Professional writer
If, like me, you enjoy writing and you would like to earn money from it, should you go down the freelance writing route or write books, or both? In the first part of this two-part series I looked at the advantages and disadvantages of freelancing, ie writing articles for newspapers and magazines. In this part, I consider the advantages and disadvantages of authoring, ie writing books.
Read More
If, like me, you enjoy writing and you would like to earn money from it, should you go down the freelance writing route or write books, or both?
From my experience, here are the pros and cons of freelancing.
Pencil, by Terry Freedman
Just as with painting and decorating, it’s all in the preparation. This is my method of writing articles fairly quickly.
Read MoreTerry’s top tips for writing professional book reviews.
Read MoreReading this book made me reflect on the “tiny noticeable things” that a writer might do to make a magazine editor’s life easier.
Read More
The Raygor reading level graph
What is readable by a particular age group today may not be readable by that same age group tomorrow.
Read MoreObserve any specialist, and they know exactly which tool they need for a particular job. Writers, too, should know what tools they need, and how to use them.
Read More
Proofreading, by Terry Freedman
Those people who implore us to always have someone else proofread a piece of writing are, annoyingly, completely correct.
Read MoreYou might think that recording an interview, and then transcribing it using an app like Otter, would be much faster than writing everything down at the time.
Read More
Blogger, by Terry Freedman
If you're going to blog, please don't disrespect your reader by publishing non-proofed copy, verbose (aka pompous) writing, gratuitous swearing, incorrect words and other horrors that could easily be avoided.
Read More
hazardous area by Terry Freedman
Technical writing may not sound like the most exciting thing in the world, but (a) there’s a great need for it and (b) a huge degree of satisfaction is gained from writing user manuals that ordinary mortals can understand.
Read More
Steps, by Terry Freedman
Different people approach articles in different ways. I think it would be rather presumptuous of me to lay down the correct order of doing things. Therefore, this is a checklist of things to do.
Read More
On this day, by Terry Freedman
Imagine being so successful as a writer that the main problems you have are managing the workload and managing the finances.
Read MoreWe don’t say, “Nice factory you’ve built up there, but it’s unfair that you get to keep it for more than a few years, and even if you do, you can’t pass it on in your will.” Who would bother investing their own time and money in the enterprise if they thought that would be the outcome?
Read More
"Brexit font and UK flag (CC0, public domain)" by swissbert is marked with CC0 1.0
Here are two useful articles about what the Brexit deal might mean for writers.
Read More
Something ain't right, by Terry Freedman
Gosh, I thought. I’m going to have to think long and hard about this….
Read More
Pencil, by Terry Freedman
At the risk of stating the obvious or, worse, being tautological, I think the mark of a professional writer is that he or she behaves professionally. What might professional behaviour look like?
Read More
a Writer's diary, by Terry Freedman
In the past I have tried giving copious guidelines to would-be contributors, or stating that the preferred document type is plain text. People did take notice of the guidelines, but the wordprocessor didn’t.
Read More
a Writer's diary, by Terry Freedman
I’m rich! Well, OK, not rich exactly, but getting there. It can only be a matter of time before I am lying in a hammock somewhere dictating my next bestseller.
Read More
a Writer's diary, by Terry Freedman
I don’t usually write short stories, but today I managed to think about, write (in my head, again) and then actually write a work of fiction which will fit nicely into a free newsletter I publish.
Read More
