Today’s Writing Tip: When to Use Can or Could

It’s easy to determine when to use the word can and when to use could. Can indicates ability. I can type a letter. I can run 10 miles. I can write a fan letter to Jon Hamm, although he probably won’t answer. Can denotes certainty. Could denotes uncertainty.

I could go to visit my sick neighbor if I don’t have to work on Thursday night. My neighbor could die from pneumonia if her immune system is not strong. My son’ s car could last another five years if he’s lucky. The most significant word in the last three sentences is “if” because the first part of every sentence depends on another factor.

It could happen, but maybe it won’t. Whereas when we use can, something will generally happen or at least the person has the ability to make it happen.

Parents used to teach children table manners by differentiating between the words can and may. A child would say, “Can I go now?” after dessert, and the parent would retort, “May I go.” Because clearly the child can go by simply getting up and leaving the table. Using may is a way of asking permission.

Sigrid Macdonald is the author of three books and two short stories, and is also a manuscript editor. Find her at http://sigridmacdonald.blogspot.com/.

Freelancing, Working From Home, Yahoo

by Joe Wallace

In recent years it seemed like everyone was going freelance, working from home, doing the thirty-second commute. But in more recent times it looks like the rubber band, so to speak, of freelancing is snapping back the other way. Consider the latest news about Yahoo and its new CEO’s policy bringing in work-from-home staff back into the office. Is this a trend you can watch spreading to other companies who suddenly decide that working in your jammies is bad for productivity?

Not yet. But keep watching those headlines and you might see plenty of “me too” stories about others, inspired by Yahoo, who want to yank their employees back into the land of the cubicles.

This is good news, and bad news for freelancers. The good news is that the reality check has finally arrived. It’s not, as many websites want us all to believe, EASY to be a freelancer or work-from-home guru. It takes discipline, dedication, and the ability to resist all of your regular time-waster distractions you indulge in when you’re not sitting in front of the computer. It also requires more transparency and accountability to make things work properly.

Some just don’t have what it takes, some are total overacheivers. But it’s not EASY, whatever the outcome.

The good news is that these kinds of reality checks are GREAT for our freelance businesses–those who continue to thrive as freelancers have an additional–and totally subjective–air of achievement. We still succeed where Yahoo “failed”. We are trustworthy enough to remain in our jammies, keep turning things in on time and on target. We rule.

But with that it’s realistic to expect a higher standard. If you can do what Yahoo wouldn’t dream of letting you do (now), working from home, it’s likely that expectations will increase. After all, there MUST be a reason why Yahoo’s CEO is so bent on yanking employees back under the glare of the florescent bulbs, right? RIGHT? Don’t be surprised if the bar gets raised in the wake of all this…even if it’s just a little bit.

But the pros need not worry–we’re used to this sort of thing. Occupational hazards include a wee bit of jealousy that we’re still wearing what we went to bed in when we deliver that product. It’s only right to expect to be scrutinized a bit closer when things like the Yahoo story pop up. The mantra? It all goes back to Gloria Gaynor; “I Will Survive”.

Freelance Multitasking From Hell: The Blog?

by Joe Wallace

Sigrid Macdonald’s post this week about multi-tasking resonated with me in a major way because I’m about to dive headfirst into multi-tasking hell. Earlier this year I went round and round with a decision about going back to school and finally decided to take the plunge and dive into the Recording Arts For Film program at Tribeca Flashpoint Media Academy in Chicago.

The TFA program features an immersive, hands-on approach, and it’s not your traditional pick-your-classes-and-attend-when-it’s-convenient schoolhouse. Instead, your schedule is chosen for you based on your career choices and you put in an eight hour day. Which necessitates me having a night shift for freelance work.

Yes, I decided to stay freelance with my current work load, keeping all my current clients, shifting my work to the evening hours instead of first thing in the morning the way I’m used to working.

I won’t accept any new projects after Saturday, when the first official TFA event happens (a student/faculty mixer, but official nonetheless), but my current clients will never notice any difference in deliverables, quality of work, etc.

How do I know? Well, it’s simple really–I’ve done all this before. AND worked a second job on top of it. None of my clients ever realized I was doing anything BUT working on their projects. And that is the way I like it. It’s as it should be.

All this is terribly self-promotional–or at least it sounds it–but there’s a reason why I share any/all of this. I’m going to be blogging about the whole experience here as it unfolds. I may have done this before, but there are always new lessons to be learned, especially when you’re multi-tasking at such a type-A workaholic level. It can be done. In my case, it WILL be done…and I’ll write about it all here on top of everything else.

A freelancer’s most important asset is his or her flexibility. If you can’t bend with the circumstances, your skills are pretty much useless in terms of earning a decent living. You might be able to scrape by with a rigid, uncompromising approach to your work, but you’ll never get off the treadmill unless you can master the Judo of freelancing.

And that’s what I intend to explore once again in my experiences at TFA, in addition to all the film audio work I’ll be doing and learning. Foley, field recording, sound effects, game audio design, dialogue looping, post-production…a whole universe of sound and plenty of opportunities for a freelancer to move ahead in a different–but related–field.

In fact, even before classes start, I’ve found some interesting freelance fodder in the textbooks. One entire textbook is a guide for audio engineers on how to carve out a career as a self-employed person. Substitute your discipline of choice–writing, editing, marketing, coding–and this book still resonates. I’ll be running a review of it in the near future, but for now, suffice it to say that my journey begins here, on the threshold. I’m happy to bring you along for the ride.

