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WELCOME TO THE WRITING PARENT
One of my first non-fiction sales was to Angela Giles Klocke, publisher of the original Writing Parent ezine. Since that time I've written for numerous writing periodicals including Writer's Digest, ByLine, Writers Weekly, Absolute Write and my own ezine, Food Writing. I have also been honored with several short stories published online and in print, and have shared my love of food and cooking in a few magazines also.
After three years of publishing Food Writing, I was preparing to open a shop in our village. Building after building fell through, and financing just wasn't working either. The day we were told the offer on my favorite building wasn't going to be considered (no counteroffer, or negotiations at all) I hopped on my treadmill to work off some frustration at the world.
As I began to feel my disappointment floating away, a random thought starting bouncing around my mind. "I miss The Writing Parent ezine," I said out loud to no one in particular. Suddenly a new door was flung open. I dashed off an email to Angela, asking if she would mind if I resurrected The Writing Parent in my own way, using my own voice. Graciously, she told me to go for it.
And here we all are, again together, or perhaps for the first time...for many of us anyway.
And why The Writing Parent? We writing parents are a special group. We have this desire to write but find time and energy to be at a premium. I have been a writing parent for nearly 20 years and while it's not always easy, it has certainly been fun. I've gone through all phases of combining parenthood with the need to write, and I'm writing more, and earning more, than ever before.
This site, this ezine, is not about parenting, but rather about writing for more money, increasing satisfaction in our writing lives and sharing the know-how to make your writing weave its way in the midst of raising a family.
I look forward to hearing from all of you and promise that this incarnation of the Writing Parent will also be worth the time you take out of your busy lives to read.
Blessings on you all as you travel the wild, wonderful path through parenthood, and parenting your own writing career.
Pam White
The Writing Parent A Weekly Ezine Volume II, Issue 23 August 11, 2008 www.thewritingparent.net
*****^^^^*****^^^^***^^^^*****^^^^****^^^^***^^**** For Parents and others who write. Subscribe and Unsubscribe instructions are found at the end of the e-zine. Our subscribers' privacy is important, I will not sell or share e-mail addresses or names with other businesses or publishers. This newsletter, in its entirety, may be shared via e-mail and on lists.
*****^^^^*****^^^^*****^^^^*****^^^^*****^^^^***^^^^ "Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money." - Jules Renard *****************************************************
In This Issue: 1. Ed notes: Techno Troubles 2. WRITING FOR YOUR NICHE MARKET by Pamela White 3. WRITE A POWERFUL BIO by Pamela White 4. Markets and Jobs for Writers
****************************************** 1. Ed notes: Techno Troubles
Hey gang! This week was one of wild ups and downs. I wanted to get out the word about my Query Letter Secrets self-guided course so I quickly wrote a sales e-mail and made the changes to my website…then I got lots of feedback.
I don't know how, but those who took advantage of the sale were sent to a page to download another self-guided course. Others were charged the original, instead of the sale, price. And some were annoyed that I was sending the ad or sales pitch emails in the first place.
Here's the scoop about the last complaint.
I am a writer. I write books for publishers, pen my own short stories, create essays, craft magazine articles. BUT I also publish two writer ezines because I LOVE to do that. So in order to be able to spend upwards of 20 hours a week on my ezines (yes, it involves that much time), I need to create an income. I do this by providing products that, I truly believe, help writers focus their writing efforts, create new ways to sell their writing and make MORE MONEY.
This is my business but I never, ever try to take advantage of anyone. I create my products for writers by interviewing other writers, researching for weeks, and drawing on my own experience with editors, publishers, magazines, newspapers, reviewing restaurants, selling weekly and monthly columns and creating query letters that sell like crazy.
I have decided that in the future, I will add "AD" on the subject line of any email that goes out with an ad for one of my books, ebooks, etc. in it. That way, anyone who wants only great information that is served up free on a weekly basis can stick to the ezine and just delete the ads.
I hope this helps us all to feel safe and comfortable with my ezines and the information I offer.
I love to learn new stuff, and learning that creating a safe and comfortable environment for my readers is essential has been an important lesson for me.
