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.

Today’s post is written by Pat Olsen, a long-time New Jersey freelance writer who specializes in business and health.

When I interviewed professional skateboarder Tony Hawk for The New York Times, he said he loved skateboarding so much he’d do it even if he wasn’t getting paid.

That’s almost the way I feel about writing first-person profiles.

First-person profiles are stories or columns I report as usual but write in first person rather than in third person, as if I’m the person I’m writing about. I write first-person columns for two magazines and am a lead contributor for two in the Times.

It’s challenging trying to capture someone else’s voice, to find a flow in what they’ve said, and perhaps uncover a theme.

Doing first-person profiles isn’t a matter of simply recording what someone says and transcribing it.  If that were the case, I might write, “Well, um, let’s see, when I was 10 − no, make that 12 — I delivered newspapers up and down the street. They were pretty heavy.”

You might want to write exactly the way someone speaks if you’re writing a novel, but not if you’re writing a profile. People often speak too casually for these types of pieces.  For a profile, I take that stream of consciousness and make it coherent and interesting. It’s not easy, but this type of writing just feels right to me and usually once I’m happy with a piece, others are, too.

If you’re interested in writing first-person profiles, the first thing to do is unlock the stories inside the person you’re writing about. Everyone has stories. The key to finding them is getting the person to talk about the anecdotes, trips, jobs or other events that bring their life into focus.

When I wrote about Peter Wilson’s career change from public relations to teaching, the key to getting him to open up was asking what he missed about his former job. When I wrote about Ray Harris, vice chairman of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, I used his recollection about getting started in the securities industry to tell his story.

Here are a few other tips I’ve picked up after years of practice:

It may take more than one interview to get someone to dig deeper. One of my first editors made me re-interview someone not once but twice to get enough details to be satisfied with what I’d written. Initially I considered it a failure not to “get it right the first time.” Since then, I’ve realized that it takes until the second or third interview for some people to open up. Most top executives are media-savvy:  once they read a sample of the type of article they’re being interviewed for they know what to do. But many people who don’t give interviews all the time may not be reflective enough the first time. Drawing their thoughts out of them could take several conversations.

Ask the same question different ways. This technique is old hat to journalists, but still works. If you try it and still aren’t getting what you need, give the person an example of what you’re looking for. If someone’s having trouble coming up with good details of a trip they took, I might say, “In another profile I wrote, the person talked about almost missing his plane because a herd of cows crossing in front of his taxi took forever to reach the other side of the road.” That kind of prompting usually helps.

I always let profiles sit, even if it’s just overnight. I need to read them with a fresh eye to be able to improve them.

First-person profiles are my favorite things to write so on one hand, they’re easy. But that doesn’t mean they’re not hard work.

Valerie is an instructor at the gym I belong to.

Calling her an instructor is a bit of an understatement.

She’s more like a drill sergeant in a leotard.

Valerie is strong, motivated and incredibly good at what she does. So good people willingly get up at an ungodly hour to make her 5:45 a.m. class. So good, she was recently honored as the 20,000-member club’s instructor of the year.

What makes her so good? She’s a big believer in intention, being in the moment and putting maximum effort into whatever she’s doing right then and there to get the best results. It shows in every crunch and lunge she does in class, in the sweat that pours from her face, and the muscles that grace her frame, the ones everyone who takes her class covet.

In fact, Valerie believes in intention so much she had the word tattooed around her arm.

There are lots of similarities between working out and writing.

In writing, as in exercising, you get out only as much as you put in. Take a half-baked approach to an interview, a story or a rewrite and you end up with dull quotes, a boring read and poorly executed revisions.

But put intention into what you’re doing and you end up improving your writing – and I’d wager your relationship with the publications you work with as well.

You’re going to sit in front of a computer for hours a day writing or editing anyway, why not do it with intention. Come up with a list of the things you need to do that day and focus your energy on executing them, one after the other.

You could be amazed with the results.

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.

Here’s what I’ve been reading this week:

What do established writers need? – On her There Are No Rules blog, Writer’s Digest Publisher Jane Friedman asks veteran writers to tell her what’s missing from the pages of WD as she contemplates developing a new periodical specifically for long-time professional writers and authors.

Five ways to find revenue sharing opportunities – Revenue sharing isn’t limited to ad networks and affiliate marketing programs, as this post from the Freelance Folder blog explains.

It’s now or never for citizen journalists and federal shield law – PBS MediaShift weighs in in support of a federal shield law protecting bloggers, even the unpaid ones.

Gresham’s Law of the Internet: Crap Content Quashes Quality – From the always smart Erik Sherman, yet another look inside Demand Studios’ content factory.

Should you incorporate? – While it’s not new, this short piece from publishing lawyer Daniel Steven on the pros and cons of incorporation for non-fiction writers and other freelancers is definitely worth checking out if this question has ever crossed your mind.

The basics of freelancing on the go – Another good one from Freelance Folder, on the essentials you need to work from anywhere.

That’s it for this week. Have a great weekend everyone, I’ll see you back here on Monday.

If you write about business, health care or many other subjects, chances are at least once in a while you end up at a convention.

As a tech reporter, I was a regular at more computer trade shows than I care to remember. They’re an exhausting, but excellent way to do a lot of research in a short amount of time.

Having just returned from a two-day marathon at a tech conference in Chicago, here’s my reporter’s convention survival guide:

Be prepared – Figure out a schedule ahead of time by looking over a show guide or conference line up to see what meetings you want to sit in on, then plan the rest of the time accordingly. Check if there’s a list of attendees or exhibitors list online so you can arrange meetings with people you want to interview while you’re there.

Pitch in advance – You can wait until after you get back from a conference to send queries based on what you learned. But why wait? You may be able to successfully pitch pieces based on the homework you did to get ready to go (see above).

