The Renegade Writer Blog

I’ve come to realize that the Renegade Writer’s blogroll is seriously out of date. I want the blogroll to be a great source for writers looking for other professional blogs, and I also would like to return the blogroll love to those writing blogs that link to the Renegade Writer. If you have a writing [...]

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a question from a reader who wanted to know if he should mention his copywriting creds in a magazine query. Thanks to all of you who answered him in the Comments!
I also asked an editor of mine at a national magazine, who just sent me his reply because [...]

This past week, when I had a houseful of guests and my husband was in Germany, I discovered that my 19-year-old cat Rupert had cancer all through his liver and pancreas. I made the decision to have him euthanized, and held him while the vet did it. I didn’t think I would cry because it [...]

I’ve been getting some wonderful feedback from my students in my current session of Get Unstuck! for Freelancers — a 6-week e-course that will help you get more motivated, more organized, and more productive.
One part of one of my assignments (to help beat perfectionism) is to purposely send an e-mail to an editor with a [...]

What’s this? A photo depicting 2010 New Year’s festivities? In October? That’s it…Linda’s clearly gone ’round the bend this time. She’s in cahoots with the department stores that already have their Christmas trees up. I’ll plan for 2010 later in the year like a normal person.
Will you? The holidays are around the corner, and you [...]

A few Renegade readers were interested in my writing buddy Damon Brown’s tech journalism boot camp last month but weren’t able to make the signup deadline. Damon is offering the course again on November 2…here are the details.
The First Byte: 5 Day Tech Journalism Boot Camp! ONE HOUR PER DAY ONLINE CLASS: November 2nd – [...]

Julia asks: “I’m attending a conference where I’ll be doing one-on-one pitch sessions with magazine editors. Can you give me any advice?”
I have done these one-on-one pitches before. I recommend reading through the magazines and coming up with a few short pitches for each. But at the conference, attend the editors’ workshops/panels, because they’ll give [...]

My first free teleclass for writers, on Querying with Confidence, was this past Tuesday evening. I think it was a great success! We had 80 writers on the call, and I got some wonderful questions during the call and afterwards in e-mail. I started out with five minutes of greeting callers as they popped on [...]

I recently read a great post by writer Thursday Bram called Why Writers Need CRM and Why I Use Gist. Gist is a free online contact management tool that’s in beta now. It can import your contacts from your e-mail applications, LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter, and more.
What’s really neat about Gist is that it brings together [...]

I just finished my first free teleclass for writers, and it was a blast. I was nervous at first and I got kicked off the line once, but all in all I think it was a success. I’ll try to post the recording here in the next few days.
I got some great questions from writers. [...]