But why take my word for it?

Look through the blog roll for the 2012 Blogathon and you’ll see dozens of other freelance writers and journalist entrepreneurs who have incorporated blogging into their writing business. Some use blogs as test beds for subjects they’d like to learn more about. For others the subject matter is secondary to the writing practice. Still others use their blogs to showcase their work, or to make money from advertising or affiliate sales.

If you’re a freelancer who still hasn’t taking the plunge, what are you waiting for?

Blogathon writers who blog

Here’s a sample of the writers participating in this year’s event and what they blog about:

Arizona writer and author Jackie Dishner blogs at Bike with Jackie about “inspiration, encouragement, quirky stories, laughs and life-changing adventures.” This is Jackie’s fifth blogathon, and this year she’s graciously agreed to be a “Blogathon Ambassador” on the event’s Google Group to help out newer bloggers. She also wrote this guest post on why it pays to do a blogging challenge.

Barb Freda blogs about food at Babette’s Feast, including a recent post on food trends. When she’s not posting on her own blog, Fred writes about business, consumer technology, food, wine, and travel and works as a recipe developer.

Carrie Schmeck is a business copywriter in Redding, Calif., who blogs at BizziWriter. Carrie uses her blog to talk about her business and the business of being a copywriter. Every Friday she runs examples of bad copywriting, like this one.

Jennie Phipps is a former newspaper reporter and editor turned freelance journalist. She also owns Freelance Success, a members only website and forum for professional writers. In her spare time, Phipps blogs at Detroit on the Cheap, one of the string of frugal-living sites in the Living on the Cheap network. Leah Ingram, a freelancer and author whose Philly on the Cheap blog is also in the Living on the Cheap network, is doing the blogathon for the third time.

Sandra Hume is a Colorado freelance writer and editor and one of close to a dozen Freelance Success members – myself included – participating in this year’s blogathon. Hume’s blog, Little House Travel, is a travel guide for fans of the Little House and their families who want to travel to places that series author Laura Ingalls Wilder called home.

When Cheryl Wright isn’t writing her weekly column in the Trinidad Guardian‘s Womanwise Sunday magazine, she posts on her namesake blog about fashion, writing inspiration, how she spends her time, and just in time for Mother’s Day, her mother’s legacy of creativity.

Debbie Kaplan is a journalist specializing in family travel whose byline has appeared in publications such as Shape, Family Fun, AAA Traveler, and the Los Angeles Times. She uses her Frisco Kids blog to share kid-friendly trips and activities around the Bay Area, such as this one about summer concerts at Stern Grove.

Freelance newspaper reporter Walter L. Johnson II blogs about media and communication industry jobs at Communications Careers Corner, including this recent post on being the right fit for the job.

Elizabeth King Humphrey is a Wilmington, N.C., freelance writer, editor, proofreader and writing coach who blogs at The Write Elizabeth about reading, writing, editing and parenting. In a recent post she shared her 5 favorite books on editing.

Anne Noble, a Michigan freelancer with nearly 30 years of experience in newspapers, magazines and corporate writing, blogs about family and other subjects at Mac’s Musings.

Ronda Levine is a Northern California editorial consultant, writer, editor and graduate teaching assistant. On her blog, Not Quite Ally McBeal, she covers a variety of subjects including relationship issues, inspiration, and her recent engagement – congrats!

Why your blog needs an ‘About’ page and a picture of you

If you’re a freelance writer or use your blog to promote your business, you have to do two things: create an About page and put your picture on it. You’d be surprised how many Blogathon bloggers’ websites I looked at to compile this list who had neither of those.

Another note: There’s no way I could include all the freelancers in this year’s blogathon in this list. If you’re participating, please feel free to add your name, the name of your blog and a link to a recent post that’s a good example of what you typically write about in a comment on this post.

Portland writers, there’s a reason none of you on on this list – I’m saving you to a separate write up after our May 18 IRL gathering – look for it next Saturday.

It’s the beginning of conference season. The Association of Health Care Journalists is happening this week, the American Society of Journalists and Authors Boot Camp is next week and more gatherings for journalists, freelancers, fiction writers, bloggers and others of their ilk take place in the months between now and the end of summer.

