Editor’s Note: The following content is provided to Writer’s Digest by a writing community partner. This content is sponsored by American Writers & Artists Inc. www.awaionline.com.

Sure, there are lots of ways to make a living as a writer …

But, not every path is the same. And, each year, there are new market trends that make some paths easier … and faster … than others.

Today I’d like to share a few insights about writing for money in 2015 … including where you’ll find the best clients, where you’ll find the biggest growth opportunities, and what the competition will look like this year.

Insight #1: Writing to consumers is not on top this year.

For all the talk about how we live in a “consumer-driven economy,” 2015 will not be the year of the consumer for writers. Instead, it will be all about the world of B2B.

If you’re not familiar, B2B stands for Business-to-Business … the world where companies sell things to each other.

In B2B, instead of a single company trying to sell you one bottle of fancy shampoo, you have various companies trying to sell millions of bottles of fancy shampoo to hotel chains or cruise lines. Instead of selling one outfit, these companies are selling 10,000 uniforms. Or perhaps a whole fleet of delivery trucks, or a brand-new software system for an entire restaurant franchise.

To close these mega-deals, B2B firms need a ton of written material, all aimed at giving the “decision makers” the information they need to make the purchase. And no matter how many pieces of sales material they have written, they always need more.

In fact, for 2015, Ko Marketing reports that 80% of B2B marketers plan to maintain or increase their budgets, making B2B companies some of the best clients in the world.

Insight #2: 13 is a lucky number for writers this year.

In their 2015 B2B Content Marketing: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report, the Content Marketing Institute reported that the average B2B company is using 13 different marketing tactics.

In this case, a “tactic” is a type of writing project …

Newsletters, emails, blog posts, white papers, case studies, social media … they’re all considered a different tactic. So along with many opportunities to get your foot in the door, each client you land will have loads of work for you.

Which means you only need a few B2B clients to make a very good living as a writer in 2015.

Insight #3: Fresher is better.

Once upon a time, companies could get away with only talking to their customers a few times a year. But not now …

B2B companies have found they get the best results from their marketing when they always have something new to share. They show up better in the search results, they get more engagement from customers, and they close more sales. So they’ve shifted from using the same old pieces over and over to constantly wanting something fresh.

In fact, 42% of B2B marketers say they publish new content “multiple times per week or daily” to serve their customers. And year over year, 70% of B2B marketers are creating more content than the year before!

Insight #4: You’ll get to multiply every project times 4.

Another big reason why B2B firms are creating so much more content has to do with “audience segmentation.”

With audience segmentation, you take one product and market it in different ways to different people. For example, a company selling a line of organic cleaning products might be looking at schools, hospitals, nursing homes, restaurants, and factories as potential audiences. To get the best results, they need a targeted campaign for each audience, even though the actual product doesn’t change.

The typical B2B firm plans to target four different audience segments in 2015, says the Content Marketing Institute. Four audiences means four versions of each piece you write. And four versions means higher fees for every project you accept.

Insight #5: Businesses say it’s gotten 3 times harder to find good writers in the past year.

Have you ever feared you may have to compete with tons of writers to win business?

B2B companies would argue otherwise … they’ve got so much work to do it feels like there are no trained B2B writers available.

In fact, in their 2015 survey of B2B marketers, the Content Marketing Institute found that 32% were being “challenged” to find trained professional writers. In 2014, only 10% reported difficulty.

What changed in just this past year? As I mentioned before, demand for B2B writing has gone through the roof, and when you consider audience segmentation, that booming demand gets multiplied to even more astronomical levels. But the supply of writers isn’t growing nearly as fast …

In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that from one year to the next, the total supply of writers is only increasing by about 3%. With 129,100 writers of any type on record, that means just 3,873 new writers a year.

In contrast, there are 5 million B2B firms in North America. Do some quick math and it works out to 39 B2B firms competing for the time of every single writer out there …

Imagine it — you could start tomorrow, and if you just claimed your “fair share” of the market, you’d be taking on 39 clients.

And many B2B writers earn a good full-time income working with just four or five clients at a time …

Could you join them? In all likelihood, the answer is yes.

It just depends on what kind of writer you are …

AWAI has a quick quiz you can take here.

