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

Some stories take on a life of their own and before you know it, a piece that was supposed to be 750 words has grown to 1,000.

Unfortunately, editors are pretty adamant about sticking to assigned word counts. So some trimming is in order. It may be tempting to turn in a too-long article and let your editor deal with the cuts. But would you rather have someone else decide what stays and what goes? I didn’t think so.

The best option is to judiciously pare your own copy before turning it in. Here are my favorite ways to trim a story that’s gotten too long for its own good:

1. Go through the entire piece paragraph by paragraph. Look for repeats or extraneous words, including adjectives or adverbs that could be sliced without altering the context of a sentence or phrase. A former newspaper assistant business section editor showed me this a long time ago, and I still use it on almost every story I write. Thanks Mike Hewitt!

2. Re-examine every quote. Does the quote advance the story or merely repeat information you’d already included in the text? If it’s the latter, tighten it up or lose it altogether. Quotations are like condiments, a little goes a long way. A piece of 300 to 500 words can get by with one or two and they don’t even have to be that long.

3. Make sure the size of the introduction fits the overall word count of the story. You wouldn’t spend 350 words of a 750 word piece on the lead and nut graph, just as you wouldn’t limit the lead of a 2,500 word feature to a couple of lines. A 500-word Web piece needs a snappy lead that pulls the reader in the story right away.

4. Summarize. Instead of whole paragraphs, use bullets, lists or other space saving devices to pack more punch into your prose without adding to the length.

5. Use sidebars. Did you go off on a tangent somewhere in the middle of the piece? If so, could you move the information into a sidebar? Ask your editor. Sometimes he’ll need an additional visual element for a page anyway and a short sidebar could be just the ticket. Even better, suggest turning the extra material into a chart, graphic or “charticle,” a short chart-like article.

6. Condense descriptions. If you’re writing about a complicated subject and included a couple paragraphs of background information explaining how something works, rework the material into one or two short sentences. Can you leave it out all together?

7. Can’t decide? Give choices. If your 1,500 word piece ends up at 1,700, choose the paragraphs you’re willing to part with. Then indicate them by writing something like OPTIONAL TO TRIM and END OPTIONAL TRIM before and after the graphs. Or set them off in brackets. This gives your editor choices, but then again, he may see your lovely words and decide he wants the whole thing.

I came late to Harry Potter. I’d seen the movies but hadn’t picked up the books. That is, not until May when my 8-year-old started reading them. I figured I should too, to help him with the scary parts.

I got hooked. I read at lunch. I read instead of watching TV at night. When I finished a book late one night I sneaked into my son’s room to get the next one, so anxious to keep reading I couldn’t make it until the next day.

After two months of total Harry Potter immersion, I finished all seven in the series, then found myself scouring author J.K. Rowling’s official website and blog, and fan sites like MuggleNet and The Leaky Cauldron and watching documentaries to learn more about the woman behind the story and the publishing phenomenon.

Rowling’s success isn’t news to Harry Potter fans. Even before I read the books I knew the highlights: poor single mom gets inspired, sells first book, goes on to become one of the most-published authors ever, and possibly the richest. But I didn’t know much about Rowling’s writing process, which is worth sharing with anyone who makes a living with their words.

Here’s what Rowling and my Harry Potter experience taught me about writing:

1. Persistence counts. Rowling got the idea for the Harry Potter in 1990 and spent the next 17 years working on it before finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in 2007. Seventeen years – that’s as long as it takes a kid to go from kindergarten through high school.
The takeaway: You may start out loving a project but the day may come – days, weeks or months into it – you’re so bored, frustrated or fed up you want to scream or put it away forever. But look what can happen if you gut it out.

2. Think things through. Rowling wrote in the biography on her website that she was on a train when the idea for Harry Potter “fell into my head.” She didn’t have paper or pen, so for the four-hour train ride all she could do was think. She says her forced rumination could have saved the series: “I think that perhaps if I had had to slow down the ideas so that I could capture them on paper I might have stifled some of them.”
The take away: Don’t be too quick to get something down on paper. Think about the structure, the concepts, the conclusions and the way you want something to play out before committing it to paper.

