Mastering the Possibilities

For years, Mastercard brought in customers with the now-famous slogan, “Master the possibilities.” You can also apply it to your freelancing career. But with freelancing it’s less about using your credit card than figuring out how to find outlets for your work.

Today’s publishing environment offers a wealth of possibilities. It used to be that freelancers had only the print world of magazines and newspapers to choose from when searching for markets. Now that rather closed market has been expanded to include all sorts of publications, both print and digital.

Readers resisted the digital publications for quite a while, but the appearance of e-readers and tablets like the Kindle and Nook gave readers an infinite number of choices.

Writers, too, were a bit hesitant to write for digital markets because most of them didn’t pay. Unfortunately, many still don’t. But breaking in is a lot easier digitally. You can easily study past issues of an online magazine or Web site just be searching for it. Searching offers another advantage—you can see easily see what subject matter is trending. You’re shots in the dark will be fewer. 

Before you go searching, however, you have to figure out exactly what type of writing you want to do. Are you planning to write articles for publication, either in print or online or both? Or are you planning on writing mostly books, using shorter pieces to promote them? And while both require the same writing skills, each requires a different mind set and marketing know how.

As little as 20 years ago, all you had to do was send your pieces to publications that might print them and you’d get paid—maybe not very much, but you would get something. Since there weren’t very many publications or writers, competition wasn’t as keen. But with the advance of technology and the creation of the Internet, all that changed. The publishing world has exploded with what seems an endless list of possibilities.

Unfortunately, just as there are many more opportunities to get published, so are there many more, especially online, that don’t pay anything. For at least the first 10 years, readers and writers looked at the Internet as a chaotic medium for amateurs. Publishers who did have online publications had very low budgets, so they didn’t pay for articles. And while they were a good way to build up your publishing clips, you can’t live on non-paying markets.

With the ease of online publishing and self-publishing through e-books, many more would-be writers are finding it easier to get published, even if they have to do it themselves, thus by-passing the hurdles of the traditional route.

A good way to start out and get your work out there is to write a weekly blog. When blogs first began, the recommendation was to publish a blog daily. But a weekly blog becomes more like a column and readers will follow it if you offer them information that they can use.

While you’re blog starts to build a following, you can study one of the annual market guides—Writer’s Market or Literary Marketplace.

The first on the list, Writer’s Market, published by Writer’s Digest Books, has been around since 1921 and is the least expensive with a list price of $50, although you can purchase it online directly from Writer’s Digest for $30. You can also get it by monthly subscription. It features over 8,000 listings of newspaper and magazine markets, book publishers, including small presses, playwriting and screenwriting markets, and even those for greeting cards. Each listing gives you the information you need to see if your work will fit. And while there are many markets in which your work will be a good match, there are 10 times as many that it will not. And while the book has it’s good points, it offers a lot of markets that just don’t pay well or not at all. Plus, it’s so widely used that many of the publications listed get overwhelmed with submissions.

Literary Marketplace claims it’s the “ultimate insider’s guide” to the publishing industry. For a whopping $360 for first-time buyers, it ought to be. It offers 54 sections in which it organizes publishers, agents, advertising agencies, associations, distributors, and events. It features twice the number of listings as Writer’s Market, but concentrates mostly on book publishing. Since its cost is prohibitive, you’ll have to use it at your local library.

Whether you use one or the other or both of these annuals will depend on how often you’re repeatedly writing for certain markets, how good you are at selling spin-off material, and where you wish to focus your publishing efforts each year.
                                       
As you progress in your freelancing career, you’ll find more markets that aren’t listed in the above annuals. Publishers of all kinds choose whether they want to be published in them. Many refuse because doing so opens them up to receiving tons of correspondence from too many wannabee writers who have neither the skill or talent to write well. They prefer to be more selective. Also, new technologies create new markets. In the last five years many opportunities have opened up for educational and recreational material for home and school computers.

Because editors play musical chairs and their requirements change regularly, it’s a good idea to use the latest edition of each of the annuals. It’s important to know the exact name, spelling, title, etc., of a publication’s editor. If you’re going to impress editors, you must get their names right.

In the case of Writer’s Market, you can check out last year’s edition from the stacks at your library, find what publications look good, and make a list of them, then go back to the library and find those on your list in the latest edition in the reference section and note the changes. Because of the high cost of Literary Marketplace, you’ll have to do all your work using the reference edition at the library.

Once you've decided on a specialty, you should subscribe to the best publications in your chosen field, or track them down regularly wherever you can. If you’re serious about book publishing, then you’ll want to read Publishers Weekly regularly at your local library or online.

Whether markets appear to be a broadening or a row of locked doors is entirely up to you, your energies, ambitions, and skills as a writer, promoter, and, most importantly, a salesperson.

It's Time to Start Over

Happy New Year! It’s once again time to start again. Funny how this one day can make such a difference. Personally, I try to use this day to get myself reorganized for the coming year. And you should, too.  As the year rolls on, things may seem to unravel. Does your recordkeeping fall short? Do your about writing seem to get more vague? Does your mind begin to wander as emergencies and small crises pop up?

As another year dawns, it’s time to reflect on your writing career. If you just started out in 2016, then you’ve got your whole career ahead of you. If you’ve been writing a while, then maybe it’s time to take stock of what you’ve accomplished and make some plans for the future. Make 2017 the year you go somewhere with your work.

Let’s say you’ve just begun to work as a freelance writer. Did you find it hard to place your work in the marketplace? Did the process seem frustrating? Do you think you’ve exhausted every avenue?

If you answered “yes” to the above questions, then you have most likely haven’t followed the path of least resistance. Most beginners start out by sending their work to top publications. That’s your first mistake. Remember, you’re a beginner. You haven’t been in the marketplace long enough to establish credentials. So maybe you ought to plan ahead for 2017 so that you can get at least one piece—and hopefully many more—published.

Here are a few tips to getting on track in the coming year:

Write about what you know. The first mistake many beginning writers make is writing about subjects they know nothing about. Stick close to home. Write about subjects having to do with work or with a special interest of yours. Doing so will help build your confidence and give what’s called a “voice of authority” to your work. (More on voice of authority will appear in a later blog).

Keep your pieces relatively short. Another mistake beginners make is writing everything there is to know on a subject. It’s not really their fault, however, since the only type of writing they learned to do in school that had anything to do with research was term papers and reports.

Write to communicate. You’re not writing for a grade as you did in school. You’re writing to communicate information to your readers. Unlike your teachers, your readers want to learn about your subject and be somewhat entertained at the same time.

Start with small publications. Search for publications that work with beginning writers. The editors of top publications are too busy to fuss with the musings of beginners. They need writing that’s concise, accurate, and professional, leaving little for them to do but lay it out and print it.

Set reasonable goals. Create reasonable goals for yourself for the coming year and see to it that you achieve them. Check on them occasionally to make sure you’re on track. And if you get off track, get back on as soon as possible. Lots of things can knock you off your game—illness, even a cold, family emergencies, a death in the family, etc. Remind yourself to review your goals in six months to see if they’re still possible or if you have to adjust them to your present situation.

