After being laid off four times in as many years, I knew I could do better in freelance writing than as an executive secretary.
I had been writing piecemeal for a few magazines and newspapers for years; however, once my day job evaporated, I put all my energy into freelancing.
Frank, age 12, who has always been the class clown (before we started homeschooling him anyway) has a very quick, very bright sense of humor. He can really keep us rolling most days.
I received the following inquiry from a reader two weeks ago:
Angela,
I saw an ad in a well-known zine that offered a “free telephone
seminar” about “how any author can become an Amazon.com bestseller.”
What are your thoughts on their message?
C.
This Week:
A few weeks back I was especially busy in my communications consulting business. One late evening, as I pondered how I’d get everything done in the brief time available to me, I made a note to visit the Yellow Pages the next day to find a transcription service. I write a lot of feature articles for the employee newsletter of an insurance company, and most assignments involve interviews with executives whom I quote for the stories.
Upon finding out that I was pregnant in 2004, I made the decision that I was going to become a freelance writer so that I could be a work-at-home mom. Staying home to raise my daughter means so much to me, yet like most families we rely on two incomes. Although I wasn’t new to writing, I was new to freelancing so I spent months reading every book I could my hands on regarding the subject. Three months before my daughter was born, I quit my job and dove right into freelance writing.
We’ve having a big party this weekend and are really excited! Since Ali’s birthday is three days after Christmas, she has a birthday party at the end of June each year, instead of December. We call this her half-birthday. This year, we were on the road in June, so her party is this weekend. It’ll be a 70’s theme and we’ve invited (gulp) 40 of our closest friends and neighbors. We even had to rent a big tent for additional shade in the yard.
Late last week, when downloading my mail, I was surprised to see a ton of returned email bouncing back to my in-box. At first glance, I thought somebody had spoofed our address to send out sp*m. On second glance, I realized that every email I’d sent to AOL users in the prior several days had been returned to our servers, in one fell swoop. I was stumped
Dearest Angela,
Headphones? I love it! Now maybe I can some work done around here!
Sincerely,
Sherry G (mother of 4, writer of not-enough)
—
Angela,
Enjoyed your bit about interruptions from the kids. Take it from me, it will never get better. I have a “kid” – age 42 – who lives downstairs. We both work at home, so learning not to interrupt has been an issue on both sides. I do a lot of transcription work; whenever I have my earphones on he stops dead in his tracks, but without them I am fair game. I must confess I tend to do the same to him, but I have learned to knock and, if he doesn’t answer, I know he doesn’t want to derail the train of thought. If I knock three times, he knows it’s urgent.
E.G.
When I first heard an editor mention my article had a good hed/dek, my first reaction was to offer her a throat lozenge. My second reaction was, what the heck is a hed/deck?
