I began, a short while ago, to write about the ridiculousness of the freelance writing market, into which (for various reasons) I am currently dangling my pretty pink tootsies; but I got exactly halfway through a post before deciding that I sounded so ridiculously entitled I may as well buy some Laura Ashley and a Pekingese named Miss Poky Poo, spray on Gucci's Eau de Smug, and be done with it. Ah yes, ha ha, the job market is HILARIOUS, I say, from my nicely air-conditioned and desperation-devoid ivory tower.
However, I was nosing about the freelance boards for job opportunities once again this morning, and this notice, appended to a request for a PR writer for a chain of pet stores, broke my silence, once and for all:
"Please note, this business is owned by two Beagles, so if you don't like dogs, or taking direction from them (they're pretty opinionated) this is probably not the best spot for you. (Although we are an equal opportunity employer, if you are a dog, unless you can type, it probably won't work out.)"
No, really. Go and read it again.
Cute, you say, and it is, in a way. But let us not forget that it is also stark raving bonkers. Taking orders from ventriloquism-aided beagles is what happens when you quit the job market and take up a satisfying career in acid-taking. The fact, ladies and gentlemen, that this is barely the tip of the iceberg (incidentally, I think we're going to need to find a better figure of speech once the icebergs disappear - the tip of the coastal city which remains above water, perhaps?) as far as - forgive me - barking madness goes should indicate the frank weirdness of my current existence. (So what else is new.)
I had, for instance, never known before I began my present trawling that there was such a thing as Fantasy Baseball Blogging, an ignorance which strikes me now as remiss. Anais Nin with baseball gloves? Slash pairings between burly rival pitchers? "I've never seen a bat THAT big before"? Somebody give me some idea over here. Throw me a bone, beagle-overlords.
It is also slightly confronting, particularly at 9am on a rainy morning, to be asked 'Do YOU have a humourous story about abortion? Your own? Somebody else's?', followed by a request to put it in 500-1000 words and cede the copyright in preparation for book publication. I suppose it's better than telling it around the pub.
The niche writing jobs out there are, in general, fairly astonishing. I've been forced to admit, to both myself and to the questions posed by job ads, that I am not an expert in power tools, gay men in sport, the history of marching bands, laws surrounding church pension groups, rashes caused by diabetes, or making jewellery which accurately resembles fish; I have not ghostwritten the autobiographies of one or more incarcerated rappers, talked to ghosts, or written a weekly column on oral sex.
(The latter was a suggested requirement for editing a self-help book on the subject- and fair enough too, because if they'd just said 'requires experience', the resulting resumes may have been highly questionable.)
And no, just for the record, I am not going to write Erotic E-Books With Unexpected Twists, purely because I'd take 'unexpected' very, very literally (Taxidermy! Entropy! Lyres! Christopher Walken, whom, like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody ever expects!). I'm not going to write 1,000 questions and answers for an 'Amusing Board Game About Art History', either, as I'd doubtless get bored and make all of them bad jokes:
"Q: Vincent Van Gogh walks into a bar, and the barman offers him a drink. How does he reply? A: 'No thanks, I've gone one 'ere.'"
There's also quite a narrow window of legitimate, well-paying (as far as freelance positions go) opportunities. On the one side of this glowing city is the dark and dense Exploitation Mire, where well-meaning freelancers attempt to avoid the bubbling mud-cysts of Work for Big $$$$$ Only Eight Days A Week!, and the poisonous traps of $0.03 Per Word, Increasing As Your Profile Rises! Let us not dare speak of Write For Us, Lttle Subscribtion Fee Required! It's dank and miserable and horribly misspelled.
On the other, however, are the serene banks of the Soul-Sucking River, where everything is legitimate, well-paid and immaculately grammatically correct, and requires merely a small compromise of one's ethics. The breeze wafts with the hot air of Product Writers Needed for PR Opportunity @ Toy Company (which, one discovers after a little internet search, needs a new PR image because the toys were found to contain lead). Published authors wave from the terrace and request a diligent serf to research, ghostwrite and edit their new book, which is an admirable interpretation of 'outsourcing'.
The best of these are the well-known and hideously well-paid Academic Paper Writing jobs. Some struggling little darling's mother whips out a credit card and on demand, like clockwork, is provided with what is ostensibly a Model Answer for the essay question provided, at the appropriate length, with bibliography and associated bells and whistles (and at an appropriate level, no less- one can order a C+ paper as easily as an A one.) Model Answers, in case you raise a moral objection, are only meant to guide our hapless university blockhead to discover his own essay-writing mojo. The merest suggestion that the Model Answer be handed in as their own work sends the Academic Paper Writing companies into mouth-frothing paroxysms and libel accusations.
The people who produce these tailored essays-on-demand, with occasional notice of less than one day, are generally graduates with astonishing last-minute research skills, and they're well-paid. For a 2,000-word undergraduate essay one earns several hundred dollars, depending on how much time is given; writing somebody else's PhD will probably earn you enough to pay off your student loans. Unless, of course, you cherish the apparently anachronistic notion that university is there to actually get an education. Personally I, being afflicted by a nastily strong ethical sense, think the essay-purchasers can go do complicated things to their instestines, which is why I will not be a millionaire any time soon.
I will, however, lead an intriguing existence, as I'm currently:
a) on the shortlist for a position writing for a Cosmo-esque women's website, whose application articles ('Write about 'Mr Right' and 'What To Wear On A First Date', 500 words each') I made as sarcastic as possible because I was devoid of any hope of actually getting the job. To say I wasn't expecting the response to my unbearably snarky submissions to be interest is a very slight understatement. If I get the job my head might explode.
b) employed as an occasional article writer by a woman who rejoices, no kidding, in the last name Rambo II.
If that doesn't mean things are going to get interesting, I don't know what does.