Good luck and make this weekly blog part of your regular reading for 2017.

Editors—You Can’t Make a Living Without Them

Editors—you can’t live with them and you can’t live without them. The truth is you can’t make a living without them. When you work with a good one, you’ll know it. And when you work with a bad one, you’ll wish you hadn’t.

If you’ve been freelancing for any length of time, you’ve probably dealt with editors who neglect to respond to your queries, are vague about what they want, make you do incessant re-writes, and then, of course, there are those who take forever to pay—or don’t pay at all.

It’s possible to have a successful freelance writing career if you know how to handle editors. Most beginning and a lot of other writers take the submissive role in the editor/writer relationship. That’s you’re first mistake.

Remember, you’re in business for yourself. You’re a business owner and as such have the right to negotiate terms. Don’t let your editors walk all over you. Sure, you’re desperate to get published and ultimately to get paid, but becoming a puppy with a ring through your nose or even worse an editor’s slave won’t get you anywhere.

Let’s start at the beginning. You researched the market, came up with a timely, compelling idea, and sent a great query. Weeks pass, and you still haven’t heard from the editor. Now what do you do?

Editors are notoriously busy people, but many of them don’t know how to communicate with their writers in a businesslike manner. This is where you have to take control of the situation. Follow up your initial query with a brief Email in which you’ve included your original pitch and ask if the editor is interested in the idea. In fact, you should have asked that question in your first query. Let the editor know that if you don’t hear from him or her in, say, two weeks, you’ll pitch your idea to other markets. Don’t sound threatening, but instead act like a professional. This type of response also shows that you’re serious about your business. But if you don’t hear anything in a reasonable amount of time, pitch the idea to another publication.

Once you get an assignment, has the editor given you detailed instructions or did he or she offer only vague suggestions. First, make sure you lay out exactly what you’re planning to do in your article query. If the editor agrees to what you’ve proposed, you’re all set. However, many writers leave the details up to the editor. If the editor gives only vague directions, you’re stuck. There’s nothing worse than researching and writing an article only to have an editor reject it because it isn’t what he or she wanted. And how were you to know? You’re not a mind reader.

When you get your assignment, make sure the editor gives you the following information:
    1. Exactly what you’re to cover in your article.
    2. The number and type of sources if you haven’t already noted this in your
        query.
    3. How many words your article should be?
    4. The due date—this is usually two weeks before the editor really needs
        the article.

If you’re dealing with a vague editor, you may want to write your own assignment letter, then ask the editor to confirm the details. This will also help you to avoid multiple revision requests.

And what do you do with an editor who consistently pays late or not at all? You wrote the assigned article and sent it in on time. You answered a few follow-up questions from your editor and submitted backup material for fact checking if necessary. You’ve completed your part of the deal, so where’s your payment?

To fully understand how this might happen, you have to understand the payment process. Just about every publication has an editorial side and a business side. While the editor commands the editorial side, the business manager and/or the accounts receivable department commands the business side. It’s the editor’s job to send your invoice or a work order to the accounts receivable department in order for them to cut you a check for your article.

Some publications have large staffs, but at others a few people do all the work. The smallest staff may consist of three or four people while larger publications have hundreds of people working for them. Both can be problematic when it comes to getting paid on time.

It’s your job to stay on top of your accounts. At first, you probably don’t care when you get paid because you have a day job to pay the bills. But once you quit your regular job and start your own business, you’ll need the money to come in regularly to keep your cash flow in line.

Make sure you send a complete invoice along with your article. This should include the date sent, title of your article, pay rate, publication date if known, due date, projected payment date and your contact information. Be sure to ask when the publication pays writers when you first get the assignment. There should be no guessing or assuming when it comes to money.

If I don’t get paid, send Email reminders to the publication’s accounts receivable department with the attached invoice to save the staff the time of looking through old messages or piles of paperwork for the original. If you still get no response, send a hard copy by regular mail. And if that doesn’t work, send it again by registered mail.

Remember, you are the one who has to take charge of business dealings with your editors—or at least meet them halfway. Don’t let your editors run the show completely. It’s just not good business.

Today’s Rollercoaster of Freelancing

Remember the days when rollercoasters were the most fun ride in an amusement park. The cars crept slowly up the incline, seemed to hesitate for a moment, then gravity took hold and they plunged to the depths, riders screaming all the way.

Today, the cars still plunge, the riders still scream, but at ever-increasing, sometimes dizzying, speeds. Believe it or not, the same thing is happening to freelance writing.

Technology has taken rollercoasters to literally new heights with more curves and many more screams. It has done the same to freelance writing. Since the 1990s, computers have changed the way freelancers do business. They’ve allowed writers to work anywhere and find information on practically any subject in seconds. But those same computers have also given editors an extra edge that previously only freelancers could provide them. You’d think all this technology would provide loads of publishing opportunities for writers, but unfortunately, the opposite is true.

Sure, there are loads of additional opportunities for writers, like blogs and ebooks, but most of these pay little or nothing. And as a freelance writer, you can’t live on that.

Technology has also cut into traditional freelance markets. And while communication happens in an instant today, there are more writers out there than ever before—all trying to make a go of it as freelancers. That number also includes all those editors and staff writers who lost their jobs because of publications closing.  So even if you think you’ve sent an idea to an editor quickly, someone else will have sent the same idea faster and gotten there first.

Freelancers used to use the U.S. Mail to not only send queries with ideas, but also finished manuscripts. Today, if you don’t use some sort of electronic form of communication, you’re out of luck. However, there are still some editors who haven’t adapted to 21st-century communication and insist writers send everything by snail mail.

In today’s freelance writing environment, writers experience higher highs and lower lows. When they fall, they fall hard. So much today depends on the idiosyncracies of technology.

For instance, one writer developed a long-standing regular gig writing content for Web sites.  The same person, his biggest client, owned a group of sites. He began pulling some sneaky tricks, trying to get more hits on Google. Google discovered this and pulled all of the client’s sites from its listing which effectively knocked out his sites, putting the freelancer out of work.

Because many people get their news from the Internet and T.V., the newspaper market, which provided many freelancers with bread-and-butter work, is virtually dead.  And while there may seem to be more magazines available today, many specialize in one subject. And a specialty market will only support a limited number of publications.

One Block at a Time

Every career depends on the building blocks gathered along the way. It isn’t any different for writers. Even the great pyramids rose one block of a stone at a time. So what kind of building blocks should you cultivate to make your writing career successful?

In this business, you’ve got to leverage whatever experience you have. Sure, one article or book may lead to another. A article, short story, or book may lead to a film. But those are the most obvious. What you need to look for are less obvious building blocks—those that you may even take for granted.

First of all, every experience you have may contribute to ideas for your work. Many writers, especially those writing fiction, use their own experiences as jumping off points. Some go as far as turning their personal experiences into stories or books. If you’ve gone through a traumatic time, readers want to read about it. Today, there seems an insatiable curiosity about what happens in other people’s lives.

