If you’ve looked at any recruitment pages recently, you may have noticed a lot of jargon creeping into job titles. Here we strip the acronyms and buzzwords away to reveal the – often quite straightforward – roles that lie underneath. UX Writer UX stands for user experience. What a UX writer does is craft the […]
Training Your Writing
/ 2020-11-21I learned some time back to write in snippets no matter how small. Made myself write 500 words in a day. Doesn’t sound like much, but it became habit. . . but it also was easier to justify in my busy day. Think about it. . . sitting down and pounding out 500 words and […]
How to Find Freelance Clients in a Recession
/ 2020-11-13I panicked when I lost my job earlier this year. The current jobs market is not exactly stellar amidst COVID-19 and the resulting recession. In the last few months, though, I’ve grown my freelance business from a side-hustle to a sustainable, full-time source of income. I love it and can’t see myself returning to traditional […]
Writing the Wave
/ 2020-11-06Niche markets perform like waves. Freelance writers benefit from plunging into the right market at the best time, even when the niche is far removed from their usual work. Here’s how to take advantage when the wave is high – and how to find your way back after. Wait for the Boom A ‘hot’ niche […]
Boost Your Writing Income with Themed Merchandise
/ 2020-10-23Merchandise that highlights your writing, freelance work, or author brand can boost your writing income in multiple ways. The most obvious is through selling those products. Beyond that, people showing off your wares become your “street team,” shoring up the personal connections and word-of-mouth critical to book sales and freelance referrals. “As human beings, we […]
Channel the Need
/ 2020-10-17Recently I was advising a political Facebook group, and one key factor I could not get some of the candidates to understand was “define the voter’s need then fill it.” The candidates only wanted to say how good they are. That’s like saying a new drink product is good, when the best ads for drink […]
13 Terms to Know About Copywriting
/ 2020-10-09Copywriters write copy that sells to people and educates them about products and services. They provide the words for things like advertisements, sales emails, brochures, and commercial websites. Copywriting is a necessity and pays better than editorial work, so no surprise that many freelance journalists and content writers gravitate to it. A key difference is […]
Don’t Be Shortsighted with Your Author Presence
/ 2020-10-09Recently, I was reading a submission from a writer who wanted to appear in the FFW newsletter. I liked the article, was going over it with some comments when someone messaged me. I keep umpteen windows open at a time, and in the back and forth, I accidentally deleted the email. It was a month […]
Five Ways COVID Has Changed Professional Screenwriting
/ 2020-09-25I know, I know. We’re all sick of talking about COVID. It’s the pandemic that just won’t go away. Unfortunately, that may be doubly true for the world of professional screenwriting. The impact of COVID has, for better or worse, changed much of Hollywood’s old reality, and many of those changes look to be with […]
Get Paid for the Job, Not the Hour
/ 2020-09-25On social media, many artists and writers fuss that the public doesn’t realize the hours and sweat that goes into a creation. I want to tell them to please hush. In doing so, they shift attention off the art itself and onto themselves. A reader doesn’t care how hard the story was to write. The […]
Five Reasons Your Magazine Pitches Get Rejected
/ 2020-09-11So you’ve written your hundredth magazine pitch only to be rejected again. This is where most writers quit, but smart authors know that a successful pitch goes beyond a clean essay and a flashy idea. You need content that not only compels the editor to inquire for more but also provides a definitive point of […]
How to Deal with a Bad Payer Without Giving In to Anger
/ 2020-08-28Some months ago, I finally, finally received a modest payment for a couple of articles I’d written for a well-known outlet. It took me almost a year from submitting the first piece to getting paid, and the whole process involved endless emails, chasing different people, lots of silence, and false dawns – a great deal […]