This is the most exciting time ever to be a writer.

Not only that, but it’s the best time ever to be a professional writer. The technologies and culture of the 21st century make it so.

Though Scott Turow might disagree, he’s dead wrong. So is every writer who thinks the craft is just about sitting in a garret churning out the occasional literary novel. Here are just three of my favorite examples of how people are getting their work out there — and pulling in reasonable income — by writing in this brave new literary world. These are all creative efforts, not the kind of business writing I coach about and feed my family with.

Turning Tricks

Not what it sounds like. Turning Tricks is a web series…basically an independent TV show distributed on YouTube and similar channels. The idea is to either make money off ad revenue, or to attract the attention of a major provider.

They’re on episode 3 of their first season, so traction is only just beginning to build. We’ll see what happens…but others have already proven the model, whether they use it to make an actual living, or just make the hobby pay for itself.

See Also: Ask a Ninja, Ray William Johnson’s =3

Monster Hunters International

Okay, fine. MHI is now carried by the traditional publisher Baen Books and selling like hotcakes. But writer Larry Correia didn’t get there the usual way.

Mr. Correia is a big, Texan man with a big, Texan gun collection. He wrote a book about killing zombies and loving guns. He shopped that book around. When no agents or publishers were interested, he self-published that bad boy. Hundreds of thousands of sales later, those same agents and publishers couldn’t buy enough love for the series.

Correia continues to promote his series well by embracing 21st-century techniques including social media, podcasting and an authorized role-playing-game based on his world.

See Also: Mike Michalowicz, Jennifer L. Armentrout

Lunch Hour Love Stories

Publishers (other than fiction magazines) have never embraced the short story. The best short fiction writers could hope for would be inclusion in a successful anthology, or to sell a collection of shorts after their novels became successful.

Lunch Hour Love Stories  destroys that misconception. Famous and up-and-coming romance writers are dropping short stories on there for $1.99 or so…and making tens of thousands of dollars a day in the first few weeks. Turns out, once you remove the (legitimate) obstacles associated with a print run, short fiction is way profitable.

The smartest contributors to LHLS are writing short stories connected to their existing novels, creating relationship sales and a positive feedback loop of readers and income.

See Also:  Pseudopod

The moral of this story is simple. The money’s out there for all kinds of writers, whether you write for yourself or for somebody else. The only real questions are these…

1. Do you have the courage to embrace the changes that have happened to the writing market in our lifetime?
2. Do you want to write for a living so much that you are willing to become an expert at one or more of these new opportunities?

If your answer is “yes” you have a great writing future ahead of you. If your answer is “no” I wish you luck in whatever career you end up in.

If your answer is “maybe” shoot me a line. I can help you figure out how to make it all happen.

What does your work day look like at 1:15 pm?  Here’s what it could look like if you were a freelance writer.

At 1:12 pm, the BabyBoy came up and said “Daddy! It’s hammock time!” Because that wasn’t a phone call into my office at a regular job-type-job I got to say “Darn straight it’s hammock time!”

I love my hammock time, and so do all the other freelancers I know. For some, “hammock time” is working in the garden. For others, it’s having time to hit the gym or go climb a rock. However you choose to celebrate your control over how you spend your days, it’s one of the best parts of the freelance writing life. It’s also important to succeeding as a freelancer. Here’s why.

1. Connecting With Freelance Mission

Freelance writing jobs are hard. You have to take responsibility for so many things, with nobody there to guide you when you don’t know what to do next. Your hammock time puts you with the reasons you take on that extra work and worry. It helps you power through when the job gets tough.

2. Sharpening the Saw

Hammock time regenerates you as efficiently as a good night’s sleep. By building some slack into your schedule and taking time to pause and reflect, you make yourself a better freelance writer. That means becoming more efficient and profitable…which means more hammock time.

3. Tapping Your Freelance Writing Pencil

A mentor of mine, Dave Kovar, advises to take minutes each day to “tap your pencil” — to make time for letting your mind wander. It’s the best prescription I’ve seen for solving complex problems, imagining plot lines, and finding new opportunities to grow your business and as a person. Hammock time creates occupies your thinking brain with one activity while freeing the rest of your mind to tap that pencil.

What’s your hammock time? Besides actually spending time in a hammock, mine includes practicing martial arts, travel and playing table-top games. Sound off in the comments.

Earlier this month, writer Scott Turow spoke about freelancing opportunities and the writing profession when he wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times called “The Slow Death of the American Author.” You can read the whole thing at their site, but here’s a quick summary.

1. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court decided people could import and resell foreign editions of American books.

2. This is the newest symptom in a cultural disease that is killing income streams for writers.

3. Google is killing writers by directing people to pirate sites, and by taking advantage of the fair use loophole with their Google Books function.

4. Book pirates are taking food out of the mouths of authors and their children.

5. The halcyon days of being an author for a living are gone forever.

With respect for Mr. Turow’s work and his contribution to the profession, I have to disagree in the strongest possible terms. Things are changing in the world of writing, but our best days are still ahead of us. The trick is understanding that the “author” model is changing to something that looks more like other freelancing jobs. Let’s look at his points one by one.