If you’re planning a trip to your first writers conference before, you’re in for a treat. There’s nothing like rubbing shoulders with other writing practitioners to fall in love with the craft all over again.

But if you’re spending all that time and money to drive, ride or jet into some distance city, stay in a hotel and eat bad conference food, make sure it’s worth it.

Here are my suggestions for maximizing your time at a writers conference, based on attending – and speaking at – dozens of them over the years:

1. Go to as many sessions as possible. Start with sessions on topics you’re most interested in or that fit your writing business as it is today. But stretch yourself by attending sessions on topics you think you might want to know more about or the speaker is someone you’ve always wanted to meet.

2. Bring your laptop. Don’t be shy about using it take notes during the sessions. Get to a room early so you get an outlet, there usually aren’t enough for everyone who wants one. If you’re a loud typer sit in the back and ignore the Luddites giving you dirty looks.

3. Sit in the back if you’re live tweeting. Or on the side or somewhere else where you won’t bother people. Use the meeting hashtag when sharing tweets. Find the other people live tweeting the event: chances are you’ll have lots in common.

4. Mingle during the mixers. Networking is a big part of going to a conference. Talk to people you don’t know. I met a retired women’s magazine editor at one of the cocktail parties at last year’s ASJA conference who gave me the best piece of advice I got at the entire conference (sorry, I can’t share – it’s that good).

5. Exchange business cards. Use the old-fashioned paper kind or business card apps like Bump. Either way, jot down a few notes about the person that will jog your memory once you’re back in your office.

6. Make plans to have every meal with a writer(s) or editor. More networking, and you never know where it might lead. You could end up doing a book project with someone you had coffee with, or hiring a writer you met over drinks for the freelance editing gig you just landed. Don’t drink too much at dinner or getting up for early sessions the next morning will be hard.

7. Be nice to the conference organizers. They’re working hard and doing the best they can given hotel, union, and other restrictions.

8. Give yourself some down time. If you’re visiting somewhere you’ve never been before, or an old favorite, give yourself an afternoon, evening – or entire day if you can swing it – to see the sites, visit old haunts, pick up souvenirs or go for a stroll. When I go to meetings, my favorite downtime activity is visiting museums. You never know: your off-hours activity could help inspire an idea for a story.

What’s your best advice for attending a writers conference?

It’s the time of year when the floor of my office is covered with  bits of white paper, dinner and the dishes get neglected and my accountant wonders how close to April 15 it’ll get before he hears from me.

Yep, it’s tax season.

I’ve spent the last three days finishing tallying up my income and expenses to have everything ready to send to my very patient accountant who’ll give my calculations a once over before filing my return with Uncle Sam.

Though taxes are something you have to do, they also should be something that you want to do in order to get better insights into how your freelance writing business is operating.

Here’s what I learned from crunching the numbers on my 2011 taxes:

1. Beware big clients. In 2011, my income dropped 3.5 percent from the previous year, a direct result of my largest client cutting back the amount of work they assigned during the second half of the year and not being able to make up all the difference from new work. The good news is I picked up two new clients in the second half of 2011, and that big client started assigning again, so by the beginning of this year my work load is about where it used to be, but my client portfolio is more diverse, always a good thing.

2. The only thing that matters is the bottom line. At the same time my gross income was down slightly, my total business expenses were up about 33.5 percent, mainly because of higher travel expenses (more on this below). Because of the increase, my expenses were about 9.8 percent of my income, compared with only 7.1 percent in 2010. Since I’m anticipating gross income to remain relatively unchanged this year, I’m already taking measures to cut back on business expenses so they’re closer to the 7 percent mark. On a side note: I’d love to hear from other freelancers if your overhead is similar to mine: is 7 to 10 percent typical for you? As a side note: isn’t it great to be in a business with a pre-tax profit margin of 90 to 93 percent?

