Published on May 6, 2015
writing career advice
Most of my life I’ve worked in high powered executive jobs. Power dressing, power speaking and power working – all of which came with a powerful lot of stress. I was in my mid thirties, sitting in another corporate office, beavering away for a six-figure salary I was never going to have the time to enjoy. I wanted freedom, freedom like I’d never had. Freedom from the grind of daily life, freedom from slaving away to pay the bills and, most of all, freedom to enjoy some of my time before I completely ran out of time to enjoy!
Published on March 25, 2015
writing career advice, writing scams
The recent Writers Weekly article, Great Writing Gig Or A Scam?, got me thinking about all the deadbeat editors I’ve met in my long freelancing career and how I’ve answered some of their “scams.”
Published on March 18, 2015
writing career advice
As writers, many of us feel the same things as we try to get the attention of the editors we believe would be a perfect fit for our submissions. As someone who’s been doing this for more than 20 years, and has also worked as an editor on occasion, I’d like to offer a little perspective…
Published on March 4, 2015
writing career advice
Niche never crossed my mind in the ICU waiting room. At the time, I could barely understand what had happened. Old people had strokes, not 49-year-old, otherwise healthy men, and certainly not my husband. Whatever had just happened, I told myself, it was a temporary thing. He would heal and we would go on with our lives.
Unfortunately, that’s not what happened…
Published on February 26, 2015
writing career advice
In my 40-plus year career as an income tax preparer, all too often I would find that clients who were trying to earn money as self-employed, or as freelancers, but were not successful did not realize that they could deduct their expenses (losses) against their other income…
Published on January 14, 2015
writing career advice
Writers are dealt a tough hand. We see little early correlation between effort, talent, and profit; we slave over details until our eyes water, just to expose ourselves to criticism. Small wonder that Googling “writers as masochists” returned more than 3 million results.
But, are you more of a masochist than necessary? Are you criticizing yourself more than the critics, demanding more of yourself than any editor would?
Published on January 14, 2015
writing career advice
I’ve been freelancing for more than thirty years. I’ve replied with job applications to hundreds of ads for writers posted online. Over the last decade and a half, I’ve nailed freelance jobs with AOL, Arthur Andersen, Forbes Investopedia, and many more print and online publications.
Some of the editors at those publications told me that hundreds of qualified writers applied for those gigs. Why was I selected for the job rather than some other writer?
I was told they hired me because they liked my cover letter, clips and resume…
Published on January 7, 2015
writing career advice
It’s a problem that plagues a lot of new freelancer writers and many are unsure about how to tackle it. Fortunately, there are ways to deal with an unresponsive editor.
Published on December 31, 2014
writing career advice
Let’s face it: as a writer competing with millions of blogs, in a very crowded niche, the last thing you want to do is stand out in a bad way! And, many of us are too close to the problem to be truly objective…
Published on December 19, 2014
book marketing, writing career advice
Every author needs an audience, and there’s no reason why you can’t start building one right now in your own backyard. What follows are five easy steps to get you started…
