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How to Get Free When You’re
Feeling Stuck and Scared

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Spring has finally sprung here in the northeast, but I’m not sure any of us quite believe it. It could still be a snowy 10 degrees tomorrow. Twenty years in New England has taught me that.

Which is why I haven’t really done anything about the fact that my new studio did not come with screens for the windows.

I’m still opening them, mind you. And that little voice in the back of my head has been telling me that, at night while I’m sleeping, a bat could easily fly through and nest in my hair.

Only it wasn’t a bat. It was a little bird.

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Blogging Lessons from
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

image from movie poster

A 40 year-old unsolved murder mystery. Strange cryptic codes in a bible. Sweden, sandwiches, and many, many cigarettes. The badass-est female protagonist since . . . forever. And an author who has, posthumously, caused quite a ruckus in the book world and in the minds of conspiracy theorists everywhere.

Yes, I’m talking about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. If you haven’t heard of it, the rest of us are inviting you to come out from under your rock. Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest) is topping bestseller lists as we speak and the theatrical release of Dragon Tattoo hits the U.S. next week.

I had the good fortune of screening an advanced copy and, of course, my mind went blog, blog, blog. Because that’s what blog obsessed people like us do. So here are the blogging lessons I learned from this tattooed ‘girl’ . . .

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The Sex and the City Guide to Blogging

Sex and the City

I’ve always been of the opinion that if Carrie Bradshaw had popped onto our television screens in 2010 instead of 1998, she would have been a blogger. But alas, she didn’t, so she wrote a (gasp!) print column for the fictional New York Star newspaper.

Yes, before there were blogs, there were newspaper columns – where readers couldn’t talk back or share good content. ‘Carrie the blogger’ would have been huge.

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Want to be a Better Writer?
Get Your Ego Out of the Way

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Raise your hand if you’re a writer.

Now, raise your hand if you have a nice-sized ego.

And now, raise your hand if you lied on that last one and kept your hand down.

The thing is, writing and a big ego kind of go hand in hand. And if you haven’t quit, gone crazy, or offed yourself yet — which I know you haven’t because you were just raising your hand — then like it or not, you have a big ego.

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What Entourage Can Teach You About Successful Freelancing

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There’s just something about those filthy Entourage boys that gets to me — in a good way.

Haven’t seen the show? It’s crass. It’s sexist, often to the point of being misogynistic. It’s so politically incorrect that sometimes I have to look away.

Also, it’s hilarious and it brings me joy.

Like a lot of successful entertainment, the show is built around archetypes that are larger than the individual characters they play. And those archetypes can actually get you more work, more money, and more enjoyment as a freelancer. I won’t say they’ll let you have quite as much fun as a rich movie star, but it’s close.

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