Ever wonder why you did it? Or want to do it fulltime? There are plenty of reasons people cite, including the desire to have more control over life in general or the need to start a new career and a new life.
But the freelance lifestyle has its own set of pitfalls that most writing sites don’t mention. Are you ready for these?
–Your boss will still be a jerk. Except now, the boss is YOU.
–You’ll work more hours for yourself than you did for the old boss.
–The money will come in late. A LOT.
–You can make horrid, costly mistakes that will force you to pay the IRS more than you did in your old career. Continue reading Why Go Freelance?→
As I drive across America travel writing and blogging about my adventures, I keep seeing these little parables about the writing life. Today’s discovery came after a morning drive from Dallas to Austin, Texas. (The day before I was in Springfield, Missouri so I probably come off a bit punchy in these recent posts).
One of my travel blogging stops in Austin was Waterloo Records–a local fixture in the indie music scene for many years. Waterloo began its stay in its current location as one of several tenants–it shared the building with two other shops. But now, the others have moved out and it looks as though Waterloo Records is poised to take over the entire building. Not sure if that will happen, but it did get my gears turning. Operating a writing business successfully should happen much the way Waterloo’s success did. Continue reading Things I Learned About Writing From Record Stores and Whole Foods→
Lately I see a lot of less experienced freelancers making serious mistakes in their marketing materials. It’s tough for people without the benefit of experience (and hindsight) to judge what’s going to hurt them in a resume or cover letter, but thinking like an editor can help a lot.
Marketing yourself can be scary–how do you convey that you’re savvy, competent and reliable? How do you get confidence across without accidentally conveying arrogance?
What does this have to do with freelance portfolios?
Every editor has their own strange little hiccups. Personality quirks. Some call them “defects”.
Mine is that whenever I get replies to my latest call for writers or when I browse online portfolios looking for someone to offer some writing work to, I hear a lot of Cibo Matto.
That is to say, I hear a lot of this one line from Beef Jerky. If I’m reading a resume or an online freelance portfolio and I run across material that seems needlessly self-aggrandizing, or completely (and cluelessly) irrelevant, I hear the line from Beef Jerky where the lead singer is screaming, “Who cares? I don’t care! A horse’s ass is better than yours!”
I was looking at a post at FreelanceSwitch about active listening, and for some reason it made me think about this type of advice and where people are at when they get it and put it into practice. I am always grateful for sites like FreelanceSwitch for dispensing targeted, specific advice like this that newcomers can use in the earliest days of their career.
There was no FreelanceSwitch when I started freelancing. What effect would that article have had on my early days as a freelancer? That’s what I was thinking when I realized that if I had to go back and do things all over again, I’d do them a LOT differently if I knew just a couple of really critical things. Continue reading If I Had To Start Freelance Writing All Over Again…→
I fired my tax preparer today. He doesn’t know he’s been fired yet. He’ll probably never know unless he looks in his database someday and realizes that I didn’t come back at tax time in 2010.
Why did I fire my tax guy? I discovered he filed my 2008 taxes using an old address even after I specifically said at the start of our 2008 tax prep conversation that I’d moved. Simple mistake, anyone could make it. Is that reason enough to give him the axe? No, not really.
But when I called his office to straighten things out, not only did I not get a call back the same day, I didn’t get a call back PERIOD. And taxes are far too important to doink around with. If the professional you’ve hired to do the job can’t get a simple detail right or at least get in touch to reassure you he’s working it, it’s time to move on and find someone who will instill the trust you expect. Continue reading Sometimes You Don’t Know You’re Fired→
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Ever wonder why you did it? Or want to do it fulltime? There are plenty of reasons people cite, including the desire to have more control over life in general or the need to start a new career and a new life.