3. It pays to travel (a little). In 2011, my biggest expense was travel. I made five trips out of the state last year, twice to cover conferences or conventions for work, twice to meet with editors or writers I work with, and once to run a panel at the American Society of Journalists and Authors conference in New York. Total expenses for airfare, lodging, transportation (taxis, shuttles, subways, parking, etc.) was approximately $4,850. I was reimbursed for about 40 percent of that, but the balance – about $2,950 – was still more than three times what I spent on travel in 2010. I won’t cut out travel altogether – I’ve already taken a trip this year that was partly work related. And I’m a firm believer in visiting editors at least once every other year. But I canceled plans to go to ASJA again this year because last year it was one of my most expensive trips and I got zero work out of it. Although I love going to New York and had fun meeting writer friends who I’d only known virtually before, I can’t justify spending that kind of money. I am thinking about attending the Online News Association convention next September in San Francisco because it’s so much closer to home.

4. I spend more on Internet services than on the telephone. And that includes minutes and texts on my Droid. My costs for monthly Internet service, hosting for my website, website design, domain name registration and inflight or hotel Internet service was about twice as much as what I paid for local, long distance and cell phone services. I think that’s a first.

5. I don’t eat out. In 2011, I spent a whopping $108 on business-related meals and entertainment in town, $433 if you include meals I had on business trips. That’s one advantage of not working in coffee shops – those $3.50 lattes add up. Think about it – even if you worked just 1 day a week at a Starbucks or similar coffee shop and spent $5 on coffee and a donut, that’s $260 a year.

6. I splurge where it counts. What I don’t spend on business lunches, I more than make up for paying for professional services, specifically the accountant who double and triple checks my tax return, and on media perils insurance, which covers my editing, writing and blogging.

7. Major expense categories don’t change much from year to year. In 2011, my top 10 business expenses were: travel, professional services, dues and subscriptions, computer hardware, Internet services including website design, office supplies, telephone services including cell service, books and periodicals, software, and mailing. In 2010, my top expenses were in the same categories, just shuffled around a bit: professional services, telephone and cell service, Internet services including website design, computer hardware, dues and subscriptions, travel, office supplies, miscellaneous expenses, books and periodicals, and software.

8. It pays to wait. In 2011, I bought a new computer, for the first time in at least four years (or five, I forget). The monitor I’d been using was even older – a label on the back said, “Manufactured in 1995″ – almost as old as my college freshman – yikes! The silver lining in waiting was being able to buy a state-of-the-art all-in-one computer with the latest bells and whistles – touchscreen, fastest Intel processor on the market, 1 terabyte of storage, HD TV screen, etc. – for well under $1,000.

If you’ve done your 2011 taxes already, what insights into your freelance business did you gain, and what will you do differently this year as a result?

I’m taking a spring break vacation – a whole week off from work.

I practice yoga, and for the last class of every three-month session, my teacher Linda schedules a restorative practice. We work through a few active poses, then spend the majority of the class prone, propped up with bolsters, blankets and chairs, relaxing our bodies and minds.

This spring break is my version of a restorative.

It’s time to recharge the batteries, fill up the old gas tank, power down to power up again. Once I hit the “Publish” key on this post, you won’t read anything else from me until next week.

Here’s why I’m heeding my own advice and taking a vacation, and why other hard-working freelancers should too:

1. It’s way over due. I vowed to take time off between Christmas and New Year’s, then ended up working almost all the way through.

2. After a hard year of work, not giving myself more time off wasn’t a good idea. My last vacation was in early August. Now I’m exhausted to the point of resenting the work that I usually love.

3. I want some down time with my family. Around my kids, I’m usually in work mode – if I’m not writing and editing, I’m driving the carpool, doing the laundry, making dinner, nagging about homework. Going on vacation means I get to be in fun mode for a whole week, and my kids deserve to see that side of me every once in a while.

4. Why work if you can’t enjoy the fruits of your labor? My job helps pay the bills, but also lets us afford things like vacations – so why I am not taking more of them?

5. I’m going on a train trip. That means instead of driving I can read a book. Or even two. I can’t wait.

6. I’m leaving my computer at home. I can’t remember the last time I went on vacation and didn’t bring a laptop with me. OK, so I’m bringing my phone and an iPad so I can check messages and take calls if I need to, but other than that, I’m not doing anything work related.