You’ll also learn about a program that can help get you started if you decide the answer is “Yes!”

Next week I’ll show you how to make a very good living as a writer, just by writing B2B content. The market is that hungry for new writers!

Until then,
Rebecca Matter

P.S. If you have any questions for me, or have a topic you’d like me to cover in a future issue, I invite you to contact me on Facebook, through AWAI or via my website, rebeccamatter.com.

When I moved to India in 2010, I didn’t consider myself a travel writer. I was a freelance essayist who wrote about family and social issues. Travel was a way to escape the mundane and perhaps fill a memory card or two with pictures along the way. I had a vague yearning to someday pen a memoir or novel, but at the time my desire was only that; no book was burning its way from inside of me, and I assumed that’s how it would remain as long as my children were young. What I did know was this:

This guest post is by Jennifer Magnuson who won the Oregon Journalism Education Association’s Pica Stick Award for Outstanding Journalism in 1988 while taking summer seminars at Southern Oregon State. Her work has appeared in Brain, Child and Bitch magazine, along with various websites including Mamazine, The Imperfect Parent, Sanity Central, Top Blog Magazine (now Blog Nosh), and her own blog, Get in the Car. Get in the Car was nominated for best humor blog in the 2007 Blogger’s Choice Awards. In 2008, Jennifer was approached by Nickelodeon to help launch their parenting website, Parents Connect. She blogged about her experience in India at peanutbutterandnaan.net. Jennifer recently returned from Abu Dhabi and now lives in Oregon with her husband and five children.

I wanted to document our time living and traveling overseas so that our experiences as newly-minted expats would not soon be forgotten. The twelve-and-a-half hour time difference made communication with the United States difficult, so I created a private blog to share stories with friends and family back home.

As the months passed, I realized that the act of writing about that which was all around me enabled me to see and remember details I might miss with a camera, or – more precariously – my own memory. The more I wrote, the more I noticed, and the more I wanted to continue to observe and create a record for posterity. It was a delicious cycle for a writer; having suffered my fair share of writer’s block I was delighted to discover that being surrounded by the unfamiliar was perfect fuel for what I call writer’s lust. Wanderlust, of course, is often the precursor.

[Learn about Freelance Writing: 10 Ways to Satisfy Editors & Land More Assignments]

Life in India meant coping with frequent brownouts that rendered technology obsolete; instant gratification and high speed internet often fell by the wayside, necessitating the purchase of my first notebook from an artist cooperative in the former French Colony of Pondicherry, on the Bay of Bengal. Bound in handmade paper the color of saffron and embossed with the golden outline of a lotus flower, it was a wise purchase. Resuming the practice of writing in longhand was more than a way to write when the electricity went out; the cadence of putting pen to paper became a metaphor for the pace of life in India as I adjusted to the slower cultural flow of life outside of the United States.

I still carry this notebook, now lovingly tattered, alongside iPads and laptops to Europe, The Middle East and everywhere in between. The act of recording the beauty that is born from the sheer otherness of places far from home is now my primary concern, the method is always secondary.

As the years pass, it has also become clear to me that a beautifully bound travel album isn’t enough to memorialize an experience. With each year that slips behind me, my recollections become as sepia-toned and blurred as the pictures themselves.

I hold in my hand a picture of a street vendor in India squatting next to a hand-woven basket of peanuts. But without my travel journal, would I remember that the nuts were roasted in red sand? Would I remember the small, wiry man and how he ran, barefoot, to catch up with our moving car to toss us a hot, steaming bag as we slowly navigated the crowded streets of Faridibad? In ten years – five, even – will I recall how, after greedily shelling nuts, the peanuts stained the tips of my fingers ocher, how this made me feel like an Indian bride fresh from her mehndi ceremony? Had I not scribbled my observations in my journal, I’m certain I would have forgotten how the air smelled of kachoris; how they dripped with clarified butter onto hissing coals, the aroma of spiced lentils and vegetables fried golden brown sending a beckoning finger of scent into our car.

