Your odds of getting an agent – and getting an agent who will really go to bat for you – are far better if you don’t become a real pain in that person’s neck. Here, in no particular order, are some characteristics of the “client from hell” from the perspective of a book agent:

1. The artiste. Many writers refuse on philosophical grounds to make any changes to their manuscripts. This is fine if you’re OK with having your manuscript remain unpublished, in your desk drawer, rather than out on shelves. Your agent and the editors he or she works with have a pretty good idea of what will sell and what won’t – listen to them.

2. The procrastinator. If you promise a revision, a proposal, a whatever to your agent by a certain date, make sure it’s there when you say it will be.

3. The snob. In book publishing, as in law (and life), it’s best to be nice to everyone because a) it’s the right thing to do and b) you never know where that administrative assistant you snubbed years ago will eventually wind up.

4. The clinger. If you have an agent you respect and trust – and you shouldn’t enter into an agreement with anyone you don’t feel this way about – there is no need to call him or her on a daily basis requesting updates, reassurance, or ego stroking. You’ll get updates when there’s news to report; beyond that, let the agent get back to work. Since agents work on commission, you can rest assured that they are nearly as eager to get your book sold as you are.

There’s nothing wrong with doing this – in fact, I encourage it for lawyers who are looking to get a handle on their spending (and saving) with an eye to someday leaving the law.

However, unless you have a serious caffeine habit, expenses of the Starbucks variety probably aren’t what’s keeping you locked in your golden handcuffs. Sure, you may be able to pare away a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars a year by cutting back on the little things, but a dramatic reduction in your spending is probably going to require more dramatic measures.

What are you spending on your mortgage every year? Your car? Your child’s private school tuition? These are the big-ticket sort of items that probably account for a large percentage of your outflow, and the sort of things you need to be looking at if you want to dramatically reduce your expenses.

Cutting back in these areas is far more difficult (emotionally, logistically, you name it) than passing up a few lattes each week, but it’s the tough choices that lead to the biggest changes.

You should ignore them at your peril; the best copywriters know that closing the sale is all about human psychology, which is why these rules are timeless. Double-check that you haven’t committed any of these common but costly mistakes in whatever you’re writing:

1. It ain’t all about you. I saw this a lot back when I was editing clients’ cover letters and resumes. “I feel this job would be an excellent step for me, because…” The company doesn’t care at all why the job would be good for you; it cares about what you’d bring to the company. Remember that your reader is always looking at your writing from a WIIFM (“what’s in it for me?”) perspective.

2. Don’t get all fancypants. As lawyers, we’re taught to write in circles to a large extent, to use big words when little ones would do, and to try to come across as educated and important. Good copywriters do just the opposite – they write in clear, unpretentious, conversational language. Sometimes it’s not even grammatically correct, which goes against everything we’re taught, but it works.

3. Remember to hit the benefits. Copywriters often talk about features (what a product has, is, or does) and benefits (why the features are a good thing). Rookie copywriters tend to focus on the features to the exclusion of the benefits, which is a mistake because the benefits are what really sell your product.

To take a simple example, the features of a wristwatch could include a leather strap, a winding mechanism, and a face that’s 1.5″ across. Some of the accompanying benefits would be:

* All-natural materials – breathable and sustainable
* No battery needed – will never let you down at a crucial moment
* Large face means it’s easy to read at a glance; no straining or squinting

The benefits are harder to write about because they require an additional level of thinking, which is why they can get overlooked, but if you don’t do this work for your reader (and explain it clearly – refer back to #2 above), it’s going to be incredibly hard to close the sale.

Ask a bunch of aspiring magazine writers what editors are looking for when they read article queries and I’ll bet most of them answer, “good article ideas.”

Well, sort of. What editors most want to find in queries are good article ideas from writers who have an appealing edge over other writers. Contrary to what most beginning freelancers think, that edge need not be writing talent. A good many other qualities, some of which don’t show up in a query, make a writer valuable to an editor.

