Learn Something New

All writers tend to get stale over time. Most are rule-followers. They’re the ones who turned in their homework on time in school, played clarinet in the marching band, didn’t have premarital sex. As adults, most writers play it safe. They drive defensively, wear sunscreen, eat right, and consult experts before making big decisions. For the most part, they don’t take risks.

The primary goal of any writer is to produce work that resounds with authenticity. We must create detailed non-fiction that holds our readers and exciting fiction that leaves them spellbound. And taking the safe path won’t always cut it. Comfort zones hold writers back both in life and in their work.

Ernest Hemingway definitely took chances. He was cut down by a hail of bullets in World War I, recovered and skied the Alps, hunted lions on foot in Africa, ran with the bulls in Pamplona, and fought fish as big as him in the Caribbean.

British writer Rebecca West took to the streets of London to advocate for women’s suffrage, probed the guts of Yugoslavia to write her nonfiction masterpiece Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, covered the Nuremberg Trials for The New Yorker, and risked arrest while exploring the slums and prisons of Johannesburg to report on apartheid.

Both used their experiences to prime their creativity. They actively sought to learn new things, not only to keep their writing fresh but to make them better and more interesting persons. To keep from getting stale, you need to learn something new.

Though a glancing acquaintance with something is often all you need to extrapolate accurately when writing fiction, most fiction writers today do extensive research to make their locations and their characters come alive. It goes without saying that non-fiction writers, to get what they need for their articles and books, need to do detailed research. Sometimes, they even have to learn all about a subject before they can write intelligently about it.

There are lots of ways to learn—and not all of them involve school. The idea that taking a class is the only way to learn comes from years of schooling. But the whole world is a classroom, and today, writers can go anywhere by searching the Internet.

But let’s start with the obvious. You may want to take a class to improve your writing skills. Professional dancers continuously take classes to improve their skills. Most writers don’t. If you write non-fiction, what about taking a class in short-story writing to learn how to write in scenes and add new dynamics to your work. If you write fiction, why not take an article writing class. You may find being limited to the facts a challenge.

And how about taking a class to learn how to use your new digital camera effectively in your work. Digital isn’t at all like 35mm, no matter how much camera manufacturers and many professional photographers would like it to be so. The new technology opens up a whole world of visual possibilities.

You can also learn a foreign language or learn to search your family’s history in a genealogy course. And while you can learn the basics of any subject in a class, it’s not a means of intense study. Only you can provide that.

Travel is a great way to learn about other cultures. By observing other cultures first hand, you’ll develop a better understanding of how everyone fits together on this planet. But it may also offer the opportunity to develop a new specialty or a chance to expand on a subject you currently write about. You don’t have to go to the extremes that Hemingway did, but you should learn to see other cultures in depth. Avoid traveling with a tour. Instead, go alone or with a friend or spouse. Focus on one culture—don’t hop from country to country, culture to culture. Experience unusual things while there. Go off the beaten path.

If you can’t afford to travel much, take advantage of Google Earth Street View. With it, you can plunk yourself down just about anywhere to get the feel of a place. Perhaps you want to create a walking tour of an historic district, but it’s been a while since you’ve been there. Google Earth has probably been there much sooner. Viewing your route with it will jog your dusty memories and give new life to your writing.

Lastly, learn from experience. You experience new things every day. Some of them are so small that you don’t pay much attention to them. But everyone has some major experiences. Learn from them by viewing and analyzing them as a writer. Learn first, then put what you’ve learned into words.

Boy, Have Times—and Technology—Changed

NOTE: Normally, I write this blog in the second person to connect directly with you, the writers who need help in getting started with your careers and those who need any tips they can get to prolong theirs. But this week I’m writing about a situation that I’m going through at the moment that has a lot to do with both my professional life and my office.

When I started out writing nearly 40 years ago (I’m not that ancient, really), I began in a world without computers, without email, without tablets, FIOS, and an Internet that has brought the world into my life. I didn’t realize just how different that all was and how it affected me until I discovered that I had a major structural problem with the floor of my office back in May and would need to deconstruct the last 30 years of my full-time career.

As writers, we’re so intent on moving forwards that we seldom look backwards. Even later in life, I don’t dwell on the past. But deconstructing my office bit by tiny bit has shown me just how much I’ve accomplished in the last 30 years.

Assembling my office began when I started freelancing fulltime. Until then, I worked in various rooms of wherever I happened to be living at the time. But even then I began accumulating informational materials, books, and files that would stay with me until now. Believe me, you don’t realize just how much you’ll accumulate as a writer until you have to go through it all.

I haven’t moved since I started freelancing fulltime. And while being in one place has its advantages, it also has its disadvantages. One project led to another and to another, each with its own set of notes, files, and reference books. When I began writing books in earnest, that all got bumped up a couple of notches.

The reason I’m telling you all this is to strongly advise you to review what you’re accumulating from time to time. While some of you may naturally do this and not save much, others, like me, save everything. And rightly so.

By saving notes and references, I’ve made thousands of extra dollars spinning off material from many projects. As a non-fiction writer, I often created new articles from parts of main ones and from sidebars. I’ve sold many a piece as a reprint, bringing in extra money for practically no work. And the wealth of material gathered in writing 15 books has given me information to spin off into any number of other projects.

