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I received this email from a new FundsforWriters reader. I have paraphrased it a little bit to avoid showing her history. <<First, I love your site. I can’t wait to continue exploring all of the valuable information that you have. I am a new writer not yet published. I have read so much material (books, articles, blogs), you name it, about the craft or writing. Some of them try and convince me that I will write a great novel in 90 days. Others imply that self-publishing is the only way to currently get published. I honestly feel like I am swimming in TOO MUCH information. So, I guess my request would be an article helping new writers maneuver through the slush and read what we really need to get started. I hear your voice, “That is too broad a topic.” Probably so, but if you could just highlight a few that would help.>> My response: You are right. That is too broad a subject. But you are also right in that there is too much information. It’s amazing how many people publish how-to without the teeth behind the lesson. They are more known for their how-to than their actually doing. But More

“You should write about your experiences growing up in a haunted house.” Those were my sister’s words. “You experienced the paranormal more than the rest of us.” She never believed I’d seen the ghost, yet, she saw the value in the story. While I pondered her words, I continued writing my other creative nonfiction – stories about my grandmother (“Personal Notes” Moose Hide Books: 2008), my mother (F-Stop: A Life in Pictures Baico Publishing: 2011), close family friends (The Whistling Bishop Baico Publishing: 2008) and I helped Dad with his memoir. In between, I wrote fiction, but my heart lay in nonfiction, specifically that which you could take reality and tell it in story form, emulating novel fiction, and the ghost story kept churning in my mind. The wise words of my editor, “Memoir sell better than fiction,” coupled with my sister’s urging, resulted in the resurfacing of my childhood memories and the ghost that haunted my nights. The result? Mrs. Murray’s Ghost (Tell-Tale Publishing: 2018) and three other books in The Piccadilly Street Series (book five is in the works). Not all of what I wrote in The Piccadilly Street Series was memoir, at least not in the traditional More

You know the song. The one with the lyric, “Dance like nobody’s watching.” You get the meaning. Let yourself be the real you. You know how you are in the car, alone, when the perfect song you sang to in high school comes on the radio. You belt it out, maybe even attempting harmony. But when we post our writing online, we do so with the idea that someone is waiting to judge. Suddenly we become more homogenized with the others hanging out there, like ourselves, who are weighing what to say so that the audience likes us. We debate with ourselves on how to write something that will garner applause so that we fit in better. We don’t want to run the risk of being too different. We often dumb ourselves down, when the crying shame is that there is a uniquely different person behind that screen, behind that pen, behind that keyboard. The world is crying for sincerity. The world thirsts for people who are themselves. That’s not saying everyone should be their weirdest self. Just that they ought to be true to themselves, and that includes in writing. We too often want to know what’s selling, what’s More

This may come as a surprise, but you don’t have to travel to become a travel writer. Almost everybody lives in or near a town or city that has some points of interest for others. If you’ve lived in your area for a long time, you probably know a lot about its various attractions. That makes you a great resource for others who may be interested in visiting your city or region. It’s also a great opportunity to use your knowledge to break into the field of travel writing without ever having to board an airplane. Lists are a great entry point for new travel writers. Niches are all around you, and you can easily create lists of things to do for each of those niches. Many of the articles I have written and published about where I live – Berlin, Germany – have been very focused list articles. For Paste Magazine, I wrote “Three Two-Wheeled Ways to See Berlin,” which covered ways of getting around in the city that didn’t involve public transportation or a car. iExplore published my article “Berlin Is a Year-Round Halloween Town,” which detailed several local attractions that cater to fans of horror and the macabre. More

“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” – British economist Charles Goodhart (Goodhart’s law) This quote says that basically, when you set a goal, and you become hard focused in meeting that goal, you can easily forget what drove you to set the goal in the first place. The measure, so to speak, becomes the details in the goals instead of the original mission. Metrics, for instance. When you set goals in terms of hours, dollars, sales, hits, reviews, and followers, and that’s what you get up in the morning to which to give your attention, you begin chasing the metrics. Your original goal turns murky. In another instance, you may notice what’s popular and think, I can do that. That applies not just to books but also to short pieces, even journalism. You see what is getting attention, say on sites like Medium.com or popular blogs. Or in terms of books, you see the best selling genres and shift gears to write those instead of what you originally started writing. You are chasing success. You are trying to find the easier road, or at least the road someone else has cut out ahead of you. More

