I used to think, as a freelancer, that I could not "afford" to turn jobs down, so I took everything that came my way. Lately, though, I've learned it's better to sometimes say a resounding, "No" to potential jobs. Fiverr has taught me this recently. I have turned down a good number of jobs on Fiverr and have no regrets. I wanted to show you a glimpse of the jobs I've turned down and tell you why I turned them down. I turned down a gig worth $120.00 because the client wanted me to edit a 12,000 word document in two days, over the weekend. Nope. I've had to nearly always put myself on "vacation" mode for weekends in order to spend time with my family. I was not going to compromise an entire weekend for one job, even if it did pay well. I turned down a job that paid $130.00 because the client was sarcastic, rude and didn't follow the rules laid out in the gig. They wanted exceptions at every turn. I'm very specific about...

I just finished reading Upstairs at the White House My Life with the First Ladies by J.B. West and I loved it! For snippets of history you won't get anywhere else, this book is a must-read. Find out what every day life is like for our presidents and their families. From Eleanor Roosevelt sending her staff home early on Sundays to spend time with their families and doing their work herself, to Jackie Kennedy's refusal to comb her hair, letting it all over her face when she was home, you will learn many intricate details of our first families' lives. J.B.West spent nearly 3 decades serving our first families, ultimately becoming Head Usher, which meant he literally ran the White House, had access to the president's most intimate living spaces and got to plan renovations, decorating, parties and even weddings with the first ladies. This is not a new book. I think it was first published in 1973, but it was new to me as I hadn't read it. I highly recommend this b...

I recently started a discussion about plagiarism on Fiverr's online forum. This discussion was very educational to me. The back story is simply that I've received a number of recent requests via Fiverr to rewrite existing information to make it look like another person's original work. I have declined each request because it looks like plagiarism to me. I even had to modify my gig descriptions to state that I do not work with plagiarized information, nor do I rewrite or, as some call it, "spin" articles. I started the discussion because I was shocked at the number of people requesting this and also shocked at their lack of shame at taking someone else's work and wanting to make it their own (or, rather, have me make it their own). Not one of them sent me work they said was their own; they all said it was work they'd taken off the internet and some even sent me links to the work instead of copying and pasting it into a document. Merriam-Webster de...

I recently sold an article to a new-to-me magazine, The Christian Standard. I had not written for them before, nor had I pitched to them before. This was my first pitch, my first query, and it paid off big time. Not only are they publishing this first article from me, they pay well and have invited me to write more for them. All this from one simple query. I am not an expert query letter writer. I have rarely written them over the years and never like this one - out of the blue, unsolicited. There's a back story. I have been a regular writer for one publication house for nearly 30 years and they recently recruited me to write on a specific topic. I gladly complied, signed the contract and wrote the article. However, even though they liked the article, before it could go to print, they changed their minds and decided not to print it. They said their needs had changed. The editor who had recruited me was no longer employed there. But, I really like the article and was going t...

I am a wife. I am a mom. I am a writer. I am a crafter. My favorite craft is paper crafting. My second favorite is drawing. Even that involves paper. As does my writing. When I craft, I think.  When I think, I write.  When I write, I get published.  When I get published, I earn money.  It nearly always starts with crafting for me.  As I've taught my writing students, thinking is a huge part of writing. I've spent weeks thinking about things I've written before I finally sat down and wrote them. Funny thing is, when I spend so much time thinking about writing, before I even write, when it's time to write those thoughts down, they are usually written within 20 minutes and these are the ones most purchased by a publisher. So, whenever I'm in my studio making pretty paper crafts, I'm actually working on a writing project. Write often. Write well. Just write. ~Tricia

Failure is hard but it's part of the writing process. Once we accept failure as truly par for the course, we will fear it less and not allow it to define us. This applies to all life, not just writing. In light of the recent election here in the US, I read this article in Forbes Magazine, Exclusive Interview: How Jared Kushner Won Trump the White House . This article ties in perfectly with today's thoughts on overcoming failure. In the quest for the White House, the article tells us that, behind the scenes, Jared Kushner tried many avenues and social media tactics to promote his father-in-law's presidential campaign, quickly halting what didn't work and putting more energy into what did work. Did you read that? He quickly halted what didn't work. This means not everything he did worked. This means he failed along the way, but still saw success in the end. The one thing he did was constantly take risks. Some risks panned out and some didn't, but he took the...

The inevitable failure we face as writers should not be what defines us as writers. We write, we fail, we write some more. I never really consider failure something to slow me down. By failure, I'm talking about failure to see publication. We can be highly successful writers if all we do is write; if that's our only motivation. But, getting published is another story and we all face the failure of not getting published, of being rejected by a publisher. I was recently asked to write an article on a specific topic. We signed a contract and I wrote the article. In the meantime, the publisher changed staff and the editor I'd been working with was no longer there. Even though I had a contract, they rejected my article. I'm still going to get paid for writing it, but they are not going to publish the article. I believe in this article; I am looking for another outlet in which to publish it. I've already sent it to another editor. This leads me to the 4th part of ...