Burn out's tough. I paced. I stared at a blank screen. I did anything, including cleaning, to avoid writing. All the while, knowing there were assignments waiting and articles to be written. My heart just wasn't in it. …
Lately, my father has been calling me Ed. It has nothing to do with his mental state, which remains pretty sharp at 89. It has to do with my recent role as his editor, which proved to be one of the most challenging but rewarding experiences of my life. …
As a professional speaker and author, receiving national exposure is about as good as it gets. On Wednesday afternoon, June 30th, I received a call from a producer of Good Morning America inquiring as to what I had going the next morning. …
The life of a full-time writer seems so sublime. Who wouldn't want to work in silk pajamas or jet off to New York for a power lunch with an editor? The notion was extremely tempting to me, a single mother struggling to support my family with a job I hated. But publish a novel? I probably had a better chance of becoming a supermodel. Still I dared to record my far-fetched fantasy in my journal, thinking that if I saw it on the page in black and white, it might be obtainable. …
I can tell you two sure things about my life. The first one: ever since I was eight, I wanted to be a writer. The rest of the story of how I became one is, well, a little less sure. My commitment to my writing career reads more like a Britney Spears marriage vow than a literary masterpiece. But that's why I am here, writing this article. It's because the second sure thing I'm going to tell you about my life is this: if I can be a successfully published writer, so can you. …
Playing in the big leagues isn't the only measure of a book's success. Success comes in small packages too, and if we continually create and celebrate lovely little wins, that elusive call from Good Morning America loses some of its ability to rob us of sleep. …
For 12 years I worked as a freelance writer while holding down a day job, often worrying that I would never be able to freelance as a career. It took me until I was 35 years old, but I now earn my living solely as a freelance writer and plan on never going back to the daily wearing of pantyhose again. …
From the moment I moved back to Iowa from Minnesota, freelancing my advertising copywriting skills was on my mind. Instead of waiting for advertising agencies to start hiring, I settled for a corporate communications job and soon confirmed that the cube farm wasn't for me. Writing newsletters, emails and web copy was fun, but WorldCom was spiraling downward. In 2002, I was finally included in a large RIF (Reduction in Force, for the few who don't know), and a few days later, the company's scandal came to light. I wiped my brow in relief and focused on taking this opportunity to do what I love: write ad copy. …
I had just turned 40 and decided to try and find the humor in it. There was plenty. I put together a small piece and submitted it to the Chicago Tribune. I didn't tell a soul. Not my husband, not my three kids, and not my mother. Especially not my mother. She's a writer. …
When I was initially told in September 1997 that my three-year-old son Paul had autism, pictures of him sitting in the corner of an institution, rocking back and forth, flashed through my mind. After a week of crying, I found Judy Smith, a wonderful speech and language therapist. She made me believe that Paul could and would be helped. …
I discovered that she and her husband wanted to recruit me to sell soap and other products that "practically sell themselves." The couple said they hated their jobs and planned to retire young. They asked about my dreams and created a chart to show how much leisure time I wasted. They were right! Although I didn't picture myself hawking soap, I could find time for writing. …
We'd been married less than a month, but it didn't take that long to realize there were a lot of things associated with being newly married that nobody bothered to tell us about. Case in point: You register for eight place settings and you only get five complete sets and a couple of miscellaneous salad plates. Guess who gets to cough up the hundreds of dollars (that you didn't budget for) to fill out the set? Must have slipped my friends' minds to bring that bit of information to my attention. Same thing for clueing my wife in to how many copies of our marriage certificate she would need for when she was going through the fresh hell of changing her last name. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. …
When we decided to try our hand at children…
I have been writing for twelve years with the majority of those years being rewriting and submitting my first juvenile fiction/young adult novel, Freedom. With over eighty rejections, I think I am a good example of perseverance, or just plain stubbornness. …
In 1994, I walked into my boss' office at a major encyclopedia company to tell him that I needed to quit my job as an editorial coordinator because my husband had been accepted into a graduate program in another state. What I expected to hear was something like "sorry to see you go" or "you will be missed." Instead, he said, "How would you like to stay on as a freelancer?" With no better prospects, I gladly accepted. …
All I wanted for my third birthday were pencils and paper, my parents say. That writing passion still burns. At nine, I won poetry trophies. By 19, I was selling articles and poems to national magazines and newspapers for money. A teenage essay I wrote sold to the New York Times Op-Ed page. Soon after, Reader's Digest sent me a check for reprint rights to excerpt that essay. When I married, I sold several short pieces to Modern Bride. I also sold dozens of opinion and inspirational articles to national religious magazines. The checks kept on coming. And they still do... …
