Good Writer Resolutions
Happy New Year, a little bit late. I was celebrating, you know Anyway, let’s get the new year started off on the right foot with some great resolutions for writers for the new year. New Year’s Resolutions for Writers Every writer is different, but there are some things that seem to be true for most writers. I’ve started off this list of writer’s New Year’s resolutions with those that fit into that almost universal category and then moved on to those things that might be more useful for fellow freelance writers. Write – No matter who you are or what [...]
AP Style – Writing About Taxes
When writing about taxes, there are some basic AP Style rules you should know about. AP Style – US Government When writing about the government of the United States of America there are some basic rules to follow. The first is that using the full United States of America is usually not necessary in most writing. Obviously, if you are quoting someone, or a document, stay true to their words. Otherwise, United States, is sufficient. Typically, you do not capitalize any words that go with (come after) United States. For example, it is United States government, not United States Government. [...]
Microsoft Word Tips For Writing Fast
I’ve talked many times about how writing faster, coupled with getting paid on a project or assignment basis, is the quickest way to increasing what you earn as a freelance writer. There are a lot of ways to write faster. The first, of course, is to write shorter length articles. When a client asks for articles of 250 words to 350 words, they don’t care about covering all of the details. In fact, chances are, they deliberately do not want to be too helpful to their readers. After all, readers who have get all of the information they need by [...]
Write Like A Professional Writer
If you are reading this freelance writing blog, I hope that you are either pursuing a writing career as a freelance writer – or otherwise – or that you are interested in writing better. Although there are many professional writers who become writers and stay writers without traveling down any of the various literary forks in the road, I have wandered over to the editing side from time to time. Being an editor is a great way to improve your writing quality and learn how to write more like a professional writer. They say that there is no better way [...]
Writing Jobs Search Websites – CareerBuilder
One of the toughest things for any professional writer, whether an experienced freelance writer or someone just starting a new freelance writing business, is to find new writing jobs. Even freelancers with a full project pipeline need to keep an eye on the future in order to ensure a steady stream of income from writing lest they find themselves evicted from the comfy work at home office and back into the faux-leather chairs of corporate America’s cubicles. There are many ways to find freelance writing jobs ranging from using job boards and writing forums dedicated to freelance gigs and writing [...]
Yahoo Style Guide AP Style For The Web
As we mentioned earlier, Yahoo has taken on the task of producing a “style guide” for the Internet. Those of you who are already in the professional writing business know about the different writing styles out there. There is AP Style, which is based upon a book by AP called The Associated Press Stylebook. Then there is the MLA stylebook and a couple of others as well. For those of you not in the freelance writing business, the point of all these style guides is to fill in some of the language gaps that exist between the grammar manuals, like [...]
Free Stock Photos For Writers Understanding Licensing Agreements
As professional writers, we know all to well the frustration of copyright infringement and people stealing professional content to fill up junk websites filled with advertisements and affiliate links. When it comes time for freelance writers to find and use stock photography to go along with our writing efforts we play by the rules. If you don’t believe in the Golden Rule, then at least you should believe in playing for the good guys, and good guys don’t steal a person’s pictures, just like good guys don’t steal someone’s written words. The catch is that many writers, both professional freelance [...]
How To Delete Section Group in Microsoft OneNote
As a freelance writer, I need a way to create, organize, and keep notes, sources, and even snippets of text or dialog, as well as article ideas. Around my home office, I have literally a hundred or more notebooks jammed with scribbles, ideas, magazine clippings, and newspaper articles. While opening up one of those notebooks and thumbing through it provides a treasure trove of writing ideas and materials, finding something specific inside of one of those notebooks isn’t as pretty. My new netbook computer for writing was one way to try and manage some of that. Unfortunately, having a hundred [...]
Get More Search Engine Traffic By Changing Your Writing … for the Worse!
To get more search engine traffic there are a lot of things you can do. You can read all about search engine optimization until you go blind. You could even hire an SEO consultant if you have money to burn. You could comment on a thousand blogs a day with a link back to your website. You could research keywords with Google’s keyword tool, the AdSense keyword tool, and the AdWords keyword tool. And, don’t forget about the Google keyword research tool. What the–? Has Arctic Llama lost his mind? Aren’t all of those tools listed up there the same [...]
Proper Copyright Notice On Websites
Ironically, after recently writing about how complicated copyright law is and how many people constantly misunderstand it, an attorney read our freelance writing blog and noticed a copyright error right there at the bottom of every page. We’re no experts, but copyright law for writers fools everyone sometimes, it seems. The freelance writing business of ArcticLlama has been around for a few years now. Most of the online content we produce for our own website started showing up online in 2008. Naturally, we placed a copyright notice at the bottom of each webpage in the footer. While this is not [...]
