I was an untidy child. Where my brother relied on a ruler to line up his toy cars, I lived with jumbled abandon. Thank heavens our mother was teetotal, or the ghastly state of my bedroom would surely have driven her to drink. I can’t remember when it was — or what...
When you’re being paid to write there’s one thing you don’t want to happen: running out of words. It happened to me shortly after I began working as a freelance copywriter. The problem wasn’t that my vocabulary had somehow been depleted, but that I’d forgotten who my...
Getting a grant can be just the thing a writer needs to ease financial stress and focus on his or her work. But landing one can be tough — particularly for international writers. Fortunately, there are some really great organizations offering funding to writers all...
Anyone who’s been in the freelance-writing game for any length of time has a horror story or two (or 10) about a client. Maybe it’s multiple revision requests from some wayward editor who doesn’t know what they want, or perhaps it’s 30+ days post...
My publisher sent my second quarter sales report at the end of August. As discussed previously, it’s pretty standard for those to come in long after the quarter ends — in my case, two months after. Folks, it was not what I hoped. Because my book released halfway...
Email tracking apps are crucial to my pitching routine. The apps use customer relationship management (CRM) to track analytics for the emails I send. Major companies like Uber and Yelp use email tracking to improve their interactions with customers. The same concept...
If you want to write a novel worth reading, you can’t just have something to say. It has to be interesting enough to capture a reader’s attention — and it needs to move. Among your best friends for harnessing the power of momentum is to cultivate urgency in your...
Imagine this scenario: A librarian is sitting behind a desk, typing away, when an author comes in, book in hand, and asks the librarian if they can buy the book and put it on the shelf. (Cue immediate awkward pause.) Unfortunately, librarians’ hands are often tied in...
When do you start planning for the next calendar year? We’re getting ready for the fourth quarter of 2016, which means it’s time to think about where my freelance career might be in 2017 — and the work I need to do now to prepare myself for the year to come....
Most essayists and memoirists know the struggle of generating new material, but most don’t go on stage to share it. Stand-up comedy is its own art form, but there are so many lessons to be learned from those who do this kind of performative and creative writing....
