Sick of nick picky editors tearing your work apart?

Find yourself complaining to anyone who’ll listen about how miserable freelancing has become?

Shut up and innovate.

That wake up call is brought to you courtesy of Tac Anderson, a tech industry source of mine who attacked the nation’s current whiny zeitgeist in an especially impassioned manifesto a couple days ago.

The economy, the layoffs, the stock market – what’s happening is out of any one person’s power to control, and the only thing you can do about it is act, Anderson writes. Look at what you do from a different perspective. Try something new. Don’t have money? Figure out something innovative that doesn’t cost anything.

What does this have to do with freelancers?

Lots. Freelancers are getting hit by a double whammy of a sucky economy and an industry that’s going through radical changes the likes of which most writers have never seen. So you can bang your head against the wall pitching to the same shrinking print magazine market. Or you can think outside the printed page for new markets, new opportunities and new ways of conducting your writing business. The need for good writing isn’t going away – people with good communications skills will always be sought after. But the medium, the format and the styles are changing. So adapt with the times.

Back to Tac Anderson. This week he’s following his own advice and leaving a job he’s held for the past two years heading up social media marketing for HP’s Laserjet division in Boise, Idaho, for a new gig with PR giant Waggener Edstrom’s Studio D division in Seattle. Chalk one up for innovation.

Reading old blog posts – The first comes from a social media expert I check in with often, Tac Anderson, a Web 2.0 manager at HP who I interviewed for a story awhile back and then got to know a little better. Anderson’s way ahead of me when it comes to blogging and using social networks. He’s got two blogs and hangs out on Twitter, FriendFeed and BrightKite.

Anderson recently wrote a post on his NewCommBiz.com blog explaining why it’s a good idea for bloggers to re-read old blog posts. His reason? You may have thought you knew everything there was to know about a topic when you wrote the original post. But chances are you’ve gained experience, perspective or better sources in the months or years that have passed. If that’s the case, updating old blog posts could be a great way to come up with new posts. You can read more of Anderson’s thoughts on the subject here.

Previewing posts – I’m a post preview fanatic. When I’m writing posts, I constantly use the “Preview this Post” feature of WordPress to see what the post will look like once it’s published. I didn’t even realize some people never use this feature until I read Lorelle VanFossen’s post on previewing, How Often Do You Preview Your Blog Post? According to VanFossen’s informal research, some bloggers never preview their posts while others hit the “Preview” button up to eight times before actually publishing. VanFossen, author of Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging, explains the pros and cons of WordPress’ current post preview set up. Some bloggers like it, some hate it. Either way, VanFossen says, it’s a good idea to use it.