The luck of the Irish – a nice saying with implications that good things just happen to some people.

But the Irish weren’t lucky. They were broke. A potato famine cost millions their livelihoods – and many their lives. Scores left their homeland forever to find work and a better life. Once they landed wherever they landed they endured grinding poverty and prejudice. Luck had nothing to do with the lives they built for themselves and the generations of descendant who followed.

So on this day when we honor St. Patrick and everybody’s feeling a little Irish, think about the luck you make for yourself.

Was it luck that you landed a great assignment, the one that will make this year better than last, or the result of years of hard work perfecting what you do?

Was it luck that the editor interviews you flew to New York to do turned out so well, or the result of research on those publications you did beforehand and the preparations you went through on what you were going to say?

Was it luck that your blog traffic is growing bigger every month, or the result of the hard work you’ve been doing to get it there?

Was it luck that when you lost your staff reporter job you didn’t just land on your feet, you created a business, one that let’s you do what you love to do and pay the bills?

Happy St. Patrick’s Day – may the luck of the Irish – the luck you make for yourself – be with you always.

Meryl Street didn’t win an Academy Award for her spot-on portrayal of Julie Child in Julie & Julia. But her performance in the 2009 film marked the 16th time she’s been nominated for the prize.

I’m convinced the reason Streep’s been recognized so many times is because she’s a good picker.

By picker I mean Streep has a good feel for what roles would be right for her, overall and at that particular point in her career. My hunch is she takes into account the script, director, producers backing the picture, amount of time she’ll need to invest in the project, and finally, the money. Whether she’s got a good agent or just a keen sense of what works well for her, it’s made her career.

On Sunday night, Sandra Bullock won the Oscar for her portrayal of a take-charge mom who brought a homeless black teenager into her Southern white family in The Blind Side. Bullock’s a good actress too. Whether she’s on par with Streep is a subject for a different blog post. But Bullock’s been in lots of interesting, if not heavyweight films over the years. She’s also been in a lot of dogs: to wit, she’s the only actress ever to win an Oscar and a Razzie (for All About Steve) in the same year.

It’s taken the actress they call America’s Sweetheart this long to grab the golden statue because she isn’t as good a picker as someone like Streep.

So what does this have to do with writers?

Writers, like Streep, Bullock and other creative types, are only as good as the projects we pick.

Pick a stimulating assignment that pushes you beyond what you thought yourself capable of doing and you wind up improving your writing, your portfolio and your chances of that higher profile publication saying “Yes” the next time you query.

Pick something easy you’ve done over and over again, and you don’t grow.

Pick a publisher that pays peanuts, pays in exposure or can’t or won’t pay at all, and you end up frustrated, and quite possibly, broke.

Figuring out what projects to pursue is something some writers are naturally great at. Others are lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. Still others have to work long and hard to figure out the process.

If you’re someone who innately knows what projects are right for any particular place and time, hooray for you – I’ve love to hear how you go through that decision-making process.

If you’re not, here are some things to think about the next time an opportunity comes your way or when you’re thinking about which assignment you want to do next. Call them the 5 Ps of Picking a Project:

1. The project – Am I excited to do this? How much time and effort will it take? Does it fit into my writing specialty? Is it an area people are interested in, one that I could make into a new specialty? Do I already have sources I could talk to who know the subject? If not, how easy would it be to find them? Will I have to travel? If so, how much time will it take me away from other projects?

2. The people – Have I worked with the editor or staff before? If so, are they easy to work with or overly demanding, demeaning or rude? Do they make a story better or edit in mistakes? Are they quick to answer emails or phone calls?

3. The publication – Is it a magazine, website, newspaper, company I want to be affiliated with? What kind of reputation do they have? What kind of financial situation are they in: on the way up or down? How do they treat their writers?

4. The pay – Is the compensation worth the number of hours I need to put into the project to do it justice? What rights are involved? Are expenses included? Is it pay on acceptance or publication? If it’s low paying, can I reuse the research and pitch a different story to a different publication? Could it lead to more work or a contract or retainer position?

5. The big picture – How does this fit into my goals for my writing business this year? For my career? Could it lead to more lucrative work? Is it something I’ll be proud of? Can I squeeze this in without sacrificing projects I’m already committed to? How does this fit into my non-work life?

Nobody’s criteria for choosing project is exactly the same. But by going through a well-reasoned thought process you could end up like Meryl Streep, a perennial winner.

