Top 10 Reasons to Go Full-Time Freelance This Week

by Joe Wallace

You know you want to, and everywhere you look there are websites encouraging you to take the plunge and go full-time freelance. Wanna know why I do it? It’s not for the huge paychecks or the accolades, but that DOES help. Instead, here are my top ten reasons why you should drop everything you’re currently doing and go full-time freelance THIS WEEK.

10. You can go from a thankless 60 hour work week to a life of ease and fun. Don’t set the alarm clock, wake up when you  feel like it and go to work in your pajamas. But if you do this, make sure the curtains are open so your neighbors can watch you taking it easy. Nothing screams “successful freelancer” than when your next-door buddies come home from a hard day slaving away in the land of the cubicles to see you still in your PJs laughing at some e-mail your favorite editor just sent you.

9. There’s no shortage of work, when you feel like actually writing something. Don’t worry about that 3PM tee time at the golf course, you can bang out that first draft and submit it after your two-hour lunch. The editor’s going to re-write you anyway, why polish?

8. It’s about time you purchased a brand new car, isn’t it? When was the last time you could afford to do THAT? Oh, and don’t forget to pay in cash with the money you made off putting Google Adsense on your resume page.

7. You’ll score big with members of both sexes, and cats will purr at the very sight of you.  To make this happens, it’s especially important to cultivate an image of carefree living, even when the last check you were due is 90 days late. Never let them see you sweat, and tell your landlord to go take a flyer—you’ll pay when you’re damn good and ready.

6. Two words. Pizza Buffet. Now you can do it anytime you want, including for breakfast. Since you’ll be waking up around 11:30 or later now, that’s more of a possibility than ever before. … Continue Reading

Freelance Writers: Please Stop Flirting With Me

I’m clearly having a Dave Barry moment, so please be patient.

Lately the deluge of offers of naughtiness are coming at me non-stop. Already twice today at the time of this writing, I’ve had freelance writers let me know they think I’m hot stuff.

Now they’re too professional to come right out and say it in an e-mail. No, these temptations come to me by way of thinly veiled messages. To the casual readers they look like simple writing goofs, but I know better.

See, I know how to read between the lines. And I can JUST TELL these freelancers are trying to tell me something. Something steamy. Like maybe they want me to scoop out one of my spare millions and take them on a world cruise, sipping alcoholic drinks out of coconut shells and savoring the pleasures of the flesh.

I know what you’re thinking right about now, but trust me. This is REAL. They all use the same code, and it’s flattering really…but I just don’t know how I can afford to take ALL these people on a steamy cruise, let alone spend the proper amount of time with them all. So what’s the hidden message in all of this material they send me?

They all write, “Please bare with me.” Some say it in the articles they send, others say it in their cover letters or e-mails about this and that. Some of them also mention that a sign proudly “bares” a logo, or that they “bare in mind” which also sounds to me just a bit dirty. I know dirty thoughts when I read them, oh yes indeedy.

But I just can’t bare with you. For starters, I’m taken. What’s more, I can’t afford all the cruise ship time. I’m flattered, really, but it won’t work out between us no matter how many times I bare with you.

Please don’t be hurt or upset, but unless you want me to “bear with you” instead, I’m afraid it’s just not on, as the kids would say. I just can’t respond to your pleas for nakedness.

I’m sure you understand.

Top Ten Perils of Freelancing and Working From Home

In the dead of Chicago’s punishing winters, I am reminded of the many occupational hazards of being a freelancer. In no particular order:

10. Yolander Prinzel nailed it with her post about the freelance life, As A Freelance Writer, I Notice My Ass Often Hurts. Too true!

9. If you write for too long while stretched out on the couch, you can forget where you are, stand up too quickly and entangle your feet on the laptop’s power cable. If you have children nearby, they will learn new vocabulary. That’s one reason why I’ll never have kids. The self-censor feature is absent from my brain.

8. Scotch just doesn’t taste as good at 9AM as it does at 6PM.

7. Everybody calls you at 11AM to ask “What are you doing?”. Well, gee. What are YOU doing? I’m earning a living over here. … Continue Reading

Line By Line: How To Edit Your Own Writing

Transparency alert: I have NOT read this book. But the title says it all. Line By Line: How To Edit Your Own Writing is the sort of book I wish every writer who works for me would purchase.

There’s nothing worse than having to edit pointless mistakes a writer should be catching before they click “send”. When I sit in the editor’s chair, it gives me actual physical pain to see yet another abused apostrophe or the word “advise” instead of “advice”. Suppressing the urge to kill is the least of an editor’s problems. The desire to play drinking games with those article submissions and blog posts is overwhelming.

