How does the playing of a master soprano sax player tell us something about how to manage a freelance writing career?

Check out a few minutes of this video of Sam Newsome playing a Duke Ellington tune. Pretty unusual stuff. Whether or not you like the music, notice what’s unusual about his playing.

Got it?

He doesn’t pause to breathe.

Newsome practices a technique called circular breathing. He has the rare, but learned, ability to breathe in even as he blows out into his sax. Australian aboriginals practice the same technique when they play the didgiridoo.

It’s called circular breathing. It creates a very cool musical effect. And it’s an instructive way to look at a freelance writing career.

When you first start writing, full- or part-time, you wonder how it can possibly come together. You know you need to pitch stories. But to do that, you need to research stories and publications. But you also need to write. And you need to follow up on queries and payments. It’s a similar process for copywriters, too. You need to pitch clients. You need to work with existing clients. You need revise and rewrite one job while you’re starting the first draft of another job.

So how DOES it all come together? Circular breathing. Another term for a balanced approach to work and to life.

As a freelance writer, you can never afford to neglect any one aspect of your job. And it IS a job. If you neglect your pitching and marketing while you’re busy on a writing job, you’ll find yourself without a current assignment. Fine, you think; I’ll just use the free time to research and pitch.

Not so smart. Because a dead period now means no checks coming in a few months down the road.

ALWAYS work the marketing side of the equation. As much as an assignment can take over your life and brainpower, you HAVE to continually line up work, or you won’t have any.

You have to breathe in even as you breathe out. You have to breathe out at the same time you breathe in.

Time management, or energy management, is the key. I talk a lot about both in WRITE WHERE THE MONEY IS. I talk about what the tasks are that ensure success and how to move them all foward. Don’t let any one task dominate for too long. Keep moving. Keep breathing.

It might seem daunting at first, but the techniques are really pretty simple. Practice circular breathing. Pretty soon you begin to feel like a master musician (or, sometimes, a circus juggler). Checks arrive for old stories as you hit the “send” button on a new story. You board a plane for an assignment the day after you line up another one. It’s challenging, it’s fun, and it becomes like beautiful music.

It might even persuade you to take up the didgiridoo. You could write a story about it.

Wally's not really a sybarite—he just lives the good life as a freelancer.

What does freelancing mean to you?

“Gulp, I’m on my own now. No paycheck, no safety net”?

Or, “Hallelujah, I’m my own boss, and yes it’s a heckuva challenge, but my time is my own now”?

Or, “Yeah, well, maybe one of these days.”

Whatever it means to you, you have to meet the master of the freelance lifestyle, the guy who savvies the “free” in freelancing better than anyone I know: Wally (Why in the World Would I Ever Want Another Real Job?) Conger.

Wally’s the mastermind of one of the most entertaining and inspiring blogs on the Internet, cleverly titled wallyconger.com. He’ll draw from anything, from television shows to sci fi to, well…ME…in order to sound the call for liberation from the soul-crushing drudgery of cube-farm labor.

In other words, Wally firmly believes that most of us can and should become masters of our own ships, captains of our own souls. For him, that means answering to no one should he decide to savor a cigar and a Guinness in his backyard at a time of day and a day of the week when most people are still hunched over their computers daydreaming about their impending 48-hour furlough.

So how do I enter this picture? For one thing, Wally and I are old friends. We went to high school together, after which we kind of went separate ways—Wally off to the world of corporate communications, me to the world of…well, the world. I became a travel writer. But we always stayed in touch, and read each other’s work with mutual admiration.

As so often happens with jobs that promise security, Wally got shown the exit several years ago during some sort of corporate restructuring. He turned in his name badge, walked through the skyscraper turnstile one last time, returned to our beloved California Central Coast, and trust me; he hasn’t looked back.

With fervor, astute insight, and contagious joie de vivre, Wally savors every moment of freelancing and shares his passion with his readers.

His latest product is called FEARLESS FREELANCER 101. It’s brilliant, and not just because it includes an in-depth interview with yours truly. It’s a bundle of PDFs and mp3s chock full of inspiration and hard-won practical advice. In his “Quick Start Guide to Fearless Freelancing,” Wally addresses every fear the hopeful freelancer faces, kiboshes them all, and serves up highly practical strategies for making the big shift. That includes how to spread the word of your availability and how to deal with money issues.

Not all of Wally’s readers are writers. But for those who are, or who are considering freelance writing, Wally turned to me for specific advice and inspiration. Our interview is included as INSIDER SECRETS FROM A GLOBE-TROTTING FREELANCER. Wally’s a great interviewer. He got me to cough up stuff that isn’t even in my book, though he also includes a chapter from Write Where the Money Is. The one titled, “Why I KNOW You Can Succeed As a Freelance Writer.”

