Category Archives: Rules of Profitable Writing

Writer-Entrepreneur: Your Mission Statement

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You’ve heard of mission statements. Most of you know what they are. In case you don’t, Entrepreneur.com’s Business Encyclopedia does:

A mission statement defines what an organization is,           why it exists, its reason for being. 

Though this is what a mission statement should be, most businesses actually draft a mission statement that consists of meaningless marketing tripe.

Nike: To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world.

Pizza Hut: We take pride in making a perfect pizza and providing courteous and helpful service on time all the time. Every customer says, “I’ll be back!”

Apple: Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.

Every business needs a mission statement — including your business as a freelance writer. But please, please, please, don’t make your mission statement a list of marketing hype and impossible promises. “Perfect pizza?” “Innovation in every athlete?” Impossible dreams are nice for singing about, but make bad business plans.

Instead, your mission statement should be a brief and inspiring reminder of why you’re writing instead of watching movies on Netflix or working at the local high school. It should be concrete, simple, and powerful for pushing your personal motivational buttons.

For what it’s worth, here’s mine:

To afford what my family needs and serve my personal values while working from home with abundant time for my wife, children and friends.

Nothing impossible in there. Nothing meaningless, or intended to trick consumers or customers into liking me better. Just honest words about what’s important to me, and why freelance writing helps me achieve those important things.

So what’s your mission statement? If you don’t have one, what would it be? Leave comments. I’m eager to hear.

 

Writer Entrepreneur: Lifestyle Design Part 2

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In part one of this sequence I talked about what I wanted to be when I grew up, and how that didn’t work with who I wanted to be — and how writing allows me to be that who while doing something a rather enjoy.

In this sequence, we’ll look at 6 tools, techniques and considerations you can use to turn a freelance career into the life you want.

1. Start at the Top

Covey said it best: “Begin with the end in mind.” You can’t design your perfect lifestyle if you don’t know what it looks like. Start with how much money you want to make, how many hours you want to work while making it, and what opportunities and experiences you want out of your life. Write it down and reference it often.

2. Work the Numbers

Freelancing means working sales, and sales means taking lots of swings while getting only a few hits. Especially early in your career, you’ll need to apply to hundreds of gigs every month to get the assignments you need to make your dreams happen. At this stage, I still send out 5 applications every day and two proposals for magazine articles every week. The more you ask for work, the more work you’ll get.

3. Take Time Off

Freelancing makes it tempting to work all the time, but you’ll have your best ideas and do your best work immediately after a vacation. Give yourself at least one day every week to “unplug” from work, and take plenty of long weekends and longer vacations. Travel. Volunteer at your kids’ school. Owning your time is one of the greatest benefits of freelancing. Not taking advantage makes all the extra work less worth it.

4. Design Your Work Day

Don’t let your time own you by forcing you to react to emergencies all day every day. Schedule your work around your natural rhythms and the activities you enjoy. Work with your family so they respect your work time and are available during your play time. Keep a daily schedule, but keep it to your standards, specifications and needs. Tim Ferriss’s The Four Hour Work Week is an excellent resource for learning about lifestyle design.

5. Have a Plan

Without a boss breathing down your neck, you’ll have to create your own plans and hold yourself accountable. Set annual, quarterly, monthly and even weekly benchmarks for yourself according to your work methods and job flow. Set your daily agendas with the aim of meeting those goals. You won’t always be able to work your plan to the letter, but varying from a plan is better than not having one.

In part three, we’ll look in details at setting goals. Later in this series, we’ll discuss family life for freelancers.

 


Writer Entrepreneur: Lifestyle Design Part 1

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Once upon a time, I wanted to be a karate teacher when I grew up. This epiphany hit me when I was 23 and just finishing up a Psychology degree. I spent the next half decade working my way up through the ranks and volunteering to teach at a karate academy in New Mexico. I saved money for starting expenses, then spent two years in Japan — where I got a job coaching a local karate team.

