Analog Coast
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Hey hey, it’s the latest instalment of “Crazy stuff people want to pay someone to write!” And now here’s our host…ME! (What, like we have the budget here to hire a host? I’m so cheap I’m about to re-use some content I just tweeted, bitches!)
Need 200 Pages for a Rabbit Care Book
200 pages? I think I can be a bit more concise. Ready?
Feed them.
You’re welcome. Where’s my money?
Need 200 Words for a Book With Dating Tips for Guys
What’s noteworthy about this? It’s the same client who’s looking for 200 words on rabbit care. What the Hell does this person do, exactly? I suppose you could use some of the information in both :
Rabbits/women sometimes like to be groomed and petted as a sign of affection. If they aren’t interested, they’ll let you know right from the start by issuing a shrill death scream/punching you in the eye and calling the police.
Pet Blogger for our website
I’m hardly one to mock others over poor grammar. However, I can’t resist pointing that out how funny it is that someone posted this wording on a website seeking writers. Are you going to name your blogger? Will you take him for walks? Maybe get together with the Rabbit Care person to ensure that your blogger remains happy and healthy.
Need Ghostwriter to Finish Original Mystery Story Idea
Hoo boy.
Some time ago, I wrote a draft novella about a female private investigator and male bounty hunter who go undercover on an assignment. I don’t want to give the plot away in the posting, but the story was meant to be fast paced, sexy, and suspenseful.
Ladies and gentlemen, originality.
Need Articles on Marriage & Sex
Well this is just easy.
Like sex? Don’t get married. Or maybe start banging some chick at work.
Now where’s my money at?
We are looking for the right person to help create amazing content/blogs for our worm business.
There are no words. Probably not the result a person is looking for when they post a job seeking out a writer.
Apparently this ties in to organic farming, but that title line just sucks the ability to form thought right out of the brain for a little while.
Invitation to Doctors
Okay, what’s this all about?
I need some body who can help me write a letter to send to Drs. I am offering my services to sell orthotics for them. I already a letter written but I need somebody who can make the letter appealing to drs.
Nothing gets your medical equipment out the door faster than farming out the task of writing the letter to doctors to a person whom you’ve never met before. Also, this one is so weird that I am totally putting my name in.
This was a job posted on a freelance writing site. I immediately sensed possible comedy gold.
Seven simple to follow rules for looking great! From the author of such previous works as ‘YOU DON’T DESERVE SNACKS OR JOY, YOU FAT PIG!’ and ‘Nobody likes a Bulimic – Anorexia for the Win (Unless You’re a Vomiting Attention Whore)’.
1. Remember that ice is a food. You totally need to chew and swallow it, right? That makes it a food! There you go. Eat all you want and you can feel good about your figure.
2. Don’t let possible weight stress take hold of you. Seriously, you’ll get worry lines all over your face. And we all know that once your face goes, Sweetheart, you’re staring at a lifetime of waitressing in a coffee house. Seriously, you have ZERO skills.
Don’t let that stress take hold…it’s healthier to get it out of your system as soon as it shows up! So the next time you’re stressing about a pound or two, direct it in to punching yourself as hard as possible in the ovaries. Now you remove that stress from your life AND you hopefully damage those baby-makers before possible pregnancy can destroy any chance of success that you might have. Plus, you totally deserve the pain for gaining weight.
3. Hunger pains mean that you’re winning! You have to work hard to achieve anything in this world, and unnatural thin-ness is no exception. If this was easy, EVERYONE would be 94 pounds and happy! But they aren’t, so leave those jealous fat and ugly people behind and relish in the cramping emptiness that will make up your existence.
4. Remember to track those calories. It sounds like a lot of work, but it shouldn’t be. After all, if you’re eating anything with a measurable calorie count, you clearly want to be fat. If you need to do math to calculate your caloric intake (and let’s face it, Math is not a skill for you…), you are soon to be a fat swine who nobody will love. I hope that makes you happy because nothing else will.
5. Hydrate! Hydrate! Hydrate! You need water or you’ll die. And water is just melted ice, so it’s a meal that you can quickly consume. Best of all, if you fill yourself with water you won’t have room for any of that pesky food! Please note that while simply putting a hose in your mouth and leaving it there might seem like a great way to fill up long term, it will actually make parts of you burst and it will totally kill you. On the plus side : no more hunger pains! And you’re viable for work in photo campaigns until you begin to visibly decompose.
