Recycling Isn't Just for the Trashman

Recycling isn’t limited to plastics and tin cans. It can play a big part in your writing, too.  Over the years, you’ll gather a lot of information. Too many writers use that information once because many of their teachers drummed the concept of not repeating into their heads. So they use an idea once and forget about it. In the writing biz, that’s not the way to make money.

Information should be a valuable commodity to you as a writer. Whether you write non-fiction or fiction, you can use ideas and the information you gathered to flush them out over and over again. Your files are a gold mine. So if you’re one of those people who can’t stand clutter and throws everything out as soon as you’re done with it, you better think again.

So what are some of the ways you can mine all those ideas and valuable information you have on hand? First, let’s look at the facts—just the facts. If you write non-fiction, you gather a truckload of facts for every article and if you write books, a boatload. That’s a lot of facts to let go to waste. So how do you know where they are when you need them? The answer is a good filing system.

Every article or story you write should have its own folder, both paper and digital. You should put all the notes and clippings and such into the paper folder. Reserve the digital folder for information you find online and for drafts of your piece. The idea of going all digital may be nice, but it isn’t practical. If you don’t have a way of retrieving the information you’ve stored, then you might as well have thrown it out.

For some topics, you may want to create several folders of information, subdividing a more complex topic into categories for easier retrieval. Information you gather for one subject or project may often be used for another on a similar one or a different one altogether. For example, let’s say you’re writing an article about pioneers traveling on the Oregon Trail. First, you’ll gather information about the Trail, itself, then you’ll begin to find information on the people who traveled it.

The information on the former can be used to not only tell the tale of the Oregon Trail when it was at its peak, but also about the remnants of the Trail in the present day. Information gathered about the latter can be used for stories about courage along the trail or articles about particular people or the lifestyle of the early settlers of the West. Right there, you have the material to write any number of stories and articles all based on the same research.

So much for the information you have on hand. But what about all those pieces you’ve already wrote and published? Taking pieces from different articles, for instance, can give you a whole new piece. With some rewriting and revising, you can craft another interesting piece without doing any more research.

And don’t forget about sidebars. Sidebars to one article can become short articles in themselves, especially if you do some quick rewriting to help them stand on their own.

Storing all that information can become a problem. Over your writing career, you’ll gather reference books, clippings, brochures, maps—you name it—and that’s not even considering all the notes you’ve taken on various subjects. But if you organize the material for easy access, you’ll be able to produce a variety of pieces for many different markets during your career.

Keeping Track of Your Ideas

Ideas are the fuel that keep writers going. These might be for future articles, short stories, plays, non-fiction books, and, yes, even blogs. They can be little bits of information, observations, profiles, or full-blown concepts. Unfortunately, the human brain can’t possibly remember them all. In fact, You can’t remember most of your ideas since they seem to disappear into thin air as fast as they appear. In order to keep ideas ready for when you need them, you’ll have to find a way to record and track them.

Keeping track of your ideas could be as simple as creating a folder in your computer in which you save any little tidbit of information that comes along. You probably can see where this is going. Soon you’ll have a folder full of tidbits but not way to tell one from another. So you create more specific folders and file specific information related to one idea category or another in them. Now you have a bunch of folders with tidbits but still no way to know what’s in each.

A rather simple solution to the folder chaos that is to keep an Idea Book–well, actually, a series of Idea Books. This notebook will become your most valuable possession—it will be what keeps you writing.

To start an idea book you’ll have to go low-tech—a standard 6x9½-inch, spiral-bound notebook will do nicely. You can either opt for a thicker one or several thinner ones. If you can find one with built-in tab dividers, all the better. If not, pick up a packet of divider tabs that you can stick some of the pages to create your own sections.

This large idea book will become your main depository for your ideas, but you may also want to keep a small, 3x5-inch, spiral-bound notebook that you carry with you. Then you can periodically skim over the ideas in it and transfer them to your larger Idea Book.

So exactly what should put into your Idea Book? First and foremost are lists of ideas on  particular topics. This is where the dividers come in handy. Perhaps you write a regular blog. You can’t come up with topics off the top of your head without some research. Your Idea Book will allow you to keep an ongoing list of ideas for future blogs. As soon as you finish writing your latest blog, you should take a look at the list and decide which topic you’re going to tackle next. This is also a good place to keep a log of all the blogs you’ve written so far in the order you’ve written them, so that you don’t repeat yourself.

Your Idea Book is also a good place to focus your ideas. Sometimes an idea is way too broad, so you may have to focus it down to its essence. It’s in this process that you can play around with variations on the topic—different slants, possible fiction adaptations, even Web page ideas. Most writers never write about a topic just once, and neither should you.

Another part of any good Idea Book is the resource section. Here, you should jot down information about library books you’ve borrowed in case you need to borrow them again and the addresses of Web sites that contain pertinent information about subjects I write about.

