Freelance Writer and Social Worker

My Favorite Freelance Writing Posts

Isn't it a shame that when you write a blog some of your best posts slip away into obscurity. (Then, of course, there are the posts that truly should slip away into obscurity, but that's a different story.)

Anyway, this week I was feeling a little nostalgic, and maybe a little lazy as well, and decided to rerun some of my favorite posts from the last year or so. If you missed the originals, I hope you'll find something amusing or something informative in these selections.

1. 25 Strategies for Smashing Through Writer's Block. No, I'm not going to take the time to argue about whether there is any such thing as writer's block. Whatever we want to call it, most of us have had times when we're simply stuck, and these tips can help.

2. Freelance Writers: 7 Tips for Caring for Your Hands, Wrists, and Arms. We may not be professional athletes, but we still rely on our bodies to make a living. If you aren't already, start treating those hands with kid gloves.

3. Dear Debra - A Letter to My Sixteen Year Old Self. My personal favorite blog posts. I just wish someone really had been around when I was 16 to give me that advice!

7 Time-Saving Elements for Business Email

Because I find most of my clients online, I check my email several times every day. I don't stop and answer all of it. I just skim the senders for names I recognize and take a quick look at the subject lines.

And that's where things start to get tricky. Today, for instance, one subject line I came across read, "Hi, how are you?" Spam, I thought, and started to click delete, but something changed my mind. I read the email and discovered it contained a job offer. Who would have thought?

This whole email thing has got me thinking about online communications. If we could all just conform to seven simple guidelines, we could save so much time!

1. Make sure you have the correct recipient and only the correct recipient. In other words, don't hit "reply all" if only one person needs your response. Before you send a new email, check to make sure it's really going to the right person. My name is apparently similar to the name of one of my client's best friends. I'm always getting long BFF emails from this person that are intended for her pal. I used to send them back to her with a nice explanation. Now I just delete them.

You've Got Mail! Why Freelance Writers SHOULD Check Email Frequently

If I've read the advice in one time management book, I've read it in a dozen: Never check email first thing in the morning. Only check email once or twice during the day. That little "ding" that lets you know when new mail arrives in your inbox is the enemy.

Rubbish. If you're a freelance writer, not checking email regularly is a habit that can cause you to lose both time and money.

Take what happened to me last Monday. On Sunday, I'd accepted a wordy, high-research, quick-turnaround job from a client. I woke up before sunrise on Monday morning, staggered my computer, and--just like all the time-management books advise--I put in two full hours of work before I checked my email. That turned out to be a big mistake, because if I'd checked first, I would have known that the client sent me an email late Sunday night canceling the project I'd just spent two hours researching.

As if that wasn't annoying enough--and it was plenty damned annoying--later that day, I missed out on an opportunity to bid on another well-paying rush job because, just like the books suggest, my email notification as turned off and I didn't get the message in time.

Defending Your Work Day as a Freelance Writer

"It's so great that you don't have to work," one of my friends told me recently. "I feel like I can just call you for anything."

I had mixed feelings about that. Of course I want my friends to see me as helpful and reliable, but I hadn't realized I "didn't have to work." In fact, I could have sworn I'd stayed up until 3:00 A.M. just that morning to help one of my many clients finish a last-minute editing project.

I know I'm not the only freelancer who runs into this dilemma. Many of the writers I know who work from home report that their friends and family members feel free to call, drop by, or ask them to run errands during the days.

These same people, of course, would never dream of barging into a brick-and-mortar workplace with similar demands.

So, what can you do if your loved ones treat you as though you don't have a "real" job?

These suggestions may help.

1. Commit to working a certain number of hours. Right now, my goal is a 50-hour work week: Eight hours Monday through Friday with half days on the weekend. I allow for some flexibility, for instance, if I have a daytime appointment, I might work a half day on Tuesday and a full day on Saturday, but the 50 hours is non-negotiable. Knowing that I'm accountable for those hours makes it easier to plan my time and set boundaries.

2. Practice saying "no." No is a word that doesn't come easily to most women and many men. We've been told that it's wrong to appear harsh, uncompromising, or perhaps worst of all, indifferent to the needs of others. When we do say no, we try to sugarcoat the message with excuses or promises of assistance in the future. The truth is, when you can't do something, it's okay to say no and leave it at that. Stand in front of the mirror and practice saying, "I'm sorry; I won't be able to help you with that." Keep saying it until the words come naturally.

3 Reasons Why Writers Miss Deadlines...And How to Stop Doing It

When I first started freelancing, a friend of mine who had been in the business for years explained due dates to me: "They're called deadlines, because dead is what your career will be if you miss too many of them."

