Archive for July 2007

Updated: 11 June 2010

Occasionally, I receive an e-mail from someone who wants advice on becoming a professional writer. There’s too much information out there, so the best thing to do is learn a little at a time. The following is what I tell those interested in a writing career.

Join a writing community: The best thing you can do is join a writer’s community as not many writers like to give advice because they worked hard to get where they are with little or no help. Many great communities exist out there. Your best bet is to search for the ones covering your industry or genre because those communities will have answers to many of your questions. So search the community for answers before asking.

Book recommendations: Writer’s Market [current year] and those listed in the top 25 books for writers and writing-related topics.

Resources: Read Writer’s Digest (it has a community, too). Check out my Friday links and Twitter (I have a list of writing pros that can also help you) as I often include links to great writing-related articles. Social media is a great place to meet and connect with writers and others in the industry. A few Twitter chats cover writing-related topics. Here’s how to join a Twitter chat.

This list is short to avoid to avoid overwhelming you. When someone gives me too much info — I feel overwhelmed that I don’t know where to begin. If you’re ready for more resources, here’s a growing list of Free Tools and Sites for Writers.

Abstract version of my story: I didn’t quit my day job and dive into freelance writing. Instead, I wrote on the side while working a day job. I continuously received assignments and it took five years before leaving my day job for full-time freelancing.

What advice do you share with new writers?

Evil villians, Crowbeak and Cornix, have taken over the peaceful town of Orniland. The villians have developed a delicious potion that will turn even the nicest person into a Warrior of Darkness. The only hope to restore its tranquility is to send the hero Plumeboom in to save the day. Help Plumeboom destroy the jugs of evil potion and rid the village of evil.

Download Plumeboom: The First Chapter

Here is a nice list of freelancing tips. I’ve listed all 23 (I counted several times) here (without the details — you can get that from the original article) along with my comments on some.

1. Keep regular working hours: I also do the same thing every morning – read the overnight e-mail and blog. This gets my day off to a good start knowing I got the required blogging out of the way.

2. Kill the instant messengers at once: Not for me. I need to keep IM open for my family. I turn on the away if I don’t want to be interrupted. Remember the person can’t see you, so if you don’t respond — don’t feel guilty. You’re working.

3. Be realistic rather than optimistic: I have a bad habit of being pessimistic thinking the client hates anything I submit.

4. Always get at least 25% in advance: Common practice, but I don’t always do this. I’ve rarely had problems with getting paid.

5. No acronyms

6. Be ready to be alone: I enjoy the silence. It drives me nuts when the kids are home because of a holiday or whatever reason. If I need company, I’ll e-mail a friend or chat in IM. I also have a weekly game with friends and play tennis.

7. Smoking & food: We all know smoking is bad, so I am not going to preach.

8. Be ready to fail: I worked as a freelancer on the side for five years before going full-time. Thank goodness. There was a time early (dot com blah) on when I thought freelancing was not going to work out. I decided to give it one more chance, e-mailed a bunch of friends and colleagues, and revived my business.

9. Clean up your communications: This says to never use IM to contact clients. Maybe if I weren’t deaf, I’d agree — but the relay is worse than IM. I give my clients a choice (along with an explanation of the relay).

10. Be ready to face a bad attitude: I’ve been blessed that I’ve been able to address any problems head on and move on. It’s easier than dealing with problems in the corporate world.

11. Plan ahead: I don’t get carried away with planning. Mainly, I just keep looking for new opportunities and not take my current ones for granted.

12. Always keep crabs in your pockets (a Greek expression meaning someone is hard on spending)

13. Don’t rest on your computer: I almost always take a break so my eyes can recover from monitoritis. Usually I’ll do laundry (hey, at least, I can spend time with family when they get home) and exercise.

14. Isolate gaming: I do exactly this even though playing games and writing reviews is in my job description. I use a different computer for games instead of my main computer.

15. Organize yourself: Palm Desktop and Tungsten T3 keep me organized. I pick two or three things to check off for the day and get those done. If I don’t do that, then I’ll feel disorganized and that I can’t get anything done.

16. Disaster recovery plan: I’ve got a backup drive (separate from my computer) that holds all of my work. I back up regularly. Need to find a way to backup somewhere outside of my location, however.

17. Don’t use headphones: My urge to listen to music happens in spurts. I don’t have a problem working with headphones and now have a speak for my MP3 player. Maybe it’s different for me as someone who is deaf.

18. Apply ergonomics: Definitely. Aeron chair and foot rest.

19. Separate your R from your D: Not an issue in my business. When I write about something that needs researching, I do it when I work on the assignment.

20. Don’t be afraid to spend on software: Amen. I even upgraded from Quickbooks 2004 to QuickBooks Pro 2007 and boy, did that make a difference!

21. Don’t outsource everything: I don’t outsource anything. If I can’t handle the work (because of my load and time), I turn it down or refer someone else.

22. S.W.O.T.

23. Stop reading “Best freelancer tips” articles or just GTD: Aw, shucks, too late.

24. Don’t kill yourself or feel guilty if you can’t do all of the above. Picking up new habits takes time.

Gamezebo has published my first game review for its mega-content site. Mystery P.I.: The Lottery Ticket joins the crowded hidden object genre. Pro hidden object seekers will find this one challenging and absorbing. The game doesn’t have anything spectacular about it, but offers a good quality game in the genre.