But it’s a variety of experiences that lead to further successes. Take one writer who began writing reviews and taking photos of musical acts for a free arts tabloid handed out in record stores. This gig led to the publication of some of his photos in a large city newspaper. That gave him some clout to use when promoting his work to editors of some music and arts magazines.

That same writer loved to travel. But travel can be expensive, which limited him to local places. One day he received an invitation to a trade show from a friend in the travel business. That led to an invitation to travel to Guatemala on a press trip. He notified some editors of trade magazines that he was going on the trip, and one asked for whatever stories he could provide from the trip—on speculation, of course. He returned and wrote the stories, and the editor loved them. That was the beginning of a long-lasting gig with that trade publication.

Work from that publication led him to write for other trade publications. While writing for more than one trade publication in a particular field is normally frowned upon, he managed to end up writing for most of the major ones in the travel industry. Because he offered so many different angles, none of his pieces competed with each other.

And while trade writing brought in steady income, it didn’t pay all that much. So this writer set his sights on consumer travel magazines. His trade writing gave him ample credentials—he often wrote two or three articles a week for them. And writing for trade, no matter which trade, meant he was also writing for business.

That business article writing led to another long-standing gig with a regional business newspaper, for whom he wrote one or two articles a week. These provided another source of steady income.

Along the way, he was now developing several avenues of income which helped to steady his overall freelance outlook.

His travel trade writing led to offers to write travel guide books. Sometimes he was one of several contributors, while at other times he wrote books on his own. This added greatly to his credentials. The reading public, as well as magazine editors, look up to anyone who has written a book. The truth is that books don’t pay all that much. But the wealth they do give you is in the respect you get as a writer. If a book is successful—even if you don’t get paid a lot for writing it—it will be one of the biggest building blocks on your road to success.

If you’re work is good enough, you may even get awards. And these can go a long way to helping to promote your writing business. The writer above knew that and when he received several prestigious awards, he took full advantage of them as promotional tools. These helped him establish at least one specialty.

The bottom line is to always push your comfort zone. Seek work that stretches your skills—yes, even exaggerate here and there. Remember, your experiences plus networking plus your skills equals moving to the next level.

Can You Really Make It as a Freelance Writer?

It’s 3 P.M. and you’re sitting at your desk in your cubicle staring at your computer screen. Your mind wanders but settles on one thought—wouldn’t it be great to have time all to yourself to sit and write articles for top magazines. 
                                   
It’s that narrow-minded thinking that will make sure you’re still sitting in that same chair several years from now—without having written a word.

Yes, it’s possible to become a successful freelance writer but to do that you have to first define “success.” Is it getting published, making a lot of money, achieving national fame, winning awards? The better you define what success is to you, the better your chance of achieving freelance writing success.

Can you really make a living as a freelance writer? Your chances are probably as good as any other entrepreneur. And just like any other person going into business for themselves, you need to look at the bigger picture.

Believe it or not, freelance writing is all about relationships. Relationships with editors, relationships with research librarians, relationship with the human subjects in your work.

The key to finding freelance success is developing relationships with editors at the publications you’d most like to write for on a regular basis. These relationships are invaluable, as you’re unlikely to make a living by relying solely on a constant stream of cold queries. You want editors to contact you with assignments. The best way to do that is to always deliver exactly what the editor wants by the assigned deadline. In fact, the more quickly you can turn around quality articles, the better off you’ll be.

Many publications, strapped by tight budgets, have smaller staffs these days. So the editors depend on a stable of good, reliable writers to fill most of their needs. While it may be hard to break into one of those stables, it’s a goal you must strive for if you plan on freelancing full time.

As editors move from publication to publication—and they move faster and more often than hairdressers do to other beauty salons—they often take along their most reliable writers, even if the magazine isn’t in the writer’s subject realm. Anyone can learn about a subject to write about it, but not everyone is a good writer. So editors opt for good writers and help them along with the subject matter as they go.

One thing that many new freelancers forget is that full-time freelance writing is a full-time job, just like the one they left to become a freelancer. Of course, the big difference is that you can choose the hours you work, but you’ll still have to put in as many hours—or more—to make it. You don’t get paid vacation time, and you don’t get benefits like health insurance, a 401k and playing on company teams. However, you do have the opportunity to out-earn what you would get working for a publisher and set a flexible schedule so you can take care of other things when you’re not overloaded with work.

So success as a freelancer depends on how all the parts fit together as a whole. It’s usually not about money, but though you can earn far more than you did in sitting in the cubicle of your day job, it’s the quality of life that counts.

Looking Ahead

As another year passes into history, it’s time to reflect on your writing career. If you just started out in 2013, then you’ve got your whole career ahead of you. If you’ve been at this a while, then maybe it’s time to take stock of what you’ve accomplished and make some plans for the future.

Let’s say you’ve just begun to work as a freelance writer. Did you find it hard to place your work in the marketplace? Did the process seem frustrating? Do you think you’ve exhausted every avenue?

If you answered “yes” to the above questions, then you have most likely haven’t followed the path of least resistance. Most beginners start out by sending their work to top publications. That’s your first mistake. Remember, you’re a beginner. You haven’t been in the marketplace long enough to establish credentials. So maybe you ought to plan ahead for 2014 so that you can get at least one piece—and hopefully many more—published.

Here are a few tips to getting on track for 2014:

Write about what you know. The first mistake many beginning writers make is writing about subjects they know nothing about. Stick close to home. Write about subjects having to do with work or with a special interest of yours. Doing so will help build your confidence and give what’s called a “voice of authority” to your work. (More on voice of authority will appear in a later blog).

Keep your pieces relatively short. Another mistake beginners make is writing everything there is to know on a subject. It’s not really their fault, however, since the only type of writing they learned to do in school that had anything to do with research was term papers and reports.

Write to communicate. You’re not writing for a grade as you did in school. You’re writing to communicate information to a reader. Unlike your teachers, your readers want to learn about your subject and be somewhat entertained at the same time.

Start with small publications. Search for publications that work with beginning writers. The editors of top publications are too busy to fuss with the musings of beginners. They need writing that’s concise, accurate, and professional, leaving little for them to do but lay it out and print it.

Set some goals. Create some goals for yourself for the coming year and see to it that you achieve them. Check on them occasionally to make sure you’re on track. And if you get off track, get back on as soon as possible. Lots of things can knock you off your game—illness, even a cold, family emergencies, a death in the family, etc. Remind yourself to review your goals in six months to see if they’re still possible or if you have to adjust them to your present situation.

Good luck and make this blog part of your reading for the coming year.

Dealing With Rejection

Most beginning writers think that rejection is a part of the writing process. They get rejected so often that they become dejected and some lose all hope of getting published. It doesn’t have to be that way.

One writer got rejected for six years before he suddenly had an article published. He didn’t really know how it happened. It just happened. That was his first mistake. It was another six years before he got published again.