One of the stories I shared via the blog made its way into the hands of a literary agent (with whom I shared a mutual friend), and when I returned home to Nashville, TN she asked me to write the first two chapters of what was to become my first book, a travel memoir about our time in India called Peanut Butter and Naan: Stories of an American Mom in the Far East. My belongings, along with the notebook, were still on a boat en-route to America. I began writing the chapters, confident that my recollections would suffice. It wasn’t until I finally unearthed my notebook from the last of the packing crates that I realized how much had escaped me in a few short months. A random flip to a page confirmed this.

[Memoir or Novel? 8 Issues to Think About Before Writing Your Own Story]

I am going to see the Taj Mahal with someone I hardly know these days – myself. Our car hurtles past a semiarid landscape punctuated with splashes of red, gold, and fuchsia bougainvillea climbing implausibly over stone walls surrounded by dust and rocks. Peacocks perch themselves on boulders, sharing space with the cows, ducks, horses, chickens, and occasional monkey that make up the incredible roadside wildlife found in this region.

We whiz past towering white-stone temples with tinny Hindi music bleating from loudspeakers affixed to spindly turrets with a little wire and luck. It’s such a contrast with the southern state of Tamil Nadu, where I live, where temples sprout up between concrete buildings on every street in a riot of colors and faces and arms, every towering inch a jumbled mass of gods and goddesses. We wind through the village of Faridibad, whose aesthetics are more like those of my temporary Indian home with its piles of trash, water buffalo, and hogs alongside each other in the muck. Street dogs with long, sad-looking teats (which look disturbingly familiar and cause me to straighten up from my slouch) push tiredly at bright cans and boxes, unmindful of the potential slaughterhouse of cars just feet away.

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Nearly every word from this journal made it into my revised chapter, now part of the book. I had forgotten these small details, and even if I weren’t journaling with the intent of publication, I am content knowing these notes forever cement the vignettes of my travel in a way a picture cannot.

As much as I adore my travel photos, a camera limits me to what I see through the viewfinder. Journaling expands how much I notice, enabling me to absorb my surroundings in a way a photograph cannot. Not only does travel writing help create a time capsule of sorts, it fosters my ability to remain present, allowing for the transformative nature of travel to encompass all of my senses. And, as a writer, I am better able to place a reader in scene if I have remembered to capture the ephemeral details such as the scents, sounds and feelings of a particular moment.

I hold another photo in my hands, this one of my youngest, a baby at the time, sitting on a veranda in the sleepy beachside town of Mamallapuram, India with a red plastic bucket on his head. What would I remember, ten years from now, had I only this memento? That he played in the sand with his one bucket brought over from the United States? My journal entry from that day tells a different story.

We are finally here. It has the air of a place forgotten. Our relative solitude underscores the feeling that we have somehow stepped into another time. The air is thick with dragonflies – they are enormous, zipping around like bright blue helicopters. Henry and I are relaxing on the veranda while Bob and the older kids chase down an elderly man leading his herd of goats along the beach. It is high tide. I lost sight of them after they passed the brightly-colored canoes that dot the shoreline just beyond the palm trees. Henry and I need to investigate.

Without my journal, I fear the photo, dusted off years from now would just be baby Henry, adorable in his red plastic bucket hat. And so, when my travels take me from home, I am quick to remember that each beautiful photograph I take has its own story, begging to not be forgotten, and the pages of my journal whisper, take me with you. Remember.

Thanks for visiting The Writer’s Dig blog. For more great writing advice, click here.

Brian A. Klems is the editor of this blog, online editor of Writer’s Digest and author of the popular gift book Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.

Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Sign up for Brian’s free Writer’s Digest eNewsletter: WD Newsletter

When I started giving interviews about my memoir, The Body Tourist, I got a lot of fairly standard questions. The book is about the six years following my “recovery” from anorexia nervosa. Recovery is in quotation marks because, as the reader discovers early on, despite the fact that I have left the hospital and landed a job as a counselor at a halfway house for drug and alcohol addicts, I am nowhere near recovered. The memoir takes an unflinching look into all the areas in which I am unwell, including my inability to weigh in the triple digits, my distorted ideas about the line between counselor and client, and my struggles with how, whether, and why to eat, be sexual, own a bed, have friends, go back to school, and stop playing games with recovery.

