“With the clock ticking, I put down my writerly scalpel, picked up my editorial chainsaw, and made like Leatherface on my beloved wordsmithery.”

Client: Make a Living Writing, championed by freelance superstar Carol Tice, has been helping working writers grow their income since 2008.

Project Description: Write a blogpost explaining how writers can turn overlong drafts into extra paychecks.

A Quote

“With the clock ticking, I put down my writerly scalpel, picked up my editorial chainsaw, and made like Leatherface on my beloved wordsmithery.”

The Inside Scoop

In her newsletter, Carol Tice mentioned that some of the best performing posts on makealivingwriting.com were those in which writers took a bad situation and managed to turn into something positive.

Shortly after that, I wrote a piece for the BiLLY BoY Blog about toilets (because I keep it classy like that), and wound up hitting double the target word count on my first draft.

Oops.

Yet rather than despair, I instead cut my piece in half and pitched it as a series to my editor at BiLLY BoY, and she loved the idea. (Checkout parts one and two of the infamous Toilet Tour for more details.)

Inspired by the results, I pitched a piece to Carol Tice that would explain this lucrative editing strategy for fellow freelancers on Make a Living Writing, and she gave me the green light, too.

That’s a three for one special in my book!

My Favorite Part

Helping fellow writers realize that clever editing can lead to better pay.

See the results:
How I Turned One Failed Article into Two Big Writing Assignments