writing business

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By March 25, 2008

As a freelance writer, you sometimes find yourself with a bad client relationship. It’s not that the client is bad; it’s just that you just can’t reach an understanding. You know that things are going wrong because: you thought you understood the brief but the client doesn’t like what you ...

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By March 20, 2008

Earlier this week, I read a post on Freelance Switch about turning clients into friends. In that post, Andy Howard made the point that when you work in an office, you invite clients over for meetings all the time, so why change your habit as a freelancer? I thought it ...

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By March 14, 2008

A writing project got bumped back to me today (not one I’d written, but it doesn’t matter), and it got me to thinking about how writers deal with criticism. The following lines are taken from How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague, and they sum ...

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6
By March 12, 2008

A friend asked me the other day what my career plan was. It was a good question. Although I love what I do, and wouldn’t go back to working in an office, in another ten or 15 years, I would like my writing career to look very different. When you ...

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6
By February 18, 2008

One of the mysteries for new freelance writers is how to bid for jobs. As a new writer, you often have no idea what to charge or what clients are looking for. Sure, you can write, but bidding is about selling yourself so you can get the chance to show ...

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29
By February 14, 2008

Give me my money! That’s what most freelancers want to say when they have done a piece of work but have not been paid. When you freelance, there’s always the chance that you might fall victim to a seasoned scammer – there are lots of them about. Three Freelance Writing ...

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18
By February 11, 2008

How much time do you spend on writing each week? When you sit at your desk to write, is that all you do, or do you get distracted by other things. I’ll come clean and say that I am prone to distraction. In addition to writing/blogging, I also spend my ...

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22
By February 8, 2008

I signed up with GetAFreelancer a couple of years ago, yet I’ve only just completed my first project with them. This is my review of the experience. Getting Started With GetAFreelancer First of all, let me tell you why it’s taken me so long to get started.The first reason is ...

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5
By January 31, 2008

It’s about time for another roundup of posts that made me think in the last couple of weeks. A post on Dosh Dosh about reaching 10,000 subscribers made me wonder whether all the things we do to promote our blogs are really worth it. Dosh Dosh concludes that great content ...

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7
By January 28, 2008

If you’re going to write for a living, then you need to put your writing life on a business footing. That doesn’t mean giving up the pleasure of writing; it just means that you need to take it seriously and get others to do the same. So how do you ...

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15
By January 8, 2008

Sometimes you need to admit when you’re wrong – and that’s what I’m doing today. At the start of 2007, I moved my diary online. I set up Google Calendar with a personal calendar, a work calendar, a school calendar, and a holiday calendar. Yes, the system had some advantages. ...

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6
By December 21, 2007

If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent the last couple of weeks trying to finish things. As the end of the year approaches, there’s always a flurry of action, as if loose ends will cause major problems if they’re not tied up before Christmas. For me, it’s about being able ...

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2
By December 5, 2007

Someone said to me recently: ‘Freelance writing is not like other jobs; you never really get away.’ She was referring to the fact that I work at home, and it’s always easy to think about the jobs that are waiting for me – or to work instead of doing something ...

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5
By December 4, 2007

If you haven’t written your Christmas articles yet, then it’s probably too late, at least if you’re writing for print. Print publications work far in advance, so if you’re writing for them, you should start planning your Christmas articles in the middle of the year and should deliver them by ...

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By November 26, 2007

As a freelance writer, one of the best ways to attract new writing work is to show off examples of work you’ve already done. When I started out in journalism, that meant rigorously collecting copies of every newspaper, newsletter, journal or magazine in which I had a bylined piece (and ...

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3
By November 23, 2007

We’ve all seen the ads where writers get offered peanuts for doing lots of work. In exchange for a paltry sum, they’re expected to sign away all rights to their work. If writers are working on a work for hire business, this is normal. But what about the other times, ...

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4
By November 22, 2007

You just never know what’s going to happen. One day, you’re merrily turning out a 1,000 word article on a topic you’re familiar with; the next, something happens to completely disrupt your routine. This could be: illness (yours or a family member’s) bereavement having relatives or friends in town In ...

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5
By November 19, 2007

These days, it’s all about being positive. For freelance writers, it’s about talking up your writing skills and abilities and proclaiming your successes to the world. We don’t often like to talk about failure (ewww – who needs all that negativity to bring you down?) And yet … ignoring or ...

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