This guest post is by Dana Lise Shavin, whose essays have appeared in Oxford American, The Writer, The Sun, Fourth Genre, Puerto del Sol, and others, and she is a lifestyle columnist for The Chattanooga Times Free Press. She is the author of a memoir, The Body Tourist (Little Feather Books). Learn more about her at Danashavin.com.

In early interviews, the questions I was most often asked were around the facts of my anorexia itself: How long did it take you to realize you were still ill? Why was it so hard for you to meet your basic needs? Where were your parents when it started? All of these were good avenues of inquiry, but along the way one interviewer asked a question which really stuck with me: “Was writing your book cathartic?”

To which I said both yes and no.

The yes part of my answer had to do with finally getting my story of brokenness and survival out of my head, onto the page, and into the world in the form of a book. I felt immeasurable relief at no longer being pregnant with my tale, or with the burning need to tell my tale. Story told, book published, I could move on. I could write other stories, focus on other goals, have other thoughts for that matter. Cathartic? You bet.

[Memoir or Novel? 8 Issues to Think About Before Writing Your Own Story]

The no part of my answer had to do with what I’d learned in the process of writing a book that dealt with painful issues, raw emotions, and no shortage of embarrassing personal details. I learned that the wish for catharsis may be what motivates us to write in the first place—the need to express something, to come to terms with feelings or emotions or events, to get something out of our system so that we can begin healing. But the process of it—the raw emoting, teeth-gnashing, and breast beating—is the province of our journals. On the other hand, writing—by which I mean the constructing, shaping, revising and refining of the story—which can take many years of focused study and work—is the province of craft.

We should be careful not to confuse the two. Otherwise we doubly lose out.

Think about it: if you were to write in your journal with an eye toward craft—paying attention to word choice, sentence construction, how to best recount the events of the day or the contents of your heart with the proper distance and narrative stance—you would lose the opportunity to muck around unfettered in the supreme muddiness of your own unrefined sentimentality, or thoroughly enjoyable lake of self-pity, or unbridled bitching or brainstorming. All of which can and often does lead to, or clear the way for, important insights and ideas.

[Learn the 8 Essential Elements of a Nonfiction Book Proposal]

Likewise, if you allow the craft of writing to get bound up or confused with your need to emote or rant or divest yourself of pain, what ends up on the published page (if it manages to get published, that is) will read like something that belongs in your journal. You won’t have proper distance from your material, and your readers will feel as if they are reading your diary. And not in a good way—chances are, that unrefined sentimentality, self-pity and bitchiness will come across as exactly that.

So how best to write about the personal, painful events in our lives? First ask yourself what your purpose is. If it’s to garner sympathy, wrong a right, or begin the process of healing, tell it to your journal first. Get it out of your system. Way out. When you’re no longer Velcroed to your emotions, when you’re ready to explore your story with an eye toward uncovering not just your own truths, but the universal ones that good writing inevitably reveals, you will truly be free to craft.

And won’t that be cathartic?

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Thanks for visiting The Writer’s Dig blog. For more great writing advice, click here.

Brian A. Klems is the editor of this blog, online editor of Writer’s Digest and author of the popular gift book Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.

Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Sign up for Brian’s free Writer’s Digest eNewsletter: WD Newsletter

Editor’s Note: The following content is provided to Writer’s Digest by a writing community partner. This content is sponsored by American Writers & Artists Inc. www.awaionline.com.

“ … To make the big bucks, you have to develop two skills: writing and selling yourself as a writer. You must be competent at one of those skills and masterful at the other. The choice is up to you.”

— Mark Ford, Million-Dollar Copywriter, Bestselling Author, and Successful Entrepreneur

Mark Ford started his first business when he was 11 years old. He’s started hundreds more since then. Today, he’s a self-made millionaire, a New York Times bestselling author under his pen name Michael Masterson, and a successful business builder.

Mark is one of the founders of AWAI … he’s the mentor of dozens of A-level copywriters … and is the inspiration behind AWAI’s Accelerated Program for Six-Figure Copywriting and more.

It’s safe to say, when it comes to good advice on making a living as a writer, you can’t find much better …

The first promotion you wrote was a multimillion-dollar success. But, you’ve said it took about 20 revisions … What tips in persistence can you give new writers who are tempted to give up too soon?

