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. 

Doing the Lecture Circuit

As you get more into freelance writing, you’ll probably discover that you’ll need to support your writing efforts by going out on the road. You’ll have to brave audiences, interviewers, and television cameras to push your wares. This isn’t such a bad idea when you figure that the more visible you are, the more your writing will sell, especially if you’re doing books. The opposite is also true---you don't have to write a bestseller to find yourself in demand for speaking engagements.

And even if you don't have a book to promote, speaking engagements are a good way to promote yourself and your specialty, as well as to make some extra money. Begin locally at first. Start with small audiences and once you’ve gained the needed confidence in your abilities and in the value of your efforts, you'll be ready to speak before larger audiences and receive higher fees.

And speaking of fees: Organizations love to call the money they give you to speak an honorarium. Just as the word “literary” implies that you’re writing on a higher plane, so the word “honorarium” implies that it’s an honor to speak to a particular group, and since it’s an honor, the organization doesn’t have to pay you as much. Take the word “honorarium” out of your vocabulary. In order to give a good presentation, you have to spend time putting it together, so you need to be paid a fair amount. This might be as low as $25 for a short speech to several hundred for a one to two-hour lecture, to well over $1,000 for a six-hour seminar.

The best approach to being sought out as a speaker is by creating a good programs to start with, letting program chairmen know about them, and then letting your reputation spread. Charity groups, schools, businesses, clubs, retirement villages,in fact, all sorts of organizations might be interested in your presentations. Program chairmen are always looking for something new and interesting. Let them know what you have.

Your programs can be anything you make them, from a concise speech to a well-integrated Powerpoint  presentation. You’ve got a lot of material in your files just waiting to be used. Think about the work you've published and the amount of information you gathered that you didn’t use. What is there in it that would make a good program? Take a topic from your main subject, or look back into the files of your research material to see if there are other angles that, developed a bit further, might be of interest to your audiences. Use your own illustrations or find some that will illustrate your material. Remember, it’s important to develop an inventory, but certain programs may really catch on, so you’ll be able to do them a number of times. It’s much like selling reprints of your writing, only live.

How do you go about getting your name around to the right people? There are two schools of thought here. One is that you should be subtle about making arrangements and the other is the direct approach. 
Whatever method you use to line up speaking engagements, make sure you’re as professional as possible. Some believe you should never ask to be a speaker—always be in the position of being asked. They’re the ones who use the term “honorarium”—this attitude comes from the academic side of the lecture fence. But you’re not an academic. You’re a writer. Therefore, promote yourself as such. Eventually, people and organizations will come to you asking if you’d speak for them.

To seek a broader audience for your lecturing, produce a simple flyer announcing your subjects for either  seminars or speeches. Post it where influential people might see it. Hand out a few to your business friends asking them to pass them on to appropriate people. Create a special speaking page on your Web site where you can list some of your most successful programs.

As a spinoff of lecture engagements, you can also teach continuing education courses, either in-depth on the same subjects or on other related to the kind of writing you do. For instance, let’s say you write about genealogy. You could develop a short course to teach the basics. You can even develop courses based on the type of writing you do—article writing, short-story writing, novel writing, for example.

If you’ve written a book, you may want to alert the local press, so they can send a reporter to cover your talk. And don’t forget local radio and T.V. stations that may want to schedule you for an interview.  For radio, you can even do this from your home via phone. Create a press kit and email it to local media outlets along with a good digital photo of yourself. Have a professional photo taken or take it yourself, but make it as professional as you can.  And be sure to prepare a short bio to send to the organization for which you’ll be speaking so that whoever is in charge will be able to introduce you properly.

And when you’re doing a lecture or seminar, be sure to bring along copies of your articles and place them strategically around the room. Keep a couple in reserve in your briefcase to hand to special people you meet. If you have a book coming out, bring along a sample copy and order blanks for it. Call attention to the existence of all this material before you leave the podium if the person who introduced you failed to do so.

Put a Spin on It

People now associate the word “spin” with the public relations hype that surrounds the President or other public figures. In that context it means to spin the information in the opposite direction to distract the public from the actual problem at hand. In writing, it has a very different–and positive–meaning.

I’m sure you’re familiar with spin-offs of popular T.V. series. These are new shows in which a character from the popular one plays a leading role. The NCIS series is a good example. Some of the characters from the original show occasionally appear in the new show to provide continuity. But in lots of spin-offs, the new show takes on a life of its own. And so it is with writing, especially for freelance writers.

Spin-offs of new articles, short stories, lectures, and whatever else your creative mind can think of are what make freelance writing interesting and economically possible. Too many beginning writers work on one project at a time and after it’s finished, they don’t do anything with all the research that went into it. That research is a gold mine of information. It can provide the facts for a series of articles, the background for a short story or a play, or the material for a lecture.

As I worked through the last 25 years, I learned to gather as much information as possible so that I could write for different markets and in different media. On one trip along 1,000 miles of the Oregon Trail, I gathered enough information for 16 articles. But I didn’t stop there. I’ve also put together two lectures on the pioneers, and wrote a children’s story, all based on that same research.

Spin-offs are easy. They can take the shape of sidebars, which later you can turn into stand-alone articles. Sometimes, the big picture is just too big–too broad, which forces you to divide it into parts. There’s always a market for short pieces. They right in front of most writers, but they don’t see them.

Writing a book is a BIG project. It takes a lot of time and a lot of work, especially in the research department. I’ve written a book on restoring and refinishing antiques. From that I’ve spun off articles, blog posts, short pieces for my antiques Web site, a seminar, and finally a continuing education course.

While you won’t get rich doing this, it certainly helps pay the bills. So start spinning and see what develops.