October 2009

Ask Me Anything: Finding Time, Following Up On Leads and Networking

Kathryn Lang asks, I want to know how you end up with eight hours for writing. I have yet to be able to make that happen around my home. Maybe I should just run away. Some freelance writers struggle to schedule around day jobs. Some struggle to schedule around kids. There are plenty of other [...]

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Mentoring: A New Business Opportunity For Writers?

I’m always interested in the revenue streams different writers put together, so Nalo Hopkinson’s decision to offer mentoring to aspiring writers definitely caught my eye. A little background: Nalo Hopkinson is an accomplished science fiction and fantasy novelist. Her teaching credentials include the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing Workshops. At the end of September, [...]

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Ask Me Anything: Scheduling & Sourcing

Mike Dougherty asks, How does a freelance writer best schedule their time? Very carefully! I know that many writers use very different systems of managing their time: some people like to spend only a certain amount of time a day working on client work, while others ascribe to the philosophy that there are 24 usable [...]

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Review: The Winning Proposal

The number of clients that turn to bid sites to find freelance writers is huge — and it continues to grow. Freelance writers have to know how to handle bid sites, even if they don’t depend such websites for the majority of their work. The sites aren’t difficult to understand. You just put in a [...]

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Ask Me Anything: Protecting Online Content

I had the chance to talk to a group of writers about promoting themselves online using blogs and other online tools. Katy Berube asks a follow up question, I am sold on doing many of these things online. My concern is what happens to my content if these websites fail. I saw what happened to [...]

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Why Writers Need CRM — And Why I Use Gist

I mentioned Gist in my list of online tools that can help writers. I’ve gotten a couple of responses that make me think that most writers think that customer relationship management software can’t help them — maybe if they work with a long list of clients, it can make sense, but what does a fiction [...]

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Tools for Writers: AIW Recap

During my presentation at AIW’s seminar yesterday, I promised to provide links to all the sites I talked about, so here they are! Word Processing Google Docs Zoho Writer Adobe Buzzword Distraction-Free Writing WriteRoom DarkRoom Notetaking Evernote Mindmapping MindMeister Query Tracking Slushomatic Write Again Invoicing Harvest Freshbooks Contact Management Batchbook Gist Task Lists Remember the [...]

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Ask Me Anything: Invoicing and Client Leads

On Thursday, I mentioned that I was in the process of sending out invoices on Twitter. Katharine O’Moore-Klopf asked, I’m curious why you prefer invoicing on 1st of month rather than at end of each gig. For me, it comes down to the types of projects I work on. Many of my clients I work [...]

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