4 AI Writing Tools for Freelance Writers

We’ve talked about whether or not AI writing tools are coming for your job as a freelance writer. We’ve explored some of the legal and ethical AI concerns you and your clients should be aware of. Now let’s look at some examples of generative AI tools you can test right now for your freelance writing business. But first… What is Generative AI? Generative AI is

Peter Bowerman’s The Well-Fed Writer 3rd Edition – One of the Best Freelance Writing Resources is Now Even Better

‘Tis the season to launch new business ventures, evaluate your freelance career, and make plans to do even better in the New Year. So why not treat yourself to one of the long-time best, and recently updated, books that can help you do just that? I’m talking about Peter Bowerman’s The Well-Fed Writer. Earlier this year, Peter released the third edition of this essential inclusion

Review: Find Your Freelance Writing Niches from John Soares

This is a review of Find Your Freelance Writing Niches, a course from John Soares of ProductiveWriters.com. As I do in any review, I’ll share an overview with you followed by highlights, suggestions, and my overall verdict. For full disclosure, while this is not an affiliate review, John did provide me with access to the course materials for review. Let’s start by taking a look at how

3 Freelance Writing Templates & Worksheets

In the last couple of posts we talked about learning new types of freelance writing projects. And I promised I’d release a few new free downloads this month to help you with that. Today I have three of them for you. Below you’ll find links to download a free press release template, and worksheets to help you outline case studies and white papers. These are

Review of Peter Bowerman’s Well-Fed Craft

You may be familiar with Peter Bowerman from his Well-Fed Writer book or blog. For years his book has been my top recommended reading material for new freelance writers. So I was thrilled to hear he was launching a new course on freelance commercial writing called Well-Fed Craft. When Peter asked me to review Well-Fed Craft, of course I said “yes.” Is Well-Fed Craft your ticket to a profitable

NaNoWriMo 2016: Plan & Resources

NaNoWriMo 2016 is well underway. Plotters have their stories outlined. Pantsers have hit the ground running. And aspiring and experienced novelists alike have that 50k word target in their sights. Today let’s talk about the NaNoWriMo writing process — what we’re working on, how we’ve scheduled our writing time during November, and what tools and resources we use to keep us on track. NaNoWriMo 2016:

Writers Worth Month Roundup 2016

Every May, Lori Widmer runs Writers Worth Month over on the Words on the Page blog. She features a collection of guest posts, profiles of experienced freelance writers, and her own tips and insight into realizing our worth (and getting paid what we’re worth) as freelance professionals. Each year I take part in this month-long event. This year I submitted a guest post and was profiled, sharing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Free Scrivener Template: Murder Mystery Novel

My next Scrivener template is now available for download: a murder mystery novel template. This one is based on my own template that I’ve been using for my upcoming mystery series. It allows you to plan, outline, and draft your next murder mystery all in one project file. Plus, there’s a place to write up some of your promotional copy, like your book launch press

The History of the English Language [Infographic]

I’ve been meaning to kick off a new, light, post series here for a while — one where I share a bite-sized bit of actionable information, or even something that’s simply entertaining. Most of these posts will be infographics — some which I’ll create and some from third party sources that I found interesting or helpful. Here is the first I wanted to share —

What do You Want From a Scrivener Mystery Novel Template?

I’ve been working this week on the next Scrivener template in my writers’ resource collection — a mystery novel template. While it won’t be ready for release this week, I want to give you a chance to weigh in. Tell me what you want from a template. What would help you write your next mystery novel? When I was moving the first draft of a mystery novel

105 Ways to Make a Living Writing

Is your goal to finally make a living writing? Whether you’re ready to quit your day job to earn a living as a writer full-time or you’re looking to increase your existing writing income, the opportunities are practically endless. If you aren’t sure where to start, or if you’re worried that there aren’t enough potential writing gigs to go around, consider this. Just about everything

The 30 Day Marketing Challenge for Writers (Free Tracker)

The New Year is a great time to tackle a new writing challenge. So why not start with a 30 day marketing challenge? The goal of this challenge is to do something to market your writing every day for 30 days. That could mean promoting your freelance writing services. It could mean book marketing. Or it might involve marketing your blog. Here’s a free tracker

Novel Planning Tools and Worksheets

We recently talked about preparing for NaNoWriMo during October, and I shared some of my own plans such as using the Snowflake Method for this novel’s outline. Today I’d like to share some of the best resources for helping you plan your NaNoWriMo novel (or any novel for that matter). Here are links to character planning resources and some of my favorite more general tools

Free HTML Cheat Sheet for Writers and Bloggers

For this week’s resource for writers, I’ve updated and re-released an oldie but goodie — my HTML cheat sheet for freelance writers and bloggers. The cheat sheet used to come with my now-retired e-book, The Web Writer’s Guide, which was released back in 2008. The new version will be available for free permanently in the All Freelance Writing Resources Collection. This download includes some of the most basic

Quick Tip: Customize Your Browser Start Page for Increased Productivity

As writers we frequently rely on the web in our work. We manage our own websites and blogs. We visit others to stay connected with colleagues and stay on top of industry news. We use social media tools in networking and marketing. And sometimes the sheer number of websites we need to visit on a regular basis can get overwhelming. Fortunately there’s a simple trick

Free Action Plan Template for Writers and Bloggers

For this week’s free resource for writers, I’m giving you an action plan template loosely based on my own action plan format (though mine are usually scribbled out on 5×8″ index cards). Here’s a bit of background on what an action plan is and how you can use this template. What is an Action Plan? We talk a lot about setting and reaching your goals

7 Time Management Tools for Freelance Writers

As a freelance writer do you ever feel like you aren’t working to your full potential — that you could get more work done if you could just eliminate some distractions and improve your productivity a bit? Fortunately there are plenty of time management tools that can help you do that. Today I’d like to share some of my favorite types of time management tools

Recommended Resource: NameSilo for Domain Registrations

If you’ve been a long-time reader, you probably know I run a lot of websites. And you might have seen me mention that GoDaddy was my registrar of choice (or at least the one I used and recommended). For years, GoDaddy had the best deals. While that might not matter much if you only need to register a few domains at a time, the savings

Get Your Free Author Website Content Checklist

Each Wednesday I try to release a new resource or highlight something worth recommending to you. While I was off most of last week, I didn’t put something up, and I’m making up for it with two freebies this week. The first is a simple downloadable content idea checklist for your author website and blog. About the Author Website Content Checklist You don’t have to

Free Scrivener Case Study Template

Yesterday I announced a new Tuesday Quick Tips series for the blog. Today marks the start of another series — Wednesday Resources. Every Wednesday (at least through the test period in June), I’ll either release a new resource for All Freelance Writing readers or I’ll promote a resource I highly recommend. Through June I already have new resources lined up every week though. . That

Free Scrivener White Paper Template

I mentioned previously that I was having a difficult time finding Scrivener templates for freelance writers. Most are focused on writing books. I already released two free templates that will help you use Scrivener for blogging — one for managing a single blog and one for managing multiple blogs. Today I’m releasing my first template for common freelance writing projects — a white paper template.

Free Scrivener Template for Managing Multiple Blogs

Recently I wrote about my decision to move to Scrivener for blogging. I also released a free scrivener template for bloggers that allows you to easily manage a single blog as its own project. But personally, I use Scrivener to manage multiple blogs, and I manage them all from a single project file so I can see all of my blogs’ content in one place.