What we need are some quick and effective remedies to keep the process of freelancing as intriguing, remunerative, and personally rewarding as it can and should be.

Getting rid of stress is a vital skill to master, because we want to avoid its negative consequences, even the potential failure, of our freelancing career. In general, stress in freelancing can be overcome by effective time management, frequent and regular change of activity, and reasonable expectations about deadlines and workload.

Any freelance gigs, including freelance writing, which can precipitate stressful situations, require preventive measures such as proper time management. To avoid negative outcomes from too much hurrying, the freelancer needs to figure out how to allocate time appropriately. It is helpful, and in fact, necessary if your workload is at all complex, to create a detailed schedule and plan. Then, using this as a guide, you can perform the tasks in the plan according to your schedule, step by step.

It is strongly recommended that these steps are tasks are not postponed until the last days or hours before the deadline! This is a sure-fire route to stress and non-fulfillment of your obligations. As a corollary to this suggestion, you need to Herewith, you should be as realistic as you can be in your estimation of time required for any orders. This, by the way, is one of the most important skills to acquire promptly, and one, unfortunately, of the most difficult to perfect. Thus, a successful freelance writer needs to become an excellent time manager, with the self-awareness and organization to set up a plan for work, and the self-discipline to adhere to it consistently.

Effective stress management in freelance writing also means taking advantage of every opportunity to change activities when it is necessary. If you feel that you are getting bored with a particular subject or genre, by all means pursue different ones. You can also find constructive ways to distract yourself, accomplish something around your house, or take a brief rest. In other words, you need to have realistic expectations for yourself and your reactions to extended writing sessions, and take proactive steps to control the way you work to compensate for them. Hence, a change of activity, subject, or genre can give you a boost of new creativity and energy, and avert the ill effects of stress on your work.

The stress of freelance writing can also be mitigated by suspending one’s concentration on details, and trying to perceive things with greater relaxation and mental distance. Considering how much time freelancers spend in front of computers working, it is crucial to be reasonable about what they can complete. John De Paola recommends, “Slow down and everything you are chasing will come around and catch you”. This means that you do not have to hurry up and to do everything at a dead. On the contrary, you have to focus on the key points and concentrate on them.

Sometimes, you know just from looking at or investigating an order that it is going to be a horror show. It may not fit your time availability, talents, and access to materials from the customer or online databases, or experience. In such a case, please be reasonable with yourself and fair to the customer. Turn it down – repeat – turn it down! Otherwise you may fail to meet a deadline and damage your reputation or relations with your client. Thus, freelancers have to be sober-minded and reasonable people since such traits tend to result in successful and on-time completion of tasks and a lower level of stress.

To conclude, averting or reducing stress in freelance writing depends on the writer’s ability to arrange work time effectively, alter routine and activity to avoid boredom, and remain reasonable about workload and deadlines. Thus taking and remaining in control of your own life and work style, as well as keeping your expectations realistic, are essential attributes of a successful freelance writer. With these characteristics, a writer can anticipate a satisfying and healthy career.

Some of these changes are major, and might affect the whole process of your work. But a lot of them are quite small and might not be noticeable, but they’re nevertheless – important. After all, perfection is in details.

That’s why we are trying to specifically highlight them for you. This helps you to get acquainted with these updates in order to start utilizing them as soon as possible. This time I’m telling you about a couple of small twitches to user interface, which should sort out confusion among writers and add more usability to the order request procedures.

These updates are active as of today, so you’re welcome to check them out by yourself.

Orders on Bids: Order Request

As you know, previously, when you saw an order on Bids, you had to go to the Order Details page and send a message to the Support team with your offer for the order.

This created certain confusion with the request history, you couldn’t revoke your request, it was harder for the Support team to sort out the requests and the exact form, in which the requests should arrive, wasn’t clear.

Now we’ve added a new tab to the Order Details page, which will allow you to control the requests on the orders. You will be able to provide the order specifications, which you find suitable in order for you take the job. You will have an additional field, which allows you to state your desired pricing and deadline for the order.

The order will also have a separate tab – Order Requests, it will contain all of your assignment requests for that specific order. You won’t be able to see requests from other writers.

Main reason for that, is that we don’t want you guys to lower your pricing, based on what you saw in other offers. This should keep the requests objective and competitive.

This tab will be a simple log, where all of your requests are kept, specific to that order: for future reference and for other informational purposes. In your Messages menu you will now be able to see your Order Requests in a separate tab – Order Requests Only.

From there you will be able to revoke your requests, in case if you decide that currently you aren’t able to work on the specific assignment. “Remove Request” function will also be available directly from the Order Details tab.