So let’s take a look at why your work may be rejected.

You could use the wrong format (more on formatting in a later blog)—how the writing looks on the page. You could have written about a topic the publication doesn’t like or use. You could have sent your piece in at the wrong time if it’s something more appropriate for a particular season. You could have made lots of mechanical errors—spelling, punctuation, etc. The list can go on and on.

So you see that most of the fault in rejection begins with you. But most beginning writers put the blame on editors or others involved in the publishing process. So what are some ways of dealing with rejection?

Don't take it personally. If you’re a beginning writer, editors won’t know you. You haven’t proven yourself, so why should they take a chance on you. If you don’t cross all your “t’s” and dot all the “i’s,” then you're surely asking to be rejected. Your work has to be perfect and look professional, even if it doesn’t sound professional. A good piece of writing can be edited into a very good piece, but a bad piece usually isn’t salvageable.

Get a second opinion. If you think that your work should have been accepted, or if it’s been rejected by a few editors, perhaps you should seek a second opinion. Get someone you trust that’s also a writer to take a look at it and offer their opinion. You may find that your writing wasn’t that good after all.

Discover what you can do to regain your confidence after a series of "no's." For a new writer, rejection really hits hard. Perhaps you’ve received enough rejection slips to paper the walls of your bathroom. Then maybe you should do just that. A little whimsy never hurt anyone. But seriously, write something that’s short and good and send it to an easy market—one that publishes a lot of material. One of the biggest mistakes beginning writers make is sending their work to top markets when their skills are not yet up to speed. And many of those markets buy only a few pieces per month, so competition is fierce.

 Find a way to turn your rejection into acceptances or positive experiences. What you need is feedback, and that’s something most editors just don’t have time to give. Read rejection notices carefully to see if there’s even a hint of feedback in them. There are editors out there who want you to succeed. You need to know what they want and then you need to give it to them.

Be creative while waiting. Too many beginning writers send off a piece of their work and then sit back and wait for an answer. Begin work on another piece while you're waiting. As far as you're concerned, the fate of your first piece is out of your hands anyway. Also, don’t wait for months for a reply. If you haven’t received a reply in say two or three weeks—a month at most—drop the editor a note asking if he or she has had time to consider your piece. Don’t be afraid of editors. Remember, they’re busy people, but people just the same.

Above all, keep slugging away. Don’t give up. Eventually, something you’ve written will get published. But you have to guide it along the right path to get there.

CAUTION! Hazards Ahead

As you proceed in your freelance writing career, you’ll come upon many hazards. Some of these are writing related, some market related, and others personal. Some of the main ones include the predators looking to use published writers for their own gains, the lure of cheap commercialism, the perils of success, and loneliness and fatigue, both mental and physical.

Other hazards come and go, such as market fluctuations, natural disasters, and legislation. As a working writer, you’ll have to get used to living with them all and continue to write.

One of the most frequent hazards concern pay. A market to which you frequently contribute falls on hard times and before you know it, the publication falls behind in payments to you. They still want material and promise to pay you as soon as things get better. While this may sound good, it’s really the death rattle of a publication trying to stay afloat.

And then you’ll run across someone who loves your work but can’t pay you. You’re not in business to give your products away, but, on the other hand, will this freebie possibly lead to some paying work? It’s a chance you may have to take. To turn this around, you may want to search out some Web sites that need content that you can provide. While they most likely won’t pay anything, they could lead to other work because of the promotion you’ll get from them. In this case, you’re in control.

Another hazard you’ll face from time to time is a lack of ideas. Try to stay ahead of this one by stockpiling ideas as you get them. Write them down or use an app for your smartphone to record them. You never know when they may come in handy. Chances are you won’t use many of them, but it never hurts to have an inventory of good ideas.

Markets come and go. You can never tell if a particular market for which you’re writing will be in business in a year or two. Editors change. That’s a biggie. An editor with whom you have had a good working relationship decides to move on. On the plus side, he or she may take you with them to the new and perhaps better publication. But on the downside, the new editor probably will want to work with his or her own stable of writers. There’s no “forever” in this business.

Another thing that can work against you is the economy itself. Upturns and downturns are commonplace today. The most recent recession is an example. While it may not have affected all the writing markets, it will have hit some—and hard. One of the hazards that occurred here was the massive layoffs of newspaper reporters and editors. Since the newspaper business is in the throes of change, they couldn’t find jobs there, so where did they turn? You guessed it—freelance writing.  Those who you may have worked for have now become your competition.

What happened in New York City in 2001 shows what can happen to a particular market. After 911, travel markets went into a state of turmoil. People were afraid to travel. Advertisers couldn’t pay for their ads so they stopped advertising. Many publications went under. That happened a dozen years ago, yet the travel publication market hasn’t fully recovered.

Writing is hard work. And after a while, it can get to you. Too many deadlines can be extremely stressful. And stress can then cause problems with your overall health. It’s important to eat right and exercise. Sure, I know you’ve heard that before, but this time it’s imperative that you live a healthy lifestyle. Remember, if you get sick or perhaps seriously ill, you don’t have workman’s compensation to help you. You most likely don’t have any backup at all. And that the biggest hazard of all.

Ready, Set, Go...

No, you’re not in a race. But it may seem like one if you’re a travel writer. What you’re actually doing is racing to find the most information in the least amount of time to use in as many articles as you can. Sounds like a tall order.  It doesn’t have to be if you’re organized.

Before you can get a go-ahead from one or more editors, you first have to research your subject, not your destination. Travel writing may seem like it’s about writing about places, but it’s really about writing about what’s at those places, and what the reader can do there. It’s really not about writing about your travel experience, but what the reader needs to know to enjoy a similar experience.

So before you begin, you have to know who your reader will be—young, old, married with a family, adventurer, or budget-conscious. Knowing who your reader will be will go a long way to helping you figure out what sort of information to collect. If you have multiple readers from different demographics, that means that the information you collect must be multifaceted. And to make the most profit from your work, you need to produce as much as you can from your research on a subject.

Before you approach editors, you’ll need to know what’s been done before on your subject. So instead of researching the subject, itself, you’ll need to research periodicals to find out how much has been done and when. If little or nothing has been done, then you might as well forget it. That often means readers aren’t interested. If a lot has been done, then, again, you might as well forget it, unless you have a very unique angle. Once you know what sort of market you have to work with, you’ll be able to query editors with your ideas.

In preparation for querying editors, brainstorm your subject. Try to think of as many different articles for the readers you’ve targeted as you can. Ask yourself questions. And based on what you discovered in your market research, come up with a dozen or more article ideas based on a general subject or destination.

It’s now time to do some preliminary subject research. For this, you’ll need to check a variety of sources–books, previous articles, the Internet. Get to know a bit about your subject so you can compose some intelligent queries. Then send them off to the publications you’ve chosen.

