Yesterday, I posted about big grammatical blunders and mentioned that I have an editor who looks at my work before I send it to clients. He’s really more of a proofreader, actually, since most of what he does is pick up typos and similar errors. This raises an important question, though: As a freelance writer, should you partner with an editor to ensure that clients get a clean copy of your work?

The answer isn’t a clean cut-and-dry yes or no. Here’s my advice:
Yes, hire an editor if…

You have writers working under you and don’t want to proofread all of their …read more

Here are some of my favorite posts from (gasp!) June of 2005:

Google Helps Me With Spelling
What Makes a “Real Writer”?
Commercial Writing Is a Lucrative Venue
When Life Interferes With Writing
Should You Write For Free?
Enjoy this blast from the past.
Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing – a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision – for those who want to get a book written.
Image from http://www.sxc.hu

(www.thegoldenpencil.com)
I am so not a copy editor, and I am so appreciative of the good ones I know!
I’m doing the final pass on my book about how to write a book. I call it a pass, rather than an edit because I know I’m missing things. I always do! I am not one of those people who is good with tiny details.
If you looked at my cottage, you’d see what I mean. At first glance it looks pretty good, but I haven’t made my bed in days! And I’ll bet there are dust bunnies, maybe full grown dust rabbits …read more

Books are not only hard to write, the manuscripts tend to get long and messy. I’m going through the draft of my book about writing books and my headings are all messed up. I also changed typeface for the body somewhere in the middle. Plus, I started drafting in double space and then, as I got closer to completion, switched to single, except there are three or four sections that didn’t get switched.
As I’m editing and realized it was past time to set up a style sheet for the book. A style sheet simply defines the style, like typeface, type …read more

(www.thegoldenpencil.com)
Yikes! I’ve been working away, editing a book proposal for a client and suddenly, at the start of sample chapter 2, nothing was making any sense at all. And this is a chapter that’s had several drafts. In fact, it’s the chapter the client likes best.
All of a sudden I realized I was hungry – seriously hungry.
Twelve Steppers use the word HALT to remind themselves not to get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. They know that if they’ve got any of these going they are more vulnerable to slipping back into their addiction.
I find HALT also works …read more

(www.thegoldenpencil.com) A while back I tracked the top five or ten posts here and they rarely seemed to change much. Today I looked and wow! Here are the top five with some comments by me:

Testing Lulu.com – this must be part of the ever-increasing interest in self-publishing.
Should The Government Monitor ‘Net Content? An Odd Couple Posting – could it be people are finally getting interested in protecting the Bill of Rights? I hope so!
Publisher Problems With Amazon Continue to Grow – Shame Shame! – with self-publishing on the rise, interest in this issue only make sense.
The tag Work at Home …read more

b5media’s list of blogs grows so fast that I often miss something that might be of interest to you. This morning I stumbled into One Book Two Book, a blog about books for kids of all ages.
Turns out it’s only a few days old, meaning none of us are too far behind. If books for kids are of interest you’ll probably want to subscribe to this blog.
Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing – a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision – for those who want to get a book written.
Image from http://www.sxc.hu

Heather Johnson, over at bootstrapper.com has assembled a list she calls The Top 100 Freelancer Blogs. There are 16 blogs for freelance writers here, including The Golden Pencil and some other favorites, as well as some that are new to me.
But the rest of the list is well worth exploring. There is, for example, a section just on Copywriting and Marketing, another on Design, etc. etc. You get the idea. I suggest you explore the list a bit. I have a hunch you’ll find at least one or two you want to bookmark.
Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing – …read more

No clue why, but this morning I don’t seem to have a single idea for a blog in my head… except this one. You know, the old write-about-the-idea-of-having no-ideas trick. All professional writers can come up with this one when they get well and truly stuck.
And why am I mostly idea less this morning? Who knows, and I’m not even sure I care much at the moment. Because I have a couple of secret weapons. The first is my ever present list of blog ideas. This is a simple word file that lives on my desktop. Currently there are 39 …read more

CopyBlogger has a great post today called: Just Say No to These Three Enemies of Clear and Direct Writing. Although I find the title a bit unwieldy, perhaps violating his rules against both something called metadiscourse and pretentiousness, the points are well taken.
Another way to sum it up might be: Keep it simple! It’s amazing how often simple writing works well.
What’s your favorite writing rule?
Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing – a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision – for those who want to get a book written.