J.K. Rowling. Photo: EPA

3. If the story’s good enough, the writing can be secondary. Face it, Rowling isn’t Hemingway. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone isn’t Beowulf. The writing in the first books in the series was downright pedestrian. But with that story, who could resist? I couldn’t.
The takeaway: Got a good story to tell? Tell it. If you write enough, you’ll get better on your own. Rowling did in her later books.

4. Go for it. Rowling was a struggling single mom when she started Harry Potter. She had no clips, no publishing industry connections, no platform.
The takeaway: It takes persistence, passion and a little Harry Potter-style bravura to believe in yourself enough to take on the publishing world as an novice writer – which may explain why many beginning writers flock sell themselves short by working for a pittance for less-than stellar publishers and websites. Could someone replicate Rowling’s rise to author stardom given what it takes to get a book published today? I’d like to hope so.

5. Write when you’re on. Rowling likes to write through the night, or in cafes with just enough people and music to get lost in. When she was finishing “Deathly Hallows” she checked into a hotel room so she could write the ending with no distractions.
The takeaway: You might not be able to afford a hotel room or pull an all nighter, especially if you have kids to get off to school the next morning. But you can structure your work day so you’re writing during your peak energy time, whenever that happens to be.

6. Don’t be afraid to make things complicated. The Harry Potter series is a thicket of characters, subplots and themes – all in what are supposed to be children’s fantasy novels.
The takeaway: Give your readers – even young ones – credit for their intelligence. Don’t dumb down your ideas, or your writing.

7. Leave stuff out. In 2007 British documentary on Rowling that re-aired earlier this month when movie version of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince opened, the author shares about details of her characters that never made it into the books, including back stories and what happens in their lives after the books ends.  The tidbits either didn’t fit into the plot or weren’t interesting enough to be included (although fans live for this kind of stuff).
The takeaway: Pick the most telling details, the juiciest quotes, the most spot-on examples to tell your story and leave the rest out, especially if – unlike Rowling – you’re writing to a specific word count.

8. Write what you love. Rowling obvious loves her Harry Potter universe – she wouldn’t have drawn up the family tree that British TV documentary shows with details of who Harry, Ron and Hermione go on to marry after the conclusion of the books.
The takeaway: Enjoy what you do and how you do it, otherwise, why do it at all?

9. Be good to your people. Rowling blogged during and after writing Deathly Hallows so readers could find out more about her and the books. Besides book signing and official appearances, she also did Q&As with the people who run her fan sites.
The takeaway: We live in an age of interactive media. If you’re writing you need some kind of relationship with your readers, whether it’s on a blog, Twitter, book signings or all of the above. Depending on what you do, you can use the interaction to shape what you write, or build an audience for your next project.

10. It’s OK to goof off. After she gave up cigarettes, Rowling took up Minesweeper, the game Microsoft bundles with Windows, when she needed a writing break. She got so good she even brags on her blog about her expert-level times.
The takeaway: If Rowling can play mindless computer games for a little mental R&R, it’s OK if you check Twitter or Facebook during the work day.

Here’s what I’ve been reading about freelancing, writing and the online news business I’ve been reading this week:

On writing:

• How do you learn to write – From a literary agent, writer and book editor.
• 5 tips for citizen journalism from ProPublica’s new ‘crowdsorcerer’
• 16 things you learn in j-school – Journalism basics
• You don’t have to be a journalist to be a journalist – Advice from a young journalist.
• The end of newspapers, in chart form – Newspaper classified ads fall off the deep end.

On blogging and online media:

• WordPress tutorials on YouTube – How to move a blog from one domain name to another and more.
• Why ebooks look so ugly
• 55 extremely useful online generators for designers

On Twitter:

• 10 must-have productivity tools for Twitter – The usual suspects (TweetDeck, TwitPics) and more.
• A directory of book trade people on Twitter – Publishers, agents, publicists, booksellers, etc.
• Twitter in the newsroom – Podcast of print and broadcast journalists talking about using Twitter.

