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.

A Few Tips for Freelance Success

Having spent three decades in the freelance trenches, I’ve learned a thing or two on what it takes to succeed in this crazy biz. Following are ten (hopefully) helpful tips for both journeyman and novice writers alike:
1. Find a niche. Establishing yourself as an expert on a particular topic is a great way to keep the assignments coming. Just make sure it’s a subject with a lot of common appeal, otherwise you may find yourself writing only for low-paying specialty publications.
2. Be a general freelancer. It’s a wonderful way to learn (and write) about a broad array of fascinating topics. In my case, I’ve written features on everything from Marine sniper training to how to bathe a kitten, and I’ve enjoyed them all.
3. Don’t be afraid of the quick turnaround. Writers capable of turning around assignments quickly are an editor’s best friend. Be that kind of writer and you’ll work a lot.
4. Always maintain a high degree of professionalism. There’s a lot of competition out there, and professionalism in every aspect of the job will go a long way toward keeping you at the head of the pack. This means listening to your editor and delivering clean, quality copy before your assigned deadline.
5. Learn to interview well. This is one of the most important tasks a freelance writer must learn to master. Do it poorly, and your work will certainly suffer.
6. Hang around with other writers. And editors. And agents. Face time with others in the profession is a great way to stay abreast of industry changes and – perhaps most importantly – get (or share) work.
7. Keep pitching, even when your plate is full. In freelancing, you’re only as good as your most recent sale. So even if you have plenty to keep you busy, continue to send out queries and make contact with editors. You may not get a new gig today, but you might tomorrow when you really need it.
8. Don’t fear negotiation. Contracts are seldom written in stone, so don’t hesitate to ask for better conditions when you feel you’re getting the short end of the stick. If your requests are reasonable, most editors will say yes, or at least offer to meet you half way.
9. Read, read, read! There’s a lot of great journalism out there, so try to expand your literary horizons beyond the daily newspaper and your favorite magazines. I encourage my students to subscribe to Esquire, GQ and Rolling Stone, all of which regularly feature writers they can learn from.
10. Learn to occasionally say no. It’s easy to say yes to every offer that crosses your desk, especially if you’re a beginning freelancer eager to bolster your portfolio. But the smart writer is at least a little bit picky. When considering an assignment, ask yourself a few questions, including “Is the fee worth the time and aggravation?”, “Will this assignment challenge me as a journalist?”, “Would the time I’ll spend on this assignment be better spent in some other pursuit?” and “Will this assignment lead to more and better work?”
– Don

Write Now! 2009 Writers’ Conference

It’s that time of year again! Time to sign up for the TAF writers’ conference. If you’re interested in freelance writing, or you’re already a freelancer but you’re not doing as well as you’d hoped, this conference is for you. With top notch instructors and two tracks of classes, you’ll find both the inspiration and the skills to take your writing (and your earnings!) to the next level. Last year’s participants enjoyed the conference so much, they predicted it would be a huge success going forward. And registrations are already pouring in. There are only 100 spaces available, so don’t wait! Sign up today. Here are the details:

NONFICTION WRITERS CONFERENCE
Triangle Area Freelancers (TAF) will hold its second nonfiction symposium Write Now! 2009 Writers’ Conference at Wake Technical Community College’s Northern Wake Campus on Saturday, April 18, 2009, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Local novelist, nonfiction writer, and private editorial consultant Peggy Payne will deliver the keynote address. Her most recent novel Sister India is a New York Times Notable Book.

The conference classes, taught by nationally published writers and journalists, are presented in two tracks. “The Craft of Writing,” will include topics such as Finding and Developing Marketable Topics, When Being There Makes All the Difference, Breaking into Triangle Markets, and Avoiding Freelance Faux Pas. “The Business of Writing” will focus on Writing for the Web, Taxes and Other Boring (But Important) Stuff for Writers, The Legalities of Freelance Writing, and The Writer’s Life.

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, snacks and beverages. For more information, call Donald Vaughan at 919.873.9833.

Freelancin’ Blues

Freelance writers: your world is an up and down mixed bag of responses from pubs nationwide. There will be rejection, but as I’ve been told many, many times, “Don’t take it personally.” If you are producing quality work, have queried regularly, and followed all publication submission guidelines, your time WILL come. But editors, please do writers the courtesy of at least being upfront about things. I once queried an editor who was not interested in my story idea. He sent me a very nice email saying something to the effect of, “Thank you … not at this time … but please query again.”

And so for months, I continued to send story ideas his way. When one really great idea came across my desk, I immediately queried this editor, certain in my heart and soul that this story could not be turned down. His reply? “Thank you for the offer. Unfortunately, we don’t have it in our budget to pay freelancers. That said, I’d welcome anything you’d like to submit but am unable to reimburse you for it.”

It was an unexpected speed bump. That’s the kind of information that should have been put forth upfront. And unfortunately, it’s not in my budget (or anyone else’s I know) to work for free.