You CAN succeed as a freelance writer. You CAN succeed as a freelancer. Wally Conger will make you a true believer. Check out FEARLESS FREELANCER 101, and let me know what you think.

As Wally would say, here’s to abolishing wage slavery, one job at a time!

“The thing that is scaring you the most is exactly what you need to do.”

I was listening to a podcast this morning—successful entrepreneurs James Schramko, Dean Hunt, and Peter Parks talking about what makes them tick. The question was raised: “What advice would you give to yourself if you could go back to when you were first starting out?” That’s when James Schramko came out with the line above.

Does this ring true to you? I bet it does. It rang like a gong in my ears. Every freelance writer knows what it’s like to dance around an idea as if it will somehow miraculously arise on its own and spontaneously come to fruition. Anyone who’s ever dated knows this syndrome.

But it’s one thing to serve up platitudes about breaking through your fears and blah blah blah. Everyone knows we shouldn’t be ruled by fear, that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, and so on.

This is a far more interesting point. James is saying that precisely…the very thing… you’re most afraid of…is exactly what you need to do.

So why does THIS particular task, concept, or story idea stand out as The Scary One?

Here’s one possibility: It’s your best shot. It’s the single thing that you absolutely know will most advance your career. Wow. The Big One. The idea begins to grow out of proportion. It takes over. It becomes your identity. If you sit on it, at least it will never get rejected. It’ll always be there for you to fondle, to look back on like a musty old memento. “One of these days….” But if you put it out and it gets shot down, your entire being would suffer. The end of life as you know it.

Here’s another possibility: The reason it’s scary to you is simply because you know it’s a dang good idea. Not a make-or-break-your-career deal. Just a solid idea. Some of the psychology above is at play, but really, the reason it’s scary is this:

Things will change when you act on it.

One way or another, things will change. Maybe that seems scary, but it’s GOOD. By definition, your life can never be the same once you take action on that One Scary Thing.

Same-ol’ same-ol’ is death to writers. We succeed by stretching, by trying new things.

So what’s scaring you right now? Different things are scary at different points in our careers. I’ll toss out a few possibilities:

• Writing your first query letter
• Following up on that query you sent out six months ago
• Pitching a big-time publication
• Asking to interview a source who will help you with a great story pitch
• Putting together a book proposal
• Writing an ebook
• Starting your own blog
• Quitting your day job
• Taking a writing course
• Trying a new avenue of writing: copywriting, for instance
• Creating your portfolio website
• Pitching a whole rash of stories to publications that pay real money
• Offering to guest post on someone’s blog
• Leveraging your writing in a new way, such as learning Internet marketing
• Continuing your education
• Attending a writer’s conference
• Teaching a course in writing
• Getting your clips together
• Revising some rejected stories and pitches to make them viable
• Buying useful reference materials that will help you write or market better

Whatever your One Scary Thing is, please realize that the second scenario is what’s true. It’s a dang good idea, not your identity. No matter what happens, your being will remain intact.

You’ll have more great ideas and you may stand at more Scary Thing thresholds. But each time you move forward anyway, you’ll become more successful.

You’ll change. You’ll grow. You’ll succeed.

You better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone.

Are you reinventing yourself? I am. So are a lot of my friends.

My friend Andrew has gone from magazine editor to ghostwriter. Andrew’s wife, Madeleine, went from graphic designer to full-time mom to professional photographer. Mike went from ghostwriter to daddy blogger. Wally toiled in corporate PR for eons; now he’s an online entrepreneur who shows others how to summon the gumption to work for themselves. James managed a Mercedes dealership until less than two years ago. Now he’s doing seven figures as an Internet marketer who shows others how to do the same. My buddy Chris was a DJ in London. Two years ago he wrote an ebook, launched a website, and today he lives in Beverly Hills and coaches hundreds of others in how to start online businesses.

My pal Jay was laid off last year from his job in human development for a big corporation. He had the good sense to jump on the John Carlton Action 2010 seminar I posted about last month. Now he’s a Carlton client studying the art of marketing his consulting business and another business he recently invested in.

My wife was an actress. Now she’s a copy editor at one of the world’s biggest ad agencies.

Me? Last year I won the Lowell Thomas silver award as Travel Journalist of the Year. This year I’m barely doing any travel writing. I’m more focused on copywriting and blogging (natch!)—and, in the spirit of Surefire Writing and my ebook—working on ways to help other writers. A year and a half ago I had no clue how to put anything up on the Internet (other than to turn my copy in to a client). Now I run a bunch of websites, and I do a lot of the design and tech work myself.