7. I’m going someplace I’ve never been. It’s an adventure! As someone who feels more comfortable sticking with places and things I know, it’s good to push myself out of my comfort zone to see what I’m capable of. That applies to work and life.

8.  I’m trying some things I haven’t done before. That’s part of the adventure. On this trip, that could involve snowshoeing, cross country skiing, snowmobiling and maybe even dog sledding. I’ll let you know.

9. I need a break from my social media accounts. I’ve been on a self-imposed Facebook diet during Lent and discovered that I can catch up with everything my friends are doing only checking in once a day for five minutes. Taking a one-week break won’t kill me. As for Twitter – that’ll be harder. And what will all my new Pinterest followers think?  Not sure, but the world will have to live without my updates for a week, and vice versa.

10. I know I’ll be more productive next week. I’m coming home to an overflowing schedule of projects and deadlines over the next two months, including kicking off the 2012 WordCount Blogathon (which you’ll find out more about soon enough). I’m counting on time away to help me get ready for that mentally and physically.

See you on the other side.

Don’t let the clever headline fool you. I Can’t Stop Reading This Analysis of Gawker’s Editorial Strategy is a serious must-read. It dissects the online tabloid’s recent experiment to assign one writer a day to finding and writing posts they think will bring in the most traffic and new readers. The staff at Nieman Journalism Lab, which is run by Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, thought it would be interesting to analyze the outcome independently.

What Nieman writer Andrew Phelps found: posts that Gawker writers produced when they were on “page view duty mode” (Gawker calls it something more colorful that I can’t repeat because of the terms of my BlogHer Publishing Network agreement) averaged 54,958 page views each; other posts, the ones that they worked longer and harder to report and write, averaged 59,920 page views, or about 9 percent more.

“The allure of that cheap content,” Phelps writes, “is in its higher apparent return on the investment. Why bother working all day on a piece if something you throw together in 20 minutes will get the same attention from the world?”

Page-view duty posts also attracted more new visitors to the site, Phelps found. The ideal, he concludes, is probably running a mix of the two because if all you give readers is weird, titillating or dumb stuff they’ll eventually get bored. And more substantive stories are more likely to pull in big-name advertisers (or sponsors).

That’s a good rule of thumb for freelancers too. If you’ve got a blog, consider mixing up quick hit pieces with more well-thought research pieces. Toss in some photos, haiku, Wordles and quotable quotes with the more serious topics you blog about. When you’re pitching editors, remember that not everything you do needs to be serious, or frivolous. The same holds for paid blogging work you do for news sites or other clients: it pays to be Sir Mixalot.

Phelps’ piece is also a great example of the interesting work that a journalist can do by crunching a few numbers. Math can be a reporter’s best friend.

Don’t Write for Free

John R. MacArthur: Internet con men ravage publishing (Providence Journal) – The long-time Harper’s publisher and Journal columnist uses the occasion of delivering a Delacorte Lectures at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism to explain how he really feels about newspapers and magazines offering their content online for free. He calls the practice “business suicide for magazines and newspapers and career suicide for writers.” The trend has been especially painful for freelancers, MacArthur says:

What about ordinary journalists and writers, most of whom have no control over the production of media, apart from their unpaid, vanity blogs? A lot them went along for the ride because they thought that they had no choice. A few have been able to make money as promoters themselves, or even as highly paid bloggers, such as Andrew Sullivan.

But by and large, the condition of the freelance writer and midlist author is very bad. Ask any author or freelance journalist – even fairly successful ones – what’s happened to their income in the past few years.

MacArthur admits to not having solutions for how publishers or writers can make it in the brave new world of digital media, only suggestions. “Such as don’t write for free. This is becoming nearly impossible, but you should really think about it. Put up paywalls on blogs, if you must blog, for pennies if that’s all the market will bear. But at least hold fast to the principle that writing is work, that writing has value, and that writers should be paid.”

Tech Tools for Writers

Yahoo Style Guide (Yahoo) – Is it OK to start a sentence with “And?” Should the word “app” be capitalized? Is “Click” here” the best way to get someone to click on a link? You’ll find answers to these and other burning questions about style, usage and grammar, and especially about writing specifically for the web, in the Yahoo Style Guide, which is available for free online.

