By Alex J. Coyne One of my first high-paying features sold to The Investor for $170 (Six String Stocks, October 2015). I’ve sold others since, including a piece for Catholic Digest that earned $500. I sure didn’t think it was possible when I started out with $20/article rates. Here’s how I got to higher rates […]
Are There Grants with No Strings?
/ 2017-07-28One of the most common questions that FundsforWriters receives is where can someone find a grant to self-publish a book, ninety percent of the time their first book. No mention of genre, where the author lives, the purpose of the book, or why anyone would want to fund such a book, much less read it. […]
Why They Extend Contest Deadlines
/ 2017-07-01I have a writing friend who gets downright angry when a contest extends the deadline. He considers it an insult, or that the editors are looking for specific people who didn’t make the deadline. In reality, contests are run by people and they make mistakes or misjudge or simply didn’t plan well enough ahead. Here’s […]
Your Income Depends on How Well You Cope with Rejection
/ 2017-06-09To make money as a freelance writer you can’t just play offense (networking, learning how to pitch, improving your craft, finding new markets, negotiating). You also have to play defense. And that means developing something researchers have identified as crucial to financial success: a higher threshold for failure. The eminent psychologist Dean Simonton, in his masterpiece […]
Are You Polarizing?
/ 2017-06-04This is one of my most important messages. One of the many reasons I left my day job was stress. Many of you have done the same or are in the process of finding ways to leave the lifestyle that makes your world less palatable. I worked for the federal government, and my job entailed […]
The Wrong Bio
/ 2017-05-30A gentleman at a conference came up to me and asked how he was supposed to include a bio in his query letter to literary agents when he had not published. He had a couple of stories in anthologies, and his day job had nothing to do with his writing. He kept catching himself making […]
How the Shy Writer Copes
/ 2017-05-27When I speak at events, people tell me they can’t believe I’m an introverted person. That’s not to say I can’t become a Mama Tiger when it comes to my family, or a real BE-ATCH when someone’s wronged me or mine. But for the most part, I avoid throngs of people. Throngs meaning as few as […]
Why Pay Contest Entry Fees?
/ 2017-05-12I received this email from a reader this week: “I see an entry that might work for me, but then the publication requests $10, $20, and sometimes more to enter the contest. Many times I just pass. Why should we pay to present our work? To date, I have paid a few, but generally I […]
Entertainment Writing Jobs You May Not Have Considered – Part 2 of 2
/ 2017-04-21In this follow-up article, I put more of an emphasis on the feature film world. Thanks to the proliferation of “prosumer” technology like HD cameras and editing software, more films are being made now than ever before, offering increased accessibility for writers who are willing to attempt a more non-traditional approach to their careers. Write […]
Entertainment Writing Jobs You May Not Have Considered – Part 1 of 2
/ 2017-04-15As a former literary manager, I represented film and television writers for the better part of eight years. Many of the talented but less experienced writers who hadn’t yet made a living at the craft were solely interested in creating original screenplays that would be shopped to production companies, studios and packaging agents. They never […]
I Need a Grant
/ 2016-07-05By C. Hope Clark – I forget that new writers enter the profession daily, and I’m most reminded when a slew of them write me after seeing FundsforWriters.com for the first time. The first thing they see is GRANTS, and that throws their fledgling minds into overdrive, wondering how they can find some generous grant […]