All Entries Tagged With: "freelance writer"
LinkedOut?
Facebook on Wednesday announced its IPO. ‘Twas but a matter of time. Mark Zuckerberg is set to personally earn between $21 and $28 billion from it. Billion. Of course billion. He hasn’t spoken about mere millions in many a year. Million schmillion. It would be churlish to knock the guy. He took an idea (it [...]
Uuurgonomics
Someone I know – we’ll call her Miss X – told me a story a few days ago. This person’s best friend – we’ll call her Malingering Twat – has been swinging the lead on her job for years, claiming all manner of mysterious ailments that no medical practitioner can diagnose. She has been on [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Broadly Speaking
It’s been some time since I handled a real paper version of a newspaper. I read a lot of news but all of it online. It has been an even longer time since I tackled a broadsheet. One entered our house the other day, though, so I thought I’d give it a go. Whose daft [...]
Amoebas
Who out there is ambitious about their writing? Who wants to write a blockbuster novel or pen a Hollywood screenplay? I don’t expect anyone will admit to it. That’s okay, I get it. No one really wants to engage when the topic of ambition rears its ugly head. It all seems a bit seedy and [...]
It’s a No From Me
The silly season is upon us. The X-Factor USA – the most potent argument ever for gun control – hit our screens last week. Lord, I hope these people are put through a metal detector before they are put before the judges. They are insane. Even most of the talented ones are insane; they’re just [...]
Mightier Than The Email
I have a website called markpepper.com, yet when I search for “Mark Pepper” I don’t even come out on page 1 of Google. If I searched for “freelance writer”, I think I would probably die of old age before I came across my website. Having a website is essential for any freelance writer, but people [...]
WWW – Wanton Waste of Words
First of all, that’s nice alliteration, huh? Anyway, I stumbled across a couple of study reports in my regular daily rounds and couldn’t quite believe anyone would need to know the information contained therein. Well, it’s all good to know, but, unless you’re an idiot, you really should know it already. On the plus side, [...]
Plan B From Utter Desperation
The eminently sensible man who is my father always used to ask me when I was trying to get acting work if I had a Plan B. Of course I didn’t. Plan Bs were for people whose Plan As weren’t going to work. My Plan A was to become a famous actor and that was [...]
Hello, Is It Me You’re Looking For?
When I was doing my TV work, I got an interesting and uplifting perspective on the whole interview process from a big casting director. I had expressed my chagrin at the odds against me (or any of the other actors) securing the part, given the sheer number of us being seen by the casting team [...]
Billy No-Mates
Are you a happy, outgoing individual with a pleasing disposition and a great sense of humour? No, I don’t want a date with you. I only ask because, if you are not yet immersed full-time in freelance writing, you should consider how your character may affect your response to the pressures and loneliness of the [...]
A Time to Write
I had a blog all ready to go until I read the latest offering from Tumblemoose. I now feel compelled to say something more than just a comment at the foot of his post. First of all, I don’t think for one second that writing skills are a “use it or lose it” affair. The [...]
Enough is Enough
In the acting profession, the old adage is that you need to be in work to get work. In other words, people will give you more work when they see what you can do. There’s also a large element of bandwagon-jumping involved; people scrambling to employ you before someone else does. That’s why certain faces [...]
Internet Killed the Writing Star
The Buggles wrote a little ditty back in 1979 called “Video Killed the Radio Star”. It bemoaned the coming age of music videos, portending a career death to all those singers and groups who had once made their living from the radio. Stupid song, really. The singers and groups all inevitably ended up making music [...]
