I Want Your Stories of Social Contacts Leading to Paying Work…

In Chapter 11 of The Well-Fed Writer, entitled “The Well-Networked Writer,” I share a pile of stories from commercial freelancers everywhere, about landing writing work through unplanned, largely serendipitous social contacts.

The moral: You never know where your next project might come from, so let the world know (in a low-key way, of course) what you’re up to.


The newly-reworked chapter (for the updated edition, now in process…) starts with this story:

12 of us were enjoying a lovely spring evening on the lake on a friend’s boat. I started chatting with a woman I’d known socially for years. “What do you do, Peter?” It was a question we’d never asked each other. When I told her, she replied, “Interesting.” Like she meant it—not just being polite.

Turns out she was the communications director for the Atlanta chapter of a large global charity. And, which needed to create an annual report, some web content, a direct mail campaign, and several brochures. Roughly $7K of work (and much more than that in time). Guess who got it? Guess who should have had that conversation a lot sooner?


Got a Good Story?
Surely, many of you have had similar happy occurrences, where, totally unplanned, you picked up commercial-writing work (and often, a LOT of work) from a social contact.

And speaking of the new edition of TWFW, if you DO have a good (and brief) story like the one above, that you’d like to see included in the new edition, I’d love to see it.

While I love the existing stories in the book (and will happily use them if I don’t get enough stories), it’d be nice to have newer, fresher material for the next edition. And, per my “brief” mention noted, I’m looking for short little accounts (100 words, max, and less is even better) of landing well-paying commercial-writing work (sorry, not just articles).

Please send to me by February 20, 2019, and include your name, city and state (or city/country, if outside the U.S.). If I decide to include your piece in the new edition, you’ll be the first to know.

Please post your submissions here, AND send to me at peter@wellfedwriter.com.