triangleareafreelancers.org Blog

Write Now! 2010 Writers’ Conference

It’s that time of year again, folks. Time to sign up for our annual conference! We’ve made some changes, based on your feedback. This year we have separate classes for novice and advanced writers, so there’s something for everyone. We’ve also added a small group mentoring session, where you can meet your fellow attendees and ask published writers questions about your career goals. We hope you’ll join us!

***PLEASE NOTE that the conference location has changed to Wake Tech’s Main Campus, south of Raleigh.

Triangle Area Freelancers (TAF) will hold its annual nonfiction symposium Write Now! 2010 at Wake Technical Community College (Main Campus) on Saturday, March 27, 2010, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Local broadcast journalist and WRAL crime beat reporter Amanda Lamb will deliver the keynote address. Amanda is the author of three books: Smotherhood, Deadly Dose, and Evil Next Door, which is scheduled for an April 6 release.

The conference classes, taught by nationally published writers and journalists, are presented in two tracks. The novice track will include topics such as “Crafting a Winning Query Letter,” “Five-minute Mentoring,” “Nurturing the Writer/Editor Relationship,” and “Technology for Beginning Freelancers.” The advanced track will focus on “Moving Up to the Major Markets,” “Podcasting for Success,” “Chasing the Human Interest Story,” and “Niche Writing.”

Registration information is available on the TAF website:
www.triangleareafreelancers.org. Online registration is available with payment made through PayPal. The cost of the conference is $59 ($49 for students with a valid ID and seniors 65 and over). Only 100 seats are available. The registration fee includes a continental breakfast, box lunch, and beverages. For more information, call Donald Vaughan at 919.873.9833.

The perfect day

As freelancers, we’re often told that in order to be most productive, we should mimic the office workday. We’re advised to start writing first thing in the morning, work standard hours, and put a sign on our office door saying we’re not to be interrupted. Personal phone calls during the day are a no no, as are household chores, which should be done in the evening or on the weekends.

On the surface, this advice makes perfect sense. Except sometimes ideas that sound good don’t work as well as they sound.

My brother is the founder and CEO of a large manufacturing business, and people are always asking him the secret to his success. The real secret, one he is too humble to admit, is plain old-fashioned hard work, sustained, over a long period of time. But a close second, in my book, is his counterintuitive thinking. If the cost of raw materials goes up, instead of increasing the prices on his products (as do his competitors), he either lowers them or holds them steady, finding alternative ways to cut costs. In other words, he does the unexpected. By doing so, he gains customers who appreciate his concern for their pocketbooks so much that they stick with him for life.

Many of us decided to become freelance writers in order to get away from the 9 to 5, so why should we try to recreate the same old grind at home? Why not, instead, design the perfect day?

I am a night owl, as are many writers, if the volume of late-night email from my freelancing buddies is any indication. So my morning starts later. I’m also an ease-into-the-morning type, instead of a jump-out-of-bed-and-get-going kind of person. After a few cups of tea and a quick glance at the news, I used to try to get to work as quickly as possible after tidying up the kitchen and throwing a load of laundry in the washer.

But it’s never felt quite right to me, so lately I’ve been trying something different. Partly for the exercise, and partly to save money instead of hiring a cleaning lady, I’ve been adding a few extra chores to my morning routine. Hard chores, like scrubbing toilets and washing window sills, that make me sweat. After a shower, I’m not only feeling productive and refreshed, I’m actually ready to sit. I’m more focused after “shaking my sillies out,” and I tend to get less overwhelmed than when I try to work in a messy house. It shifts our whole day later, but my husband works long hours, so it’s not a problem for us.

As for the interruptions, I’m fortunate, because our kids are grown, although I still get plenty of calls from my stressed-out college girl. Family members and friends also forget that I’m working and call here and there during the day to chat. But, having worked in many office environments, I know that there are plenty of interruptions there too. My feeling is that socializing, within reason (whether it’s in person at work or on the phone at home), isn’t a total waste of time. When we’re too isolated, we sometimes just spin our wheels.

While a day at home alone might sound like bliss to our friends who can’t leave the office except for lunch, eight hours working by yourself can prove to be long and uneventful. We all need connections, and feedback. Granted, if you’re on a roll writing the best article ever, you don’t want to answer the phone and lose your focus. But writers often create in what I call chunks—the first pass chunk, the flesh-it-out chunk, and the editing chunk. We all know that stepping back from our work from time to time to let our words percolate helps us to see things we’ve missed (like my misuse of the word “waist” instead of “waste” in my first pass on the previous paragraph).

In between chunks, it makes sense to take a break and respond to a friend’s call. When our first blush of excitement about an article or a blog post wanes, sharing our ideas with others can often re-energize us. After having done so, I often go back to my work with more clarity, and add a few interesting details to the piece I’m working on based on our conversation.

