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New Year’s Pitch Cleansing: Knowing when to fold ‘em, when to pitch ‘em
I’m not a fan of making New Year’s resolutions, but as December closed in on me I suffered from repeated anxiety dreams about clutter. Safe to call them nightmares, minus blood-shedding. The context...
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How much should I charge? Pricing tips for freelance jobs
The email and real life conversations between freelancers are littered with this question. The answer is rarely simple. It’s often a process. NASW’s Words Worth database and ASJA’s Pay Check database...
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Missed the #AmtrakResidency? Get aboard these unexpected writing opportunities
You’ve heard the news, I imagine: Amtrak is offering writing residencies. The plan is the brainchild of novelist Alexander Chee, and it’s brilliant, but it’s been tweeted and posted so far and wide...
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Avoiding a Monstrous Email Fail
Noooooooooo! I shouldn’t have sent that email! It was like telling spooky ghost stories around a virtual campfire. In SciLance, we recently swapped tales of email terror, sans the s’mores. One...
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Writing residencies: A room of one’s own
An artist’s pastels at the Vermont Studio Center A few weeks ago, Michelle Nijhuis (bio) suggested a number of tongue-in-cheek writing retreats in response to the frenzy around the Amtrak writing...
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Keeping irons in the fire
Today, I’m singing the praises of keeping lots of irons in the fire. Here’s why. One of the tricky things about freelancing – especially when you’re starting out – is managing current projects while...
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My New Office Commute to Nowhere
I pause on my “commute” to view the Flatirons. How do you commute when there’s nowhere to go? How do you create some physical and psychic separation between home and work – and keep home a sanctuary —...
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Why is storytelling important in science writing?
Last month, I participated in a “Writing Science for the Masses” roundtable discussion with the Center for American Literary Studies at Penn State. My co-panelists, Amy Teitel and A’ndrea Messer, and I...
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Further and other dated cultural references
“At times the campaign can look, sound, and smell more like Ken Kesey’s bus than a congressional race.” The sentence, written by Karl Taro Greenfeld in a recent issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, jumped...
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PhDs in the science writing ecosystem
My PhD graduation from Indiana University. Two weeks later I started an internship at Discover. If you know you want to write for a living, few people would advise the arduous journey of PhD work in...
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New routines
It’s 7:00 am on a crisp fall morning in upstate New York and I am walking the dog. I am also dressed — in real clothes. In a half hour, I’ll pack my messenger bag and nag my son out the door for our...
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Start Writing ASAP
You pitch a story, get an assignment, sign a contract, and start reporting. When do you start writing? When I was first starting out, I would find sources, read papers, interview sources, read more...
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Should freelancers write native advertising?
A couple of years ago, I posted my portfolio on Contently, an online site said to connect journalists with media outlets that had stories but lacked writers. Its focus soon expanded to include...
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