What's the Rush?

Everyone today seems to be in a rush to do everything. And that includes writers. The trend over the last several years seems to be to write a book, namely a novel, in just 30 days. While that may not be impossible, is it good for the book or the writer? The answer is probably not.

Books like Write Your Novel in a Month and 90 Days to Your Novel from Writer’s Digest Books say something about the world we live in.

Many beginning writers look at a book as their ticket to fame. Sure, a few fine writers have achieved fame from their books but only because they were really good writers in the first place who thought out their books carefully.

This all began in 1999 with National Novel Writing Month, abbreviated to NaNoWriMo, an annual Internet-based creative writing project that takes place during November of each year. It challenges participants to write 50,000 words of a new novel from November 1st until the deadline at 11:59 P.M. on November 30th. Supposedly, the goal of NaNoWriMo is to get people writing, who might not otherwise do so, and keep them motivated throughout the process.

To ensure this, the project tries to make writing seem like a fun, community activity.  And while it can be fun, writing, itself is a solitary activity. The Web site does provides participants with tips for combating writer's block, lists of local places where writers participating in the project meet, and an online support through forums.

NaNoWriMo focuses on completion instead of perfection. It emphasizes the length of a book rather than the quality, encouraging writers to finish their first draft so that it can later be edited by the author.  Encouraging creativity worldwide, the project began with  21 participants and now boasts a participation of over 200,000 – writing a total of over 2.8 billion words. That’s a lot of words, but do they mean anything.  Of the thousands of participants completing thousands of novels or parts of novels, only 100 have been published by traditional book publishers. Even taking into consideration others which have been self-published, that’s still not a great percentage for the number of would-be writers involved.

While finishing a novel in 30 days may seem like an achievement, it’s no more one than running in one of those 10K races for some charity. NaNoWriMo is essentially a race against time. And while it’s intentions are admirable, too many wannabee writers have begun to think that they should rush to get their novel done in a certain amount of time.  This is probably because they lack the long-term motivation to see a book to its completion. And in many cases, their writing skills aren’t up to writing a project of a book’s magnitude.

What many beginning writers fail to see is that what they write is a very rough draft that will need hours and hours of work to get it to the polished, published stage. The best novels and non-fiction books out there takes months, sometimes years, to write. They take careful planning and, in the case of novels, plotting. “Off and running” just won’t do.

Revamping or Retrenchment

As your freelance career progresses, you may find that some of your ideas and avenues for publication just aren’t working out. Do you throw in the towel? No. Instead, you should revamp what you’ve been working on and try again. However, the damage may be severe—markets for your ideas begin to disappear, you’re running out of ideas, or you’re just not as interested in the subject as you were when you started. In this case, you may need to fall back and retrench. And much like soldiers in World War I who did just that to come up with a new strategy, so should you.

Revamping your operation or project isn’t as drastic. You may have to go back and do more research in both your subject and the market for it. Perhaps you’ll need to find some new contacts and get in touch with ones you haven’t heard from in a while. If you've corresponded with an editor previously and received encouraging words but no assignments, send him or her a short E-mail, saying something like “I contacted you a few months ago, and you said you’d be glad to look at other ideas I had. Do you have any stories you're contemplating? If so, can I help?" Reminding editors that you're still available to take on assignments isn’t such a bad one.

Revamping may also mean asking for more pay. No writer gets additional compensation without first showing that he or she deserves it. Keep a special file containing notes on all the best pieces you’ve written for a particular editor. While some editors will increase your pay automatically if you’re doing an outstanding job, others will need a little more prodding. If you an exceptional job on an article, be prepared to ask for more pay the next time around. But always leave yourself a graceful way out if the editor turns down your request. Don't burn bridges unless you absolutely have to.

If you’ve been specializing in a particular subject area and not getting too far with it, perhaps it’s time to take a second look at it. While revamping may also mean developing another specialty, remember that you’ve already put in a lot of time into the one you’re pursuing, and you’ll have to go back to square one if you begin again. Study your target market. Note changes in it and your specialty.

How has what’s happening in the world affected your specialty? After 9/11, the market for travel articles went into chaos. People weren’t traveling and advertisers stopped buying ads, so publications that specialized in travel had to pull back. Some went out of business. Likewise, have the effects of global events filtered down to your locality yet? You may be able to cash in on your specialty in local or regional markets—at least until the national markets recover. The recent economic recession had the same affect on a number of subject areas.

If you're pushing your skills into a new area, it's bound to make others a little suspicious now and then, even if you know you're competent to handle the new situation. Remind yourself this new arena is one in which you're going to have to sell harder than before. Be prepared. Do your research and come up strong.

If you manage to get an assignment in your specialty area every now and then, that should tell you that you should be able to get more. If you’re at a point where some editors trust you to deliver, you're halfway there. Assuming it may take several queries to land one assignment, prepare yourself for the strikeouts and keep after the home runs. Your self-confidence will grow with practice. Success, no matter how slight, whets the appetite as nothing else can.

Occasionally think outside the box. Even specialized publications run general pieces once in a while. Their readers are always looking to save money, travel, manage their lives, etc.

If you're changing specialties, you may have to go back a step or two until you've proven yourself. Move ahead quickly once you've established your new specialty. Be alert for chances to point out to editors that you're now as qualified as anyone else. Perhaps review books in your new field. You’ll not only increase your visibility, but you’ll also add free books to your personal specialty library, saving money in the process.

