The Renegade Writer Blog

Magazine Circus is a new web site for the magazine industry. From their site:
Magazine Circus was started in February 2009 as a free on-line site for members of the magazine industry to gather and share information and news.
We offer a simple and fun social networking site, an active blog that we update as often as [...]

My buddy Jennifer Lawler, the author of more than two dozen books including the Dojo Wisdom series, has started a blog called Finding Your Voice: “a blog about the creative life, with a few kicks and punches thrown in.” Jennifer already has several great personal development posts up. Today, she put up an interview with [...]

I just turned 40. My husband and I adopted a baby boy in January. My career is in flux as magazines I usually write for are ceasing publication and taking work I normally do in-house.
How do I feel? Energized!
Now that I’m officially middle-aged (the dictionary definition is from 40 to 60 years of age), I’m [...]

Today’s blog post is by Monica Bhide, who teaches Introduction to Food Writing, which starts on March 2.
A year ago, I started a vision board. You have heard of these things, right? A board where you post your goals, your dreams, your hopes. You put the board up where you can see it each [...]

A version of this article originally appeared on 1099.com.
If businesses viewed their marketing campaigns through their prospective clients’ eyes, we wouldn’t have telemarketers, door-to-door salesmen, and slogans like “Lucky Supermarkets: We’re Lower than Low.” Maybe big companies with money bursting out their wazoos can spend their way past client myopia, but if we freelance writers [...]

I recently wrote for a national women’s magazine. I had written for them three times in the distant past, and this was my first time writing for them under a new regime.
When I got the assignment, the editor said, “We like the idea, but we want it to be like X, not like Y [...]

“Acting as if” is a personal development trick where you imagine how someone who’s in a position you aspire to would act, and then do those things yourself. For example, say you want to be a best-selling author. What would she do? Chances are she would set aside a certain amount of time to write [...]

We have great news from one of our Renegade Writer course instructors, Monica Bhide, who teaches our Introduction to Food Writing course. Last week she got the cover art for her upcoming food memoir, Modern Spice: Inspired Indian Flavors for the Contemporary Kitchen, and boy, it’s a beaut. Seriously, when Monica sent me this image, [...]

Let’s face it — freelance writing is scary. When checks don’t come in, you feel like you’re on the brink of economic collapse on a personal level. When you need to call an editor, your mind floods with images of the editor slamming down the phone in your ear (but not before telling you not [...]