There’s a great quote attributed to motivational speaker Anthony Robbins: if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.

This quote reminds me of freelancers who continue to query print consumer magazines then complain when they don’t hear anything. When the print magazine industry’s losing ad pages at an alarming rate, it’s not surprising that editors aren’t buying. So why keep flogging that dead horse?

Online’s the future, and I’m not just talking about writing for content farms. There are all kinds of opportunities with online only-news sites, corporate sites, newsletters, trade publications, e-books, user guides, mobile phone apps and on and on.

Making the most of these opportunities could require retraining. But if you’re in the market to pick up some new skills, you don’t need to look far for opportunities.

One is a free hour-long webinar, Moving to Digital-First Content: How Intelligent Content Technology is Changing Publishing from Scott Abel, of The Content Wrangler fame, on Thursday, March 11 at 2 p.m. ET. Registration is free but you have to sign up in advance.

In the webinar, Abel will lead a discussion with content management specialist Ann Rockley and digital publishing innovator Dev Ganesan.

Here are a couple other journalism training websites that offer free or low-cost classes freelancers can take to pick up skills they need to create content online.

Knowledgewebb – Run by former journalist Amy Webb, this website’s motto is “Don’t sweat the tech. ” Knowledgewebb hosts online and off-line classes, webinars, tutorials and more. Subscriptions are $129 a year or $89 if you belong to the Online News Association or another partner organization.

Knight Digital Media Center - This partnership between journalism schools at UC Berkeley and USC offers multimedia trainings, bootcamps and other workshops at one or the other campus several times a year. Classes are limited to 20 applicants and are free, with costs underwritten by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation. Here’s a list of upcoming classes in 2010.

Online News Association – The largest professional association for journalists working online hosts its own annual convention, regional seminars and informal mixers and meetups around the country. The group also maintains a calendar of outside seminars and training opportunities (but you have to be a member to access it). Annual dues are $75 for working journalists.

J-Lab – The Institute for Interactive Journalism helps professional and citizen journalists use digital technologies to to report the news, through training, research and publications. The organization also provides grants to new media projects, and will award a total of $25,000 to nine such ventures this year – but hurry if this is something you’re interested in, the deadline is March 1. J-Lab and the McCormick Foundation also run a separate grant program to fund women-run new media ventures; that deadline is April 12.

Poynter’s News University – Nicknamed News U., this online journalism training program offers 150 free or low-cost classes. The e-learning project of the nonprofit Poynter Institute has more than 150,000 registered users and currently offers courses such as Mobile Media 101: Producing News with Your Smartphone (March 3) and Becoming a more Effective Editor: Strategies for Editing Yourself, Others (March 2010).

Know of other places – online or off – where writers of all stripes can get training? Let me know and I’ll add them to the list.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably spent at least part of the last five days watching the 2010 Winter Olympics and wondering how it’s possible for the human body to spin, flip, fly or move so fast.

Olympic athletes aren’t born doing those things. With the rare exception, it takes years, maybe even decades, to reach that level of achievement – something spectators like you and me understand almost intuitively.

Yet when it comes to our work as writers, we expect to come out of the gate a Nicholas Kristoff or Seymour Hersh.

But writing, like sports, doesn’t work that way. To attain a certain level of mastery takes time and effort. While it might not take the 10,000 hours Malcolm Gladwell says it does in Outliers, it’s not something you can start out at and be perfect right away (unless you’re a J.D. Salinger, and face it, we’re not).

Good writing takes hard work. To be an Olympic caliber writer takes Olympic caliber training.

So how do you train like a gold-medal champion?

Specialize. You don’t see Apollo Anton Ohno competing in short-track speed skating and figure skating. Ohno’s a champion because he’s devoted umpteen years of his life to one thing and one thing only, and that devotion’s made him the most decorated American Winter Olympian ever. To get good at something specialize. If you want to be a business reporter, pitch and take assignments to write business stories. If you want to be a copywriter, actively seek out copywriting opportunities. Ditto for any other niche writing market.

Find a coach. Watch the Olympic figure skaters before and after they enter the rink. There’s always a coach there to encourage them before they’re on and critique them once they’re done. Writers need coaches too. You could hire a coach, but you don’t have to. Coaching could come from attending a writer’s workshop, reading books on the craft, or putting some really good writing blogs on your RSS reader (including this one, hopefully).

