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Article:
Get An Attitude About Your Writing by: Angela Booth (This excerpt is taken from my new writing workshop Writing To Sell In the Internet Age.) Writer John Clausen, in his excellent book about freelance writing: Too Lazy To Work, Too Nervous To Steal, recommends that you get an attitude about your work. And he's right. Many writers are submissive. This attitude brings out the worst in others. It leads to people in a position to pay you for your work taking massive advantage of you, because they figure that you're not going to do anything about it. Heck, it leads to business people --- editors, publishers and anyone who hires writers --- taking advantage of writers in general. So, while you're standing up for yourself, tell yourself that you're standing up for writers everywhere. Because you are. Getting an attitude doesn't mean that you are rude or aggressive. You should be completely polite and professional at all times. However, you do need to be assertive. And to believe in yourself. As Clausen rightly points out, whenever someone hires you to write something, or buys from you, they want to believe that they're hiring and buying the best they can afford. Who will believe that you're good if you don't? If you're overly grateful for each job you get, too thrilled with the idea that the potential buyer is being so nice to consider your work, you'll get ripped off with every job that you do. It took me a long time to learn this. This doesn't mean that you should get a massively inflated ego. You should have enough perspective to see where your work needs improvement. If you're prepared to learn, and to practise, your work will improve each year. Let's get down to basics. If I don't mean be aggressive about your work, what do I mean by 'get an attitude'? What I mean is this: know what the kind of writing you're doing is worth, and what you're worth. And then don't write for less. This means that you're willing to do some research and thinking before you accept a writing job. For example, let's say that a glossy magazine wants you to write a thousand words on the different kinds of plastic surgery which are popular at the moment. The magazine has lots of advertising. By calling the advertising department, and having their advertising rates faxed to you, you see that they're charging $'10
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