We’re kinda bummed this week because Winter swept in here on the first day of Spring and dumped a few inches of snow. It left behind a bitter wind and frozen toes and fingers. I forgot to turn up the heater last night and it was freeeeeeezing in here this morning! Frank and Max made a great snowman on Saturday, but Frosty melted before the temperatures dropped yesterday afternoon. Poor Max (age 2) just couldn’t figure out what happened and kept looking out the window and saying, “Where snowman?! He go store??”
This week:
All writers want top market prices for their work. But top markets often ask for publishing credits, and how can you get publishing credits without making a sale? Rather than give away your writing to hungry publications that are too new or too poor to pay, sell your work to small or local markets. Commercial sales help to fill your vita with the much-desired publishing credits and provide you with experience in marketing your work and negotiating rights—for profit.
I want to learn more about what is “public record” so that I will have the confidence to walk into city hall or the court house and ask for records. Often times, small town folks who work in these offices don’t even know what the law is and I find myself not educated enough on this matter to push the issue or know where exactly to look for information. I don’t really want to take a law class. Surely there is some place the information is available for writers.
Start local. That’s the advice I received when building my writing portfolio. In 2001, I was new to freelancing, with only a few clips published on the Internet. There were a few newspapers and magazines that I considered writing for in my area and one in particular was a regional parenting magazine that I read regularly.
We spent a lazy weekend together plotting our summer vacation. Thank heaven for MapQuest! It was quite a trick to plan a 5500-mile trip that includes online access at every stop. We were somewhat successful, with the exception of a national park where we’ll be so far out in the boonies that we won’t even have cell phone access that night. But, we’ll have someone else monitoring the sites, so we’re not worried about it. Gosh, we may even feel like we’re on vacation that night!
A year or so ago, I was contacted by an attorney representing a firm that is listed in the Whispers and Warnings section of WritersWeekly.com. He said he would sue us if we didn’t remove the complaints about his firm from our website. His emails were quite menacing…so menacing in fact that we became suspicious. Aren’t attorneys schooled in the art of subtle manipulation and vague threats? Aren’t they trained to keep their cool at all times in order to prevail as the more intelligent animal in any debate?
This Week:
