You have a great idea for an article. Now what? In freelance writing, a successful query letter starts with a great idea. Fortunately, if you followed the advice of my last article, you’ve got a list of potential article ideas to choose from. …

They’re closer than you think. Why have I gone so far out of my way in my writing career to avoid pitching and querying? It’s not the inevitable rejections. Those aren’t fun, but they make the acceptances all that much sweeter. It’s not the amount of time and effort that…

Pitching is not my favorite. I don’t know any writers who love the pitching process. Pitching is a lot of work — in fact, researching, crafting and sending out an effective pitch can take more time and effort than actually writing the article you’re trying to sell. Pitching also takes…

If you want to make a living writing, there are basically two business models you can follow: Get paid to write (services) Get people to buy things you’ve written (products) Let’s break these down. Get paid to write — this includes work-for-hire and contracting services like ghost writing, professional blogging…

There’s no one right way to become a full-time writer, and many different ways you can get there. But there are definitely wrong ways, which is the path I took. “But Jean,” you might be asking, “how could it be wrong if it got you where you are?” Because it…

Do you need clips to get clips? A modified version of this article first appeared in The Working Writer, a weekly newsletter for helping writers forge their own paths to sustainable and profitable writing careers. We can all recall the frustrating conundrum we faced when we first attempted to enter…

With a new year upon us, the conventional wisdom of our day is that it’s time to get to work getting after our goals. …

It’s a great time to be an Indie Author, but it’s also sometimes a confusing time to be an Indie Author. Conflicting advice abounds. I was going to write today about the merits of keeping your day job, but then I saw this post from Dean Wesley Smith making the…

Whoever said self-publishing is the easy path to a career as a published author has never actually tried self-publishing. Self-publishing can be immensely rewarding and satisfying, but one thing it’s definitely not is easy. If you’re considering self-publishing because you think it’s a shortcut to achieving your publishing dreams, think…