Lastly, you can use your Idea Book to brainstorm possible markets for your work.  This might be just a list of places where you can post your blog. If you write for magazines and such, you may also want to produce diagrams that help you figure out who will be reading your pieces and which markets cater to them.

The techies out there may argue why not use a tablet or phone to do the same thing.
While you can handle some of your items in your idea book—lists of ideas, Web sites, library books, and such—brainstorming, focusing, and figuring out who will read your work is best done on paper. Perhaps you can figure a way to combine the two.

For the digital side of things, you’ll most likely have to use an app, otherwise you’ll be using several programs to do all that an Idea Book entails. One that really works well is Evernote. This little program allows you to create messages to yourself, as well as to-do lists, but it also goes beyond what you can do with just a standard paper Idea Book.

With Evernote or some app like it, you can also clip parts or entire articles from the Internet and save them to it. Then you can go back later and read them. It also allows you to create categories in which to save information. With the free version, you can only save to two digital devices—a desktop and laptop, laptop and phone, laptop and tablet. But you can go for the deluxe paid version which allows much more flexibility.

You can certainly use your smartphone to record ideas on the go, as well as saving Web sites for review later.

Choose whatever works for your situation and digital expertise level. Whatever you do, get your ideas organized. And you’ll keep writing forever.

 

Sensing the World Around You

In order to draw your reader into the world you’re reporting on or into a fictional world you’ve created, you’ve got to be able to translate what your senses tell you into words. Too many people, including a lot of writers, just amble through life, not truly interacting with the world around them. To be a good—no make that great—writer you need to be aware of every nuance as you go about daily life. To do this, you must learn to how and when to turn on and off your sense awareness.

If you were to be hypersensitive 24 hours a day, you’d probably go mad. But there are times when you need to hike your sensitivity up a notch, to put your senses into hyper mode. Then after you’ve mastered this hypersensitivity, you must learn how to write about it so that your readers will experience it, too.

As humans, we’ve been given something that separates us from other mammals, who also have sense awareness. That special something is reason. Just being aware of things around you isn’t enough. You have to be able to interpret them—to understand how they all fit together.

The strongest of your five senses is sight. If you write fiction, you probably fill your scenes with rich visual detail that your readers can picture in their minds. But make your writing come alive, you must include bits of the other four senses, for without them, your writing will be lifeless.

People normally depend on sight so much that it replaces some of what the other senses are meant to do. When a person loses their sight, not only does their world go dark, but they feel as if they’re living in a void. Writing using only sight does the same thing for a reader.

Sight offers us shape, color, and texture, important things to consider when describing people and objects. But it also helps us interpret distance, an important part of describing landscapes and cityscapes. We pay so much attention to what we’re seeing that we forget that there are sounds to be heard and aromas and fragrances to be smelled.

The sense of smell is the one that’s most closely linked to memory. Why do you think that the smell of popcorn evokes such a strong desire to watch movies? Selling popcorn in the lobby of movie theaters over the decades has associated the smell of it with watching movies with most people. When Blockbuster Video had video rental stores, they always had a popcorn machine making popcorn. The smell of the stuff permeated the store and encouraged people to rent movie videos.

The same is true of the smell of cinnamon buns. Supermarkets get their buns frozen and ready to bake. They position their bakeries in the front of the store with a vent to the parking lot. As you get out of your car, you’re drawn into the store by this delicious smell. Even if you don’t buy any cinnamon buns, the smell of them triggers memories of a cozy home which makes you hungry, thus you buy more of everything else. So including smells in your writing will trigger memories in your readers, putting them into the scene, itself.

Generally, smells can be divided into three types: aromas, odors, and fragrances. The first is a pleasant one having to do with foods. The second has to do with unpleasant food or other smells. And the last is the ultra pleasant scents of flowers and perfumes.

Taste is another sense often forgotten by writers. Ernest Hemingway knew this and included tastes of foods in many of his stories.  The sense of taste is usually associated with the sense of smell. You can break taste down into five types: bitter, sweet, salty, sour, and the newest and trendiest, umami, a Japanese word that means “pleasant savory taste.” A good example of this last type is cooked mushrooms.

The sense of touch, on the other hand, is often ignored by most writers. That’s because they, themselves, aren’t fully aware of it. The only time you may be aware of your sense of touch is in extreme situations—touching something hot or cold. At most other times, you just take your sense of touch for granted.

To awaken your sense of touch, you must purposefully touch something with the pads on the insides of the tips of your fingers. Don’t fully touch the surface but hover close to it with the pad with your finger pads, just enough to be able to sense the texture of the surface. Now while you can’t go around only using the pads on your fingers to touch things, doing so will train you to become more aware of things you do touch. Readers want to know what things feel like. That vicarious experience of touch really draws them into your writing.

