Living the Freelance Writer’s Life
Get Help When You Need It
When you’re starting out as a freelancer, you pretty much have to do everything yourself. You don’t have extra money around to hire people to help you with things, so you have to make the time to get things done. I’ve often said that, as soon as you think you can afford it (and that happens sooner than you might think if you shop around... [Read more...]
How Much is Your Time Worth?
One of the big problems for people who are trying to leave a day job to freelance full-time is figuring out how much money they need to make to get by doing freelance work. It’s not necessarily the case that you have to be making the same amount you did in your day job, since there are costs associated with leaving the house for work (fancy clothes,... [Read more...]
Quick Tip: Schedule Your Sending
Yesterday I wrote about the fact that I have a whole lot of queries sitting around that really need to be sent. I’m sure I’m not the only one. What I — and, maybe, you — need to do is to actually put some time into my schedule that’s just for writing, refining and sending queries. As it is right now I’ll get an idea,... [Read more...]
Look Online for a Full-Time Career
I was chatting with a mom friend the other day about what I do and it occurred to me that right now all the income I make is from jobs that are completely online. It’s actually been that way for a while, since I haven’t done any book editing since the little one was born and my local newspaper stopped running book reviews. I still send... [Read more...]
Must-Reads: On Content Farms and Beyond
I have done probably more than my fair share of writing for content farms. I’d guess that many freelancers coming of age in the past five years or so have done the same. There are all sorts of these sites online and it seems like new ones pop up with regularity. Back in the day, I used to work for a site called Write for Cash (long-since defunct),... [Read more...]
Read More PostsQuick Tips
Quick Tip: Schedule Your Sending
Yesterday I wrote about the fact that I have a whole lot of queries sitting around that really need to be sent. I’m sure I’m not the only one. What I — and, maybe, you — need to do is to actually put some time into my schedule that’s just for writing, refining and sending queries. As it is right now I’ll get an idea,... [Read more]
Quick Tip: Try a New To-Do
If you’re getting hung up on how much (or how little!) you’re getting done each day, it may be time to rethink your to-do list. I used to like to write down everything I hoped I could accomplish in a given day, meaning that I never actually got everything marked off. Lately I’ve been trying to keep my to-dos to just three or four... [Read more]
Quick Tip: Let it Sit
It’s easy to get excited about a project, query or finished article. We want to send it out while that enthusiasm for the project is still there, but in our haste we might not describe a project as fully as we could or we might make sloppy grammatical or other errors that could easily be caught if we’d given our work a chance to percolate. Even... [Read more]
Quick Tip: One a Day
If you’re like me — like most people, I’d imagine — your stack of magazines, newsletters and other things to be read is taking over your workspace, as well as other places in your home. It can get to be overwhelming. How can you ever get through so much information when there’s more coming in all the time? Well, you can’t.... [Read more]
Quick Tip: How Much Money Do You Need?
When thinking about whether it’s time to quit your day job, you might wonder exactly how much money you need to be making regularly before you make the plunge or how much you really need to save as a cushion. Six months’ living expenses is not the same as six months’ salary. To really know how much money you need, you need to keep... [Read more]
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