The Writing Coach Podcast with Rebecca L. Weber

This episode isn't a breakdown of why followups should be a part of your routine. Scheduling followups is so quick, easy, cheap, and effective, that NOT doing them basically means turning your back on multiple assignments, clients, and ultimately the growth of your freelance career. Instead, let's focus on the hesitation, second guessing, and outright avoidance of following up. We'll cover how to:...

For many freelancers, when you get sick it becomes a question of finding hours or days when you're able to push yourself to get things done vs. not getting paid, rather than taking actual time off. Today I'm talking about my own experience contracting coronavirus, and discussing how to care for yourself and your freelance writing business when you get sick in general. We look at getting rest, sayi...

Who gets to decide if you're accomplished or not? Is there somebody actually keeping score? Often one of the motivating reasons we set a goal is to feel accomplished. That can be a real challenge if it's an emotion that's unfamiliar to you. If you have a strong habit of naysaying what you do and repeatedly telling yourself that you're not accomplished (yet/enough), reaching external milestones is...

Today's episode continues where we left off last week, looking at the distinction between desire and commitment. You've decided to step out of the energy suck of both wanting and not wanting something, and shift into prioritization. Listen into how one of the writers I coach figured out how to prioritize time for writing and sending pitches. The actions themselves seem simple, but only after first...

This is the first of two episodes exploring the intersection of desire, commitment, and priorities. Is there something in your writing life that you strongly desire but haven't committed to yet? Writers who mistake desire for commitment are actually committed to wanting to do something—request deadline extension, write a book, pitch a dream publication, earn 2x more than last year—rather than comm...

Join me on Tuesday, March 23, for a live masterclass on how to break into your dream publications. We'll focus on proven strategies to get consistent, meaningful assignments that pay well. This isn't the conventional, so-called freelancing wisdom that leads to mediocre results. These are the same principles I teach my paying coaching clients, who have broken into the Guardian, the New York Times,...

Freelancers often think of the editors who don't want to assign them stories, and of readers who don't want to read their stories and angles, when writing pitches. I don't mean the editors don't want to assign the stories because the pitches need to be zhushed up. I mean they don't want to work with the writer because it's a bad match. And that if the freelancer had done a frank assessment, they'd...

The work you're doing now will tend to lead to similar work moving forward. Similar pay, topics, structures, publications, clients, etc. All of these tend to replicate if you're not intentionally making changes and steering yourself in a new direction. You also have the possibility of continually building upon what you did last quarter or last year. This can be the thing that leads to feeling invi...

No electricity. No internet. They're not one in the same, but when they overlap they make for a powerful Venn diagram. The extreme weather and increased pressures on infrastructure means we're going to continue to see large areas lose power and connectivity. Here in South Africa, we've had plenty of chances to learn how to freelance efficiently both with some tech strategies and managing our own e...

Listen into some coaching I gave to a few alumni inside my small group coaching program, Freelance Writer Bootcamp, who have NOT been pitching their celebrity crush clients. You may be surprised to hear the coaching I give them about how to move forward and break their current patterns. MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE The pitching triad miniseries: WCP113 Believe me: Pitching triad miniseries (1 of 3) W...

The pitching triad focuses on three interconnected areas: trust in yourself, in your publication, and in your pitch. Today we're focusing on the believing in your pitch. When you know pitching is one of your freelance superpowers, it can deepen your trust and belief in yourself and your ability to work with your ideal clients as well. Here are a few things we'll explore: Why mid-career writers who...

Are you currently working on a pitch or assignment for your dream publication? Do you know that your ideal clients see you as an ideal freelancer for them? Are you confident that they'll pay you well and promptly? If you answered "No" to any of these questions, it could indicate a lack of belief in your client and your connection with them. This will interfere with your ability to identify, attrac...

The writers I coach ask me all the time what they should be doing. Whether they are trying to figure out a news hook for a seemingly evergreen story pitch or planning their annual financial goal, they want to know what specific actions to take. Today's episode goes beyond any one goal or task, and it's something that virtually every writer I've worked with could spend more time on: Building their...