Ever hopeful yet skeptical, editors read queries for evidence that a writer not only has a relevant article idea but also one or more of the following qualities:

1. Research ability. Writers who can turn up little-known, highly interesting truths, track down hard-to-find statistics and answer thorny factual questions can easily rack up magazine assignments as long as they also understand what makes a topic relevant to a certain publication’s readers. Build your queries around such material and you’ll soon have lots of editors as regular clients – especially if your submissions sail through the fact-checking process.

2. First-hand knowledge. Pilot and flight instructor Mal Gormley found himself in demand as a writer for Business & Commercial Aviation, Aviation Week and other aviation magazines, which had all gotten burned by freelancers who were decent writers and researchers but who just didn’t understand flying. Hobbies, languages you speak, where you live or have lived and family circumstances such as being a parent of twins can each sometimes add to your appeal and win you assignments and repeat business from editors if you play your cards shrewdly in proposing and writing articles.

3. Access. Did you used to be a wardrobe assistant in Hollywood or an executive coach for Fortune 100 CEOs? If you can validly claim unusual access to hard-to-reach groups of people, you may find it easier to land assignments. Debra Wallace, who has interviewed such film stars as Dustin Hoffman, Glenn Close and Lauren Bacall, says that the celebrity writing business is “tough and not for the faint of heart.” She advises novices to prove their ability to get access first at smaller, local magazines before approaching national publications.

4. Expertise. Professional degree credentials are not quite as valued by editors as many well-educated people expect. Unfortunately, many experts cannot explain what they know in ways that capture the attention of magazine readers. But those who can write in a popular style have a great opportunity to endear themselves to editors.

5. Controversy. If you’re one of those people who have a knack for making people sit up and argue for or against what you’re saying, some editors consider that a worthy strong point. What generally accepted views can you passionately – and credibly – dispute? Just don’t launch an attack that’s going to inspire death threats or make you untouchable when you want to write on other issues.

6. Dependability. Editors can’t know how dependable you are from a query, of course, but having had a weekly column or having written regularly for one publication strongly implies that you adhere to journalistic standards and meet deadlines. Because an editor has to get an issue finished on time no matter what, this quality counts heavily. “When I told editors that I’d written for Crain’s Chicago Business every week for fifteen years, it impressed the hell out of them,” says Joanne Cleaver. “‘Wow – fifteen years’: their tone of voice changed.” Once you demonstrate dependability to an editor, you’re in the running for repeat assignments.

7. Quickness. With their unforgiving publication schedule, editors also value writers who can bang out a readable article in next to no time. If you’ve ever had a writing job with daily deadlines, mention that as one of your qualifications. It might get you an opportunity to come to the rescue when another freelancer fails to deliver what was promised and an editor is looking at a hole in the issue about to close.

8. Catchy phrasing. Think about those phrases that suddenly enter the language, seemingly from nowhere, such as “mommy track,” “chick lit” or “alpha male.” Show the ability to coin such concepts in your query, and an editor might think “Cover story!”

Make one of these eight qualities your calling card, and you’ll find numerous magazine doors opening for you as a freelancer.

Veteran magazine writing coach Marcia Yudkin is the author of Freelance Writing for Magazines & Newspapers from HarperCollins, a Book of the Month Club Selection, and 10 other books. Her articles have appeared in Ms., Psychology Today, the New York Times Magazine, Yoga Journal, Business 2.0 and elsewhere. Learn more about her home-study courses on writing for magazines by clicking here.

For those of you unfamiliar with her work, she’s a best-selling U.S. novelist who tends to write books about complicated family situations with incredibly satisfying “gotcha” twist endings. One of her books, My Sister’s Keeper, was turned into a schmaltzy Cameron Diaz vehicle last year that received decidedly mixed reviews.

Jodi had some interesting observations on:

Fiction in the U.S.: She believes there’s a sharp divide in this country between “literary fiction” and “commercial fiction.” It has nothing to do with the quality of the writing, she said, but rather the fact that “literary” fiction tends to win awards and acclaim, while “commercial” fiction gets better marketing budgets and larger print runs.

She said she made a conscious decision early in her career to focus on commercial fiction so that she could reach a wider audience (and, presumably, set herself up to make more money, though she wasn’t crass enough to say so).