Order Ratings

A lot of writers were previously confused by the fact that their current orders contain order ratings. This means that when you have a paper that is in progress or is being checked by our staff, the Order Ratings tab already showed how customer rated the order, although he/she didn’t even see it in the first place. All of the ratings were negative and the most confusing part was that the answer to the question “Will you recommend this writer?” was always negative.

This was caused by the specifications of our system. The counters of Order Ratings work similarly to a speedometer – when you stand still: it shows zero. Same with the Order Ratings – when you haven’t completed the order, it shows “zero” points for the Rating, which the system interprets as “0” points for each one of the answers from the customer, thus making the Rating negative right from the start. You have to keep in mind that this was just the visualization of zero points by the system, these ratings weren’t actual and weren’t stored anywhere.

But a lot of writers were still concerned and came to chat with us from time to time, worried that the customer didn’t like the work, which, in a lot of cases, wasn’t even submitted yet (weird, huh?).

From now on the Order Ratings tab will only be available for completed orders, which contain at least one legitimate order rating (approved by the Support Dpt.). This will eliminate any possible confusion.

That’s it for this time, we’ll keep you posted on other updates from us and we hope that you find all of them to be useful. Thank you for staying with the ResearchWritingCenter.com! Good luck with your writing gigs!

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A lot of institutions formalize this form of academic expression to an almost military extent – carelessness with the rules of a specific citation style is similar to being a deserter during war time! And a lot of people suffer the consequences of this type of attitude.

For all of our clients citations styles and adherence to them is vital.

That’s why we provide details for specific citation styles on our Format Requirements page, to keep us all on the same page, when it comes to dealing with citations. It contains links to major resources, which are extremely helpful for learning the peculiarities of each one of the available citation styles.

Of course, all of this info is freely available online and you’re always more than welcome to do some additional research. But everything changes and evolves, so as the academic standards, specifically for citation styles, in our case.

We constantly try to research these kinds of things for you guys. That’s why we wanted to announces that we’ve updated the list of resources available on the Format Requirements page. These are mandatory to get acquainted with.

From now on the citation styles in the completed papers will be checked according to the peculiarities available in these sources. That’s why you need to make sure, that you’ve read all of them and know the basic differences from the previous versions.

IMPORTANT: This update will take affect later today, so you still have time to re-adjust your upcoming works!

As usually, we use trusted and verified resources. The new guidelines will include information from:

• Griffith University
• Deakin University
• University of Chicago
• Coastal Carolina University
• Online Writing Lab at Purdue University.

These resources contain balanced instructions about the specific citations styles, but you have to remember that the priority always goes to the customer requirements. Depending on the institution – citation style requirements might be different from the standards. You have to sort these things out with the customer before completing your work to provide proper citations and bibliography at the end.

New requirements will take time to learn and adjust to. We encourage you to do that as soon as possible, to make sure that there won’t be any issues with your upcoming papers (if you’re using one of the major citation styles – APA, MLA, etc)

Thank you and good luck with your writing gigs!

If so, then you need to examine all the pros and cons of freelance writing with insight, and make an informed and genuine choice. There is definitely a long list of advantages and disadvantages to freelancing; however, you need to define what freelancing is for you individually: an unhealthy occupation, or a vocation for an entire life.

Freelance writing is often deemed to be an unhealthy profession because of the many stresses caused by the lack of steady income and work stability, and the need to spend excessive time at the computer, often accompanied by way too much junk food. The stressful situations that crop up in freelance writing are usually precipitated by the absence of work, and by dishonest customers. Such stress was incisively described by Robert Benchley definition: “The freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.”

However, in reality, freelancing is not nearly as stress inducing as is commonly imagined in the contemporary business world. As with any other job, freelance writing is only as stressful as the current set of circumstances. For one thing, working with a firm that pre-screens and arranges payment for all work can reduce the probability of being “stiffed” by a client. Furthermore, the absence of regular work for a freelance writer is directly comparable to the potential for lay-offs from a full time position.

Although freelance writing may seem to lack income stability in comparison with conventional jobs, it may actually garner even greater rewards, at times, than fulltime work: at other time times, more modest returns. Thus, the truth has multiple faces.

For those who have done it for some time, the verdict is that the major disadvantage of freelance writing is the amount of time spent in front of a computer. Combined with the temptation to grab something junky to eat rather than taking the time to eat nutritiously, this can lead to a less active, and therefore unhealthier, lifestyle.

However, if you know how to manage your time sensibly, you can find time for exercise in a gym, a walk, or other physically active pursuits. Furthermore, junk food is not just the downfall of freelance writers! Fortunately, we have a choice about what we actually put in our mouths; whether junk or something nutritious.

