The Petite Writer

The first writing job that I ever got was to write 40 100-word articles… for $5.

It was back in 2006 and online, freelance work was really beginning to pick up the pace. Even then, the amount of money that I was paid was tiny, of course, but I was happy just to get the chance to create content as a writer and actually get paid for it.

It took me about a week to finish this project, and if you were to calculate how much I earned per hour, it would probably be around $0.125.

But I was happy, I didn’t know any better at the time, and it was the beginning of a writing career.

I was a shockingly slow writer at the time and very insecure in everything that I put on the page. It took me a whole week to write 4,000 words of, honestly, generic content that didn’t even require any research. But we all have to start somewhere and at a certain level. Today, the same number of words would take me between 2 and 5 hours depending on how complex the content is.

Looking back, I can honestly say that I truly appreciate that first job and I remember the stress and insecurities that came with it very fondly. I may not have earned much, but I learned more from that job than I did from many others to come.

#inpursuitofdragons

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