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Writing is a primary source of income that should be stored in more than one location. When you don’t do this and your hardware crashes, you risk missed deadlines, kill fees, and strained client relationships. In addition, you feel frustrated and angry as you try to duplicate what was lost from memory or notes. As a longtime technical/creative writer, I regularly work with backups and archives. I understand the cost of losing your important information without a second copy. In the end, even one day of lost productivity can exceed a year of a basic subscription for backup storage. Why You Don’t Back Up Your Work Developing reasons not to save data beyond your device is a creative endeavor in itself. One cause given is that your material has a greater chance of being stolen from a cloud storage platform. In other situations, your overconfidence exceeds the hardware’s actual staying power. Then there’s procrastination. “I’ll get to it soon” never materializes when it comes to securing your work. As a result, you might be too late to do anything if your device won’t boot up. Back Up Now for Safety Later It takes around 20 minutes to add your data More

In a recent chatroom, someone asked if there was any hope left for struggling writers with so many other writers taking shortcuts with AI. My response was that if fear of AI knocks you off your game, maybe you aren’t playing the right game. Many of us live in fear that we aren’t being productive with our writing. We aren’t publishing enough, marketing enough, or selling enough. There are plenty of other ways to make money in this world, and writing is not at the forefront of those opportunities. Writing is a love dance with words. If you start with a story to tell, it’s still about dancing with words. If you have strong journalism skills, it’s still about dancing with words. If you need to make money to prove you are a writer, it’s still about dancing with words. For a moment, toss the concept of being professional, making money, or becoming well known. When writing feels inherent… When writing gives you solace… When writing transports you to a better place… When writing allows you to give yourself grace and not compete… When writing isn’t about legacy, career, or proving a point… That’s loving yourself. That’s appreciating yourself. That’s More

I declined a speaking opportunity this week. One in a very reasonable distance from me, as a matter of fact. This time of year often fills my calendar with such requests, which thrills me. I love doing events. But they must be worth my investment of time, travel, and book sales. In this case, it was a writers thing. I won’t say which one. Doesn’t matter. That’s not the point. Their conditions and mine just didn’t meet in the middle and we parted ways amicably. We all have budgets. But, that said, my fee is not high, and oftentimes, the fact I am on the SC Humanities Speakers Roster would have covered my speaking fee. But the travel and hotel were not covered, and sales would be minimal. Writers don’t make money selling books to other writers. Some will say I can afford to turn down an event at this stage in my career, but in actuality, I could not afford to accept it. I would have declined early in my career as well. Events consisting of all writers do not result in big book sales. Most writers there are trying to sell a book. Your exposure is minimal. The More

Many freelancers struggle with consistency, especially with pitching and idea generation. We all know we should keep a pitch tracker so we’ll know when we’ve sent something out and when we can expect a response. But if that’s all we’re doing, it’s easy to lose focus. Most of us are goal-oriented or reward-oriented. We like knowing there’s something waiting for us at the end of our hard work. We don’t always get responses fast enough to fill that need. What can help is a seven-step system that will keep the ideas flowing and make a writer look forward to writing. 1.    Start by creating a weekly goal tracker to keep ideas and outreach on track. It can look something like this: Task / Minimum Goal  / Stretch Goal New article ideas      5   /   10 Pitches sent      2  /   5 Follow-ups on previous pitches     2  /   3 Articles drafted or revised     1  /   2 2.    At the end of every week, have a creative check-in. I usually do this every Friday evening. See how many new ideas you came up with, how many pitches you sent, if any follow-ups are due in the coming week, and if there are any ideas you could refine or match to a different editor, More

I just spent a week going back and forth with a freelance writer who wanted to see his piece published in this newsletter. TO be honest, the piece had great potential. I needed some changes in it, and he quickly accommodated. The message had purpose. I hadn’t had red flags before then, but while he did a rewrite, I did a deep dive into him to see if he might be in any way affiliated with AI or a con artist from a third world country. I get a ton of both. I had hope for this piece, but my gut told me to look harder after I studied his resume…then his email. Three different emails with all of them Gmail, and two of them with names I could not read much less pronounce. Every single link in his bio led to places I’d never heard of before except one, LinkedIn. Then I looked at where he claimed to be from, and it ranged from West Virginia to California to UK to Asia. His resume was posted with a company that blatantly promoted itself as AI-friendly. He had no presence on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, etc. When I questioned him More

