First installment of this little meme here.

***

Dear People who live above me,

Stop taking up all the street parking and start parking in your perfectly good driveway. The next time I come home and you’re taking up MY parking spot on the street, leaving your driveway sitting empty and therefore forcing me to park half-a-block away I’m going to park in front of your driveway and block it.

Sincerely,

The Girl Downstairs (who hates you)

***

Dear Landlord,

Take care of the above problem stat or I’m going to become a real problem for YOU.

From,

The Girl who wishes she’d never rented from you

***

Dear Carbs,

Stop teasing me. I want you so badly, all the time. Sometimes I wake up in the night thinking about you. I’m trying to resist, but it’s hard. Why do you have to taste so good?

Forever yours,

The Girl who loves you too much

***

Dear Body,

You’re doing great and holding up well. Just get me through the next 1.5 weeks strong and I promise I’ll let you lay on the couch for an entire week and you can have all the carbs you want. Promise!

Sincerely,

The Girl who really appreciates you

***

Dear Portland Marathon,

Thoughts of you are starting to scare me.

Apprehensively yours,

#1532

***

Dear Car,

Please clean yourself out, fill yourself up with gas and give yourself an oil change before next Wednesday. You need to be in top shape for the big road trip. It would be greatly appreciated.

Forever in your debt,

Your neglectful (and lazy) owner

***

What letter would you write today?

In case you missed this weekends posts:

Random things I mix in my oatmeal

I ran my last LONG training run yesterday: 18 Miles!

***************

I get a lot of emails, tweets and comments asking about my freelance writing.

The two most common questions I get are:

1. How did you get into freelance writing?

2. Any advice for someone who wants to start doing it?

First things first, I am not a full-time freelance writer. I do it on the side to supplement my full-time marketing gig. Currently, I average between $200 to $500 extra per month with my freelance writing and social media work. I have experience writing for all kinds of different publications including newspapers, magazines and online (websites and online publications).

I hear a lot of freelance writers say, “network, network, network”. This is true, it’s important to network and grab onto opportunities but I think that other aspects – like having writing clippings – are very important.

Get Some Clippings

Since I have a Journalism degree I basically had to get work published when I was in school in order to graduate. When I first started writing and getting my work published in newspapers do you think I got paid for it? Hell no. I gave a lot of writing – a lot of hours of hard work – away for free so I could gain a binder full of clippings and articles. These clippings have helped me land paid gigs at other publications so giving away my work for free at first was worth it.

Pitch Ideas

I have no idea how many different story ideas I’ve pitched to editors over the years. Some of them have been accepted and others haven’t. The nice thing about pitching ideas is that even if the editor doesn’t go for the specific story idea you pitched they will often keep your name on file and contact you for future assignments. This led to me getting quite a few big assignments for a local newspaper and magazine last year – they happened to have my name on file.

Take All Opportunities

Once I wrote five articles about bicycling bylaws in random cities for a random blog. I got paid $100 for it. Was this fast-tracking me on a career to being a magazine writer? Not at all. But it was a writing gig that I got paid for so I did it. When you’re starting out freelance writing you should take every opportunity that comes your way, because ever little bit of money counts right. Plus, you never know when that experience will come in handy for a future job.

Focus on Local Publications

I’ve never written an article for Glamour or Runners World (two of my favourite magazines) but I have written several articles for local magazines and newspapers in Kamloops and British Columbia. It’s fine to dream of writing articles for major magazines, but you’re not going to get there without climbing a few steps in the beginning. So start pitching ideas to local publications to get some clippings and establish yourself as a freelance writer. Once you’ve gotten some clippings under your belt (see above) then there is no reason local publications shouldn’t pay you for your writing.

Look in Unusual Places for Work

Some assignments I’ve done include the aforementioned bicycle articles, writing a biography for a local Realtor and creating website copy for a nutrition-cookbook website. All of these were paid assignments but not quite in the scope of “feature article writing” as most people would see it. My current main source of freelance income is writing for Demand Studios, which requires writing some pretty strange assignments like Cold Water Swimming Safety.

Some good reading for aspiring freelance writers:

The Adventurous Writer

Freelance Writing Jobs Network

Those are pretty much all the tips I have for now. Do you guys have any questions? If so, leave them in the comments and I will try to answer them.

Also, I know there are some other part-time, and full-time, freelancers reading this blog. I would love it if you left some of your tips and tricks in the comments section as well. What have I missed?

First things first, are you wearing a cute “Casual Friday” outfit today? Take a picture and send it to me for an upcoming Workplace Fashion post!

Details here.

***********

I meant to get this post up yesterday but never got time! How people manage to blog multiple times a day, I’ll never know.

Anyways, before I move onto the main topic of this post, I want to share the amazing salad I had on Wednesday night. It had cherry tomatoes on it that I grew myself!

This summer I managed to successfully keep alive a strawberry plant and a tomato plant. This is a HUGE feat for me. I think that next summer I will attempt a full garden! OK, 1/2 a garden…

I didn’t get a ton of tomatoes off my little plant, but it was enough to complete my salad for dinner!

OK, moving onto todays topics.

Wednesdays

I’ve briefly mentioned before that I work a semi-full-time schedule. I work 30 hours a week, and four days a week, in the office. I’ve chosen to take Wednesdays as my day off because it breaks up the week nicely but occasionally I will take Monday or Friday off instead so I can have a long weekend.

Contrary to popular belief, I do not sleep-in and have restful relaxing days lying around reading and napping and blogging. But boy, that would be nice! I am always up by 5 or 6 am to get my medium-long run in and then I usually spend anywhere from 5-10 hours working on freelance articles and projects. This is what my Saturdays look like as well, minus the running.

I need the extra income that comes from freelance projects, so doing extra work on those days is not an option for me, it’s necessary.

The other day I posted about having trouble relaxing at night because I tend to spend most of the evening on my computer. Even though I don’t consider blogging and everything that goes along with it – social networking/emailing/reading and commenting on blogs – to be work, it tends to tie in so closely with my freelance projects that it can be difficult to distinguish the two. For example, I took a break from writing a freelance article to write this blog post. See what I mean?

To be honest, I do some kind of “work” 6-7 days per week most weeks. Whether it’s for 1/2 hour or 8 hours.

Good thing I enjoy what I do!

Any other freelancers out there? How do you find a balance between “days off” and “work-at-home days”? And anyone else grow veggies (or attempt to) in your backyard or on your patio summer?