MIT Sloan Management Review just published this story about employees who work well outside of the office and used the term “nanobots” to describe them: There’s a new class of worker out there: Nearly Autonomous, Not in the Office, doing Business in their Own Time Staff. Or nanobots, for short. Empowered by their mobile devices […]
Do you tell editors what you do when you're not writing for them?
I’m a firm believer in the value of specializing in a freelance writing business. I’ve also espoused in this space about the benefits of being a team player when it comes to the publications and editors you work with, and how worthwhile it is to cultivate contributing writer gigs. So if you specialize, and you […]
The WordCount guide to queries
Long weekends like the four-day Thanksgiving holiday that starts tomorrow when nobody’s in the office are great times to work on projects you can’t get around to when you have story deadlines and editors breathing down your neck, projects like crafting queries to new or not so new-to-you publications. To help get the query juices […]
Road trip
I’m on the road today, visiting editors in southern California and then taking a few days off. While I’m gone, please enjoy this rerun of some popular WordCount posts about visiting and working with editors. What editors want from freelance writers 4 ways to bring good karma to your freelance writing business Top 10 qualities […]
You may be desperate for work, just don't act like it
It’s one thing to be desperate for work. It’s another to act like it. You may have just lost a big client, or even more than one, so you’re scrambling to add some new writing assignments to your calendar. You send out letters of introduction and query like crazy. A few nibbles come in as […]
Don't let this freelance faux pas happen to you
Writers love to gripe about frustrating things editors do, like assign rush jobs then wait weeks to edit them, or require a certain source be included in a story then ignore a writer’s frantic phone calls when said source goes AWOL. But freelancers make their fair share of dumb mistakes too. A friendly editor recently […]