I’m grateful for my day job and I love my freelance night job, but I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing both.

It’s time to get my plans moving and shaking. I can’t wait for inspiration anymore.

Christmas lights, freelance entertainment journalism and the perils of a solitary life. Not bad for one blog post!

Just letting everyone know that I’m alive and what I’ve been doing that’s taken me away from the site.

Too busy to write, because I’m busy writing. Here’s some quick catchup and brief Hollywood opinions.

The pleasures of writing, the frustrations of miscommunication and the agony of waiting.

It takes a particular kind of driver to deal with Los Angeles traffic without spontaneously combusting or running people off the road.

When everything looks bleak is when you should strive to find that ray of hope to keep you going.

Social networking, MySpace Profile 2.0 and an upcoming industry event in West Hollywood. No rest for the weary or entertainment journalists with day jobs.

As a freelance writer or journalist, the people you rely on to do your job will inevitably let you down. Be ready for it and know how to deal with it.

As a freelance writer, you’ll probably run into a lot of fly-by-night publications that are looking for writers to supply them with content. These outlets are great for new people trying to beef up their portfolio with tear sheets or just get some experience. Typically, these publications won’t pay you. Most of the time, writers put up with it, because they usually have a day job anyway.

Once you’ve written a few articles, you can start being a little picky about which fly-by-night publication you want write for. Sooner or later, you’ll get picked up by a regional rag that actually has some good connections.

Since this is my professional blog, I made a conscious decision not to blog too much about work since the only reason to write about work on your personal time is just to complain. I submit to you that I’ve let slip a complaint about work here and there, but nothing that I thought was flagrant or would put off a prospective future employer. Recently, however, work has gotten me down — to the point of depressing me — and I just feel the need to get a few things off my chest.

I’ve been playing video games since the Atari 2600 when I thought I was gosu for being able to “dodge” enemy lasers on Berserk by letting the lasers pass through the pixels that separated my avatar’s head from his body. Damn, those little Psylon dudes were irritating, especially when you bumped up the Difficulty lever a couple of times and the bad guys fired an endless stream of lasers.

Of course video games have come a long way since then, but I’ve been there each step of the way, playing Nintendos, Playstations, Xboxs and finally settling on the PC.

Here’s another satisfying tale for my fellow freelance writers. Freelance writing around the Internet often means creatively finding work. Since new gimmicks are constantly being invented for the Web, it isn’t necessarily difficult to find jobs as a content writer, especially when the particular gimmick, gizmo, service or whatever is brand new. However, early adoption [...]

Life as a freelance writer is easily summed up in one word: temporary. One day a publication may need you to write movie reviews, the next day restaurant reviews. The day after that, they may not need you at all. That’s why you have to keep moving and keep scrounging for more work. It’s like [...]

I don’t want to speak out of turn here since I’m not a freelance writer by trade (anymore), nor do I have tons of experience doing it. On the other hand, I think I’ve experienced enough to give people just starting out in the freelance world some good advice and safety tips. Some of this [...]

Man, I’m beat. I’m not sure if it’s because I shocked my deltoids tonight or because the marketing and sales department burst out in a fit of sporadic fall cleaning at work today. And if you’re joining the party late, I’m in the marketing department. Somewhere, someone high up (probably even the highest) decided that [...]

You gotta start somewhere. As a professional writer, typically that means writing for free. If you’re writing for yourself, just keep a diary and be done with it. For the rest of you, understand that writing is a business. Like any business, if people are gonna sign checks for a writer, they want to get [...]