Novice to Professional Freelancer - Climbing the Chillibreeze Ladder

chillibreeze writer — PN Poornima

Resources for your freelance writing career

I didn’t find Chillibreeze – Chillibreeze found me! Don’t get me wrong, this was more due to serendipity than any extraordinary writing skills I possessed. What has been extraordinary, however, is my two years with the company – an unexpectedly fulfilling journey, peppered with happy surprises and exciting discoveries.

But first, back to the serendipity bit. I had no idea what lay in store when an airmail letter arrived from USA; it was from an ex-colleague and dear friend whom I’d lost touch with for over a decade. Soon, we connected online and were catching up. At the time, l was in a limbo, with my two kids in middle school and no longer needing me 24x7. With no burning ambition to hit the corporate trail again (who’d hire me, anyway?), I was keen to dust off an old love – writing – and try my hand at some freelancing. However, where did one begin?

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Talk about six degrees of separation! My friend from the US had a Bangalore-based relative working for an intriguingly named online content provider – would I like to give it a shot? A brief chat later with said relative, and I was logging on to the CB website, filling forms, and writing a sample article. The rest, as they say, is history…

An earlier stint in magazine publishing helped me land my first project with CB, editing sample SAT question papers. However, the excitement of spotting missing commas and spelling errors soon palled. Several weeks later, came another mail asking for feature writers. I must have said something right for I was soon on board and had to submit an article a day on topics I was clueless about. Phew, did I sweat over those! After a gap of some 15 years, my creative writing skills weren’t exactly razor sharp. Every time I researched my topic on the web, I’d go into an anxiety attack with the information overload out there. Worst of all, I’d think up a perfect phrase 24 hours after submitting the article! Somewhere along the way, I confessed some of my inadequacies to the project coordinator and was pleasantly delighted with the kindness and support I received.

I made many bloopers in those early months. I’d rashly apply for any project that dropped into my inbox and then tie myself into knots! In time, I learned to get into projects which played to my strengths. Researching new ideas and topics became a passion in itself – the family was certainly impressed with nuggets of information I’d casually drop about Italian pottery, Zen Buddhism or Peruvian cuisine! Discipline also became a habit, thanks to the project managers’ insistence on complete adherence to style or format requirements.

Moving up the ladder from writer to coordinator, about a year on, was a tectonic shift. Perhaps project coordinators were in short supply, or maybe I’d just been hanging around long enough, but an offer came my way to assist in steering part of a large, multi-writer project. No big deal, I thought cockily. Big mistake. Like many self-taught computer users, nothing much existed for me beyond MS Word. With less than a student’s knowledge of Excel, I soon bit the dust. Entries would mysteriously vanish; tallying the week’s output of articles was like rocket science. Even as I figured out these mysteries, my inbox would be flooding with fresh articles for editing. Here too, CB’s project managers held my hand, educating me patiently, and disentangling me from my goof-ups. (There were rewards too – when my 12-year-old first saw the designation ‘project coordinator’ under my name, she was duly impressed, a nice change from earlier expressions of mild condescension.)

Wearing two hats – writer and coordinator – has meant communicating with managers, editors, and writers across the country, some of whom now feel like old friends (though we’ve never met in person!) At CB, the fine balance between professionalism and warmth one encounters is like tonic to the essential loneliness of being a writer!

The best part of climbing the Chillibreeze ladder has been the great variety of opportunities and challenges that have popped up. Even as I’d gotten used to being a faceless freelancer, up came an offer to write an E-book, complete with my own byline – yet another territory I’d never trodden. There’s only one thing I look forward to – keep surprising me, CB!

Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in January, 2010. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

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PN Poornima writes for chillibreeze.

Novice to Professional Freelancer - Climbing the Chillibreeze Ladder

chillibreeze writer — PN Poornima

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