Career Paths

Posted on July 2, 2020 by

My career path, while slightly unusual (Disney–Department of Defense–NASA–Freelancing), is not the only one by a long stretch. Your path will likely be the result of a mix between your interests, skills, aspirations, and job market. The bottom line here is that there is no ONE or RIGHT path to achieving career success. Every path can have advantages and disadvantage. Continue reading →

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Proposal Team Colors

Posted on June 29, 2020 by

The larger and more important the proposal and the larger the organization, the more proposal reviews you are likely to have. The most reviews I ever recall participating in for one proposal was three. The proposal review teams consist of people with some experience reading and responding to proposals in the past but who not connected with the work. The idea being, you want people who support you but who will look at the proposal objectively and catch errors or “holes.” Each of these reviews comes with a color: pink, red, or gold. Much to my surprise, however, there are more reviews than that! Continue reading →

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Working for Free

Posted on June 25, 2020 by

It starts when you’re young: a friend asks you to look over their resume to see if there are any typos or other errors on it. A family member asks you to edit their small business flyer. Then another friend asks you to write an article for their local magazine. None of them will pay you, of course, but they seem to think that their task will give you “exposure.” If you’ve done this before, STOP. If you’re a freelancer, or even if you have a full-time job and do other writing jobs on the side, you owe it to yourself NOT to work for free most of the time. Continue reading →

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For My Younger Readers Who Are Struggling With Career Aspirations

Posted on June 22, 2020 by
This was originally addressed to a friend of a friend. The recipient is a younger person who is struggling with her ability to do well in the classes she thinks she’ll need to succeed in to become an astronaut. Knowing of my interest in the subject, my friend asked if I had any advice or positive inspiration to share with this young teen. Oddly enough, I did. Obviously this is slanted in a space direction, but it could apply to anyone in that youthful state of doubt. As they say, it does get better, but I’d add that you have to work at it.

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Latest on the Book

Posted on June 18, 2020 by

Some writers are accused of having “The World’s Greatest Unpublished Novel” lurking in their computer. I’ve got something like “The World’s Most Plausible Unpublished Technical Writing Book” in mine. I’m in the home stretch on the writing portion, so with any luck I’ll get the darn thing into the online publishing world sometime this year. Below is a more detailed update for those of you curious about such things. Continue reading →

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