Freelance Writing and Rock Climbing...

I'am John Smith and i want to utter something about the subject mentioned in the title..:)

Among the various features of Nat Geo Adventure, what fascinates me to no end is rock climbing. I am not an enthusiast but I am amazed by these lithe men and women with the chutzpah to scale sheer cliffs rising hundreds of meters above the ground.

With nothing but their hands and feet searching for the smallest crags, holes and cracks along the cliff walls, inch by painful inch, they push themselves upward to the top.

And what do they find up there? Nothing but an unobstructed panorama of the world beneath their feet, the overpowering feeling of having accomplished something very few, or none at all, has done before, their name in the record books and, of course, TV cameras rolling for everyone all over the world to see.

Definitely but with less bravado and daring, the difficulties in freelance writing are no less daunting as rock climbing. But the feeling of accomplishment, of having established a name, and done something very few did and can do, is as exhilarating and satisfying.

You may not lose life of limb as in crock climbing but the world of freelance writing is probably littered with more dashed hopes and broken dreams; unmet expectations and a life of frustrations.

I know. I've been through hell.

Pushing yourself up:
No one gets to climb cliffs by waking up one day and saying "I am going to climb that cliff."

You become a rock climber or a freelance writer because:

- You love to do it:
My son, an industrial engineer, is taking up law because his fiancée, herself, a lawyer, is egging him to do so. While I admire his ambition, I have doubts about his motivation.

Doing something out of obligation is a drag while doing it for love is passion. Obligation is energy-sapping, passion is overpowering. One can encounter countless obstacles to get away from fulfilling an obligation but nothing can stop a burning passion.

You've got to be a total idiot to climb a wall without the love for doing so.

- You have prepared for it:
Do you know how horses and dogs are trained to jump over an obstacle? They were trained, initially, to walk over it. The obstacle was then raised a little higher, but still can be walked over. Further up it goes until they must jump to go over it.

Similarly, freelance writing or rock climbing goes through the same gradual steps. You write a sentence, a paragraph, an article, until you graduate into something more challenging like a book or a long research paper.

You just keep on writing until your skills are honed to be noticed by potential clients.

- You have equipped yourself for it:
Rock climbers normally have nothing much but the right pair of shoes and finger pads. But they have admirably strong arm and leg muscles, their bodies as flexible as that of a contortionist.

Your preparation would be in the wealth of your vocabulary, your artistry in writing your ideas like a painting, the acceptability of your grammar and sentence composition skills and lots and lots of subjects to write about.

- You have a network of people (or sites) to help you out:
Freelance writing is tedious, it is boring, it makes your back and leg muscles ache from long hours of sitting in front of the computer churning out articles after articles that no one knows about, much more, read.

In short, there is no way you can do it alone.

You need people to critique your articles, to help you improve your writing style, to help you make your writing go viral. You need people to motivate you to keep you going.
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Last June 5, I went under the knife to remove a small squamous cell carcinoma at the lower corner of my right eye. After the operation, my right face was swollen and all bandaged up, my right eye partly shut, my eyeballs, red all over. On top of that, my reconstructive surgeon gave me a long list of "don'ts" for the next three weeks. I can live with practically all of them except for "keeping away from the computer."

This article is the fourth I have done since then. I had to struggle with the previous three as my right eye was still seeing double. I have better time doing this. But why am I forcing myself to write?

If I don't write, I am nothing.

Joseph Dabon,