X: Xenophobes Will Stay Poor

I wonder how many A to Z challenge bloggers used the word Xenophobe today? I know of two. (http://sociologyfornerds.com, if the post is up).

I’ve learned an important lesson in recent months. I’ve been a freelancer for almost 20 years, and a full-timer for the past 13. Yet it took me this long to realize that being a xenophobe is bad for business.

We conduct a lot of our work online and via email. Most of our interactions look like black squiggles on a white page, and that little stream-of-consciousness voice in our heads may be the only sound we hear in a given day. Except maybe for the cat purring in the sunshine.

I describe myself as introverted; my happy-go-lucky friend Shane describes me as socially awkward. I started to notice a creeping xenophobia a few years ago—too many struggles with the mortgage company, too many arguments with the neighbor. My daughter grew up and moved off to college. I was turned off to people and shut myself inside my house and just focused on my business.

But recently I’ve been given a great gift: people. I was chasing a shiny idea and all of a sudden realized there were people out there, people with interesting stories and beautiful challenges and great responsibilities toward sustaining the world.

These people woke me up and are the direct First Cause for a new business I’ve launched. I’m determined to bring my knowledge to other freelancers, to share challenges for a time and help others leap higher, faster. The FOCUS writing series is gestating in my brain, but soon it’ll pop out into the world as a fully-grown offering.

And I have people to thank for that. My brush with xenophobia has passed, and now it’s time to do business.

If you’re interested in being one of the first to hear about Launch Day, please grab a copy of my ebook and share your name and email with me using the box on the right. People rock!

V: Vacation Time!

You’ve worked hard enough. You’ve worked enough 24/7 shifts with your business, your kids, your family, your home, your schooling, and all the other 10,000 things you do each moment.

Take a vacation, already!

Most freelancers long wistfully for vacation time; kicking back at the beach or around the campfire, jetting off to exotic places like northern Minnesota or the hopping nightlife of Atlanta. We dream of vacations many more hours than we’re actually ON vacation, and it seems to take two days to detox and settle in anyway.

Here’s my checklist for planning a vacation:

1. Tell all my clients I’ll be gone, and pad the time off with a week at either end so I can handle their last-minute emergencies.
2. Make sure I work extra hard in the weeks leading up to vacation, and polish off projects that have been hanging out there.
3. Never start on a new, crazy idea within a month of vacation time. (I have to scold myself for this one; I love shiny things.)
4. Get my email newsletter list and messages in good order so I don’t leave something undone.
5. Bring along my pen and paper so I can plan out my next years’ goals.

It might seem silly to plan my next year while on vacation, but there’s something so genuinely wonderful about sitting in the woods with no technology and just thinking. I reflect on where I’ve been, what I’ve done, who I’ve done it with, and where the next few months will lead me in my business growth. That’s precious time well-spent—plus I get to reconnect with my husband and my internal self and all is well after we get home.

Get your house in order before going on vacation. Really, truly leave the technology behind at home. Don’t fret about missing emails or opportunities. Just go, and be. It’ll all be waiting for you when you get back.

U: Understand Your Target Market

Here’s an exercise that will help you develop empathy with your audience so you can understand WHY you’re writing what you’re writing. It’s part of the FOCUS training exercises, but I’ll release the password so you can access the exercise and get a taste for what I’m talking about in the FOCUS series.

Click here: http://10000seeds.com/conqueringcontent/focus-develop-your-empathy/

Enter the password when prompted: focus

If you’re intrigued, put your name and email address in the opt-in form on the right. I’ll send you more free exercises that will help you build your professional freelance writing business.

T: Take Time to Breathe

So glad you’ve arrived on this blog, on this post, on this day, at this moment in time. Before you came here, you were in the middle of a long string of actions: click here, read that, take a sip of coffee, run a Google search, check your Facebook, look in on the napping baby… not necessarily in that order. And probably with more coffee.

Screech to a halt for the next three minutes. Take a deep breath and let it out. One more time—deep breath, let it out. Be still for just 120 seconds.

I’m going to insert a few blank spaces in this blog post, just to visually cue your brain and body to become still and be in the present moment.

There now, does your body feel calmer? Is your brain more collected? Is your heart beating slower? Do you feel (oh, no, there she goes with the woo-woo stuff) more centered?

If you often forget to breathe, bookmark this post. Set up a reminder in your calendar to come back here every day until 120 seconds of breathing is a habit in your life. Take time to breathe before resuming your zooming actions and I promise this three minutes will increase your productivity a thousand-fold.

Leave a comment below to share how you feel! Feelings are your friends, my friends.

S: Seek Out a Real Relationship With Another Writer

Ah, writers. Most of us would prefer to live in high garrets with only the glow from our laptops illuminating our surroundings. Even if you’re more of a “people” person than I am, you’re probably considered an introvert at parties, right? You’re a thinker, a philosopher, an absorber of other people’s emotions and needs.

If you’re not this type of person, I wonder why you got into writing for a living.

This quietness prevents writers from reaching out to others and seeking relationships with peers and mentors. We’re all willing to help out a friend or friendly competitor, but we don’t usually volunteer our wisdom unless asked by the other person. So, I’m advising you today that it’s time to ask. Time to reach out and get involved with a writing buddy or a mentor.

When I launch my FOCUS training, one thing I’ll offer is a friendly ear and a mentoring role to other writers who want to be professional, well-paid freelance writers. My question to you reading this is: What’s the best way to develop and maintain that relationship? Would you like to email back and forth, or would an accountability phone call once a week satisfy you, or would you find support in a small-group webinar/teleclass?