Sound is another sense that most people take for granted. We hear all the time, yet we really don’t listen. Most people put hearing on auto mode. Hearing is selective. We hear what we want to hear. Even though there may be softer sounds in the background, we select to hear those that are the closest and therefore the loudest. Put sounds into your writing. Let your readers hear them. Doing so will help create drama and impact.

Until you train yourself to include all five senses in your writing, the best way to deal with them is to write as you normally do, then go back over what you’ve written and note the senses that are missing and put them in. Eventually, you’ll include them naturally.

Listen to Yourself

Everyone thinks they know how to write. In fact, just about everyone can because they all learned how to write in school. But learning how to write and knowing how to write are two different things.

Because writing is one of three universal forms of communication—the other two being speaking and listening—writers are susceptible to comments and even harsh criticisms from just about anyone.

It begins with someone telling you that you should be a writer. “You certainly have a way with words,” they may say. Or, “Have you ever thought about being a writer? You certainly have the talent for it.”

In most cases of this sort, the person making the comments has neither the background nor credentials to determine whether you should be a writer or not. Only another writer can truly comment on your aspirations. And even then, it’s only their opinion.

And even if you’re trying desperately to become a professional writer—one that gets paid for their writing—the person who doesn’t write for a living but just writes to communicate can’t understand what all the fuss is about because to them writing is an everyday thing.

So what makes a writer so special? Although “wordsmith” is a word only used in pseudo-intellectual circles today, it best describes what a writer does. A writer crafts articles, stories, and books using words in a special way to achieve a purpose, to communicate a special message. People describe those who can do this without too much effort as having “talent.” But, in truth, any writer can achieve the same goals with hard work and determination.

It’s like when you were back in school. Some of your fellow students got good grades with hardly any effort. It seemed as if they didn’t do half the work you did. But in the end you may have received good grades by working harder. The same happens with writers.

Once you’ve had something published for pay, you think you’ve made it. But getting published is only the first step in a career-long process. At this point you can claim to be a writer, for you’ve written something and gotten paid for it. But other people don’t see the difference. To them, you write just like they do—you put your fingers on the keyboard and tap away.

Because of this, they look upon you as a threat to their writing abilities. Normally, you may not have a problem with this, but should you use your writing abilities for a project that isn’t related to your professional work, all bets are off. At this point, others see your writing abilities as equal to theirs. So whether you know that a passage should be written in a certain way doesn’t matter. They won’t hesitate to criticize your work because they feel equal to you.

Ironically, this doesn’t happen with other professions. No one tells a doctor or a lawyer or even a business owner the right way to do their work because they know nothing about it.

Even in the writing industry, we have prejudices. People look upon writers who are on the staffs of newspapers and magazines as professional writers. But they don’t look upon freelance writers with the same eye, even though they also get paid for their work. To many people, working for a weekly paycheck gives the job credibility. In fact, most people don’t even realize freelance writers actually exist even though they read their work in publications all the time. And what about all the authors out there? Using the word “author” after your name only says you write books, but in the end, you’re a writer all the same.

So what can you do to gain credibility in the eyes of others? First, you must study your craft and learn all the grammar and usage rules. Then you need to learn when to break those rules to make a point or show emphasis. Academics only write by the rules. General writers write using the rules or not depending on what they’re trying to say. What makes it difficult for freelance writers is that there are no requirements to be one—no special schooling, no degree, no internship. The only credibility a freelance writer has is his or her ability to get published and get paid for it.

In the end, stick to your guns and listen to yourself, for only you know what you want to say and how you want to say it and get paid for it.

You’ve Got a Site—Now What?

Okay, so you’ve designed your writer’s Web site or had it done for you, now what? Many people think if they design and launch a Web site that visitors will come. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, it usually takes at least three and sometimes six months for visitors to find your site. Why is that and what can you do about it?

The answer to the first question is simple. In order for people to find your site, they have to see it in search listings, but getting into search listings is no easy task. The extraordinarily long time it takes for your site to appear in search engine results is because it takes time for search engines robots to crawl your site. The next time you view your new site, imagine little things moving all over your pages. They’re recording keywords in the content and what the content is about. Then they send that information back to the mother ship, let’s say Google, so the search engine can create a listing that appears in visitors’ searches.

But once search engines have found your site, things will change and visitors will start going to it. However, by promoting your site through Email and social media, you can get visitors to go to it even before search engines list it. It’s imperative to promote your site from the very first minute it appears online. And don’t stop—ever.

In this era of social media, it’s important to let readers know where else you’re active online. After you get your Web site up and running, be sure to create a professional Facebook Page. This isn’t the personal page that most people use, but one that shows you as a writing professional. It’s the type of page people “like.” You’ll have to work to get people to like your new Facebook Page, and this could take some time. But once you’ve created your Facebook Page, you’ll be able to download the code for widgets to put on your site, so that visitors can go to it.