The Web abounds with writers who ponder how to develop that proverbial network that’s supposed to represent their 1,000 true fans…those fans who are supposed to make growth possible. Those fans who want anything we have to offer, and tell others about it. In case you are not familiar with the concept, read these articles. You need to know. A 20-Step Process for Finding Your 1,000 True Fans (from 2008) http://www.copyblogger.com/20-steps-1000-fans/ 1000 True Fans? Try 100 (today) https://future.com/1000-true-fans-try-100/ 1000 True Fans (today) https://elitecontentmarketer.com/1000-true-fans/  The logic is that if you could find 1,000 true fans willing to pay $100 a year for your work, you develop a $100,000 income. The theory is over a decade old. Is it still applicable? Of course it is. In some circles, outside that of books, of course, the logic has expanded to finding 100 fans willing to buy $1,000 worth of product in a year, and yes, there are ample examples of products out there where this works. Sports clothing, video games, home interior products learn to use their brand and cater to the repeating customer. The problem with that theory in the publishing industry, however, is that writers cannot create $1,000 worth of product More

Someone recently emailed me, upset that a book contest charged a $70 entry fee. The first prize was a strong four figures, and I knew the credibility of the sponsor. Therefore, I had no problem posting the contest. The complainer called the contest predatory and told me not to respond to their complaint. Apparently they just wanted to vent to me, but I could not let this generalization go. Of course, I replied. Generalizations like this hurt the industry, I said, and went on to state the following. As I teach at conferences and to anyone who will listen, contests that do not charge entry fees are more likely to: not pay out, pay less, attract less quality writing, and be less reliable. Unless there is a deep-pocket sponsor, someone has to come up with the prize money, cost of advertising, and payment to the finalist judges. Having judged many contests, sometimes being paid and sometimes not, I know what it takes to judge a contest that allows book-length submissions. A judge can receive 100+ books in the mail/email to judge in six weeks, and there are often multiple judges. If anyone says there is one judge, that judge is More

When I started freelancing, I was a pure writing whore. I’d write anything for anyone for almost any price. It’s what most writers do. Their brain says get paid to write with little thought given to branding the career. Defining your specialty, choosing your niche(s), at first blush feels like setting limitations on potential work. What if there isn’t enough work in the niche(s) you like? What if you don’t feel like enough of an expert in the niche(s)? What if you go all out in one niche only to learn there’s more work in another? When you start a business, you have to define yourself. My son opened a strength training gym. I joined. I love it. The members, however, are slow coming in. But those coming in are sticking around. Why? Because they like the focus. They like that someone catered to what they love . . . functional strength training. They found their niche. He provided a niche. The union is usually longer-lasting in these situations. Your goal is to land consistent paying work, repetitive customers, and establish a name for yourself. That’s harder to do when you do everything. Those needing freelance writers prefer to connect with writers More

Storyteller and mythologist Martin Shaw is as much a philosopher as anyone I’ve read. He’s Irish and steeped in that history of storytelling, which if you’ve read such stories, know they are quite rich in lesson. In a recent post of his in Emergence Magazine, he spoke of embracing mystery, which could be interpreted in embracing uncertainty as well. It also spoke of embracing who we are, in all its uncomfortable uncertainty.  So studying mystery turned into a study of ourselves. “Accept the challenge of uncertainty. As a matter of personal style. It’s the right thing to do. We get older, we find life is riven with weirdness. We should be weird too.” Like water seeks its level, most of the world seeks a level life. As you can read in abundance on social media, most folks fight change, seek blame, and strike out at life not being the “normal” they wish. The real goal should be embracing who we are and what we wish to become, not make others fit our mold. “Stay honest to the shape you came here to embody. Refuse to be a hologram or engage in acts of ventriloquism.” Writers, especially, seek originality. But all too often More

I freelance off and on as my schedule permits or my bank account demands. I usually use https://www.freelancer.com (lowest membership level), and https://www.upwork.com (free version) for budgetary reasons. Ghostwriting fiction has taken the lead as my favorite type of work. It has a lot of perks but there are things you should know if you want to make it your career. Landing my first job was not as easy as I thought it would be. I was new to the game. There are plenty of veteran ghostwriters bidding on the same jobs out there. Not having a successful work history on a particular platform meant I needed to put a lot more effort into convincing someone to hire me. This proved true no matter how much ghostwriting work I had under my belt elsewhere. My freelancing portfolio consists of everything from content writing to children’s book illustration, book layout, and creating marketing materials. Adding ghostwriting fiction to the list was another skill that I had to prove. Since most ghostwriting is done under an NDA (non-disclosure agreement), this meant that I needed to use samples of the writing I’ve done under my name or pen name. I don’t typically write More