Today’s guest post comes to us from Susan Johnston, the Urban Muse Writer. Enjoy! Anyone who has ever sat through drinks or coffee in their search for love knows that first dates can be both exhilarating and nerve-wracking. Freelancing can be much the same. Courting clients isn’t that different from courting a potential mate. You’re [...]
Are You Trying to Be Too Smart?
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As a professional writer, your vocabulary is literally your stock in trade. Other businesses have huge stockrooms full of whatever they sell – frozen food, Gucci shoes, leather satchels… You, you have words. If you’re anything like me, you’ve taken some pains to make sure your stock hasn’t been the same since 1997. You read [...]
Are You Selling Yourself Short?
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If you make your living as a freelancer, you’re going to be asked – constantly – to prove your worth. Your clients want to know if you’re the best person for the job.Your blog readers want to know if you really have the smarts to give them advice. Your social media “friends” want you to [...]
Why You Don’t Need to Mimic Someone Else’s Fame
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Today’s guest post comes to us from Josh Hanagarne, World’s Strongest Librarian, and a guy I really like as a person. He came online, got whacked by the glittery fame stick in just a few posts and has sat there slightly amazed by it all ever since. Which is pretty cool, if you ask me. [...]
The Princess Bride Guide to Copywriting
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So there have been a lot of other posts around the blogosphere lately about the Star Wars Guide to Blogging and the Bridges of Madison County Guide to Marketing and I realized that at Men with Pens, we don’t really draw from pop culture for posts. Then I realized that this is because James doesn’t [...]
Four Reasons to Love Your Competition
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Every business owner who has a blog has at some point had the following thought: “Why am I giving away all my hard-earned wisdom for free when my competition could easily snap it up and use it against me?” Competition is a scary thing. We all hope we’ll be the only person with this particular [...]
Drive-By Shooting Special: Melani Ward
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James watched as Harry hitched a tattered leather bag to his bike and revved up the engine. For the last time, he headed off into the sunset. What a character. Man, they’d trashed and torched their share of sites, and done some hits they could be darned proud of. Now James stood in the doorway, [...]
Three Ways to Get a Rush from Your Writing
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I have no clue who this guy is. No, really, I don’t. Alright, well, I know he emailed me to let me know I had a broken link in a post. And I know he was interested in what that link led to, which made me think well of him, so I emailed him back. [...]
How Dirty is Your Mind?
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Sherlock Holmes, the great fictional detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was purported to have one of the best minds of his generation. In one of the first Holmes stories ever written, Holmes described how he came to have such a clever brain: I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little [...]
Do Clients Need to Like You or Trust You?
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Truth is the cry of all, but the game of few. – George Berkeley There’s a lot of knowledge available for free on the web. “Experts” of every stripe are leaping out of every corner, telling people what to do, insisting that their way is the only way to do it, claiming they know the [...]
