Quiet Rebel Writer

When I was five, my twin brothers were born. The chaos was such that I truly don’t remember much of the next three years, aside from an occasional, wispy memory of school. The story in our family is that I was the gopher, running for diapers, bottles, blankets, clothes, and anything else my freakishly frazzled […]

Lately, my mind races all day, and keeps me up at night. I’m jacked up, physically wiped but mentally straining forward at the same time. I’m eating in quick gulps, and rushing back to my desk to get just a bit more work in. My cat looks at me mournfully, chastising me for failing her […]

When things are slow, as they sometimes are in these first few months of the year, nothing’s better than a nice, meaty list of tips and techniques to spark positive movement. Here are some resources I’ve turned to over the last months in times of introspection and/or desperation:
101 Ways to Get More Freelance Work and […]

Remember the deal? Besides the fascinating and equally repulsive world of bow-chik-a-bow-wow porn, you’ve also got food porn, torture porn, and gadget porn. And now, dear readers, you’ve got word porn. Let’s start this vocabularly lesson of wicked, wonky words.
Parlous
Pull this one out at parties, and watch the eyes grow wide. (Disclaimer: eyes could […]

Well hello there, gentle readers (and I say that with a cheer, as I’m now starting to get a few of you). What, you may ask, is all this nonsense about? If you read this blog, what, goes the eternal question, is in it for you?
Sure, I’ve got an about page. But let’s do […]

In my previous 9-to-5 incarnations, I dreaded many things. The daily commute on crowded CTA buses of needlessly bitchy people, the inane office politics that resembled high school cliques, the need to sit at my desk even when all the work for the day was done. But I especially hated dressing up, even to the […]

The beautiful, glorious, appreciated clients are those who get it. They understand that just like any other business service, like design or IT consulting, writing is valuable, necessary, and worth the cash. They’re the ones I want to hug, who don’t blink when I quote them my hourly or project rate and agree that I’m […]

Us Redheads have to stick together, even if it takes a ridiculously hilarious fake protest against Wendy’s to do it. Check out this video of the redhead-filled subway cars, with all involved feigning ignorance, and a confederate selling squirts of sunscreen.
I don’t know how many liquored nights I’ve dreamed of getting myself a sweet […]

When I started freelancing, I read that I needed to cold call to get some clients. So I did, despite the fact that I hate calling strangers with a fiery passion that knows no bounds. I called for a couple weeks, despite the fact that I seriously contemplated stabbing a pen in my eye before […]

Mikhail Bulgakov lived and wrote in the painfully tightening noose of Stalinist Russia. He wrote his first major work about his experiences fighting the Russian civil war, and the book, called White Guard, went on to become a successful play in 1926 Moscow. In fact, Stalin, recently ascendant to the leadership of the Communist Party […]