Fans of Brain Age and Big Brain Academy (personally, I like this one better) can expect more activities in Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day, which comes out on August 20, 2007. The game comes with 17 new activities for exercising your brain. The new edition also lets you keep four save files on one game card. It also comes with game sharing for competing in a picture-drawing quiz or an acrostic challenge with others. The DS Download Play allows you to send a demo to others or compete against 16 players in one of four modes.

Trapped in a magical puzzle book, the adventurous Titus needs your help to release him from his spell. To do this, you must solve the tricky puzzles of Azada. Crack the series of puzzles and fill in the missing pages of the enchanted book to free Titus from his prison.

An Azada Strategy Guide is available.

Download the game from your favorite site

• Amazon
• Big Fish Games

Jakob Nielsen’s latest diatribe attempts to prove that it’s better to writer articles, not blog postings in a blog. I’ve got mixed feelings about this.

My blog is over seven years old, but I broke it into two parts a few years ago. The two parts being: Blog and Features. I put longer articles with a lasting value in the features and everything else in the blog section. I came across this idea from surfing many blogs one winter. I discovered that the longer posts drove me away more than retained me.

I thought splitting the content into two sections would make a good compromise. When I first started this, I used to write a short intro in the blog about the newest feature. So those who had the time and interest could read it otherwise they move on. But then came the redesign. Now a short summary of the latest entries in both the blog and features appears on the home page. I like it that way, but it makes it difficult to do an intro. Wouldn’t it look silly for the intro and feature of the same story to appear on the home page at the same time?

Nothing I can do about that. I do have three feeds: one for blog, one for features and one for both. But what if those reading the blog feeds don’t realize a feature feed exists? The chances of vice versa are slim because the blog came long before the feature. Hmm… maybe I need to explain this somewhere in the Web site section of the About page.

There are so many blogs out there — if bloggers want our attention, wouldn’t shorter be better since it gives us more time to explore more blogs? This isn’t to say that a blog entry should never be long — a business that wants to share its opinion or expertise may need to do that through an article. Perhaps, articles can be an occasional feature instead of a daily thing? Or the business could create a separate section for articles. Personally, I don’t like to link to blogs from the Best of Web articles section in the e-mail newsletters. But if a site that has an articles section, I’ll link to it (if the article is good enough, of course). What do you think about articles vs. blog posts?

Think Before You SEND is a Web site based on the book, Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home. The site collects stories of the worst e-mails sent.

I’ve had a few minor embarrassments from sending an e-mail to the wrong person who has the same first name as the right person. My e-mail client alphabetizes my contacts by first name, so if I enter “Cindy,” the first one that appears may not be the one I mean to e-mail. Thankfully, the e-mails either wouldn’t make sense to the wrong person or just had basic conversation with nothing weird or embarrassing.

Four rules for sending e-mails:

1. Never send an angry e-mail. Cool down. Save it as a draft. Revisit later. Remember the recipient may interpret emotional e-mails differently.

2. Leave the To: box blank to avoid accidentally sending the e-mail to the person before you finish it or review it.

3. Are you sure you should Reply All?

4. Do you need to CC (carbon copy) all those people?

Update: Not long after I posted this, I discover the authors’ manifesto on when NOT to send an e-mail appears on ChangeThis.

Adam Darowski says that his blog helped him land his current job and Joshua Porter of Bokardo simulated a great discussion about blogs as a resume. From the beginning (June 1, 2000), I’ve posted my blog knowing that a future boss or client could read it. This blog was originally a personal blog since I didn’t have my own business yet — just a couple of writing assignments.

Of course, when I look back at those old posts — I wince. But I won’t delete them or change them. They’ve been on the Internet for too long. The only time I ever change a post is when I catch a typo or grammar error. Occasionally, I find broken links — but I don’t delete all of them because it would make the post confusing if I do.

What about kids who start blogging or MySpace-types of pages? Is it fair to use their page against them? Can’t kids be kids? Here’s a story of someone who didn’t get a degree due to a MySpace profile. My daughter uses MySpace and keeps it clean — thankfully. It has typical kid comments and photos (nothing suggestive). I’ve talked to her about how her personal pages reflect on her. What else can I do? She’s only in middle school and shouldn’t have to worry about college just yet.

Someone I know is anxious to find another job, but he doesn’t have a blog and isn’t interested in starting one. Should everyone have a blog? I don’t think so. The Web can still become the new resume as many of us have profiles on social networking sites like LinkedIn, Ryze, and MySpace.

Anyone in the Dallas area looking for an IT manager or project manager that has people skills — please contact me. I’ve got the person for you. Why is he anxious? Simply because the company promised he’d gain more responsibilities. Instead it moved his responsibilities to the mother ship, so he’s stuck doing tasks more for an entry-level tech. Furthermore, the manager won’t hired the much needed two staffers leaving him to do the job of three people. The data center desperately needs newer and additional hardware, but the company won’t spend the money leaving him to do a lot of reactive work instead of proactive.

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