About

I like a roaring fire on my computer.

Freelancing is without a doubt the dream work-from-home job. With our declining economy, there are more and more opportunities for freelancers as magazines and newspapers have been forced to cut their staff just to stay afloat.

So the jobs are out there, but so is the competition. This blog will focus not on getting in somewhere, but how to stay in once you’ve got your foot in the door.

Who am I to write this blog? I’m currently a staff writer for a  magazine.  I also do editing and copyediting, and I can tell you that when I spend hours and sometimes days fixing a story written by a hack (correcting their spelling and checking the facts they neglected to check), I spend a lot of time wondering who we can get to replace him or her for the next issue. I don’t want some editor thinking that same thing about you.

I was a newspaper reporter for 12 years, and an arts and entertainment editor for four. I’ve been an obituary editor, a longtime weekly columnist, the editor of a state fish and game newsletter, and have been a contributor to several newspapers and magazines you’ve probably never heard of (except maybe The Boston Globe and Yankee Magazine). I’ve been an on-air radio news announcer at two stations, one of them being an NPR affiliate, and have received a first-place “Excellence In Journalism” award for a radio series I wrote. I’ve written two books: one non-fiction, which was published; and one fiction, which was not.

I did not finish college. I got my start in 1985 , worming my way into journalism by studying the market like my life depended on it (and in a way it did; I wanted to be a writer and nothing else). I took every class and seminar I could find, badgered editors and instructors into talking to me, read every writing book published at that time, and then dissected my targeted publication for every nuance and style usage they adhered to.

It paid off and I’ve been a working writer ever since. In the very beginning I fought with more editors, copyeditors, and publishers than I care to remember. But I learned. Albeit the hard way, but I learned. Now I’m married to an editor, something Young Stupid Me would have thought physically impossible.

It’s for all these reasons I’m writing this blog, to help you endear yourself to your editor and be the first person they think of when those precious writing assignments are being handed out.