I’m sure it didn’t take 20 revisions — it just seemed like that. And I wouldn’t say that I exhibited persistence per se. As you say, it was my first effort at writing a sales letter and it was also a sales letter for an entirely new kind of investment publication. I’d written both the sales letter and the product in my spare time and I’d pitched my boss on giving me a piece of the action if it became successful. So there was a lot riding on it and I saw it as a make-it-or-give-up sort of situation. I was very motivated to see it work and so I was eager to make whatever changes he suggested. I probably did three full revisions and another three or four partial revisions over a period of three months. It never even felt like work. It felt like, “This is so cool. If this works, I’m going to be a hero.”

You’ve said studying one marketing promotion a day is one of the secrets of your success. For people who don’t want to write sales copy and would rather write something like websites or e-books, what’s the best way to find great copy to learn from?

First of all, let me address the second part of your question. To me, there is very little difference between writing sales copy or writing websites or writing e-books. If you are paid to write, then you are paid to write persuasively. All the same rules apply.

As far as this idea of studying a finished piece of writing every day, I first made that statement 17 years ago, when I was working with Katie, Don, and Paul on the original AWAI copywriting program. In fact, I went beyond recommending that the fledgling writer read and study copy. I recommended hand copying it, word-by-word.

The truth is, I did a little bit of that transcribing myself and found it to be useful, but I never had the patience to practice what I preached. I did study (read with the intention of learning) loads of copy at that time and I’m sure that was very helpful.

When you study copy regularly, you not only notice strategies and techniques that the copywriter has used to make the package stronger, but you also get an ear for the rhythm of the phrasing and the tone of voice — two very important aspects of writing that are nearly impossible to learn any other way. I wasn’t the first person to recommend this sort of learning (Aristotle, among other critics, recommended it more than two thousand years ago). And there have been many other writing coaches that have repeated it since then. But I seldom see people explaining why this is so important. It’s all about learning what I think of as the musical side of the craft.

What do you mean by musical?

Have you ever noticed how much emotional impact music gives to lyrics? Have you ever found a song profound and moving and yet later realized that the lyrics themselves were very ordinary, even cliché? This is what a great prose stylist can do with phrasing and tone of voice. It’s very powerful and, as I say, it can’t be learned analytically. You have to absorb it word-by-word.

How much of success as a freelance writer is about writing good copy, versus understanding how to find clients who value your work?

That is a seemingly simple question that requires a long and complicated answer. I will attempt to make it short by making a few statements that are connected without spelling out the connections. First, writing is a technical skill. As with any skill, it can be learned in degrees and as with any skill, there are four “macro” levels: incompetence, competence, mastery, and virtuosity. To become competent, you must be willing to practice writing for about 1,000 hours while you are incompetent. Many would-be writers never achieve competence because they refuse to admit (even to themselves) that they are incompetent. To become masterful, you need to put in 5,000 hours of conscious learning. (I wrote about these hourly requirements years before Malcolm Gladwell made them famous.) To become a virtuoso, you need a natural talent.

You can make lots of money as a merely competent copywriter. But to do so, you must confine your writing to markets that pay reasonably well for competent writing. Happily, there are many such markets. If you want to make good money without being masterful, then you must spend a good deal of time learning how to sell your competence, over and over again.

If you decide to become masterful at some sort of writing, then you will only have to do a modest amount of marketing at the beginning. A masterful writer will have little or no problem finding work. Virtually anyone that employs him will want to use him over and over again.

Put differently, to make the big bucks, you have to develop two skills: writing and selling yourself as a writer. You must be competent at one of those skills and masterful at the other. The choice is up to you.

What’s your best tip for writers on how to find clients who value their work and are willing to pay fair fees?

Spend a full week — 40 hours — studying the company you want to work for. Study their products. Study their sales literature. Study their customers. Don’t approach them until you know what they need and are 100% sure you can give it to them.

Most of the great copywriters were protégés of other great copywriters. For someone new to the writing world, what criteria should be used to find and vet a mentor?

It’s amazing to me how little value people place in finding a mentor. There is this bizarre idea out there that accomplished writers should be happy to work with inexperienced writers merely for the pleasure of it. Mentoring someone in any sophisticated skill is enormously demanding. The mentor is offering a huge value and he will provide that effort only if he thinks that the protégé is both ready to learn at a certain level and also willing to pay for it in some way.