Unlike your Web site, your Facebook Page is more to show fans what’s happening currently in your professional career. Don’t, as so many book authors do, create a Facebook Page for your book. Rather create a page for your writing business on which you can showcase your writing, no matter what kind you do.

If you have notable media coverage, good reviews, positive testimonials, or a significant following on a social media site, such as Instagram or Twitter, tell your site visitors about it. In fact, you may want to create a media page on which you post press releases and links to articles and reviews about you and your work. Doing so will show visitors that spending time on your site is worth it.

Give your visitors a reason to come back. Just telling them you’re a writer isn’t enough. Just promoting your book isn’t enough. You must offer them something. Don’t just post articles or stories you’ve written. Instead, choose them for subject matter that may be interesting to your readers, so they’re then actively reading your work. Inform and entertain them.

If visitors reach the bottom of a page on your site, that means they’re very engaged and will likely go to other pages on your site. Use this as an opportunity to add a call to action, such as an email newsletter sign-up or the sale of your book. If you don’t engage them first, you won’t sell anything.

To maximize the effectiveness of your website, install a site analytics tool. Google Analytics is a free and popular tool available to anyone with a Google account. Once you install it, you can  immediately collect data on your Web site traffic and visitors. It will also tell you which pages of your site are the most popular. This will help you plan for future additions to your site. And most importantly, your site statistics will tell you how people get to and use your site.

About 20–30 percent of your site traffic will come from mobile or tablet devices. Is your site optimized for those visits? While it’s important to keep cell phone users in mind, don’t design your site specifically for them, or for that matter, for any particular Web browser. Design your site for the majority of users. Owners of too many sites today are redesigning their sites just for cell phone use which takes away from how they look on a wide computer screen.

Remember, you don’t have to launch and perfect everything on your site at once. In fact, doing so is against the grain of the digital era. Start small but smart, and build your skills and presence over time. Customize and add more complex functionality as you get more comfortable with the technology, and as you develop specific skills and career goals that require the investment.

Developing a Voice of Authority

Why is some writing believable and other writing isn’t? What makes the reader believe in some pieces and know that the material is made up in others? The answer to both questions is voice of authority, that sense the reader gets when reading that the writer really knows what he or she is talking about.

Most writers don’t even think of this when writing. A voice of authority enables the writer to create a depth to a piece of writing in non-fiction and to characters in fiction. This comes from research. To write with depth takes lots of research. The more research you do, the better you’ll be able to draw your reader into your article or story.

The effect of a good voice of authority makes the writer seem like an expert in the subject. What captures readers is a sense that the voice of the writer has authority.

So how do you become an authority on a subject without years of study? There are several ways you can become an authority on the subject. Obviously, you can prove you’re an authority if you’ve already amassed this knowledge through earning an undergraduate or graduate degree, or if you’re a professional writing about a subject in your field. But you can also rely on experts through interviews and research. Lastly, your own personal experiences might give you all the authority you need about a particular subject. After all, the cardinal rule in writing is to write what you know.

But knowing your subject well isn’t the only secret. To truly draw your reader in, you need to write using active voice. That means you’ll have to forget what you learned in school because there you learned to write in the academic style where writers hide in the shadows and have to credit their sources.

Writing in the active voice is in-your-face writing. In it the subject of your sentences controls the action through active verbs that offer precise images to the reader. Combine that with knowledge and you’ve got a winner. Using adjectives that describe scenes and people precisely also helps to improve the authority of your voice. Authority not only involves what you know but your values and your vision. In some cases, this may involve your personal beliefs.

What person you choose to use to write your story also affects your voice of authority. If you write in the third person, the reader views it as a report on what’s happening. If you write in the second person, the reader becomes personally involved—like in this blog. And if you write in the first person, whether your story is true or not, the reader believes every word because it’s coming straight from the horse’s (your) mouth.

But even if you choose to write in the third person, you can still demonstrate your authority on the subject by the details you choose to include. Using lots of details make it seem to the reader that you really know your subject, even if it’s the one and only piece you’ve written on it.

In creating convincing fictional characters, many writers research the lives of real people to gain insight into how they think and communicate about their chosen lifestyle and locality. This isn’t any different than method film actors who take the time to follow along with a real person who’s in the same occupation and lives in the same region as the character they’ll be playing on the screen. That’s what makes their performance so believable. That’s what draws viewers into a film and makes them empathize with the character.

Narrative authority signifies believability. It’s a series of deliberate yet subtle cues that you’ll use to convince the reader that what he or she sees on the page amounts to a genuine human experience. In order for this to work, the reader must accept that the you, as the article writer or storyteller, are the best person to deliver the information. Ultimately, authority convinces readers to take a leap of faith. It instills trust and makes the reader believe that the illusion of the story in fiction is as real as anything else. In non-fiction, especially historical writing, it propels the reader back to another time and place.

