Rachel Kaufman

Freelance writer, editor, and blogger in the Washington, D.C. metro area

Archives for the ‘Blog’ Category

Social Media Success

By Rachel • Jan 5th, 2010 • Category: Blog

As some of you already know, this year I’m making the transition from “writer, editor, and blogger” to “writer, editor, blogger, and author. That’s right. I am gonna sell a book this year, darn it!
As part of that goal, I’ve added a bunch of agent blogs and writing blogs to my RSS reader, figuring I [...]



Nanowrimo 2009

By Rachel • Nov 30th, 2009 • Category: Blog

That’s right, folks, I’ve finished Nanowrimo 2009 with a steampunk story starring the spunkiest wrench wench ever to walk the streets of New Bombay.
Considering the speed at which I churned out either 50,419 words or 50,093 words (depending on whether you believe Nanowrimo’s word counter or Scrivener’s), I’m actually happy with the way the story [...]



Story outlining tips

By Rachel • Jun 10th, 2009 • Category: Blog

This post came my way courtesy of the hive mind (Delicious popular bookmarks) and it was worth a mention: how to outline a big piece.
Meranda of Meranda Writes posts her outlining method here. It’s analog and oldschool, but effective…she writes each “fact” on a post-it note sliver and rearranges.
I did something like this when working [...]



Products Versus Services

By Rachel • Jun 8th, 2009 • Category: Blog

I’ve “read” (skimmed) two books in the last few days: Be The Media and The Four-Hour Workweek. They’ve gotten me thinking about quite a few things.
Despite the totally different audiences and topics, the books are fundamentally about the same thing: You, you brilliant snowflake you, can break out of the molds The Man’s put you [...]



Journalism Ethics: Who’s Paid By Whom?

By Rachel • May 19th, 2009 • Category: Blog

I thought this piece from Edward Wasserman at the Society of American Business Writers and Editors was very pertinent to today’s world. In essence, he says, today’s journalism comes from interested citizens, freelancers who may do other, non-journalism writing on the side, and writers funded by direct advertising, grants, or some other model. In other [...]



How Not To Deal With A Journalist

By Rachel • May 11th, 2009 • Category: Blog

Here’s a horror story for freelancers out there. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.
I was at a media professionals mixer the other day, chatting with a number of TV journalists and writers. Then I saw a woman making her way through the crowd, staring at nametags. She grabbed this guy behind me whose [...]



Limited Time Offer: Free Resume Critique

By Rachel • Mar 30th, 2009 • Category: Blog

Hi all, and welcome new readers. For a limited time, I’m offering a free resume critique to job-seekers anywhere. This is a $70 value, yours free for e-mailing me. Check out my services page to learn more or contact me right now.



Reviewed: “Damp Squid”

By Rachel • Mar 26th, 2009 • Category: Blog

A Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare by Jeremy Butterfield

My review

rating: 4 of 5 starsA fascinating study of words *as people actually use them.* Most books on language do not have the power of the Corpus behind them, which is what makes Damp Squid so special.

This book is written [...]



Where I’ve been: 5 Tools To Boost Web 2.0 Productivity

By Rachel • Mar 17th, 2009 • Category: Blog

Image via Wikipedia

My Tuesday posts have been lacking, I know, but that’s because I’ve started blogging at mediabistro.com’s MediaJobsDaily.
So instead of a list of markets and freelance opportunities this week, I’d like to highlight a few tech tools I’ve found indispensable for my new role as breaking-news-blogger and social media maven.

Twitlet – I love this [...]



I’m trying Zemanta!

By Rachel • Feb 25th, 2009 • Category: Blog

Image via CrunchBase

One of the things I’ve found time-consuming about blogging is finding appropriate images to go along with posts (which is why so many of these posts are image-less…which is faster, but boring!)
I’ve just discovered a free Firefox plugin that claims to take the work out of this semi-arduous task.
Zemanta does this by analyzing [...]