6. Figuring out a proper portion size. This is actually a lot easier than it might seem. If we’re talking about some sort of vegetable that has been boiled down until it becomes a colourful glop, you want no more than will fit on to a spoon. Not a normal spoon, one of those little tiny spoons your weird grandmother had for the sugar bowl in her tea set. One of those. Finished? You’re done.
As for any other type of food, even suggesting eating that is failure. You can’t even be in the same room with it. STOP FAILING AT LIFE!
7. Breakfast is still the most important meal of the day. It sets the tone. It lets you tell your body what to expect for the day, and you need that.
-First off, smoke a pack of cigarettes. No filters, just smoke away. Sure, your lungs will be converted to blackened husks of disease, but unless things go very wrong you aren’t being asked to model your goddamn lungs! You can’t put food in your mouth so jam a stick of tobacco in there.
-Your stomach is going to start growling. You remember that it’s YOUR stomach! You are the boss! You tell that thing to shut the fuck up! Scream at it! Hit it if you’d like (try to aim towards the ovarian region if possible). Show that organ who’s boss!
-Once you’re done screaming, shut the Hell up about your hunger. Nobody likes an attention whore! Don’t be like one of those starving African kids who monopolize late night television. You’ll get to know them when you’re up late with hunger pains so strong that you’re coiled up in the fetal position in the corner of your room. Why they lament their God given lean figures is completely beyond me. So selfish.
And that’s it! Good luck with your career path of poisoning the self esteem of girls who can’t fit in to the bizarrely designed clothing you’ve been modeling.
Just venting a few frustrations with common issues seen with potential clients in the freelance world.
-Every single day, I see numerous job postings that are supposed to be aimed at a specific person. Let’s use an example with a typical woman’s name (most of you already know where this is heading. It’s the joke that will never, ever be old. Thanks, James) :
Hi, Medula! How are you doing? We certainly were impressed with the work you did before…”
Yeah, clearly she made a huge impression. Or you’re so utterly incompetent that you can’t properly send a private message. Either way, it’s not giving me much incentive to apply.
-The worst writer in the room frequently seems to be the person trying to hire one. This would of course explain WHY they need someone to write for them. It also explains why they often end up hiring some dude from Bangladesh whose prior exposure to English consisted entirely of reading safety labels on auto parts as they flew by him on an assembly line.
-It’s cool if you have some really specific needs, such as fluency in other languages or for the writer to live in a certain area. Could you maybe use the damn job posting form to put those things in their pre-arranged spots ABOVE the main job description? I just love reading through a few hundred words only to find that I can’t even apply because I need to be able to write this up in English AND Swahili. The odds of important details like this being lost somewhere within the description also seem to rise at a rate equal to the description’s word count.
-No, I won’t agree to do the job for $4 an hour. I have these pesky things called ‘dignity’ and ‘self worth’ which are preventing me from accepting that. I don’t care whether you try to act like we’re buddies or, even more entertaining, ‘threaten’ me. Seriously, what possible threat are you going to lay down? That you won’t allow me to work for you? Sweet mercy, no! Please chomp on dicks.
-Hey, you with the ‘totally original’ piece of fiction : it isn’t original. Time traveling robot killers are not original. The whole space opera thing is pretty much tapped out. Wow, robots in disguise? How new and fresh! The odds of any creative writing concept being original seem to go down the more often the person trumpets the originality of their idea.
-If you actually do have an original fiction idea, it is probably completely terrible. Here are a few of the ideas that I’ve actually seen presented :
1. An Amish love story.
I fail to see how a romance novel built entirely on furtive glances exchanged at barn buildings will remain interesting for very long.
2. Practitioners of a certain form of Yoga that take a time out during certain phases of the moon do so because they’re werewolves. And there’s a romance angle.
The best part of this entire pitch was the line ‘I need someone who knows (insert name of it here) Yoga because the story needs to be authentic’. Yes, when you’re commissioning someone to write you a Yoga werewolf love story, authenticity is certainly going to be a priority.
3. The rich live above ground and use all the power. The poor live below ground and keep producing stuff for the rich, but they don’t even know the rich EXIST, man!
So…who did they think they’re making all of this stuff for? This didn’t occur to anyone? Also, how are they manufacturing anything without power?
But then one poor guy learns THE TRUTH and the poor get mad, and the main rich guy is evil and stuff and starts planning to kill all the poor!
So…where would the rich be getting all of their stuff from after this? It doesn’t seem like a well planned slaughter at all.
And then the evil guy’s daughter falls in to a hole and ends up in Poorville…
Seriously? How high were you when you came up with this? They’ve enclosed the poor below ground, but they couldn’t be bothered to fill in some old mine shaft?
