Craziest Freelance Job You've Been Offered/Taken?

[KBtheWriter]

Just sort of curious. What is the craziest writing gig you have ever considered or taken? I got an offer to write foot fetish erotica for someone. Not really my thing, and not sure how I feel about it, but the pay is good so I am considering it.

[MonkeyShiner]

Three words, 'Do Fish Fart.'

[KBtheWriter]

hahahaha

[Al Stevens]

Writing the memoirs of a legendary old bandleader from the big band era. We had a few meetings during an ocean crossing. He wouldn't tell the good stuff. The stories he wanted to tell were boring.

[KBtheWriter]

Just what everyone wants to write... a bio with all the juicy parts left out haha

[kohuether]

I've written a lot of content articles on some pretty boring topics. So, I don't know if I would call them crazy... but some of the keywords are definitely out there!

[andiwrite]

I would love to do some fetish writing work. Do you mind if I ask you where you found such a gig?

I haven't had a lot of super crazy jobs so far. The only thing that comes to mind was a rewrite of an article about the new Katy Perry movie. The article was a pretty standard description of the film, the sort you might see in US weekly or something. It had a few quotes from the directors and the producers, talking about what it was like to make the film and what not. The only weird part is that I was specifically told to erase these quotes and make up new ones. I normally do a lot of "glowing reviews" and don't really mind lying, but when it came down to completely fabricating quotes for major movie producers, I felt pretty strange.

I saw the film a couple days later and kept giggling to myself, thinking about how somewhere out there, someone is reading about this very movie and thinking the directors said a bunch of stuff that I just made up.

[bulldoggerel]

I was once paid ( very little) to write the inside messages on a series of sympathy cards.

[KBtheWriter]

Originally Posted by andiwrite

I would love to do some fetish writing work. Do you mind if I ask you where you found such a gig?

I haven't had a lot of super crazy jobs so far. The only thing that comes to mind was a rewrite of an article about the new Katy Perry movie. The article was a pretty standard description of the film, the sort you might see in US weekly or something. It had a few quotes from the directors and the producers, talking about what it was like to make the film and what not. The only weird part is that I was specifically told to erase these quotes and make up new ones. I normally do a lot of "glowing reviews" and don't really mind lying, but when it came down to completely fabricating quotes for major movie producers, I felt pretty strange.

I saw the film a couple days later and kept giggling to myself, thinking about how somewhere out there, someone is reading about this very movie and thinking the directors said a bunch of stuff that I just made up.

Sorry, just seeing this now. I saw it on odesk

[ResearchGuy]

Maybe not crazy, but unusual. Researching and summarizing energy efficiency stats for a very "green" self-serve laundry.

[mrsmig]

Back when texting was a Brand New Thing, I wrote for a company that provided daily trivia, horoscopes and other material to cell phone subscribers via text. I wrote a bunch of general trivia and horoscopes for adults, as well as sports and nature trivia for kids. The kid stuff had to be in the current slang so it was an interesting exercise, especially since all the squibs had to be quite short.

The pay was surprisingly good, but unfortunately it didn't last very long - I wrote about 300 pieces for them and never heard from them again. I think technology probably roared past that particular niche market.

[WeaselFire]

I wrote a series of fortune cookie fortunes for a company that produced "Misfortune" cookies. Things like:

In a journey of a thousand steps, you will sprain your ankle
Bugs like you
You are the third wheel
A man with your intellect doesn't know what intellect means

I probably wrote 300 or so of these. They accepted 65, at a buck apiece. Plus I got a free box of samples

Jeff

[liter8media]

A history of Oz. Enjoyable, but unexpected.

[lastlittlebird]

I once wrote an article on the nutrition of snake meat. Difficult to pin down much on that particular subject.

[August Talok]

Once got paid to write a feature length screenplay for someone, solely based on a vision they had of a billboard that read "Today is the start of a new day".

[Kayley]

I got paid $400 to make a book jacket. It's not that crazy, but it was the most memorable.

[SilverDragon]

Back in my days as an odesk junkie I took all sorts of crazy jobs. I know this is not quite appropriate, but the craziest I think was to look for videos of women performing "compromising acts" and then doing a write up for each video. I made about $200 on the project but I had no idea what it was for. My guess it was for pop up ads.
Sorry if that weirded you out.

[kkbe]

I designed a flyer for a guy selling high colonic enemas, which he would happily administer (for a small fee).

[Katrina S. Forest]

Had someone e-mail me out of the blue on FictionPress to ask if I would write their story for them. I said I expected to be paid for writing someone else's stuff and never heard from them again.

I guess I was supposed to do it for "the love of writing." ^_^

[tamara]

I was in PR for a while. I got four requests in the same week.

1. Fly to Vegas to show journalists the fabulous features of super fancy baby car seats. I'd had the client for two days and had to wing it.

2. Research and write a 300-page business plan for marketing online courses overseas for a university.

3. Train an underachieving sales team in "developing repoire with potential clients."

4. Fly to Atlanta to sit with a tire company guy at a car show while he explained to me the compelling details of each of their 200+ models of tires. I was then to write unique sales blurbs for each one.

I was told by the client in task 2 that I was the person she called when she had a weird job no one else knew how to do. Gee, thanks. I don't miss it.