How do you start a writing business? If you’re in the writing business or some other communications-type company right now, you know that the playing field has been leveled–about 30 times since last week. Veterans are having to start over. Newcomers are having to start and then re-start.
The good news: it’s not game over. It’s [...]
I have worked freelance for more than 20 years, and while I have seen tremendous almost unbelievable advances in technology in that time span, I have seen virtually no improvement in human nature. In specific, I have observed a very common flaw in freelancers.
This flaw is not unique to writers. Anyone who goes into business [...]
There is a tendency among non-writers to think that writing is easy. Furthermore, there is a perverse streak among the non-writing that seeks to educate writers.
If you write for businesses, you will be revised. Sometimes these revisions are whimsical and capricious. Sometimes they are mean-spirited and are accompanied by personal attacks on your intellect. [...]
Unfortunate circumstances recently forced a creative friend of mine to go freelance. As many before him, he approached the freelance life as some sort of extended vacation to be punctuated by only occasional periods of work, of which he would choose only the assignments to his liking and do them as time permitted.
As you can [...]
You’ve written something glorious. It is a subject about which you are passionate and (if you do say so yourself) exceedingly articulate. You’ve spent hours and weeks and months devoted to this work.
You shop it around and find that some publishers reject you. No sale.
But then you find a publisher that is willing to take [...]
You are a writer or want to be a writer and you’re fresh out of ideas for your career. Lucky for you that you read this blog. Here are 10 cool ideas you can steal, although I guess it’s technically not stealing if I give them to you.
1. Get a blog. A blog is like [...]
People hold the written word to a much higher standard than the spoken word. I learned this when I wrote books for a man who did a lot of presenting. Our goal was to turn his educational presentations into workbooks. I soon found out that he and his team of unholy reviewers were absolute sticklers [...]
Writers do not earn a lot of money.
Wait, let me rephrase that. Some writers don’t earn any money, a very rare few earn a lot of money, and most of us are somewhere on the low end of "in-between."
I recently met a lady who 20 years ago wrote features for some of the prestigious magazines [...]
This woman is a typochondriac.
You know the symptoms. This is the kind of person who sees a typo and goes into anaphylaxis, requiring both a team of paramedics and the National Guard to resuscitate her to a recuperative state. There she lies for months as teams of therapists help her cope with the fragments of [...]
This little Chinese girl reading a book may well soon be a big threat to American writers. Creative people in the United States have seen a precipitous erosion of their fees as more and more jobs go overseas. Want proof? Go to those Ebay-type creative sites (Elance.com, Guru.com, RentACoder.com) and you can see jobs for [...]
Most writers can’t market. That used to be very important and it was probably the main reason many adept and passionate writers were unable to pursue careers as writers.
Today it is crucial. In fact, a writer who can market his or her own work today has unprecedented opportunities. But a writer who cannot or refuses [...]
Perry Belcher has something on his Success blog right now (click here) about a fast, easy, systematic way to write a book. Perry proposed this step-by-step process and solicited comments. One of the common comments that came back was the key to writing a book is being passionate.
All of the people who recommended passion were [...]
The number one question I’m asked by non-writers is always about copyrights. For some reason, most people who do not write well are exceedingly concerned that somebody will steal something they have written. I think that’s extremely amusing, considering that most of the dreadful copy produced by non-writers is highly undesirable. But most non-writers fear [...]
How do you get customers for your writing business? I’m not talking here about how to get people to sign up for your email list or how to get people to buy an ebook. I’m talking about attracting customers for whom you can write. These are people you will actually interact with, often over [...]
I own more computers than I have hands. I like it that way. I spend a great deal of my time engaged on the computer, and it has definitely made the writer’s life much easier. There was a time when every revision to an article meant that you had to retype the whole thing. And [...]
Every day, all over the world, editors and publishers and website owners are paying good money to people to write stuff for them.
Everything you see with words on it–from your cereal box to the label on your T-shirt–has probably been written by a writer.
So how do you get them to pick you? The answer is [...]
The answer is probably not newspapers, although I regularly hear from writer friends and newspaper denizens that the traditional newspaper is on its way out.
I have written for newspapers. I got my start writing for an entertainment paper and I recently wrapped up a multi-year stint doing a medical column for a local paper. In-between, [...]
Every now and then I get to write a script for a DVD. I’m not writing a big screen motion picture–we’re talking about the type of production known as an “industrial.” It’s a DVD prepared by a business for a specifically business purpose, usually for training but sometimes for promotion.
Hey, it’s still a script.
The big [...]
I recently priced a pair of fuzzy dice like the ones in the picture. I’m not normally the sort of person who goes in for decorating my car, but I was killing time in the Las Vegas Airport. For those of you who have never been to the Las Vegas Airport, it’s a lot like [...]
Business cards used to be a staple of the professional world. Freelancers needed them to introduce themselves or offer a handy reminder of their phone and address. Today, many business contacts are online–I have worked with some clients I have never met face-to-face. So what happens to the business card?
Your business card is, to some [...]
Problem clients are everywhere. They are the people who don’t want to pay well, or even at all. They are the folks who keep changing their minds and wanting to see a revision to reflect every idle thought that passes through their caffeinated and ADD-rattled brains. They are the kind who figure that one project [...]
Most articles have a fairly rigid structure, which may or may not be spelled out by the journal or magazine. If they don’t, read what they already publish and dissect it. The cool thing about periodical writing is you can see what sells by looking at what gets published. Just analyze it and use that [...]
Here’s how to write a brochure, even if you think you know how to write a brochure. In a brochure, you are building “tracks” through the content. The first track is the track that involves the headline and cover of the brochure. That’s Track 1, because that’s all some people will ever read.
Track 2 involves [...]
Although it is just a tiny section of the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel in the Vatican, the hand of God reaching down to touch the hand of Adam is one of greatest works of art in history. It was painted by Michelangelos Buonarotti, better known as Michelangelo, a Renaissance artist who hung out with [...]
The other day I was discussing something I had written on pacemakers and defibrillators with a woman. She was the sort of woman who could represent “the general public.” She wanted to know if I was a doctor. Disappointed when I said no, she asked if I might be, sigh, a nurse. Not even. Then [...]
This picture was taken before the first stock market crash. Although undated, it has to be from the early 1920s. The ladies in the picture are some of my relatives. Helen was fresh off the boat from Slovenia. Victoria had been born at Sandy Hook Lighthouse to native-born parents. They were both related to my [...]
My grandfather and grandmother were in the New York area during the great stock market crash of 1929. However, they didn’t lose their money in the Great Depression. They had gone broke much earlier. The Great Depression was more like the great leveler–now they just didn’t seem as poor.
Today’s economic crunch does not have [...]
This really happens and it really happened today. I wrote an article for a client. The article was actually done once, substantially revised after a review committee looked at it, and then revised by me. I turned in a manuscript and further revisions were undertaken by the rightful owners of the article, who because of [...]
Writers have a natural edge when it comes to blogging. That’s because we can write.
A lot of people who have blogs, even very successful blogs, are less than great writers. Sometimes it’s hard to follow what they’re saying.
So why do so few writers blog? I think part of it is tradition. Writing is not [...]
This is one of those point/counterpoint things, although it is kind of dumb because I’m the only author and I have a point of view. However, I am going to try to share what I think is popular sentiment … and what I am experiencing myself.
How has the econmy affected freelance writers or writers, like [...]
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