When I started out in corporate writing in 1997, I relied heavily on Bob Bly’s book Secrets of a Freelance Writer. Now that I’m getting back into the field, I’m reading his book again. It’s brimming with useful information. You can sign up for Bly’s free monthly e-newsletter called The Direct Response Letter and...
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This article is reprinted with permission from Marcia Layton Turner’s fab newsletter Become a Six-Figure Writer. The road to writing wealth begins with catching a potential client’s attention. This is true whether your goal is to break into book publishing, magazine article writing, web copywriting, corporate writing, or some other writing niche. But getting...
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Let’s just admit it: this world economic meltdown really sucks. It sucks for everyone, and it sucks for us writers, as we watch magazines fold, pages shrink, websites shut down, editors getting their pink slips (and we all know, another name for a laid-off editor is a new freelancer). Although times weren’t nearly as...
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I learned this morning that Lori Hall Steele, the gifted writer who’d been battling ALS or Lyme Disease, passed away yesterday at age 44. I know many of you gave generously to help save Lori’s home earlier this fall. As soon as I learn the address of where to send condolences to her family,...
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Yesterday, freelancer and Renegade Writer course instructor Alison Stein Wellner blogged on her website about her very first effort to get published — at age 8! (She even included the actual query letter sent to Highlights, along with the story she was selling. Already a pro before she hit junior high!) My parents tell...
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For the first time in my 11-year career, I almost missed a deadline this week. I somehow got two deadlines mixed up, so I turned in one article several days early and didn’t realize the mix-up until the day the second article was actually due. Thankfully I’m a fast writer and I had already...
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I like to work at Borders. Today, I take a cushy seat in the nearly-empty café. Soon afterwards, a tunelessly humming old man takes a seat right next to mine. And now all the seats in the café are filled so I can’t move. I’m trying to write a blog post for Monday and...
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Freelancer and author Michelle Goodwin has a must-read guest post on the New York Times‘ “Shifting Careers” blog this week. Michelle’s the author of The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: Practical Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube and the recently released My So-Called Freelance Life: How to Survive and Thrive as a Creative Professional...
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This article was originally published in Writer’s Digest. Whenever I ask aspiring magazine writers why they don’t get started writing queries, they say the same thing: “I’m afraid of interviewing people.” And their fears aren’t unfounded — I’ve written for over 100 magazines and have probably interviewed more than 1,000 people in the past...
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Thanks to a tweet yesterday from LeilaM, I discovered a fantastic writing tool called Write or Die. It’s a web-based program where you set a word-count and time goal, along with a reminder mode to kick you into action (mode choices are “gentle,” “normal,” “kamikaze,” and “electric shock”) and start writing. When you let...
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