This week’s highlights from the freelance and digital news biz:

HuffPost invests in investigative news – Everybody’s favorite we-don’t-pay-contributors news aggregator Website is turning over a new leaf, big time. The The Huffington Post is launching an investigative news team with a $1.75 million starter budget and advice from well-known online news guru and NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen. The Huffington Post Investigative Fund will make its work available “for any publication or Website to publish at the same time it is posted on The Huffington Post,” Rosen says.

DIY publishing – Magazine you used to write for folded? Why not start your own. Computer giant HP has a new service called MagCloud that lets an indie publisher email .pdf files it will print on the same type of glossy stock high-end magazine use for only 20 cent a page, using outsourcers to do that actual printing and distribution. This New York Times article calls the service “publishing’s equivalent to YouTube.”

Twitter media database – With Twitter growing a reported 30 percent a month, new tools are popping up all the time to help find what or who you’re looking for on the service. One of the newest is a sharable database of freelancers and other writers on Twitter. If you’re not on it already, add your name here.

Portland TV personalities on Twitter – Oregon Media Insiders blogger Lynn Siprelle names names in this rundown of which local TV stations rock Twitter and which don’t.

Nice to know I’m not the only one who thinks that – Portland’s best-known punk cabaret singer and entertainer extraordinaire Storm Large opened her one-woman show, “Crazy Enough,” this week. The former reality TV star (the long-since cancelled Rockstar: Supernova) opened up about the show, her life and her creative process in a story and Q&A in today’s Oregonian. On writing, Large says: “Most of the time it’s miserable and you’re just thinking, ‘This sucks! No one’s gonna like this!’”

WordCount Live and in Person – I’ll be talking about the different ways small businesses are using social media as part of a panel discussion at Shop Symposium/09, on Monday, April 6, at the Portland Center for the Performing Arts. If you’re going, be sure to track me down and say hi.

You had the idea, wrote the query, got the assignment, negotiated the contract, worked out a deadline and did the research. Now all that’s left is interviewing the source.

What’s that, the source won’t answer your email or phone calls? Don’t they realize what you’ve had to do to get this far?

Unfortunately, just because you need to talk to a source doesn’t mean that they need to talk to you. They’re busy, they’re press shy, they’re grouchy, they’ve been warned by counsel or their media relations staff not to speak to the press.

That’s when you need to use your writer’s ingenuity to figure out how to get a reluctant source to talk anyway – or how to salvage a story if they won’t.

(If you’re a source of mine, feel free to stop reading at this point.)

If and when you run into an uncooperative source, do a quick gut check or touch base with your editor. Do you really need that specific source? Or would another person, company or expert with the same credentials, background or situation suffice?

If you need a particular source who’s yet to open up, here are my top 10 secrets to getting somebody to talk:

1. Send questions via email. If a source won’t make time to talk on the phone maybe they’ll respond to written answers. It’s not the best way to go but at least you’ll have something. These days, try Twitter too – somebody who won’t sit for an interview might be OK answer questions 140 characters at a time.

2. Find out if someone else is available. Worst case scenario: talk to an organization’s spokesperson.

3. Do an end run around gatekeepers. Sometimes the source you’re trying to reach doesn’t know about your request because their secretary, PR department, spouse or some other handler hasn’t told them. In those situations, search online, in phone books or elsewhere for a direct number or email address you can use to directly plead your case.

4. Call at odd hours. If you need to talk to an executive or business owner, call before or after hours when chances are good secretaries and receptionists aren’t there and the head honcho will pick up the phone themselves.

5. Investigate association or board affiliations. Websites for professional organizations often list names, bios and contact information for their board members.

