Marketing Monday: The Hero's Journey
“Once upon a time…” A great storytelling framework for your writing is the Hero’s Journey. Let’s go over its steps, and where you’ll recognize it in the stories around you.
Writing Advice Wednesday: Myers-Briggs Your Characters
Want a way to truly get to know your characters? Pick a Myers-Briggs personality for them.
Marketing Monday: A Simple Story Structure to Use Today
Before we jump into the greater Hero’s Journey, here’s a simple storytelling structure you can start using today.
Writing Advice Wednesday: Shitty First Drafts Make It All Less Daunting
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.
Writing Advice Wednesday: Write in Excel
I’ve recently started using an approach to my writing that’s keeping everything much more organized, and makes the act of writing much less daunting. What is it? Writing in Excel.
The Daily Freelancer: They Won't Come to You
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.
The Daily Freelancer: How to (Really) Proofread
Proofreading isn’t just a glance through before hitting publish. It’s a lot more intricate and nuanced than that, and today I share how I go about proofreading (since I’ve been actually getting paid to do it recently!). Ultimately? All those writing mechanics should disappear to create a seamless reading experience.
The Daily Freelancer: The Ups and Downs of Writing
It was an up-and-down day, with successes and rejections. I borrow some principles from meditation and mindfulness to look at how we can rise above the emotions of being a writer.
The Daily Freelancer: When Writers Have Typos (and How to Better Proofread)
Writers aren’t perfect…but kinda have to be perfect when they write (so says I, who found a typo in my Upwork profile this past weekend). Since I’ve been going overboard on proofreading today, here are some quick tips on how to get rid of those last-minute typos.
The Daily Freelancer: Writing Should Provoke Emotions, Not Check Boxes
While SEO might be a great framework, and a way to crack the formula of Google rankings, there’s something at the core of good content that we never talk about: emotion. Today I talk about how to craft great content by focusing on writing techniques.
The Daily Freelancer: Generating Ideas
As a writer, ideas are our gas. Learn how to fill the tank with some of these suggestions.
Setting Up an Author Website on Squarespace
Authors, you know that having a website is crucial to not only getting the word out about your work, but having an authoritative online presence that people can visit. If you’re not sure how to get started, or the whole idea of website stuff makes you want to curl up in a ball — no fear. Here’s our quick guide to getting started on Squarespace.
Using the Hero’s Journey to Get Through a Pandemic
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.
Dear Writer: The Muse Is a Lie
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.”
How to Start — and Sustain — a Successful Book Club
I happen to have an amazing book club — the Brew Pub Book Club. It took some work and some luck to get it to where it is, but it’s nothing anyone couldn’t accomplish. Here’s how to do a book club right.