Writer Aid celebrates ten years of advice for writers

Posted: June 30, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: blogs, Book publishing, Freelancing for Newspapers, newspaper layoffs, Uncategorized, Writing advice | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dear writers and readers, this blog has been dormant since late last year, but I had to mark the 10-year anniversary of my first post by telling you that I have updated the past posts, revising where the information was no longer accurate and making sure all the links worked. Those updated posts are my gift to you. Because I think it would be good to have all the advice put together in one place in a logical order, I am also planning to compile my blog posts into an e-book. I will let you know about that as soon as it’s available.

In the beginning, the blog was called Freelancing for Newspapers. I started it to publicize my then-upcoming Freelancing for Newspapers book. I’ll be honest. Some of those first posts were so lame it hurts to read them now. I was just learning how to blog. Now I offer a class on it. (click on Classes above). Over those first few years, I offered a mix of my own experiences writing freelance articles, plus information about the newspaper business and advice for writers on everything from how to get an assignment to how to get paid.

But the publishing world changed, I changed, and so did this blog. It morphed from Freelancing for Newspapers to Freelancing for Newspapers +, the plus sign indicating I might talk about more than newspapers. Eventually it became Writer Aid so I could address all sorts of writing, including fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction (and also maybe lure readers into my servers for writers).

At the same time, the newspaper business was changing. With the double whammy of the recession and the Internet, newspapers were going under or shrinking. Longtime staff writers were losing their jobs by the hundreds. And freelance opportunities became harder to find. Our local daily, The Oregonian, went from a stuffed package loaded with special sections to a thin tabloid. How could one write for the garden or arts sections when even the decades-long editors of those sections were now unemployed?

My own life was changing, too. I was caring for my husband, who had Alzheimer’s Disease. In 2009, he moved into a nursing home, and in 2011, he died. Through it all, I kept writing, but I was easing out of article writing and focusing more on poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction. I went back to school and earned my MFA in creative writing. I started teaching. I published two more books, Shoes Full of Sand and Childless by Marriage.

All of these changes were reflected in the blog as I talked about self-publishing, poetry, plots, settings, characters, and selling books. For a while, the blog shrank down to three quick tips because that’s all I could manage, but I kept it going. Last December, I decided there were too many writers blogging about writing, and the world didn’t need me doing it. I would focus on my other blogs, Unleashed in Oregon and Childless by Marriage.

I’m still not sure the world needs me writing about writing. Writers are so inbred, and I think it’s important to talk to the rest of the world. But as I put together the e-book, I suspect I will find topics that I have not yet addressed, and I will write new posts to fill in the blanks. If you sign up to follow the blog, WordPress will let you know when that happens.

You can still buy the Freelancing for Newspapers book. Some of the information is outdated now, but the basics of writing and selling articles is the same. The steps in the book will lead you from idea to published story, not just in newspapers but in magazines and online publications. Order a copy.

Now go write something.

The Writer Aid Blog is Moving On

Posted: December 10, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Advice for writers, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dear writers, you might notice that I haven’t been posting here lately. Or maybe you haven’t noticed, which is the point of today’s post. I have decided to discontinue the Writer Aid blog. I will keep the past posts, resource list, and information about my editing and coaching services online, but the weekly posts will cease. I will continue to publish writing-related content in other publications and occasionally on my Unleashed in Oregon site, but as a few publishers have said to me over the years, this blog just doesn’t “pencil out” anymore.

A quick Google search shows an endless list of  blogs and newsletters for writers. Every writer wants to publish a blog about writing. Nobody can read them all and still get any writing done. The best blogs and newsletters are produced by people who dedicate themselves to that work. Me, I’m scattered all over, with three blogs, a website, Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads. I’m working on projects in poetry, fiction and nonfiction, as well as maintaining a music career. I have enjoyed sharing my insights about writing here and at the Everything But Writing site that preceded it, but it has been 10 years, and it’s time to move on.

You will not be without resources. Let me recommend some of my favorite sites to check out:

Every year, in the May issue, Writer’s Digest publishes 101 Best Websites for Writers. If you can’t find something there, you’re not trying. Visit http://www.writersidigest.com

Here’s a list from The Positive Writer of top writing blogs that I totally agree with. Click on the links there for advice and inspiration that will keep you writing for years.

At Funds for Writers, C.Hope Clark inspires writers with her articles and extensive lists of contests, funding sources, and publishing opportunities. There’s a free newsletter, as well as a paid version with more listings.

