I listened to an NPR interview a few years ago where an author talked about the increasing importance of aesthetics in the modern business world. Twenty years ago, you could send in a photocopy of a typed resume with no fancy text. Today, everybody has access to word processing — meaning that laser-printed paperwork with appropriate bold and italic type is the minimum requirement.

As a freelance writer, you’re not just a job applicant — you’re a business. It’s worth taking a day or two to develop a handful of forms and graphics to form a best foot for you to put forward. It’s possible to go overboard with tri-fold brochures and similar business collateral, but as a simple contractor you will definitely need the following:

• A business card with a simple graphic,  your name and contact information. If it’s legible, this can double as your email signature and your logo.
• A banner logo for the top of your website and paperwork.
• A letterhead with your banner logo on top, preferably formatted for easy entry.
• A solid resume, preferably checked over by a professional, ready for customization to each job you’ll bid on.
• A form cover letter. You should never turn it in unaltered, but it will form the bones of the application letter. You can send this as a data file, or copy and paste it into your email applications.
• An invoice. MS Publisher and MS Excel come with a selection of form invoices, which you can customize using your banner logo and/or letterhead.

So one of my major clients — one worth about 2/3 of my income — is experiencing serious problems of late. This isn’t catastrophic, but only because I have other opportunities I can pursue. It did mean spending much of last week getting more aggressive about pursuing those opportunities. Research on job boards, reaching out to contacts and similar leg work have put me in the middle of a few negotiations — and put my resume in many more dark holes where I’ll never hear from them again.

I applied to probably 50 writing assignments last week. I’ve heard back from about 5. One point of this is that even somebody with a reasonable resume does well to get a 10% callback rate in this market.

But that’s not the only point.

The main point is that I applied only for the jobs I thought I’d enjoy — which was less than half the gigs I found out about. There is an abundance of opportunity out there, even in the middle of the worst economic situation since the Great Depression. Some examples:

• A greeting card company willing to pay $300 a pop for material
• Several websites wanting blog content, at $15 to $75 for a page of material
• A children’s book publisher needing words for a picture book
• Magazines, both print and online, seeking fiction and nonfiction articles
• Companies needing business plans, grant applications, internal documents and advertising copy
• Content mills paying a little money for a little effort. Sure, it’s like working fast food — but it’s real money for writing.
• An insurance agent wanting copy to educate his clients.
• Writing reviews of local strip clubs
• Straight-up journalism for big-name and small-time papers
• Ghostwriting opportunities ranging from online content to full-length manuscripts.
• Resume and cover letter writing.

The work is out there, folks. It’s just a matter of taking the time to find it. For some, the constant job hunt can be a deal-breaker — it’s one of the reasons my wife prefers a “real” job to freelance work. But if you’re willing to do the legwork, freelance writing is a literally bottomless well.

Thanks for listening.

Apologies to my Facebook friends for the repetition, but this was too beautiful to pass up. Stephen King on two of the most popular publishing phenomena of the past twenty years.

Words of wisdom from somebody who knows a little about writing popular fiction. You can find similar observations here:

http://www.mugglespace.com/photo/hermione-vs-bella-1?xg_source=activity