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Writing: Cheaper than therapy.

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(Happy Throwback Thursday! Hope you enjoy this blast from my blog’s past.)

One of the speakers at Press Publish in Phoenix dropped this little bon mot: “I didn’t have a therapist, so I started a blog.”

Judging by the lolsnorts that resulted, more than a few audience members have also found this to be true.

Understand: I am in no way snarking on therapy, having undergone it myself. In fact, therapy changed my life, or rather gave me the tools to create a life worth living.

That said, I completely agree with the premise. Whether it’s done in a locked journal or on a wide-open blog, writing can ease aggravations small or large and maybe even change a life – yours, or someone else’s.

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Try editing on paper.

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Three different sets of eyes went over the manuscript for “Your Playbook For Tough Times: Living Large On Small Change, For The Short Term Or The Long Haul.” My daughter, who’s also a writer, read it. I edited it as I wrote it, and read the rough draft from beginning to end more than once.

Finally, a former newspaper colleague gave it a careful going-over, to the point of testing each URL to make sure it worked. (Fun fact: Some of them didn’t, no matter how careful I thought I’d been.)

So guess what I found when I read the finished book?

 

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Win a ticket to FinCon17.

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The Rockstar Finance site is giving away a free ticket to the 2017 Financial Blogger Conference, which will take place Oct. 25-28 in Dallas.

Someone has to win. Why shouldn’t it be you?

Note: You don’t have to be a personal finance writer to enjoy FinCon17! In fact, you don’t even have to be a writer at all. Some people go because they’re interested in topics like FIRE (financial independence/retire early), paying down student loans, conquering consumer debt, video production, podcasting and awards travel.

But if you are a writer, or planning to be one, you’ll learn plenty about that, too.

 

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No. 1 on top-jobs list? Writing.

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Each year the Freelancer.com website puts together a list of the 10 most in-demand services. Derived from the 10 million job opportunities posted on the freelancing/crowdsourcing website, the list is designed to give entrepreneurs a heads-up on what’s needed the most.

The top job opp? Writing and content.

Let me say that I really don’t like the word “content.” In fact, one entire chapter of the Write A Blog People Will Read course is titled, “Stop calling it ‘content’!” Fact is, that’s what lots of people call it – and if you’re a writer then this list should encourage you.

 

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Freelancers: Prepare to get sick.

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Two days ago I had cataract surgery on my left eye. Although the outpatient process is fairly simple, it has affected my ability to work.

This reminded me, once again, that freelancers should always be ready to deal with illness or injury.

Independent contractors don’t get sick days. If we don’t work, we don’t get paid. That’s just one more thing to think about if you’re planning to go freelance.

As someone who hasn’t had a square job since 2002, I have a year-round readiness plan in place. If you, too, are your own boss then you need a plan of your own.

 

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A blogging success story.

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Sometimes a blog can become a full-time job, as people like Holly Johnson or Steve Chou can attest. Or a personal website could get you nationally known, e.g., Chris Hardwick.

Today I’m going to talk about a guy whose personal blog turned into his dream job – a gig that was not running a blog.

As the Alaska Dispatch News headline puts it, “Anchorage man turns hobby into NBA front office job.”

Seth Partnow, 39, told the newspaper that his job “feels, to some degree, almost like a fantasy camp.”

Not bad for a guy who started blogging about basketball because he was a total stats nerd.

 

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Don’t let Facebook run your life.

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The November election certainly stirred things up. Even if your preferred candidates won you’ve likely felt some upheaval thanks to relentless Internet uproar, which in some cases led to un-friending – and even un-familying – over political differences.

And if your candidates didn’t prevail? The temptation might be to dig a hole, crawl in and pull it in after you – after you get done un-friending your Facebook buds and cutting yourself off from relatives.

Don’t do that. Instead, take some advice from online course expert David Siteman Garland.

“Your social media is your social media. If you want to talk politics on there all day, that’s your right,” he said in an e-newsletter.

“However…there are better ways to spend your time.”

 

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How to be a better writer. (Hint: It takes work.)

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thAs a writing coach and creator of the Write A Blog People Will Read course, here’s a phrase I hear regularly: I want to be a better writer.

Most of us want the same thing – and those of you who don’t, i.e., those who think your writing is already perfect, are probably kidding yourselves.

Earlier this year I wound up offering advice to someone I encountered someone on a writing website. Specifically, I offered to give feedback on a couple of her articles. She was delighted and sent me several short essays.

Well.

 

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What’s the point of blogging?

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th(I’ve decided to re-publish articles now and again in honor of what the kids call Throwback Thursday. Enjoy.)

Some days writing feels more “like digging ditches than casting spells,” as author Chuck Wendig puts it. Today is one of those days.

A note I’d scribbled earlier saved me: “It’s amazing how the information that I read seems to come to me when I really need it most.”

That sentence came from a reader e-mail, and I wrote it on a scrap of paper because I knew it would come in handy.

It has.

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What I learned from writing ‘Your Playbook For Tough Times.’

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YourPlaybookForToughTimes3DFirst it was five months of researching, writing, self-editing, having friends read the manuscript and paying a professional proofreader. Next came weeks of tech glitches and waiting, waiting, waiting for review blurbs. But my long-simmering project is finally done.

“Your Playbook For Tough Times: Living Large On Small Change, For The Short Term Or The Long Haul” ate up a ton of my time, most of it in hurry-up-and-wait mode. By the time I hit “publish” I was nearly snatching myself bald-headed with frustration.

Oh, and then I had to un-publish temporarily. More on that in a minute.

But you know what? I’m going to do it all over again, probably within a few months. Knowing what might go wrong during self-publishing will, I think, make it easier the next time.

 

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