“I have long suspected that within every American heart there lurks a latent hooligan cowboy, but nowhere does he strut his spurs more gallantly than in the darkened recesses of the portajon.”

Client: BiLLY BoY Enterprises is the creative division of WGA Architecture. Their blog focuses on the intersection of culture and design.

Project Description: Write a humorous piece highlighting toilets from around the world.

A Quote

“I have long suspected that within every American heart there lurks a latent hooligan cowboy, but nowhere does he strut his spurs more gallantly than in the darkened recesses of the portajon.”

The Inside Scoop

Through freelancewriting.com’s Morning Coffee Newsletter, I learned that BiLLY BoY Enterprises was on the lookout for blog writers. I saw on their website that they had a page where you could submit a résumé and so on.

But you know what?

I didn’t become a freelancer so I could “submit résumés.”

So I emailed them directly, informing them of my desire to write for their blog, and included a link to a funny post about toilets which I had written for a travelogue of my first visit to Japan.

They wrote back saying that they found my writing sample “inspirational,” and asked if I could write a piece comparing toilets from around the world.

No problem!

My original draft turned out to be double the 500 word target length, so I cut it in half and pitched the idea of a series to the BiLLY BoY editor, who gladly agreed (you can checkout the second part here).

As an added bonus, I went on to write a third post for makealivingwriting.com, explaining how I used this editing tactic to double my income from the overlong initial draft.

That’s three gigs from one post! Gotta love efficiency!

My Favorite Part

Probably the Chinese toilet stall with the cutaway door—cracks me up every time.

See the results:
Toilet Tour I