Considering freelance writing as a life vocation, try outlining a formal list of advantages. The first is the immense variety of interests that you can pursue or be exposed to, because freelance writers work in varied fields, from science, to comedy, or philosophy. The second advantage is the potential for effective use of time.

When you are a freelance writer you need to arrange your time properly in order to accomplish your orders and still have time for rest and the rest of life. What is needed to achieve this goal is to learn to manage your time effectively. The third point is the enhancement of your writing skills.

Almost any gig is going to require research, analysis of sources of information, and synthesis of something original and useful. This process cannot help but result in the improvement of your language skills, knowledge base, and facility at researching. These three advantages can transform a pursuit that earns money into a life vocation with enormous opportunities for personal growth and development.

Summarizing the pros and cons of freelance writing, it is necessary to admit that its disadvantages consists in some unhealthy moments like stress from earnings instability and frauds; however, this disadvantage is largely offset by the numerous advantages that freelancing possesses. Offering the potential to pursue varied interests and genres, to control one’s work time individually and effectively, and to continue to develop professionally, freelance writing can be a perfect vocation for an entire lifetime.

Thus, your true and genuine choice lies hidden among your most authentic desires: if you aspire to interesting tasks that permit you to manage your time uniquely and personally, while deepening and broadening your skills, then neither stresses nor lack of stability can frighten you and dissuade you from freelance writing.

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This submission won our hearts, especially because we know that it’s a true story, which makes it even more humorous. Check out the previous submissions for our “Start Writing & Get Us Laughing” contest.

The point of the contest was pretty simple – write an amusing story about freelance writing (fictional or from your own experience).

We’ve identified 5 winners of the contest and wanted to highlight these contest submissions for you. Next week, we’re starting a new series of useful freelance writing articles. So be sure to tune in.

Does That Translate? An Unbearable Customer Interaction by Cynthia O.

It was an evening of the deepest quiet on the mountain. The silence was broken only by an owl cry, marking his territory through the wood of maples, oaks, beech, hickory and ash. One child already dozed in the car, ready to accompany me to the nearest railroad station 40 minutes away to pick up their dad. The other child had enjoyed a bedtime story and was preparing for our excursion with a bathroom visit. I was trying to resolve an issue with an editing customer, an Italian research scientist for whom I was proposing to proof-read an article.

“Ah, certo, Cheensia” her voice floated out cheerily, “The very word: BEAR! You are always so good with words! You could not BEAR to read the article as it looks now.”

Editor’s note: thank you everyone for voting and participating in the contest. We’ll be working on new promotions and contests for you, guys!

Check back next week, as we’re going to tell you a little bit more about freelance writing and it’s benefits: we’ll compare freelance writing with a day job!

The point of the contest was pretty simple – write an amusing story about freelance writing (fictional or from your own experience).

We’ve identified 5 winners of the contest and wanted to highlight these contest submissions for you.

Make sure check back next week – the winning submission will be waiting for you!

“I Did It for the Story” by Shad W.

It was a cold December day in downtown Manhattan, NY. I was in my mid-twenty’s, but acted as old as I possibly could. Nokia had flown me in from Chicago to demo a new product line. I was in sales and dressed as if I was an Executive. The BIG launch was filled with various “Suits” and Corporate so-and-so’s.

Just below that it said, “Also the monkey has a bigger penis than you do.”

Editor’s note: Great story, Shad! It would fit greatly as a starting plot twist for some sort of a romantic comedy Thank you for participating in our contest!

Coming up, next week – the contest winner!

The point of the contest was pretty simple – write an amusing story about freelance writing (fictional or from your own experience).

We’ve identified 5 winners of the contest and wanted to highlight these contest submissions for you.

Make sure check back next week – another submission will be waiting for you!

This may not be the funniest of all submissions, but it definitely contains some philosophical points, which a lot of freelance writers should be sympathetic to!

Writing Now and Then by Pargat D.

This is my attempt to write something funny and amusing about freelance Writing. The idea of doing this is itself funny for a rookie like me! Anyway, I’ll try to put my thoughts into words and struggle with the humour part, either.

As the art flourishes, it may be good for the part-time writer, but for the lay-man English as a language has been hit hard, you never know when “One Large Burger with extra Fries” is rated above anything Shakespeare wrote and is regarded as the finest sentence in post-modern English. After all, what’s in a verb?!

Editor’s note: Thanks you, Pargat, for participating in the contest! As for the rest of you, guys – check back next week, when we’ll be highlighting the 2nd place winning essay. For more freelance writing goodness check out our Facebook and Twitter!

As you know there have been a lot of great writing pieces and we simply can’t let them go by unrecognised.