Peace, Write Well, and Prosper, Pam White www.food-writing.com www.thewrittingparent.net
Recently, while cleaning my file cabinet out, I found a dozen notebooks filled with my scribbled notes on markets, article ideas, book dreams, and outlines of writing projects. In each notebook I found bits and pieces of advice I picked up along the way. At times, I would write down thoughts on books I'd bought that were about writing, and keep notes on talks with other niche writers.
Here are some of the most valuable bits:
Know the history of the writers that covered your niche in the past. Find out who is covering it today, and what are their influences. Take time to explore these writers whose passion for travel, gardening, children, cooking, designing, and pets drove them to share information before it became popular or even profitable to do so. Read them, know them, learn their passion and how they express it. Soon you'll recognize the writers you connect with as you keep looking for more of their work, and savoring every word. If their work resonates with you, then you have the beginning of that style of niche or genre writer inside.
Research where you live and write what you know. Even if you live in a small town, you can break into the New York or Los Angeles, or London magazine publishing world. Interview local residents, friends, family and email pals for ideas. If you want to be on television, in the major newspapers, editing books published in your niche market, and writing up global trends for your genre, you might have to travel to Paris, Tuscany, Los Angeles, Sao Paolo, New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, Barcelona – anywhere that the new research is being done or trends are created. But keep in mind, you can write anywhere there are stories you can cover, whether you focus on a small seaside village in Scotland, or on a new style of parenting or green gardening.
Go to writers' conferences: Part of the thrill of going to conferences is meeting other writers but the business of writing includes networking with editors, agents and publishers and these conferences is where you have the best chance of meeting up with them. The most important aspect of conferences, however, is that you learn what the editors are looking for, right now, so you can give it to them.
Making a living writing articles is hard work. Writing articles is time-intensive. You spend days or weeks developing the idea, time writing the query and researching magazines, contacting interviewees or creating recipes, writing the piece and then doing rewrites and edits. Learn to take the research from one stellar piece and turn it into other articles, columns, essays and even books. Organize your information in file folders by topic so that you can easily find contact names and research you've already done to save time…which means making more money for your efforts.
Sell yourself. One writer told me that she spends half her time selling herself. She contacts other niche writers she likes in order to make influential friends, calls editors for lunch, sends emails to other writers congratulating them on successful publication of a book or article, and works on her website to showcase her work and herself to advantage. If you don't want to spend your writing time dining with local editors or writers, you may have a slower rise to the top but you may also find that connecting with readers online and just writing notes to editors can boost your visibility, as can reading great writing and building your work to those heights.
***************************************************** 3. WRITE A POWERFUL BIO by Pamela White
Selling articles to magazines, newspapers and websites not only provides writers with income, it also offers the writers an opening for self-promotion.
Flip through your favorite magazines and most (but not all) have a brief author's bio attached to the article. The bio may be placed near the table of contents under a heading like "Our Contributors." It may also come at the end of the article or story, or at the bottom of the first page of the article.
Readers truly love these bits that offer insight into the writer's personality, especially if they can feel a friendship with or relate to the author of the story or article they have just read.
In order to form a connection with readers, write a bio that shows something personal, a tidbit that resonates with your readers. Think about the magazine and the topic of the article you are writing. This will direct your author's bio.
If you are writing for a gardening magazine, it is easy to figure out who your audience is: gardeners, or at least they want to be gardeners.
In this example, write a sentence about your gardening experiences: "Gail Stinton started her English garden in 1979 and it has grown to take over her yard." For a simple living magazines, the bio could be altered to say "Gail Stinton devotes her summer to growing enough vegetables and herbs to keep her family fed throughout the other seasons." Or the imaginary Ms. Stinton might write "Gail Stinton runs her home with power generated by windmills and solar panels. She is an avid organic gardener and natural gourmet cook."
Writing one size-fits-all bios does not offer the greatest returns. Adjust each bio to fit each audience that you are writing for, at least whenever possible. But once your creativity is engages, it will not be too hard to do just that:
*When writing for a gourmet cooking magazine, include any professional experience, culinary awards, or gourmet hobbies you have.
*When writing for a parenting magazine, include the number (and ages) of your children, personal and professional experience with children, and other parent-related activities (member of the PTA, soccer coach, homeschool mom).
*When writing for car, truck or racing magazines, include personal history of driving, cars you own, job experience at a racetrack, or employment at an auto maker, anything that will appeal to your readers, and will show you to be an expert, or at least an aficionado.
