Category Archives: Writing

The Art Of Storytelling

Many years ago I wrote a story about meatloaf for two reasons. The first reason is because I was trying to win a free Kindle (I’ve never bought one to this day). The second reason is because I’d recently had an adventure that involved meatloaf, it was fresh in my mind and I decided to go for it; timing is everything. 🙂

me giving a seminar;
phones didn’t take great pictures back then

Unfortunately I didn’t win; I don’t think I even placed. I did get one critique on the story, though. The guy said he liked the story and laughed at it, but that I used the word “I” too many times and that if I’d tightened that up then the story might have been stronger.
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We Need To Talk About Upwork

Back in January, I wrote an article titled Most People Hiring Writers Know Nothing About Writing, and I’ll admit that I wasn’t overly nice about it. Unfortunately, the truth isn’t always nice, but it’s still the truth, and today I’m writing about another truth, a specific truth, one that irks me to the nth degree. Today, I’ll be talking about Upwork (no, I’m not linking to it).

They’re making my head hurt!

I signed up on the site back in 2018, but at that time I wasn’t going all that often. I went looking for any writing assignments to help pad my income, because at that time I was financially secure and the pandemic wasn’t a thought in anyone’s mind. It wasn’t until the summer of 2021 when I decided it was time to start bidding on some projects, because I thought adding some income would be a good thing to do, and I knew there were a lot of potential opportunities for me to be able to find some contracts to bid on.
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You Can’t Please Everyone So Start With Pleasing Yourself

I found this to be an interesting turn of events, thus I’m sharing another repurposed article from years ago. Every once in a while I write reviews of things, my opinion on a book, movie, software, etc. Most of the time I don’t know the people all that well, although on this blog I wrote a review of Beverly Mahone’s book How To Get On The News Without Committing Murder and I know her fairly well.

John59

There’s a happy guy!

In that vein, I once wrote a book review on a book by someone I’d known for 10 years at the time titled Paid To Think. I can’t say we’re great friends, but he’s someone I’ve respected from day one, a very driven and successful guy who wouldn’t be the worst person to emulate in many ways.
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Most People Hiring Writers Know Nothing About Writing

Last year I wrote an article titled Are Writers Taken For Granted? It addressed how horribly many people who are trying to write for living or to make extra income are paid, which is still a problem these days.

breakfast at B'ville Diner

The last paragraph explains this picture 🙂

At the time I said that I wasn’t going to be shilling myself out there trying to find writing gigs because it felt demeaning. Well, after as bad a last 12 months as I’ve had, I’m back to looking for some writing gigs as I try to reestablish my consulting business.
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Bigfoot Lives In My Backyard

Another repurposed article that I feel needs to be shared. Sometimes I think Bigfoot lives in my backyard. Well, maybe in the woods that’s behind my backyard. That might sound like the strangest thing you’ve ever heard, but if it’s not Bigfoot it’s something incredibly big, ugly, and dangerous that’s back there. It’s one of the reasons I hate the backyard.

When we were looking at houses back in 2000, we saw a lot of houses that didn’t quite work out for us. Some had one beautiful room and that would be it; others would have one floor that was immaculate but another floor that looked like squatters had taken over. We did see a couple houses that were pretty nice, but we just couldn’t pull the trigger.
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