6. Go where they’ll be. They may avoid your calls, but they can’t avoid you if you show up at their monthly Rotary Club lunch or annual industry trade show. You might only get a line or two or a “No comment” but it’s better than nothing.

7. Talk to friends or business partners. If your story has to do with something a person or company did, bought or sold, find one of their friends, colleagues or business partners and get the details from them. Then contact your source again and ask them to confirm the facts.

8. Check what’s already been written. Look online for previous articles, white papers, analyst write ups or case studies about the source, their organization or company. That way even if you end up not getting an interview, you’ll have some background – just make sure you include an attribution to the original source.

9. Search social networks. Look on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook to find out if your source hangs out there. If they do, ask them then and there to answer your questions. Or let your network know that you’re trolling for Ms. ABC or XYZ Company to talk to. Or put out a general call for help.

10. Be empathetic. Sometimes, especially if you’re dealing with someone who’s never been interviewed before, all they might need is a little coaxing and an explanation of how things work – what information you’re after, what on the record means, etc. – to feel comfortable enough to talk.

What techniques do you use to get reluctant sources to talk?

Twice in the last week I’ve encountered writers or bloggers who’ve run into a bad patch in their careers and are wondering if it makes sense to go back to school and get a master’s degree in journalism.

Bottom line: you don’t need a degree to get work as a writer.

Even if you have no professional journalism experience, j-school isn’t the only answer.

I’ve been there. In college I was editor of the student newspaper but my degree was in English literature, so I went to journalism grad school because I thought I needed “real” training. After a year, I realized a masters in journalism was for people who had absolutely no previous experience writing or wanted to be an academic.

I was neither – and struggling to support myself. So after a year I quit and got a job at as a trade magazine writer and editor (there was a recession, entry-level newspaper jobs were non-existent). Many years later, after I’d worked as a weekly and then daily newspaper reporter and then as a freelance writer, I went back to grad school – as the professor. I taught online newswriting to grad students. My only qualifications were those years I’d spent practicing the craft.

So if you’re contemplating going back to school to give your writing career a kick in the pants, there are other ways:

If you’re already writing, stick with it. Find some regular gigs – it is possible in this economy. If you have very little experience, you may need to start small and work your way up – and in these days of Craigslist writing jobs and Web content producers, there are lots of opportunities for starting small.

Blog. There’s no substitute for writing day in and day out. If you don’t want to maintain your own blog, find one on a subject you’re interested in and pitch a few blog posts. I don’t ordinarily advocate writing for free, but if you’re just starting out, you’ve gotta prove to somebody you can do the work – but then move on. And if you’re already established, hunt for paid gigs, they’re out there.

If you’re worried about your skills being out of date, there’s an abundance of non-degree track classes on using multimedia in journalism you can take online or in person. Organizations like the Knight Digital Media Center and News University offer scholarships or cover part of the expense. Take lots of them, and while you’re at it, do a lot of networking so you meet people who could potentially open doors for you.

Find someone with the job you’d like to have some day. Follow them on Twitter. Invite them to connect with you on LinkedIn. If they live in the same town you do, invite them to lunch. Ask them to mentor you. Don’t become a stalker. Do soak up as much knowledge as they’re willing to impart – then when you’ve got your writing business up and running pay it forward to some other acolyte.

Yes, getting a master’s degree could give you some official validation in the profession, and not having that might bug you in some deep down part of your being, a lot like the way that it still bothers me. But you don’t need it. Just go do it.

It’s popular for writers to look down on PR people. The stereotypical media relations representative is inexperienced, doesn’t know one publication from another, hasn’t a clue about how the news business works, and actually makes it harder to get through to a source. While that’s an exaggeration, it’s still true that in many cases the PR bar is set pretty low.

But after years in the business I can honestly say a good public relations rep is a treasure. The true pros make my job easier because they understand what I’m after, quickly find the person or information I need, take it upon themselves to do whatever follow up is necessary, and don’t pester me with follow ups.

