The Weekly Resource Round Up

This week's round up has a few more goodies for you. If you have good resource or tool to share, let me know by commenting.

If you're feeling frazzled, stop by and check out Will Write for Chocolate for a laugh break. The comics never fail to make me smile.

Are you in personal branding prison? James Chartrand of Men With Pens offers some great advice about branding on a Copyblogger guest post.

Laura Spencer at Freelance Folder gives us ten tips to stay motivated even when you really don't feel like working.

If you need a refresher on punctuation, grammar or AP style, be sure to check out News University's course Cleaning Your Copy. The course is free. You just have to register with NewsU to take it.

Stock XChng is a good source for free photos to use in articles and blogs. Be sure to check the restrictions when using photos. Some require permission to use in a public work or ask that you give them a photo credit. Even if they have no requirements to use the photo, I always credit the photographer and leave a note letting them know where I used it.

Back to School

Tonight, I go back to school. Considering I've been out of school 8 years, it's a bit of a scary thought, but I'm excited as well. Initially, school shouldn't interfere with my writing. My classes will be only two nights a week so I can continue to write during the day and late at night as I do now. Once I start clinicals, however, I'll have to rework my writing schedule as I've been advised that there are few, if any nighttime clinicals offered. By end the end of the year, my class will be finished and I'll be certified as a phlebotomist.

Even though I'm adding another career, I'm not giving up on my writing. My plan is to use phlebotomy as a source of full-time income while I build my writing business. As my writing business grows, I'll scale back on the other work.

The training should help my writing as well, especially when it comes to medical or health related articles. I figure I can probably get a few articles out of training and working as a phlebotomist as well.

*Photo by Steve Woods.

The Weekly Resource Round Up

Note to readers: The Weekly Resource Round Up is a new feature and will appear every Wednesday. I spend a couple hours each week browsing the internet in search of information related to freelance writing. I'm constantly coming across some great information and tools and wanted to share them with you to help you in your own journey.

Deb Ng of Freelance Writing Jobs shares 50 Places that Hire Freelance Writers. Be sure to check out her freelance writing job leads as well.

Mira's List offers a large frequently updated list of grants, fellowships and residencies for individuals working in the arts. A number of these are specifically for freelance writers.

You can check the Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) of your headlines at the Advanced Marketing Institute. The free Headline Analyzer is an excellent tool for finding a headline that make an impact on your readers.

Web Doctus offers tips on using twitter to find freelance writing jobs.