Let’s face it, if you’re freelancing, chances are that you aren’t too crazy about routines anyway. Why be conventional if you don’t have to? Experiment with your day. Try different schedules in order to find the one that’s perfect for you. Do you write better at midnight, after a walk, or after cleaning out the fridge as I did today? Do you prefer the TV on and the windows open? Go for it. Even once you discover the formula that works for you, don’t get stuck in it. Be creative. Mix it up now and then. As long as you get your work done, there is no wrong schedule.

Contrary to what common sense would suggest, conventional wisdom isn’t always the best kind.

- Elaine Luddy Klonicki

To be or not to be (a friend)

The other day a friend told me she had viewed my Netflix queue and she thought we had similar tastes in movies. Afterwards, my husband asked me how she managed to see my choices, and I told him that she was my Netflix “friend.” My ONE and ONLY Netflix friend, actually, a fact Netflix reminds me of every time I log on. 

Do you guys have many online friends? 

If you do, you’re lucky. You don’t get these sadistic little messages from everyone—my publisher Lulu included—that say things like “You do not have any friends. How very sad for you.” 

I must be really weird. I’m actually a very nice person, and I have plenty of friends offline. But when I’m working, I’m working. The older I get, the more brain power and concentration it takes. Friends can be such a distraction. 

Beside, I have a full life, a lot of commitments, and way too many relatives. 

So I barely even know what it even means to have a friend on Lulu or Netflix. Or what the implications are. I mean, am I supposed to know when their birthdays are, or watch their kids when they’re sick? 

This is a whole new arena for me, and it’s clearly a generational thing. When my daughter logged on to her much-older brother’s MySpace site a couple of years ago, she was aghast to find that he had no friends. She took pity on him and, in addition to signing herself up, she got all her friends to be his friends. She, herself, already had 75 friends. But that was a long time ago, before all the new friends she got on Facebook. 

I’m just wondering if any of these “helpful” little messages ever actually push anyone over the edge. Say you’re having a really, really, really bad day. You log on to see if some kind person has purchased a copy of your book online, or if your DVD is on the way. And you get that message. “You have NO friends.” 

Or worse. You ARE the kind of person who makes friends everywhere, and you get a message that says, “You have 1750 friends.” Do you realize how many trips to the card shop that is? 

Really, it sounds like such a liability to me. You watch—mark my words—someone’s going to sue one of these websites, because their recently departed loved one took the message a little too seriously. 

So long, friend.

-Elaine Luddy Klonicki

Elaine, Part Three – The chicken or the egg

Remember when you tried to get your first job out of school? More than likely, you were told you needed experience, but you couldn’t figure out how you were supposed to get that experience without a job.

The publishing world works much the same way. You can’t get published without an assignment, but you can’t get an assignment without being published first. What to do?

Now, more than ever, there are solutions, both in print and online.

Most newspapers accept Point of View pieces from readers for their Op-Ed pages. If your newspaper has a community column section, you can submit an essay in the hopes of becoming a guest columnist. Magazines such as Writer’s Digest run regular contests where they ask you to write based on a prompt, and publish the winning entries. There are a number of non-paying print magazines, such as Reminisce, which will publish your story if it is accepted. Some writers’ groups publish anthologies of their members’ short stories or essays.

Online there an endless number of websites that need content—it’s just a matter of matching up what you want to write about with someone who wants to publish on that topic. One way to get started is to post material on a “content” site, such as Constant-Content.com. These are basically auction sites which allow you to offer your work to the highest bidder, but they do allow you to post free content, which may get picked up by a website with a small budget.   

Many startup e-zines are non-paying at first and then graduate to becoming for-pay sites once they gather enough advertisers and readers.

Writing sites which cater to specific genres, such as HumorPress.com, run bi-monthly contests and offer publication and small monetary prizes to the winners.

If you like to write book reviews, you can submit them to online review sites such as Blogcritics.org or BloggerNews.net.

With the proliferation of blogs, you might want to offer to be a guest blogger on a friend’s site. Or you can create your own blog for free on places like WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal or OutBlogger. The current issue of Writer’s Digest magazine (December 2007) compares the features of these sites.

Finally, you can create your own website using free services such as Geocities.Yahoo.com.  

Once you get a few publications—print or online—under your belt, you’ll feel more confident about writing queries in order to get paying assignments. If you’re a good writer, and you’re professional, it’s just a matter of being persistent. It will all be worthwhile when you get the first “Yes” from an editor!

-Elaine Luddy Klonicki

Easy as A-B-C

They say adversity builds character. Frankly, I think I am quite enough of a character, thanks, and Adversity can just trundle off and find somebody else to pick on! That said, it strikes me that adversity also builds writers.

