Those of you who follow this blog know I’m a firm believer in freelance writers getting enough time off to make their lives sane and to recharge their batteries. In support of that, I generally aim at writing only about four hours a day, leaving plenty of time for the rest of my business. I also try not to work on weekends. That’s why you often don’t see a blog post on Saturday and usually only one on Sunday. The truth is I rarely do much if any serious writing work on the weekends.
There are, however, always exceptions! I’ve gotten …read more

I’ve got a client who is doing a series of fairly short videos full of management tips, techniques, etc. They are used in her organization and we’re using them as the basis of a book. If we do this right, we’ll have two products to sell – the book and the video set.
Writing from videos, however, isn’t a cinch. Although it can help to see her talk and hear her voice, and she’s pretty good about leaving out all the umms and ahhhs and yaknows so many people use in speech, the spoken word is still a long way from …read more

So someone sends me a 58 page paper on a subject that’s dear to my heart. Since I’m feeling time pressured, the best thing to do seems to be to print it out for reading on my flight Wednesday. I click my print button and instead of the usual smooth printing, with occasional shouts for more ink or more paper, darn thing starts clicking… a fairly loud, very annoying and rhythmic clicking. And it won’t turn off.
Not to be done in, I quickly unplug it. Turning a printer off and on solves more problems than you might suspect. Not this …read more