Kristen Hall-Geisler

Category: The Wingback

  • Putting My Money Where My Pen Is

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    I wrote a draft of A Car of One’s Own last year and shopped it around to agents, to no avail. It’s a weird length at 30,000 words, and it’s not the kind of book a person would buy at Barnes and Noble for $15. It’s a tough sell for an agent. Publishing it electronically myself…

  • The Nouveau Commonplace

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    I learned a few months ago that the word “commonplace” has an older meaning than the current definition of something being so common it’s no longer interesting. It’s the kind of word you’d think hipsters would use more often than they do. But a commonplace is also a notebook where you write down quotes and…

  • What I Learned from HowStuffWorks.com: Research and Documentation

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    I do lots of work for lots of different outlets, but there are a few publications (online and print) that I work with regularly. One of those is HowStuffWorks.com, which is part of the Discovery network. I’ve been writing for their Autos channel since 2008 — nearly three years — and the most important thing…

  • To Holiday or Not to Holiday

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    I am writing this at my desk, in my office, on Memorial Day, an official holiday in the United States. Yet here I am at my desk. Most people are camping this weekend — or as a friend of a friend on Facebook called camping, “drinking near trees.” I did not leave town for the…

  • On the In-Person Q&A

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    A few months ago, my friends Kristin and Ali (founder of Indigo Editing) asked if I would be available to answer questions about the freelance life. I said sure. Ali mentioned that I was requested by someone, which was flattering. She never said who the requester was, but she doesn’t know my mom, so it…

  • Freelance Tip #2: Twitter

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    Though Twitter has only been around a couple of years, it’s spawned a little industry of books on how to effectively use it — and a big group of Twitter haters. I use Twitter and have for a long time, if we’re measuring time in internet terms rather than, say, geologic terms. Here’s my Twitter…

  • Freelance Tip #1: Lunch

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    Basically, you have two options for lunch as a freelancer: eat in or go out. Let’s explore the options for and implications of each. Eat In Do not eat at your desk. That is for people with “regular” jobs who have to work in cubicles. You are a freelancer. So eat somewhere nice, like at…

  • On Freelance Breathing Space

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    Recently one of my favorite editors at one of my favorite freelance gigs sent out an email announcing that we all — staff and freelancers alike — were being given “breathing space” for a few weeks. I don’t know if this is a euphemism for being a bit broke or if things really were getting…

  • The Monday Morning Freelance Plan

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    As a freelance writer and editor working from home, getting out of the house is always nice. So I’ve instituted a new ritual: the Monday morning freelance plan. It gets me out of the house and makes the rest of my week far more productive. The basic idea: This takes about an hour, maybe a…

  • Kinds of Editing: Developmental, Line, Copy, and Proofreading

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    You’ve finished your manuscript, and you know you need an editor. You start looking online and see there are different kinds of editing, and editors who specialize in each. How do you know which you need? How do you know what your book needs? What’s the difference between the types of edits? I’m going to…