The guide includes sections on writing for the web, editing, resources and a list of spellings and usage for common words and phrases. Use the Ask the Editor section to submit a question. Follow the Yahoo Style Guide on Twitter  or buy the book. (According to the guide, the answers to those questions are usually not, no and no.)

Jennifer Lawler

When I told my friends and colleagues that I had been asked to launch and manage Crimson Romance, the new romance ebook imprint from Adams Media, I was immediately deluged with  emails that said something like, “That sounds like so much fun! I’d love to try my hand at writing a romance!”

It is fun writing romance (in addition to editing the Crimson Romance line, I also write romances under a pen name). But it’s also a lot harder than it looks. Want to give it a try?

Here are some tips for making sure you don’t make newbie mistakes:

1. Read in the genre. If your last recollection of reading a romance was thumbing through your mother’s copy of The Flame and The Flower, you need to update your knowledge. Contemporary romance is full of smart, kickass heroines who don’t put up with heroes who manhandle them. Reading in the genre will also help you see the huge variety of stories you can portray on this canvas – paranormal, historical, erotic, suspense, just for starters – with all kinds of characters, settings, themes, and conflicts.

2. Include a plot that isn’t the romance. The romance between your heroine and hero is the focus of the book, but something else has to be going on. For example, the heroine is trying to keep the ranch from being sold, while the hero is trying to find the escaped convict. Essentially, you have the narrative arc of the plot, and the narrative arc of the romance, and they must both reach a satisfying conclusion at about the same time. That’s a lot harder than it looks.

3. Understand basic romance conventions. People who don’t read and write in the genre often think romance = love story, but that’s only part of the picture. Romance actually = happily ever after. You may have a great story but if the hero dies at the end, sorry, it isn’t romance. By the same token, writers sometimes let the main plot of the book overshadow the romance. When that happens, you might have a mystery with romantic elements, but you don’t have a romance. Gone are the days when all romance heroines had to be beautiful 18-year-old virgins, but readers do expect to like the heroine and love the hero. They expect to meet the two main characters early in the book. And so on. Learning genre conventions requires more than reading romance novels, though. It also requires thinking critically about what you’ve read, what the books have in common, and why that might appeal to readers.

4. Focus on motivation and conflict.   Characters have to act in ways that make sense based on who they are and the situations they find themselves in. That is to say, their motivations must be clear – readers must know what their goals are and why they want to reach them. When goals conflict, it creates the pivotal tension of the story. (Conflict – and how it’s resolved – is what keeps readers turning the pages.) In a romance, the hero and heroine are in conflict because of their goals. Readers know the story is going to end happily ever after. What they want to know is how you’re going to manage that!

5. Let the sensuality shine. If the thought of writing a sex scene makes you burst into laughter, the solution isn’t to write romances where the main characters do nothing more than kiss. The solution is to figure out how to write about sensuality in a way that doesn’t make you laugh at your own efforts. Readers want to feel the sexual attraction and romantic tension build throughout a romance, even in very chaste romances. Learning how to portray attraction and sexuality in a believable way requires a certain amount of practice. And research is definitely encouraged!

Any WordCount readers write romance fiction? I’d love to hear about it. Please share your experiences in a comment. Thanks! 

Another writer recently told me his marketing suffered from “paralysis of analysis.” He wanted marketing strategies that didn’t require a ton of thought.

Frankly, that’s how I see marketing anyway.

Lori Widmer

Maybe it’s the word. “Marketing” sounds ominous and complicated, like one of those torturous processes that corporations labor over for months to produce a few pages of strategy. Perhaps corporations need that process. However, for freelance writers, it needn’t be so tedious.

Maybe you suffer from that same paralysis as my writer friend, or are just bored with your current methods. If so, try adding one or more of these strategies to your marketing efforts:

1. Plan it. Choose how many clients you’re going to contact. Make it a number that feels manageable to get in touch with on any given day. The next day, contact that same number. Repeat this every work day. If you find you’re able to contact more clients than you originally thought, do it. The idea is to do something every day to expand your client list.