The point of the contest was pretty simple – write an amusing story about freelance writing (fictional or from your own experience).

We’ve identified 5 winners of the contest and wanted to highlight these contest submissions for you.

Make sure check back next week – another submission will be waiting for you!

Oh No! by Mishal A.

You think your report or proposal is perfect. Then someone who’s never read it before finds an oh-so-embarrassing mistake. You lose your face. Or an account. Or a promotion.

“Your cooling skills are outstanding.”
If I were in the HVAC business and had just fixed your air conditioner, then that might be true.
It only takes one misstep like this to submarine your credibility.

Editor’s note: Thank you, Mishal, for participating in the contest and highlighting those minor and thus unpleasant mistakes that a lot of freelance writers leave in their papers.

Fortunately their more humorous than damaging. And we, at the ResearchWritingCenter.com, wish you to make only this kind of mistakes in your works, if any at all

P.S. We’ve added a great online meme to describe the frustration we face, when dealing with these spelling and/or contextual mistakes!

Have a great weekend!

In the meantime, our team keeps working to make your user experience even more comfortable and memorable.

That’s why, after taking a brief break, our specialists continue to develop new features and options for our admin panel. And I’m here to tell you about them. And a couple of screen shots to get you all excited about the updates:)

Order Verification Update

Some of you have probably already noticed that we implemented some changes to our order verification process. The element that specifically concerns you is our messaging system. We are modifying the order verification procedures to allow more transparency.

For example, now you will receive a notification of revision requirements with more exact details on the issues that need your further attention. Those will be small textual hints to guide you in the right direction, in a form somewhat similar to the following:

- the paper is to contain a title page;
- the paper is to contain a reference page;

As you can see – much less chance of ambiguity there, as might have been the case previously when you received personalized messages from the Support Dpt.

This scheme will be automatized to a certain extent, which should eliminate human error and will also allow you to proceed with the work on your revision much sooner, since you won’t waste any time trying to figure out the exact instructions.
Please note that the messages you can expect to receive and other aspects of this update are subject to modification, because we’re rolling this feature out gradually. Thus, things may change over the next weeks. So this specific feature might change eventually, when we will finalize these improvements for you.

What other stuff can you expect in the future? Let’s check it out!

Customer Profile

First of all, we are updating the customer profile for you guys.

Pretty soon, you’ll be able to see more customer details, including some that were previously visible ONLY to the Support Department.

Of course, the info will NOT include any personally identifying information; but it will contain some additional info to help acquaint you with your customer’s characteristics.

This info should shed some light on the specific difficulties that your customer faces in their writing. The final set of data to be made visible will become available when this feature is going to be activated, which should happen within the next couple of weeks.

We decided to make this info available so that you can connect with your customers on a more personal level. This should lead to better results.

You will also be able to see other available orders from this customer. This means that, theoretically, if you feel a connection with a certain customer, or the subject matter they are working with, you can request to take up one of his/her other orders.

We hope that you see what we are trying to do here: now, not only are our customers able to choose their writers, but the writers are able to ‘choose’ their customers, too. Of course, as usual, we cannot guarantee whether any order will be assigned to you or not.

Orders on BIDs

We’re also making certain changes to the procedures for Orders on BIDs. In the near future, it will be much easier to request Orders on BIDS, as they will have their own special form, designed to make your life easier – just fill it out and send your request, no need to write long and unnecessary messages.

We’re going to keep you posted on these upcoming updates. As for the above mentioned changes to the system – they should be up and running by the end of January, or even sooner than that.

Thank you for staying with the ResearchWritingCenter.com – let’s do everything possible within our means to make it the best freelance writing community on the web!

The point of the contest was pretty simple – write an amusing story about freelance writing (fictional or from your won experience).

We’ve identified 5 winners of the contest and wanted to highlight these contest submissions for you.

Make sure check back next week – another submission will be waiting for you!

“Freelance Writing: Who Put a Hex on Us?” by Nalin S.

When I first started freelance writing, my parents, friends and relatives or almost everyone I know were totally against it. Even I wasn’t sure if I was ready for it or not as I had a degree to pursue, which if I was to take up freelance writing, had to be set aside for the future. Confusion was paramount and I was being asked questions by my mother, “Who put a hex on you, my child?” to which I had no reply.

Today, I feel happy about being a freelance writer as it does not burden me with things I don’t like, it pleasures me with things I like to do. The computer has been tamed now and my little brother surely gets his monthly allowance from his big brother, who is not so much worthless now.

Editor’s note: Thank you, Nalin, for participating in the contest! Good job! Thank you to everyone, who voted for this submission. See you soon, guys!

HAPPY NEW YEAR to ALL of YOU, GUYS! See you in 2012!