Category Archives for Entrepreneurship
Balancing the Demands of a Professional Writing Career with a Full-Time Job
While everyone else at the office celebrates another successful commute home by popping the tab on a cold one and settling into the couch for a night in front of the TV, the rest of us brew a pot of coffee (or load the first of many K-Cups), reheat yesterday’s General Tso’s, open our computers, and prepare to camp out for the night.
We’re professional writers, but that might not be what it says on our business cards.
A lot of people who work eight hours a day also have some kind of side hustle, especially those in their 30s or younger, and these after-hours pursuits are not restricted to writing. Painters, composers, upcyclers, photographers, graffiti artists, filmmakers, microbrewers, web designers—they all create in the off-hours, the five-to-nine.
These endeavors are sometimes monetized hobbies, or they can even be secret second jobs in multistage schemes to escape the cubicle life forever.
Either way, at the end of a full workday, these creatives devote themselves to an ambitious pursuit without any guarantee of a payoff beyond the satisfaction of exploring their talents and passions.
3 Creative Networking Methods Writers Need To Try
“Networking” is a red-letter word for many writers. Often, it invokes the image of a writers’ conference or cocktail event, with strangers standing around eating hors d’oeuvres and making small talk—which is a scenario many introverted writers want to run from (after all, there are reasons we work from home, right?).
But networking comes in all shapes and sizes, which is good, because it’s an essential ingredient for the success of any professional writing career.
The idea of networking is simple: You create and sustain as many relationships as you can in the hopes you’ll get some work from these relationships down the road. And it’s really not as scary as it sounds—networking is as simple as making friends!
How to Handle a Small Team Like a Newsroom
Scroll through your favorite social media feed, and you may see a post or two telling you how you can “adult,” and while we wait for that unfortunate verb to go out of fashion, the concept behind those articles is useful for many of us. Because who doesn’t need a little help scrubbing those hard-to-reach places when it comes to personal development?
But what happens when it’s not just ourselves that we have to coax into our full potential, but a group of strangers?
When other people’s work is suddenly your responsibility—whether you’re the team lead on a collaborative project, or you’ve collected a federation of steady freelancers, or you’ve finally hired that help you’ve been wishing for since the day you started your business—congrats, you’ve been knighted into the managers’ club.
The Importance of Being Humble as a Writer
I believe it was Pulitzer Prize winner Kendrick Lamar who once said, “Sit down, be humble.”
After spending a few years in the writing and editing business, I believe that any and all creators should live by those words. Because nobody likes a jerk, even if they’re talented.
I started writing at a young age, so luckily my over-inflated ego disappeared with my immaturity and naivete about the writing business. The time I stopped believing my sad poem about the 16-year-old boy who didn’t like me back was Art, was the same time I realized I wasn’t hot shit. However, I often come across writers older than me that believe their writing is perfect, untouchable even. They resist any feedback because who could dare change their words?
I’ve even had a writer flat out reject my edits to their grammar mistakes. The usage of a question mark isn’t really debatable. But here we are.