Beginning writers should not expect that accomplished writers will be willing to mentor them. They should be happy with peer-to-peer feedback and the sort of secondary and tertiary mentoring they can get from programs like AWAI offers.

There are professional mentors out there who offer their services for a fee. I used such mentors when I was learning to write fiction. Some of them were good and some not so good. I don’t have any helpful advice on how to “find and vet” a good mentor other than to jump in with a positive attitude and get out respectfully and appreciatively if it doesn’t seem to be working out. The world of professional writing is a small one. Never, ever burn your bridges.

Throughout your life, you’ve launched scores of successful businesses. What gave you that confidence to put yourself out there and go for it so many times?

I never had any confidence that I could be successful in business. In fact, until I was 33, I never had any interest in business. I had lots of dreams about what I might do in life. I wanted to be a teacher and a writer and an artist and an art collector and a martial artist, etc. But I never even thought about business in a serious way until I decided one day to make “getting rich” my top priority. People talk about priorities, but most of that talk is rubbish. Making something a top priority is a very big and very dangerous thing to do. It is entirely different from, say, underlining one of the items on your to-do list.

After making that decision, everything changed for me. I thought about everything differently. Difficult decisions were suddenly easy to make. Confusing questions were easy to answer. I started moving, very quickly, in a very clear-to-me direction. And things fell into place, including a series of dozens of successful, multimillion-dollar businesses. I wrote a book about all that, The Reluctant Entrepreneur. I recommend that to anyone who thinks they might want to own a business and who is also reluctant — a sign of intelligence.

You helped debunk the myth that copywriting talent is something people are born with and can’t be learned. Can you also debunk the myth that people are stuck in their own circumstances, and explain whether it’s possible for anyone to become wealthy? (And if so, how?)

I’m not going to say anything here that you haven’t heard before. Yet it can never be said too often.

We are not in charge of what happens to us in life, but we are in charge of how we think about it. Is it harder for a black or Hispanic person to make it in Corporate America than a white person? Yes. But it can be done. Is it difficult for someone who can’t use his hands to become a successful writer? Yes. But it can be done. Is it difficult for someone who did not have the benefit of a good education and caring parents and well-placed friends to become rich? Yes. But it can be done.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book about that called David and Goliath. It explains that handicaps can be advantages if the individual responds to them in a certain way.

I wrote my own book, Seven Years to Seven Figures, which told the story of a number of people I mentored who developed multimillion-dollar businesses, starting from scratch, in less than seven years. And I’ve developed an entire program — a very extensive program — called The Palm Beach Wealth Club to give people every idea and every tool I could think of to make such an ambition come true.

Who are the top copywriters you’d recommend studying today?

I don’t have such a list. But it’s not a difficult list to put together. You must start with the industry you intend to work within. Then identify the top two or three companies in that industry and then identify the top two or three copywriters working for those companies. Those are the copywriters I’d study.

As someone who’s been wildly successful as a writer for over two decades, is there room for people from all backgrounds and circumstances — age, means, etc.? What can they do to set themselves apart?

I think I answered that question already. Age can be considered a handicap. But it is also an advantage. Older people usually have a lower tolerance for bullshit. And that can be a great advantage to anyone who wants to develop a writing style that is based on wisdom and honesty and a straightforward voice.

I have trained young people and I’ve trained older people and have had success with both. The main difference between the two is the obvious one: younger people have more time to become competent and more earning years after they achieve competence.

But so what? You can become a competent copywriter by spending 1,000 hours learning and practicing the skill. If you have a good mentor, even a mentorship program like AWAI offers, you can cut that time down almost in half. Do the math. Figure out how long it will take you, given the time you can devote to it. But don’t be deterred, at all, by your age or circumstances.

How did your time in the Peace Corps — two years teaching students at the University of Chad in Africa — change your perspective on life?

For one thing, it taught me how difficult it is to be a good teacher. Since my parents were both teachers, I figured I’d be a natural. I wasn’t. Teaching, like writing, requires skills that must be learned over time. It also requires the gradual dissolution of the ego. The first can be accomplished simply by putting in the work. The second is a lifelong challenge.

