When our family relocated from Tennessee to Vermont, I was confident I could keep landing assignments from my southern editors. I wasn’t so sure, however, if I could successfully continue teaching creative writing to homeschoolers-something I had been enjoying for five years. By asking myself the 5 W’s and the H, I found answers that not only satisfied my itch to teach, but also met a legitimate need in my new community.
A few years ago, while on a committee at my parish, I gave a talk that detailed my spiritual journey. A friend found the talk intriguing and repeatedly pestered me to get it published. “Uh-huh,” I thought, “as if it’s that easy…” But when I spoke with my spiritual director he also encouraged me to seek publication. Eventually, I sent my story off, assuming nothing would come of it. Although I’d always thought of myself as a writer, I’d long before given up thoughts of writing professionally.
Ali’s basketball team made it all the way to the finals on Saturday…but they didn’t win. It was a real nail biter and Ali was very happy to win 2nd place in the league. Zach’s team made it to the semi-finals. Needless to say…we spent the entire weekend at the YMCA!
After I ran last week’s article, Don’t Argue With Editors After Rejection, I received an irate email from a woman whose article was recently rejected. (Contrary to our guidelines, she’d submitted an unsolicited piece without querying first.) She called my writing “a sham of an article.”
This Week:
Award-winning novelist Jeffrey Marks is the newest instructor at WritersWeekly University. His class, Intent To Sell – Marketing Genre Fiction Works In Today’s Marketplace, helps first-time novelists create the materials they need to start marketing their works. In today’s article, Jeffrey details his introduction to marketing genre fiction.
I have a question for Ask the Expert. For the past six months or so I have done a few book reviews for a particular website. I understood when I signed on that there was no monetary compensation. I now realize that this is more time consuming and harder than I expected.
I assume the company running the website must get some compensation for their work. How do these types of businesses work? Do you think I am being taken advantage of doing reviews for free?
Leafing through Jane Magazine at my local Barnes & Noble one afternoon, I came across a column entitled, It Happened to Me. It’s a column in which readers are given the opportunity to submit a true story, approximately a thousand words in length, and, if printed, are paid $1000. (However, according to the magazine’s website, https://www.janemag.com, writers are encouraged to “do it for the love.”)
Last week, I purchased bathtub finger paint, window paint, red spray paint and glow-in-the-dark plastic stars. On Monday morning, while Richard had his head buried in his email, I wrote drew an A, a heart, and an R (A Loves R) in the bathtubs, on the bathroom mirrors, and on the windows in the house. When Richard was later on the phone, I wrote the same thing on the ceiling of our bedroom, right over his pillow, with the glow-in-the-dark stars. My last mission was to paint A Loves R in the snow out front and back with the red spray paint. Problem is…it was so cold that each time I tried to use the spray can, it would freeze up. I tried shaking it vigorously, but that just caused drops of red to splatter in the snow…
I’d like to share some advice on how not to ruin your chances of writing for a publication…
