It was my first official day as a full time freelance. I was still asleep when the phone rang. (Yes, I slept in my first day on the job — tsk, tsk). It was my editor from a well-known entertainment trade paper.
Nine years ago I sat in my dermatologist’s waiting room mentally shuffling the remaining working hours left in my day. I felt unproductive, stalled… and itchy. I’ve gone to the same dermatologist for years; catching up is always the first order of my visits-zits and skin irritations must wait patiently. That day, as we chatted, […]
I built my freelance career on those three words. “You never know,” I’d say to myself as I followed up on a job opportunity, hoping it would lead to paying work that I could add to the other paying work I was doing. Eventually, I hoped, that pile of paying work would allow me to become a full-time writer and toss my day job.
As embarrassing as it is to admit, my first paid newsletter assignment was for a dormitory at the University of Massachusetts. The Stall Street Journal was proudly posted on the inside of every bathroom stall in the building. Despite it being read while dorm residents were busy doing other things, or that my writers received story assignments as punishment by the residence director, I loved the job.
Little did I know when my marriage broke up–actually, down–that writing would become a lifeline, drawing me out of depression, or that my freelance career was about to take off. My success since then has been due to desperation, determination, and dumb luck.
Rejection. It’s a problem I’ve dealt with my whole life. It usually stems from my need to share voluminous amounts of detail with my audience.
I write comic books. So do writers you may have actually heard of like Stephen King, Kevin Smith, Max Allan Collins, Brad Meltzer and Greg Rucka. Should you? Well, in 2002 over 67 million comic books were ordered through Diamond Distribution, America’s largest comic book distributor, with total sales topping $190 million. Helping those sales […]
Everything I know about good writing I learned in Portage, Wisconsin in 1981. I was a cub reporter for the local daily paper. On the way back to the office from our standard mid-day fare of beer-boiled brats and string cheese, my friend, Patrick, also a cub reporter and the more talented writer, and I paused at a sidewalk book sale. Patrick handed me Giving Good Weight by one John McPhee.
You’ve looked at the magazines and thought, “Heck, I could do this!” Is it really as easy as it seems, or do you still have a lot to learn? I used to look at the magazines my teenage neighbor and her friends read and think, “Heck, I could do that!” So one day, I borrowed […]
For the better part of the past four years, I’ve worked as a hired gun. In other words, I’ve financed my living primarily as a freelance commercial writer.
