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Working on Your Own Time: It’s What Freelancing is About (freelance jobs) Do you have a busy life? Do you wish that you could schedule your work around the rest of your priorities? You work to make money so that you can live. You have no choice but to pay for housing and food and other life necessities. Because you need the money, work tends to creep up to the top of the priority list. Other things are more important though. Freelance jobs allow you to put work where it belongs on the list of priorities. You can play with your kids when they’re home, enjoy doing the things you enjoy outdoors while it’s daytime and spend your Sunday mornings at church instead of behind a counter. The work still needs to get done, but you can do it when you have time instead of from nine to five, Monday through Friday or worse, whenever you’re put on the schedule. Kinds of Freelance Jobs Do you have the appropriate skills and abilities to work at freelance jobs? There are many, many different kinds available. Those with professional degrees can consult. While the jobs that result from extensive education generally lead to many hours working for a good salary, your education can lead you in another direction. If you can manage to find the clients, you can work by appointment only, guiding those who do not have the experience or education that you have. If you are not a professional, you may still have the appropriate talents that will get you into freelance jobs. Writing is a very popular freelance opportunity. You live in a world that relies on the written word. You do not go through a single day without reading a considerable amount of text. Someone needs to do all of that writing, and much of it is hired out to freelancers. Actually, any skill that you possess may be suited to freelance work. Check out a few job boards and find out who’s hiring. Tips of the Trade Freelance jobs are out there, but so is the competition. To get yourself to the top of the hiring list, there are a few things you can do. First, use any experience you have to your advantage. Even if a previous job was short term or didn’t seem significant to you, you gained experience there. Let the employers know about everything you can do. Another thing you must do as a freelancer is to be very consistent and organized. An employer will be much more likely to rehire you if you turn out a good product. Everything you turn in should be clear and professional. Always meet deadlines. While most of the freelance jobs are extremely flexible, allowing you to work at your convenience, there are still deadlines. The work needs to be finished when the employer asks for it. Most of the qualities that will get you more freelance jobs only require common sense and a good work ethic. Living on Sparse Paychecks One downside of freelance jobs is that they are not necessarily consistent. Especially if you jump from one job to another, working for different companies, you will not have any guarantee about how much you will get paid each month. The flexibility may or may not be worth the uncertainty of freelancing to you. If you can manage to save effectively, the distance between paychecks won’t matter. If you do get frustrated about always wondering where the next paycheck is coming from, just remind yourself that the trade off is getting to enjoy more precious time not tied to a desk. There are definitely pros and cons when it comes to freelancing. You just need to decide how important it is to you to prioritize your life around what really matters to you.

Finishing a Masterpiece and Getting it on the Shelves (how to get a book published) Writing a book is a monumental task in itself. The process is long, drawn out and grueling. Even if you thoroughly enjoy writing and writing on the same subject for an extended period of time, you will no doubt be exhausted by the writing of a book. Getting that book published, however, will take even more time and effort than producing the thing in the first place. Are you thinking about writing a book? Have you already written one and now are just wondering how to get a book published? If you are, read on. Here are a few tips on how to get from the starting line to triumphantly crossing the finish line. Writing that Book When starting out writing your book, before you are ready to consider how to get a book published, you may already feel daunted. To write a successful book you need to start out with some original thought. You probably have plenty of originality, but you may have trouble getting your ideas into a coherent flow of information that will be digestible by the general public. The first step is to create a book skeleton. You need to organize your thoughts into a progression of chapters. If your book will be non-fiction, start with a table of contents. Write chapter headings and sub-headings. You will automatically know that you’ll need an introductory chapter, but you should probably leave the content of your introduction for the last step. Organize your chapters so that they build upon one another. The more headings that you can brainstorm to begin with, the easier it will be to fill in your book with a series of short articles that flow into one another. If your writing will be fiction, you will need more of a storyboard. You will need to create cause and effect as well as character sketches. To make your story coherent your characters will need events to react to. Their reactions should become predictable as your readers get into the story. You may need to create some situations for your characters just for the purpose of introducing their traits to the reader. These are very general guidelines about how to begin constructing your book. The actual process will be much more involved as you move closer to finding out how to get a book published. Even after you are finished with the bulk of the content, your goal is still a ways off into the future. Getting to Print The next step in how to get a book published is finding a publisher. There are resources at your local library that will let you know who will be the best candidate for publishing the kind of writing that you do. After a series of queries and correspondence with the potential publishers you may get an invitation to send your manuscript. Then the work begins. A publisher is very experienced in finding books that are marketable. He knows what it will take to get your book to sell. Don’t be offended when his editors tears your writing apart. If they are doing that, you can enjoy the fact that you are on the road to a published book. Expect to enter into a close relationship of compromise and change with the editor as you rework and rework what you have already so painstakingly written. When you are finished you will have a readable and clean and correct manuscript ready for print. The road to getting a book published is a long one, but well worth the effort. Trust yourself, and trust the publisher to create a beautiful masterpiece. Don’t be discouraged if several publishers are not interested in your book. You may have to just keep the first few for yourself, and then again, they may eventually get accepted. Good luck and enjoy the process.

Better Employees Avoid these Top Five Office Blunders Being a good employee can go a long way when it comes to the workplace and job advancement. When you are working in an office there are certain unspoken rules that you will want to follow. One of the biggest mistakes that one can make when they are working in an office is having romantic relationships with co-workers or their boss. This completely colors the work situation and can cause major problems in the workplace. Although office romances are common, they typically bring about some friction between the couple or the couple and others. The remedy for office romance issues is that usually one or both members of the romance leave the job. Being dishonest is an office blunder that can land you in the unemployment office. Stealing from your job, lying about reports being done and trying to cause conflict by lying to one co-worker about another are all very silly mistakes that employees make. It is not acceptable to borrow money from the float, even if you are intending to pay it back. Pretending like you have completed your work when it is only half done is not wise. Gossiping and stirring up rumors is also not a good idea. All of these things can make you the bosses’ number one most wanted to fire employee. Not following the dress code is another easy to remedy problem that many employees make. The reason why this is such a big deal is because it says that you do not care about your position enough to wear the right clothing. It also can land your boss in hot water if the director or head supervisor comes into the department. Not only will you be reprimanded for not having on proper uniform, your boss will be singled out for not making you comply with uniform standards. The too can make you very unpopular with the boss. Saying incredibly inappropriate things is also a blunder that can easily be avoided. Jokes and comments about the way that people look in their clothing can border on the line of harassment. In fact, just about anything can be proven to be harassment by a good lawyer. That is why it is best to keep jokes and opinions about others to you and you only. You could lose your job and find yourself in a lawsuit otherwise. The number one blunder than employees make on the job is having a bad attitude. People that are very negative bring down a crowd, not just themselves. That means that when the time comes to make cuts, the bad attitude person is the likely candidate. Removing a negative person from the workplace can bring up the morale of everyone else. Even very effective employees with bad attitude are often terminated simply because they bring down the mood and productivity of others. Be thankful that you have a job and keep a positive frame of mind. If you are not happy with your job, search for another one. In addition to these five blunders that better employees avoid, there are a few obvious ones. Being tardy is perhaps one of the most prevalent and easy to prevent blunders employees make. Being tardy on a regular basis is not acceptable. There is no reason to continuously be tardy for work. If you are getting stuck in traffic, leave earlier or take a different route. Being a good employee can take you a long way at work and in your personal life. It feels good to know that you are an effective person be it at work or elsewhere. Be kind to co-workers and go through your days with a positive mindset. With these tools in place you will be able to avoid blunders more effectively.