So for what it’s worth, here are 10 things a media rep can do to make my life easier:

1. When I call or email, promptly find the appropriate source for the story I’m working on, brief them on the topic and set up an interview time, preferably via email. And remember what time zone I’m in so I don’t get calls to my home office at insane hours of the morning or night.

2. If you must sit in on a phone interview, be invisible. But at the end of the call, note any information the source needed to check on and send it to me as quickly as possible.

3. Don’t assume I want to interview you. I don’t. I want to interview the subject matter expert at your company, organization, agency or school. So be a gatekeeper. In the rare situation where I’m OK with getting my quote from you, I’ll let you know.

4. Be easily accessible by office phone, cell or email should my editor have a question I need an answer to in a hurry. If you’re going to be out of the office, make sure someone is around who can answer my questions.

5. If I need file art for a story, send it to me or directly to the art director of the publication I’m writing the story for, in the appropriate file format.

6. Take it upon yourself to find out when my story runs rather than asking me to send you a link once it’s out. Honestly, I’ll be on deadline on something else by then and won’t remember.

7. Don’t ask to review stories before they’re published. You can’t. I have been known to send sources direct quotes to check for factual accuracy, but that’s the exception not the rule. It’s also why I ask what seems like a zillion very detailed questions during an interview, to make sure I’ve got the information down cold.

8. Feel free to email me press releases and other updates. But don’t follow up with a phone call, and don’t expect to hear back from me unless it just so happens I’m working on something related to the topic. Don’t be surprised if you never hear from me – or if I call six months down the line.

9. Know my publication. If you don’t, get up to speed by reading it online so when you’re pitching stories you understand who my readers are and what aspects of your news are relevant.

10. Accept my LinkedIn invitation so I can add you to my list of contacts there, which I regularly search when I’m looking for story sources. Or feel free to send me an invitation. And if you don’t use LinkedIn or Facebook, learn how.

Rewrites aren’t high on my list of favorite work-related activities. The fact is, I hate them. Especially when an editor sits on something for a couple weeks then ships it back with questions. It makes me want to fire off an email saying “That was so five stories ago!”

But rewrites are a fact of the writing life. So it’s a good idea to come to grips with the fact that if you freelance, you’ll have to do rewrites occasionally, if not on a regular basis.

The best way to ward off rewrites it to turn in your best effort the first go around. That means understanding exactly what the editor is looking for – even if it means asking what seems like an insane number of questions ahead of time. Then do all the research the story requires, hit all the marks in your writing, check your story for spelling, grammar, typos, cliches, transitions and flow. I always tack on a headline and deck, and if the format calls for it, subheads, charts and graphs. The more you can do on the front end to avoid working on a story after the fact the better.

But sometimes rewrites happen despite your best efforts. Here are some other techniques I use to handle them:

Plunge in. Don’t think about it, don’t get mad, don’t delay, just get it over with as fast as possible. It’s like ripping off a bandage – it’s got to be done, so might as well do it fast.

Focus on one question at a time. if an editor sends something back with five questions that need to be answered or facts to be added, mentally break them down into discrete tasks and attack them one by one. I’m a huge to-do list person, anyway, so by breaking the job into bite-size elements I feel good about knocking them off one after the other.

Pick up the phone. As much as I don’t want to, sometimes I have to pick up the phone and re-interview a source to confirm something or answer a question from an editor that I just didn’t have an answer for from my original interview. This situation happened to me recently, and if I hadn’t called to follow up on an editor’s question I would never have talked to the company executive who told me about some pending contracts, which may turn into a news story I could pitch to a magazine I’ve just started writing for. That’d definitely make me look good to my new editor.

Turn it into a opportunity. If you’ve got to do a rewrite anyway, take the chance to re-read your story and tweak an awkward phrase here or a bad transition there that you might not have noticed before.

Sleep on it. Sometimes the repair work isn’t as bad as you thought. If you’re not on a deadline, leave a rewrite until the next day, then attack it with fresh eyes.

Enough already with the cliches.

