28,000 subscribers

What writer hasn’t wished for regular income from a regular column? This year is my third year as a columnist, and I love it. Believe it or not, some markets are looking for columnists. They are also open to serials, which are similar to a column. You can pitch column ideas to your local newspaper, magazine or regional publication. Some markets that are open to columns include Wellcome Collection (https://wellcomecollection.org/get-involved/propose-a-story), The Cut and Inc.com. You can also go solo, writing a column on Medium or through Substack, and once you get traction and regular readers, an editor may approach you to write your column for their publication. If not, approach them with statistics under your belt; statistics showing you have the material for column writing, and you have the talent to attract followers. Any editor would love you bringing your readership with you to theirs. Once you land a column, or are in the throes of establishing one, here are tips to keep it going: Know the Audience Know and understand who you are writing for. The editor who enlisted me to write a column about books emphasized that the audience is readers, but I need to be able to More

I received a sweet email from a fan of my novels. “Hi Hope.  I just wanted to thank you again for your newsletter and to let you know I requested Murder in Craven at the Vancouver, WA library. I have a goal to read forty books this year and am hoping to add the Craven series to the list. Money is tight right now, so I try to add books from local authors to my library’s collection.” What a wonderful gesture! Authors ask their fans to buy their books all the time, but do they ask them to order the books via the library? Because if the book is not on the library shelf, and someone asks, there’s a chance the book will be purchased and stocked. And if the book is part of a series, even better. A library buys a title once for it to be read free by dozens of readers. To some authors, that means dozens of readers not buying the book. While that is partly the case, those readers just might buy other books in the series, or buy another book outside the series, tell their book club about the book they read from the More

Artificial intelligence has led to job losses and client cut backs. However, it’s important to notice that AI has been used mostly to replace impersonal, cheap copywriting or content jobs. High-quality sites and news-worthy publications won’t replace their authors with artificial intelligence anytime soon. If you’re an author, your stories are still human enough to sell to the right market—but still, fewer authors are making an income from copywriting. Writing and the Human Element The type of client who chooses to replace human authors with Artificial Intelligence isn’t the kind of publication or client an author wants. Usually, these are entities that never paid their human writers what they were worth anyway, so for these companies, using AI is just another reach for cheap results. Focus selling your stories to publications, literary journals, and websites where content expresses clear human elements. Essays, personal stories, and interviews hinge on human elements and interaction outside of AI’s scope. Only Gay Talese could have written Frank Sinatra Has a Cold (1966), and my account of living with connective tissue disorder (Spider Hands) was unique and human. Writing About AI Even writing about artificial intelligence needs a human writer who understands the topic. Learn about AI instead More

While at a recent writing retreat, an attendee cornered me, asking questions about entering the freelance writing industry. She told me what she’d like to write about, but she felt she really wasn’t an expert at anything. So I mined her life. That lady left floating off the ground, so thrilled, so empowered, and so endowed with ideas that I couldn’t help but laugh aloud. She made my day, and, apparently, I made hers. Everyone forgets trade magazines. There’s little romantic or enthusiastic about these publications, but they are highly targeted publications with a solid readership base. They are funded by targeted advertising, and they usually answer back and pay more quickly than the average mag that goes out to the general public. Trades cater to certain professions, hobbyists, and enthusiasts. From how to make jewelry to managing police department. From airlines to pizza restaurants. From teaching to lawyering. From agriculture to architecture. I could go on and on. Another retreat attendee had published in general areas, but not in the area in which she worked….that of being a chef. She wanted to branch out writing in the food industry but was worried she had no clips. No worry, I More

Do you have a passion for video games? If you do, breaking into the video game article market could be a good way to expand your freelance writing business. Countless video game websites and magazines cover console, mobile device, and Windows PC gaming, many of which are open to freelance article submissions. I have been a freelance gaming writer since about 2010 and will share some advice here for how you can break into this burgeoning article market. What Are Video Game Articles? You can write various types of video game articles for digital and print publications. Many gaming websites include video game guides, features, reviews, and news articles. Guide articles provide hints and tips for playing games. Reviews rate the latest game releases. News articles cover all the latest developments in the gaming industry, especially for new games and console releases. The feature pieces explore aspects of video gaming from many angles. Search For Freelance Game Writer Vacancies Video game websites often advertise their freelance vacancies on recruitment network sites. Websites such as Simply Hired, Pro Blogger, Blogging Jobs, Video Game Journalism, LinkedIn, Indeed, and Freelance Writing Jobs are good places to search for video game sites seeking regular contributors. Valnet and GAMURS Group are two digital media networks with numerous More

