Here’s an example of an assignment when absolutely everything went wrong. I’ll show you how I recovered, and then I’ll show you how I went on to make that relationship so good and so long-lasting that the editor offered me payments in advance and made me a contributing editor at that magazine. (For those of […]

Welcome to day two of my five-part series where I teach you about how to query effectively by giving you behind-the-scenes on my biggest, most profitable, and most prestigious assignments.  (If you want to read some of the pitches that landed me these assignments, you can get them here.) Let’s talk about wastepickers Many years […]

Welcome to day one of my five-part series where I walk you through how I got some of my biggest, most profitable, and most prestigious assignments.  Let’s talk about TIME Time was my first big credit. As in big prestigious credit that people didn’t look at and go, “Oh, women’s magazine.” I’d written tons for women’s […]

You know what happens when work starts drying up, the economy goes into freefall, and jobs become scarce? Yep, writers like us start taking low pay and crapping assignments from clients, bad advice from fellow freelancers, and a lot of loathing from our own selves because it’s easy to believe that we are, and continue […]