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It’s easy to get caught up in the fact that we want others to love what we write. We make one tiny, harmless alteration after another, and eventually our work becomes something else entirely.

But learning how to be a successful freelance writer is a bottomless pit. There’s always more you *could* know that *might* help your freelance writing career.

creeping learning addiction that eats up all their time and prevents them from moving forward.

The “just the facts” approach to your website may cover all of the bullet points you need covered, but it’s not engaging enough to keep people around.

It’s a trash can. Not a physical one, but a mental trash can. It’s for discarding advice that doesn’t feel right for you. It doesn’t seem like the right answer. Your gut tells you this advice isn’t for you. It just doesn’t resonate. If that happens, you should ignore that tip and move on. My teacher would say, “Use what feels right and discard the rest.” I think a lot of writers forget to take out their trash can when they’re learning about writing. But it really pays to keep it handy.

Stop making failure a negative thing and start writing. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes and start creating. And if you do mess up, do your best to learn from it. Trust me, you’ll be much better off.

While visualizing your story may seem like the right way to approach writing, it turns out that for full-time writers, the brain performs a bit differently. When Dr. Lotze watched writers from a competitive creative writing program perform the same tests, he found that experienced writers, while brainstorming, used parts of their brains associated with speech instead of vision.

Novice writers, Lotze suggests, are more likely to watch the story unfold like a movie inside their heads.