A former boss of mine has taken to calling me around 6:30 a.m. sometimes. I’m not awake, so he’ll leave a message. “Are you taking a nap or something?” he might ask. “Because I know you can’t still be asleep from last night this late in the day.” I’m a freelance journalist without much of [...]

I recently posted on the reasons why I love freelancing. Once you know you want the gig, it also helps to know what you’re willing to do. There are four big reasons to agree to write a story, and every writer should know them – if only so he can decide if that writing gig, [...]

I wrote a story for Philadelphia Weekly on theatrical performance commissioned by the Village of Arts and Humanities. I also blogged it for uwishunu and pitched it to friends at KYW News Radio and the Inquirer. Though KYW covered it on its own, and the Inqy will do the same for another round of the [...]

I recently finished a story on spec and had my editor balk at the story. The general rule is freelancers shouldn’t write without a promise of pay, but it was a story I didn’t find particularly challenging, did find interesting and was for a new publication, some reasons that motivate me to take a chance. [...]

Suppose you’ve started a career in another field and look back somehow longingly on the print industry. You want to freelance on the side, make some cash and rekindle the love with the sight of your byline by slumming it in the currently self-destructing print industry. But, of course, if you have any writing samples [...]

Updated: 3/9/09 at 8:56 p.m. Newspapers and many magazines don’t cover freelance expenses, like telephone calls. What gives? Doing some quick math – and the 15 cents per minute phone call I use from my cell-phone plan to charge those publications that do accept my charges – I expect to spend at the very least [...]