2. Suggest new projects. If you’ve worked with certain clients for years providing a specific service or product, suggest adding another service. Blogs, newsletters, and sales letters are just a few ways writers and editors can add to what they provide to increase their earnings. Create a sales package of everything you offer and present it to a client, showing how additional services or products can help them improve their businesses or lives.

3. Follow up. All those marketing pieces you sent out a month ago are useless unless you follow up. Get in touch with those contacts. Say hello, repeat your offer, send them a relevant article, or just ask what they need and how you can help. They may not need your services, but you won’t know if you don’t ask.

4. Target potential clients that resemble your existing clients. Not every client you’ll have will fit into the same box. For that reason, brainstorm where to direct your next marketing efforts. Look for potential clients that share similarities with companies you already do work for. If you work with doctors’ offices now, check out health-care suppliers. If a group of potential clients has similar needs, your chances of securing business increase.

5. Create several points of contact. Keeping your name in front of clients even when you’re not marketing to them directly can boost your business, too. Whom will your clients remember – the person who sent them a brochure, or the person they interact with every week on social media sites? Brush off your Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ accounts and use them to get in touch with clients by sharing links, stories and ideas.

Inefficient marketing comes from lack of regular application. If you’re consistent with whatever methods you choose, you will see results.

What are your obstacles to consistent marketing?

There was a time not long ago when I was getting up at 4:30 a.m. to finish everything on the day’s to-do list.

I’ve done phone interviews at 6 a.m. to accommodate sources in other time zones. I’ve taken work with me to the beach, the mountains and the desert when I was supposed to be taking time off. Earlier in my career, I nursed babies during phone interviews, wrote stories with a toddler on my knee, and once took my newborn daughter with me on a job interview (it didn’t go well, you can read all about it in this post I wrote for SecondAct).

It’s the juggle that comes with working as a freelance writer.

The big fat freelance juggle.

Balancing work with life is the subject of the next WordCount Last Wednesday Twitter chat, which happens Wednesday, Feb. 29, at 10 a.m. Pacific time. Use hashtag #wclw to join the conversation.

For the 60-minute chat, we’ll start with introductions, move to some pre-set questions and leave time at the end for other questions.

Questions for Feb. 29 #wclw chat

Meryl Streep and J. Roy Helland at 2012 Academy Awards. Todd Wawrychuk / ©A.M.P.A.S.

I was one of the millions drooling over the designer gowns, cringing at Billy Crystal’s lame jokes, happy to see Octavia Spencer win Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Help, and holding out for Hugo to go home with the Best Picture prize at last night’s Academy Awards.

Sitting through the three-hour telecast, watching the winners and losers and following the online banter, it struck me how much there is for freelance writers to learn from this annual ritual.

And I’m not just talking about how tough it is to win the prize for best adapted screenplay when your competition is Alexander Payne and George Clooney.

Here are some of my takeaways for writers from the 2012 Academy Awards:

1. Experience counts, age doesn’t. Meryl Streep won her third Oscar at age 62 for playing ex-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. Christopher Plummer won an Academy Award for best supporting actor, a first for the 82-year-old actor, for playing a widower who comes out after his wife dies in Beginners.  What do they have in common? They’ve both been working at their craft for decades. That dedication helped them overcome the movie business’ bias for all things young. Streep’s win came just weeks after Vogue put her on its January cover, making her the magazine’s oldest known cover girl. Two decades ago when Streep turned 40 and was offered three roles playing witches, she told her husband, “It’s over,” the actress told Vogue. Obviously not.

The takeaway for writers: yes, there are a lot of younger writers out there who might be more knowledgeable about certain aspects of the freelance business. But if you’ve been at it for a long time, you’ve got the upper hand when it comes to interviewing, reporting and writing. Play that up when you’re pitching stories or talking to prospective clients.

2. What’s old is new again. If you would have told somebody a year ago that a silent movie would win an Academy Award they would have called you nuts. A silent film hasn’t been tapped as the best movie of the year since the first Oscars were handed out 84 years ago. Yet last night, The Artist walked away with the grand prize as well as awards for best director, actor, costume design and original score.

