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Want to go from writing wannabe to writing whiz? I help you do that through courses, coaching and DFY copy. Learn to write for a living, self-publish or grow your biz here.
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a few ways New Leaf Writing can help you
It’s like the hairdresser that goes out of business because she doesn’t have time to work with paying clients because she’s too busy doing her sister’s kids hair in her garage.
Once you start giving your editing services away to one person, suddenly everyone in the neighborhood finds out, and pretty soon you’re editing the Christmas letter of Tom’s sister’s cousin with the twitchy eye.
Respect your craft.
Don’t do edit for free.
If you fail frequently and still write, you learn to:
Seriously, you guys. Failure has made me the writer I am today, and I could never wish it away in a million years.
So next time you feel the urge to hide that failure, remember these benefits and that failure is the secret to writing well. Remember that my client landed his dream job by flaunting that failure. (Or at least, by failing to hide it. Ha.)
As a new freelancer, you’re most likely thinking about freelance writing jobs to get, not freelance writing jobs to avoid.
Well, first of all, good for you. You’ve got hustle.
Second of all, you need to rethink your approach.
If all you have is a get, get, get mentality, then you’ll quickly find yourself doing a bunch of work you don’t want to do … and not being properly paid for it. I want to save you from that. To which end, I’ve provided a list below of the freelance writing jobs you should avoid unless you’re absolutely sure you want them.
Hard work is turtles all the way down.
Now, if you’re not familiar with this expression, it refers to the ancient idea that the world is supported on the back of a turtle, which is in turn supported by a larger turtle, under which is a larger turtle, which is standing on a larger (and presumably Schwarzenegger-strong at this point) turtle, and so on. Turtles all the way down, man.
Again, work is a lot like that.
That annoying-but-entrepreneurially-necessary chore you did today depending on a skill set or knowledge bank you built yesterday, or last week or two years ago or in high school. That particular skill set was founded on other skill sets, which rest on still others.
So you want to write, but you’re not sure how to start the habit. No matter what you, it seems you can never develop a writing practice that actually sticks.
Duty calls. Work exhausts you. Kids and meals and Netflix all make Sitting Down and Doing the Thing sound so hard.
I get it. I’ve been there. And before I actually decided to start a writing practice, I was always flailing, hoping to find time but never doing it … because I wasn’t making it.
Oh, and before you conclude it was easy for me because I write full-time, know that even after I accomplished that, it was extremely difficult for me to make time for aspirational writing. So again, I do know what you’re going through.
That said, here’s how I made time for my fiction and nonfiction books, and how I make sure to write something for myself every single day.
So you’re a copywriter hopeful – or already working in the field – and you’re not quite sure where to go from here. You want more business, and you want to enjoy your work more. But sometimes things feel a little scattered, you feel all over the place, you have to do too much research.
You may not even feel like you know what you’re doing.
And that’s okay, because we all feel like we have no idea what the hell we’re doing … like, all the time. And yesterday. And this morning. And next Tuesday. And so on.
But there is a way to make your copywriting career feel a bit less scattered, and that’s to niche down.
It seems counterintuitive, but it really really works. Seriously, it’s saved my business and led to some of the most entertaining gigs of my life. Niching = smart copywriting.
Book reviews are the lifeblood of the publishing industry. Without people saying nice things about a book, it’s just not going to do very well, no matter how much marketing goes into selling that book.
As such, publishers and authors are constantly looking for reviewers, and people routinely search for reviews before they choose whether or not to buy a new release … or an old one.
With so much money flowing into the system, and with writing being one of the most obvious (but not the only) medium for a book review, it pays to know how to write one.
If you’re a writer, that is. But we’re all writers here.
If not, get out.
Okay, j/k. I still like you. Nevertheless, the following post will be most useful to two kinds of people: a) those who love to read books and want a never-ending supply of freebies they can devour and then post on their blogs, or b) those who write reviews for clients to post on their websites, with the goal of building authority in their niche and generally looking like a cultured smartypants.
I used to write a lot of book reviews, back when I had a blog dedicated to that. Once I decided to read mostly for pleasure, I took the blog down (though I still maintain an Instagram account dedicated to the craft).
Point being: I know a thing of two about ze reviewing of ze books. Since it’s such a lucrative service to offer to clients, I thought I’d put up a quickie here to guide first-timers through your first review, and old-timers towards a better product.