Practice. Olympic athletes are in the spotlight once every four years, but they practice constantly. Practice is what allows U.S. snowboard superpipe champ Shaun White to do tricks like the Double McTwist 1260, which he invented and so far has been the only rider to have landed successfully. Thankfully, practicing writing is a little easier than doing double flipping, triple twisting maneuvers on a snowboard – although getting a reluctant interviewee to open up sometimes feels like it. The best practice for writers is writing. If assignments aren’t pouring in, aim your writing energies at query letters, keeping a journal, blogging or taking a writing class – anything that helps sharpen your skills.

Use the right equipment. Bode Miller didn’t win a bronze medal in the downhill on any old pair of skis. He used the right equipment and tuned it to the conditions on the mountain that day. To get the most out of their work, writers need equipment that’s tuned to their special needs too: a laptop that has enough umph to be a main workstation yet is light enough to take on the road, a telephone headset and Skype, a smartphone with a built-in camera, software for making podcasts.

Surround yourself with like-minded professionals. Skiers on the World Cup circuit travel, train and live together – U.S. skier Lindsey Vonn’s chief nemesis on the World Cup circuit is also her best friend, Germany’s Maria Riesch. This is a hard one for me, because it’s against my naturally competitive nature to want to share too much with writers who could potentially take work away from me. But the reality is, there’s no way I could write all the stories there are to write about topics I cover. So why not accept that and spread the wealth? And good karma has a way of finding its way back to you.

Visualize greatness. Olympic athletes train mentally as well as physically, picturing themselves performing at their peak. When I was 15 my parents sent me to a weekend seminar led by a local high-school football coach whose specialty was teaching athletes how to visual success. Over two days we learned what affirmations were and how to use positive mental imagery to picture ourselves doing whatever it was we wanted to do. Sounds hokey but it works, especially the visualization. I’ve continued to use some of the techniques up to this day. If you think of yourself as a successfully employed freelance writer, you will be. That doesn’t mean that all you have to do is think about it. You have to do the things that will make you successful – the querying, the interviews, the writing, the rewriting.  But by picturing yourself as successful you won’t be mentally sabotaging everything else you’re doing to get there. And when you’ve got that big interview or have a call with an editor at your dream magazine you’ll be calm, cool and collected because you’ve been there before, in your head.

* * *

If the Olympics inspire you, you might want to check out the Pen Olympics now going on at Edittorent, another blog for writers. There’s a new competition every day – Monday’s was Doggerel Sled Racing.

When it comes to the media business, the world is flat – and I don’t mean the screens replacing print for reading everything from newspapers to books, though that’s happening too.

I’m talking about flat in the sense that with so many newspaper and magazine staff jobs going by the wayside, publications don’t have as many middle managers or mid-level editors as there used to be. As a result, many publications are farming work out to independent contractors, editors and writers.

With so much in flux, at any given time the hierarchy of who’s working for whom could change, and the editor you wrote for yesterday maybe the writer you edit tomorrow.

It’s happened to me in the past couple months, as I’ve taken on a new editing project. I’ve found myself assigning stories to not one, not two but three freelance writer/editors who at one time or another I’ve written for while they were either staff or freelance editors. Another writer I’m working with is also a freelance editor who may eventually throw some assignments my way.

If it’s happening to me, it’s got to be happening to other writers too.

So how do you act when your boss today may be the person reporting to you tomorrow?

1. Quit thinking of writer-editor relationships as ‘us v. them.’ Constantly pitting yourself against editors because of perceived bad treatment – lousy contract language, unreasonable deadlines, crummy editing or late payments -  makes you a victim. If you’re not happy about aspects of a writing opportunity you have the power to make a choice: negotiate new terms, walk away, or accept the fact that the terms are lousy but you’re taking the assignment anyway. Yes, sometimes the editor you’re dealing with is disorganized, mean or incompetent. But in many situations, problems you encounter may be beyond their control. If you run into trouble the best thing to do is talk, via email or better yet, by phone.

2. Approach the editor-writer relationship as one of equals. One’s not better than the other, just responsible for different things. Editors translate ideas into stories suitable for their audience, sit through a lot of meetings, buffer writers from demands – reasonable or otherwise – of editors and other publication staff higher up the food chain and prep articles for prime time. Writers are editors’ eyes and ears on the front lines, keeping tabs on what’s happening out in the world to come up with interesting, relevant stories. If you think of what editors and writers do as being different parts of the same enterprise, you’ll have more appreciation for what the other does, and it’ll show in your working relationships.

