Have you ever walked into a hair salon or barber shop and asked the proprietor if she'd cut and style your hair for free? Ever got into a taxi and asked the driver to take you to the airport for nothing? I didn't think so, nor have I.

I ask this question because some assume that while professional services like those of barbers, hair stylists, lawyers, accountants, and candle stick makers must be paid for, the services of a writer need not be. Indeed, some multi-billionaires have started websites (named after themselves) asking writers to contribute for free ('you'll get a lot of great exposure and can build a large following/platform/blah, blah, blah") and never get around to paying their writers, even after they've sold their websites for billions of dollars to a Fortune 500 media company. I won't mention any names here, but you may know who I'm talking about.

Can I pay my rent or my car loan in "exposure and an online following"? I've never tried it -- who knows, maybe it'll work. What I'm saying is that writers are like every other professional and every other person in this world: we got bills to pay and need to work to generate the income in order to pay our bills. I can't write for free because it simply isn't a sustainable business model, no more than a barber shop giving free haircuts has a sustainable business model.

Seemingly more than almost any other profession, writers constantly get asked to work for free. I literally get a couple emails every week "inviting" me to write free content for people and websites I've never even heard of. The emails are polite and might even praise my work, but they also go on to express how lucky I am to receive such a great opportunity to write for free. Really?! Mostly, I just respond saying that I don't write for free because I have to do things like eat, have a roof over my head, pay my taxes, etc., and writing for free doesn't help me. I then ask them to pay my normal rate for the written work. I haven't heard back yet.

I'm not telling you not to write for free. That's a personal decision. You may actually need exposure -- although exposure can kill you in the wintertime here in Boston -- and a platform (although they hang people from platforms, don't they?). It's your choice. If you are independently wealthy and writing is just a hobby, then write your heart out for free. If you're starting out and need to build clips in order to move up to getting paid, that's fine. Go ahead and write for free a few times. It's tough out there, I know.

But I believe writers have an obligation to value their work and demand that others value it enough to pay for it. Paying clients help you live your life by (get ready for it) paying for your skills and your time. That way, you don't need to go out and collect cans in the street in order to pay your rent.

Sorry if I'm getting all Marxist here, but I do believe writers have the same right to make a living by selling their services as barbers or bakers or Beyonce'. It takes years to develop skills and hours to produce content that's worth reading. That time should be compensated so writers can keep practicing their profession.

And yes, you are right, I AM writing this blog post for free. But I'm doing it for the love of it and (I suppose) am simply exploiting myself, nobody else. Every writer needs to make their own choices, but making a living is important and so is getting paid.

What do you think of writing for free, dear reader. I can't pay you a penny for your thoughts, but do hope you'll share your experiences and opinions below . . .

Last week, I was asked to be a guest lecturer for a college writing class in Cambridge, MA. My friend Deb teaches the class, and she asked me to share some insights about essay writing with her students. They were a great group, filled with energy and lots of thoughtful questions about the writing process. One student asked me if there was a "right" way to seek and receive feedback, and I'd like to focus on this topic.

1. Is it a good idea to seek feedback on your writing? It depends. You may be working against a tight deadline and have limited time to seek feedback before you need to submit. In these cases, I don't seek feedback. At other times, you may feel confident about what you're doing and won't feel the need to invite feedback. I look for feedback when there's time for it and when I feel it will be useful. In other words, when I have some doubts about the writing. Usually these doubts revolve around the beginning and the ending, and the overall tone of the work

2. To whom should I go for feedback? It's a good idea to have two or three people you trust who are willing to provide feedback. I have a close friend who is an experienced, savvy business consultant. When I'm writing about business topics and I have time and some doubts, I'll email him my work and ask him to provide feedback. I also ask my wife for feedback. She's a skilled editor and has always been able to spot weaknesses is my writing, which has been tremendously helpful.

