The life of a freelance writer is pretty sweet.
It’s interesting, challenging work. You meet great people. You have a lot of freedom to organize your work life the way you want it. The pay can be excellent, and you get to make a living doing something you love.
But there are aspects of the profession that aren’t much fun.
As a freelance copywriter, you need to get professional about how you deal with the parts of freelancing that aren’t unicorns and rainbows. Today, I’m going to talk about how to handle one of the more irritating hassles in the life of a writer: Requests for rewrites.
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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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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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Earlier this year, Brian and I created a course called Freelance X Factor.
It was designed for the “typical” Copyblogger reader. (Smart, interested in writing, pretty savvy about social media . . . but possibly “not there yet” when it comes to packaging all of that up and turning it into income.)
The course is designed to give you a “business model in a box,” to take what you’re great at and start using it to make a better living. Our focus was to take social media writers and turn them into effective businesspeople.
While we were at it, we included a lot of content to help you become a social media rock star, if you weren’t there already.
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Earlier this week we saw a stark lesson in the power of a label when it comes to promoting your business.
Using the right vocabulary is everything when it comes to writing powerful copy. And though I adore words even more than donuts, it was only recently that I realized I had been using some of them all wrong.
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Do you remember the doubt on Luke Skywalker’s face when he first held the cool metal of an inert light saber? Looking up at Obi-Wan, he believed it when he said, “I can’t go with you to Alderaan.”
Last summer, we felt just like young Skywalker as we waded waist-deep into the bog of online writing. There was much to learn, forces at work looking to sway us to the dark side, and at times, it was hard to believe in ourselves or our path.
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