Habit Forming For those of you who have made the jump from office to home office, how are you doing on the whole “I’m working from home, so I gotta get serious” thing? A recent discussion over at Anne Wayman’s About Freelance Writing site talked about whether a writer should have an outside address or…
Fighting the Losing BattleJust came across a brand-new client. In the short phone conversation we had, I managed to impress him with how flexible I was (he even said, “You sound very easy to work with”) and how qualified I was to handle his project. He did have one thing standing in the way, however….
Editing For Fun And (not) MoneySo what do you do when your great-uncle Ted asks you to look over his latest endeavor into the novel-writing biz? What do you do when your best friend’s mother needs someone to “look over and edit” her newsletter for the Red Cross? When you’ve been volunteered to be the…
RepresentI got a terrific email to start my morning. I’d just written an article for a magazine wherein I had to interview one of their advertisers and present a profile of the company and what they do. They do highly technical mathematics and analytics, which is not my strong suit. So I was nervous about…
Writing a Good Query Letter My recent foray into advertising for writing help has driven home a very important truth; few people understand the power of a good query letter. That may sound like an unfair generalization, and maybe it is, but my mail this past week backs up my theory all too painfully. As…
Your Potential Employer Speaks Like most writers, I’ve been on the job search side of things. I’ve sent out the queries, copied clips and stuffed them in envelopes, included my SASE, etc. Since things have gone electronic, it’s much easier to give a potential employer exactly what he or she is looking for. Clips are…
Your Free Coach It’s not often that we get free help in our careers. People make big money coaching, consulting and offering career advice. However, there’s one place that exists where a budding writer can get sage advice, lots of help for specific problems/questions and join in a unique camraderie. Check out Anne Wayman’s About…
Overworked, Week TwoI’m a bit more than two weeks into my working full time plus freelancing. It’s been interesting. I love the day job (albeit a temporary day job). The work is interesting and there are plenty of gaps in the day where I can check my email and respond to client inquiries. No, I…
Proof That It WorksA friend of mine was recently telling me how she’d worked for a magazine twice and after a year, still hadn’t seen payment for either article. Oh, they had good excuses. They were dancing around the issue – “We sent a check. If you haven’t received it in a week, call us….
Projects From Hell (and why you should be pickier)At the moment, I’m feeling the weight of an unending project bearing down on me. The clients want to see it completed. I want to see it completed. But it goes on and on…. and guess what? The amount of stress this project is causing is not…