Surving Economic Hardship

Allen quit his job due to a conflict which left them with only Anna's meager earnings from her part time writing to support them and baby Marie. Anna was terrified at the thought of having to pay the bills with no help since her income had originally been to put up some money for the occasional bills that came into the home once or twice a year and to have something to fall back on. The job market was slim to say the least and Allen ended up being out of work for an entire month unable to draw unemployment due to the fact he had quit his job.

Anna though terrified decided to do something about it and began to write day and night. Anna was exhausted working as a ghost writer for one person regularly writing both original articles and doing rewrites. The low rate of pay was frustrating for Anna; she received $1 per rewrite no matter how long they were, original articles paid her $2 for up to 500 word original articles and $3 for articles over 500 words and up to 1,000 words. The work was due anywhere from 24 to 48 hours after she received them in her inbox. Originally doing only five articles per day at the most she began to do ten and still only managed to come up with at the most $50 to $70 in a seven day work week.

It didn't take Anna long to figure out that $200 to $280 for the month wasn't going to pay her bills so began looking for more work but kept her regular work so she had it to fall back on. She began submitting to writing contest in the hopes of being chosen for one of the cash prizes to help with her bills. The contest produced little in her efforts to pay the bills with the most she won being $10 one time and the least being $5 three times. (Her contest winnings were not all in the same month.)

She had a friend whom we'll call Lynn that was managing to write on a regular basis and pay the majority of her bills so she asked her for help. Anna wasn't confident enough in her own writing to submit bids on projects she saw or approach publishers but Lynn had confidence in her.

Lynn began to send work to Anna in small projects that had to be done within a few days. Some paid only $0.50 per rewrite but Anna didn't' care she needed the money so she continued to do every bite of overflow that Lynn sent her gladly. Anna finally began to grow in her confidence to write when she realized that every article she wrote for Lynn got rave reviews and offers for more work. She finally got the confidence she needed to bid on writing projects on her own. Anna was thrilled to find out that she got the jobs although the fact that some only paid $1 for 500 word articles was a little disappointing to her. Despite her disappointment at the rate of pay she continued to write and eventually found higher paying projects. She is now employed to write on a regular basis and gets no less than $3 per 450 word article and still manages to find the time to do small projects and write her own material for submission to publishers. Anna is still having trouble finding the correct formula to get a publisher to take her own but it's only a matter of time.

What did Allen do while Anna wrote her fingers to the bone?

Allen took care of baby Marie while Anna wrote and tried in vain for a month to find work. When Allen finally found work it was short lived with him being laid off after just a few months. Anna is happy now that this time he can at least draw unemployment to help them cover the bills and keep food in the house this time.

While Allen was and is unemployed Anna continues to write. The two of them are currently selling scrap metal to help cover the expenses that are incurred. They also managed to find every thing they could do to cut the expenses of monthly bills and the grocery bill.

Now the three of them are glad to face the trials that life has to offer and are confident that they can make it through everything that life throws at them knowing that they are going to survive.