A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post called The Dark Side of Diversifying, about how over-diversifying your career can make you feel scattered and at loose ends. As I mentioned, I work on a TON of projects: I write for magazines and corporate clients, write and market books, teach e-courses, do phone...
Read more »
Last month, Jennifer Lawler wrote an excellent general copywriting copywriting and editing for universities adoption profile/”dear birthmom” letter writing (I’m starting up the website in a week or so) two e-courses Renegade Writer e-courses (taught by outside instructors) phone mentoring for writers query letter critiquing free query letter packet Review Copy Helper (a list...
Read more »
Since we brought our son Traver home in early 2009, work seems to have gotten so much easier and I seem to have even more free time than I did before. How can that be? After all, as any freelancing mom or dad will attest, trying to get any writing done with a squalling...
Read more »
I’ve been reading Dan Ariely’s new book The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home. In it, he talks about how humans and animals alike need to find meaning through labor. Ariely conducted an experiment where subjects were asked to complete a simple puzzle on a sheet...
Read more »
I recently downloaded the free e-book The Zero-Hour Workweek by Jonathan Mead of Illuminated Mind. The title is a play off of The 4-Hour Workweek, the popular book by Tim Ferriss. The e-book is pretty inspiring, but when you get right down to it it’s a guide on how to start a blog on...
Read more »
Did you ever think it’s not the economy, of the toughness of the industry, or just plain bad luck that’s keeping you from flourishing as a freelance writer — but your own limiting beliefs? Many aspiring freelancers are wonderful writers with salable ideas, but they can’t break out of the writing-for-cheap (or worse, writing-for-free)...
Read more »
I was doing a New Year’s cleaning of my computer files when I ran across my very first clip: a review of a text on dialectology for the journal Language, which I wrote while a grad student in Slavic Linguistics at UC Berkeley. In my first query letter sometime later, I mentioned that I...
Read more »
Thanks to everyone who filled out my Renegade Writer survey — and congratulations to Colette Martin, who won a free half-hour phone coaching session with yours truly. I really appreciate that so many people took the time out of their busy day to offer their valuable feedback. I received great feedback from 131 writers,...
Read more »
This post is by Monica Bhide, who teaches our e-course Introduction to Food Writing, which starts on January 11. A few years ago, I signed up with an agent and sent out my first formal book proposal. I had published two books earlier — the first one based on an idea that I sent...
Read more »
I have thousands of bylines that attest to the fact that I make my living as a writer. But it's my keyboard that tells the story of the tens of thousands of hours I've spent at this desk working at my craft.
Read more »