It's been longer than I would've liked since the last episode. I've had coronavirus, and although my symptoms have been squarely in the mild category--I can breathe and take pills to keep my fever in check--I wasn't recovered in a couple of weeks as I had anticipated. I thought long covid was for people who wound up in the hospital. Initially, it was a no brainer that I would pull back and avoid a...

How do you prepare for your next task? Next project? Next month? Next year? Sometimes we give it no more thought than opening a new browser tab, and we're absorbed from minute one. But sometimes we rub right up against resistance. Boring project. PITA client. The I-can't-remember-where-I-left-off-and-I'd-rather-scroll- Instagram mood. Yes, we do the work, but it's more fragmented, less focused, an...

You've had English teachers and editors ask you to use the active voice rather than the passive voice when writing. When presented with two sentences, one passive and one active, we almost always choose the active. So why do we keep writing our drafts in the passive voice? Our minds default repeatedly to seeing people as passive rather than active participants, in things large and small. We habitu...

Register for the free masterclass, taught live on Wednesday: www.rebeccalweber.com/masterclass Perfectionism is a gateway to procrastination. If you're holding yourself and your story ideas to an impossible standard, you're probably not sending out very many pitches. "Imperfect" doesn't mean half-baked, overwrought, or unsent pitches. Think original ideas that are relevant to the audience you're p...

If you decide to take on the complaint-free challenge, you're guaranteed to learn something about yourself. It's simple: No complaining to anybody you know IRL. No complaining to virtual strangers online. No complaining to yourself. (That one's the hardest.) Complaining makes our work far less enjoyable. We engage less with our stories, we resent our clients, and we don't appreciate ourselves. Thi...

Judith Gaton, style coach, author, and podcast host, joins us today to talk about the impact of how the way we get dressed impacts our sense of well being. This isn't about getting dressed to the nines when you're working from home (unless you want to!), but about being more deliberate in ways that support your writing life. Why too much freedom (AKA not changing out of your jammies all day) can b...

Habits can become so ingrained that we believe that they're the way things are rather than a pattern we've started and that we can also end. Sometimes when it's nearly time to turn in a piece, we'll go over and over and over it again, working ourselves up in a way that produces diminishing returns for the procut and is the antithesis of self-care. One of my coaching clients did this regularly, alo...

I don't mean that editors don't want your pitch because the story angle isn't clear, that there's no news hook, and that you don't have a string of impressive clips in your bio. You can learn how to handle all of that. What I mean is that editors want what a pitch promises. Understand this, and you'll be better able to communicate in way that establishes trust and value in your editorial relations...

When it comes to pitching, a surprising number of mid-career freelancers really aren't sure what to do. They may have a basic, intermediary, or theoretical understanding of pitching that doesn't yield reliable results with competitive publications. Getting clear about this is way more effective for building internal motivation than telling yourself you should be pitching, that you should be gettin...

Freelance writers often spend a lot of time trying to decide when to pitch. Learn when the very best time to pitch is, plus what you can do with the time you used to spend asking this question. Follow me on Instagram: @freelancewriterbootcamp Apply to work with me in my small group coaching program: www. FreelanceWriterBootcamp.com Break into your dream publications. Earn more money. Cover stories...

Should you follow up on the story you pitched more quickly than you used to pre-pandemic? Yes, if the story itself must be told urgently. No, if you personally have a sense of urgency about knowing what your next assignment will be. Freelancers often conflate these two very different kinds of urgency. Let's get clear about introducing urgency into an article while feeling focused, curious, confide...

Today we're looking at the challenges and opportunities for multilingual writers. We speak with freelancers from Brazil, Poland, and South Africa, who have all used their locations and language skills to build relationships with editors overseas. This is a fascinating discussion for everyone interested in developing a better understanding of international coverage. -Centering local stories for for...