If you write about business, technology or niche subjects, you probably have to bat off the cliches like flies.

OK, did you notice that both of those sentences included cliches? That’s how hard it is to keep them out of your writing.

But you should keep them out, if you want your copy to feel fresh and original.

Here are a few business and technology cliches I’d love to put out to pasture – yes, that was another intentional cliche:

¤ Anything with level the playing field as in “This merger will level the playing field in the widgets industry.”

¤ At the end of the day when it’s used to mean “As a result” or “In the final analysis,” as in “At the end of the day this widget industry merger will be good for widger buyers everywhere.” If I hear this at the end of the day I want to shoot somebody.

¤ The fill-in-the-blank space, a commonly used expression in business and technology circles, as in “the outsourcing space,” “the talent management software space” or “the online security space”

¤ Likewise, solution as it pertains to software, as in “Our email software solution is the best.”

¤ On site – what’s wrong with “at your office” or “at the company”?

¤ “End user” as a description of someone who uses something, i.e. “The end user won’t understand how to operate this smart phone without a manual.” When did saying “people” go out of style?

¤ The Internet “bubble” – burst it now, please.

¤ Anything with 2.0 at the end of it. Web 2.0. Media 2.0. Parenting 2.0. I’m as guilty as the next person on this one, it’s just such a great short-hand way of saying the next generation of something. But it’s been overused and as my son would say, “That killed it.”

if you want to read more on cliches, here’s a great piece from The Weekly Standard called “The Cliche Community”, by writer and self-proclaimed “word grouch” Andrew Ferguson.

Going out on your own is scary enough, so why would any sane person do it in an economy like this one? Because a bad economy may actually be a good time to start a freelance career.

At least that’s what Susan Johnston is hoping. Johnston is a Boston writer and creator of The Urban Muse blog, which I’ve mentioned here before. Though Johnston has freelanced for some time, she recently left a steady job to pursue it full time. She’s agreed to talk about what led to her decision and how she’s making it work in this WordCount guest post. Here’s her story:

I’ve been freelancing for several years, but I finally made the leap to full time freelancing a little less than a month ago. Most of the people in my life were supportive but a few practical people wondered, “Are you sure this is the right time? Why not wait until the economy bounces back?”

I concluded that there is never a “perfect” time to make a major life change, so I trusted my gut and jumped in. Here’s how I did it.

1. Minimize spending. Even though I had a bit of cushion when I quit my job, I also know that editors and clients can take a long time to process payment. In the case of one website, it took over a year for me to get paid – needless to say I don’t write for them anymore. Fortunately, I’m a saver by nature and several of my clients do pay promptly, but working from home has made it even easier to curb my spending. I can go to the movie matinee instead of paying full price. Plus, I’m not buying as many convenience foods and I don’t have to pay for dry cleaning or commuting costs anymore. Which makes me wonder why I didn’t leave my job sooner.

2. Diversify. I’d love to spend all my time writing magazine features, but with advertising dollars down, many of my editors just aren’t handing out as many assignments as they used to. Fortunately, I also do copywriting, which offers a decent hourly rate and steady work while I send out queries. I also picked up some extra cash proofreading marketing materials and writing for a local guidebook. Though I haven’t had to rely on it yet, I also contacted some creative staffing firms about picking up extra work through them. Other writers tell me this is a great way to fill the gaps between assignments.

3. Use those contacts. When I told my boss I was going full time freelance, I softened the blow by offering to complete some projects remotely and train my successor. He gladly accepted my offer, so now my old company is one of my new clients. I also ran into a friend of a friend at a networking event and mentioned that I’d just gone full time freelance. She publishes a local guidebook I mentioned above and invited me to contribute. Give people examples of the type of work you do and they might know someone needs you.

* * *
Here are other WordCount posts on freelancing in a down economy:
Freelancers strategies for prospering in bad times
Taking my own advice for beating bad times
Marketing your freelance writing in bad times
What me worry? Magazine startups venture into an uncertain economy