All Entries Tagged With: "freelance writing"
Adios Amigos!
This is my 100th blog for this website. The 100th and my last. I have decided it’s time to admit I have been straining the spider’s thread that has so tenuously joined so many of my rants to the topic of freelance writing. I have had a great time blogging for you all, and I [...]
Say What?
The core of freelance writing is communication. It’s a simple brief. We take facts, thoughts, opinions, and we convey them to our readership as effectively as possible. Depending on our task, we use a variety of skills to accomplish our goal, but the through line is always communication. A piece of freelance writing fails the [...]
Get Stuffed
We all hope, as freelance writers, to make our mark in some way. You may, at the start of your career, have a few lofty ideals, much like an actor fresh out of RADA who will only play Shakespeare, dahling. A year later, still unemployed, he’s back in his village hall doing amdram Agatha Christie [...]
The Random Insanity of America
I read a funny story a few days ago involving a guy who ended up getting shot. Okay, that doesn’t sound terribly funny. Perhaps it was just the irony of the situation. Baldrick, have you no idea what “irony” is? Yes, it’s like “goldy” and “bronzy” only it’s made out of iron. Classic Blackadder. Anyway, [...]
Coping with Rejection/Dejection
As grown-ups, we all know that it is only children who get upset and cry when things don’t go their way. Big people, on the contrary, approach their setbacks with a stoical shrug, before moving on with their lives and never looking back. Yah, right. No one likes rejection of any kind. I don’t care [...]
Fit for Purpose
This is not – you’ll be surprised to learn – another rant from me on the lack of skills exhibited by certain freelance writers. No. I literally mean “fit”. And by “literally” I mean that is exactly what it’s about, which is the way the word literally should be used. The word literally should not [...]
Bucked Off The Hobby Horse
Are you feeling a little bucked off? Did you enter freelance writing to become a famous novelist only to wind up writing thousands of SEO articles on subjects that now haunt your dreams because of their overwhelming presence in your waking day? I expect the career of many a freelance writer has started out this [...]
Fly Me To The Moon
A story on Forbes online just over a month ago was entitled “So You Want To Be A Writer? Here’s How To Make The Transition From Your Day Job”. Straight away, I felt a little irritated. I know it was intended as an attention-grabber, designed to pull readers in, because – let’s face it – [...]
Things Can Only Get Better
Assuming we all make it into 2013, I’m looking forward to the world economy picking up. Not that I expect that to happen in 2013 – I think we have some tough years still ahead of us – but, as and when things do improve, I am hoping the freelance writing landscape will also change. [...]
Does Anyone On Board Know How to Fly a Plane?
Me want repli too coment what man writ at botum ov old post. Well, according to Bob, that should suffice. Bob has just commented on a post by Monika from September 2008 entitled “Anal Reader Behaviour” (you have a lot of catching up to do, Bob, me ol’ mucker). The comment has not been approved [...]
Sensational? Seriously?
I’m publishing this blog a few days earlier than normal because there is the most bizarre freelance writing story circulating the internet at the moment, and it has got me slightly bewildered. An 85-year-old woman who works for the Grand Forks Herald has just become “an internet sensation”, thanks to a restaurant review she wrote [...]
You Gotta Have Faith
Ah, the immortal words of George Michael. Up there on a par with Ghandi and Martin Luther King. Freelance writers and anyone else engaged in an artistic endeavour which end is not guaranteed must have faith. You must have faith in two people. The first person is you. The second is that one as-yet unmet [...]
The Midlife Writer
I shall be 46 in less than a month. Holy crap. Now is about the time I should start to feel the stirrings of a midlife crisis. I’m not sure I’ll know it if it hits, though, because I’ve been in crisis since my twenties. And I’ve always wanted a Harley. I also think it’s [...]
I Think I’d Rather Be A Paidlance Writer
One of my favorite sites out there is Clients From Hell. If you’ve not been there, you really need to go have a look. Be prepared to laugh your fanny off. Oh, also be prepared to shake your head in horror, wonder and amazement. Here is the snippet that inspired me to write this post: [...]
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 [...]