The reason I became a writer in the first place was to have a blast with life—to try new things and write about them, to get paid for learning and growing. So maybe reinvention comes naturally to me. I do know what it’s like to feel stuck, though. This feels better.

Reinvention is all the craze. The word itself is simply a reinvention of others like stretching, growing, changing. The world is changing like crazy. It’s reinventing itself right in front of our eyes. And that’s good. If we go with it. If we fight it, it all seems nuts.

So how are you reinventing yourself? If you’re a freelance writer, are you looking for new markets, new media? If you’re a journalist, have you thought about copywriting? Or at least branching out beyond your niche? Thought about starting a blog or writing an ebook? If you’re an Internet marketer, have you tried writing articles?

If you’re not yet a writer, but want to give it try, what are you waiting for?

We all have multiple dimensions, new depths to discover. Change is what makes life worth living. I intend to continue reinventing myself for as long as I live.

John Carlton — "the most ripped-off and respected copywriter alive."

I’ve been to my share of writers conferences. They can be good for getting a recharge, gaining inspiration, or for commiserating with my brethren. Rarely, though, do I come away feeling like what I gained will directly repay the cost of attending. And that’s okay. I go for less-measurable reasons.

But I’m planning to attend one on January 29–30 that will be different.

It’s John Carlton’s Action 2010 seminar in San Diego.

John Carlton is one of the country’s most successful copywriters. He and a panel of super-successful copywriters and marketing masters will be sharing tactics and strategies geared to getting us attendees to formulate a workable action plan for success in 2010.

I like the sound of that. Much better than vague resolutions like “query more” or “land more narrative features.”

Here’s a blurb from his sales letter for the event:

“We’re breaking the mold on seminars (yet again)…

… and creating a resource-rich space where you will be literally surrounded by trusted professionals (the best in the biz)…

… all interacting with you and other attendees…

… on the really important stuff behind growth and business success.”

If you’re unclear what copywriting is, it’s essentially writing marketing and/or advertising copy, online or off-line. If you’re a good writer, you should consider it—even if it’s only to better sell yourself.

You know me primarily as a magazine journalist. But notice I never call myself anything but “writer.” I’ve done a fair amount of copywriting over the years, and it’s been a lucrative addition to my writing income.

I readily admit I have much to learn. Why not learn from the best?

Even if you’re not an aspiring copywriter, you should view yourself as an entrepreneur, a businessperson. That’s how you should run your writing life. And that means marketing yourself and marketing your writing.

All too often, freelance writers lean too far to the artsy side of the spectrum and neglect to see and market themselves as businesses. That’s why so many writers are struggling.

I’m going to Action 2010 to help break that mold. I hope some of you will join me. It’s that rarest of all writers conferences—one that I know will repay the cost of admission. Many times over.

One more quote from Carlton:

“I’m going to guarantee that you come away with a list of at least 12 specific Action Plan tactics you’ll be able to implement immediately to increase your bottom line.”

I’d say that’s pretty persuasive copy.

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Click here to learn more about John Carlton’s Action 2010.

How do I fit 25 hours into a 24-hour day? Selena Templeton asked me that, essentially, in a recent comment.

I’m no paragon, but I’ve been freelancing successfully for nearly three decades. I’ve developed some approaches that I know work. Initially, they were survival mechanisms. Now I truly enjoy them.

Above all else, rid yourself of any delusional notion that you can multitask. The concept is a sham. It invites FADD: Freelance Attention-Deficit Disorder. Before you know it, you’re lost in the Twittersphere, following someone’s jokey Facebook link, reading The Onion, or looking for old Lucy bits on YouTube. (Gee, does it sound like I’ve been there?)

Next: Take care of yourself. You’re the top race horse in your stable, and you’ve got a lot invested in your health and abilities. Feed that hoss good hay. Let him rest. Work him hard! Then let him rest again.

I devote my early morning to meditation, exercise (as you know, I’m a bike geek), and a good breakfast. I report to work (my home office) on time. I answer the early e-mails. Then…

I build focused blocks of time in to my day. If you’re a part-time freelancer working at night, you might have just one session under the light of a midnight-oil lamp. All the more reason to be fully focused. Full-timers, you should schedule three to five dedicated time blocks every day.

During those times, schedule one task. One task only. Devote yourself to it fully for the entire time block. I like two-hour segments. Turn off your e-mail. Turn off your iPhone or Blackberry. Don’t be a slave to those devices, or to anyone demanding your attention.

You’ll be amazed at how much you can accomplish in one of those sessions. I can’t tell you how much I love them! And I work really, really hard during those time periods.