*When writing for travel magazines, include places you've been, how often you travel, or your favorite destination.
While all these are examples that can be used, they are really more to nudge your own creativity to write your most savvy author bio. If you feel confident using humor, definitely include a dash of humor in your bios: "Jen Wren spends her days in the kitchen preparing nutritious meals for her three bottomless pits, otherwise known as her children, all of whom are under the age of four." This might be a good bio beginning for the writer of a parenting article on cooking for children. It's personal, informal and inviting enough to convince readers that you are the real deal, and that you feel your readers' pain.
Make a deeper connection and sell your books, or gain a following by including contact information and a list of your books and the publisher, your website URL, or message boards you moderate. This allows readers with questions to write for advice, encourages readers of your great articles to hop on over to an online bookstore, or invites visitors to your website to buy your books (or other products).
This also works if you have a business. If your business built with brick and mortar, like a restaurant, your locally published articles should certainly include a bio that promotes this business. If your business is online ("We ship heirloom seeds around the world") then include that information in your bio as well.
And, finally, if you have a website, ezine, or blog, invite your article readers to sign up. You could say something like, "Sign up for the author's blog at ….." or you could offer an incentive, "Get a free copy of '10 Things Editors Want You to Know' at the author's website: www.foodwriting101.com.com," especially if you have an ezine or blog that needs subscribers.
Make that author bio count when your articles are published online, in print and around the world
CAR AND DRIVER Hachette Filipacchi Media US, Inc. 1585 Eisenhower Way Ann Arbor, MI 48108 www.caranddriver.com Write or email for guidelines, requires queries. All articles deal with cars: reviews, news, etc. up to 2500 words. Pay negotiable.
AMERICAN CAREERS 6701 W. 64th St. Overland Park, KS66202 www.carcom.com Queries are required. Uses articles on different careers. Readership is elementary, middle and high school students. Articles 300 to 1000 words for $100 to $450.
ALIMENTUM: THE LITERATURE OF FOOD Submissions to: Alimentum, P.O. Box 210028 Nashville, TN37221 www.alimentumjournal.com Seeks Creative Non-Fiction, Poetry and Fiction about food. Submissions period will be open in the Fall 08 ****************************************
"There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." – W. Somerset Maugham
The Writing Parent is copyrighted by Pamela White, 2008
You've been dreaming and planning, writing and pitching. So why aren't you selling more?
There is no deep, dark secret. You just need a mentor to help you plot our your road map to writing sucess. That's where The Writing Parent comes in.
For over 15 years, I have been writing and publishing my own work and for the last nine years I have coached writers and food writers to greater success, better pay, and regular publication - books, cookbooks, magazines, newspapers, radio shows and television proposals. GO HERE...
The Writing Parent A Bi-weekly Ezine Volume II, Issue 19 July 7, 2008
For Parents and others who write. Subscribe and Unsubscribe instructions are found at the end of the e-zine.Our subscribers' privacy is important, I will not sell or share e-mail addresses or names with other businesses or publishers. This newsletter, in its entirety, may be shared via e-mail and on lists.
*****^^^^*****^^^^*****^^^^*****^^^^*****^^^^***^^^^ "Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it. Toss it even if you love it." - Stephen King
4. Markets and Jobs for Writers – will return next issue
****************************************** 1. Ed notes: BUCKLING DOWN
Gas and food prices are totally out of whack.
Weird, but that's been a huge incentive for me to pitch more articles, write more courses to teach, and, of course, earn more from my writing.
As our income is decimated by the high price of everything, we are cutting back, but we can only cut back so far.
The only way to get through this, I decided, is to push myself to write, pitch and sell more of my writing. So far I've set up office hours in my home's office. No more writing on the laptop, while lounging in my pajamas, until I had to either get dressed to go to work or fix dinner.
The lounging, laptop writing never was very successful for me. I usually ended up seduced by SNOOD, a computer game that even I can play, and play it I do (by the hours!).
This weekend, I got up early, showered, dressed and sat in my office chair and began work. I am scheduling writing time in between other jobs and obligations, and so far I am holding to that schedule.
When I get tired, I just ask myself, "What do you really want out of life?"
The answer: TO WRITE. Always to write despite economic upheaval, and growing children. To write whether it's winter or summer, to write whether I am happy or sad. Always to write.