I always wanted to be a real writer. I dreamt of days spent churning out page after page of evocative prose that would impress editors with its brilliance and move readers to grateful tears. There was only one problem: I *couldn't* be a real writer. Oh, I could work at dead-end jobs (hating every one), doodle in a journal, and raise kids, but professional "success" was simply out of my league. …
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. …
For three years, I've taught Food Writing classes online. Last June, a student proposed that I write a Food Writing II class, and start a newsletter. He believed in my ability to publish a profitable e-zine. He obviously didn't know my disastrous history as a publisher. I started a community newspaper years ago, only to find the workload too heavy and my bank account too light. …
As a university undergraduate, I was interested in TV writing, not journalism, so working on the school newspaper never entered my mind. Now, years later, I'm suddenly "in demand" as a writer at my alma mater. …
It's more than a jungle out there; it is a battle - with weapons to gather, a plan to formulate, followers to cultivate, walls to breach, and territory to establish. So where does this POD writer go from here? Well, here is my "battle story" and where it has taken me. …
Over the next three years, I tried; no luck. Books about Vietnam wouldn't sell, they said. Out of frustration, I sold the erights to an ebook startup. In 2001, they entered it in the Frankfurt eBook Awards. Carl Melcher was named a finalist, along with the work of Joyce Carol Oates and David McCullough. I had made it, right? Selling the book would be a slam-dunk now! Wrong. …
One day I read an article on WritersWeekly.com that advised writers to be prepared to try new genres of writing and the author placed emphasis on technical writing. Prior to that time, I had concentrated on seeking writing assignments on regular non-fiction, magazine-newspaper type of articles. …
Like many freelancers, I've seen my income drop sharply in the last couple of years. However, last summer I developed an effective recovery strategy to increase my article sales. My strategy is a variant of the tried and true technique of building on success by approaching an editor with a new article proposal after she has accepted one of your manuscripts for publication. …
In December 2002, I decided to become a freelance writer. I came to the profession with no formal education in writing, and I had no contacts in the writing industry. I believed that I could be a good writer because, at the age of seven, I wrote my life story. And, I have continued writing ever since. I am also an avid reader. The fact that I am a married middle-aged mother with two young children did not deter me. …
Even though I lived there, I'm embarrassed to admit that I failed to see the obvious. It was only after a friend asked me when I was going to write about the tornado that the light bulb nearly blinded me. I got busy, conducted over 70 interviews, tracked down photographs, and ultimately self-published a 130-page book titled Manti Tornado Stories. Copies sold right out of my hands! …
When the editor of a small community newspaper called to ask if I would be interested in writing several freelance articles for the paper, I hesitated. He was only offering $50 per story and I was concerned that the articles would require much more time and effort than the pay warranted. But, with the holidays around the corner and few deadlines during November and December, I agreed to take on the assignments. …
Years later I wrote a letter to a local newspaper regarding something I felt passionate about. Out of two hundred letters printed that month, mine was chosen as the second best letter submitted. That was the catalyst I needed to pursue writing as a career. I now realized that my dreams were to be my goals. First I wanted to see an article of mine in the newspaper. It happened. Then I wanted to see my name in print in a magazine. I did. And over the past three years, with a lot of hard work, articles and short stories were published and I was getting paid! …
On the WritersWeekly.com Freelance Job Listings, I found a link to the CBC Radio Freelancer Forum. As a print writer, radio was a BIG stretch, but a little desperate for paying markets, I registered for the CBC forum and newsletter. In one of the newsletters was a request for "consumer" pitches requiring freelancers to test several products and tell which gave consumers the best bang for their buck. The finished pieces were only 3 or 4 minutes long and I knew that this was something I could do. …
After WritersWeekly.com published my article, Paying Personal Essay Markets, a publicist who had read my article contacted me and inquired if I'd be interested in reviewing a book on sexual child abuse. She'd supply me with the book plus the opportunity to interview the author, but I'd be responsible for writing, querying and ultimately selling the book review. …
I want to thank WritersWeekly.com for the fine e-book, How to Be a Syndicated Newspaper Columnist. I bought it about a year ago and have been taking your advice to heart ever since, submitting two different columns to various arts weeklies and traditional newspapers across the country... …
Like any decent Clark, Rowling, Morrison wannabe, I started my illustrious writing career creating books. I would go to sleep nightly with visions of sugarplums and book signings dancing in my head. However, when I woke up, only rejections came true. Discouraged, I abandoned my two best friends- pen and paper. I had every intention of never seeing them again, but they kept calling, beckoning me back. …
Well, I've never done this before. But, hey, we ran out of success stories and I've been very happy with the success of my new book, Query Letters That Worked! So, today, I thought I'd tell you how I made more than $1900 in 48 hours. Several months ago, determined to keep up with my new goal to write and publish three new books each year, I wrote down a list of several possible book ideas... …
