About
Thank you for visiting my site. My name is Dustin M. Wax, and I’m a freelance writer.
Short Version
You’re looking for someone who can write copy that works, often under pressure, always to deadline, and always on target for your audience and clients. I’ve spent years doing just that. I’m experienced, creative, dependable, detail-oriented, and ready to work.
I have been writing, professionally and academically, for years. As an academic and teacher, I’ve had to learn how to “sell” complicated ideas to people who in many cases could not care less. As a professional, I’ve done marketing and corporate communications, educational web content, business proposals, and website copy for a variety of organizations and businesses.
Long Version
I’ve always been a good writer, which served me in good stead as an academic, which is what I’ve been for most of the last decade. Along the way, though, I’ve found a use for my talents at jobs ranging from an assistant to the Deputy Director of a major New York City museum, where I became the unofficial letter writer for the entire Program division, to a stint as the Communications Coordinator of a dot-com startup during the first Internet boom, where I was lucky enough to serve under a major figure in the marketing world.
Of course, the dot-com boom went bust and I landed at a big international affairs foundation, where I wrote and edited almost all of the website’s content. There, I was able to learn first-hand the strategies that were then just emerging for bringing educational content to the web.
After a few years focusing on academic pursuits, including teaching over 40 sections of anthropology and gender studies, I returned to writing as a freelancer. Over the last year, I’ve produced a stream of articles for the Technorati Top 100 personal productivity site Lifehack, and launched my own site, The Writer’s Technology Companion, a site dedicated to the tools and technologies of the writer’s trade.
As a blogger since 2000, I’ve learned the intricacies of several blogging systems, as well as the ins and outs of this still-growing medium. It’s experience I’ve brought to several clients, building out websites using the blogging software WordPress as a platform.
This combination of writing talent and technological know-how is what I bring to all my projects. Today’s marketing strategies must inevitably lead online, because if your customers or clients don’t find you on the Web, they’ll soon enough find your copetitors — or your most vocal critics. It’s no longer enough to get the right people to pay attention, you have to reward that attention, and I can help you do that.
For more information about me, a copy of my resume, or to tell me about your organization’s particular situation, click here to email me from the contact page.
10 Questions with Dustin
In a perfect world, I could take face-to-face with everyone who visits my site. It’s not a perfect world, and I know you probably have lots of questions you’d like answers to while you’re considering me for your next project. With that in mind, I sat down with myself and asked myself some of the questions I thought you might want to ask.
Who are you?
I’m a Las Vegas-based freelance writer with years of experience in the corporate, non-profit, and academic worlds.
What sort of writing do you do?
Over the years, I’ve had to learn to write in a variety of styles, from breezy direct email and newsletters to academic-ese. So I’m pretty comfortable with whatever you throw at me. My specialties are technology, arts and culture, and informative writing in general: articles, reports, brochures, training materials, manuals, tutorials, reviews, and the like.
Aren’t you an educator, too?
Yes, I am — you’ve really done your homework. I’ve been teaching college classes in anthropology and gender studies for the last 5 years.
How has teaching shaped you as a writer?
In a number of ways, actually. First of all, I read a lot of bad writing, and I’ve made a point of trying to put my students on a path towards better writing. Nothing teaches you how to do something better than teaching it to somebody else!
Secondly, I’ve spent several years in front of classrooms full of students whose abilities ranged across the spectrum, which has forced me to become quite adept at explaining difficult concepts clearly and succinctly — skills that naturally carry over into my writing.
What about blogging? Blogs aren’t real writing, are they?
They are, indeed! I write several posts a week for an audience that regularly exceeds 100,000 readers, providing them with advice and insight that makes their lives better. What could be more serious than that?
While there are plenty of blogs out there that consist of little more than pictures of cats and descriptions of lunch (and pictures of cats eating lunch), I’ve always made a point of writing about things that mattered — although I have been known to indulge my silly side once in a while.
You’ve spent years in the “Ivory Tower”. Do you know anything at all about marketing?
I spent a year at the peak of the first dot-com boom working under a master marketer, formerly a Vice President at the then-recently-launched Nielsen Marketing. Under his tutelage, I put together direct email campaigns, sales and support copy for our company’s website, and all manner of other promotional materials.
I’d ask you to think twice about your conceptions of the “Ivory Tower”, too. Teaching, especially in the fields I teach in, consists largely of selling ideas to young people who believe they already know everything important there is to know. Frankly,I think the average marketer could learn a thing or two by teaching a gender studies class!
What do you do for fun?
You mean, besides interviewing myself? Well, I’m not a bad guitar player, and I do a little photography, too. I love to travel; I haven’t been abroad in a few years, but even a trip to the next state gives me a thrill. And like every writer worth his (or her!) salt, I read a great deal. Business books, contemporary fantasy, literary fiction, popular science, anthropology — just about anything I can get my hands on, really.
What did you study in college?
Anthropology, especially cultural anthropology.
So why aren’t you off somewhere living with the natives and reporting on their strange habits?
I am. Look around you — is there anywhere stranger than home?
The highest demand for anthropologists right now doesn’t come from the academic world but from the business world! Anthropologists are trained to learn about what makes people tick, and are especially good at seeing people for what they actually do rather than what somebody thinks they should do. I think you can see why so many companies are chasing after anthropologists.
What kind of personality do you have? I want to hire someone who’s not just talented and experienced, but someone I can get along with.
Most people say I’m laid-back and casual, which I put down to having spent my formative years in San Diego. I’m good at keeping my cool even under pressure. I have a dry sense of humor that seems to help me stay calm — I have a knack for seeing the absurd in just about any situation. I’m hardy a social butterfly (aside from Truman Capote, writers usually aren’t) but I get along well with just about everyone.
Let’s talk skills. Have any?
You mean besides writing and teaching? I’m good with technology — computers, the Internet, that sort of thing. I can set up a website, organize a database, and do some pretty complex stuff with Photoshop. I have a keen understanding of the Internet — I’d be happy to talk to you about building or improving your organization’s web presence.
Is there anything you can’t do?
No, nothing comes to mind.
OK, I’m lousy at sports, I’m not licensed to practice medicine or law, and I don’t write very good romance novels. Other than that, I’m not willing to admit that there’s anything I can’t do, only things I haven’t done yet.