…and she’s hurt. But she wasn’t hurt by the poor people, but her evil dad makes it seem like she was so he can start a war and stuff!
Who exactly is going to fight on the side of the rich? They’re grossly outnumbered, probably aren’t in very good shape at this point on account of doing nothing, and the poor they’d be fighting make all of their stuff. Will the poor be producing weapons for the rich while fighting them, because they’re incredibly stupid?
4. This one is new today!
Tell the story of a specific Brewery, finding a way to twist our marketing about ‘the finest hops’ and the like in to a gothic theme with mysterious happenings.
A gothic themed story, minimum 10,000 words, that also markets your beer? I have a nice one for you. It’s really short, but I think it gets the point across.
“There once was a brewery owner who spent all day ‘testing’ his product. Then he went online and put up some ideas that probably seemed smart after his ninth morning pint. They weren’t, though. Then he hopefully drove home and ran in to a tree.”
-Could you maybe attempt to explain what the Hell you want AT ALL?
Hi! Need articles written in two days. Please apply if interested.
Interested in what, exactly? How many articles? What are they about? How long do they need to be? Sure, I could ask you all of this, but I can also apply for six other writing jobs with people who bothered to explain all of this in the first place. They actually know what they want. You barely managed to explain the blatantly obvious and then left to return to your busy day spent no doubt confusing the living shit out of people live and in person. I actually suspect that you may be a caveman who has awoken in this new and confusing future and is trying to fit in.
There. I feel much better.
The freelancing continues!
Fresh off my work trying to help a UK car buyer flog their wares, I hit a patch of…absolutely nothing.The inconsistency of work availability might be the single most frustrating part of the entire freelance endeavour. I’m just not used to it. All of my previous work experience was of the typical ‘Work, go home, go to work the next day’ variety. There wasn’t any of this ‘Work, look for work, wait, work a bit, wait some more, wait again, work’ day-to-day nonsense that I get to deal with now. I’m a bit of a control freak, and I’m impatient. Uncertainty is not my friend.
Anyway, yesterday the floodgates opened. I ended up getting a job that promises to be semi-regular. The client represents a whole bunch of different companies on Anna Maria Island. It’s a ridiculously high end district just off the Gulf Coast of Florida. We’ll get back to this gig in a minute.
The other was a more immediate tasking, yet again helping someone fix some ghastly work a different writer had thrown together. It was a series of nearly un-readable reviews. Anyway, I smashed my way through those in an hour and got my money. Sweet! Oh wait, do I want more work? Okay…
Public service announcement : You know those ‘customer reviews’ that you find on various product sites? Yeah, don’t believe those. Trust me. There’s a very good chance they weren’t written by customers. I know. I wrote 50 of the damn things for a series of outbuilding kits that can be put together by homeowners. I sure as Hell have never seen nor dealt with any of these products.
Yay for dishonesty paying the bills! It was actually a bit of a challenge. The 50 reviews can’t all seem like they were written by one person, so you have to try to vary your tone. Some are written dumb, some blather on, some are right to the point, blah blah blah. It’s actually a lot more difficult than you might imagine, particularly when you have to start working the names of states and certain product keywords in to a portion of them.
Speaking of writing challenges, let’s go back to the first job. This one involves re-writing news articles in to a more casual blog format for local businesses. One of the two that I wrote today was for a wedding planning site. Yes, seriously. And as anyone who has ever visited a wedding planning site is well aware, the writing style for that sort of content can charitably be described as ‘Spectacularly Cheezy’. Well, I embraced that. Sweet merciful fuck did I embrace that. As penance for my earlier case of review fraud, I am going to force myself to share with everyone who reads this the single most horribly awful sentence that I am likely to ever write.
I warn you, it’s bad.
It’s REALLY, REALLY bad. We’re talking douche chills bad. You might want to get yourself a drink before continuing. I plan to.
Okay, ready?
No, really? Are you really ready?
Fuck it. Let’s rip the Band-Aid off and just get this over with…
After all, who hasn’t dreamed of a wedding on a beautiful, sandy beach as the sun beams down on the beginning of their new life together?
I know, T. I know. I am actually shuddering right now. Frankly, I’d kind of like it if you did show up and punch me in the face.
Yeah. That’s some spectacularly shitty crap…and that’s just one sentence. There was more. The rest wasn’t nearly as embarrassing, but it was still pretty terrible. But, apparently the client loves it. It fits with the rest of their content. It really does. Trust me, I read through some of it to try to figure out the right ‘mood’ for the rewrite. Wow. Just wow.
