Welcome to Pitch Fix, The Write Life’s newest column! Once a month, we’ll take a look at a real pitch from a real freelance writer and figure out how to make it better. Pitching is one of the most important parts of a freelancer’s career — it’s how we get the gigs...
You know all those times you pitch a publication and never hear back? After spending weeks or months on what you thought was a pretty awesome story? We’ve all been there. It’s part of the job, but it’s frustrating nonetheless. It’s hard to know what you did “wrong.”...
This post is sponsored by Start Blogging Online, your resource for building a blog, generating traffic, creating passive income, and more! As most regular bloggers will tell you, writing for the web is an utterly different beast than writing for a magazine or...
I’ve been writing for more than 20 years, and in that time I’ve seen some pretty crazy sales pitches. “This book will get you out of the rat race and into a hammock.” “These tips can turn an aspiring writer into a hammock-swinging...
Why spend the next year writing at home when you could be out exploring the world? That’s the thinking behind a few programs that help get digital nomads out and about in the world — and connecting with like-minded peers. Check out these programs to learn...
Can writers benefit from live video streaming? It seems like every time you turn around, there’s a new app or social media tool that makes claims about getting your name in front of a larger audience. The novelty of that new tool is quickly replaced by pressure to...
Let’s say you have a book out and want to promote it. So you contact a website and offer to write a free guest post (or several) for them. In exchange for providing the free content, you have some requests: You want the column(s) to be accompanied by your book cover...
Do you have a plan for what you’ll do when your next big project ends? Doing a little bit of advance work in preparation for a project’s end or a client’s departure will help ensure that losing a gig doesn’t also mean losing money. I closed out a big project this...
As I write this, I’m at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport waiting for the next leg of my journey out to the East Coast. As a location-independent freelancer, I always try to take full advantage of travel interludes to catch up on my work....
November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo: a frantic month of writing with the goal of drafting a 50,000 word novel. Want to give it a shot? NaNoWriMo season will be here before you know it. But here is a little-known fact that you may not know: most...