Once you hear back from editors, the fun begins. Now that you know what you’re going to be writing about, it’s time to start researching in earnest. Researching for the articles themselves requires that you go beyond books and the Internet. For travel writing, research requires that you travel to a place and talk to people and do things that your traveling readers would want to do—traveling there, staying in hotels, eating in restaurants, seeing the sights, enjoying entertainment. While you may not include all the information you obtain from your trip in your articles, you, nevertheless, have to make a note of it. You never know when you might want to use it in the future.

Before you go, you need to know as much about your destination as possible. And while you can read travel books on your destination, you may find other books, including novels set in the place, will give you a feel for it. The more you know before you go, the better you’ll be able to find unique information while there. You can even access your destination on Google Maps Street View and actually see the place where you’re going. Though you can only view it from the street or road, you’ll get an idea of what to expect when you get there.

You’ll also need to set up appointments with tourism people, curators of museums, and interesting persons related to your subject. Contact the local tourism department and ask for recommendations and possible help setting up appointments and interviews. They may be able to set up special tours or get you in to places that may be closed to the public temporarily. Remember, while it may be interesting to readers to write about special places or things to do, if they can’t do it when they travel there, it’s really no use to them.  Part of the downfall of many PBS travel shows—Globetrekker is a good example—is that they show too many things that readers just cannot do or places they can’t get into. Rick Steves’ series, on the other hand, is an excellent example of keeping viewers (or readers) in mind.

Now that you’ve done all your preliminary research, made your reservations, and purchased your tickets, it’s time to go. Once you arrive, you’ve got to be “on” every waking minute. You never know when the information you need will pop up unexpectedly.

Still think you want to dabble in travel writing?

P.S. And after you get home, you’ll want to collapse, but you can’t because you have to compile all your notes and such and get writing those articles. Soon it will be time to do it all over again. Not quite like a vacation, is it?

Augmenting Your Freelance Income

Basically there are three avenues to pursue to keep your freelance financial picture sunny: diligence in negotiating the best freelance deals, scouting for sources of augmenting that income from time to time, and adding secondary sources of income to the overall financial setup.

The prime ingredient in the discovery of funds to supplement income is your own ingenuity. People in other businesses have advantages you don't. They can, like the publisher of the magazine you write for, apply to numerous people to raise capital: customers, suppliers, insurance companies, banks, employees, other companies, venture-capital firms, investment bankers, and governments. If your business is a sole proprietorship, as is that of most freelancers, you don't have those options. The ability to get credit depends on your personal reputation. Third parties cannot invest in the business without incurring responsibilities for business debts as well. That usually means you have to rely on relatives or very close, good friends, which often isn’t a good idea.

If you’re thinking of getting a loan from your bank to tide you over, think again. In most cases, banks do loan small businesses money for operating capital or improvements, but freelance writing isn’t generally one of them. In fact, most banks don’t really consider you a small business. Plus, the loans they make to small businesses usually start at $50,000 or more.

An alternative to borrowing the money is applying for a grant. The pros and cons of public funding of writers are as numerous as the writers who do or do not get the grants. Living from grant to grant is much like living from paycheck to paycheck. The truth is that once you get on the grant merry-go-round, it’s hard to get off. Some writers actually write less and less the more they skipped from one grant to another since   it's easier to get a second and a third grant after you've got that first one. But getting that first grant can be a real challenge.

While there certainly are lots of grants out there, matching up their requirements to your situation is difficult. Let’s face it, if you want someone to give you money, you’ll need to fulfill their requirements. Also, one mistake on a grant application and you’re out. In fact, you may find writing a grant application harder than the writing you normally do. Grantors look for many things, least of which is good writing. For many writers, the chore of getting the grant in the first place may be more than it's worth. Searching for “writing grants” online will yield many sources.

Trying for prizes, on the other hand, may not be such a bad idea. If you have a novel on the back burner or if you write in a specialized field—travel, science, business, etc.), you may qualify for annual prizes given by a variety of organizations, some of which come with a cash award, no strings attached. Many prizes, even if they don't carry a cash award, will eventually help line your pockets, since the prestige of winning can be a feather in your cap and portfolio. If you do win a prize or receive an honor, milk it for all it’s worth. If you think you have a chance, take the time to fill out the forms and send in the required material.

Get creative when thinking up ways to bring in additional income. Perhaps you have an extra room in your house that you can rent out to a college student, or if times are especially tough, consider taking in a roommate or housemate to help meet your bills. You could also rent out equipment you have that you use only once in a while. Post notices everywhere, locally and online.

Lastly, consider selling items on eBay. While selling one or two items won’t bring in much, you could set up a sideline business selling items in a particular category such as collectibles. To do this successfully, you’ll have to set aside time to purchase inventory and pack and ship the things you sell. This will eat into your writing time, but money is money, no matter how you earn it.

If you look around you may find you have that other sources of income, no matter how small, that would help relieve the strain on your business budget.

Avoiding Deadends and Deadbeats

As you move forward in your freelance career, you’ll no doubt run into deadend markets and deadbeat editors. Perhaps the only problem you’ll have is to wait for the acceptance of your pieces. But chances are you’ll have many more negative experiences.

Editors are busy people. When an editor says he or she will send a reply to your query tomorrow, you can bet it will probably not arrive, at least not for a while. It pays to follow up with all your correspondence. Sending a polite reminder is good business, not hassling an editor.

Maybe you’ve been working with an editor for quite a while. You believe you have a good relationship. He’s told you that he likes your work. Then one day, you fail to get a response. It turns out that he moved on to a completely different type of publication—without telling you. You can try to track him down, but you’d be better off finding a new market.
                                         
In these uncertain economic times, it’s not unusual for a magazine to fold precipitously. You may have been waiting patiently to get paid, and it isn’t until several months later that you discover that the publisher went bankrupt.

Writers used to have to worry about whether the U.S. Postal Service delivered their manuscript. And even if your manuscript arrived it then got stuck in the mailroom. There seemed to be a definite relationship between how many floors a building had and how long your article sat in the mailroom. And if you sent your work to one of the higher paying periodicals, it most likely ended up in the slush pile where it may have sat for several weeks before an unpaid intern took a look at it.

Your article is accepted; you're jubilant. Then you get word from the editor that she had to kill your article. Even then you have to wait an unduly long time for the kill fee. Needless to say, the article's timeliness has been its undoing—the poor thing now is dead. You can’t even send it elsewhere.

And if you think that one or more of these may happen to you at various times, think again. It’s not uncommon in the freelance biz for nearly all of them to happen at the same time or at least one right after the other. It’s enough to drive a writer crazy.
                                               
Can you spot these possible disasters beforehand? In some cases, yes. But most of time, no. In fact, you may have no indication that a problem exists until the worst happens.

You can prevent some negative experiences from happening by taking a few precautions. Many writers refuse to do more than send a query to a new publication, then sit back and wait for the results. You’ll soon discover that there’s always a shakedown period at a new publication. You don't want to get caught in the fallout. Some magazines just don’t make it.