The new reason you need a website is going to be different than you might think. Artificial Intelligence – AI. Many writers these days deem themselves “writers” because they’ve learned to access AI programs, tell it what they want to pitch, and have it either write the query letter or the article itself. Some call themselves still being original because they edited the piece and changed a few things. I don’t want that in FundsforWriters. Many of them claim that by using Discord, Reddit, and other sites, they find loads of work and submit as many as 20 articles a day (eye rolling by me), and therefore, claim a website not needed. Why bother, they say, when they can find work without the burden of tending a website? Or even maintain social media? I rejected four articles within an hour this week, each using the same spiel they were taught by someone in a YouTube episode. Seriously, there are people out there making money teaching wannabes (or not even wannabes since they don’t really want to be writers) how to scam editors in this method of pitching. Even more arcane was how one writer pitched me a piece on how More

In the gym today, my trainer advised that if you want to improve and build muscle (i.e., get strong), you push the last three reps/times such that you think you’ll fail at any moment. In other words, you push to failure. You push, seeking that point when you just can’t. He said he’s had clients get frustrated when he tells them they left effort out there unused, and then walk out. But they usually walk back in the next day after they’ve had a look-in-the-mirror moment. Once they learn to lift like that, and once they learn to come back day after day and not just when they can work it in, they are lifting with passion. Only then is when you see success. Your brain will try to tell you to take the path of least resistance in most anything. It will tell you to stop before it gets too hard. But you do not improve unless you push past that. In writing, you write/publish/submit to the point of failure. Writers who opine about the pain of rejection, in my opinion, don’t write with passion. They write for fun. They write to feel good. They do not write with More

Businesses increasingly use AI to draft and edit content – blog posts, case studies, training outlines, policy documents, contracts, presentations and more. I heard about a life-writing company that uses AI to ghost books based on an interview transcript, and only brings in a human to edit and sense-check the final draft. Many may deplore this direction, but it’s rapidly becoming new work for writers. Rather than create from scratch, people take AI drafts and ‘make them human’. This requires a slightly different skillset to that required of a traditional content writer. At least businesses understand AI content alone won’t cut it. In fact, the request is often just that: ‘make this sound like it’s not AI’. Everyone’s using it, but no one wants to be caught doing it. So how do you ‘humanise’ AI content? Get rid of the obvious telltale AI icks Nothing wrong with an em dash in its place, but the likes of ChatGPT use them to excess. Other telltale signs include the gratuitous use of emojis and a number of cheesy almost cliche constructions. For example: ‘The result? Increased sales, and a delighted client.’ Another would be the overused ‘Not X but Y’ pattern. As in: ‘This isn’t just More

Recently a long-time fan wrote me, saying she kept some of my words for ready reference. She came across a particular essay that really resonated with her, and she asked that I repeat it, because what applied years ago, still applies today. It’s pretty evergreen, I think. “The world is hurting, and it doesn’t know how to stop hurting.   That’s why you ensconce yourself in your writing space and find your happy place. Not only because you need it for your peace of mind, but because others still need good stories for escape, for enjoyment, for self-help, for stimulation. Create your happy place. Make yourself want to go there. Then disappear in your stories. Show the world that negativity is not going to win.” Sure, it’s easy to say chin up and all that, but we have bad days. Sometimes it’s politics. Sometimes it’s family. Sometimes it’s the fact life didn’t turn out quite as we’d hoped. Writing is what I use to level the day. Writing is what I use to disappear from the horrors. Writing is what I use to feel better about myself. Develop the habit. Writing is worth way more to you than simple publication. More

As a journalist, the most common question I receive is about the source of my story ideas. Sometimes, newspapers assign me work which saves me the brainpower of having to come up with ideas. In the unfortunate case that I must come up with my own stories (most of the time), there’s a few tricks like crowdsourcing in various corners of the internet, getting yourself on media lists, and going back to previous sources. However, the best advice I can offer, cliched as it is, is to keep your ears open. We take for granted that interesting things happen in our vicinity throughout our daily lives. In my case, a light bulb goes on in my head at those moments. It’s an instinct I’ve honed over time. Call it a spidey sense of sorts. Four Tips on Honing This Skill: Notice the interesting things going on around you. I was driving down a highway and noticed a motel totally out of character with its neighboring properties on Arlington’s hotel row. Several months later I thought about that hotel when I needed a local article. In another example, I visited a synagogue in Richmond and saw pictures of two congregants in More