We are in a recession. Just received word that yet another magazine (Country Home) has folded, costing up to 40 people their jobs, and that Cobblestone Publishing is having trouble paying their writers who’ve already sold stories. Yikes. The economic climate hasn’t begun to affect me in ways this severe yet, but believe me, here at Chez Scrapple we can plainly hear the cold, icy fingers of economic woe and hardship scrabbling, scrabbling at our door like a cat that really wants to get indoors, only to decide a minute after entering that outdoors really does look much more pleasant place to be and you will let the cat out when he commands, or the miaoing and scratching will begin anew, and so on until Doomsday.

This is serious, people.

There are really only a few ways to keep yourself in paying work in a time like this, and thus prevent madness:

1. Absolutely do not screw things up with any of your existing clients. You’re probably going to lose some anyway because of all the outlets that are shutting down–you don’t want to lose any clients because of something you did.

   There are more than enough blogs out there covering how to treat clients well, so I don’t think I need to go into it here, but if you really don’t know how to stay on top of deadlines, turn in clean copy, and not be a general pain, then I don’t know if I can help you.

2. Seek out new opportunities. I’ve made it one of my 2009 goals to pitch a new market every week. That’s 52 potential new revenue sources. Some of these I’ll be able to talk about; some I’m going to keep more under wraps. But I must say that my first attempt last Monday was a huge success and netted me some very prestigious work. I don’t know if I can follow that up with as much of a success each week, but I’ll be trying.

   My other 2009 goal relates directly to this: I’d like to raise my effective hourly wage. Since I’m paid by the word, I can either raise my per-word rate or work faster. I’m doing both: procrastinating less (you won’t find me on GTalk as often in the coming months), and dropping the lowest-paying assignments and clients from my to-do list when I acquire higher-paying opportunities.

   Honestly, right now I don’t even know how long it takes me to do certain tasks, so my first step is to track my time using Freshbooks and calculate exactly how much time I really am spending on things.

   This doesn’t exactly bring me to my third and last point, but this is the Internet! We don’t need fancy transitions and, like, grammar and stuff.

3. PAY IT FORWARD. I truly believe that the more I give out the more I will receive. Just this week I was asked if I could cover an event, but I’m regrettably going to be out of town. I immediately passed it on to an acquaintance who I know is looking for more writing gigs, and I think she’s going to get the assignment.

   But I want more good karma, so starting this week I’m going to post a list of leads and info every Tuesday. I always find it helpful to know who’s gone under and who’s still looking for writers, and who’s easy to reach and who doesn’t work with freelancers. Yeah, some of this is in Writer’s Market and more is in MediaBistro’s “How to Pitch,” but let’s be honest: they’re not the Bibles of freelancing. There’s more out there. I can’t cover it all, but I can certainly share a little about what I’ve learned, thus increasing the sum total of the world’s knowledge and–more importantly–making it a little easier for freelancers to cut it.

   Come back on Tuesday for more. And if you come across leads, pay it forward in the comments, ok?