However, you must not use tricks and gimmicks to work authority into your writing. You’ve got to be honest with your reader and show that you truly know your subject. That’s the only way it will work.

Seeking Illusive Inspiration

Beginning writers make the mistake of waiting around to be inspired. While inspiration plays an important part in writing, it isn’t the most important part of writing. Inspiration is the result of accidental stimuli. To be truly inspired, you need to be prepared for when that happens.

This preparation comes through experience and observations. Everything you’ve done up to the moment will prepare you to be inspired. At times you may feel as if you’ve fallen into a void. The world continues to spin around you, but nothing seems to grab you. Perhaps you’ve gone into sensual overload. You’ve absorbed so much using your senses, that you can’t seem to see how any particular thing can help you in your writing.  That’s the reason that many writers feel the need to get away—to go to some exotic place to find new ideas.

Did you ever wonder where the idea of a writer going to stay in a cabin in the woods came from?
Henry David Thoreau not only went to stay in one, he built it. This so impressed the reading public that beginning writers from then on thought that they needed to do something similar in order to be inspired.

Robert Louis Stevenson came over to America from Scotland, then traveled to Monterrey, California. While he was there, he didn’t write a word. Instead, he just took it all in—the magnificent coastal scenery, the Spanish missions, and the legends he heard while visiting local watering holes. And even though he didn’t make any notes, all this got his imagination going, enabling him to eventually write his now famous novel Treasure Island.

If you try to be inspired, nothing will happen.

And, no, you don’t have to go somewhere exotic to be inspired. Under the right circumstances, inspiration can strike you in your own backyard. California Writer Armistead Maupin used to go shopping at his local Safeway Supermarket on Thursday nights—singles’ night—and while there he met some unique people in the produce aisle. These became his characters in Tales of the City, first published as a newspaper serial starting on August 8, 1974, in a Marin County newspaper, The Pacific Sun, picked up in 1976 by the San Francisco Chronicle, and later reworked into the series of highly successful books about the 1970s in San Francisco. So something as commonplace as a weekly trip to the supermarket can provide fodder for future work.

This shows that inspiration can strike at the least likely of times and in the least likely of places. It will strike you when you least expect it, when your guard is down. As a writer, you need to be aware of when this happens so that you can take advantage of it. That doesn’t mean you must rush to your computer and start frantically writing before the inspiration disappears. Instead, you should get in the habit of writing down some snippets of ideas as they come to you in the moment of inspiration. Carry a small notebook with you or jot down some brief notes on a scrap of paper or a napkin. But get it down before you forget it.

To be inspired, you have to be in the right frame of mind. If you’re trying to come up with an idea, your mind will block up. But if you just observe and enjoy, the world around you will provide you with lots of ideas and your imagination will soar.

Reading and Writing Go Hand in Hand

Reading is an important part of writing. But you’d be surprised just how many beginning writers aren’t avid readers. A recent study states that 23 percent of Americans want to be writers, but the percentage of them who actually read regularly is pitifully poor.

Reading and writing go hand in hand. To be a good writer, you have to be a good reader. The more you read, the better writer you’ll become. This is a pretty bold statement, but it’s true. Exposure to good writing is imperative. Reading just anything won’t do. You have to read well-written articles, stories, and books before you can understand how to write them well.

Most people read to be informed and/or entertained. As a writer, you have to read for technique and, yes, ideas. The broader your reading—the more different kinds of writing you read—the more of each you’ll absorb and the more ideas you’ll have for your own work.

Begin by making it a daily habit. Work the reading of articles in newspapers, magazines, and journals (either online or in print) into your daily routine. With the proliferation of electronic tablets and e-readers, it’s easy to catch up on what interests you while you’re on your coffee break or while eating lunch.

Consider cross-platform programs like Evernote. With its free version, you can save articles or other writing from the Internet to read when you have time. And you can make notes on what you read if reading from a laptop or tablet.  Of course, you can always take along a paperback book to read while having lunch in a nearby park or even while sitting at the picnic table outside your office building where you work.               

The wider your reading, the better. But make sure what you’re reading lies within your fields of interest. That’s not saying you shouldn’t read something new and different once in while.  But if you stick to what interests you, you’ll be more likely to enjoy what you’re reading because you have some interest in the subject matter. Perhaps you’re interested in anything having to do with the Arctic or Antarctic. You might read articles, short stories, non-fiction books and novels about either location----all within you realm of interest.

You may be interested in reading various genres of writing—science fiction, mysteries, detective stories, westerns, etc. But if you don’t enjoy a particular genre, reading it for whatever reason won’t make you like it any more. In fact, it may totally turn you off to it because you see reading it as a self-assignment of sorts.