Don’t run overtime, even if you’re in a groove. Set a timer and stop when it dings. (I use www.online-stopwatch.com. That’s their hourglass image above.) Get up and stretch, breathe some fresh air, have a healthy snack.

Then, before your next focused-attention segment, answer calls and e-mails. Tweet. Cruise by Facebook. But don’t get lost.

Then back to focusing.

That’s the nutshell version. There’s more in my book. There I explain the concept of energy management versus time management. I’ll share more here, too, because I love this subject. I practice what I preach, and I know it works. But I also respect your time. Enough for now.

____________________________________________________

Anyone else have surefire methods for managing time and energy? Share them below!

Meet fellow writer, blogger, and blogger about writing, Carol Tice. Carol irrepressibly contends, as do I, that freelance writers can and should make very good money doing what we do. Thinking small gets us nowhere. Here she not only addresses the dicey subject of freelance rates, she trots out a figure of $100 an hour—not as a fantasy, but a real number. Attainable. Viable. Reasonable. Many of us work at a per-word, not a per-hour rate, but we need to think in terms of how each assignment plays out in hourly compensation. And shooting for a hundred bucks is a great way to think! I’ll let Carol take over now:

“I’d like to discuss freelance writing rates. Several writers have commented to me in the course of the year that they make $30–$40 an hour writing four articles an hour for content mills, and that they consider that great pay.

“But is it? What is a good rate to shoot for in freelance writing?

“My answer, in case you couldn’t tell from the title of this blog, is $100 an hour. That should be your goal.

“Let’s do the math to learn why it’s important that your hourly rate be so high.

“If you work 35 hours a week, $30 an hour means you’d make $52,500 a year allowing for 2 weeks’ vacation. Sounds good on the face of it, right?

“But at $100 an hour, you make $175,000 a year. Wow! Big difference, huh?

“I sense that you’re freaking out. Think it’s impossible? Yesterday’s pay rate? Hardly. That’s my own rate goal for my business.

“If you’re saying, ‘I don’t need to make $175,000 a year, so $30 an hour will be OK,’ I’d like you to consider these three things:

“Your expenses. Costs include paying your own health insurance, which is more costly every year. Paying state, local and federal taxes, and self-employment tax. Paying for equipment, marketing, Web-site development, advertising, heat, light, paper and other supplies. Making $40 an hour at a full-time job where they pay the benefits might pencil out – but the equation changes when you’re on your own. After expenses, that really doesn’t leave much net profit.

“Unbillable hours. Then there’s the downtime. You wait for interview calls to start, bill accounts, market the business, tally up your monthly accounts, have a slow week where you aren’t fully booked, and on and on. Not every hour is a billable hour. Track your time for a month to get a sense of how many real, billable hours you’ve got – it’ll probably be eye-opening.

“Work/life balance. Didn’t you start freelancing so you could spend more time with family? Many freelancers get into it for the “freedom,” but end up working 12-hour days to keep it going…not that freeing in my view. A lot of us with children find we’ve got only 30-32 real, available work hours in the week unless we want to stick our kids in many hours of child care.

“Put these three factors together and you’ll quickly see why your average hourly rate needs to be high in order for you to earn a decent living.

“Don’t know what your average hourly rate is now? Track your billable hours for a month to get a sense of your current rate. Then, set a goal of improving your hourly rate in 2010. You won’t bill $100 an hour overnight if you’re at $20 an hour now. It’ll take time to gradually replace lower-paying accounts with higher ones – but it’ll be worth the effort.

“There’s one final reason to aim high, for $100 an hour. We often don’t achieve our goals in life. Maybe one client’s at $100 an hour, but you have another situation where it works out to less, but there’s still a good reason to do the gig — a great editor connection you want to keep, for instance, or great exposure that helps your marketing. So when we shoot for $100, we may end up with $75 overall and still do quite well. Shoot for $30 and you may end up with not enough to buy groceries.

“Whatever your rate now, make a plan to increase your hourly rate in the coming year – because better-paying gigs are what truly put the “free” in freelance.”

Even if you don’t write for a living as Carol and I do, honor yourself as a writer. You deserve at least $100 an hour.

My best editorial client, National Geographic Adventure magazine, folded last month. I was the editor at large and a regular contributor.

When I got the news, I spent time commiserating with the staff. It was a great magazine, loved by 625,000 readers. Beautifully produced. Super high quality editorial. I was proud to be a part of it for its entire 10-year lifespan. Proud to be friends with the very smart people who edited and designed it.