I’m really looking for your opinions because I don’t know what would work best for my fellow writers. Please leave your ideas below, and know that you’re helping me decide a key component in my FOCUS training series. Thanks!

R: Rewrite Your Author Bio

How long has it been since you looked at your author bio? When was that photo taken, really? Have you published something recently, started a new venture, added a new service line to your freelance writing business? Yep, I thought so.

I recommend reviewing your author bio every six months. Make a list of all the places where your bio is published: Facebook, Twitter, your blog, writing sites like Constant-Content and EzineArticles. If you’re a published author, contact your publisher or jump on Amazon to update your bio.

Quick tips on what to put in your author bio:

• Tell what niche you write about/for.
• Brag about how many years you’ve been writing. (I’ve been writing for 31 years, myself.)
• Mention writers’ organization memberships.
• Mention your writing degree, if you have one.
• Mention the title of your free or paid ebook, if you have one.
• Include your blog/website address, Twitter @, Facebook page.

But mostly your bio should mention your niche and your writing experience because you want people to hire you, right?

Author bios should be written with a purpose, just like all the other self-marketing materials you produce. What do you want readers to do after reading your bio? Why should they pay attention to you?

If you like, share your author bio in the comments section below. We’d love to learn more about you!

Q: Quick!

<Insert swear word here>, I hate that. The emergencies are emergencies, it seems. Online marketing can get completely out of control faster than a class of kindergartners encountering a herd of tarantulas.

If you do any type of sales writing, you’ve probably fallen victim to the all-red-all-caps-exclamation-point <insert swear word here>; it’s easy to do. But how do you deliver a call-to-action without annoying the <insert swear word here> out of readers?

By teaching. By slowing down. By listening to what readers want and need. By offering the best solution for their problems and then letting them absorb what you’re saying. Mostly, by slowing down.

Reach a friendly verbal hand out to your readers, draw them into your circle, and become a guide and mentor. Even if readers bounce away from your words at the end of the post, they’ll be left with the unconscious feeling that someone real just helped them cross the street.

Stop with the QUICK mentality and step into a welcoming, almost spiritual space. Ask how readers are feeling every once in a while and give your writing a rhythmic pace that soothes and calms. Yes, online content is meant to be digested super-fast, but you don’t want your readers to experience a sugar crash every time they read your words.

So, how are you feeling right now? Quick! Leave a comment below!!

P: Punch Up Your Prose

This post fits right in with my complimentary ebook “Pretty Darn Good Writers: Become Great” available by entering your email address in the opt-in box to the right. I despise spammers, so you can believe I won’t spam you just because you downloaded my ebook.

OK, punching up your prose.

I’ve noticed that a lot of online marketing content is a yawn. It’s grammatically fine, uses subheadings and keywords properly, talks about the subject in a linear way. But man, can it be boring! Lifeless verbs, limp metaphors, empty pronouns… Informative, but not captivating.

So how do freelance writers (especially ghostwriters) create captivating prose? Start by eradicating extraneous phrases. Just use the right words the first time, rather than tacking on more and more phrases that end up being breathy and confusing and that annoy a dedicated reader who is simply trying to solve a problem like how to write better prose.

See what I mean?

Next, get creative with your verbs. Punch. Eradicate. Tacking. Annoy. If you don’t have a thesaurus, use the online versions to find word substitutions that rock.

One more tip: Use clear but visually-stunning metaphors. Employ the six senses when writing so your readers can hear and see and taste and touch and smell and FEEL your writing. Yes, you can do this even in a shampoo review or an article about toe fungus remedies.

How do you punch up your prose? Creative writers, jump into the comments section and give us some solid examples!

O: Overworked and Undervalued? You Must Be a Freelance Writer!

I fired this client in the nicest way possible: I told her I was doubling my rates. Being a fussy penny-pincher, she said she could do it herself. Six months later, her newsletter’s open rates were below 10 percent and her unsubscribe rate tripled.

She realized that she should have paid me my going rate and tried to rehire me. By then, I was already booked working for less fussy clients who paid even more, so I politely refused. She responded by sending me a word-of-mouth referral, so I guess she wasn’t too mad.

When you feel overworked and undervalued, what do you do? Do you have the guts to fire a bad client, double your rates, cut back on your schedule? Share your insights in the comments so your fellow freelance writers can take heart!

N: Never Settle for Less Than What You’re Worth

We’ve all done it. As freelance writers, we’ve allowed clients to take advantage of our talents and time. We’ve accepted less money than we’re worth just to pay the bills, get something we want, build our professional portfolios.

As a once-in-a-while action, settling for less than you’re worth is OK. Most freelancers I know settle for less on a daily basis, though, and that’s a sure way to burn out and give up on working from home. If you’re not making enough income, you’re forced to go to town and get a job and that’s sad.

Do you know what you’re worth? What’s your real hourly wage? How much should you earn per word or per article? What’s your income goal for the next month and the next year?

If you haven’t put any thought into these questions, drop everything right now and figure it out. If you’re not satisfied with your progress, rethink what you’ve been doing so you can meet your goals. Please don’t put this off; every minute you waste by accepting less money than you’re worth is a minute lost out of your freelance writing business.

When the FOCUS Training exercises are completely polished, I’ll include a module titled “Setting Priorities for Work and Life.” These four exercises will help you get clear on what you’re worth both from a business perspective and a personal perspective. To get on the pre-launch list, just share your email address with me by downloading a copy of “Pretty Darn Good Writers: Become Great” in the upper right corner of this blog.