I just found this amazing list at newpages.com of blogs by poets and writers. I could spend weeks reading these blogs.

And poets, Diane Lockward’s poetry newsletter never fails to teach me something and get my pen moving. Click on the link and scroll down to subscribe.

There are more. So many more.

It’s hard to say goodbye, so I won’t. I’m still here. You can reach me at sufalick@gmail.com or come say hi to me on Facebook.

Now, let’s go write.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why I’m Not Doing NaNoWriMo This Year

Posted: November 6, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Advice for writers | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, is all over the Internet right now. Are you doing it? The goal is to write a 50,000-word novel this month. That means 1,666 words a day if you write seven days a week. That doesn’t seem like so much for me. I can spew out words in profusion on the days that I choose to write, but seven days a week? Including Thanksgiving? No, no, no. That kind of schedule is a quick trip to burnout land for me. I purposely keep my hands off the computer keys on Sunday and sometimes another day of the week because it’s not just typing. The brain needs to recharge. It needs to go back to the warehouse for supplies. If I get an inspiration on my non-writing days, I may boot up the machine, but I’m more likely to scratch it out on a piece of paper so I’m ready to go in the morning.

For some people, NaNo works. The camaraderie and the pressure to report progress every day can really help get you writing. You can even attend “write-ins” in your community to pour out the words together. No critiques, no craft discussions, or worries about marketing, just writing. It’s all good. Just not for me. Not this year.

I have started NaNoWriMo a couple of times and pooped out because I realized the novel I had started to write wasn’t what I was supposed to be writing at that point. I already had writing projects I needed to get done, and NaNo was just a distraction. Plus I think it’s more important to write well than to write quickly. This year, I’m immersed in a nonfiction project and don’t really have a novel noodling around in my brain. I’m still trying to sell the last one I wrote. Plus it’s November. I’m as busy as a dog barking at squirrels under the woodpile.

Challenges can be good. I have gotten many poems out of Poem-a-Day challenges, and I enjoyed last year’s A to Z blog challenge. Anything that gets us over the wall between not writing and writing is good. If you’re doing NaNoWriMo this year, go, go, go. God bless you. May your words flow easily into a great novel that we’ll all read and love. But don’t feel guilty if you’re not taking the challenge this year. Do your own thing. Make your own challenge that fits your life and your writing goals. Finish that book by Christmas. Send out a query a week, write 500 words of prose a day, or write a poem every Tuesday. Or just keep doing what you’re doing. That’s probably challenge enough.

Now let’s go write.

How much does it cost to be a writer?

Posted: October 30, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Advice for writers | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

I got to thinking about this the other day after I talked to a freelance editor about working on my book. These days everybody says you need to hire an editor to fix up your book before you send it to agents and publishers. Critique groups are good, but you need to hire a pro to look at the whole book to help you shape it, cut the fat and find the “narrative arc.” Or so they say.

Years ago, an editor helped me with one of my previous books, and it was good. So I thought I’d try it again.

But here’s the problem. The editor I talked to charges $100 an hour. She thinks it would take 10 to 20 hours to do the job, which is only to look at the big picture, not to do any actual editing on syntax and sentences. That’s $1,000 to $2,000, for those who can’t do math without their calculators. I’m sure she’d do a great job, but that’s a lot of money. Her rates are on the high side. Others might charge less, but it’s still quite an investment. Check out this chart from the Editorial Freelancers Association.

My previous editor was expensive, $700, I think, but she did everything, from the big picture to the typos. If she edited the kind of book I’m working on now, I’d try her again.

It used to be that editors at publishing houses took your shapeless but promising manuscript and helped you rewrite it until it was perfect. That’s what happened with my book Stories Grandma Never Told, published by Heyday Books a few years back. The editor helped me make it much better, and I didn’t have to pay for the privilege. In fact, they paid me. Now, apparently editors at larger publishing houses don’t so much edit the books as advocate for them with the marketing folks.

So does this mean that unless you can afford to spend thousands on editing, you’re never going to get into a major publishing house? I pray to God it’s not true.

The cost of editing might explain why so many less-than-stellar books are self-published these days. And why we see so many typos in our books. Most of us think our books are fine after we finish our own revisions. Maybe they are; maybe they aren’t, but I can’t believe we have to spend so much money to find out. Let’s go back to the critique group idea. Maybe we could trade manuscripts with each other to get the big picture view. You read my book, I’ll read yours, and we’ll compare notes.