I came home. A year later, I owned a karate school. I loved lots of it, especially the relationships I formed with my students. There were aspects I didn’t love:

  • Making $20,000 a year.
  • Working 80-plus hours a week.
  • Dealing with the hours of daily scut work involved in running a brick-and-mortar business.
  • Rarely having time for vacation.
  • Working evenings with kids at home.
  • Firing people.
  • Collecting on bills.
  • Paying merchant services fees, especially the lease on the credit card machine (seriously, those guys are like the Mafia without any of the grace and charm).
Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad I did that — but I’m equally glad I don’t do that any more. When I closed my school (equal parts bad economy and the factors above), I wound up writing on the strength of the portfolio I’d developed writing for my business.
I’ve had job offers since, some in the martial arts field. I like writing — but not as much as I like teaching karate. However…
  • I make three times the money, working an average of 15 hours a week.
  • My schedule is completely flexible — meaning I can volunteer for my oldest son, and be home for the baby.
  • I have time for my hobbies, including martial arts.
  • We go on three or four vacations a year.
  • My billing is all by check or Paypal, and I rarely have to chase clients.
  • A writing business is simpler than a brick-and-mortar shop.
  • I can write from anywhere in the world.
Which is a long way to say that freelance writing gives me the lifestyle I want. It allows me to be a great hubby and dad, and gives me the time to indulge my wide and varied interests. It’s not for everybody, but if you’re reading this blog — it’s probably for you.
But that lifestyle doesn’t come without work and attention. Part 2 of this series will be some specific techniques and considerations for making freelance writing give you exactly the life you want.

The Competition

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Writers write, but they also read. We read good writing and bad writing to help us hone our craft. We also read news, advice and information about our profession. At the risk of sending you all running for other — often slicker and more highly produced — sites, here are a few that I visit every week.

Fuel Your Writing has columns for every kind of writer, from NaNoWriMo advice to actionable tips for getting business writing assignments. The biggest problem is the sheer volume of the information — it can be hard to decide what to read.

Make a Living Writing is a simple, well-produced blog with “practical help for hungry writers.” Writer Carol Tice is an experience copy writer, and has the same attitude as I do about writing professionally: write where the money is, which lets you write the stuff you want.

Query Shark will make you laugh or cry, depending on how bad your query letters are. The author takes (presumably) real query letters and subjects them to a detailed, often brutal, analysis. Entertainment for some, powerful advice for the rest of us.

Writer’s Market is a fixture in the writing community, especially the community of aspiring fiction writers. I haven’t decided yet whether it’s mostly a cynical attempt to tap into that market — but occasionally they come out with some solid advice. The good stuff requires an annual fee, which comes complete with weekly emails asking you to buy more stuff.

 Men With Pens is not an 80s band. It focuses on “working writer” topics like copy writing and blogging, but also includes advice about writing novels and simply handling the life of a writer.

Seth Godin requires little introduction to many copy writers. He’s considered one of the best in the world. Not all of his posts are specifically about writing, but almost all of his ideas are relevant. At the worst, his copy is a great example of clean, clear and insightful writing.

Check these out. They’re worth your time.

Thanks for listening.

 

 

http://www.makealivingwriting.com/

Technical Writing

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I recently took on a large-scale technical writing project. There’s a huge market for this kind of writing, which makes it a good opportunity for going full-time. It’s not what most people think of when they say “I want to be a writer” — you’re not creating fictional masterpieces, or breaking a major case with investigative journalism. But you are making peoples’ lives easier while honing your writing chops.

For folks who don’t know, technical writing means documenting some kind of process. The name implies writing instructions for some kind of gadget, but it applies just as much to assembly directions for Christmas gifts, employee manuals and how-to pieces.

Successful technical writing requires a few skills that aren’t necessarily part of other kinds of writing.

Interviewing

The key process in technical writing is taking information out of somebody’s head, then putting it on paper. This means you need to be able to effectively interview that person. Active listening, leading questions and reviewing answers for completeness are all parts of this skill.

Psychology

You will have to understand how the human mind learns and takes in information. Without this basic knowledge, you won’t be able to structure and organize the instructions in a way that makes sense. You don’t have to be a psychiatrist or therapist, but you do need a basic understanding of learning and decision science.

Clarity

Clear, concise writing is the hallmark of good technical copy. You have to be able to write in a way that leaves no room for doubt or error, while also keeping the instructions accessible and interesting. This can sometimes make technical writing less fun than other kinds. There’s little room for clever prose or flights of fancy.

Detailed Fact-Checking

All writing requires fact checking. In fiction, you have to review your work to make sure of a minor character’s name, or whether a specific location has features you want to use. In non-fiction, you check the accuracy of what you’re reporting. Technical writing goes a step further, needing you to double- and triple-check the steps and flow of the process you’re documenting. This is one reason technical writers often work in teams, so they can help check one another’s work.

The bad news is not everybody comes to the table with these skills. The good news it that they’re skills everybody can learn.

Thanks for listening.