I also learned that having lots of money is not related to living a rich life. I wrote a book about that too, just published last year. It’s called Living Rich.

So is a writing career one of the best ways for someone to increase their income?

Writing is a great career. You can do it successfully as an employee or as a freelance writer. One is not more lucrative than the other. The choice is more about comfort, whether one prefers the comfort that working for a business provides or whether one prefers the independence of freelance employment.

I certainly believe that writing commercially is a great way to go. I’ve recommended it to many friends and to my children, one of whom has actually listened to me!

What’s the very best Glicken you’ve ever received, either from a client or as a result of your own endeavors?

Again, I’m going to say something you’ve heard a hundred times before and it may make you puke. The Glicken I most enjoy is when someone approaches me in the airport or at a conference and tells me that I changed their life in some positive, concrete way.

What’s something a new writer can do this week to advance his or her writing career?

Find an extra half hour a day and devote those 30 minutes to study and/or practice.

***

Along with being successful author, copywriter, and entrepreneur, Mark is a wonderful teacher. I’ve had the pleasure of working with him for over 10 years at AWAI, and owe a great deal of my own success to him.

If you ever have the opportunity to learn from him firsthand, jump on it.

And if you happen to be taking AWAI’s Accelerated Program for Six-Figure Copywriting, you’ll be learning to write copy from one of the industry’s top copywriters. In fact, many of today’s A-level copywriters credit Mark as a huge contributor to their success.

I should also note that this interview originally appeared in AWAI’s Barefoot Writer Magazine …

Each month, we feature an interview with a writer who is willing to share specific insights and advice on how you can follow in their footsteps. In addition, the pages are filled with practical tips and strategies for making a living as a writer, as well as inspiration from numerous writers who are living the writer’s life and want to “pay it forward.”

Next week, I’ll share with you five insights about writing for money in 2015 …

Including where you’ll find the best clients, where you’ll find the biggest growth opportunities, and what the competition will look like this year.

Until then,
Rebecca Matter

P.S. If you have any questions for me, or have a topic you’d like me to cover in a future issue, I invite you to contact me on Facebook, through AWAI or via my website, rebeccamatter.com.

It has never been more difficult to get traditionally published and make your writing stand out than right now. Literary agent Carly Watters has years of experience launching debut authors.

In this live 90-minute webinar — titled “Successfully Publishing Your First Novel in the 21st Century” —  instructor and literary agent Carly Watters shares with you the process of polishing your manuscript and getting it publication ready, querying literary agents effectively, keeping an agent’s attention with your manuscript, how to make the most of an agent/author relationship, how to find the best place to publish your writing, and where to find your readers. Plus, as a bonus, Carly will critique your manuscript’s first five pages! It all happens at 1 p.m., EST, Thursday, February 19, 2015, and lasts 90 minutes.

Click Here to Register

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

• How to begin your book and why you’ve probably been starting in the wrong spot
• Self-editing tips that will transform your manuscript
• How to make your query letter stand out (from someone who reads over 800 a month!)
• Why agents stop reading your manuscript
• What agents are looking for in writers that are going to help them stand out
• How agents partner with authors to make them stand out in 21st century publishing

Click Here to Register

ABOUT THE CRITIQUE

All registrants are invited to submit the first 5 pages of a novel. All submitted pages are guaranteed a written critique by Literary Agent Carly Watters. Carly reserves the right to request more writing from you, if she deems the writing excellent.

Please Note: Even if you can’t attend the live webinar, registering for this live version will enable you to receive the On Demand webinar and a personal critique of your material.Purchasing the On Demand version after the live event will not include a critique.

Click Here to Register

INSTRUCTOR

Carly Watters is a VP and senior literary agent with the P.S. Literary Agency. She is a hands-on agent who develops proposals and manuscripts with attention to detail and the relevant markets. PSLA’s mission is to manage authors’ literary brands for their entire career.

Never without a book on hand, she reads across categories—which is reflected in the genres she represents—and is actively seeking new authors in women’s fiction, commercial fiction, upmarket fiction, literary thrillers, platform-driven nonfiction, and select children’s projects. Carly is drawn to emotional, well-paced narratives with a great voice and characters that readers can get invested in.