Now, I'm certainly not saying I've never, ever missed a deadline, but keeping my friend's advice in mind has ensured that I don't miss them very often. I've also acquired a few clients who told me that they had ended working relationships with other freelancers because they were chronically late when it came to turning in their projects.

If you have a problem with missing deadlines, it's likely that one of three things is going on. See if you recognize any of these reasons:

1. You're procrastinating. Procrastinating means deliberately putting off tasks that you know must be done. People procrastinate for a variety of reasons including dislike for the project at hand, fear of not doing the work right, hope that someone will step in and do the project for you, and addiction to the adrenaline rush that often accompanies postponing a job until the last possible moment.

If you're a procrastinator, you need to make your calendar and your "to do" lists your very best friends in the whole world. As soon as you receive a new assignment, look it over and break it up into small, manageable chunks that are not at all intimidating. Then, schedule time to complete each chunk. Plan to finish your project a couple of days before the actual deadline, just in case you run into unexpected complications.

This method may feel unnatural the first several times you try it, but after a few successes, you'll wonder how you ever muddled along without it.

What Being an ER Social Worker Taught Me about Writing

In 1997, I got my first job as a master's level social worker providing crisis services and bereavement support in an inner city emergency room popularly known as "The Knife and Gun Club."

Oddly enough, I loved the work, and many of the lessons I learned in the ER turned out to be great preparation for my career as a freelance writer.

1. What an emergency is...and what it isn't.

In the emergency room where I worked, the staff got pretty excited when someone's heart stopped beating or when a patient came in spurting gouts of blood from a wound or an orifice. Other than that, we were a laid-back crew.

Similarly, I don't get terribly worked up when a client calls me with an "emergency." I respond in a prompt and professional manner, but I figure if the client still has a heartbeat and is capable of speech, we have time to work things out.

It was also working in the emergency room that taught me one of my all-time favorite quotes: "Lack of prior planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."

How Many Hats Do You Wear?

When you go to work in the corporate world, you're usually given a copy of your job description the moment you set foot in the door on your first day. You know immediately what is expected of you and how your performance will be judged. You also have a high degree of confidence that if you do the work assigned to you, you will receive a steady paycheck.

Unfortunately, freelance writers don't have a cut-and-dried list of duties. In fact, many of us get into trouble because we neglect a task that we weren't even aware we should have been doing.

Just for fun one day, I decided to sit down and figure how many jobs are actually encompassed in the term "freelance writer." The number was...well...interesting.

The Sad Truth about Multitasking

I pride myself on being able to walk and chew gum at the same time. I can also do light housekeeping with the television on or music playing in the background. That is about the extent of my ability to multitask.

If I try to switch my concentration back and forth between two projects, I end up making a hopeless muddle of both of them. And don't even get me started about trying to write while watching TV.

When I was growing up and going to college in the 80's, multitasking was all the rage. My friends bragged about the number of things they could do while completing a homework assignment or studying for an exam. One of my married friends swore she could do a perfect French translation while changing clothes, fixing dinner, and calming her fussy two year old. Another friend effortlessly tore through algebra equations while we gossiped on the phone.

I, on the other hand, could not be trusted to feed my cat while my mind was on homework. I tried it once, and she ended up with a highlighter and two pens in her food dish. True story. I felt like an absolute dunce. Now that I'm revisiting the time management issue nearly twenty years later, however, I realize that perhaps I wasn't so stupid after all.

What's Love Got to Do with It? Doing What You Need When It's Not What You Want

"I don't feel like writing today." Have you ever heard a friend say that? Have you ever given yourself a day off when you couldn't afford it because you felt that way? I have, and every single time I've let myself off the hook with that excuse, it's turned out to be a mistake.

Those of us who work in the arts are the only people who get to base our work--or lack thereof--on our feelings. Imagine a doctor telling his patient, "I'm just not in the mood to do open-heart surgery today. I'd rather do an appendectomy." Imagine your accountant calling you an April 14 and announcing, "I didn't file your taxes this year because I couldn't get in the mood."

If there's one thing I've learned as a freelancer, it's that I'll never be in the mood for some tasks. I'll never enjoy marketing, for instance, and some of the writing assignments I take on in order to pay the bills are just plain boring. If I waited to do these things until I felt like it, they would never get done.

So, how do you force yourself to do what you really do not want to do? The techniques below have worked pretty well for me:

A Glamorous Day in the Life of a Freelance Writer

Several of my friends have been asking me what my days are like now that I'm self-employed. Except, that's not quite how they put it. They usually ask me how things are now that I no longer have to work. Many are convinced that I'm living a life of luxury and leisure. For anyone who is curious, the following timeline represents a fairly typical day in my life.