 Writing Lab News
Straight talk about your writing career from Sharon Hurley Hall
Issue 42 - September 2009 |
|
This month's articles cover working on the road, lifestyle design for freelance writers and dealing with flaky editors. There's a humorous look at one of the reasons why the freelance life appeals, and an update on what I've been up to in the past month. See you in October! |
|
In this issue:
Working On The Roadby Sharon Hurley Hall Freelance writers enjoy the freedom of working from anywhere. I recently wrote this article on the Taking Off Travel Blog outlining my strategies for mobile working. As a location independent writer, I like to think I’ve got managing my business on the road down to a fine art. Here’s how I do it. One of my main strategies is to be able to access as much stuff as possible from the cloud. That means having a good online backup system which also has editing facilities. My choice for that is Syncplicity. Anywhere I go I can get to the latest backup from my home computer and get the files I need. As a backup, I occasionally email things to myself (I use Gmail) so that I can open things in Google Documents. With word processing, spreadsheets and presentations, Google Documents is a pretty nifty MS Office replacement. Read the rest of Working On The Road and feel free to share your strategies either through the comments or my contact form. 
Designing Your Life With Freelance Writingby Sharon Hurley Hall
This article is exclusive to Writing Lab News subscribers. Lifestyle design. Location independent. Digital nomad. Workshifter. There's been a lot of talk in the blogosphere and Twittersphere about people like us - people who have the freedom to work when they choose and where they choose. Though we don't always think about it in that way, many freelance writers are attracted to the profession, not just for the writing, but for the opportunity it affords us to customize the way we live. Many of us want to:
Everyone has a different version of the perfect lifestyle but more and more people seem to be taking this step. If you're thinking of doing it, then I can recommend a couple of good resources. There's the Location Independent site, which includes a really useful blog. And, if you're serious about running a business from anywhere, then consider the excellent Location Independent business course, which I will be reviewing soon. I went through the whole course and saw ways that I could improve my writing business. Reader Question: Flaky Editorby Sharon Hurley Hall I get a lot of questions from newsletter and blog readers, asking about issues related to writing. I plan to feature edited versions of these from time to time in this newsletter. This month's question has to do with a flaky editor.The situation: N said: 'I am having trouble with an editor on my first internet writing job. He asked me to cover a conference and agreed to pay my expenses in exchange for short daily updates. He posted my work for the first few days, but hasn't posted any in the last six days. Instead, he has been posting his own work and ignoring my emails. What should I do?' My response: 'Try to contact the editor again to establish if there's a reason why he isn't using the work. Unless he's paid you, he doesn't have the right to the work (as long as you haven't signed an agreement that says otherwise), so you have the right to use it elsewhere. If he still owes you money, Angela Hoy runs an excellent service called Whispers and Warnings, which is great for naming and shaming those who owe you and won't pay up.'
Writing Talk - Reasons To Love WritingThis is just one of the many reasons why I love being a freelance writer. Check out the other Writing Talk strips here. 
Diary Of A Working Writer – September 2009For many of us, it's back to reality after a summer spent balancing work with home life, and it's no exception for me. August was a good month, in which I had nibbles from a few potential new clients and continued to work on some of my usual projects. On the Taking Off Travel blog, I looked at couchsurfing, traveling to the hurricane belt and asked: what kind of packer are you? On the Appvita blog, I reviewed Magcloud, which has great potential for writers, as well as time tracker application TSheets and Spezify, a new kind of search. Two of my favorite reviews on Piggybankpie covered the Thesis Wordpress theme and feed reader alternative Lazyfeed. I also had a good guest posting month - you can check out some of the places my posts appeared in this post on sharonhh.com. My most popular post on Get Paid To Write Online this month was on Rebalancing My Writing Career and I'm still in the process of working that through. Watch this space for announcements as I spread my wings a bit. Have a great month! Share this newsletter with a friend (if they don't want it, all they have to do is ignore the signup email - no hassle, I promise.) |