Strong submission guidelines are the cornerstone of being a published author. If you know which publications are receptive and paying, you’re ahead of the writing race. However, good guidelines can be difficult to source, and they’re individual to every author. Here’s how to sift through the pile and find the golden guidelines. Searching for Pages and Guidelines Search for guidelines using different engines: DuckDuckGo, Bing, and Google can each produce individual results.  I sold “Ouij-e: Summoning Spirits Online” to Fate & Fortune Magazine – but only after switching to DuckDuckGo for my searches. Bonus tip: turn off AI Search and Personalized Results via search engine settings, or use incognito mode. Add keywords to your search matching your niche (e.g. “submission guidelines technology” or “write for us music magazine”) and add keywords like “pay” or “rate” to look for ones more likely to list their pay. Searching for niche “pagan” markets connected me to The Wild Hunt’s guidelines, and I sold “Are Massive Multiplayer Online Rituals the Future?” and soon after submitted my first piece to the quarterly Witches Magazine. Markets that don’t list their requirements are much more likely to say: “We have no need for writers,” or “We don’t have a writing budget.” Public guidelines and “write for us” pages More

Writers look at contests for entry fee, word count, prize money, potential publication, and which influential judge might be on board to read the entries. But what is also important to note is the rights you give up if you win. . . or maybe even if you just enter.   Begin with understanding why an entity is even running the contest. What is the motive? Such motives can be:   1) To make money with entry fees. Often the fees tally higher than the prize money and expenses, giving the sponsor a profit. It’s how many literary journals stay afloat.   2) To draw attention to other products. Entities might need members, or wish to sell tickets to courses or classes or editing services, or hope to draw attention to a book or two, and a contest is free advertising to the rest of the entity’s assets.   3) To gather assets in the form of all these stories, poems, or prose and use them to populate a website, publish an anthology, or gain a connection to writers’ brands for future use. (i.e., We’ve had successful authors like John Doe participate in our contests.)   There is nothing illegal More

I’ve been writing for a long time. I’ve written novels for just under 20 years though I’ve officially published for 14. By now, a lot of people know I write books, and when I’m introduced to someone new and they learn I write books, I can talk it off the cuff with no problem. It’s part of my nature now. But that also means that I have friends and family who think my writing is just another part of me, no different than feeding chickens, gardening, and going to the gym. No, they don’t come to events, and more don’t read the books than do. Don’t get me wrong. . .I have noble and loyal readers who mean the world to me. However, I don’t see or hear from them every day. That means it’s totally up to me to show up to work. I have to love putting words in order. I have to love studying craft. I have to make appearances. I have to keep my social media, newsletters, and website updated. I have to want to do this as if nobody else is there for me. A lot of fledgling writers need atta-boys and atta-girls to keep More

As writers, it’s vital to be able to summarise what we offer in a few brief interesting words – as much for ourselves as for the readers we want to reach. Whenever I write any article, let alone a book, I begin by drafting a rough lede which sets out the essence of the piece, and why it might be worth reading – part summary, part hook. Then, as I write, I can sense-check my emerging copy to keep me on track. In the same way, developing a nutshell statement for yourself as an author is a helpful shortcut to tell people who you are as a writer and what you offer. There are lots of terms people use for this – author brand statement, USP (unique selling proposition), elevator pitch, but the basic idea is very simple. It’s an instant self-marketing tool that helps everyone from readers to bookstore managers to agents to get a quick sense of what you’re about. The words aren’t many but the thinking behind them can be intense. You boil down what you do and make it appealing to people. Craft different versions and try them out on friends and family. My overall nutshell More

(See Part 1: The website) Despite complaints about inbox overload and spam, surveys show consumers consider email the least intrusive of direct marketing tactics. When someone signs up for your messages, they’re inviting you into a personal space that’s largely competitor-free (unlike a search results page). And unlike social media, your list is yours to keep. An author website is essential. But it’s the emails you send that remind people you are there, nudge them about new work, and drive sales at key moments. Let’s look at how to get your email newsletter up and running, and how to grow your list of followers. Choose your email platform MailerLite is free for <1,000 subscribers, with unlimited email sends. A popular choice with authors, it includes automation, customisable signup forms, drag-and-drop email builders, landing pages and a visual workflow editor. (Automation is when you set up emails to send in response to an automatic trigger, such as a pre-prepared welcome email that automatically fires when someone signs up for your newsletter.) The interface is clean and intuitive, and you can segment your list to target different reader groups. As often, you need a paid plan for some features like advanced automations and additional More