3. If you’re a writer, think like an editor. Editors keep track of multiple details for multiple projects for multiple issues simultaneously. Some go so far as to use Excel spreadsheets or project management apps to keep things straight. If you’re a writer, you can help them and yourself by thinking like an editor. Don’t turn in stories until you’ve gone over them with the eyes of a copyeditor. If you’re responsible for turning in elements that run with the story such as headlines, decks, inks, file art, sidebars, subheads, etc., send everything with your original draft – along with your invoice – instead of waiting for an editor to remind you. If you have aspirations to work as an editor, being organized about those types of details is good practice, gets you noticed, and it could pay off if you ever want to ask for a recommendation.

4. If you’re an editor, think like a writer. As an editor, if you say yes to a query, talk through what your expectations are of the writer and for the story at the very beginning so everyone’s expectations are the same. Because of their status, editors often have access to people and information writers might not. Sharing that information with a writer could help them with a story they’re working on, which helps you in the long run.

5. Be considerate in all your business relationships. I write a lot about workplace issues and in the last couple months have done a few pieces of employee rewards and recognition programs. My take away – you don’t have to give people money or stuff to make them feel good about doing their job, or about working with you. A small amount of courtesy goes a long way – an email to say thanks for an assignment, or a Twitter status update on how awesome someone is to work with. When the holidays roll around, you don’t necessarily need to send gifts to editors you work for – though last Christmas I did send something small to editors I’d worked with over the year.

Do you work as an editor and writer? What advice do you have for getting along in a flatter media world?

As I step away from the keyboard to spend the next four days on feasting and football, family and friends, I’ve been thinking about how much I have to be grateful for.

It’s true 2009 will go down as one of the most godawful years the modern media business has ever seen.

Even so, for me it could have been a lot worse. And as 2009 shinnies up to 2010, things are definitely looking up.

So, here are the 10 things I’m grateful for this Thanksgiving:

1. The editors I work with on a regular basis – Carroll, Elizabeth and Jonathan especially – for being good role models as I discover whether the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence.

2. The editors who took a chance on me – There were more than a few of them this year, as I hustled to make up for work lost when regular clients cut their budgets by pitching magazines, online news outlets and other publications I hadn’t written for before. Some new assignments worked out beautifully, others not so much. But I learned from all of them.

3. The media community in the city where I live - As the ongoing commentary in the wake of last weekend’s WeMaketheMedia conference proves, media people in Portland are earnest and passionate about what they do, and where and how they’ll do it in the future. It’s not just me. Ask Bill Lascher – coming up from Los Angeles for the conference sealed his decision to move here. Welcome Bill.

4. The Online News Association – If you hadn’t held your annual conference in San Francisco, I couldn’t have afforded the time or $$$ to go. But you did, and I did, and got to spend three days learning new stuff and meeting old friends, a winning combination of ever there was one.

5. My family – You tease nag me over the time I spend on Twitter, LinkedIn and my blog. But you’ve been behind me 100 percent as I’ve jumped into this or that new venture, even if it’s meant more work around the old homestead on your part (next year, maybe you’ll even do that part without grumbling – then I’ll really have something to be thankful for).

6. Ron Doyle, my website designer – The inspired mind behind WordCount’s facelift – making me just as proud of the blog’s design as the words I stuff into it.

7. Old Faithful – You give me a few scares this year, and you’re slowing down in your old age, but you still boot up every morning and haven’t crashed in who knows how long. Hang in there, we’ll get a new hard drive in you yet.

8. Twitter - I fulfilled one of my 2009 New Year’s Resolutions to do more public speaking thanks to the Twitter follower who broadcast about a friend of a friend needing a speaker for an upcoming event, then retweeting my reply that I was ready, willing and available. Since then once’s thing’s led to another and I’ve given talks to groups big and small on writing, hyperlocal news, digital journalism and social media – and had a blast doing it.

9. My writer friends – Even though I some of you I know only virtually, you’ve there whenever I need another writer’s perspective on something, or just to hang out with when I’m avoiding a rewrite.

10. You – the readers of this blog. You’ve prodded me to write about things I never would have thought of on my own and in the process helped make this endeavor bigger and more successful than I’d ever dreamed.

This Thanksgiving, what are you grateful for?