1. Yup. This is true. The Supreme Court made this decision after a college student from India realized the Indian edition of his textbooks sold for a fraction of the American price, even though they were in English. The Court decided that if it was fair for publishers to engage in arbitrage by gouging Americans, it was equally fair for consumers to engage in arbitrage by finding the best deal possible. 
2. Not really. Some copyright factors are cutting into traditional income streams. The days of being Scott Turow, or Stephen King, writing one book a year and making a few hundred grand annually…that stream is dying and some Internet chicanery contributes to that death. But the web as a whole, with the new opportunities for self-publishing, easier promotion in the hands of writers, and broader access to clients for all freelancing jobs — that’s making this the best decade to be a writer ever. 
3. Nah. Remember back in the 1990s when Garth Brooks made a stink because record stores selling used CDs were killing his sales? He still made money the way musicians make money — with concert tickets. Google promotes books with their services, and any freelancer worth his salt can gain far more from Big G than it costs. 
4. Again, no. Yes, some pirates distribute books for free and the author gets no cut. However, the amount of money that actually represents is a rounding error in comparison to how much freelancing writers earn if they do their jobs. The amount is smaller than the margin for error in the calculation. 
5. Also again, no. Like I suggested in #2, and all over this blog, this is the best time ever to be a writer. Yes, we have to learn new skills — but none of those skills are harder than learning how to write. No, we can’t just turn out manuscripts and trust a publisher to do the rest. But we can learn those skills and create exactly the freelance living we want, doing jobs that are fun and challenging and interesting. 

Mr. Turow speaks from the point of view of anybody for whom a system worked well when that system is beginning to change. He can choose to panic and make his fears come true…for him. Or he can do what the rest of us freelance writers do: adapt, learn new skills, work a little harder and come out better than he came in.

If you’re not sure how, Scott, reach out. I’ll be thrilled to show you.

For readers who don’t know, content mills are a model mostly from the 2005-2011 era. They used search engine optimization tricks to derive advertising revenue from massive piles of C+/B- content. To do this, they needed massive piles of writers willing to write short articles for a low payment per piece.

Lots of professional freelancers are pretty hard on these sites, but if I’m not a raving fan I’m at least a lukewarm fan. Here’s the good, the bad and the ugly about these sources of writing income.

The Good

The important thing to remember about content mills is they’re a deeply, deeply mercenary market. They’re in it to make money by gaming the system. If you’re also willing to game the system — especially their system — you can make a surprising amount of money.

For example, Demand Media pays approximately $25 for a 400-word article. That’s a little more than 6 cents a word — not bad, but not great. If you’re not too worried about never winning a Pulitzer, you can crank out three or four of those in an hour on topics where you’re already familiar. Making $75 to $100 an hour ain’t too shabby.

The other thing about content mills for freelance writers is they have a nearly bottomless demand for content. I keep my account open over at Demand even though I don’t write for them much any more. That way if I’m having a dry week, I can log in and make my earnings quota. They always have work.

The Bad

For freelance writers who want to expand their writing, content mills can become a “golden handcuff” trap. The money’s pretty easy, and you can make enough to get by. A year later, you find you’ve done nothing to grow your writing business or to improve your craft. You’re workin’ at the mill, and have gotten used to punching that clock and going home.

Since 2011, content mills have become riskier to depend on. Google doesn’t like their business model, and released the Penguin and Panda updates specifically to break it. This killed a lot of the mills in the past two years, but a few are still operating. You should get an account at one or more, but not rely on them for all your income.

The other bad side of content mills is they’re kind of annoying. Editorial and writing staff aren’t top-shelf. You’ll have to get used to snotty editors and weird rules. My favorite story was the time an editor from a home improvement mill sent back an article because my “math was wrong.” Turned out the editor didn’t know that 2x4s are not, in fact, 2 by 4. But this is a small price to pay for the money to be made.

The Ugly

Listen very carefully. Freelance writers aren’t the only people who look down on content mills. Publishers do, too, and potential clients at all in the know about our industry. If you write for a content mill, use a pen name. I’m not saying you’ll definitely lose opportunities if they find out you wrote for eHow or About.com — but why take the chance?

Mystery writing star Lawrence Block tells a story about how he used to write porn for a living before he became famous. It paid the bills, and let him write for a living before he could write what he wanted to for a living. Content mills are a bit like that. It’s harder work, and you shouldn’t necessarily be proud of it…but it pays the bills so you don’t have to go find a real job.

Professional writers make a living by being geeks.

Folks who’ve known me for a long time know I’m a geek. I dig science fiction, pay attention to comic books, appreciate the inherent math in good heavy metal. I run a D&D game twice a month.

I’m a dyed-in-the-wool, hard-core, unapologetic geek.

But I’ll tell you a secret.

Everybody’s a geek. In their own way.

Have you ever gotten a jock talking sports statistics? What a geek! How about the hot chick at the bar who hasn’t read anything since middle school? Listen to her tell you about what’s going on with her favorite celebrities. Total geek! Even Mad Men lead Don Draper is a geek when he’s talking about what he does best.

We’re all geeks, and that’s a good thing. Last week, I got three job offers just because I’m a geek.

• While talking about SEO and web writing with a professional I met at a conference, the two of us geeked out about how awesome publishing is in the 21st century. I dropped a couple of knowledge bombs and now I’m writing a lot of his web copy.
• My buddy mark runs a small company that manufactures awesome motorcycle masks. He’s looking to grow his business so I started talking about web marketing while we were riding stationary bikes at the gym. After a couple minutes, he interrupted me with “Jason. Do you want a job?”
• I was at my insurance agent’s office, minding my own business and setting up some changes to my retirement savings. He started talking about a sideline he’s doing with some new agricultural technologies and I, once again, started to geek out about web marketing. So now his partners want me to do their website.

Here’s your takeaway from this as a writer. I didn’t go into any of those conversations looking for work. I was just talking about stuff I find fascinating. My energy and passion, and the knowledge that came from them, made the sale without me ever having to put on my sales hat.

What can you sell just because you’re passionate about it? Are you writing on that topic right now?

If not….why not?