Write What You Know (Who Knew?!)

It seems I have a knack for education topics. Go figure. I guess I’ve been trying so hard to get out of education, that I intentionally blocked it from freelance possibilities. Not so any longer.

I landed a freelance gig writing test questions. I have written thousands of test questions over the years in my full-time job. I never thought someone would pay me for each question I write.

Once upon a time last November I applied for a job at a publishing company. They liked my background, but only had a two month position to offer me, so I had to turn it down. We did agree to put me on their freelancing list before we hung up the phone. January, I received an email from them calling for language arts test question writers (right up my alley). After a few exchanges by email and phone, I participated in an hour long training session by conference call. The session walked the writers through some example documents emailed earlier. There were so many templates and such a large spreadsheet document that I was a little nervous. It went very well, though, and I had my first assignment that evening.

I must admit, the learning curve was high. Yes, I’ve written oodles of test questions, and yes, I follow the best practices of answer choice length and distracters, yada, yada, but the templates they sent were rigid, and I had to get used to them. The trainer mentioned that the assignments take their other writers 3-4 hours to do. It took me 10-12 that first day. It was disheartening, but I knew I was going to have to pay this price in order to get better. The next assignment was a flash compared to the first. I was much more comfortable with their format and had set up my own way of tracking and moving forward. I doubled my question per hour rate (thus my hourly rate) on the second day.

After I completed the second assignment, I received an email from the client praising my work. What a rush! I will need to ask her for permission to use that as a testimonial, so much sweeter since I didn’t ask for it. The work is not steady, but it’s a nice perk. I still can’t quit my day job, but I have a direction and I plan on working steadily that way. Perhaps by the end of this school year (May 30), I’ll have enough clients to work from home.

It’s a goal.