Magazines that pay on publication are notorious for creating problems. Publishers want to hang on to their money for as long as possible. Many times "pay on publication" means "several months or more after publication." But then, you may be trying to get into a new market. The number of publications paying on acceptance has dwindled with the recession. Do your homework and study the markets before you decide to send any work to them.

One tactic you might use is to wait the required time for an answer from a publisher or editor, then send a registered letter advising you're withdrawing your manuscript or query. You’ll then be free to submit it elsewhere.

To avoid problems once you get an assignment, you should make sure to immediately follow the conversation with a follow-up letter of assignment—sent by Email or regular mail—detailing the article topic, length, agreed-upon rates, delivery date, and expenses to be paid.

Lastly, save all Email messages from editors. When you do have a problem, you can then send forward the original message to the editor who may be denying what he or she said in the first place. It’s only then that you’ll exclaim, “Thank God for Email!”

Tapping the Markets

As a beginning writer, you must try to place your work in almost any publication just to get some credits. However, most markets open to novices pay little or nothing. And while you’ll get some credits, you may starve in the meantime. These first markets include church publications, fillers for local newspapers, and features for weekly newspapers. The amount you get paid doesn’t seem to matter as much as seeing your work in print. But when the initial thrill of publication wears off, it’s time to move on. You've paid your dues and sharpened your writing skills.

The next step is to assess your financial foundation and potential. If easy, though insufficient, income sources have to kept food on your table while you experiment with higher paying markets, you should be sure that you can rely on your initial markets for steady assignments and that you can shorten the time required to complete them. Try squeezing your bread-and-butter work into the first week or ten days of every month. That way you’ll be assured of at least some money to pay your bills.

Also, are you psychologically prepared to face these writing chores every month. While they may seem like a bother, the work you get from them will build up both in credits and cash.  Conversely, can you quickly switch over to even more demanding but business-expanding assignments, perhaps even within the same hour?

Your progress might proceed like this: Currently, you’re writing a combination of feature articles for several local newspapers in your region and brief but interesting local travel stories. If you play your cards right, you might even be able to sell the same article to say four or five publications, as long as their readerships don’t overlap. This way you only have to write an article once, but get to sell it several times. Your weekly article may bring in say $35. If you sell to five papers, that’s a total of $175.

Check with your editors and line up a three or four months of work for them. But to plan that far into the future, you’ll need ideas and that’s where those clips you’ve been saving come in. Clips are like fine wine, the more they age, the more valuable they become. Digging through them will provide you with lots of ideas—many of them updates on the topics covered. Topics are constantly being redone and published again in this business.

Go back and study those periodicals where you bombed out the first time. Editors change and you’ve grow more skilled, so your chance of scoring with them the second time around is good. Carefully peruse their table of contents.  How do their published articles differ from yours? Are they offering their readers lots of tips or are they more general in scope. Can you revamp any of your queries to include details you missed before? Perhaps you've misread or misinterpreted the writer's guidelines, or possibly the editorial direction has been altered while you’ve been concentrating on other publications. If you can’t rework your queries, look in your folder of clips to see what you can find for higher-paying markets. Set yourself a timetable to send out 20-25 new queries within two weeks to the markets you've picked. Work as furiously as you can on this to get the ball rolling. Then while you’re waiting, you can work on some of your bread and butter assignments.
   
Pull out all the stops. Sharpen your writing technique. Study the work of writers you admire— analyze it and compare it to your own.  Copy a paragraph or two, then print it out double-spaced, just like your own work. Doing this will help you see it as writing on a computer and not the printed page which will help you compare better compare to y our work. After you do this, rewrite what you’ve copied in your own style, using your own words. Try this exercise from time to time during your writing career.

Red Pen Redo

You’ve sent in your first article and surprise, surprise, it’s going to be published. A few months later you receive a copy of your published piece, but you hardly recognize it. What happened? Who could do such a thing? The answer is simple. It’s been edited, perhaps even rewritten.

At first glance you’re livid. “That’s not my work,” you say while gritting your teeth. Well, actually, it is.—it’s just been edited, mostly likely for clarity and length. Remember the person you sent your article to, the editor? That’s his or her job.

Your initial shock goes back to when you were in school. Academics guard their written words like gold and subconsciously—and in some cases consciously—impart that attitude to their students. So everyone comes out of school think their words are golden. However, in professional writing, there are two routes of editing—all non-fiction, especially articles, can be edited by an editor without consulting the writer while fiction cannot and the editor usually returns it to the writer without publishing it. If you write a novel, your editor will send the manuscript back to you with notations and suggestions for editing, but leave the editing, itself, up to you.

Writers relatively new to this business sometimes consider an editor's cutting or rewriting of their prose a loss.  The majority of editors will help you work by editing it, but there are some who do go too far.  There isn’t a writer out there who can't profit from that editorial red pen. On the other hand, there are some periodicals where as a general rule copy is almost totally rewritten in-house to fit the peculiar, well-recognized style of the magazine. If you object to your work being fitted into their prose style, perhaps you should consider another profession.

To proceed farther faster in this business, you’ll need to become your own best editor. The old salts say you should give even the lowest paying markets your best work. Frankly, if you ask any business person if they truly practice this, they’ll laugh in your face. Let’s face it, it’s just not good business. And editors of cheap publications know this. Their goal is to get your best work for as little money as possible. Remember the old saying, “You get what you pay for.” If you do run across a particularly miserly publication, ask what they can afford to pay you and then tell the editor what you can do for that amount. Giving your best effort on a shorter piece will take less time and will add value to your income dollar. Plus the editor will respect you for your professionalism, even if you don’t get your work published at that magazine. If the pay is low, you might negotiate for more regular work. The income from doing a bunch of short pieces can add up over time.

To make each piece you write the best you can do, you’ll need to do some revisions. It’s best to study a publication to see how long the articles or short stories are and write yours to match that length than it is to write whatever length you feel like doing. There’s only so much space in a magazine, and if you expect to get published often, you have to pay attention to the length of your works.

As human beings, we aren't organized to spout forth perfection. That’s what the first draft is for. But after you’ve gotten down everything you think is relevant, then it’s time to take a closer look. Those who seem to be talented writers have most likely spent years silently developing and editing their pieces.

To sharpen your editing skills, try some of these exercises. With your 3,000-4,000-word article or story in front of you, imagine you’re required to edit it to fit a magazine page that only allows you 1,500 words. That may sound like a challenge, but how about cutting a 12,000-word first draft down to 1,500! You've got to be extremely concise and pack a lot of essential information into as few words as possible. In fact, today’s print magazines are running more 300-500-word articles than longer ones, following the lead of those on the Internet.   

If you still need help, ask an editorially talented friend, sibling, or spouse to critique your work.  Your writing will improve, and so will your ability to undergo the scrutiny of an editor’s red pen.

A Star is Born

In Hollywood’s golden days, stars could be discovered working in malt shops and diners. Even today, would-be actors work in eating establishments around Hollywood, hoping that an agent or casting director will see them and give them an audition. Oh, were it that easy for writers.