Your heroine is walking home alone at night after putting in some forced overtime at a hated desk job. It is dark, windy. The streetlights flicker, casting strange shadows upon the pavement. She feels herself being followed, looks behind her, sees nothing but picks up her pace, her navy blue heels click clicking against the concrete sidewalk.
And
Your heroine is walking home alone at night after putting in some forced overtime as Snow White at some spoiled rich kid's birthday party. It is dark, windy. The mouse shaped streetlights flicker, making distorted Mickey Mouse shadows dance upon the cobblestones. She feels herself being followed, looks behind her, sees nothing but picks up her pace, her red sparkle shoes click clicking against the cheery yellow sidewalk.
Quite a different feel to each, isn't there? What was the only difference? Location. The first, based in New York City, sets up the reader for a dark, paranormal romance. The second, set in a Disney environment, makes the reader expect a lighter romance, perhaps even a comedy.
Location is very important, as important as your hero and heroine. It sets expectations and mood. A different setting can completely change a novel.
The easiest location to write is your hometown. You know the sights, sounds, and smells (yes, smells, every town smells different) of that location. The most challenging is the place you've never visited. It requires extension research if you wish to capture the location's true personality. Thanks to the internet, that research is easier. You can take virtual tours and email locals (contacting someone from the Mayor's office or the local tourism board is a great place to start).
I don't like to overload readers with the location's unique characteristics. Many readers use their own experiences as a base so a sprinkling of local flavor is enough. The location also shouldn't steal the show from the romance. It is there to help the romance plot along, not hinder it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kimber Chin writes romance novels based in the business world. Her first novel, Breach Of Trust, is now available. Every week, she offers a FREE read on her site http://businessromance.com
********************************************************* 3. WORK FOR HIRE? WHY NOT? By Pamela White
For a long time I've counseled my writing students to avoid work-for-hire contracts. Work-for-hire simply means that the publisher is buying all rights for a one-time fee. No more selling reprints, or being able to use it in a book or on your website for promotional purposes. You write it. They own it.
Still, as I mellow with age I have discovered a few limited circumstances where signing a work-for-hire contract could work to the writer's advantage.
I am not saying accept a work-for-hire contract without trying to negotiate a better deal, but sometimes, in the long run, selling your words one time to one publisher just might provide you with something you can use in the years to come.
For example, consider work for hire contracts when:
*** You need publication credits. Just starting out? Fighting a shrinking market of solvent magazines and newspapers? Look at the sites and publications that most writers shun because they buy all rights. Less competition equals better chances for new writers. Just make sure you take those published clips and you make the most of them in terms of using them to promote yourself as a published writer when pitching to other magazines or sites. This is a temporary way to bridge the gap between no writing credits to being paid well for first time rights for your writing work.
*** Ghost writing. If you think that all ghost writing is under a work-for-hire contract, guess again. Most ghost writers negotiate a piece of the profits. But imagine a local business man with a huge ego who wants his "autobiography" published with his name as the author. He hires you to write it out. You could charge a per hour fee, or you could negotiate for a portion of the profits that will never come close to what your fee would be. Ask for an hourly fee and let him enjoy the royalty payments. Just make sure he agrees to give you rave reviews when you need them to move into more lucrative ghost writing gigs that include profit-sharing.
*** You feel that you need to have a published book before an agent will look at your novel. Trying to break into the fiction market with traditional publishers is tough if you don't have a following or a track record with your writing. If you are offered a chance to write a non-fiction book or a series of short essays or stories for a pre-determined fee, consider it. Once you have that traditionally published book in hand, you are suddenly more valuable to publishers when they consider your next proposal.
*** You get an offer by a commercial business or an association to write a how-to booklet as a bonus for those who purchase a particular product or service. Let's pretend that Campbell Soup calls you and asks you to develop 200 recipes for their cream of mushroom soup. They offer you several thousand dollars and say they will own the recipes you are creating for them. Take the money. It's standard when dealing with businesses that want to have an add-on bonus for their customers, like a booklet of recipes. It's also prestigious to have written one (although most are done in-house nowadays). Also the pay is likely to be generous. Use the project as a launching pad for other lucrative writing jobs and move on.
Yes, the norm is to say that work-for-hire is a no-win situation for writers, but sometimes, especially for newer writers, work-for-hire is a viable way to break in, move up and earn more.
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