Well, clearly my plan to blog about my work every month went to pot. But as Fred and Ginger say: Pick yourself up, brush yourself off, start all over again.
I’m reevaluating whether this monthly tactic is best for 2022, or if another way will work better, but for now, here are some of the highlights that happened in the last quarter of 2021:
Worked on several stories for the College of Education at the University of Maryland, one of my longest-term clients. After our interview about a lecture he gave, Professor Cam Scribner told me: “you really nailed down all of the exact sort of complexities that I would have brought up if we were teaching in a graduate seminar.”
Wrote a story for Goucher College on alumni entrepreneurs in the food business. I used to write a lot of food stories in my newspaper days, then I wrote for the now-defunct food section of Paste Magazine, but I haven’t had a lot of opportunities to write content marketing or copy about food. It’s a topic near and dear to my heart, so I’d love to get back into it.
My friend Melanie Padgett Powers, who is the managing editor of Dateline Federation Magazine for the Hemophilia Federation of America, recruited me for a piece on hemophilia families and adoptions. It was a pleasure getting to speak to the families.
I wrote a piece for marketing recruitment agency Torchlight Hire on what to know about paying a freelance writer. Writers are notoriously undervalued, and I hope marketing directors will pay attention and heed my words. For example, promising “great exposure,” but no/meager pay just doesn’t work. You wouldn’t expect your plumber/dentist/hairdresser to work for “exposure,” would you?
Wrote two pieces for ASJA Magazine, and continued my work as editor of the Weekly newsletter. One member described it as: “Lots of meaty information told in a brief, breezy style.”
Continued working as blog editor and strategist with designer Christy Batta. I love helping a business, whether a solo business or a large corporation, tell its stories. And as much as I enjoy doing the actual writing myself, I love the process of guiding and supporting someone else through the process of just as much.
In 2022, my goals include doing more content strategy, diving back into the food niche, continuing to build a niche in ad tech, writing even more stories about interesting people doing fascinating things, and building great relationships with clients and fellow writers and editors. You can email me at hello@redpeneditorial.co, or find me on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Wishing you a happy, healthy New Year.