3. What is good feedback? Well, it depends on what you need. I like to have feedback that spots problems in the writing, but I don't want the person to offer me specific solutions. In my opinion, it's the writer's role to find solutions to the problems. With my wife, for example, I always ask her to point out problems but don't tell me how to solve them.

Good feedback is always about the work itself and never about the writer. The feedback should be as specific as possible. "The ending doesn't feel right," isn't great feedback. It recognizes a problem, but the writer wants to understand the problem in more detail. Better feedback might be, "the ending doesn't seem to tie together what you've written before, so it seems inorganic and tacked on." With this latter feedback, I can analyze and solve the problem. All good writers must be strong problem-solvers.

4. What if the feedback is more about the person giving feedback than the writer? Then disregard it. Sometimes, the giver of feedback would handle the writing differently from you or write with a different tone. That's fine, but the writer is the owner of the work and it must reflect the writer's perspective not that of the person offering feedback. The writer should take in all feedback, but also retains the right to disregard it completely after considering it. If, for example, you write a personal essay about a painful childhood experience, nobody has the right to tell you not to share that story or to make it more upbeat. These choices are yours alone.

5. Do the same feedback rules apply to editors? Yes, but editors should be able to both identify problems and also help you fix them. Editors are supposed to understand the "editorial voice" of the publication or client, so if a writer is off target with the voice/tone, a good editor will help you get back on target with specific suggestions. Like a good writer, a good editor is also a problem-solver. Editors who merely point out problems ('the tone doesn't feel quite right. Can you change it and re-submit?") are not effective editors, and writers won't much enjoy writing for them. 

What has been your experience with receiving feedback? Please feel free to share your thoughts . . . 

Old curmudgeon alert! Back when I was coming up as a writer, back in the pre-historic, early 1990s, breaking into print was a major milestone for any writer. I can still recall my first experience writing an assignment for a national magazine. It was an article about Olympic legend Jesse Owens and his Cleveland mentor, and Junior High gym teacher, Charles Riley. I was lucky that it was such a great story, one about a shy young African-American boy whose family had moved north for work and a kindly, white gym teacher who recognized a boy's potential, nurtured it, and became a sort of second father to that supremely-gifted boy.

I spent days researching the article in the Boston Public Library, carefully making notes in my three-ring binder and using the copy machine when I needed to pull out quotes for the article. These were the days before laptops and email. I wrote the article on a typewriter (if anyone can still remember those old machines), and mailed it to the magazine's New York City office in a large manila envelope with four stamps on it. Today I thank God for email and word processing, the two most important changes in this writer's lifetime.

The two months or so waiting for the magazine to hit the newstands were filled with excitement. I received my check for $500 in the mail, and that was exciting enough. My first big payday as a writer. When the magazine came out, the publication sent me three free copies in a large manila envelope. I can still recall the pride I felt opening that package, flipping the shiny magazine open to the table of contents, and seeing my byline, the product of a week's work at the BPL.

That feeling of seeing your name in print, and thinking somehow that it's magically turned you into a writer (a "real" writer, not just someone who talks about writing and hangs out at coffee shops), is something that sustained me for months. I remember wanting to repeat that pleasure, and I did.

Like all good things, alas, that feeling of trembling excitement dissipates with time. You care less and less, and then want to be published in "better" magazines, maybe even become a contributing editor (I did this too, for "The Writer" magazine). Breaking into print is a milestone, but the journey never ends. You move up the food chain, although the print food chain has dwindled significantly over the last two decades. Seems to be just a few crumbs left now.

Like so many workers these days, writers have been pushed to adapt by the fast pace of technology and the ever-accelerating pace of global change. Want to make a living? Then you need to follow where the readers and money are going, which ain't traditional print magazines or journalism. I went from journalist to digital content provider, not because I chose to but because I had to adapt in order to remain relevant. I don't see my name in print much anymore, but I'm in the digital space now with every other writer making a living these days.