I’ve talked the talk.

Now it’s time to walk the walk.

After preaching to everyone who visits here about the need to innovate during an era of unprecedented industry change and try new things, I’ve taken my own advice and accepted an assignment to do something I’ve never done before.

What will I be doing?

Here’s a hint:

You know all those things I’ve written about editors – what makes a good one, how to tell a bad one when you see them, how to pitch, how to keep them updated on what you’re doing?

Well, I’ll be taking my own advice as, like Alice, I go through the looking glass and say goodbye freelance writer, hello freelance editor.

I’ll save all the details for another day. But generally speaking, I’ll be helping bring an online-based project from concept to launch, including mapping out timelines and editorial calendars, securing writers, lining up assignments, editing copy and working with what seems like an enormous team.

Am I excited? Of course.

Am I nervous? Of course.

I’ve worked as a business publication editor before, but it’s been awhile. In fact, it was so long ago the publication I was responsible for came out once a month, in print and the Internet was still a twinkle in ARPANET’s eye. In those days, marketing a publication consisted of printing extra copies to take to conventions and trade shows. This project will live online, and once we’re live we’ll let the world know through Twitter and Digg. Times, they are a changing indeed.

I’m not saying goodbye to writing altogether, especially not here. But it’s going to feel good to exercise a few different creative muscles for the time being.

Wish me luck!

Newspapers maybe on the way out, but news isn’t.

The shape news takes, not only the way it’s delivered but what actually constitutes news, is changing.

Those were two of the major takeaways from the first day of the the Online News Association 2009 conference going on in San Francisco.

A sold-out crowd of more than 650 reporters and editors from around the world – mostly the U.S. but also from Canada, Colombia, Norway and elsewhere – packed into meeting rooms at the San Francisco Hilton Hotel to heard Twitter CEO Ev Williams, tech radio host Leo LaPorte, essayist Paul Saffo and others share their views of what lies ahead for the news business and the technology that’s used to produce it.

Because whether you like it or not, the news business is turning into the technology business. That was blindly apparent in a lightening-fast 60 minute presentation on tech trends journalists should know about given by media consultant Amy Webb, head of Webbmedia in Washington D.C. Twitter, Facebook, blogs – it’s just the beginning of a landslide of widgets, apps and other tools reporters, editors and Website managers can and are using to better bring information to their constituencies, and vice versa.

Twitter’s Williams didn’t share much about the little company with the big social network the assembled crowd didn’t already know, with a few exceptions. One: think of Twitter as a network, not a destination, Williams said. In the future, services will be built on top of Twitter so people won’t necessarily realize that it’s what they’re using. Another item of interest for anybody who uses Twitter now: the service is beta testing a lists function that will make it easier to segment groups of people you follow. If anyone reading this knows how to get me into that beta, ping me – I will trade 15 minutes of free social media or editorial consulting in return.

LaPorte, the tech radio guy, has been around the tech industry since the early days of the personal computer. He started out as a radio news reader and wound his way through various radio- and tech-related ventures before starting a network of tech radio show podcasts including This Week in Tech. LaPorte’s story should hearten aspiring news entrepreneurs; after years of pitching shows to radio, TV and publishing companies, LaPorte used the advent of relatively cheap podcasting technology to do his own thing, and it’s paying off. He’s currently pulling in approximately $1.5 million a year in advertising for shows that cost $350,00 to produce (which he does with a staff of seven).

Saffo, a Stanford professor who’s spent his career studying and talking about technological innovation, told the crowd to embrace the uncertainty they face as the media business changes. “The waves of creative destruction are tunneling through every corner of your industry,” Saffo said. “The only strategy is to flee into the future as fast as you can, and avoid the mistakes of the incumbents.”

Stay tuned for more from the Online News Association conference.

I spent yesterday afternoon watching my son’s football team lose a game.

It was not pretty. Time after time the team got within yards of the end zone only to be stopped by a dominating defensive line.

I’m not sure who was more frustrated, the players, the coaches or the parents watching helplessly from the sidelines.

As painful as the experience was, one thing is certain: those players won’t forget that game or that afternoon. They won’t forget it because from now on they’ll do everything in their power never to repeat it.

Success isn’t the only thing you can learn from. You can learn from failure too. Sometimes the lessons you learn from failing stick with you more than the ones you learn from winning.

Have you failed in your freelance business?