Her fans: She has no assistant and personally responds to every one of the 200-250 emails she gets every day. “To me it’s just a matter of good breeding,” she said. “There are so many books out there, and the fact that someone out there has chosen not only to read one of mine, but taken the time to let me know what they think about it, is an honor.”

Finding the time to write: She recommends that anyone who wants to be a writer should try to carve out time every day – “It doesn’t have to be much, even 20 minutes” – where they’re writing. “Not looking at emails, not talking on the phone, but writing.” She noted that so many people give up before they finish a project, fearing that it’s the worst-written thing ever, “but if you don’t finish it, you never know what it could have been.”

A director changing the ending of your book in the film adaptation (i.e., My Sister’s Keeper): Jodi said that signing over the film rights to a book is a lot like giving a child up for adoption in that you cede all control over the outcome. “You check in on that child years later, and you hope that she’s been raised by good people and has become a good person who’s contributed something to society. Of course, it may turn out that she’s been raised by crack whores.”

This may in fact be true for you, but it may not be. Take a few minutes to run the numbers, and you could be in for a shock:

1. Write down what you earn (take-home pay, after deductions and taxes) over any time period it’s convenient for you to calculate – year, month, week, etc.

2. Next, for that same period of time, figure out how much you spend on job-related expenses – these are things you would not be spending money on if you didn’t have this particular job:

* Commuting costs
* Work clothes (eg, suits and ties and other stuff you generally don’t wear in your non-work life)
* Subscriptions you maintain for work-related reasons
* Conferences, books, and other educational expenses
* Professional membership fees
* Lunches and/or dinners out
* Child care expenses (if your ideal job would allow you to eliminate or reduce these)
* Decompression costs – you probably spend at least some money on blowing-off-steam purchases and activities that would not be necessary if you weren’t stuck in a job you hate. Maybe your drug of choice is 18-year-old scotch, or multiple pairs of extravagant shoes, or “I deserve it” vacations or expensive toys. Be truthful with yourself and ballpark this amount as best you can.

3. Subtract #2 from #1.

4. Figure out how many hours you spend both at work and on work-related activities over this period of time. Again, include not just your hours at work, but all the time your job necessitates – commuting time, time spent in professional development activities and courses, business-related meals and networking events, time spent on Saturday mornings catching up on paperwork, and so on.

5. Divide the dollar amount you came up with in step #3 by the number of hours you came up with in step #4. This is your true hourly rate.

Surprised? Many lawyers are. Depending on your specific circumstances, it’s quite possible that bartending a few nights a week at the pub down the street would put you in better shape financially. Or maybe it’s not as out of reach as you thought for you to quit your job and become a stay-at-home parent who writes on the side.

The bottom line here is that you shouldn’t make assumptions that keep you stuck in a life that makes you unhappy without checking into all the angles first.

1. Is there enough material there for a book? Many great ideas are more suited to magazine articles than books – in a general sense, think through what you’d write, chapter by chapter, to confirm that there’s sufficient ground to cover.

2. Is the market sufficiently broad? Your book may be great for, say, event planners in the Boston area. But given that there are only (I’m guessing here) a few hundred of them at most, and not all of them will buy your book, you don’t have a large enough pool to draw from. See if you can expand your idea to encompass more potential readers/buyers.

3. Is the market sufficiently narrow? Conversely, you will have a hard time selling a book that is meant to appeal to “women” or “anyone with a pet,” unless you’re someone like Oprah who has an extremely large following of people eager to snap up anything you write.

4. Will your book be sufficiently different than what’s already out there? Do a bit of research on Amazon and/or at your local bookstore. Ideally, you want to see a few books that are similar to yours, but with a slightly different slant. It may initially seem like a good thing if there’s nothing out there that remotely resembles your project, but that could just mean that there’s no market for it (it could also mean that you are truly breaking valuable new ground, so don’t get overly discouraged by this if you really believe in what you’re doing).

5. Are you the one to write it? You don’t need to be an M.D. to write a book about wellness, but you’ll probably need something more than a garden-variety J.D. to establish your credibility in this field. Maybe you’ve overcome a serious illness using herbs and meditation, or maybe you’ve spent your legal career in the healthcare industry and have picked up some insider info along the way. If you lack the necessary credibility to sway an agent on your topic of choice, consider recruiting an appropriately credentialed co-author.