In many ways, the milestones are simpler for young writers now. You can start a blog and find readers in a day or two. Who needs to get ink all over their fingers or change those messy, old typewriter ribbons (ugh!). The costs of entry are lower, and anybody can find an audience online. I'm all for it, though it's taken me a while to embrace these digital changes. We all need to adapt or perish.

​How have you had to adapt, dear reader? Share your experiences/comments below . . . 

I've been on vacation from my teaching duties this week, but have just written nine articles over the last five days. Writing well is important, but careful, often-dogged research provides the foundation for every article I write. Research requires a combination of humility ("I don't know enough about this topic and don't want to bullsh#t my readers" -- a thought which may never have crossed Donald Trump's mind about any topic, for instance) and pure determination to find answers and satisfy your curiosity.

You can research an article forever, and yet have more research yet to do. With the coming of the Internet and its partner Mr. Google, you can find more information about an infinite number of topics. What does this torrent of available research mean for writers? You need to know when you've done enough research and collected enough resources to start the writing process. There's no formula here -- it's just a feeling you get from experience. Research is done, now it feels like time to write.

Some fuzzy research guidelines: A longer article will obviously require more research than a shorter one. If the writer has a strong foundation in the topic, i.e., has some expertise, then less research will be needed.

Let's look at a few examples. I've written many articles about hiring and recruiting millennials. So when a client asks me to write a 700-word blog post about how to attract and interview millennial job candidates, I generally know what the post will look like before I begin researching. When I use google and search for "interviewing millennials," I'll already have read (and maybe even written) some of the relevant source material. The goal of my research will be to find a new angle, to say something about the topic that hasn't been said before. This might be challenging, but it's doable.

I'll read articles on my laptop and make notes. Sometimes I'll even print out good sources I come across, and mark up the printout. If I really like a source but don't have access to a printer, I'll cut and paste the URL into my word-processing software so I can re-read it later -- and can also cite to the link when I craft the post. I'll do research on my phone sometimes, like when I'm on the bus.

Attributing sources is important, if not always done by every writer. If you use something, cite the source and link to it. It's just good etiquette and also helps the reader if he or she wants to dive deeper into the topic.

Now, if I'm asked to write something I know little about, maybe concerning trends in cybersecurity or what midsized companies should do when their hybrid cloud computer infrastructure is breached, then I have more challenges in the research phase. If that challenge is too large, I may just turn down the assignment. But as a general rule, I'm a writer because I like to learn new things, and writing is my way of sharing what I've learned. I research more if my learning curve is steeper, not only because I have more to learn but because I need to sound somewhat authoritative to my readers. Readers know when you're bullsh@tting them.

If I'm not a cybersecurity expert, and trust me I'm not, then I might just read research in order to find the structure I need for the article. Once I have a sense of structure, I'll look to cite research in each part of the structure I've sketched out. It's a slower process, and my writing may be more "hedge-y" -- in other words, I need to be clear when I'm not sure about something. When I write these sorts of "learning curve" articles, I try to reach out to someone who knows more about the topic than I do, and ask them to review my draft. I will also rely on feedback from my editor and/or the client.

I enjoy researching, though it can take you into technical areas where you can get exhausted. I can now comfortably write an article on the hybrid cloud, because I've done a few of them, so my learning curve is less steep. But that doesn't mean I enjoy the process. It's a job, and I need to deliver quality for my clients and readers if I want to maintain my professional reputation (I do). That's every writer's obligation, and research helps you meet it.

Follow wherever the research leads you. I love to click on hyperlinks in the research I do, taking me deeper into a topic. You can find great things if you keep digging and remain curious. That said, don't go too deep and get lost in a black hole. Research is a means to an end, good writing, not an end in itself.

I've been writing a lot about the Affordable Care Act/"Obamacare" recently, and the amount of available resources on healthcare reform seems endless. When I find my eyes glazing over, I just take a break, go for a walk, and go back to the research later. Research will always be there waiting. Actually, I think I'll go for a walk now . . . .Feel free to share your thoughts below on research and its connection to writing!