Freelance Writing Blog

3 Tools for More Productive and Organized Writing

Today marks the start of my usual year-end vacation, meaning I won’t be around much until the New Year (January 4th in this case). Before taking these yearly breaks I spend a lot of time evaluating my previous year. It’s how I set goals for the next year, but it’s also when I look at the tools and processes I’ve been using to decide what

Updates on the All Freelance Writing Podcast

Update: I’ve decided to hold off on the podcast’s relaunch until early in the New Year so it wouldn’t go through a start-stop phase right away due to my already-scheduled vacation time in November and December. It will return in January.   If you were a regular listener of the All Freelance Writing podcast, you’ve probably noticed that the show has been on hiatus for a

Calculate Your Ideal Freelance Writing Rates (and Give Yourself a Raise)

The freelance writing rate calculator here at All Freelance Writing was designed to help freelancers calculate their base rates. These would be the minimum rates you need to charge to cover the bare basics. Then you would figure out a premium based on your credentials and experience. There’s another way you can use this free tool however. And it can help you reach your ideal

Mindly: A Simple, Beautiful Mind Mapping App

I’ve always loved the concept of mind mapping, but it’s not something I’ve done regularly. It’s something I’d prefer to use software for rather than one of my white boards but, quite frankly, I found every solution I came across to be ugly. Petty, I know, but if I’ll be looking at an organizational tool a lot, I prefer it to be clean and visually

Find an Extra Hour Every Day With a 5-Minute List

There are days when 24 hours just isn’t enough. I’m sure you’ve experienced at least a few of those. Wouldn’t it be great if you could find an extra hour without having to sacrifice sleep or something else you love to do? Finding that extra hour a day might be easier than  you think. The trick? Create a “5-minute list.” What is a 5-Minute List? Your 5-minute

Cut Down on Wrist Pain with a Vertical Mouse

When I share resources for writers here, they’re usually along the lines of e-books or other downloads. But today I want to recommend something different — a new mouse that’s ideal for those long hours we writers can spend in front of our computers. More specifically, let’s look at vertical mice. I didn’t even know what a vertical mouse was until Anne Wayman mentioned them

Quick Tip for Bloggers: Use Notepad ++

I was contacted several days ago by a fellow freelance writer and blogger. He was having problems on his WordPress site where his theme was no longer compatible with the WordPress core. It caused elements of his site to disappear. Another colleague pointed him in my direction, and thankfully I was able to find a patch. The problem? The patch was for a different version of

No. You Don’t Have to “Write Every Day.”

There’s one kind of blog post I dread seeing in my feed reader. They’re the blog posts that sport headlines like “The ONE Thing You Need to do to Become a Successful Writer” or “The Best Writing Advice You’ll Ever Get.” Why do I dread these kinds of posts? Well, other than the obnoxiously gimmicky clickbait titles they tend to use, I usually know what

5 Free Scrivener Templates

If you’ve been following this blog for a while you might have seen some of my free Scrivener templates. Unfortunately those are a bit scattered throughout the blog, and I’ve had a couple of folks this week email me trying to find one of my blogging templates and another reader asked for recommendations about mystery templates without realizing I’d released one here. So I thought

Quick Tip: Write Blog Posts Faster with Formatting Shortcuts

WordPress 4.3 was recently released, and if you haven’t upgraded yet you should. It has a great new feature for writers, helping you write blog posts faster while spending less time formatting your content. When we talked about using Scrivener for blogging, I shared a free Markdown cheat sheet with you. Markdown lets you use simple formatting shortcuts as you type so you don’t have

Free Goal & Task Tracker Worksheet

It’s August. Seriously. When did that happen? Normally by now I’ve completed a detailed mid-year evaluation and posted my quarterly check-in on the blog. Whoops! Actually, it was less a simple oversight and more an issue of reorganization. By mid-July, I knew a few things weren’t working out as planned, so I decided to make some changes. The usual mid-year check-in was scrapped. It was a dud

Keep Your Inbox Cleaner with This Quick Tip

Do you ever start work on Monday mornings feeling suffocated by your email inbox? That’s how I felt yesterday morning. I receive a lot of email every day, including on the weekends. But this weekend I received a couple thousand extras beyond my norm, and I never poked my head in to stay on top of it (not that I should on my days off). While

Quick Tip: Look Beyond Your Bubble for Freelance Writing Advice

Last week Paula Hendrickson wrote a great guest post for Lori Widmer’s blog on vetting writing experts. This topic is near and dear to my heart because I’ve had more new writers come to me looking for help after taking horrible advice from pseudo experts than I can count. I feel for those writers. It’s easy to get sucked in because some of these charlatans are masters

Review of The Freelancer Planner

Not long ago I was contacted by Michelle Nickolaisen, asking if I’d like to review The Freelancer Planner. Of course I said “yes.” Planners? Organization? Schedules? She clearly knew the way to this freelancer’s heart. Total organization junkie over here. Michelle sent over a review copy of the downloadable version of her planner. This is a six-page .pdf planner (minus the cover page) that you can print

Quick Tip: Determine Your “Perfect Day”

Do you know what your “perfect day” looks like? Those are the days when you achieve far more than you might normally expect, where you feel good and rested but still productive. They’re the days that don’t leave you feeling drained. They’re the days that leave you wanting more. I know what my “perfect day” looks like because I’ve lived it plenty of times. And

The Perils (and Benefits) of Reviewing Indie Fiction

I think most people by nature are polite. Maybe more so with authors, because we’ve had our hearts ripped out and stomped on repeatedly by literary agents and publishers. And maybe there’s some unwritten code I don’t know about, that says if you’re an author and you’re reviewing someone else’s work, you have to give them five stars and a glowing review. If that’s the

Is Grammarly a Good Tool for Professional Writers?

