The Renegade Writer Blog

This is a guest post by writer Kristine Hansen. She’s written for Wine Enthusiast, Yoga Journal, American Way (the inflight magazine for American Airlines), The Writer, The Onion, Audubon, Budget Travel, Backpacker, Town & Country, Midwest Living, and Time Out Chicago.
Don’t worry. I won’t go on and on about these lean economic times. But what [...]

You’ve sent out 20 letters of introduction (commonly known as LOIs) to magazine editors and have gotten exactly zero assignments. Find out what this means and how to analyze your LOI ROI with Erik Sherman’s article When the Marketing Response is Disappointing. [lf]

Elaine Grant, who teaches the Magazine Writing Basics class through the Renegade Writer, just sent me this testimonial for her class:
Elaine’s class helped me focus my ideas and target my writing to get it ready for publication. Her online “lectures” are full of information and fun to read. I still find myself referring back to [...]

Have you ever gotten in over your head with an assignment? Maybe the topic ended up being too technical for you or your sources spoke in fluent jargon-ese. Maria Schneider, my former editor at Writer’s Digest and current owner of the Editor Unleashed blog, has tips for getting through a tough assignment. First step: Don’t [...]

Copyblogger.com has a great post on 14 Foolproof Proofreading Tips for Bloggers. For example, the poster recommends keeping a list of words you commonly misspell so you can search and destroy them before your post goes live. Check it out! [lf]

I’ve been teaching Magazine Writing Basics for a while now, and when I taught my last session, I added two phone consultations to the e-course – one during the first week, and one at the end of the 8-week class. I wanted to speak with my students because I really feel that teaching magazine writing [...]

This guest post is by Tracey Palmer, freelance writer and editor and founder of Palmer Communications and Chicks Who Write.
As journalists, we love nothing more than quoting facts and figures. You can’t argue with them, right? Logic rules. That’s what I always thought. But remember Mr. Spock? The Star Trek icon, part human, part Vulcan, [...]

Want to follow other journalists on Twitter, or find out how other writers are using this site? Here’s a directory of journalists, bloggers, and media outlets on Twitter. (I’m at http://twitter.com/LFormichelli … Diana’s at http://twitter.com/dianaburrell.)

Earlier this week I was giving advice to a freelancing friend of mine who was having a bad day, and I heard myself say, “If this assignment violates your code, then don’t do it. It’s as simple as that.”
It made me wonder how many of us have a code, personal rules or standards we won’t [...]

I was recently on a writer’s forum where a writer posted that he was writing articles for a penny a word and wondering if that was wise. The other posters shared that they also write for a penny a word, and boast that they can bang out the articles quickly so it’s worth it for [...]