But I didn’t take it personally. I pitched the same story idea to an online publication and they were thrilled. Being in the right place at the right time really does have its benefits. And in this business, perseverance is everything.

-Kristy

[Previously posted at www.kristystevenson.blogspot.com - June, 2008.]

When your writing rules YOU

It wasn’t so much an epiphany as a slow, gradual realization that I was no longer in control of my career. True, I was getting plenty of assignments, many of them lucrative, but I had fallen into the trap of accepting everything that crossed my desk in a frightened attempt to maintain an “income stream,” and in so doing I had killed the very thing that made me want to become a writer in the first place.

I’ve been writing for more than 30 years, and have worked steadily as a freelancer for 17 years. I entered freelancing in 1991 out of a desire to write what I wanted to write, not what others wanted me to write. But now, nearly two decades in, I was right back where I started, a realization that made me increasingly unhappy.

So one morning not too long ago I woke up and said, no more!

My problem, I realized, was that I had become lazy and complacent. I had developed bad habits that were keeping me from achieving my full potential as a professional writer. I had no one to blame but myself for the rut I was in, and it was up to me to climb out and start climbing up.

The first thing I did was resolve not to waste time on small articles for small markets. I wasn’t going to burn bridges — that’s never a wise career move — but I was going to politely decline the small stuff and more aggressively ask for larger, better paying features.

More importantly, I began jotting down the big ideas that had been filling my brain over the years, and identifying the larger, better markets that might be interested in them. This included, among others, Rolling Stone Magazine, Readers’ Digest, GQ and the larger inflight magazines. It might take me a while to break in, but I realized I never would if I didn’t start making the effort. These markets weren’t going to come to me, I had to go to them — and with my very best work.
Driven, I spent an hour and a half at Barnes & Noble evaluating markets and writing down pertinent contact information. Magazines that used to intimidate me are now targets in my sights. I may miss with my first shot, and maybe even my second and third. But eventually I’ll hit the target, and all of my efforts will have been worthwhile.

I’m also working harder and faster. I don’t procrastinate anymore. When I get an assignment now, I immediately get my questions together and move fast to arrange interviews. The faster I work, the more I work. And the more I work, the closer I come to my goal of writing what I want to write.

I’m telling you this because I want you to push and encourage me. Like the smoker who tells everyone he knows that he’s trying to quit, I want you to MAKE me work harder toward my bigger goals.

If you do that, I promise to do the same for you.

– Don

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

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

Does Professionalism Still Matter?

The death of print journalism has been predicted for some time now, as more and more people get their news from the Internet and fewer read newspapers and other paper journals. While that trend is not in doubt, some go further and predict that in the future, traditional journalists will be replaced with amateur “citizen journalists” reporting from cyberspace, ready at a moment’s notice to weigh in on the day’s issues.One of the surprises of the computer revolution was the democratization of information dissemination; anyone with a blog can now be a reporter just like Seymour Hersh or Anna Quindlen, but without the pesky distractions of dues-paying or J-school. While blogs serve a valuable purpose in giving readers alternatives to traditional information sources, bloggers can no more shortcut their way into journalism than a hospital orderly perform brain surgery – at least not yet.

Consider the following recent blog entry from SlashDot:

Seems like the Storm botnet that was behind the last two waves of attacks is also responsible for this new kind of social-engineering based attacks, using spam to try and convince users of the necessity of using Tor for there communications.

Spell-check won’t catch those mistakes, and a freelance writer would receive a stunningly rapid rejection after submitting an article query with that kind of error. On the web, it’s met with a communal shrug, if it’s noticed at all. Of course, “legacy” news outlets aren’t immune from glitches, as demonstrated in this AP snippet from CNN Online:

The provocative characterization came just days after bin Laden attracted international attention with the release of a video in which he ridicules President Bush about the Iraq war and reminds the world that he not been captured.

The difference: The latter seems to be a dropped word (most likely a technical error), while the former is a rookie mistake that an editor would pounce on like a Swift Boater on John Kerry.

What’s happening with online writing seems to mirror the revolution in digital photography, which suddenly made it possible for anyone to share their photos online. Sites such as Flickr and Snapfish sprang up to host them, and some became portals for photographers to offer their work to stock photo companies, greatly increasing traffic on those sites.

But just as submitting some pictures to a photo agency doesn’t make you a professional photographer, blogging doesn’t make you a journalist. That comes from just one source: experience. And as any freelance writer can tell you, that doesn’t happen at broadband speed. That said, blogging is a great place to begin writing, as long as the writer is willing to learn the craft. If not, as Truman Capote once said, “It’s not writing, it’s typing.”

Nascent bloggers would do well to check out the sites of established professional writers; they’re great places to get free training in sentence structure, punctuation and all the other tools a writer must master in order to be worthy of the moniker. Even old-fashioned books made of (gasp) paper can be useful.

Because professionalism does still matter, and it will – at least I hope it will – for the foreseeable future. And now that I’ve answered that question, it occurs to me that I’m writing for free.

So, I’m outta here…

- Mark