Also, be sure to stick to writing that has been professionally edited or at least written by a professional, such as this blog. Not all blogs fall into this category, however. Some are just ramblings of everyday people with something to say on a particular subject. And while they’re useful for gleaning information, the writing in them isn’t always up to par.

You can also read or re-read works of literature. But watch out. The older a piece of writing is, the more its style will be dated. And you want to read writing from the last 50-70 years—the period that includes modern writers like Ernest Hemingway, John Updike, Tom Wolfe, Ann Rice, and Truman Capote.

Remember, you’re writing in the 21st Century, so the technique and style you need to absorb should be of your contemporaries. But that doesn’t mean you can’t glean ideas from famous works. Try to figure out how the writer developed his or her idea for a story or book. Was it relevant at the time? Was it related to current events? Is it still relevant or could it be relevant again in a new form?

And while no idea should be done again in exactly the same way, you could put your own spin to an old classic. Take “Romeo and Juliet,” for example. This story of star-crossed lovers has been done over hundreds of times, each as intriguing as the last.

In the process of reading, learn to recognize bad writing. Then steer clear of it, both in your reading and your own writing.

You Can Take It With You

As a busy day-job writer, you need to be ready to mix it up, to write on the go, to always have a draft or a research article or a final edit in your briefcase or under the seat of the car, or on your laptop, tablet, cell phone, or thumb drive.

Today’s technology makes it possible for you to take your writing with you.  Laptops, tablets, readers, and smart phones are all available.  But you may not own all of these devices, you most likely have one or two.  And even if you aren’t this electronically connected, you still have pen paper and perhaps a clipboard.

One of the most useful tools for today’s writers is a laptop.  Some use only a laptop computer.  Perhaps you live in a smaller apartment and don’t have space for full desktop setup.  While you can purchase a new laptop – preferably one with wireless—you can often find one for less that’s refurbished on a manufacturer’s web site.

The same applies to tablets.  While you may not have the keyboard flexibility of a laptop or desktop, nor the full word processing power, you can always purchase an optional add-on keyboard to help you jot down notes or make lists. Tablets and e-readers are better for reading overdrafts or for doing research—bookmarking web sites for later use.

Evernote, a program that allows you to save articles and whole web pages, as well as create to do and idea lists, as well as random notes, then access them on another of your devices at another time, is an excellent tool.

Even smart phones offer a way to access notes or to do pulmonary research while on the go.  With so many restaurants, cafes, and coffee shops offering free Wi-Fi, it makes sense to get plugged into today’s technology.

But while owning and using electronic devices is a start, you’ll have to get into a mobile mode if you expect to accomplish anything while on the go.

When you’re at your computer in your office, you have everything at hand—handwritten notes, printed out notes, lists, computer files—all at the ready. But when you’re on the go, you may not have all these things at your fingertips. To successfully work on the go, you have to prepare your work ahead of time.

Type up and print out your pages of notes. Save the files on your desktop but also save them to a thumb drive or directly on your laptop or tablet via a wireless connection. Also print out your notes. While some writers do all their work on their computers, it makes sense to have notes or drafts of articles, stories, or chapters of a book printed out so that you can mark or edit them with a colored pen.

Not all locations have Wi-Fi available. If you’re in a situation where there’s not electronic connection, then you can take out your printed notes and such for current projects, and continue working. But you have to prepare these beforehand.

One problem that can occur when working with a thumb drive is that you create or edit files on it but forget that the version on your main computer hasn’t been changes. Get in the habit of copying all the changed files onto the hard drive of your desktop or laptop at the end of each day or upon returning home if away for a length of time. If you’re using a laptop and a desktop, make sure that you save files to both in their most current form.

If you choose to read over drafts on your tablet or e-reader, don’t forget to delete them when you’re finished that project so that they don’t clog up the memory on your mobile device.

Another way of working while on the go is to use a service like GoToMyPC. With this service, for which you’ll have to pay a monthly fee, you can access the files on your desktop computer while working away from home on your laptop, tablet, or a third-party computer, such as those in a hotel business center.

Using your mobile devices will allow you to make better use of the incidental spots in your daily schedule—lunch hour, waiting for your kids to get out of sports practice, a half-hour between school drop-off and your morning commute, waiting in a doctor’s or dentist’s office, waiting to board your flight at an airport—when, given the right setup and equipment, you could easily fit in a solid session of writing or editing.

Spinning Your Way to Profits

Too many writers move from one new project to the other.  They never consider all the work researching each one and literally close the book on each as they finish it. That’s such a waste of time and potential resources. Back in April of 2010, I wrote about doing spin-offs in this blog. I concentrated on using research over and over again, but this time I’d like to show you some other ways you can spin your way to profits.

Remember the old saying, “It takes money to make money.” Spin-offs—making your material work in a number of ways—allow you to make your money earn money. While you may not have any control of how much interest your bank pays you to let them “use” your money, you do have lots of control when it comes to using accumulated materials, as well as actual articles and stories, if you own the rights to them. So let’s start there.

