(www.thegoldenpencil.com)

The other day a writing buddy of mine called. He was tempted to take a writing gig that paid way less than half of what she normally gets. True, it was a rather unique opportunity with a major trade publisher. If he did this job well he’d have an excellent contact which might lead to more lucrative work in the future. It wasn’t, however, a book, nor did it earn royalties. In my mind, the “might lead to more lucrative work” some day, some time down the road is, well, most often futile.

We’re close so I asked him what was really up. It turned out he was feeling cash poor. I asked if he had any savings, and he said he did, but he didn’t want to dip into them.

I understand not wanting to spend savings - it’s hard enough to get the money saved and horrid to see it disappear. I finally realized, however, that I have to have a savings account I’m willing to use to smooth out the ups and downs of my freelance writing income. Once I opened a savings account (I use Ingdirect.com) that I created just to smooth income I no longer worried as much when I had to use it for that. After all, I earned a bit of interest and often found I didn’t have to use it right away. I call it my Prudent Reserve account.

It took awhile to build it up to the point it actually helps fill in dips in income, but once it was big enough to do so, it made my life and my pricing so much easier. Now I rarely feel pressured to under price myself.

Of course, my Prudent Reserve account isn’t my only savings. I regularly put 12% in a retirement account and a tax savings account as well. I don’t always manage to stick with these percentages, but often enough so it works.

What I hadn’t anticipated is how secure that savings account would make me feel when I was setting prices. Because of that account, I’m free to turn down poorly paying work, or work I simply wouldn’t like. That’s freelance freedom.

Write, and save, 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 suspect many of you are like me. I started writing because I had some sort of a need to write. Somehow, maybe as early as sixth grade, I loved getting words on paper. It was probably around that time that the romance of being a writer began to creep in. Although I started reading Writer’s Digest magazine as soon as I discovered it, and buying Writer’s Market annually in college, I didn’t even submit anything over-the-transom until I was 32.

Of course, at any and every job I’d end up with the writing chores - never paid directly, but loving them none-the-less. Sometime in my 30s I also discovered that, if you were lucky, you could get writing jobs. My first were in the then new personal computer industry as a tech writer.

I sold my first freelance piece and began to sell other things, including a newspaper column that grew to a massive three-paper syndication. But even though my income from freelancing was gradually increasing, it took me a heck of a long time to begin to treat my freelance writing as a business. By that I mean more or less the following:

• I began to believe I could make a living from freelance writing
• I got a business bank account and deposited my writing income there.
• I got business cards.
• I started telling people I was a freelance writer.
• I began keeping track of my business expenses.
• I built my first website selling myself as a writer - with many changes it’s still AnneWayman.com.
• I began filing self-employment taxes.

These days I know for sure I’m in business for myself and my business is freelance writing. I treat my writing like a business. The result is a better income and increased confidence. I love being a writer in business for myself.

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

Graham Strong, who writes a blog called A Few Strong Words and also writes white papers, has a post called: Cutting Out the Noise

There he talks about his own experience shutting down IM and email most of the day as an experiment to see if he really did get more done. Not surprisingly, he found he did.

Sometimes I wonder, no, I recognize that I like to be connected - to have the radio on, to let email notify me with a sound that more mail (spam) has arrived only because I don’t want to hear the constant chatter in my head. Of course, meditation also lessens those head voices.

But when I need to work on a difficult piece of writing, I turn off the radio and the phone and ignore the email. Silence can be golden for this writer.

What about you? Do you work better in silence? Or not? Tell us about it.

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

BuzzNetworker, another b5media blog, has a post today called: Citizen Journalism. It highlights the Center for Citizen Media, which is new to me, then goes on to talk about the fact that the San Jose Mercury News has called for neighborhood bloggers.

In one sense citizen journalism isn’t new at all. When you stop and think about it, Thomas Payne was a citizen first, so was Ben Franklin and countless others who broke news and changed worlds. In fact, professional journalism is really the new kid on the block, developing, according to some, in the early 20th century.

What’s different, of course, is the internet which has literally connected us world around. No longer do I have to wait for my daily newspaper or, in smaller towns, my weekly newspaper. I don’t have to wait for the evening news on either radio or TV, and I don’t have to wait until a “professional” news reporter gets it together to tell me what’s going on. It comes constantly, in my email and, if I choose, through blog feeds.

It’s the if I choose that concerns me a bit. There’s no denying that I tend to subscribe to blogs (and listen to radio shows - no TV here) that reinforce my own view of the world. And that means I have less exposure to opposing view points. Now, I do go out and seek those, but how many do?

Are we in danger of simply preaching to our own choirs at the expense of the exchange of 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.

Image from http://www.sxc.hu

I’m normally at my computer writing by 6:30 or 7 in the morning. I’m one of those folks who likes getting up at first light and mornings are my most creative time. It’s just flat easier to write in the morning for me than at any other time.

