I have found that I do NOT look good with the light colour. ARGH! So word to the wise, do not use Splat hair dye... It may look cool but frankly I'll stick with Manic Panic or whatever ones that I KNOW other people have had at least decent looking colour.

Here we are at point four of frustration which leads into some questions. I've been following a number of writers on youtube, facebook, and other places to learn more about the industry as I write/edit my current works. I write articles for Elotalk.com every couple of days, discuss with editors, and have the content put up on the site. With this, I strive to improve each time I do an article regardless of its content. I've also just finished editing a very short story for a contest. It does not have a cash payment but will provide a yearly subscription to their magazine. The important part for me in this experiment is to see what happens. Do they like the content of the story or does it need improvement? Does it get somewhere? Even if it doesn't make the runners up, I will be happy anyways. After it's submitted, I'll call it a success because I've never completed a short story with a point. I believe I've managed to do that successfully. Therefore, it's an achievement for me, albeit small. That's all that matters.

This is part of frustration four: The reality of the situation is this: I'm not working. I don't make money and it drives me mad. Being lazy once in a while is fine, but I don't like to sit on my butt, doing nothing. This is why I write as much as I do for Elotalk, and moderate as many channels as I do, because I need to do something before I go crazy. I also enjoy socializing by going to events and that's not a possibility if I make nothing. While I may be looking for jobs, it's not happening, and it's been quite a while since I've worked.

So while article writing and contest attempting, I've been researching Content Mills. It seems like a potentially viable option at this stage and the above covers the reasons behind why I contemplate it. In researching it, I found that they don't pay a lot, but that's not the point. The general presumption is about 2-5 cents a word, which is very little when you look at a 500 word article. If a person writes an article on a bulk price (ie: I'll pay you $200 for an article), then you can equate how good/terrible the pricing is based on how long it takes to write it. Time really is money in this case. Though, I've read many times that writers can make something like 20 cents or more per word once they've proven themselves. 20 cents versus 5 cents per word is a big difference. I'm not expecting to take over the world with Content Milling but it'd give me a little bit to work with while doing other things. So that leaves me with some questions for you guys

Many of you are writers, did any of you consider the idea before? How long did you stick with it before getting out of it? Did you opt out of the idea and why? What might be viable solutions I could consider in place of it? What are your general thoughts? Is it worth it?

I'm still just looking for information and have not signed up for any sites. I won't do that until I know all sides of the story, the pros and the cons to Content Mills, and if its really worth the hassle. Regardless, I'm still going to look it up, but I do appreciate constructive feedback. I have no idea who reads my blogs to be honest, but I know that chances are most of you are people I know. That means that I consider you friends regardless of if we regularly speak, and if I consider you to be friends, then I'd like to know what your thoughts are.

I'm also looking at other avenues, this isn't the only thing I've considered. I'm looking for other contests to enter, writing jobs that I could apply for, etc.. I'm still working on and hopefully finishing my novel. As in, I'm not just relying on this one idea so don't panic peeps!

Now I'm going to fix my hair, eat something, and send off the short story :) Frustration is more just the state of mind I'm in right now. The Jaggy will recover, don't worry!

Be good peeps!

Until next time.

Jagtress.

#writing #editing #contentmills #wordpress #elotalk #elotalkcom