editorial

Why I Became A Writer

by Catherine L. Tully

Editor, Catherine L. Tully
Editor, Catherine L. Tully

Today’s post is simply a sharing one…

I’d like to tell you why I became a writer. (And, I’d love to hear why you became, or are becoming a writer in the comments section.)

Ultimately, at the heart of things, I became a writer because I have always been one. When I was little, I came up with a “newspaper” called The Little Town Daily News. I don’t really remember what I wrote about, but I know that I put a lot of time into making copies, and I sold it for about .10 cents each–which, for back then, was not that cheap!

I’ve always been writing, whether it was in my journal or coming up with a newsletter for my childhood club. I’ve written stories, articles, nonsense, letters, cards and countless other things. Even if I weren’t getting paid for it, I’d probably still be writing in some capacity. (Luckily, I’ll never know for sure!)

Not everyone makes it in this business, but some people really do hang in and stand the test of time. My hunch is that almost every one of the tenacious ones that breaks through and does this for a living–or even part-time for some extra cash–is somewhat like me.

So…what is it dear reader? Have you always been a writer in some capacity–even if you have just been composing poetry in your head or writing song lyrics that never made it to paper?

Drop us a note here and tell us your story!

 

advice, freelance money

Taxes Don’t Lie

freelance taxesBy Jake Poinier

In my last corporate job, I had a boss who was fond of saying “What gets measured gets done.” Mind you, it didn’t always make our editorial staff happy. (If you can show me something that makes a graphic designer crazier than being measured with metrics like “page output per day,” I’d be stunned.)

As a freelancer, I try to avoid such micro measures, not just because they make me crazy, but because I find them unhelpful. I don’t really care how many words I write per hour or day, because it simply doesn’t matter. At the risk of sounding crass, the only measurement that does is income, expenses, and savings. And since I spent much of last weekend doing my taxes, well, I have a pretty good idea of what went on last year, and even some insight into the first quarter of 2013.

Your taxes don’t lie. And as much as I hate doing taxes, they’re as good a reality check as a freelancer can get, and that’s an important part of being self-employed. Here’s what I learned this year:

  • Revenues were an improvement over the previous year, and expenses were about the same. Yippee!
  • Starting up a Solo 401(k) saved me a significant amount on taxes, and gets me that much closer to retirement. Double yippee!
  • I had one client that was a four-figure income stream in 2011 that dried up entirely in 2012 because they hired a full-time person who now does all their writing. Same thing happened with one of my clients that was great for the first half of the year, then my main contact left. Losing a client stinks.
  • I did work for 19 different entities, most of which sent me a 1099, meaning they’d spent $600+. Eight of them represented 75% of my total income, and no single client was more than 25%, so I feel comfortable with my diversification.

I know Catherine is a believer in hiring a CPA to do your taxes — and I do have a CPA double-check my work. But, call me a masochist, there’s a value to getting into the numbers yourself that can’t be measured.

When he’s not doing his taxes, Jake Poinier can be found at DoctorFreelance.com or @DrFreelance.

Photo by Jakub Krechowicz

advice, blogging

Today’s Writing Tip: Question Marks In the Middle of a Sentence

sig2010Punctuating question marks in the middle of a sentence confuses the best of us. Our instinct is often to capitalize the word that follows the question mark, but usually that’s wrong. Here’s an example:

When I asked my teacher, Mr. Cotton, “What is the purpose of life?” this is the answer I received.

Note two things about that sentence. One, the word that proceeds the question and the question mark is lowercased. That’s because the phrase “What is the purpose of life?” is still part of a larger sentence, even though it is a complete sentence and can stand on its own normally, but in this instance it is only half of the sentence.

“This is the answer I received” is the other half and we need it to make our point. Two, there is no comma after the question mark. A version of our example which includes the comma is wrong, e.g., When I asked my teacher, Mr. Cotton, “What is the purpose of life?,” this is the answer I received.

Fortunately, your spellcheck will probably pick up the second issue and flag it as a problem; however, spellcheck may incorrectly tell you that you want to capitalize any word after a question mark. Don’t do it automatically; do so only if it is not part of a larger sentence and that includes dialogue. (“Is the purpose of life to love and be loved?” she asked. No caps for the pronoun and no comma after the question mark.)

Sigrid Macdonald is an author and an editor. You can find her at http://sigridmacdonald.blogspot.com/ 

advice, client relationships

Stress Management or “How To Freak Out and Throw Things.”

lady-screams
A portrait of the author.

By Amanda Smyth Connor

We’ve all been there. Suddenly all of your deadline worlds collide, all of the stresses of the world unite and it all falls on your shoulders. No matter how carefully you maintain your deadlines, schedules and plans,  work stress can’t be helped.

I’m not talking about the day-to-day stress of maintaining your daily workload. I’m talking about the days when everything is on fire, all of the clients are calling and your inbox has hit its max. You find yourself spiraling out of control until you’re rocking in the corner and your productivity is shot.

Stress management is essential to the freelancer, particularly in an industry known for job flow that is feast-or-famine. As a freelancer, you may go weeks or, God forbid, months without a new client. This is a terrifying ordeal. What may be equally as terrifying is when all of the clients come calling at once.

