The Renegade Writer Blog

In my post Extreme Productivity in early August, I talked about how I had my husband change my password to a time-suck writer’s forum and I downloaded a free Firefox extension called BlockSite to block other distracting sites. For a couple of days my fingers itched to type in those web addresses, but then the [...]

If you know me, you know that the articles I write are typically service pieces with subheads and bullet-pointed tips for magazines like Health, Oxygen, Writer’s Digest , and many trade and custom publications. In my mind, moving up to the next level as a writer would be writing more complicated pieces. And I recently [...]

When our lives feel out of our control, it tends to make us anxious, worried, and depressed, and can decrease motivation. We feel as if life is happening to us, and we’re just reacting to what life throws at us. On the other hand, when we feel in control of our time and our careers, [...]

(I blogged about this earlier tonight on Hail Britannia, but since it’s writing-related, I figured it belonged here, too.)
Remember the rant British restaurant reviewer Giles Coren sent to his editors about an indefinite article that was removed from his copy? It’s here. Be sure you should read it before you watch this hilarious piece of [...]

(Back in 2006, Linda wrote a post about health and the freelancer. These odds & ends are a continuation.)
Watch your butt
This is an indelicate subject, but I’m an indelicate person, so here goes.
The more successful you are as a freelancer, the more you sit on your ass. Sitting for hours a day at a keyboard [...]

Career columnist Penelope Trunk wrote an interesting blog post last month about Twitter — specifically about why it’s good to jump into stuff like Twittering and blogging when you have no idea what you’re doing — or even if you don’t “get” it. On a grander scale, I believe in this advice, too. Writing a [...]

First, what’s a hack? A hack can be a writer who churns out copy, yes, but here I mean a tip or trick that makes your workday more productive. And hey, I welcome any and all tips that help me churn out the words. Here, the ten productivity hacks I use most often and recommend [...]

I started taking a meditation class at the local yoga studio, and my teacher said it’s her job in life to “fail well.” That really resonated with me, and I think it pertains to writing as well as to the rest of life. As writers, we need to really put ourselves out there and do [...]

It’s funny because it’s true!

If you’re anything like me, you’ve got a to-do list that’s a foot long, filled with a variety of tasks — everything from the mundane to the critically important. The critical stuff always gets done, and I notice that the mundane does too. It’s all the stuff in the middle that languishes from day to [...]