Unless you’ve sold an article or story for all rights, you still own secondary rights. If you’ve sold articles to newspapers, you’ve most likely sold them First Serial Rights for their market. That means you can sell that same article to any other newspaper in the country. The big papers in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles are exceptions to this since they often buy exclusive or all rights, but they also pay the most. If you can find newspapers buying articles these days, you may have a treasure of articles just waiting to be used. And while smaller papers don’t pay as much, selling the same article over and over can reap big rewards for practically no work.

You can also rework previously published articles by updating them or changing their focus. You may only need to change the beginning and end of an article to enable you to sell the re-vamped piece elsewhere for secondary rights. Many markets will gladly buy secondary rights. There are quite a few markets out there that pay only five cents a word or even $35 total. While that may not seem like much, if you can find five or ten like that, you’re on your way to self-syndication.

Another way to use spin-off material is to sell the same magazine article to a number of specialty magazines. If you’ve written on a general enough subject, you can tailor the article to fit different markets just by changing the slant. An article about display techniques could be sold to magazines dealing with retail sales, antiques, home decoration, even collecting. It just takes some creative imagination on your part. If the magazine is in the lower end of the pay scale, don't bother to query the editor. Instead, just send the article, attached to an Email, explaining that you’re sending the article to see if that editor might be interested in publishing it. If your article covers a topic of universal interest, the editor will most likely purchase it.
 
Not only can you write spin-off material, you can also sell reprints of what you've published to specialized markets and databases. For instance, an article on stress management, reprinted separately, might be of interest to corporate managers who want to see that their management trainees have a copy. Companies and associations also buy material to distribute to their customers via newsletters.

Spin-offs do two things: They add a little more revenue to your bank account while spreading  the word about your expertise.

But cultivate your sources carefully. Take time to rework the same ones. For example, to get information for an article on the ten questions investment brokers are asked most, a writer who specializes in writing about investing might contact some of the stable of resources he or she has built up over the years. Plus, with a specialty, you’ll already have a backlog of material at hand, so most of your research will already be completed.

Finally, to create financially successful spin-offs, you need to have at least 90 percent of the research material already in hand, and you have to be a fast writer. Try not to spend more than two days on a spin-off piece. If it takes more time than that, you’ll be losing money. Also, try to have your major markets pay for all the research costs by doing more research than necessary in the beginning. That way the cost won’t come out of your pocket later if you need a little more material for your spin-offs.

Gallant Giveaways

As a freelance writer, promotion can come in variety of forms. Sometimes traditional advertising works, depending on what sort of writing you’re doing. But often, you’ll need to think creatively about promoting yourself and your work.

First, think about your specific qualities as a writer. What would best project your image in some silent, ever-present reminder to your readers or clients? The obvious answer is some form of writing—a visual example of your work, but with a twist.

Make a list of places where you can place an example of your work—Web sites, blogs, newsletters, etc. Do a search for Web sites that deal with the type of subject matter you write about. Check them out individually and see if they accept articles on their sites. Pick a half dozen and either prepare short, 500-words-or-less articles on topics that would appeal to them or customize and update pieces you’ve written previously. Send your sample articles off to the webmasters of the sites you’ve chosen. Do this for each separate subject area you write about. You may not see instant results, but eventually you’ll notice Email messages from people looking to know more about you and your subject. You may be asked to write for other sites or give permission to use one of the pieces you’ve already posted.

In today’s world of social media, you should have no problem getting some attention from your sample promotional pieces. People will tweet about them on Twitter, post links to them on Facebook, and in general talk about them. But most of all, you’ll have gotten the word out about you and your work. Remember to include a short bio with your pieces with links to your Web site and Facebook fan page. This is how you get people to notice you.

A second easy way to promote yourself and your writing is by writing something special to include with your holiday greeting. While many people have stopped sending Christmas cards as such, there are lots of other ways to get a greeting out there. For instance, you can prepare an ecard. Write a holiday article or story and find or create an illustration for it. Put the illustration and the story in the body of an Email or lay it out in your word processing program and save it as a PDF file. Just about everyone can open a PDF file. And those with ebook readers can read your story on them. If your story or article is memorable, you’ll be surprised how many people will send an Email to let you know that they’ve shared it with their family and friends. You can send the same story or an even more professional version to your editors for both periodicals and books. You’ll be amazed what a little viral marketing can do.

Along the same lines, check out blogs that may invite you to be a guest blogger. Like Facebook, not only will all your followers read it, but so will all the followers of the person for whom you’re guest blogging. To begin, check with fellow writers and see if you can exchange blogs with any of them. Not matter how you do it, the results will benefit you.

