Seven practices to give yourself a bonus! ASK FOR A BETTER CONTRACT Ask for a better contract when you’re giving up too many rights, you can’t figure out what you’re getting paid or when, or you are an authority or have a demonstrable specialty. Just ask, “Do you have a better contract?” Let them ask […]
Writers are steadily admonished: Write what you know! Well, I don’t know about you, but I know a lot, and much of it, okay, most of it, would not go any further along the transom than the nearest circular file. After all, who wants to read that trash pickup in my neighborhood is Wednesday mornings? Or, what editor would buy a piece about replacing household light bulbs?
In sales, reselling is not usually an option unless a thing can be mass-produced, which is not a possibility in writing non-fiction articles and magazine pieces as a general rule. However, with a slight twist, most pieces that have been sold once, can be sold again, multiplying your ability to spread yourself around. In freelance […]
Curious about freelance writing courses offered at our community college, I called someone teaching an essay-writing course and mentioned that I was a freelance writer. He urged me to contact the community college. Encouraged, I also approached my local community center. Bear in mind, I’m in Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa’s internationally-acclaimed Writers Workshop. Yet after receiving a surprisingly warm welcome, I began teaching freelance writing courses for both.
Nothing thrills a freelance non-fiction writer as much as a new sale. Chocolate may make me happy, but a new sale makes me positively ecstatic. It generally causes me to run around the house jumping up and down for a while, while my family smiles and then joins in the excitement. They know what’s causing […]
I first met success while staring down the twin barrels of poverty and debt. My husband and I were going through a bad patch financially. Actually, “patch” doesn’t begin to describe this encumbrance the size of Asia. And our rented house in rural England had all the conveniences of the average garden shed.
A new author who uses a small or P.O.D. publisher must make some important decisions about his or her book promotion. If the author believes his or her book is well-written, if the author has something to say, or if the book is important in some way, then the author must decide what role he […]
One of my favorite movies is the Billy Crystal/Danny Devito comedy, Throw Momma from the Train. In it Crystal’s character, a creative writing teacher, gives what I still consider is the best piece of writing advice, “A writer writes.”
After finishing my first book, BABY CATCHER: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife securing an agent and publisher seemed insurmountable challenges. Yet, just three months after its completion, BABY CATCHER sold to Scribner for a low six-figure amount. It sold again in Germany and has been chosen as an alternate selection with The Literary Guild and […]
Long before I began my writing career, I was dreaming of it. Like most closet writers just starting out I worked full time while writing and submitted pieces to magazines in between the cracks of my busy life. My big plan was to build a writing career around published clips. Only problem seemed to be that I was rejected many times more than published. Truth be told, three years into my fledging career, my clips were still embarrassingly minuscule. I can hardly say I had a portfolio. My failure to become a published writer steamed from writing about things I really didn’t know. In the beginning, I would write about any subject if I thought I had a chance of getting published. What I should have been writing was on subjects I was passionate about, those things that lit me up inside, even if they were simple.