But I couldn’t spend much time wringing my hands or theirs, or even contemplating what it meant for the future of print journalism. Maybe later. It was time to move on. I had work to do. I thought I’d share some of the steps I’ve taken since NGA folded. This will always happen to us as freelance writers. Clients will go away. Magazines will fold, businesses will go belly-up, or staff turnover will bring change of direction. Clients might stop using us, or use us less. Here’s what I’ve been up to:

1. I reminded myself that this is normal. And good, really. When everything remains the same, we can get stagnant, complacent. It’s good to hustle. And to remember that there are lots of markets, millions of opportunities out there. It’s exciting to be reminded of that.

2. I got my homepage, my platform, in order: bobhowells.com. I want editors and ad clients to have easy access to snippets of my portfolio. I’d gotten lazy about this. I had a steady gig. I didn’t have to sell myself much.

I did the site on my own. It cost nothing other than domain registration and hosting. If you don’t have clips available online—a résumé of some sort, do it. It will pay off. You don’t have to be a tech wizard. I’m certainly not. But I’m a journalist whose business it is to dive in and understand stuff. I applied my instincts to this process. You can too. Or just hire some help.

3. I contacted clients I’d worked for in the past. You know, just checking in. And by the way, I have this cool idea…. My electrician did the same the other day, and I gave him a job right off. I got a great print assignment almost right away, and put down the groundwork for more.

4. I checked in with other writers and bloggers. The grapevine is buzzing. It always pays off to find out what others are up to. As always, I’m touched by the generosity of my fellow freelancers.

Interestingly, I hear far fewer sour attitudes than in tough times past. We all recognize that the landscape is changing. Change can be painful, but the great thing is, media is becoming so dispersed that we’re more than ever the masters of our own fates.

5. I stepped up activity on Facebook and Twitter. Not to waste time, but to raise my presence and to network.

6. I kept up with my posts here, and jotted down many, many ideas for future posts.

7. I followed my own advice in this post.  Especially the part about focus. In just two highly focused hours, I wrote something I’m extremely proud of.

8. I continued my education in Internet marketing. I will be sharing much more about this in the future. We as writers are in a strong position to succeed in Internet marketing, to parlay our skills as communicators into great success online. I pay keen attention to two mentors in particular, Chris Farrell and James Schramko. (Those are my affiliate links to their sites.) I urge anyone looking for a fresh outlet to try either or both of these guys, at least for a trial period.

9. I read or thumbed through books on entrepreneurism and wealth building. I thought Gary Vaynerchuk’s short Crush It! was superb for its specifics and practicality. (Grammar Ranter wishes he could have edited it, though.) Christopher Howard’s Instant Wealth—Wake Up Rich was more “ya gotta believe,” but full of inspiration—his and that of some of the world’s most successful people. (Yep, those are my Amazon links.)

10. I meditated.

The inquisitor and the world he used to inhabit.

My friend James Glave has posted this useful little quiz on his eponymously titled blog. I can only cop to two yeses, so I guess I’m doomed:

“Please check all that apply.

• Do you have a trust fund?
• Are you married or engaged to a lawyer, airline pilot, surgeon, petroleum or mining engineer, dentist, or pharmaceutical executive?
• If not, can you grow hydroponic marijuana?
• If none of the above apply, are you at least married or engaged to an individual with a “real job”?
• Are you are childless, or monastic, or both?
• Do you suffer from low self-esteem?
• Are you comfortable waiting six to eight months to be paid for two months of work even though your mortgage lender or landlord may not exhibit the same flexibility?
• Are you Malcolm Gladwell?

“If you answer ‘yes’ to at least three of these questions, then congratulations! You may be a candidate for a career in the glamorous and rewarding field of freelance journalism.”

No question: A lot of affirmative replies will help grease your freelance career. But not all is grim out here in writerland. I’ve had a decent year. But I’ve worked hard, hustled, and tapped new markets.

James, by the way, is a former colleague from Outside magazine and one of the best writers about things green in the business. His book, Almost Green, is a classic of the emerging “how to balance being green with being alive in a brown world” genre. After a stint as a freelancer during which he flunked his quiz, he’s gone into PR. Green PR, of course. I see that as a smart move, a way to parlay his writing skill and knowledge into steady bucks.

Which, really, is exactly what I’m doing as a freelance writer. Some of us do it full time. That’s not easy. Some of us do it part time—a lot easier. Some do it to be able to work at home. Others do it to leverage a career in another profession, whether a desk job or an Internet marketing gig. You know—raise your status. Publicize your online gig. All sorts of combinations. More than ever.

So whether or not you pass James’s aptitude test, and whether or not you write for a living, it’s a great time to be a freelance writer.