Spot the wrongly used “there,” “their” or “they’re” and take a drink. See the contraction of “there is” followed by a plural? Take TWO drinks.

All those dead brain cells could be avoided if all writers would buy books like these and start SELF-EDITING! Please, for the love of all that is nice and true, do this one favor for us overworked editors.

Thank you.

Stupid Words and Phrases You Should Never Use

Drew Kerr’s article, Three Words Every PR Pro Should Ban at Ragan.com got my wheels turning. I didn’t even need to read the whole thing to know there was a screed coming.

There are words that add color to your writing, there are words you can’t live without, and there are words that violate the cardinal rule of good writing. In the Gospel According to Strunk and White, the all-time number one commandment is this:

“Omit needless words.”

So why do writers INSIST on using “additionally” or “furthermore” in their work? Why in the name of the great gods of the IBM Selectric do people bother writing “The sale is going to be held on Saturday” when “The sale begins Saturday” will do quite nicely, thank you?

Drew Kerr advises PR-heads to stop using the word “thrilled” in their press releases. I have to agree, as it seems to imply some kind of twisted sexual gratification–when you’re talking about breaking ground for a new condo or electing a new president for the Elk’s Club, that just doesn’t sound right. Ditto for Kerr’s other advice, which is to stop using the word “excited” in the same context.

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Freelancer Jargon 2.0: My Top 10 Suggestions

If you are new to freelancing, you’re probably already struggling to learn new phrases and concepts. Words like “invoice” and “kill fee” probably meant nothing to you until you dived right in to the nutty world of self-employment. Now here comes a jerk like me suggesting you learn even MORE new phrases. But it goes without saying that the freelancer lexicon needs a bit of an update–industry jargon 2.0, you might say. Here is a handy list of new phrases we should all be adding to our vocabularies. Take with one grain of salt and use as directed.

10. The device pictured above should no longer be referred to as a phone. It should be called a LEASH.

9. Sleep is not a word freelancers should be using. Replace immediately with the word nap.

8. Sick is a word to be used only when you need to justify a three day weekend. If you need to take a vacation, you should be telling people you have a two-week onsite project.

7.  You did NOT just spend $1500 on a new laptop. You took a strategic tactical tax deduction. You also took a strategic tax deduction (STAD for short) on that Playstation 3 you just purchased, but only if you write a review on it for your monetized blog.

6. A magazine that goes bankrupt before paying you is a deadbeat dad. A high-paying magazine that gave you regular assigments that goes bankrupt is called a deadbeat sugar daddy.

5. An editor who won’t return your e-mails is a zombie. When you terminate the relationship with an editor who won’t return your e-mails, you George Romero‘d him. (Romero is the guy who brought zombie lore–including the requirement to shoot a zombie in the head to kill it–to pop culture.)

4. Deadlines should be reclassified. In the military, a deadline is called a suspense. While this seems to be bad usage, it does make sense, as you’ll be keeping the editor in suspense until you actually turn in your work. Will you or won’t you? Maybe we should start using this goofy term instead.

3. Freelance opportunities are often called markets, but are really meal tickets. A magazine that regularly publishes freelancers in our current economy should be known as Daddy Warbucks.

2. Starbucks should simply be rebranded as the Alternate Conference Room.

1.  Time-wasting blog entries like this should be called brain candy.  In our current economy, freelance blogs themselves could be considered like lifeboats, as in, “You’re a survivor, too?” But then again, most freelancers I know are doing better than the cubicle zombies I know, so maybe there’s a better analogy. Feel free to suggest your own freelancer jargon 2.0 in the comments section.

Writer’s Block for Writers of Writer’s Block Material

Why, yes, I am about to go on a screed here. Why does every writing site in the world (especially the crap ones) put stuff about writer’s block in a prominent place on their pages? It’s starting to annoy me no end. Maybe I haven’t had enough caffeine yet, but looking over some sites on today’s morning hunt for new and interesting things to write about. I see a massive collection of articles about writer’s block, every site I visit. You’d think it was an airborne disease.

Do people really worry about this stuff? Me, I worry more about whether the checks are coming in on time and how much is going to be held over til next month. I’m more worried about avoiding carpal tunnel syndrome. Where are all the articles on THAT? It’s far more of a REAL ISSUE than frickin’ so-called writer’s block. But it’s just too easy for people to write about, and so every wanna-be writing site in the entire world is crammed full of info on the dreaded WB. Nothing about that godawful recurring pain in your hands and wrists that makes it nearly impossible to use a keyboard without pain though.

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