Unfortunately, you, as a writer, won’t be given a break on your good looks. Most beginning writers think it’s only their writing that counts. What they don’t know is that they need to promote themselves as writers and creative thinkers.

As a one-person business operation, you need to keep yourself out front in all public endeavors which can further the cause of your business. You must consider all presentations of yourself as exploratory—the beginnings of friendships and working relationships that you plan to extend. Networking is the key to good promotion, but it’s only one part. Precede interchanges with new contacts by promoting your basic qualities as a writer. With every promotional effort you send out, try to imprint those qualities, strikingly and memorably, in the minds of the people you deal with.

In order to successfully promote yourself as a writer, you have to be constantly alert to new opportunities which may appear at the most unusual moments. If possible, notice how professional writers promote themselves—what do they do, what to they say—and try to emulate them. Notice how they’ve acquired a forceful, effective, yet graceful way of putting their message across. What you may discover is that promoting yourself may require you to be more aggressive, forceful, and, yes, even somewhat daring.

You must project those three qualities in an attractive manner to insure success. Professional promotion isn't bullying. It’s effective persuasion. If an editor likes you as well as the work you do, he or she is far more likely to use you a second time. It's as simple as that.

Someone once said, "Doing business without advertising is like winking at someone in the dark. You know what you're doing, but nobody else does." As a freelancer, it's all too easy to spend your time winking in the dark. But whether you live and work in a city apartment or in a suburban house, the time will come when you need to toot your own horn. When it does, you need to be prepared.

To begin, start saving clippings of your work from the beginning. As your work improves, so will your clippings. Replace those first ones with better ones from better publications. Along with them, compose a resume listing all the places where you’ve been published. Update this periodically, replacing lower market publications with higher market ones. If you’ve done other types of writing for other clients, list the positions you've held, the kind of work you've done them, the dates, and any other pertinent information that describes your writing abilities.

Along with your resume, you’ll need to prepare a biographical sketch. This can be as short as a few sentences or as long as several paragraphs describing who you are and your accomplishments.. The shorter one you’ll need to send along with any articles, stories, or books you sell. The longer one can be used for your social networking pages on Facebook, Linkedin, etc. Create a folder in your computer titled “Promotion” in which you can save files of your resume, bio, and such. Occasionally, you’ll need to create different versions, perhaps for different subjects you write about. Save these with appropriate names so that you can easily find them when needed. To make updating your promotional material easier, create a file in which you list information on your jobs as you do them—titles of writing pieces with publication name and date, place, date and title of lectures or workshops you’ve presented, etc. When it comes time to update your bio, you’ll have everything you need at your fingertips.

Maximizing Your Productivity

As your freelance career progresses, you may find that you have too many small projects that are interesting but just don't pay their way. Worse yet, you may on occasion work for a publication that doesn't keep its promise to pay. At year's end, even though you've been writing constantly, you find yourself in the hole.

Be realistic about what you can do. Remember, you can only do so much in the time you have. Spending too much time on poorly paying projects will eventually take its toll. So what can you do about it? The answer lies in creating a production schedule for maximizing your productivity.

If you want to improve your productivity for the next year or even the next quarter, you’ll need to take a hard look at what you’ve accomplished and what you haven’t in the last one. After analyzing the data, you need to come up with a production schedule that meets your needs and your lifestyle. Devise a detailed production schedule for the coming year with a built-in review time each month. You should also mark specific billing dates in red, since you’ll want to be reminded to do bookkeeping chores. Doing this will definitely increase your productivity.

Ease into systematic production planning by starting with a desk diary. You should look for one that allots a page to each day, perhaps subdivided into segments, with plenty of space for notations on your production and billing schedules and which will also allow you to note expenses and a list of important contact numbers and email addresses. If you’re somewhat computer savvy, you can use a project scheduling program and while this will work, you may find that being able to write notes and adjustments on a paper one is more thorough.

Begin by writing in the listing for each project the deadline and what you need to prepare for it—basic text, sidebars, photos, graphs, or charts. Include for each a schedule for initial research and library or fieldwork to be completed by a fixed date.

Next note the dates and times for interviews and contact numbers and/or email addresses. Will your interviewees be available when you need them? Also, don't forget to note time differences if they live outside of your area.

Make a note of the date to contact your editor for a progress report. It’s important to let him or her know if you’ve discovered some new material in your research or if the project isn't going in the direction expected. Discussing this with your editor will let you know if it’s salvageable.

Lastly, make a note of dates when you need to obtain permissions or supplementary material, as well as the dates they're due in your hands, ready to be assembled with your text.

Set up a tentative production schedule before you have assignments—a sort of sketch to see how you can fit in trips, interviews, writing time, research time, and such at the beginning of each month or quarter. Some writers prefer to send queries out in groups at the beginning of each month rather than one at a time. Scheduling several interviews in a certain area, for example, not only saves time and effort but also money.

And while editors will always give you a deadline, it’s smart to schedule your own a bit ahead of the ones they'll give you. If you seem to be running to too many places each month, perhaps you could organize your research into three or four trips, instead..

Along with research and deadline dates, make a note of when you expect to be paid and how much. Even if you send a bill with your manuscript, many publications are slow in paying. Ask each new editor you work with when his or her publication pays for work and record that information on your productivity page for that project, then match that against the schedule of foreseeable expenses.

Doing all of the above may sound like extra work but in the end, it will make you a more productive writer.

If the Idea Fits...

Every beginning freelance writer, whether of non-fiction or fiction, thinks that their ideas are great and everyone, including editors, should gobble them up. This is no accident. In fact, your teachers from the first day you entered school encouraged you to think of only original ideas and that everyone would like them. That may be the way academics think, but it certainly isn’t what life’s about in the real world.

So when you began freelancing, you reached inside yourself for ideas and doggedly forged ahead developing them without any concern for who would read and like them. You had no concern for your readers. Instead, you were more concerned about yourself. And that’s only natural since for at least 12 years, and for some people more, you learned that the writer and the writer’s ideas are the center of writing. But in the type of writing you’re attempting to do now, it’s the reader who’s at the center. To be successful, you have to write what readers and editors want to read.

Let's examine your ideas file. When you first began to consider freelancing, you probably clipped articles from the all sorts of major publications, as well as your local newspapers and printed out those you found on the Internet. You clipped information that interested you specifically, plus material about broad general trends. Then you filed these clippings in categorized folders to use later. Soon you realized you had been collecting loads of clippings but not acting on the ideas they inspired.

Or perhaps the opposite was true. You insisted on sticking to a few of your favorite story ideas even though they got rejected by editor after editor. You even tried some twice, hoping that they’d change their minds.

Let’s face it, organizing your ideas into marketable form isn't easy when you're starting out. The best way to get yourself on track is to get some feedback—ideally from other writers, but perhaps from an editor who looks kindly at beginners. Ask them why your ideas aren’t hitting the mark. In fact, ask readers—friends, colleagues, family members—if they would read a piece based on a certain idea. Talk about your work and listen to what’s said in return.