New technology in electronic books now enables you to further increase your visibility by self-publishing short books or articles in your specialty to sell on Amazon for Kindle. It’s a fact that Kindle has the lion’s share of the ebook market, so ignore Nook and other venues and concentrate on it. This helps provide you with a track record in your new area of expertise.

Sometimes it doesn't make much sense to continue in the direction you’re headed. If you've tried to make a go at a specialty but discovered you've hardly made headway, you might want to  reconsider. Retrenchment may be what's in order, before you get in over your head financially or otherwise. But retrenchment means giving up what you were doing in favor of starting something else. You’ll definitely lose money on this because income won’t be coming in for a while. Unless you have another source of income, only use retrenchment as a last resort. Don’t give up too soon.

Stringing Along

One way I got by early in my freelancing career was to become a stringer. The term stringing goes back to early newspaper days when a reporter's copy was "strung together," so the newspaper paid him—there weren’t very many female reporters back then—by the inch. Today, that term means working for a newspaper or magazine “from the field,” turning in ideas and stories to the editor either when I find them or when the editor sends me an assignment.

Each publication sets up its stringer network differently. Some stringers receive small retainers plus a fee for an article when the publication prints it. More often than not, publications forego the retainer in favor of a loose agreement as to the acceptance of pieces or guaranteeing a certain number of them will see publication throughout the year. Or the publication will just keep feeding me regular assignments with no guarantee—the most common practice. Either way, the editor knows the quality of my work and how to get hold of me fast.  In turn, I know what kind of stories they want and how to present them, including sending photos if needed. From experience, I know I can count on a certain amount of work each month which helps me plan my budget. What’s even better, I can string for several publications at the same time as long as they’re not competing for the same readers.

When I first started freelancing, it took a while to find a publication willing to take me on as a stringer. Just by luck, I was working as the manager of a mom-and-pop travel agency. A friend at another agency signed me up for a press trip to Guatemala at a trade show. At the time I wasn’t writing for any publication and needed an assignment to go on the trip. I cold called the managing editor of a travel trade magazine. She was interested in the destination and gave me an assignment to write about tourism there. Upon publication, I was to be paid a whopping $30. She liked my article so much, she started assigning me more of them. Soon, I was writing two or three articles a week for her. These pieces weren’t especially complicated to research or difficult to write, which left me time to try to get articles published in other publications.

Four years later, I had quit my day job as a travel agent and jumped head first into freelance writing. One morning I cold called the managing editor of the Philadelphia Business Journal—I live just outside the city—and explained that I had experience covering business topics (Isn’t tourism a business?) and was interested in writing for him. I pitched an idea to him, which he liked, and I got my first assignment. After completing several other assignments, he began to call on me every week, sometimes twice, to cover a variety of business stories. Some were news while others were features. He gave me feedback on my articles, telling me what he wanted or didn’t want. As time went on, he even told me who to call on for interviews and gave me their phone numbers. The Journal paid $160 for each article. In most cases, I had three or four days to complete a story from research to finished article. He knew I could turn a story around very fast and that he could count on me to be accurate. At the same time, I was still writing for my original travel trade publication.

While the per article amount may not seem like a lot in either case, it quickly became income I could count on while I tried to get published in national magazines.

Working for both publications, I amassed a tidy file of contacts in business and tourism. I knew who to call for what and could get in touch with people quickly. This was before the Internet and E-mail. The articles I wrote for these publications and others like them became the core of my freelance business—at least until I got published in larger national magazines.

Turning One Published Piece into Many

I’m absolutely amazed at how many beginning writers get published for the first time, then turn to a completely different subject, marketing that to a different editor or publisher instead of building a relationship with the first.

Writing is not just about words, it’s about relationships. No matter what sort of writing you do, you need to build on past successes. If you begin at the top, you have no where to go but down, so it’s important to begin slowly and build relationships with your editors. This can be either by getting to know what a particular editor wants or building on new contacts, using an award you’ve recently received.

I believe the first time I had an article published in a national magazine was a fluke. While it wasn’t totally an accident–-I had sent the piece into the magazine, Popular Mechanics, after all–-it was by happenstance that it appeared between the covers of this national publication exactly one year later. The article showed readers how to build turn an ordinary compact station wagon into a “chuck wagon” for use on a cross-country camping trip. It wasn’t particularly in my field of interest, but it was something I actually did construct. I didn’t publish anything again for six years.

Oh, I tried. I sent pieces all over the place, but I failed to send another idea to the editor of Popular Mechanics. That was my mistake.

As soon as you achieve publishing success, immediately send several similar ideas to that same editor. In fact, while you’re waiting to hear back from that publication, assemble a list of salable ideas that you can send along later.

Perhaps the editor liked your writing style or perhaps your subject. What probably happened–as in my case–was that the editor liked the timeliness of my subject. At the time, gasoline prices had begun to rise dramatically, and this offered families an affordable way to go on an extended vacation and eat well at the same time. But even though you may have just gotten lucky doesn’t mean that you couldn’t sell something to that same editor.

It’s important to build a rapport with your editors. The longest I worked for the same one was 14 years. That’s because she remained in her position, and I gave her consistently good material she could use. The second longest was seven years.

Editors flit from publication to publication about as fast as hairdressers do from salon to salon. If you have a good relationship with an editor, he or she will often take you with them to their new publication. It’s usually an upgrade to a better position for them, resulting in a marketing upgrade for you, which can mean higher pay and more prestige.

The same holds true for getting awards, but I’ll tell you more about that next week.