Agreed, Paula. Lori’s is one of the few voices I trust for online writing advice.

Geez, you guys! You’re far too kind. If it weren’t for the people who come here, this blog wouldn’t be much of anything.

Thank YOU for making it what it is.

You nailed it, Paula. Thanks for saying it so well!

I agree, Ranee. You know why Lori’s blog is the best and most trustworthy? Her goal is to help other writers, not sell them something. Plus, she’s super smart!

Yes, please share, Ranee! I would love to have a conversation and get to know you. 🙂

My contact form is best (I try not to put the email address online) — http://www.loriwidmer.com/contact

Just send me a quick hello and I’ll share my email address. Life stories don’t often fit in those little contact boxes. 🙂

And thank you! In a cacophony of online voices, I’m glad to have one that I truly trust. I’ll share my summary story with you soon, so that you can get a better idea of why I especially appreciate the guidance you provide. And it will be nice to give you a person behind my name, which doesn’t always happen in the blogosphere. Till then!

Ranee, you’ve just made my day. Thank you! I appreciate the compliment — I hate the manipulative, sell-me-something stuff that’s out there, so this is a doubly nice compliment!

I’m so glad I’m doing something that resonates with you. Please let me know if I ever veer too far away from that path. And feel free to tell me what you want to hear! This blog is basically yours (I’m just the steward).

Would love to hear more about your story and your path. Feel free to email me through my website. I respond pretty quickly when I’m not busy with client work!

I’ve been reading your posts for at least a year. I mean, really reading your posts. Looking forward to your posts. Opening them immediately instead of saving them for days or deleting them when I’m buried.

I also subscribe to a lot of other freelance writing blogs and newsletters, so I have a wide frame for comparison. And you are the one I love above all others. Everything you write makes sense. It’s honest and never manipulative. It’s practical, relevant, authentic, thoughtful. It’s based on long and legitimate experience, and it gives me a role model of a freelancer who knows the stuff and walks the talk.

Freelance writing is a demanding path, and you’re the best guide I know. Thank you. Now, back to your regularly scheduled discussion . . .

Agreed on all counts, Devon. And I’ll add this: the people who use these excuses don’t take this job seriously. They should be viewing this from a different lens — they should consider this their only source of income, even if it isn’t. Writers should be working at this as though their entire livelihood depends on it. It may someday. Or it does right now.

If you want to succeed — really succeed — you have to view this as your only option. And you have to want to build the best career, business, life you can. We all have it in us. Those who try harder and are open to change are the ones who make it. It’s not rocket science.

So the bulk of my clients are far away. Because I’m not working for them for free, even though they try to bully me daily about how “exposure” will help. No. It just reinforces that they don’t have to pay for quality, and what they’re getting for free — let’s just say there are companies I don’t do business with because their marketing materials are so bad I don’t trust they’d have quality in anything else.

Most of this bad advice I notice either comes from hobbyists or those whose partners foot the bills or who make their living at what they consider a “real job” and dream of a writing life that doesn’t exist. Or from wanna-be writers in other jobs who never actually get around to write more than an article every couple of months and are thrilled if it gets them five bucks and a by-line. If they had to turn out content every day, most of them wouldn’t last a week.

But most of the people who earn a living off this bad advice are those that are creating the advice and selling it to those in the categories above.

They write advice about freelancing, but those are their only actual credits. You don’t find their bylines in a variety of situations. Only on advice articles.

That’s what pisses me off.