writing and research» freelancing

Freelancing Abroad With My Advent Netbook

suejeff — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 16:00:15 +0000

On Saturday, we take off to Spain for a fortnight and my Advent Netbook and Nokia 5800 are going with me. When you freelance for a living you don’t want to let clients down when you go away, which is why my Nokia phone and my Netbook are going with me.

Location Independent

While I plan to spend some of my time by the pool working on my unfinished novel, I also want to keep up on the freelance front. With a netbook you really can be location independent because it is so much lighter than a normal laptop. Sometimes when I have a job that requires a lot of research, I use the laptop for the research and write the document on the netbook because it means I don’t have to keep leaving the page I am working on. Some projects need more research than others and it helps to have several things open on the laptop while I write the first draft on my netbook.

I sometimes take the netbook into the garden to work or out for a coffee because it is so light and easy to carry around. My IBM laptop is great but it does tend to be a bit on the heavy side, which is why I’ll be freelancing abroad with my netbook – and getting some lovely, warm, dry, sunshine, great for my RA.

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Freelancing On The Other Side Of The Pond: Opening Up A Whole New World

suejeff — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:13:17 +0000

I live in the UK and although freelancing and freelance writers are quite commonplace in the US it is less so over here. Online American friends write of the response of friends, family and new people when they say they’re a freelance writer. Over here the reaction is not simply what do you do all day, but what is freelancing and what is web content? You can still get blank looks over here when you mention blogging, although that is diminishing with the publicity that both My Space and Face Book have had in the last few years.

Writing for the American Market

There are fewer freelance opportunities over here, so I do most of my writing for the American market, it’s also a lot harder over here for unknown freelancers to break into the magazine market. Over the years I have written in all kinds of formats, from scribble and dogerral, to a PhD thesis, a good number of research reports, one published short story and two half finished novels, but writing for the web is rather different.

Three Sheets to the Wind: Content Writers Must Be Nutters

Although things are beginning to change slowly on this side of the pond, there are still many areas where if you talk about writing web content, you get blank looks. People think you are making things up, trying to be clever, or going clean off your rocker – sorry stark raving bonkers, cuckoo, whichever description fits your lingo.

Hands Across the Atlantic

In spite of the fact that freelancing from the UK can be problematic, freelance writers in the US, Canada and Australia are more than generous to other writers, no matter what their provenance. Three and a half years ago when I started blogging, I made a whole group of online friends that I am still in regular contact with. My experience of these writers is that they are generous to a fault with their knowledge and expertise, I have yet to come across an American writer who is not willing to pass on their knowledge to help out other writers.

Freelancing on this side of the pond may be a bit behind but there is no question about the fact that UK freelancers can be part of an online community that stretches its hands across the Atlantic. If you’re a UK writer looking for a whole new experience, then why not try freelancing and communicating with American writers and with Canadian and Australian freelancers, it will open up a whole new world.

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Freelancing Gets You Through the Bad Times

suejeff — Thu, 21 May 2009 19:06:33 +0000

It is two years this week since my son disappeared and was found drowned a week later. I’ve found that the best way through things is to carry on working. You cannot do anything about the part of your heart that is broken, other than carry on.

Writing is useful when you are feeling bad, even the most mundane subjects are much better than looking at the dark hole inside, and there is something soothing about the rhythmic tapping of the keys. It’s not often that I put stream of consciousness stuff on here but this is the way things are at the moment. I can certainly do without the bloody RA flare that has been hanging around for more than a week.

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A Freelancer’s (wry) Look at Getting Things Done

suejeff — Thu, 14 May 2009 00:29:31 +0000

Getting everything done as a work at home freelancing writer mother of six grown up children and thirteen grandchildren is not easy. While I try to keep to a strict schedule at least four days a week, you can bet your life those are the days somebody needs me.

Being Needed

It’s nice to be needed but not so much that you end up needled because you are not doing the things that you had planned. I have a method of operation on those four days where I work for an hour and take half an hour off for most of the day. If my RA is playing up then I may need to work an hour on and an hour off to rest my wrists and hands.

I find that social media sites such as Twitter can be seductive and you’re tempted to watch the stream and click interesting links, because they’ve got to be more interesting than the upteenth finance article. I try to keep my twittering for my off times but occasionally I break my own rule and then I sit up half the night trying to claw back the lost time.

You Can’t Teach a Very Old Dog

Oh I forgot to mention our dog. He is now fifteen years old and I think he is a little senile. If he doesn’t want to go out but has to go for his stomach’s sake, he chunters at me or my husband for the whole walk, it’s a sort of stop start growly grunty sound. He does the same thing when he doesn’t get enough of foods that he is not supposed to have. When he wants to interrupt my work time he tries to get his head on my laptop to stop me typing.

Getting things done for a sixty something, arthritic freelancer with a large family and a dopy, possibly senile dog, is not a simple process as you might imagine, but somehow, I still manage to make a living.

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