Hello and WTH?

Another Freelance Writing Blog? You’ve GOT to be Kidding Me!

Is there a need for yet another blog full of freelance writing advice? When there are blogs like Lori Widmer’s Words on the Page, Jenn Mattern’s Kiss My Biz, and Tara Lynne Groth’s Write Naked!, Angela Hoy’s Writers Weekly, Cathy Miller’s Simply Stated Business, Sharon Hurley Hall, and Peter Bowerman’s Well-Fed Writer? I could easily list another dozen terrific sites.

So, the short answer is “Hell, no!”

But I’m doing it anyway.

Hey, look, if you enjoy watching the way the creative sausages are made, hop on over to my five-days-a-week blog, Ink in My Coffee. You can follow my fiction, plays, radio work, screenplays, etc. from concept through publication or production. You can follow the way the writing affects my life, and the life affects my writing and how I try (and sometimes fail) to keep them in balance. You can follow the way I don’t believe any of us can be apolitical at this juncture in our history.

So what the heck is going on here?

Something a little different.

Ink-Dipped Advice is geared to both clients who want to hire a writer (even if the client decides not to hire me) and to writers who want to find clients, but don’t want to get trapped in many of the freelance prisons we build for ourselves.

Why am I doing this?

Because, as much as I adore the above-listed bloggers, respect what they’ve achieved, go to them for advice – I do things differently.

My background is not traditional business – I spent the bulk of my life in theatre. That has strengthened my marketing writing and opened out my abilities in a huge way. I have an international, ever-growing client base, and can and do a wide range writing on an even wider range of topics. Browse the rest of the website and you’ll see.

When you seek out writing advice, you will hear that you HAVE to have a niche. That you won’t earn any money, or worse, only have the option to be a content mill writer if you don’t niche.

For me, that is complete and utter B.S.

Hey, if there’s a single topic you love and want to focus on, if you WANT to niche – go for it. Write your passions. Your writing will be better for it, provided you put in the work to develop your craft.

But I am the Anti-Niche, or, as I prefer to call it a Renaissance Writer. And it works for me.

I became a writer because I find the world an interesting, fascinating place. I don’t want to lead a single life. I want to lead many lives. Writing allows me to follow anything that interests me, learn about it, become it, and earn my living at it.

Saying “no” to poorly paid work was a hard lesson, but the best lesson I’ve ever learned. Do I negotiate? To a point. But I go into my meetings knowing my negotiation range. If it’s below my rate, I don’t do it. The potential client goes on to find someone who will work for that rate, and I find a client who pays me my rate. We’re both happy. We both find the matches that work best for us.

I take on clients whose passions, work, interests, and missions intrigue and engage me. Then, I expand on their message, I help them refine it, expand it, and communicate it in a way that engages and enlarges their audience. Which allows them to make more money.

This isn’t THE WAY to do things. It’s ONE way. The way that works for me.

Here, I will share what I’ve tried, and how it’s worked, or not worked. I’m not telling tales out of school on my clients. A great deal of my work, especially the ghostwritten work, is confidential. I have no intention of breaking my word to my clients.

But it might be interesting, for individuals on both sides of the table, to see different ways of working. To see the creative process. Some clients don’t care about the writer’s creative process. Some writers don’t care what the clients are going through unless it affects their piece directly. But maybe if each side of the table understood the other a bit more closely, it would be easier to find the right match, and to work with good people whose process is very different.

Something just might work for you.

Or it might reinforce what doesn’t work for you, and remind you that you’re happier in the choices you’ve made.

But they’re YOUR choices, and that matters.

For the moment, Wednesday is my designated day for this blog. Join me on the adventure!