One of the ways I chose to add to my income was by teaching adult evening classes and giving lectures. The material for over 75 courses and lectures came from my articles and books and from my knowledge of writing, specifically for my writing classes. But I also created courses based on my specialty of writing about antiques, for which I also wrote two books.

Another facet of my work has been in photography. From the beginning, I’ve always billed myself as a writer/photographer. For the most part, I’ve illustrated most of my articles and several of my books. This, in itself, created a whole other section of my office. Notebooks filled with negatives, boxes of slides, and a complete darkroom filled over half the space. With the advent of digital photography, I store my photos—over 30,000 digital images alone—in my computer. But I still have several thousand slides and negatives that are still useful and can be digitized.

My advice to you all, based on what I’m going through right now, is to plan ahead. Plan your office for efficiency and make an effort to review and cull through your files and other materials periodically to keep from getting overwhelmed later. I teach my students in my digital photography classes to start an organizational scheme right away before they accumulate so many images that they won’t be able to find what they’re looking for.

Even with the best planned file system, the shear volume of files can prevent you from using them as efficiently as possible.

In my next blog, I’ll discuss what you need to keep and what you can safely throw away. Since my office will be completely torn apart in August, I’ll do my best to post a blog or two, but I won’t be able to do one a week until most likely mid-September. 

Staying Afloat Without a Paddle

As important as the quality of your writing is to freelancing, so should your financial base. Too many beginning writers only daydream about how wonderful it would be to strike out on their own and get paid for their writing. In order to stay afloat while freelancing, especially in the beginning while you’re opening markets and gathering clients, you must have money to pay your bills.

If you’ve ever bought a house, you know how careful you have to inspect it. Once you sign the sales agreement, you’re stuck with it, no matter what problems may arise. The same goes for severing the financial cord to your fill-time job. By doing thorough research and planning carefully, you’ll be able to concentrate on your writing and not have to worry about how you’re going to buy food or pay for heat and fuel for your car.

When I began freelancing, I decided that if I had to work part-time at any point in my freelance career that I would only get a job at something related to what I was doing. I figured that if I working thinking and working with writing or any of the subjects I wrote about then I might also gain some knowledge or insights to help me in my writing. I wrote about travel and tourism, so I worked as a travel agent. I wrote about the Internet and technology, so I learned to design Web sites for small businesses. I even did public relations writing—I got plenty of press releases and learned to write good ones from them.

But the job that has offered me the most opportunities was teaching what I loved to do best—writing. No, I didn’t teach in public school or college. Over the years, I’ve taught continued education courses at a number of colleges and universities as well as community evening schools in my area. I knew that I really couldn’t write all day and all night, so I scheduled my classes during the evening hours. No course is longer than eight weeks and each session runs for two hours. I work as an independent contractor, thus setting my own schedule and creating and writing my own courses. Once a course is “in the bag,” I just have to reap the profits.

The experience I gained teaching writing courses propelled me into an even more lucrative sideline—business writing workshops. I earn more in a six-hour day doing this than writing two or three articles. But instead of presenting these workshop constantly, I’m selective and only do them occasionally.

Another sideline related to my course work is lecturing. I’ve amassed loads of information on a variety of subjects, as well as photographs of the same. I began assembling these into one-hour lectures that I present at retirement centers and at conferences. Again, once a lecture is all assembled, it’s easy to draw from my inventory and reap the profits.

When, do you ask, do I have time to write? Believe it or not, I have a lot of time because I set my own schedule. All my teaching venues know that if something comes up, I may need to cancel a class and make it up later. All have been very accommodating. Plus, I get all sorts of ideas when teaching others.

My Web design business kicks in when times are slow. It takes a lot to put a good site together, so I take on only one client at a time. The pay is usually worth it.

During the recent economic downturn, my ability to turn a profit with my other ventures has paid off handsomely. All of these ventures come under the umbrella of Bob Brooke Communications, my brand name and the company I created.

Read the Kind of Writing You’re Going to Write

Besides writing articles and books, I also teach writing. Over the last 25 years, I’ve had a lot of students take my classes. I’d venture to say that only about one percent of them had read the type of writing they intended to write. To be a good writer–to be a published writer at all–you need to read the kind of writing you intend to publish.

Unfortunately, the majority of beginning writers still hold the attitude that what they write is important. After all, didn’t they learn in school that every word is a nugget of gold. While that may be true in rare cases, in most a word is just a word, unless it’s strung together with other words that have meaning for the reader, for the reader is the most important part of the process.

When asked why they took one of my courses, many students say that they’ve been trying to get published but have had no luck. They think it’s their writing–and sometimes it is. But usually it’s because they have no idea of what’s being published out there. They have no idea of what editors want. And to find that out, short of asking an editor, is to read what that editor is publishing.

To learn to write a good article, short story, non-fiction book or novel, you first have to read ones that have been recently published. Notice I said recently. Reading short stories published in 1910 won’t get you anywhere. They’re just not written in a contemporary style. And style and structure, even more than content, is what you’re looking for.

So to learn how to write to get published, seek out good examples of the kind of writing you plan to do. By doing that, you’ll be well on your way to your first pay check.