{"id":4186,"date":"2012-05-01T15:28:01","date_gmt":"2012-05-01T21:28:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4186"},"modified":"2012-05-01T15:28:01","modified_gmt":"2012-05-01T21:28:01","slug":"a-professional-writers-approach-to-the-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4186","title":{"rendered":"A Professional Writer’s Approach to the Job"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kathy Shaidle is not the first person to say that the successful writer is not necessarily the most talented writer, but in this post at PJ Lifestyle<\/em> she offers some guidance for being a successful freelancer.<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the reasons I\u2019m a freelance writer is that, frankly, I don\u2019t \u201cplay well with others.\u201d I am too introverted, tactless, demanding, opinionated, and \u201cmasculine\u201d to fit in with today\u2019s feminized workplace \u2014 a pink and purple extravaganza of giggling, weekly birthday parties, crying-in-the-bathroom, \u201cdiversity training,\u201d \u201cteam building,\u201d and boring baby pictures\/anecdotes \u2014 everything, it seems, except actual work.<\/p>\n

And today, \u201cfitting in\u201d with the company \u201cculture\u201d (of bridal showers and non-stop conversations about food and \u201cstupid husbands\u201d) is prioritized over competence and intelligence.<\/p>\n

Yet somehow, even a curmudgeon like me can manage to remain polite, helpful, and engaged for the length of that email or phone call with a client.<\/p>\n

So just imagine how impressed they\u2019ll be with a genuinely nice person like you!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good links, too. The part about working regular business hours is important, I think, if you have clients who expect to reach you by telephone during their<\/em> regular business hours. For the person working around another job, it might not be so easy.<\/p>\n

Somewhere out there is advice for writing after you have just spent three hours grading essays. When I find it, I will post it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kathy Shaidle is not the first person to say that the successful writer is not necessarily the most talented writer, but in this post at PJ Lifestyle she offers some guidance for being a successful freelancer. One of the reasons I\u2019m a freelance writer is that, frankly, I don\u2019t \u201cplay well with others.\u201d I am […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-4186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-15w","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1762,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1762","url_meta":{"origin":4186,"position":0},"title":"Freelancing: the Horror","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 14, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Via Rod Dreher's new blog, Macroculture, comes this essay by Richard Morgan on the horrors of freelancing. By the time that I finished it, I was thinking of Knut Hamsun's novel\u00a0 Hunger. See the movie version\u2014I saw it as a teenager, and how I ever became a writer afterwards, I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":852,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=852","url_meta":{"origin":4186,"position":1},"title":"Sex in World Religions & Other Updates","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 12, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 First, here is a better version of the Pagan rosary story, \"'Hail Persephone:' Pagans Retool the Rosary,\" which has a photo and also some of the rosary invocations.Kimberly Winston's article was also mentioned at the GetReligion blog on religion and journalism.\u00b6 My recent post on Carlos Castaneda must have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Islam\"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=islam"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1251,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1251","url_meta":{"origin":4186,"position":2},"title":"Writers and Money","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I am back from the American Academy of Religion meeting in Montreal, of which more later, where I also collected a freelance-editing check that I was owed.When I collected nine days' worth of mail at the post office, I was happy to see that another check that was \"in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2056,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2056","url_meta":{"origin":4186,"position":3},"title":"From Slate, America’s Two Literary Cultures","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 30, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"This article on \"America's two distinct literary cultures\" (via University Diaries) touched me because I almost went down the Master of Fine Arts in writing road myself\u2014and of course I taught alongside people who had done so. After graduating from Reed College with what amounted to a BFA, I was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6305,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6305","url_meta":{"origin":4186,"position":4},"title":"Journalistic Cliches and Their Academic Cousins","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 27, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"My least-favorite journalistic cliche is \"time will tell.\" Despite the president's charm offensive, some pundits say that the world will end next Tuesday. Time will tell. Read the whole list of 150 here. As a journal editor, I could make my own list, particularly those stupid bits of wordiness that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1113,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1113","url_meta":{"origin":4186,"position":5},"title":"Copyediting Religion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Orthographic payback is a bitch.For years--starting when I wrote for Gnosis in the 1980s--I was one of those pushing for the capitalization of the words Witch and Pagan when used to describe first, the followers of the new, self-consciously created polytheistic mystery religion and, second, Pagan as a more general\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4187,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4186\/revisions\/4187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}