There are only so many hours in a day and at least a precious few of those need to be dedicated to eating and sleeping (note: showering is always the first thing to go when the deadlines come calling.)

Stress management comes in various ways.

1. Prioritize the insanity to the best of your abilities. Is one project really on fire or is it merely smoldering? Can we de-prioritize it behind the project that is at “stage 5 inferno?” Which deadlines require immediate attention and which ones can be put off for a day with a simple email or phone call response.

2. You can’t work yourself to death. It’s counterproductive to be dead. When spiraling, I tend to forego sleep and I forget to eat regular meals. I run myself down quickly, I hit a wall and then I become useless to everyone.

Take breaks. Eat a meal during which you don’t check email, even if it’s for just 30-minutes. And try to get at least 6-hours of sleep, otherwise you’ll just crap out.

3. The worst thing you can do is to relieve stress by lashing out. Do not lash out at innocent bystanders who happen to get in the way of your rage-stroke. This won’t help you feel better.

 

How do you handle stress management when things get crazy? 

 

Amanda Smyth Connor is a social media manager for a major publishing company and has managed online communities and content development for many start-up and Fortune 500 companies.  She has been a professional editor for more years than she can remember.

advice, Marketing yourself, social networking

She was a pushy dame with an appetite for the limelight…

SpillaneAs a freelancer, I wear two hats: one as a writer, the other as a publication layout artist. The season for my publication layout work runs from August through February, which leaves about five months of unscheduled time to pursue my own projects. Some years I get assigned to write a book, others I go scrounging for piece-work. Last year, I had neither to fill the gap, so I set several of my own ideas in motion: a series of Kindle cookbooks, a line of spice blends, an apron design, a collection of short stories, and a self-published children’s book that had been shelved and forgotten for nearly twenty years.

In the spring and summer of 2012, I managed to lay the foundations, to begin production on all of these projects, and to design a website for each one. But that’s as far as I was able to progress before it was time for the publication layout season to begin again. And now that I’m finished with this year’s edition, I’m once again presented with another five months of unscheduled time to pick up where I left off last August.

The first thing I realized is that I now have to find the most effective way to market what I’ve created. And I know I’m not alone when I say that marketing has never been my forte. I’m sure there are lots of ‘creatives’ out there who would much rather spend their time writing a novel, creating a work of art, composing a song, or in my case…developing a new recipe and photographing the finished dish!

But market I must.

On my very first day of freelancing freedom, while pondering the possibilities for introducing my creations to the world, as if manna from heaven, I happened upon a quote from steamy, noir detective novelist Mickey Spillane, who said: “Wherever I go everybody knows me, but here’s why … I’m a merchandiser, I’m not just a writer. I stay in every avenue you can think of.”

His career spanned more than sixty years, from his early stories in DC Comics and the publication of his first novel, I, the Jury, in 1947, to his death in 2006. He appeared in every medium, from comic books, magazines, and pulp fiction, to movies and television. Several of his novels have been published posthumously, and he now has a presence on the Internet that yields more than 700,000 search results.

Mickey Spillane’s words lit a fuse that sparked fireworks in my imagination, and over the course of a single week, I have explored the promotion of my products via Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Vimeo, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Amazon, eBay, Goodreads, Twitter, Google, and Groupon, not to mention the thousands of bloggers who write about the very things that I’ve created. Suddenly there aren’t enough hours in a day, a week, or even five months to pursue them all…but I’m gonna give it my best shot.

 

CelesteHeiterFZBioCeleste Heiter is the author of Turn Your PC into a Lean Mean Freelancing Machine, the creator of the LoveBites Cookbook Series for Kindle Fire, and the author of Potty Pals , a potty-training book for children. She has also written ten books published by ThingsAsian Press; and spent eight years posting her recipes, food photographs, and film reviews on ChopstickCinema .

Visit her website, and her Amazon Author Page.

 

advice

Writers – Time For A Spring Cleaning

by Catherine L. Tully

Spring is in the air and regardless of whether you have a million projects going or are in-between jobs, it’s time for a spring cleaning!

I advocate doing a quarterly “spring clean” in your office area so that you are able to stay organized and have minimal issues with efficiency. What does this type of re-vamp consist of? Here’s my checklist for the bare minimum you need to stay on top of things in your writing life:

  • Organize those e-mails you have been avoiding dealing with or keeping in your inbox to get to at “a later date”.
  • De-frag your hard drive (PCs).
  • Back up your computer.
  • Organize any paperwork. Toss, file, mail and address. Then, get it off your desk.
  • Catch up on bookkeeping.
  • Reach out to editors that you haven’t been in touch with for a while and touch base.
  • Clean your computer screen and blow out your keyboard with canned air.
  • Replace office supplies as needed.
  • Check printer ink.
  • Update your web presence (LinkedIn, website, etc.)

This is just a basic checklist–be sure and add anything you need to take care of to it. If you can set aside a day or two each season to take care of these things, you’ll likely be a lot more organized–and a lot less aggravated!

Do you have anything to add to the list?

Chicago-based content writing, editing, and social media. 1579 N. Milwaukee #220, Chicago Illinois 60622