Want a way to truly get to know your characters? Pick a Myers-Briggs personality for them.

Take the anxiety out of writing — especially freelance writing, which is compounded by having to create great work for others — by simply pounding out a shitty first draft.

I’ve been a long-time fan of Colson Whitehead, and recently read the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Nickel Boys, his newest novel. Read more about it, some of his other works that I love, and the unfortunate significance of reading The Nickel Boys this week.

I recently heard that there are some freelancers who just set up their profile on Upwork and wait for clients to come to them, or who only send out one pitch a week. As someone who built a website based on getting my presence and my value out into the world, I’m learning how to increasing my efforts at visibility to land more clients — and you should too.

I reread Leading Men last week for a book club, and it was one of my favorite novels of 2019. Read about what a beautiful, stylistically written book it is, full of longing and desire.

I’m a writer, so my outlook on reality is a bit skewed, in that one part of me lives life while the writer part of me stands back and processes it. I’ve also been working on another project about storytelling, and in taking a closer look at the Hero’s Journey, the classic framework for storytelling, I realized that we fit right in.

Yes, I’m among the many who have ditched the 9-5 and gone freelance. While you could call me a business copywriter, my first love is fiction, and I identify first and foremost as a fiction writer. Here are a few things I’ve learned in my recent shift to freelance as a fiction writer.

Many years ago I took a playwriting class that consisted in part of discussing great drama and reading aloud our own pieces, but mostly consisted of our professor giving us pep talks on the literary life. “No one’s going to care if you stop writing,” he declared, explaining how since family and friends didn’t understand what we did, no one would be concerned if we took a different route. “You have to do it for you.”

Another truth he upheld was, “There is no Muse.”