This is a re-post from a few years ago.  Perhaps some people will find ideas in it: The other night, I let my brain run barefoot over the subject of jobs that PWF can do.  If you'll put up with a bit of ruminating first, you will be rewarded with some suggestions that are meant mainly to get you to thinking about the same subject.  However, if anything here appeals to you, please feel free to use it.  Just don't publish it, please. It's grist for my book. First, some thoughts.  If you're out of a job, or nearly so, it helps to broaden your options to think about getting *work*, as opposed to getting another *job*.  The difference is that you do the work you're hired for and move on to the next assignment.  It's seems insecure at the outset, but when you realize that when you have a job you are at the mercy of the person who has the power to fire you, neither does a job seem all that secure. One way to go into business for yourself is to think of all the things you'd pay someone to do for you if you could afford to do so, then pick one or two and offer to do them for other people. The only way I know of to *stay* in business is to give your customers a little more and a little better than they expected and remind them, when they praise you, that you do this for your living and you'd appreci- ate it if they tell their friends about you.  It should go without saying that you are absolutely reliable, and do what you said you would do when you said you would do it. That sounds like a conflict with FM, I know, but it doesn't have to be that way.  I've been in the business of writing articles and books since 1983 and I've always given myself long lead times.  From the beginning, when it was a lie, I told editors that I was usually booked six weeks in advance, so they shouldn't count on me for emergency last minute assign- ments, but were always free to ask.  They got the idea early on that I was much in demand, and that made me all the more attractive as a writer. It also gave (gives!) me time to have off days and still not miss a dead- line.  I've been plenty sick and laid up at times during these years, but I still haven't blown a deadline because of this.  (Twice I've hired other writers to help me out, sharing a byline and fee with them, but that's as bad as it's gotten.) The criteria for a good job for a PWF, I think, are something you can do largely at home, that allows you to negotiate long lead times, and that doesn't involve a lot of stress or performance pressure. OK, so you're not a writer (or think you're not