Today’s column is courtesy of Dave Navarro – no relation to the eyeliner-sporting Jane’s Addiction guitarist of the same name – pulled with permission from his excellent ebook, More Time Now, available at www.rockyourday.com.

The Big Problem

…is that you can’t actually “manage” time. It doesn’t work that way. Time just is – and it moves along at its own pace, whether you choose to do something that changes the world or just sit on the couch playing World of Witchcraft.

But we humans don’t like to believe that – and so we get it in our heads that if only we were more organized that we could suddenly become masters of time management and start getting things done. There’s an entire industry built around systems, expensive planners, and complicated gadgets that promise relief from the frenzy of daily activity that grinds you down.

It’s funny, though, how the biggest empires in the world were built without the benefit of Franklin Planners, Palm Pilots or web-based to-do lists…and how people lived balanced, filfilled lives for centuries without a well-worn copy of Getting Things Done or The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People by their side.

Kind of makes you wonder how they pulled it all together, doesn’t it? They simply used the one true tool at their disposal: Their mindset.

Working Your Inner Game

…is more important than any book, planner or gadget you can buy – and it doesn’t cost a penny. Holding yourself accountable for becoming a better player at the game of life is the single most important thing you can do to win your day (and your life) back.

But for far too many of us, reacting to urgency and surrendering to our desire for comfort at all costs have become true priorities in our lives. Taking stock of what we really want and pushing ourselves to become more – for our own sake as well as for those we care about – has fallen by the wayside.

Only when you decide to stop settling for less do you begin changing your life. It can get messy, but it’s worth it.

Stop Chasing Productivity

…as a Holy Grail. Doing more for the sake of being impressive (either to yourself or to others) isn’t going to ease your burden. The busiest people in the world are not by default the happiest any more than the richest people in the world are more fulfilled than the average Joe.

In other words, simply doing more will not make you happier or finally free you up to have “peace of mind.” Fulfillment comes from doing less of the things which steal your time and don’t ultimately matter. Once you do that, you can use that extra time to do more of the things that are truly important to your life.

Getting Your Foot In the Door

Once you have some samples in hand, you’ll want to start approaching your target businesses – ideally these should have some tie-in with your existing expertise (if you’re an employment lawyer, you may want to talk to headhunters and job placement agencies, for example).

You should get together a packet of your samples, along with a sharp cover letter, and mail them out to the appropriate person – call first to find out who this is; usually there’s a director of corporate communications or something like that. It may sound like a cop-out, but often the best thing to do is call and ask who at the organization is in charge of hiring freelance copywriters.

If you have a website up with samples available online, so much the better – this can save you some postage costs and hassle. If you go this route, your website must be clearly all about you as a corporate writer, not you as an essayist/poet/lyrical soul.

Call or email to follow up a few weeks after sending out your mailing. You may be told they’ll keep your materials on file, and oftentimes this really does result in your getting work at some point, even if it’s further down the road than you’d like.

Corporate Writing Rates

Depending on the size and prestige of the businesses you’re approaching, the pay for corporate gigs can be quite good. Here’s a ballpark list of rates (these vary not only by the company, but by geography – businesses in New York City generally have more cash to throw around than businesses in Putney, Vermont):

* Brochure (one folded 8.5″ x 11″ sheet): $500 – $1000

* White paper or report: $2500 – $7500 (depending on length and complexity)

* Home page of website: $500 – $1500

* Ezine article: $500 – $1000

* Press release: $500 – $1500

A good rule of thumb when discussing rates is that you should never be the first one to throw out a figure. If they balk at giving you a number, try to find out in a general sense what the approximate budget for the project is – it’s a business; they should have some idea what they’re prepared to pay. This will save you from unintentionally lowballing yourself, or tossing out a figure that strikes them as outrageously high.

Resources to Check Out

The following are excellent resources for anyone looking to break into business writing:

The Well-Fed Writer & The Well-Fed Writer: Back for Seconds
Peter Bowerman

The Copywriter’s Handbook
Bob Bly

Start & Run a Copywriting Business
Steve Slaunwhite