What My Law Career Taught Me about Freelance Writing
When I was a practicing corporate lawyer and dreamed of getting into freelance writing, I didn’t think that the two worlds had much in common. Sure, I knew that both jobs required a good deal of reading, researching and writing. But apart from that fundamental skill set, I imagined that with the ditching of my high heels, dark suits, and litigation bag, I would be leaving behind many of professional rules and practices that shaped my life.
Wrong. After I got over the I’ll-write-all-day-in-my-PJs fantasy, and realized that a successful freelance career involves much more than writing, I saw that my legal experience taught me extremely valuable lessons about running a freelance business (not to mention that it financed my start-up). Here are 5 key lessons that I learned: Continue Reading
The Best Freelance Writing Books
We’ve talked about graphic design books in the past, but there are some great freelance writing books out there as well. If you are interested in writing on a freelance basis at all, these books can bring you up to speed on the information you need to know. Continue Reading
How to Handle a Telephone Interview
Writers have a reputation for being reclusive, phone-haters. Is it true? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s true for me. I hate it. To me, the phone is for talking with family, friends and the computer repair guy. Conversations with strangers over the phone unnerve me – particularly when I’m interviewing a source. I find myself speaking in a strange, high-pitched voice that both irritates and distracts me. And I stammer. A lot.
The internet has made it easy for Haters like me to avoid the telephone: we can conduct the bulk of our research with a few clicks of the mouse, and interview hoity-toity experts without saying a word. But by shunning telephone interviews, we Haters might be doing ourselves a disservice. Continue Reading
The 5 Best Copywriting Books: An Unconventional Guide
Anytime I work with a young copywriter eager to launch their career, there always comes a time when they ask the inevitable question: “what are some good how-to books for copywriters?”
The truth is, there are none. A good how-to book may provide a few tips, a couple of poignant stories from the trenches, but the cold, hard truth is that you just have to jump in and hope you learn to swim fast enough to keep up. Because the reality of being a copywriter is nothing like you’ve learned in advertising school or in any book on the craft. The real world of a busy, working copywriter is faster and far more demanding than you could imagine.
Still, there must be a book or two that can help, right? Oh yes. But, they’re probably not the books you’d expect. These books aren’t how-to manuals on writing killer copy. Instead, the following essential reads are intended to inspire, stoke the imagination and prepare the next great copywriter to embrace innovation and trust his or her inner voice. Here are my 5 unexpectedly awesome books for copywriters.
Web Writing: Who Sets the Standards?
Whether you’re a designer, a developer, a writer, or any other type of creative professional, chances are that you’ll be writing on the Web at some point.
So, how should creatives stay consistent when writing online?
That depends on who you ask.
Most people and publications rely on the Associated Press Stylebook, but Yahoo is set to release its own version of writing guidelines, The Yahoo! Style Guide: The Ultimate Sourcebook for Writing, Editing, and Creating Content for the Digital World. Continue Reading
Finding Time to Write
The people who bring you these FreelanceSwitch articles work in a wide range of fields, and we hail from all over the world. But we do have something in common, and that is that we’ve found ways to squeeze writing about the business side of creativity into our busy schedules.
Finding time to write seems to be the Holy Grail for many would-be scribes. Well, I’m here to tell you that we all have the same amount of time: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. And you might be pleasantly surprised to find that you’re already doing quite a bit of writing during your waking hours. For example:
9 Ways to Make Your Writing More Compelling
You don’t need to be a freelance writer to have a good reason to improve your writing skills.
Whether it’s marketing copy for your client, a sales pitch to a client, or a cover letter for your resume, all of us need to write in a way that is compelling, interesting, and unique.
If your cover letter is enthralling, you get the interview. If you’re persuasive, you make the sale. If you’re convincing, you get a slice of the new budget (maybe).
Here are nine ways to make all of your writing more compelling and interesting:
6 Ways that Regular Writing Can Help All Freelancers
Many freelancers think that posts on writing are for the benefit of freelance journalists and copywriters alone. You can’t really blame them — if your trade is based on the excellent design you deliver or your skill as a programmer, then it might seem that the ability to piece words together in a pleasing and practical way isn’t necessary for you to master.
I’m a writer so my opinion might be biased, but many others in all sorts of trades and careers have discovered the value of the written word as a tool for relationship building, problem solving, and idea expression. You can learn to use the deceptively simple tool of writing to your advantage as well.
7 Inspiration Sources You Should Pay Attention To
Finding inspiration is a huge topic of interest for creative people. We look for angles to write about on our blogs all the time. Some days, that inspiration comes easily, and we ride the glorious wave of creativity that just seems to flow from our minds.
Other days, we wonder what train our Muse took and when she’s planning on coming back.
You could try the usual tricks to get your inspiration and creativity flowing again. Get some sleep, take a break, quit the coffee or eat almonds. Or you could look a little closer – sometimes, creative inspiration is right in front of your eyes.
Blogging Without Giving It All Away
A friend — we’ll call her “Casey” — came to me for advice recently. Casey’s a writer too, with a nice deal writing a nightlife column for a local alternative weekly, in addition to her other work writing celebrity news for local and national magazines.
Casey knows that to keep her site Google-friendly and to build her platform as a writer, she needs to keep up her blog. That constant stream of content gives the search engines plenty of keywords to chew on, and gives her potential clients and fans a quick taste of her work, too.
The problem is, she didn’t know what to write. As an up-and-coming writer struggling to make a living with her words, she can’t afford to give away stories on her blog that she could get paid for elsewhere. But what, then, could she post that would demonstrate her abilities and make her blog worth reading?
How to Get Stuck Words to Flow Again
Your fingers hover above the keyboard as you stare blankly at your empty document. You have an assignment, a topic, a project that you need to work on.
And you have no idea where to go from where you are.
It isn’t burnout. You aren’t exhausted, or sick of writing and wishing everyone who wants you to write something would just go away for a week
What you are is stuck. You know what you want to do, but you just can’t seem to get anything out to work on. Continue Reading
Working in the Shadows: Ghostwriting, Freelancing, and Work Without Recognition
Among other things, I’m a ghostwriter. Not the sexy kind that sits down with Sarah Palin or Oprah or that guy who killed his wife and married his daughter (I’m sure there is one!) and writes their story, getting an “as told to” or even “with” credit on the front cover. No, I write articles that appear in publications large and small under someone else’s name.
My reasons for doing this are plentiful, and not worth getting into in depth here – what it boils down to is that the money is good, the work is easy, and it saves me the time I’d normally spend querying editors and thinking of ideas. Since I teach a full-time schedule, that time saving is important.
