You’ve head me say it before - they are upgrading the electricity on my 1920ish cottage… it’s a fair drama for sure. I’m one of four, that is part of 10.

The next step is to “cut over” to the new box and this takes at least two agencies… the city and the electric company and at least one inspector. I’ll be running off extension cords until that process is complete and we don’t know if it’s half a day or a week and a half! So if the blogging seems spotty…

Darn, guess I should be set up with a laptop, but I’m not… I don’t like writing in coffee shops.

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

Jennifer Williamson who owns her own writing service and blogs about it all at CatalystBlogger recently took a temporary full-time, on-site writing job even though she’d promised herself and the world she wouldn’t ever do that again.

She tells the story in a post called: On-Site Writing vs. Freelancing: The Showdown

As she points out, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. She then lists some benefits of on-site work and some drawbacks. Included in her benefits is Quick feedback on your work. And, apparently, in this on-site job that’s what she got, often in a matter of hours. My experience on-site has been different. Feedback in offices where I’ve written has often taken as long as it does with clients.

Of course, I identify with the drawbacks. I’m truly a committed freelancer who never ever wants to see the inside of an office on a regular basis again.

What do you think? What are advantages to on-site work?

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

Eldon Sarte, creator of Wordpreneur.com has a nifty post called: Establish a “Looking for Freelance Work” Routine

He’s absolutely right! It’s one of those things I do automatically enough I hadn’t even thought of writing about it. There’s some excellent how-to that make it worth your time.

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

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

Wow! We’ve got 75 Writing, Blogging, Editing and Translation Jobs today.

There may be a couple of employers who have posted different ads in different places for the same job… if I can’t tell for sure, I opt to post rather than miss one.

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

I’m going through one of those periods that astrologers lay off to mars in retrograde… lots of smallish things going wrong, and a couple of larger ones too. I won’t go into all the details, but I’m also having trouble with a clients, and I’d like your advice.

The first is a smallish contract for a book proposal. The client wants me to create a sample chapter and the rest of the sales pitch so she can circulate it to agents and/or publishers. We get along well, have had several phone appointments and are, I think (and she’s so indicated) closing in on her really quite unique style. In the last few days, she’s broken two, maybe three telephone appointments. She’s had a good reason, for each, but… and when I suggested a particular time on Friday she asked if instead I could meet with her on Saturday.

The question: Would you work on Saturday in this situation even though you normally don’t? Why? And if you didn’t, what would you tell the client.

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

Ricco, over at CopyBlogger.com has a nifty short post called: An Easy Way to Come Up With Creative Ideas. His method will work for sure.

What I’ve always said is that writing ideas are everywhere! The trick, of course, is to hone them so they work.

But you knew that.

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

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 ideas listed there, about 2/3 of which I’ve already written about at one point or another. When I do write about one, I strike through it so I know I’ve done a blog, but so I can also read it. I’ve found many topics can be done over and over again, and some spark additional ideas.

My other secret weapon is a feed reader. I use FeedReader3, which is free and dirt simple. When I start the program (I know, some people leave their readers on all the time.), it populates itself with the blogs I’ve chosen and their most recent headlines. I’ve got enough blogs in there to be sure to find at least on topic anytime I look.

As I’ve been known to say, “ideas are truly everywhere.”

Where do you get your writing ideas?

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.

Although I rarely run out of ideas for writing, keeping up with this blog sometimes taxes my brain. It’s not that writing blog entries is particularly difficult for me. In fact, it’s ideal because, for the most part, blog writing is pretty much top-of-the-head stuff.

But when I’m in the middle of a ghostwriting project, my thinking tends to focus on that. While I often find something in my ghostwriting to blog about, sometimes my mind is just blank. It’s as if my brain doesn’t want to switch subjects.

Hence the idea list, or in this case the Blog Idea List. It’s dirt simple. I opened a word file called, guess what, Blog Ideas and saved it on my desktop where I know I can find it on the fly. Then, when I have an idea, I write it down.

At the moment there are some 16 ideas, including:

• Ideas in the shower
• Those days when you just can’t start
• just because you can doesn’t mean you must

When I complete one I use Word’s strikethrough – in the font menu – to strike through the idea. That way I know I’ve used it, but, since many of these ideas can be used multiple times, I can still read it.

Of course, an idea list isn’t limited to blog writing. Idea lists can be a catch-all for every idea you want to capture or dedicated to a particular project or any combination. They can also be done in a notebook or even taped while you’re driving.

Getting the idea down somewhere where it can be retrieved seems to free my mind to generate even more ideas. And ideas are, after all, where we start writing.

You also might want to read Where Do Writing Ideas Come From?

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.

On the whole, I find as a freelance writer I’m swimming in ideas. But every now and again I get stuck.

For example, I do a blog for seniors. Twice a week I have to come up with two ideas – something that will generally appeal to the over 50 crowd and something about the bank (Senior BofI) I’m doing the blog for.

This morning, in spite of two cups of coffee and a delightful conversation with a friend, I couldn’t find a single idea about or for seniors in my head. With the deadline looming, rather than panic, I simply looked through several of the newsletters aimed at seniors I subscribe to just for this purpose. Sure enough, I found something that appealed to me and so I wrote.

In other words, I’ve created a back-up for those times when my muse is missing. That just makes good sense.

You may want to read an article I wrote about writers and ideas.

Write well and often,

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