I started out to write about the cost of being a writer. Editing is certainly not the only cost. Let me take a peek at my expense charts. The main expenses:

  • Postage to mail my published books at $2.72 apiece via media mail. As for submissions, I rarely submit anything by snail mail these days so that cost has gone down considerably, but then there are . . .
  • Submission fees. Not every publication charges a fee to submit, but more and more of them do, even ones that only pay in copies. It may be only $3 or $5, but it adds up, especially when I’m also paying . . .
  • Contest entry fees. These keep getting higher. Most are $15 or more. I have seen book competitions with $40 fees.
  • Internet-related fees. You’ve got to keep the Wi-Fi going, and it isn’t free. You may pay for a website or domain name (I have several). WordPress charges $18 for those domain names and that’s not even a premium account.
  • Office supplies and office equipment, including computer gear, tablets and phones.
  • Business cards, brochures and other printed matter.
  • Professional memberships at $30 to $300 a year.
  • Books and other publications (you don’t want to know how much I spend on this)
  • Education: University degrees, conferences, workshops, etc. are not cheap.

You can keep your writing low budget, but not as much as in the days when all you needed was a pencil and some paper, envelopes and postage stamps. You can refuse to submit to contests with entry fees or publications that charge submission fees. You can skip the domain names and paid websites. You can get all of your reading material at the library or buy only used books. You can trade critiques with friends. But alas, being a writer is not free. Neither is anything else, however, whether you’re an artist, a quilter, a gardener or a golfer. If you love it, you find a way to pay for it.

I’ll figure out what to do about the book. Meanwhile, it didn’t cost me anything to put these words on the screen, and it doesn’t cost you anything to read them. Isn’t that wonderful?

Let’s go write.

Get Inspired with These Writing Books

Posted: October 23, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: books for writers | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I’m always reading books about writing. Here are a couple I have finished recently.

The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop by Diane Lockward, Wind Publications, 2013. I may have talked about this book two years ago when I first started working my way through it, but I’ve got to mention it again now that I’ve made it to the last page. This book is fantastic. On days when I had no ideas, I turned to The Crafty Poet and never came away disappointed. Lockward has filled this book with poems, prompts and essays by poets about their craft. The poems themselves are wonderful, but we’re encouraged to use them as springboards for our own work, using some of the same techniques. The exercise I just finished offered a poem with no punctuation or capitalization. I had never written such a poem, but trying it made me feel so free I plan to do it again. Other prompts work with places, sounds, word, line breaks and much more. I’m not sure what I’m going to do now that I have finished this book. I may have to go back to page one and start again. Lockward offers a great poetry newsletter at dianelockward.blogspot.com. I also recommend her books of poetry. I’m currently reading What Feeds Us and loving it.

The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr, HarperCollins, 2015. This is the book all my memoir-writing friends are rushing to read this year.  Having read and loved Mary Karr’s memoirs—The Liars’ Club, Cherry, Lit–I expected to love this book. She has received mostly five-star reviews on Goodreads, so maybe I’m just cranky. It is a good book, inspiring and educational, like a master class in the memoir, but I felt handicapped reading it because I haven’t read all the memoirs that she discusses in depth. It was like trying to pass a literature course without doing the homework. Future readers, check the table of contents and read the works mentioned there, as well as Karr’s memoirs. Then you will be prepared for the in-depth analysis in this book. I had expected a how-to for writers, but this is more an exploration of the memoir genre. However, Karr does offer considerable advice about voice and revision, truth and memory, and dealing with family and friends. If you’re a Karr fan, read this, but do your homework first.

***

About this blog: I have been doing this blog under various names for eight years, compiling almost 400 posts. Combine that with columns I have written elsewhere, and I think it’s time for me to put together another writing book. What do you think? Would you be interested?

Meanwhile, time is zooming by. Let’s go write.

Are you sure your writing is really done?

Posted: October 16, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Advice for writers, Revision | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

You know how sometimes fried chicken is all brown and crispy on the outside, but then when you cut it open, it’s pink and bloody inside? That’s how I’m feeling about some of the work I have been reading in my role as one of the editors of the Timberline Review, for which submissions closed yesterday.

It happens mostly in poems, but also in prose. I start reading and think, wow, this is going to be great. What a fresh topic, what wonderful imagery. The rhythm, the emotion, the substance. And then . . . rats. The piece fizzles out. Suddenly I’m at the end, and the writer didn’t carry through with the promise he or she made at the beginning. The piece ends in a stream of vague generalities or clichés, goes on too long, or stops suddenly, leaving me wanting more. We grade the poems on a 1 to 4 scale, 1 being yes and 4 being forget about it. In my weariness last night, I gave one poem a 5. I hate, hate, hate starting out reading a 1 poem and having to give it a 4 because the writer didn’t finish it.