Take meetings – Some conventions share names of reporters who’ve signed up to attend with other conference goers or exhibitors. If that’s the case, you could get bombarded with interview requests. Pick and choose which ones fit into your objectives for going to the meeting. And save room for last minute requests.

Get the hashtag – These days people go to Twitter to talk about a convention before, during and after it happens. Get in on the conversation by using the meeting’s designated Twitter hashtag. If you’re not sure what that is, check on the convention organizer’s website, or do a search or ask around on Twitter.

Give yourself down time – Schedule every single minute of a convention and you won’t leave room for those chance encounters that often lead to good tidbits for stories. Save yourself time to check email and deal with any work-related activities you can’t leave at home.

Take notes – You may live on your iPhone, but you can’t take notes on one (tweets yes, notes no). For the meeting I just went to, I brought a netbook and a plain old notepad; I took notes on the netbook during conference sessions, but used a notepad when I was doing one-on-one interviews – I find it easier to glance up at a person while I’m interviewing them when I’m not doing it from behind a screen.

Go paperless – Companies or organizations you meet with will inevitably have press releases and other materials they’ll want to give you. Unless you’re writing for the convention daily, do you really need them? If it’s news, most companies will release the same information on PR wire services, which you can find online once you’re back in your office.

Dress for success – Do not underestimate the power of comfortable shoes. There’s nothing worse than hobbling through miles of concrete convention hall floors in too tight footwear.

Recharge – Plug in laptops, phones, and any other electronic gear overnight so you don’t run out of juice during the day. The same goes for you – if you’re somewhere you’ve never been before, have friends in town or are invited to convention-related events, it’s tempting to stay out late. Just give yourself enough time to rejuvenate before the next day.

Do a data dump – Once a convention’s over, jot down everything you learned, want to follow up on, need more information about, story ideas you want to pursue, etc., as quickly as possible while it’s still fresh in your mind. The same goes for transcribing interview notes – you may not end up writing a story you pitched for months, and if you wait until then to look over convention notes they won’t make as much sense as they do a few hours or days after the fact. If I flew to a meeting, I do a data dump on the plane home.

Follow up – Back in your office, go through notes for any follow up you committed to and jump on it right away.

What are your secrets for convention success?

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.

While I’m away from my keyboard this week, I’m re-running a few posts that didn’t get the attention – or web traffic – they deserved the first time around. I’ll return with fresh insights on the business of writing next week. – Michelle Rafter

I recently interviewed a management guru who’s a rock star in corporate circles, makes a mint from training sessions and has several best-selling business books under his belt.

Want to know what he did at the end of the 60 minutes we spent on the phone? He thanked me for reading his books before we talked. It seems that despite his fame and glory, he gets interviewed all the time by reporters who don’t bother to find out the first thing about what he does before turning on their tape recorders. That’s like a music writer talking to Chris Martin without listening to a single Coldplay song.

And we wonder why people don’t respect writers.

Not adequately prepping for a big interview is one of the cardinal sins of journalism. True, if you’re racing to a crime scene or get dragged onto a story at the last minute there’s not much time for research.

But more often than not, there’s time to do at least a cursory search on your subject. And if it’s a story that you pitched to a magazine or Website you have no excuse for not doing your homework before dialing Mr. or Ms. Big.

What should that homework consist of? Here’s my checklist of 12 things to do to ace a VIP interview:

1. Read the book. Need I say more?

2. Read what other people have written. That includes whatever you can get your hands on about your interview subject’s work, company, book or whatever other aspect of their life you’re writing about. Information is power. Soak up as much as possible so you’re comfortable with the subject matter and so you know what the heck Mr. Big is talking about.

3. Write your questions ahead of time. There’s nothing worse than getting tongue tied because you’re nervous, or forgetting to ask the most important question. Need help? Ask your editor for input.

4. Get your numbers straight. Just this week I almost missed an interview because I thought the subject was calling me and she thought I was calling her (the PR rep got her wires crossed). Work out the logistics ahead of time so you can spend the final minutes leading up to an interview mentally going over what you’ll say, not frantically looking for a phone number or street address.

5. Be on time. Show up late for an interview and you’ve already pissed off the person you were hoping would open up to you. Ain’t gonna happen now.

6. Take good notes. A voice recorder is a beautiful thing, especially the digital kind that plug into a conmputer’s USB port. But machines break, batteries die, stuff happens. So back yourself up with typed or handwritten notes. Yes, it’s old school, but it works.

7. Be polite. At least at first. Good manners go far in this business. And if it turns out to be a confrontational interview, you can always switch to bad cop mode.

8. Play devil’s advocate. Afraid to ask probing questions? Couch it in a non-threatening phrase like “Skeptics say…” or “There are people who say that you…” or “Let’s say for the sake of argument I don’t buy your opinion of (XYZ subject). Convince me.”

9. Keep track of the time. Heads will roll – namely yours – if you hang up before asking your editor’s pet question. Skip some questions if you have to, you can always follow up on the middling stuff with your VIP’s publicist, secretary or marketing chief.

10. Ask for more. Ms. VIP may have said she only has 15 minutes, but as you get close to being done, ask for more time anyway. If things are going well, she may oblige you by answering another question or two. And if not? There’s no harm in trying.

11. Ask what to ask. My go-to last question is always the same: “Is there anything else you’d like to say?” It gives your VIP the opportunity to mention something else that’s on their mind that could lead your story in a whole new direction. Or not. But you’ll never know if you don’t ask.

12. Say thank you. They didn’t have to talk to you, but they did. So even if they weren’t forthcoming or even if they didn’t say anything you didn’t already know, thank them anyway. You never know when you might need to talk to Mr. or Ms. VIP again.