If you’re going to write for a living, then you need to put your writing life on a business footing. That doesn’t mean giving up the pleasure of writing; it just means that you need to take it seriously and get others to do the same. So how do you transform your writing from a [...] [...more]
Sometimes you need to admit when you’re wrong - and that’s what I’m doing today. At the start of 2007, I moved my diary online. I set up Google Calendar with a personal calendar, a work calendar, a school calendar, and a holiday calendar. Yes, the system had some advantages. I could access my calendars wherever [...] [...more]
If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent the last couple of weeks trying to finish things. As the end of the year approaches, there’s always a flurry of action, as if loose ends will cause major problems if they’re not tied up before Christmas. For me, it’s about being able to take time off with [...] [...more]
Someone said to me recently: ‘Freelance writing is not like other jobs; you never really get away.’ She was referring to the fact that I work at home, and it’s always easy to think about the jobs that are waiting for me - or to work instead of doing something social. But her comment [...] [...more]
If you haven’t written your Christmas articles yet, then it’s probably too late, at least if you’re writing for print. Print publications work far in advance, so if you’re writing for them, you should start planning your Christmas articles in the middle of the year and should deliver them by September to October. Yes, there [...] [...more]
As a freelance writer, one of the best ways to attract new writing work is to show off examples of work you’ve already done. When I started out in journalism, that meant rigorously collecting copies of every newspaper, newsletter, journal or magazine in which I had a bylined piece (and even, in the early days, [...] [...more]
We’ve all seen the ads where writers get offered peanuts for doing lots of work. In exchange for a paltry sum, they’re expected to sign away all rights to their work. If writers are working on a work for hire business, this is normal. But what about the other times, where you publish a bylined article, [...] [...more]
You just never know what’s going to happen. One day, you’re merrily turning out a 1,000 word article on a topic you’re familiar with; the next, something happens to completely disrupt your routine. This could be: illness (yours or a family member’s) bereavement having relatives or friends in town In all of these cases, your carefully planned writing routine [...] [...more]
These days, it’s all about being positive. For freelance writers, it’s about talking up your writing skills and abilities and proclaiming your successes to the world. We don’t often like to talk about failure (ewww - who needs all that negativity to bring you down?) And yet … ignoring or burying our mistakes is [...] [...more]
Jennifer Mattern of AllFreelanceWriting has a great article on Setting Freelance Writing Rates the Right Way. It’s easy for a freelance writer to say “I earned $50,000 at my old day job and I got by fine, so I want to set a goal to earn the same amount from my freelance writing full-time.” What’s harder [...] [...more]