Next week I’ll be interviewing over Skype with someone from Scribd. They’re looking for someone to help purge the spam from their system and write up some marketing copy. I sincerely hope that it will never involve writing anything along the lines of that monstrous sentence above. Then again, I’m probably going to get more material that needs a re-write for the same wedding site. So…yay? I think?
Content! Words! Stuff!
Turns out that when you end up writing a bunch of stuff for other people, it leaves less time for you to write stuff for you. Particularly when not much is happening that you feel like blathering about. But the blog was really starting to whine about us just not spending time together anymore, so I felt the need to write what is the post equivalent of a ‘Yeah, I’m really thinking about you’ bouquet to buy myself some time. Seriously, blogs get really bitchy.
Many moons ago I wrote a post (that I can’t even be bothered to find) about my growing board game collection. Chad posted a comment asking me to take a picture of all of them. At the time, they were all over the place. Some were stored in a closet. Some were stacked up on the floor. Some more were on top of a shelving unit. So yeah, not so much.
But since I re-arranged a whole bunch of crap this weekend, I suddenly had a bunch if free shelving. Holy crap! Room! Things could be conglomerated! Let the amalgamation commence!
Enjoy the wonderful backdrop of ripped open wall that needs to be re-framed at some point.
Doesn’t that mean that all of this will eventually have to be moved again so that the wall can be rebuilt?
Uh…shut the fuck up, voice!
That pile of stuff next to Band of Heroes on the right is two counter trays holding all of the game counters (the box is jammed full of boards, scenario cards, help sheets and game cards). That Plano box next to Agricola is all of the counters and bits…it won’t fit in the damn game box with all the cards and boards. And Flash Point’s little box of stuff doesn’t fit once the expansion boards are put on the box. So awesome to have boards show up in a goddamn sleeve that offers no storage at all. Thanks a lot, game publisher whose name escapes me at the moment!
And there’s the bit that you couldn’t see before…namely, a few big boxes, some RPG books and shredded drywall and vapour barrier. Woo? What looks like a weird lump of tar in with the RPG stuff is actually a bag of dice.
If you don’t see a game in those pictures, that means I’ve traded it away. I am a fickle bastard when it comes to hanging on to things, especially when those things take up space. Hell, a few of these might vanish at some point to be replaced by others. Of course, such cullings have also meant that everything fits on those shelves with room to spare. I consider that a good thing.
Post – written.
Self – mocked.
Collection – photographed.
Check, check and check. This is in the bag.
There were long stretches during my university career that I didn’t particularly like who I was. I had basis for this in the form of a romantic attachment that I formed that didn’t work out. I’m sure most of the rest was in my head. However, there are two very overt examples that reinforced what I believed. I can look back at one and think about it with a little distance and realize that maybe I talked myself into letting it get me down. I may fully tell you, one day, about the time God beat me out for a girl but now is not that time. No, tonight, I will tell you about the other time that my ego, my machismo, and my self image took a hit. And this time, I tell you, I have evidence to back up my case.
I’d never intended to sign up for a bachelor auction. But there are times when people can talk you into things. If I had it to do over again, I would have stuck to the inside of my shell like I had every other time with the exception of the one time that I got hypnotized. Still, I guess I just let myself get talked into signing up.
I figured that the fact that I was the second one up wasn’t a good sign. Still, I had a little bit of an insurance policy. Shelley, Dylan’s wife, had a friend who would put up a minimal bid for me in the event that no other offers were sent up. Obviously, I would pay her back but in the end it wasn’t necessary. Someone bid on me.
That was nice, even if the bid was for less than the gift certificate that came along with this hunk of masculinity.
Maybe the girl was just interested in charity. Maybe she was angry at her boyfriend. I really don’t know. I do know that she had a boyfriend. Or at least that’s what she told me to beg out of the date. I’m not saying that I’m the height of amusing or even all that great a guy but she didn’t even want the gift certificate. She got out of there fast after making her excuses. I’m guessing that she was kind and trying to get the bidding going and was surprised when it turned out that she was the winner.
In the end, I treated myself to some Chinese food and consoled myself with the fact that at least mine wasn’t the lowest bid in the entire auction. That was the poor sap who went ahead of me in the auction. He went for a paltry ten bucks.
Sleep when you’re dead. Come on. Come out. So what if you’re tired? It’s just for a little while. I know you have to work in the morning. but you can make it up on the weekend.