Today, however, I’m doing it differently. First of all, I’m pretty well caught up with writing for clients at the moment. Secondly, I have two important appointments this afternoon. Afternoons are when I usually do my running around. I needed to go to an office supply store to get stick on dots so I could price my pottery for a student sale this weekend. Given what this afternoon and tomorrow look like, this morning seemed my only good chance.

I’ve also been wanting a new throw rug for my kitchen and a replacement hose for the garden… easy to pick up at the same time. So I was at the stores early today. I’ve also been doing some of the fiddly little chores, like moving the soaker hose and trying to woo the kitten and her feral mother.

Frankly, it feels like one of those nice change ups we do once and awhile. I suspect I’ll be back at the computer early tomorrow, but shopping, etc. first has been a nice change.

Actually, it’s not quite 10 a.m. and I know lots of freelance writers never get started before 10 or 11… of course, they go to bed way later than I do. What time do you start your writing day?

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

Sigh! I suppose it should be obvious, but until I read Joe Wikert’s story called Kindle Book Conversion: One Author’s Story that I realized there would, of course, be formatting problems when it came time to get your book, or mine, into shape for whatever ebook reader I wanted to be able to sell it for.

Actually, the story is a Q&A with Francis Hamit is the author of The Shenandoah Spy, but the bottom line is it will cost either coin or extra effort to get your book ready to display on Amazon’s Kindle, and I’ll bet the same thing is true for other ebook readers.

Darn… I thought the only problem was in the readers themselves… the quality of the display, the cost, the ease of download, etc.

Does anyone here have any experience with converting an existing book, e or otherwise, for ebook readers? I’d love to hear about it. Either in a comment or an email.

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

How many of you recognize this scenario, or something like it?

You give a client two styles of writing, and they choose one. You dig deep and send them a couple of thousand words in the style they picked and email it off with your fingers crossed.

A couple of days later, an email from the client arrives in your mail box and you just know it’s their response to what you sent… but you have no idea if they will like what you did or not. You can’t quite bring yourself to open it right away so you… make a cup of coffee and come back to the computer, and taking a deep breath, open the email.

In my most recent example of this, my client absolutely loved what I had sent. But it doesn’t always happen that way. In fact, the same client had not liked the original sample at all.

How do you handle the email you know will tell you you’re on track or not?

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.

Have you ever been editing your work on screen and had trouble erasing what you thought was an errant period? Except it turned out to be a spec of who knows what masquerading as misplaced punctuation. Or, if you’re like me, you’ll notice weird spots on your screen… mine are usually toward the bottom and probably come from the last coffee I sprayed everywhere laughing at some joke.

Then there’s simple dullness… it’s amazing what can collect on our screens. I guess it’s because of the static electricity or something.

Jennifer Hofmann, over at MyOrganizedBiz suggests: Clean the screen so your work can be seen. She’s got some good suggestions… right now I’m using a microfiber dust cloth on everything, including the screen.

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.

If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you’re probably at least vaguely aware I live in San Diego. Well, now that I’ve moved, I live in a town called National City, but it adjoins San Diego so it’s almost the same thing. Not only do I live in sublime weather now, I was born here, so I’m super spoiled.

Right now it’s raining… not hard, just enough to catch your attention. There’s something about raid that makes me want to curl up and read. I want to read mind candy, like the latest thriller. Or something fairly esoteric like The Three Pillars of Zen. I don’t want to read about politics, or technology or about writing ether.

What about you? What do you like to do in the rain?

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.

Writing skills have a fairly predictable path. In the beginning we’re really not good at it. Oh we can get words on paper and our sentences are usually complete, but we tend to be awkward and far less than smooth. With practice and maybe the luck of finding a few good editors, our confidence increases, we find our voice and our writing begins to work well, maybe even sing. By this time we know what we like to write, are willing to explore new areas, and generally are a true professional in our chosen work.

It’s at this point, just when we think we’ve got it all together, that we’ve got to be careful not to loose the wow factor in our writing. I think the secret is to continue to pay close attention. When I look back, I remember the care I took in the beginning. I’d write and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. I’d read everything I wrote out loud at least once.

Some of that, of course, was fear, but a lot of it was learning my craft. A succession of good editors, and one or two bad ones, helped immensely… I love good editing, and I learned from even the poor ones. Today I’m able to write much more quickly than I was way back when. I trust myself more, but I have to be careful I don’t get bored; when I do, it shows, if not to me, to my readers.

Of course, some writing is fast. I don’t pay as close attention to my often thrice daily blog as I do for the chapters I’m writing for a client… I simply don’t have the time. Which isn’t to say I don’t feel a responsibility to my blog readers - I do. After all, most of you come here to learn something about freelance writing, even if it’s just watching me write about anything and everything.

How do you keep the wow in your writing?

Write well and often,