Why is it that when I have the biggest deadlines, I have the strongest urge to take breaks and troll around the Web. It probably the brain’s way of relieving the mental strain. Someone has to come up with a name for this, like the Freelancer’s Law of Inversely Proportional Leisure Activity. When I need […]
LinkedIn's Companies directory best tool yet for freelancers
LinkedIn just unwrapped a new feature that may be the social network’s best tool yet for freelance writers – a comprehensive company directory. The Companies feature is a database of LinkedIn’s 26 million members that can be searched by company, geography or industry. Freelancers can use it to look up editors at umpteen publishers of […]
Best of WordCount: Tips to improve your writing
WordCount is taking a break this week while I’m on vacation, so I’m rerunning some of my most popular posts. Today’s topic: Tips For Improving Your Writing 25 tips for better freelance writing – Never go into an interview cold. Don’t be afraid to ask dumb questions. Show, don’t tell. Use active verbs. Read the […]
Getting organized doesn't have to hurt
Want to know the secret to organizing your computer files? You don’t have to. Thanks to e-mail programs, online backup, software add-ons, and search tools like Google Desktop that work as well for freelance writers as they do for big companies, you never have to file anything again. That might not be the best way […]
Debate continues over outsourcing copyediting to India
As U.S. newspapers scramble to cut costs in the face of falling advertising, a handful have announced plans to outsource copyediting and page layout to editorial services firms in India. This has sparked a tremendous debate within the newspaper business. While one side argues that there’s no way something as connected to local language, geography, […]
Top 10 things writers want from PR people
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 […]