Not long ago I published a review of AutoCrit, a self-editing tool designed for authors of fiction. I also found it helpful for nonfiction work such as blog posts. Shortly after reviewing AutoCrit, I was contacted by a rep for Grammarly, another online editing tool for writers which serves as both a spelling and grammar checker. The kind folks at Grammarly set up a test

The All Freelance Writing Podcast Q&A Special

Apologies for the delay in this episode of the All Freelance Writing Podcast. I ran into some recording difficulties last week. But that will not affect the schedule for our next episode, which will go out Friday of next week. This week’s episode is a Q&A special — the first general writers’ Q&A special, although I’ve done one specific to bloggers in the past. I

Quick Tip: Sort and Filter for Easier Email Management

A frequent productivity complaint of writers is that social media can become a big distraction from their writing. That hasn’t been an issue for me recently. But something else has: email. Today is my first day back to work after about a week off. It wasn’t planned time off. I simply decided to take some personal time, after clearing up client projects early. Normally when

8 Blog Post Ideas to Fall Back On

Do you ever get blogger’s block – feeling like you’ve already blogged about everything in your niche and you can’t come up with new blog post ideas? I do. I’d bet most bloggers do from time to time. No matter how much you’ve written, you probably haven’t really tapped your niche, even if it’s a narrow one. So when these dry spells happen, how can

3 Ways to Torpedo Your Blogger Outreach Efforts (Infographic)

Earlier this week, I went off on Elance / Upwork for their BS blogger outreach efforts that targeted me and several other colleagues (I’ve heard from at least six others now who were a part of this supposed “handful” of targeted blogs). In that post, I shared a simple infographic highlighting the three big mistakes Upwork made, in the hopes that other businesses would see

Ways Bloggers Can Minimize the Impact of Being on Skeazy Pitch Lists (Podcast)

  The latest episode of the All Freelance Writing Podcast is now live. As promised in my last post’s comments, it includes an extension of the Elance / Upwork fiasco with their lame blogger relations attempt. Then I move on to offer a few tips to bloggers who are tired of finding themselves on these lists. Also in this episode: Is there really a difference

Are Freelance Industry Bloggers Stupid? Upwork Seems to Think So

It’s days like these I wish I hadn’t retired Naked PR. If you don’t already know, I used to own a small PR firm, where I was an early specialist in online public relations and social media consulting (before everyone under the sun started thinking they were qualified to call themselves that). Naked PR was my blog where I had a tendency to say things

A Writers Worth Month Round-up

Did you miss any of last month’s Writers Worth Month posts over on Lori Widmer’s Words on the Page blog? No worries. You can find links to all posts in the series below. Check out Lori’s site in general. She offers great advice to newer writers all year long. I’m a particular fan of her “This Job, Not That Job” series where she highlights lousy

2 Years to a Book [InfoGraphic]

In this week’s “short share,” we have a two-year book writing plan from HuntersWritings.com. While two years might be an unnecessarily long time for many indie authors these days, I think it’s a great plan for new authors — especially those trying to write their first book alongside a traditional day job. If you find yourself with limited time to write, but you’d like to

How Do You Motivate Yourself to Write?

It doesn’t matter how experienced of a writer you are. You’re bound to feel unmotivated every now and then. Sometimes you can plow through these periods. But at other times you’ll need to find ways to get excited about your projects again. I’m like any other writer in this regard. I have good days and bad days. Sometimes a lack of motivation is a result

5 Useful Scrivener Keyboard Shortcuts for Writers

Scrivener is a wonderful tool for writers. You can use it to write a novel or nonfiction book. You can use it to format your writing as an e-book. You can even use Scrivener for blogging. That said, Scrivener can also be a complicated tool to use. I doubt I even know half of what it can do. It’s one of those tools that you

Quick Tip: White Label WordPress for Client Installations

Freelance writers often take on complementary services. For example, a web content writer might handle social media marketing for the content they write. Freelance bloggers might be asked to step in and assist a client even before they have a blog set up. If you’re able to quickly set up WordPress for your clients, charging them for the service might make a lot of sense. But if

Relax Melodies – An Awesome Audio App for Writers

This might sound strange. But today I want to recommend an audio app — more specifically a sleep audio app — to writers. It’s called Relax Melodies, and it’s available on both Android and iOS devices. I’ve been struggling with insomnia recently, working and sleeping rather odd hours. Sleep has been difficult to come by lately, but when I do sleep, this app usually plays a

Quick Tip: Your Freelance Writer Website is for Clients, Not You

When a client visits your professional website, are they getting the information they want and need? Are benefits of hiring you, as opposed to your competition, clear? Do they leave with enough information to make a hiring decision, or at least feel inclined to contact you? An effective freelance writer website should do those things. Does yours? I previously announced I’m in the process of