January 2010

Co-Working in Maryland

As a full-time freelancer, I spend most of my days in my house, at my computer, talking to my cats. It can get a bit lonely at times and it doesn’t make for a great environment when I need to work with clients in person — after all, I don’t have a conference room hidden [...]

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An Ebook Launch From the Inside

Today, my new ebook, “Discover Your New Job Online,” goes on sale at Lifehack. While I’d love it if you purchased a copy or passed the news along to someone else interested, this post is really about how I got to this point: what happened to get the ebook ready to go and the decisions [...]

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Be Careful of Writing Routines

There was a period of time when I thought my notebooks had to be just so; I would only write in a specific type of notebook, with a particular pen. That routine just about did me in as a writer. Rather than offering me a way to be a better writer (no matter how cool [...]

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Ask Me Anything: Handling Missing Stories

Jen asks, I’m starting into freelance writing (pretty casual, after my 9-5) and in order to build up clips, I contacted a local free newspaper about writing a piece for them.  In the end, I sent in a full piece (450 words) for consideration and the editor said to me it would be run in [...]

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The Practicalities of Going Beyond a Kill Fee

I’m not the biggest fan of kill fees, mostly because they tend to mean that I completed a project to the best of my abilities but my client decided not to pay me the full price for my time. If I’m working on a piece that gets killed, I won’t turn down a kill fee, [...]

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Ask Me Anything: Keeping Email Under Control

I commented on Twitter earlier this week that I had entirely changed how I organize my email and I got a couple of requests to share how my new system works. It’s been several days and it’s working great, so I’m ready to share how I’m handling emails. The Setup There is some technology that [...]

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