Archive for the "Doing the work" category

Nelson recently posted his ultimate secret for success in freelancing.  He nailed it.  If you haven’t read it yet, you can view it here. Nelson got it down to a single word, “determination”.  It got me thinking about what one concept would I recommend to freelancers as the single most important element of success.  My [...]

Time is one of those things you just can’t get away from.  It just keeps going at one second per second and never stops.  Many of us don’t even think about it until we have a massive project due the next day and we haven’t even started.  It’s not a problem for people with traditional [...]

It’s happened to me, it’s happened to you, it’s happened to all of us.  You apply for a job opening, get the interview and then after what feels like some good solid communication you discover the job went to someone else. Well, you could do some yelling and screaming and run about the house tearing [...]

I haven’t posted here in a while. A long while. There’s one reason why: I went into full shutdown from freelance writer burn-out. I couldn’t even log into oDesk without getting a sick feeling in my stomach. The danger of destroying yourself from overworking is very real, and as part of my personal therapy in [...]

Here’s a writing niche I hope takes off: Spoofs. A spoof is an article or webpage you write as a satire, mimicking some otherwise serious subject. I didn’t even know there was a demand for this until someone asked if I could write ‘humor’. Turns out I can. My first effort, Math Kills was a [...]

In this series, I’ve been trying to encourage providers of writing services to try editing. In this post I hope to illustrate the process with an example. Over the transom. I still hear the ‘plonk’. Even though it’s a virtual manuscript hitting my in-box, I hear the sound of a ream of paper falling solidly [...]

If you are still nervous about taking on editing/proofing jobs (and you haven’t yet taken the oDesk test) here’s a resource for you: www.newsu.org. You can find free courses there- both general writing and one called “Cleaning Your Copy” which runs through the material found on the oDesk test. There is also a practice quiz [...]

Changes isn’t just a David Bowie song. Not one of us hasn’t had to make one or more changes to a project before a buyer would accept it.  It happens, sometimes it’s because the buyer was vague about what they wanted, sometimes it’s because they change their mind part way through, and sometimes it’s because [...]

In my first post, I talked about why you should consider editing and the general skills needed. This post is about what you are likely to see. Native speakers Native speakers of English are prone to different problems than foreign speakers. Here’s an example of something I edited that had already been purchased for an [...]

The Need I’ve noticed a trend on oDesk and other contract writing sites. The trend is to hire as cheaply as possible and then either the buyer edits the material into something usable or hires someone else to do it. (And when they get someone else to take a second look, you can bet the [...]