I worked in the newspaper business for a long time. We were lucky if we had time for two drafts, but if you’re writing on your own, you do have time for two or 20 or however many drafts it takes to make sure your work is the best it can be. Right now, take out a piece of paper and write down these words. Write them big. WHAT AM I TRYING TO SAY? Hang it up where you can see it and ask yourself that with everything you write.

Write your first drafts as loose and wild as you want. Don’t worry about things hanging together or even making sense. But when you revise and before you ever send your work out for publication, ask yourself that question. What am I trying to say? Write down what you’re trying to say in one sentence. And follow it up with: Does this piece of writing say it? Does it say it all the way from the first line to the last? Can I tie the opening and closing together? Are there sections that just don’t support that main idea? Did I run out of steam halfway through or quit too soon? Finish your thought. Then stop. The most common editing suggestion we’ve been making to our poets is to cut the final stanza. So take another look. Is your work really ready?

Two other editor quibbles I have to share today:

1) If the guidelines say not to put your name on the submission, don’t put your name on it. Don’t put it in the file name or in your headers or footers, don’t put it anywhere except in your cover letter or the online form you use to submit. When editors say blind submissions, that’s what we want.

2) Learn the difference between lay and lie and how to conjugate them:

I lie down now, I lay down last night, I had lain down last Tuesday, I am lying down now.

I lay down the book now, I laid it down last night, I had laid it down last Tuesday, I am laying it down now.

See the nifty chart and examples at The Grammarist.

Now let’s go write.

Lost submissions? Ask until you get an answer

Posted: October 9, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Advice for writers | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Remember how we were talking a while back about following up on our submissions, how we should not be afraid to ask what’s going on with our stories or poems when we haven’t heard anything for a while? Well, sometimes you have to follow up on the followups.

I don’t want to scare you, but once in a while good news turns into less good news or silence. You told all your friends about your big acceptance and then . . . nothing.

Earlier this week, I wrote three followup emails on writing that had been accepted. One was for a piece that a big-publication editor asked me to write, which I did, in January. Nothing has happened. I had someone else who was interested, but I said no, I was waiting for the big-pub editor. I contacted her three times, was told each time that she was running behind but would get back to me soon. Nothing. My next email went unanswered. I tried again this week. Still nothing. Big-time publication and payment still in limbo.

One of my poems was accepted in March. No pay but a great outlet. I have heard nothing. Checked the website a couple times to see if the poem had been published without telling me. Nope. This week, I went to their website again and saw a notice that publication was suspended until March 2016. The staff is reorganizing and trying to catch up. But what about my poem? Message on the website: If you submitted something that has not been published and we haven’t contacted you, please email us. Which I did. No word yet.

A couple weeks ago, I received notice that I had won a prize for an essay, one of the most important essays I ever wrote. It will be published in an upcoming anthology. Fantastic. I sent them an email with my bio and picture and asked about rights, proofs, publicity, timing, etc. Nothing. I wrote again this week. The editor responded quickly, saying the information was in the contest guidelines and maybe her response to my previous email got caught in the spam filter. Nope. I check my spam regularly. Now I wish I had read those guidelines more closely. They’re taking only one-time rights, which is good, but there will be no proofs or editing; they assume the piece was ready to publish when I sent it in. They’ll sent me a press release to distribute when the book comes out. Okay. Not all the answers I wanted, but now I know more than I did before.

Lest you have decided by now to quit this crazy business, let me assure you that more often things work out well. Editors keep in touch, share information, send you proofs, and make sure you get paid. But sometimes you’ve got to be persistent. Don’t call or email them every day, but do keep in touch and let them know you refuse to be jerked around.

So follow up, and follow up again. If you never get an answer, take your business elsewhere. Their loss.

If you have been accepted by a publication, or if there’s one you really want to be in, check their website regularly, follow their blogs, and sign up for their email lists. Yes, you will get more emails than you like, but you will also know what’s going on with them. Then when you write your queries or cover letters, you can say, “I really liked that piece on X that you ran last month” or “That story you told about such and such inspired this” or “I heard you were looking for ____.” Showing that you know what they’re up to will help, I promise. And if they go silent on you, you might be able to find the answers for yourself.

Now let’s go write.

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