6 things clients want from a writer
I turned down an assignment today that wasn’t my area of expertise. Instead, I referred my contact to someone else I knew would do a great job. But it got me thinking, what do clients want from a freelance writer? Here are some things, beyond of course the...Life takes action
Through the serendipity of the web, I somehow came across a blog called 37 Days. Asheville, North Carolina writer Patti Digh asked the question, “What would I be doing today if I only had 37 days to live?” after her stepfather was diagnosed with lung...
9 tips to regain your daily focus
Updated July 13, 2018 You have to be disciplined to be productive when working from your home, and usually I am. I’m at my desk at 9 a.m. After a quick check for e-mail, I keep the sound off to avoid hearing the siren song that more has arrived. A to-do list has...
Secrets & six strings
Here are some interesting items I came across this week: PostSecret: Frank Warren started PostSecret.com as a community art project. Since November 2004, he has received more than 150,000 postcards, each sent anonymously and containing that person’s secret. The...
Love is a four-letter word, and a book of the same name
Have you read Four Letter Word: Original Love Letters (edited by Joshua Knelman and Rosalind Porter)? Although one reviewer said it “unleashes the romantic in all of us,” I didn’t find it that way at all. Confession: I am a hopeless romantic....We heart Best Buy CEO
Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn had the communicators at the IABC conference in San Francisco in June in the palm of his hand, as I mentioned talking about highlights of the conference. He seals the deal with this interview in the The New York Times published August 15. If...Make surveys make sense
Customer/employee surveys are important. I know this, and I try to go along with companies who take the time to survey me as a customer. But they need to do a better job of asking questions that are both within the customer’s ability to answer and that they can...
‘As thick as unabridged dictionaries’ and more expressive language
Here are more great examples of words eloquently or imaginatively written for the enjoyment of readers: “The files holding the data are as thick as unabridged dictionaries.” – Joshua Wolf Shenk in The Atlantic, “What Makes Us Happy?”...