The takeaway for writers: everything old is new again. Don’t be afraid to pursue projects that have historical roots. Look at some of the bestselling non-fiction books of the past couple years – The Devil the White City was set in 1893. The central figure in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks died in 1951. The main action in Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption takes place close to 70 years ago. In Portland, one of this year’s most-shared stories is the five-part Oregonian series The War Bride, which traces the disappearance of an Icelandic war bride who moved here during WWII.

3. Dazzle them, but not at the expense of the basics. The special effects during Sunday’s night’s Oscar telecast were as good as ever, including Crystal’s trademark film montage opener, which saw him making cameo appearances in several of this year’s nominated movies such as The Descendants and The Adventures of Tin Tin. But on Twitter, all anybody could talk about was the show’s poor audio quality – including tinny feedback from microphones.

The takeaway for writers: your work can include all the razzle dazzle you can muster, but fail to get basics like spelling and grammar right and that’s the only thing people (and editors) will notice.

4. Don’t be sleazy. Jennifer Lopez usually looks great. But the ultra-low cut V of her shimmering off-white evening gown had tongues wagging all over Twitter that she’d had an inadvertent wardrobe malfunction (The Los Angeles Times did the tough work of reviewing footage of JLo on stage and states that in fact there was no nip slip). Was it must-see TV? Yes. Was it classy? No.

The takeaway for writers:  JLo’s manufactured-for-TV moment is the equivalent of link bait. While some web content specialists may resort to inserting keywords related to the day’s top news into headlines – even when they have nothing to do with the subject – for a big traffic bump, show a little more class. It’s possible to use SEO to promote your work online without having to resort to sleazy tricks.

5. If you find a good thing, stick with it. In her acceptance speech, Streep thanked hair and makeup artist J. Roy Helland, who won an Oscar for his work on The Iron Lady, and has partnered with Streep for 37 years. “We’re so old and we’re so happening!” The (Vancouver) Sun reported Streep shouting as the two winners met outside the press room. As The Grindstone commentator Lindsay Cross put it in this blog post, “I guess it shows how a good working partnership can always enhance the final product.” Amen to that.

The takeaway for writers: When you find a good thing, hang onto it, whether it’s a editor who’s sympatico with your ideas, a website that loves your blog or publisher who challenges you to perform at your best. Too often writers act like moths, flitting from one bright light to the next in search of work, when they could accomplish a lot more – and feel happier about it – by sticking with a few tried and true outlets and colleagues.

What did you learn from this year’s Academy Awards? 

Photo by Helio/Flickr

How do you juggle work and home life? It’s a question we’ll take up at the next WordCount Last Wednesday Twitter chat on Wednesday, Feb. 29, at 10 a.m. Pacific time. Use hashtag #wclw to join the conversation.

Yesterday, my friend and fellow business journalist Laura Vanderkam led an online discussion over at the Wall Street Journal‘s The Juggle blog on the value of leisure time and how to build enough of it into your schedule so you don’t feel constantly overwhelmed with work.

It’s a great subject. Feeling overwhelmed is a constant for many people who are self employed – including freelance writers. Show me a freelancer who’s never gotten up early, stayed up late or worked weekends to get caught up and I’ll show you someone who’s not serious about what they do.

But burn the candle at both ends too long and the only thing you get is burnt out. Add family, a house, pets, volunteering and other obligations to the picture and you could find yourself wondering whether it’s all worth it.

Juggling is the key: finding the right trade off between work and everything else.

The tricky part is determining the right balance for you, and how to accomplish what you need to accomplish – at work, at home, for fun – without giving short shrift to the other parts of your life.

We’ll look at all of that during the #wclw chat.

I should add that the idea for this chat topic bubbled up during last month’s #wclw chat, when long-time freelancer and new mom Sara Lancaster and freelancer and mom-to-be Andrea Altenburg started sharing about working with babies. Thanks for the inspiration ladies!

For the 60-minute chat, we’ll start with introductions, move to some pre-set questions and leave time at the end for other questions.

Questions for Feb. 29 #wclw chat