All posts by Joe Wallace

Happy Thanksgiving!

From all of us at Freelance-Zone.com, have a safe and happy Thanksgiving. We’ll be back with our regularly scheduled posts come Monday. In the meantime, take some time to be thankful for the good things, remember our military members serving overseas who couldn’t be home for the festivities, and enjoy!

happy thanksgiving 2012

Tools of the Freelance Trade–And An Announcement

Joe-Wallace-Vinyl-Collector-and-authorby Joe Wallace

I’ve been investing quite a lot of cash recently in the tools of the freelance trade. For me that means a lot of different things including professional grade microphones, studio monitors, recording equipment and other necessities. I haven’t given up writing, not by a long shot, but I’ve added multimedia producing to my list of talents available for hire and that work requires owning gear.

But I’ve invested in my writing work, too. One of the tools I’ve discovered I cannot live without as a freelance web writing professional is the iPad. Freelance writers are very slow to catch up with the times in some cases–you’ll find plenty of outdated websites still chugging away, with writers being especially guilty of missing the boat when it comes to being tech-savvy.

But for anyone who writes online, the time to start switching to mobile devices is NOW, if you haven’t already. You’ll be shocked at how your website looks on a mobile device. Or your work as it appears on other sites. You will also be surprised at how easy it is to get your writing work done using a Bluetooth keyboard paired with a tablet or iPad. The portability of tablets makes them a dream to use professionally, even compared to a 13-inch Macbook or notebook computer.

Here’s a gigantic mea culpa–Freelance-Zone.com itself is far behind the times with its own web design.

On tablets and the iPad, the three-column format leaves far too much to be desired, and a re-think of the entire look of the site is underway. But it’s a reminder to me personally how easy it can be to fall behind.

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions, but I’ve made one anyway—this space will be cleaned up and mobile friendly in 2013, and when I look at it on the iPad it will be something to be proud of rather than a reminder that I’ve been the tortoise, not the hare, when it comes to new tech. It’s soooo easy to dispense advice about these things, yet fail to look in the mirror to see what’s staring back. We aim to change that in coming weeks and some of the transitions might be a bit painful, but we’re heading into a new look for a new era as tablets, the cloud, and mobile freelancing become more and more mainstream.

Joe Wallace has a thing for gadgets. He loves producing video, audio, and writing for the web. He is also polishing a short indie film, preparing to release two new albums via iTunes and Amazon.com, and contemplating having his highlights done. He blogs about audio production at www.now-sound.com and writes on financial topics for a variety of websites.

Is This Wrong?

Joe-Wallace-Vinyl-Collector-and-authorLet yourself get on a few PR mailing lists and eventually you get flooded with press releases, requests for work, product reviews, an endless supply of e-mail. And on the day you post a “help wanted” ad for a creative person, whether they’re writers, editors, photogs, etc…you can expect an even larger pile to deal with. It’s my own fault, I know.

But I feel slightly guilty when trying to manage all that incoming mail, for one simple reason; I round-file anything that looks even vaguely like spam and aggressively delete emails from the clueless, the hopeless, and the inept. I’m sure they are all nice people, I just don’t have time for them right now. I have deadlines to meet, material to edit, audio to create, mixes and uploads to contend with.

A multimedia freelancer’s life is a very busy one–something a lot of these e-mail senders don’t seem to appreciate. Especially the ones who want me to hire them.

It’s sad, but it’s true. Long, rambling preambles, irrelevant details, people who won’t GET TO THE VERB, as it were. I am guilty of doing this myself, but fortunately, it’s mostly contained to my blog posts.

Ahem.

Lately I’ve been aggressively deleting ALL emails, unread from the moment I encounter the following pet peeve: people who write “free-lance” instead of “freelance”.

Having worked as a freelancer since 2003, I find the use of “free-lance” to be a red flag. A warning sign. An indicator that a degree of cluelessness is very likely present. This is not nice, it is not fair, and likely not even true in some cases. But I don’t care, since pet peeves are not tied to logic, common sense, or human decency.

I’ve even seen the dreadful use of this mangling of the word “freelance” on book covers–books I refuse to review.

There IS a point to all this, somewhere. I suppose the point is that packaging is everything, first impressions are critical, and you should stop hyphenating the word “freelance” if you want to appear like you know the business at all. That’s just my opinion and doesn’t reflect those of other seasoned creative types who are in business for themselves.