Joe Wallace is a writer, editor, multi-media visual artist, and now a student again. He may be the only one in his classes outside the faculty who remembers Gerald Ford as President, but at least he still has most of his knee cartilage. For now. Wallace blogs about multi-media production and indie film making at www.now-sound.com and vinyl records at www.turntabling.net.

Becoming A Writer: Should You Quit Your Day Job?

by Catherine L. Tully

Freelance-Zone Editor, Catherine L. Tully

I have been asked this question many, many times and my answer has not changed. Aspiring writers often want to know if they should quit their day job and go full time into freelance writing.

My answer is no. A solid no.

Freelance writing is an extraordinarily difficult career field. It’s tough for even those of us who have been doing it full-time for a long while. And it’s one field that ‘taking the plunge” so to speak, is not advisable.

But let me be more specific…there is a why to this. Here are my top four reasons to transition slowly to the freelance lifestyle…

• The money is unreliable. You are depending on a variety of clients to pay you, which means that checks may or may not be on time. Or, they may not pay you at all. Do you want to bet your rent (or worse yet, house payment) on that? Once you are more established you’ll get a better feel for how to budget like this–but I’m here to tell you that it isn’t easy. Going from a regular paycheck to this type of income is an adjustment.
• You need regular clients. Despite the idea of freelancing for all different kinds of publications, a lot of us freelancers have a cache of regular clients that we work for to pay the bills. This takes time to build.
• Habit changes are hard. Are you used to working for yourself? Do you have the discipline to get up and get to it in the morning…or are you more likely to watch some television? How are you going to do errands like banking and grocery shopping, but still make sure you are on deadline? Give yourself some wiggle room and build toward all of this slowly.
• Having a savings helps. If you can sock away a few bucks to help get you through the lean times at the beginning of a freelance career (or as an emergency fund for times when a client is late paying), your life will feel a lot better.

For you seasoned freelancers out there–do you have anything to add to this list? Feel free to share!

Resist The Urge

I can’t say I learned any valuable lessons today after reading some of my fellow freelance lifestyle bloggers, but I do feel I’ve gotten a good reminder to count to ten, hold my breath, check and double check my writing after ranting.

Not that all my fellow bloggers are ranters, just me.

I was reading a better-left-unmentioned freelance blog post about what freelancers can learn from celeb missteps in the public eye. Something bugged me about the article and I really, REALLY wanted to open fire with both barrels over it. But I’m sure (OK, I am HOPING) it was just poor word choice at work, so I decided to let it go.

Sort of.

The article mentions a famous person’s far-too-open comments during interviews and in social media–using them as an object lesson for freelancers on what not to do in the public eye. The article stated the celeb made “racial comments”, offered up too much sex life detail, and made “homosexual comments”.

The “homosexual comments” bit really bugged me and it took a good five seconds to figure out why. In a not-quite-a-laundry-list of ill-advised things this famous person did, “homosexual comments” stood out as being a negative and a bit singled out–the previous complaint had to do with sex life TMI, so why the attention on “homosexual comments”?

I can’t accuse the writer of being a gay basher, and that’s not my point. But a more thoughtful choice of words would prevent the impression–however fleeting (or not)–that there’s some anti-gay sentiment going on in that article. Note that I’m not accusing anyone of actually being a hater, but rather pointing out that poor word choice can lead to that perception.

My inner optimist wants to think the person who wrote this is only guilty of a poor turn of phrase and has no real bone to pick with consenting adults who spend their time in a manner of their choosing regardless of how intriguing or threatening that might seem to people unfamiliar with a given lifestyle.

But my inner pessimist thinks maybe sometimes some people somewhere make a Freudian slip (intended or not) and that slip can be a big red flag with regard to professionalism, EEO and a myrid of other things. Is that true in this particular case? I’m going to side with the optimist for fairness’ sake. I can’t honestly say there was malice aforethought here. But again, that’s not the point.

As professionals, our words are read, scrutinized, absorbed, made fun of, regarded as wise, and repeated. We’re all guilty of writing, saying, and doing insensitive things. But it’s a different sort of thing when you’re trying to give advice to other professionals and those aspiring to follow your lead.

Dispensing advice from on high is pretty damn easy to do (beautifully illustrated here by me), but don’t let a throwaway phrase knock the wind out of the entire presentation. Nobody likes to be excluded, but in this particular case one segment of the audience may have gotten a little taste of exclusion–whether intentional or not. “Homosexual comments” could mean anything to anybody. But it doesn’t sound good, and it’s not what the writer wanted that article to be remembered for.

And there’s the lesson.

–Joe Wallace

Don’t Let The Freelance Competition Get You Down

Unfortunately a lot of people new to freelancing or considering the leap feel the way this YouTube video poster does (see the clip below). Freelancing can be an intimidating thing indeed–the staggering amount of work it can take to find clients and establish new relationships makes people want to look for short cuts in the that process.

Unfortunately, there are no short cuts. Word of mouth business, for example–something this video poster brings up–only comes when you’ve taken the time and care with your existing clients to generate that word of mouth buzz. The person in this video expresses hope for a shortcut by using a third party service, but such hopes are misguided for more reasons than just the obvious ones.

That’s because the Youtube clip winds up being a shill for a seemingly defunct company called ManifestingInMotionNow.com. The website returns a 404 Not Found error when you try to see the site. But freelancers can still learn a great deal from this video–especially when it comes to how NOT to market yourself or your company.

Marketing should be clear, direct, and to the point, and after watching this video, please tell us–were those qualities present here?