Freelancer Magazine and me.
As well as working on copywriting projects with clients, a small but reassuringly regular part of my working life is writing for Freelancer Magazine. The mag was in its first month when editor Sophie Cross decided to run a competition to find a guest editor for issue #5. As I die-hard fan of the mag […]
Struggling to start writing? This advice might help.
Writing, whether it’s for work or pleasure, often feels like something you should be doing but aren’t. “Oh I wish I could do more… but…” We get stuck in our own heads and never get round to putting pen to paper. We say it’s a lack-of-time thing, but is it really a perfectionist thing? A […]
How I survived my first five years of freelancing.
Almost exactly five years ago I sat down at my desk for my first day as a full time freelancer. I had nothing. No work. Not a drop. I’d left my PAYE job before Christmas, my part-time lecturing gig had just finished til the next academic year and the freelance writing work I’d been doing […]
Running a business is about human connections.
Whenever I’m asked by new copywriters how I get clients, my answer is always the same: build networks and give value. In this year’s ProCopywriters survey, 88% surveyed said they get most of their work via word of mouth. EIGHTY-EIGHTY PERCENT 👀 Being recommended like that means doing consistently great work, yes. But it also […]
Could improvisation solve your creative blocks? Because I think it’s solving mine…
A couple of months ago I started playing in an instrumental band, as the only guitarist. It felt exposing. There was nowhere to hide my shaky chops. No singing or words for me to distract people with. I was leaning FAR out of my comfort zone. Then, just to make life even more interesting, we […]
Marketing is not as complicated as we think it is.
Do you ever get the feeling that marketing has been packaged up and optimised and given acronyms and made to seem like a THING that is separate from us that we can tie onto our work and lives like a ROCKET PACK that will shoot us into the capitalist stratosphere? Do you? I do. But […]
Have we lost the art of switching off?
Last month I took some long-awaited time off work. The weeks leading up to the break were busy. Frantic, in fact. I had to pomodoro my socks off to keep myself on track and get everything done. Head down, keep focus. I did it. Finished up. Shut my laptop. Off we went. I had been […]
The small business superpower that big brands wish they had…
One thing I firmly believe about all this marketing jazz is that nobody really knows what they’re doing. The big brands may have more years under their belt and more people on the payroll, but at the end of the day, they’re just doing the same thing as you and me with more cash. You’ve […]
Finding freelancing clients can be a wonky journey, and that’s ok.
In the early days of freelance life, I used to be shy about the fact that so many leads seemed to come from chance encounters, recommendations and friends. I always imagined that when I had Properly Made It I would move beyond all that, and operate from a place of a highly functioning, SEO-perfected website, […]
What to do when you’ve run out of ideas.
At a time when we’re feeling more uninspired and “meh” than ever, is there anything we can do to jumpstart the imaginative parts of our brains? Living through a creative drought can be infuriating, especially when you need a steady flow of ideas to pay the bills. Whether you’re making art, music or coming up […]