Electrolicious

How do you tell which freelance writing postings are legit, and which aren’t? What kind of important probing questions to ask potential clients to make sure that your gig is a) not a scam and b) well-defined with clear boundaries.
First, allow me to be honest here: I’ve never been much of a full-time freelancer. I’m [...]

Are there any books you recommend or any other sites/writers you find inspiring?
Sure, here are a few reads I’ve been inspired by:

My Misspent Youth by Meaghan Daum
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
A Woman Trapped in a Woman’s Body: (Tales from a Life of Cringe) by Lauren Weedman
Last Days column by David Schmader
The World [...]

You seem to have a nice balance in sharing yourself on a personal level with sharing fun stuff (if that makes sense - you’ve got a healthy separation, it seems). Did you find that hard? What kind of questions do you ask yourself before you talk about things on your blog, esp personal things?
First: thank [...]

Are connections as important as skill in the job world?
Always.
I think connections and networking are important in pretty much every industry, and the copywriting/marketing world is no exception. (And don’t even get me started on the publishing industry!) It’s part of why being a serial contracting copywriter served me well: I did years of short [...]

In this second installation of my copywriting FAQ. In this episode, I’ll tell you the five key things I’ve learned about copywriting and business writing in general.
Were there key things you studied/did/that happened that translate into something you could pass on to others?

Ah yes. Thanks for bringing me back to that. Well, if you [...]

The other night I got a very nice email from a reader named Lucy, asking me a bunch of questions about my career and how I got where I am and what I suggest for others who would like to join me here in the land of word whoredom. I figured I would share my [...]

I was already excited about the shift in my commute with our move back to Capitol Hill. My current commute consists of a solo drive on all four of Puget Sound’s major freeways (i5, i90, 405, 520) taking 45 minutes or so. Moving back to Capitol Hill, I’ve got lots of vanpool, carpool, and bus [...]

Yesterday I had a 7:30am breakfast meeting (guh!) with a group of researchers from Microsoft’s Cambridge office. Part of my job involves talking to cool people doing cool shit, and so that was what I was there to do. There were two Germans (one from the East, one from the West), a Spaniard, and a [...]

I have this long-standing rule about not writing about work on Electrolicious, but I have to bend the rule for a moment to make this statement: Microsoft loves pink hair. Seriously. There is not a single day that I work in Redmond that someone doesn’t dish the love for my pink hair. MS sets the [...]

For a window into why the prospect of an investigative book is freaking me out so much, I present to you this post I wrote almost exactly four years ago: Electrolicious: My Credentials.
The summary: I have made a career out of being a careless, bullshitting writer. In fact, I remember my first semester of [...]