I have. For the first time ever, I had story killed earlier this year because what I turned in didn’t match what the editor was looking for, even after two rewrites. Granted, what the editor wanted was a moving target, but when all was said and done, my efforts weren’t good enough.

I’ve had other failures along the way. The first time I ever pitched a story  to a magazine I was still in grad school. I’d been researching a well-known activist/journalist turned author and queried a progressive magazine on an update on his life timed to a movie about him that was coming out. Much to my inexperienced surprise they accepted the story – which I then proceeded to never write.

While I was working as a daily newspaper staff writer I got a call out of the blue from the Los Angeles bureau chief of a national business magazine who needed to fill an opening in his office. I was on maternity leave with a very young baby at the time and was nursing so I couldn’t leave her even for a few hours. In a fit of generosity, the bureau chief suggested bringing her along. But midway through our interview the baby got hungry and started screaming so I had to excuse myself, feed her, then resume the interview. Not surprisingly, I didn’t get the job.

I’ve had other failures, some still too fresh or painful to willingly share.

But I’d like to think I’ve learned from my mistakes. Learned how to be better at following through on queries, communications and opportunities.

After all these years doing what I do, failure still hurts just as much as it did for those football players yesterday. But I try not to let it get to me.

Because if you don’t learn from your failures, you’re failing to learn.

An argument that’s often made in favor of writing for content aggregators – my term for sites like Demand Studios, Helium, Associated Content, Studio101, etc. that pull together works created by a multitude of providers- is that it’s easy to get work. You sign up, in some cases, go through some type of try out or training period, then grab whatever articles are available for writing, or write on the subjects of your choosing.

By writing for content aggregators, proponents argue, writers can bypass the often lengthy query process – sending pitches, waiting for answers, and dealing with rejections. Instead of plowing their time and brain power into queries and other marketing endeavors, they can immediately direct all their energies toward paying work.

But settling for easy money is a mistake.

Freelancing isn’t about writing. It’s about sales.

To be good at freelance writing, you have to be good at sales.

You have to be able to sell a concept. You have to be able to sell how a concept fits a particular audience. And you have to be able to sell yourself as the best person to do the work.

By bypassing the sales process, you shortchange yourself from the very beginning by accepting work that’s easy to get – and carries a low rate as a result.

If you’ve ever written about business, you may know about sales cycles. Some products have short sales cycles. Consumables like food or fashion have short sales cycles. A farmer picks apples, sells them to the wholesaler, grocer or farmer’s market and people buy them. Other products have incredibly long sales cycles. Pharmaceutical reps may call on a doctor’s office for months before getting them to agree to recommend a certain type of prescription medication to their patients. Boeing may spend years – years – courting a major airline or a country before convincing them to buy a fleet of multi-million dollar airliners.

Sales cycles for freelancing articles for print or online publications – not including content aggregators – fall somewhere in the middle. It’s not often you email a pitch to an editor and hear back the same day – it may happen if you write breaking news or work as a contributing editor for a publication on a regular basis. But if you’re pitching cold – the equivalent of a sales rep cold calling prospective accounts – it’s pretty rare to hear back right away. Sales cycles for freelance pieces could be weeks, maybe even months, and include multiple rounds of email conversations with potential clients. As I noted here recently, not long ago I heard from an editor I’d sent a letter of introduction 18 months before. I ended up doing a big project for her and more work could be ahead.

Another reason freelancers avoid selling: they can’t handle rejection, or they’d rather not deal with it. Nobody likes hearing “no.” But in sales, rejection is par for the course.

So freelance sales cycles can be long and the outcome isn’t guaranteed. Is that a reason to chuck it all and grab low-paying work, simply because it’s the path of least resistance? For some that answer is yes. For others, the rewards of higher paid work outweigh the risk of waiting out a long sales cycle, and the risk of getting a “no” instead of a “yes.”

Good salespeople know, the key to limiting your risk is doing adequate due diligence on potential clients ahead of time to understand the needs they might have that you could fill, all the better to target your “sales” pitch – that also includes researching which markets aren’t buying right now, so you don’t end up bumping your head against a wall of rejection. Also important: having enough proposals in the pipeline so the deals you land are enough to keep you busy working at the income goals that you’ve set, and continuously prospecting new markets.

Next time you’re getting ready to go after new work, don’t think of yourself as a writer. Think of yourself as a salesperson, and writing is the product you’re selling.