But it’s a good object lesson anyway, methinks. Because THAT is how subjective the freelance business can get, savvy?

Joe Wallace writes, edits, produces, and promotes creative multimedia projects. He is very busy and isn’t accepting new assignments except on a very limited basis. He’s currently editing and doing sound design for the indie film project 45 RPM, writing about veteran’s finance issues, and doing social media promotion for said projects.

Today’s Writing Tip: All Right, Already, and Altogether

sig2010All right, already, and altogether are phrases that may confuse writers. When are they one word and when are they two?

Let’s start with all right. The one word version is slang. It’s not acceptable and you won’t find it in a proper dictionary.

Altogether is another story. Let’s say that my uncle died and the family assembled to celebrate his life. We were all together at the funeral. And when I added up the cost of my hotel room in my airfare, altogether the bills amounted to $1000. Both versions are adverbs, but the one word version means completely or entirely whereas the two word version refers to a group of something – people, books, things.

Likewise with already. I had already finished my homework means I had completed it before the due date. But if I was going out for coffee with a group of friends, I could say, “We are all ready.” Another way to think of the latter is, “All of us are ready.”

Sigrid Macdonald is the author of three books, including Be Your Own Editor http://tinyurl.com/7wnk5se and two erotic short stories, which she wrote under the pen name Tiffanie Good. Silver Publishing released “The Pink Triangle,” a tale of friendship, lust, and betrayal. You can view her story here: http://tinyurl.com/6v65rgr

Want to Protect Your Writing From Content Scrapers?

Joe-Wallace-Vinyl-Collector-and-author

by Joe Wallace

This is old news to some, and a bit of a revelation to others. Google offers writers something I interpret as both an extra layer of anti-plagiarism protection AND a bit of search engine brand recognition with Google Authorship.

It requires you to use Google+ (surprise, surprise) and publish your work on your Google+ profile page, but it’s pretty handy as a way to show to Google who got there first when it comes to your work, content scrapers, or out-and-out plagiarism. Here are the steps to getting started, from the official Google Authorship page:

“You can link content you publish on a specific domain (such as www.wired.com) to your Google+ profile.

  1. Make sure you have a profile photo with a recognizable headshot.
  2. Make sure a byline containing your name appears on each page of your content (for example, “By Steven Levy”).
  3. Make sure your byline name matches the name on your Google+ profile.
  4. Verify you have an email address (such as stevenlevy@wired.com) on the same domain as your content. (Don’t have an email address on the same domain? Use this method to link your content to your Google+ profile)

(Here on the Google page there is a text box where you enter your e-mail address)

“Submitting this form will add your email address to the Work section of your profile, which by default is viewable only by your circles. You can keep your email private if you wish. It will also add a public link to the domain of the email address to the Contributor to section of your profile.”

It’s as simple as that!

You aren’t necessarily promised protection, better search placement or any other perk–I personally interpret what Google has done here as a two-fold means to protect the original author of an online work AND help that work get better Google ranking versus scraped content or copied material. Your own mileage may vary.

This Is a Sort of Writing Tip

sig2010Lately I’ve been seeing the phrases “kind of” and “sort of” in print, and hearing them far too often on podcasts and radio. When is it appropriate to use these terms and when should we leave them at home?

If you have a task at work that is slightly difficult, you can say that it is kind of a pain. What you don’t want to say is this: “I have a sort of project that needs to be finished by Friday.”

The first sentence has “kind of” modifying the word pain, which makes sense. The second sentence has the adjective modifying the word project, which doesn’t make any sense, because we’re not going to have a “sort of” project. We either have a project or we don’t!

Here’s another one. “It’s kind of important for me to show up at the party.” That sentence is fine. If I change it to this, it’s grammatically incorrect: “It’s important for me to kind of be at the party.”

You either show up or you don’t. Kind of and sort of are filler words akin to “like…” (I was, like, so busy.) They seem to be the modern equivalent of saying “um” or “ah,” but you don’t want to discard them altogether, because there are a number of instances where they are the best words of choice.

Sigrid Macdonald is a book coach, a manuscript editor, and the author of three books including Be Your Own Editor. BYOE is available on Amazon in soft cover (http://tinyurl.com/3xkoths) and on Kindle (http://tinyurl.com/3y3nuzb). Or get 20% off the regular price by writing directly to the author.