The Freelancer, Self Promotion and Perpetual Networking

My life has become an exercise in perpetual networking. As a lifetime networker this is not a new addition to my daily life but since I have taken the financially dubious decision to write full time it has become something of a priority as I network with the people that I write to, for and about. At the base of my overheated networking efforts is the ambition to promote myself and my work and so I have created an intricate network of contacts connecting me to people all over the world, in all walks of life simply on the basis of a shared interest in some obscure subject that I want to write about or that needs the services of a freelance writer to make it a less obscure subject. The internet, the greatest network ever conceived by the human mind, has been the most effective medium for all of this rampant networking with sites like Facebook and Linkedin, where I never imagined spending time in the past, now being my familiar stomping ground while I spend my idle hours musing over how to raise my EdgeRank rating to keep my status updates in the news feed for longer.
I love being asked to contribute to other author’s books in some way and was flattered that Maria Clay would ask me to write the back cover blurb for her book Conversations with a Scammer: My Secret Life Online just recently. She has produced a dynamic, cutting edge book on internet date site scammers and I had the challenge of getting her message into 200 words with a hook. I hoped that my efforts were sufficient but her reply that I had exceeded her expectations was a fillip for me and gave me even more motivation to get involved and network with all of the dynamic artists that I meet in cyberspace.This blog is a vital part of the networking strategy that I have evolved but due to the success of my networking efforts it has ironically suffered from a lack of my attention as I focus on the paying writing jobs and keep on delaying making a post here until I have the time to write something specifically for my blogging audience. Make the time! has become my motto as my ‘ToDo’ list continues to lengthen as the writing jobs come rolling in. The success of my efforts as a writer is also starting to create another group that I network with- the fans. While I have always hoped that there would be people out there that would read my writing, when I received my first fan letters (Facebook messages/e-mails/blog comments) proclaiming their enjoyment of this or that piece that I had written it gave me a renewed enthusiasm and reset the bar for my future work. It also created a whole new web in my network that has surprised me and led to working on interesting briefs like the author, Eric Coyote that wrote and asked me if I would review his latest book The Long Drunk.

 Of course there is still my own work to consider and while I continue to plug away at selling my books: Loot, A Comment on the Verses of the Book of the Law, Give Us this Day Our Daily Blog and my latest effort Master of the Crossroads (note the shameless plug for my entire back catalogue!) I have branched out into journalism and in last month’s Moot Magazine I managed to get not one, but two of my articles into the issue with requests from the editor for more. The first article, Spirituality: A New Religion for the New Age has been a great success and my background article on the Occupy movement, The 99% Occupy No Man’s Land was a bonus for me. In the next issue I hope to have at least one more article and, if Thoth, the god of writers, smiles on me perhaps I will have an e-book review column included regularly as well.

Freelancing has created some really interesting opportunities to write about things that I had never imagined venturing into like the e-book that I was contracted to write recently about Australia’s most wanted fugitive, Malcolm Naden, currently on the run from police in New South Wales for murder and who has evaded capture for six and a half years by living off the land in the Australian Wilderness. My first novel Loot was a crime fiction book and I have always been a fan of true crime books like Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood but had never imagined having the opportunity to be paid to write one in a similar vein.

While freelancing has provided many professional opportunities as my talent for writing internet copy has become known, it is through simple networking that has led to perhaps the most interesting developments and my network has become huge since joining forces with Lady Elizabeth Rose and her team who put on public celebrations of the Pagan Sabbats at CERES Environmental Park in Brunswick, one of Melbourne’s inner suburbs. Networking with this organic local Pagan community has even created opportunities to talk about my esoteric interests to these new readers that have become my fans while I have even been using my burgeoning networking skills to bring other people in my network together with my influence being the catalyst for new connections and friendships between people that share common interests and passions.

While all of this is very fertile ground for the writer it is also very time consuming and I find that I am spending as much time on promotional work and tendering for jobs as I do on writing which has led to this blog suffering from a sort of literary malnutrition. I do have a few of my usual kind of blog posts in the pipeline and intend in the coming weeks to write on topics that the followers of this blog (you know who you are) have come to expect from me. I just have to keep repeating my mantra- I Must Make the Time!

 

Cathedral Photo by Donovan Lord, Editor of Moot Magazine