Recent Articles
Publish Or Perish
That old axiom that in the old days applied only to college professors could be applied to a lot more professions today. As you can imagine, I believe that freelance writing is one of them. In this instance we are talking about publishing an e-book most likely and not the dry research paper that the [...]
Desk Potato
Apparently, although I suspect it’s something of a contradiction in terms, I am a hard-working couch potato. Well, probably not a couch potato because I sit at my desk to work. So a desk-chair potato. This must be true because when it becomes my time to vacuum the house and my wife unsubtly rolls the [...]
The List of Writer’s Forums
In my post last week I mentioned that one of the support system components most valuable to a writer is a writing forum. I’ve put together this list and I hope it can help you to decide if belonging to a forum is something you want to do. They are not listed in any particular [...]
Write What You Know (You Can Get Away With)
So, just pop it into a preheated oven and cook at gas mark 7 for an hour. That’s what I’d do to cookery books. I appreciate that book-burning on such a grand scale is frowned upon in polite circles, but I don’t really move in polite circles so I’m not that bothered. The fascination with [...]
The Guilt of Freelance Writing
For someone who calls himself a freelance writer, I do precious little freelance writing these days. My other work and life in general gets in the way. I don’t feel too bad about that in terms of not being a jobbing freelance writer any more, because I’m still earning a wage, but I do sometimes [...]
Getting Back To Freelance Writing
For the past year or so, I’ve been on kind of a freelance writing hiatus. Not that I had given it up completely, I mean there were several writing projects that kept my attention through the year but for the most part I had taken down my freelance writing shingle. Well, things have recently changed. [...]
Is Freelance Writing a Career?
I guess it kind of depends on your definition of “career” doesn’t it? For me, when I think of a career I envision something that one does as their primary means of supporting themselves. In my mind, a career is a long term proposition that doesn’t include using the current job as a stepping stone [...]
Ripp(off)ing Yarns
As a follow-up to my last blog and to an earlier one on e-books, I have another tale from The Wall Street Journal, which is throwing a rotten mince pie in the face of all those looking forward to their new Kindle this Christmas. In a recent article, E-Book Readers Face Sticker Shock, the Journal [...]
Freelance Writing Videos
Intuitively, it’s not something you would initially consider as a freelance writer. Why on earth would a person who writes for a living even consider producing videos? I can understand how folks would not consider this a priority or even a consideration for freelance writing but I think there is room for videos in our [...]
How Do You Connect With Other Freelance Writers?
This question developed today after a little FaceBook thingy happened. The incident got me thinking about us freelance writing types and how we connect with other writers. I imagine it’s a bit different for each of us and I’ll bet there are more similarities than meets the eye. In my previous article, I wrote about [...]
Apple Bites Amazon
I read with disappointment but no great surprise (nothing about big business surprises me any more) two stories in The Wall Street Journal last week. On the 7th we had EU Launches E-Book Pricing Probe, then the next day appeared Justice Department Confirms E-Book Pricing Probe. Of course, there may be nothing to this, but I’m [...]
To Connect Or Not To Connect With Other Freelancers?
I was thinking about the relationships I have with other freelance writers. In my next article I plan on writing about how to connect and then I started wondering if there are folks out there who don’t even try to connect with other freelance writers. I mean, writing is a solitary sport for most of [...]
Talent May Not Out
I expect you’ve heard of the expression “talent will out”. It’s linked most strongly with the acting profession. It’s the sort of encouraging guff you say to someone who is struggling but truly deserves to make it. It basically means – if they carry on acting – their talent is so great it will at [...]
You’re So Vain …
I remember a time when authors who self-published were a bit of a laughing stock. They paid a printing company to run off a certain number of their books, getting a cheaper-per-book rate for a larger print run, but essentially paying in the thousands for the privilege of finally holding a bound copy of their [...]
If You Didn’t Need To Freelance Write
What else would you be doing? The question really goes to the foundation of your writing psyche. There are certainly a lot of others ways to express your creative self. I mean, you could cruise down the road a novelist takes. You could just keep personal journals or a blog. For that matter you could [...]
Freelance My Ass
I don’t have much time for euphemisms. I’m fairly straight-talking and thus like to speak and hear things as they are meant to be spoken and heard. Your writing style may be different to mine, and certain projects will not allow for on-the-nail writing no matter who you are, but my favourite newspaper articles can [...]
Punch Your Freelance Writing
Right in the chops. Go for the knock-out. There are a lot of freelance writers in the ring. The only way to rise above everyone else is to deliver solid punches with your writing. Clients will notice. You will notice. Soon after, everyone will notice. Punchy Get out your thesaurus. I’m assuming you keep one handy. [...]
Put Time into Properly Managing Your Home-Based Writing Business
With all that full-time writers have to do in this day and age, managing a home-based writing business may not seem like a big deal to some outside the business, but it can be overwhelming for some small business entrepreneurs. So, if you’ve gone from the corporate world of writing and/or reporting to operating your [...]