Of course, if you do more corporate writing, you may want to consider small gifts from time to time, but especially during the holidays. What would you like to be representative of your work through the year—a desk calendar, a bookmark, a pen with your name on it? You can have your contact information imprinted on a variety of objects, from pens to penlights. It pays to be creative here. Choose an object that stands out from the crowd. One writer/photographer saw an ad in a national coin magazine—a reproduction of a Viking ship on an old coin. He had some of these inexpensive but handsome items attached to a paperweight with his name and phone number on it and sent them to his favorite editors.

A travel writer knew a craftsman who could inexpensively reproduce various items from her world travels into almost anything. From time to time she commissions felt bookmarks, picture frames, desk boxes, etc., and sees that the editors and publishers she knows get a unique reminder of her work each year. If you’re going to go this route, make sure your gifts are well made and not tacky. A shoddy gift will hurt you more than help you. Try to give gifts that are useful as well as tasteful, so the person receiving it will see your name frequently.

Just as there are ideas all around for articles and books, there are obviously all manner of ideas for publicity about your freelancing business. Watch for them everywhere. Allocate some of your time to develop them in your special way. Make notes on possible angles, amusing tactics, or catchy jingles and slogans. You can interpret many of these ideas, so they won't require expensive chunks of your budget.

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.

Looking Into That Crystal Ball

While it would be nice to have a crystal ball to look into to tell what’s going to happen in your freelance writing career, as far as technology is concerned, it’s just not possible. But there are ways you can predict or at least forecast what may happen. And with a little luck, it will.

If you’re determined enough, you can make anything happen. Your mind is a strange and fascinating thing. Let it work for you. So the first step when looking into the future is to think positively. Imagine yourself a success, and you’ll most likely succeed.

To help plan for the future, know where you hope to be in five years. What kind of writing—articles, stories, books, or a combination of these—do you anticipate producing? How much money do you want to be making? Knowing the answers to these questions will help you obtain the skills necessary for you to succeed.

To make sure you get where you want to go, you’ve got to create a five-year plan. This shouldn’t be set in concrete, but be flexible enough to change as time goes on. But at least you’ll know where you want to end up at the end of that time.

Begin by figuring out where you want to be at the end of your career. Do you see an end, or do you plan to write for the rest of your life? In the beginning, you may not know where you fit in the freelancing world, but after a year or two, you should have a pretty good idea. A freelance career is a living thing. It changes and evolves as it goes, so you’ll need to do the same.

Imagine where you’ll be two years from now. Do you see yourself working full time as a freelancer or do you plan on working part-time for the foreseeable future?

What kind of assignments do you want to receive on a regular basis? And what do you need to know to get them—knowledge, experience, kind of people for contacts, etc.? What have you done so far that will help you get started along this path? Make a list or a spreadsheet of every writing project or job, noting how you did it, with whom you were in contact, and how much you were paid. Seeing that information all together on paper will show you just how well you’re progressing or not. And if not, you’ll be able to see where you’re falling short.

What barriers do you see between where you are now and where you want to be in five years? Don’t be shy or sugar-coat the your situation. Note everything in detail. Is the lack of sufficient funds holding you back? Do you see a way around this? Do your family and friends support you, either financially or emotionally? Do you feel like a writer?

Analyze the current publishing situation. Things haven’t been so great lately. Will that affect your long-term plan. How can you adapt your plan to fit into upcoming industry changes? Do you see yourself publishing ebooks or are you set on print publishing?

How well do you present yourself and your talents? Are you shy about promoting yourself? Do you think that writers shouldn’t do that? Too many beginning writers pick up that kind of attitude from their schooling. To be a successful writer, you have to live in a studio apartment and starve for your craft. That’s nonsense. In today’s world, writers are working professionals just like lots of other people. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Do you overreact to criticism? Beginning writers are notoriously thin-skinned. You may think everyone is out to steal your work. If it’s worth stealing, then perhaps you’d have something to worry about. But as a beginner, it mostly likely isn't. Instead, concentrate on making your writing the best it can be.

Are you trying to handle everything yourself instead of looking for the right kind of help? If you’re having problems with a particular skill, get some help, either through a tutor or a class. Find out all you can about the kind of writing you intend to do. Read lots of examples of it. Become very familiar with its style or organization. Don’t think just because you read articles, stories, or books that you know how to write them.

What warnings have been coming back to you that you've ignored? Have you had the same pieces rejected again and again? Have any editors hinted at why they’ve rejected your work? Try to get some feedback, even from your friends. After all, some of them may be avid readers.

Creating a five-year plan will force you to keep track of the people and places where you'll find help in accomplishing your goals. You won't veer off into sidelines that aren't financially rewarding enough. A five-year plan also maintains vigilance over your best, most lucrative and satisfying ideas. Be both realistic and ambitious—five years can be a very short or a very long time. But if you don't look that far ahead, you'll discover you've lost much more than just five years of your time.

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.