If you do happen to find an editor who will give you feedback, ask him or her why you haven't been able to interest them in any ideas you’ve sent. Also ask how you should rearrange your proposals and if and when he or she is most likely to be interested in some of your favorite ideas. Whatever advice you can get, act on it immediately.

Perhaps it's time to sit back and take a good, thorough look at the ideas you've been percolating, to check them against what editors say they want and need, rather than what you want to give them. At the same time reexamine your markets to see if any you once thought held promise still do, especially if you present them with ideas they want and need.

Before you send an idea to any publication or publisher, be sure to check out what they have already produced. Read several issues of a magazine or send for the current catalog from a book publisher. Keeping your ideas in mind, peruse either carefully to see if your ideas match the ones already done. If so, you know you’ve got a good chance at success with that publication or publisher. If you send out your favorite ideas blindly, you’re doomed to failure.

If you already have been published by magazine or book publisher but your current ideas have been rejected, reexamine that market to see if it has changed direction. Have they lost ad revenue or are taking different types advertising than before? Are they publishing pieces that they wouldn’t have before?  Have they cut back on freelance pieces or are they only publishing well-known writers? And most importantly, has the editor changed since you last wrote for them?

If you’re intent on publishing a book, you’ll find the book publishing industry in a state of flux. Recently, a major New York publishing house filed for bankruptcy protection. More are sure to follow.

Take a good hard look at your ideas. Will they be interesting to readers? If so, which group? Focus your ideas on what readers want to read, and you’ll come out a winner just about every time.

Planning for the Future

All successful businesses start with a master plan. As a freelance writer, you need to know where you’re going and have a plan in place to take care of contingencies—those times when the markets you’ve been counting on disappear. Perhaps you’ve been putting it off while focusing on getting published. Before you get too far along in your freelance writing career, take some time to compile a more definitive plan.

With a good plan, you’ll be able to review your progress periodically. Doing so will allow you to discover  the need for a change in your direction when your original plan and your checkbook balance are at odds. Plus a clear, concise, well-thought-out business plan gives you a better opportunity to get a loan from your bank or a friend or family member when money is tight or you want to buy some new equipment. Few people, bank loan officers included, ever take freelance businesspeople seriously unless they have a plan in writing.

Your plan should be flexible, but it should keep you pointing—and moving—in the right direction.

A good business plan also keeps your eye on your long-term goals. It will detail priorities in a sequence that will save you valuable time and energy and help eliminate worry, which can be a major distraction to your writing.

When you draft your plan, stick to facts, realities, and valid assumptions. Don't overlook the obvious pluses. Perhaps your spouse has a good, reliable job which won’t disappear overnight. Or you know that you'll be coming into some money in a couple of years.  Or, even better, you’ve been building up your expertise in a particular subject area which will allow you to eventually specialize in it, resulting in reliable assignments.

When compiling a business plan, keep daydreams to a minimum. You’ll only get frustrated if you write a plan based on wishful thinking. Deal in the here and now, not in what you hope will happen. Above all, don't overanalyze, or you'll drown in a sea of data you won't be able to use. Allow a certain amount of time for creating your business plan and then stop. You can always change it later.

If you’re dealing with several different types of markets or other related ventures, such as teaching or photography, you might want to compile some detailed sub-plans. These don’t have to be involved, but should include details for that particular venture to help you expand as you go. Once you have your plan in place, prepare a general To-Do List based on it that you can work into your daily routine.

Now that you know what a good business plan will do for you writing, let’s look at what it should include.

First and foremost, it should include a statement of purpose—what is the purpose of your writing business.

Second, a detailed description of your business, including a list of your specialties, the markets for them, and a paragraph on why you, above others, can give an editor or a client a unique angle.

Third, a discussion of what the market is like for your writing. Included in this section should be a list of opportunities, with specific details about current markets, names of publishers, publications, and editors, as well as other clients. Do the same for each of your specialties or other ventures.

Fourth, a plan for marketing your writing—how do you plan to promote it and yourself? 

Fifth, list your market objectives for one year, eighteen months, two years, and five years. These will help you outline your strategy—specific work you'd like to be able to cover in the year to come, research already available to you, what you'd need to research further, and probable places where you might find  information, plus the time and cost to get it.

And finally, a profit-and-loss statement or budget, including an estimate of your net worth, and a list of your office equipment with a projection of future items that could increase your productivity. This tells you and whoever is reading your plan where you are financially and where you plan to go.

Remember, the more flexible your plan, the more it will allow you to grow your freelance business.

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.

Can You Change a Contract?

Your chance of making a profit from a book or article hedges on the contract you sign for it. Contracts can be as short as a page or as long as 30 pages. Some publishers call them agreements, but they’re contracts, nonetheless. It pays to read them carefully because whatever is included in them is binding for both parties.

Publishers have revised their contracts since the Internet came into prominent use to garner every business advantage. In today’s market, that means electronic sales, among other things. Publishing to their Web sites or publishing your work as an ebook are options they never had before. And with the success of Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s ebook reader, those options have stepped right out front. This applies both to books and article, but not as much to short stories.

Signing a contract put you into a legal binding agreement . However, it also binds the publisher into the same agreement. Once, a magazine I wrote for sent me contracts for every article. In it was a line about electronic rights. I changed the wording to say I wouldn’t sell them or sometimes, I said I’d sell them for 10-15 percent of the article fee. His editor agreed. The publisher ignored the changes and published them on his Web site anyway. After two years and many articles later, I called him on it, and his lawyer said he basically didn’t have a leg to stand on because he had ignored the original contract changes. The publisher ended up paying me over $400 in back fees.

Another time, a client, who had hired me to write an extensive four-page advertorial for a big-city paper, ignored the phrase in it which said he had only one full edit of the manuscript. This was to prevent him from changing his mind lots of times before publication–a habit of business executives. In the end, he had to pay me 100 percent more because each additional edit cost him $1.00 per word. Again, his lawyer said he didn’t have a leg to stand on.

You can change any of the wording in a contract before you sign it–as long as the publisher agrees. A publisher usually begins with a standard legal contract, then adds whatever details he or she needs for the individual project. A standard contract gives all the monetary and legal advantages to the party who draws it up. In the above examples, these were the magazine publisher and myself. You, as the writer, have the right to change anything in the contract, should you not find it in your best interest.

If this is your first contract with a particular publisher, you don’t have the bargaining power to change much. But as you continue working on projects for that same publisher, your bargaining power increases.

And it isn’t just about your advance, should you be writing a book. Other items that you can change include deadline dates, reversion of rights back to you after publication (used mostly for articles), electronic rights (Web site and ebooks), royalty percentages, subsidiary rights (T.V., film, worldwide rights), and more.

So the next time you receive a contract from a publisher, read it very carefully. In fact, make a copy and underline or highlight sections on the copy that you find questionable. Don’t hesitate to ask for changes. Remember, it’s in your best interest. The publisher already has theirs covered.