Nora Ephron – whose writing I have loved for decades – found the inspiration for her novel, Heartburn, in the decline and fall of her marriage to Carl Bernstein. Another writer whose work I have enjoyed is David Eddings. His “About the Author” blurbs illustrate Elaine Klonicki’s opening remark in “Walk Like a Duck” (October 12, 2007), listing some of his former occupations: military service (Army), grocery clerk, college English teacher. Having served in the Army myself, and come close enough to the other two, I can attest to the tribulation they engender. John Steinbeck tried to establish himself as a free-lance writer in the 1920s – and failed, returning to his native California, and continuing to write. His books were well-loved by English teachers and students alike (including those in the 8^th grade), as well as by the ubiquitous “they”: He won the 1962 Nobel Prize for Literature.

How many of us, as angst-ridden adolescents, have not put some of the frustration of those years into words? Granted, at least some of them are nothing but bad poetry, but they express what we felt as best we could at the time. For me, it was around 1969:

You say you know me.

But have you ever lived months,

Years of your life, being

With a thousand people every day –

Yet still being alone?

You say you know me.

But have you ever stood on one side

Of a wet cardboard wall

With the rest of the world pushing on the other

To trample you when it breaks through?

You say you know me,

Though you have never known the things I’ve known.

You know my face.

You may know what my name is.

But you don’t really know me.

You see? Bad poetry. The thing is – whether they include contending with an inadequate income while we try to convince potential employers we have brains, talents and skills, or putting on a brave face to keep up the spirits of a family member with a serious illness – the obstacles we overcome every day add to what we have done, and therefore, to what we can do. Conveniently, they also provide fodder for our pens or – more commonly these days – our computers.

Say, Adversity, maybe I can use you for something after all…but do you really need to be such a bloody enthusiast?

- Dara Lyon Warner

Elaine, Part Two – What’s unique about you?

Beginning writers are often told, “Write what you know.” This is because what you know—and especially what you feel passionate about—will roll off your tongue (and on to your computer screen) more easily than a researched topic. If you write about an area in which you have some expertise, your depictions will feel more authentic to the reader, and your words will ring more true.

Some aspects of freelancing are counterintuitive. It might seem to make sense to write about topics with general appeal in order to attract the greatest number of readers. In fact, it’s better to create a market for yourself by writing about what other people aren’t writing about.

This is one of the joys of freelancing. It gives you license to indulge your obsessions, to embrace your inner nerd, so to speak. The most quirky topic or hobby may prove to be the most interesting to a potential editor.

Think about what’s unique about you. What fan clubs do you belong to? What online forums do you contribute to? What hobbies do your friends tease you about? Try writing about your favorite episode of The Waltons, the best Clay Aiken concert you’ve attended, or the farthest place you’ve traveled to attend a Star Trek convention.

As News and Observer columnist Don Vaughan says in his April 20, 2007,column (www.newsobserver.com/nrn/vaughan/story/565896.html), “Don’t be ashamed – be proud! Stand up and let the world know. By admitting your passion, maybe, just maybe, you’ll open the eyes of someone who has never before experienced that particular joy. And that’s a wonderful gift to share.”

Don happened to be referring to his life-long interest in comic books. I would reveal what my personal obsession is, but I can’t right now. John-Boy’s coming on TV.

- Elaine Luddy Klonicki

Elaine, Part One – Walk Like a Duck

People often come to freelance writing later in life and from other careers. Some switch from other writing fields, such as technical writing. Others have done business writing, including press releases and marketing materials, as part of their job. Exposure to a variety of knowledge bases can be a boon for a freelancer. The more exposure you have to the world, the more you have to write about.

But one pitfall for beginning freelancers is that they often don’t see themselves as writers. New members who come to our group often say the same thing. “I’m not really a writer—I don’t have anything published.”

Although some people have a more natural aptitude than others, thankfully, writing is primarily a learned skill: the more you write, the better you get. There is no acid test to determine whether you are, or are not, a writer. You are a writer if you write.

But thinking of yourself as a writer is a critical step towards being one. If you’re not there yet, you can borrow a role-playing technique psychotherapists use to help people get a jump-start on learning new behaviors. It’s called “acting as if” (known in laymen’s terms as “Fake it until you make it.”)

For example, if you’re uncomfortable in social situations, you can “act as if” you are extroverted. You can walk into a room of strangers, make solid eye contact, introduce yourself, give a firm handshake, and smile warmly at everyone.

People are funny. If they see something that “walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck,” they think it’s a duck. If you appear to be outgoing, they assume you’re outgoing. If you appear to be a writer, they assume you’re a writer.

One of my favorite anecdotes from Sue Monk Kidd’s Firstlight, which is a collection of her early inspirational writings, is her description of how she announced to the world that she was going to become a writer. (She had had a long career as a nurse.) “The world” turned out to be her husband and two-year-old, who were sitting at the breakfast table eating cereal. Her point was that she had decided.

If you’ve decided you want to be a writer, start “acting as if” — by doing the things that writers do. Establish a space in your home to write, buy writers’ magazines, join a writers’ group, take a writing class, talk to people about what you’re writing, and most importantly, write!

- Elaine Luddy Klonicki