Three principles for not being intimidated by something completely new — My dad was a true renaissance man. He was an accomplished electrical engineer with several groundbreaking inventions, a professionally trained opera singer, a polyglot who taught himself English and Italian, and so on. …

It’s not too late to build a successful freelancing business, even if it sometimes feels like everyone around you is a freelancer and a competitor. — It’s always a good day when I have a chance to go down a rabbit hole to research something completely random, and learn something new. But when I’m contemplating embarking on a new project, research stops being fun and has a way of ratcheting up the stress. It shows me…

A thought experiment about the many different ways to achieve a goal — Let’s stipulate that trees are good for the environment and planting trees is a critical component of any strategy to save the planet from climate change (algae may actually be better, but that’s a post for another day). Even if trees weren’t superheroes in the battle against carbon emissions, they…

Turns out, 2 minutes is a huge block of time when you need to be productive — We all have special talents, and mine is wasting time. I often spend way too much time in meditative daydreaming over a cup of coffee gone cold. If there are 10 or 15 minutes between appointments, they are magically frittered away. An hour can go by as I wander around…

Here’s why you should stretch beyond your writing comfort zone — and how to do it well. — If you’re a content creator, I’m sure you’ve stumbled on the advice to write what you know. There is much to be said for this advice. With the ability to describe authentic details comes the fluency you need to provide a richer picture of your subject matter. …

Here’s why the perfect freelancing niche on paper may be perfectly wrong in reality. — If you’re like me, a freelance writer who loves to travel, trying to break into travel writing, seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it? When you do the math, it’s beyond tempting. Why should you be traveling on your dime when you could travel on someone else’s dime AND get paid…

Nos. 2 and 3 may surprise you. — I’m a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of person. I wrote a whole novel without an outline. I go on trips abroad without a detailed itinerary. And I started my freelance business without a roadmap, either. I became a freelance writer because a law firm approached me to rewrite their website, and I…

And the better alternatives that align your interests with your client’s — Recently, a potential client approached me for a ghostwriting project. One of his first questions was, “how much do you charge per word?” It may seem like a reasonable question because so many freelance writers choose to use a per-word rate for their fee. But unless you’re selling content by…

Better pay is just one reason to consider this area of freelance writing. — I stumbled into ghostwriting when a client asked if I’d be willing to write in her voice, without credit, and offered me a lot of money to do it. I’ve since noticed that most other ghostwriters have a similar story about the happy accidents that led to their ghostwriting journeys. …