by Vanessa Cobb

Created on: April 18, 2008

Advice to the Budding Freelancer

1. If at all humanly possible, force the cat to stay in at night and spend most of his daytime outdoors, or as far from your keyboard as you can manage. To avoid the irritation of door-scratching, consider barricading him behind a heavy cushion.
2. Trawl your son's friends for able-bodied volunteer cleaners and rotate duties to keep them keen. Incentivise, only as necessary. (Note the inverse age to productivity ratio.)

3. Avoid using the washing machine until you feel a rush of writers' block coming on. In this way, you may eliminate up to three basketfuls in one sitting, with no loss of concentration.
4. Allocate half an hour a day to devising lawful and appropriate strategies for business accounting.
5. Cultivate a community of retired experts who are demonstrably wealthier than you are. Great minds, once in high demand, relish a drop of oil on the cogs, and are usually content with the price of a packet of bourbons or a bottle of plonk in return for their time. Juice each interview for tasty ideas and work up at least two salable stories from each.
6. Invest in high-speed unlimited broadband. Not only will it allow you to whiz through research in no time, dispatch high resolution graphics to your editor and dig out nuggets of opportune fortune on line, you'll find the viewing quality at BBC i-player far superior.
7. Gather armfuls of self-addressed envelopes and post them to editors, requesting a copy of writers' guidelines. Once you have a friendly reply, develop an idea for the publication and summarize it in a personal email, resorting if necessary to How Tiger Found His Way Home' after your cat mysteriously disappears for a peaceful fortnight.
8. Approach Universities, large companies and other sources of interest to request they add you to their press release list. Watch out for something newsworthy and offbeat, and then pounce on it like Tiger on his pray.
9. Once a production schedule has been confirmed, disable your high-speed unlimited broadband, together with Tomb Raider and the water-feed to the washing machine. In this regard, trawl your son's friends for a trainee plumber.
10. Always supply illustrations when cited, ensuring that information is accurate, authentic and properly accredited; much like the following graph tabling the ratio of productivity to age in teenagers. (Sadly, having been unwisely delegated, this item is not yet available for publication.)

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