These tried and true sayings have been thrown around since the dawn of time to make people do things and stay up later than they meant to. So it should come as no surprise that I succumbed to their siren call on more than one occasion.
Around Christmas time, when I was working at the bleach factory, my university friends were all out of school with nothing on the agenda but celebration. Another semester was done and they were left with too much time on their hands. And the cascade of out-of-town students meant that some of them had nobody else to celebrate with than those of us who were not beholden to some finals schedule to determine our availability.
So I found myself dragged out on weeknights, to the occasional bar, to the more frequent coffee session or movie. And I was tired. All the time.
One night, after a movie, my car died at Rob’s house (see, it did happen a lot) and I didn’t finish dropping off various friends until three or four in the morning. So, it made perfect sense to me to stay up and go to work rather than sleep a couple of hours and wake up crusty and unhappy. I made myself stay awake with various tactics uncovered in the deepest jungles of South America. Either that or I played hockey on the Sega Genesis.
Whatever the motivation, I was able to stay awake long enough to have a shower and get in the car for work.
I worked that day, unhappy, tired, and unmotivated, but the bleach didn’t stop coming because I wasn’t feeling it.
I did notice that things were a little weird. I would blank out and panic that I was behind on my bottles because I was not on top of things, only to realize that I wasn’t behind at all. Or a pallet would be closer to finished than I expected. It didn’t make sense to me, but I made it through that day without any major incidents. (Or minor, I think.)
It wasn’t until later that I realised that I’d fallen asleep on the job. But that I had kept working. The truth is, a person could almost do all of that job by reflex. It isn’t much more than muscle memory to check bottles for leaks, throw six of them into a box and push it through the tape machine, then when there were three boxes, to go throw them onto the pallet. So it is feasible that I did fall asleep and work through it. I was certainly tired enough to do it.
I’m not entirely convinced that that’s the reality and sixteen years is too long for me to pretend I can one hundred per cent guarantee that’s what happened but it makes sense and is a better story than that I’m blocking some essential truth of that day out.
After that, I did try to make a point of getting enough sleep for the next day of work. I wish I could tell you that I got a solid at least 6 hours, but hey, you can sleep when you’re dead. Or at least, you can make it up on the weekend.
I’ve often wondered about the freelancers who are willing to whore themselves out for insanely low amounts of money. Without fail, every single job that I’ve seen on a freelance site features an offer so incredibly cheap that it’s almost insulting just to read. We’re talking some woebegone soul asking for $17 to complete a job where the average asking price is more like $250. Who are these people? And the bigger question, does anyone hire them?
Apparently so.
I’ve spent the past day and a half helping to fix some writing work that I’m assuming comes from a couple of those people. A car buying site in the UK had hired a couple of guys to do the writing for 80 or so landing pages on their site. One paragraph per page specifying the usual sales pitch for a specific town…nothing too fancy. Here’s an example of what they ended up with :
At Trade My Motor we help all experienced and inexperienced car sellers to get benefit from the online resource. We guarantee that the entire procedure of selling your car will be quick, trustworthy and easy. The nationwide network of Trade My Motor is helping its clients everywhere. We allow you to contact our branches directly and start the car selling process immediately. We buy any car in Barnet without the hassle and fuss entailed by a private sale. By following few simple and easy online steps, you can sell your old car and receive the money instantly. We only need your personal contact details, few images of your car, and true remarks about the condition of the car. There is nothing else to do at your side. We will get your car valued and inform you about the price and purchase it within twenty four hours. If you agree with our deal, then money will be transferred to your account instantly for just a small fee.
With Trade My Motor you can get benefit from the experienced and reliable team and we assure you a friendly quality service second to none.
I kind of want to file a police report about the violent rape of the English language.
The funny thing is, when I was first providing an example to get this job, I was also linked to a ‘good’ write-up. It wasn’t so much ‘good’ as ‘a bit less of a bag of a shit’ than that mess above. My personal favourite part…rather than describing the company as fair AND secure, the writer went with ‘fairly secure’. What a ringing endorsement.
“We’re fairly secure. We’ll kind of get you the best deal, maybe. And we’ll perhaps do so with a hint of a smile, if you catch us on the right day and stuff. Call us today…or don’t. Whatever.”
Anyway, yeah. I find myself wondering how these guys were hired in the first place (I can’t imagine their writing was much better during initial discussions about the job). I also find myself hoping they get more work, because I’m happy to follow them up and fix stuff for dolla dolla bills, yo.
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