Clients include Globe and Mail bestseller Jay Onrait, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Karen Katchur, Andrea Dunlop, Rebecca Phillips, Colin Mochrie, Allison Day, Paulette Lambert and more. Carly’s blog has been named one of 101 Best Websites for Writers by Writer’s Digest magazine. You can find Carly online at carlywatters.com and on Twitter @carlywatters.

Click Here to Register

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

• Writers who are looking to publish their work for the first time
• Writers who want to get their manuscript publication ready
• Writers who would like to get a literary agent
• Writers who would like tips on how to query literary agents
• Writers who want to learn more about the business side of publishing in the 21st century
• Writers who have published before, but are looking for better ways to find readers

Click Here to Register

HOW DOES THE WEBINAR WORK?

The webinar is broadcasted via the internet with live audio delivered through your computer speakers or over your telephone. The live webinar’s visual presentation is displayed directly from the Presenter’s computer to your computer screen. The Q&A is managed through a chat-style submission system with questions being read and answered by the Presenter for the entire class to hear. In the event some questions are not answered during the live session, an e-mail with questions and answers will be sent to all webinar attendees. By attending the live webinar and/or asking questions, your full name may be stated during the live event and captured in the recording.

Click Here to Register

For today’s prompt, write a treat poem. I guess this could be a trick or treat poem, or a poem about treating yourself (or another person) to something nice. I entreat you to have fun with it. Perhaps, we could sign a treaty to make it official and then shout it from the tallest “treet”ops. Okay, getting a little carried away, but hey, that’s what Wednesday poems are for, right?

*****

2015 Poet’s Market

Publish your poetry!

Get the most trusted guide to publishing your poetry: the 2015 Poet’s Market!

Edited by Robert Lee Brewer, this edition of Poet’s Market includes articles on the craft of poetry, business of poetry, and promotion of poetry. Plus, interviews with poets and original contemporary poems. Oh yeah, and hundreds of poetry publishing opportunities, including book publishers, chapbook publishers, magazines, journals, online publications, contests, and so much more!

Click to continue.

*****

Here’s my attempt at a Treat Poem:

“treats”

tell me a secret
and let it rest on my mind
near all the others–
keeping my new prisoner
and hoping it won’t escape

*****

Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer’s Digest Writing Community and author of the poetry collection, Solving the World’s Problems (Press 53). He edits Poet’s Market, Writer’s Market, and Guide to Self-Publishing, in addition to writing a free weekly WritersMarket.com newsletter and poetry column for Writer’s Digest magazine.

He just enjoyed/survived a five-day weekend that included an aircraft carrier, submarine, destroyer, tight sleeping quarters, and an ice storm.

Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.

*****

Find more poetic posts here:

• Wednesday Poetry Prompts: 295.
• Gogyohka: Poetic Form.
• The Poetry World A-Z.

The following is a guest post from one of WD’s bloggers from our NaNoWriMo project, EJ Runyon. In this post, EJ describes the importance of moving past using writing exercises and learning how to turn the exercises into usable content for your work-in-progress. Using an exercise should only be the first of several steps in beginning your writing process, particularly as a beginner.

*     *     *     *     *

Novice writers spend a lot of time reading blogs and other websites that offer exercises, story starters and prompts to try out writing skills.

Write a list your antagonist will use shopping.
What would an apple say if it could plead for its life?

And we all dig in and write out small drabbles. It’s a start. Especially for new writers wanting to flex writing muscles.

But if you exercise, then nothing more, will you ever discover where those exercises might take you?

Let’s take the steps of expanding those exercises by questioning them. The goal is reviewing with an eye for “exercises into scenes”:  looking at your work and taking the next step; reworking exercises into actual storytelling.

Let’s say you were given a word or two for starting the beginning of a sentence,

“First thing in the morning…”

Your task is to write anything for 5 minutes. So you look at your paper, or the keyboard and you begin writing:

First thing in the morning all I have to do is get up and write my page. I tell myself this every morning yet I can’t seem to follow through. I reassure myself I will tomorrow. Am I lacking the will or am I unable to do it at all? Instead of doing what I need to do, want to do, I end up wandering into the kitchen, getting coffee; then I’m off through my day.

Cool.

After a while you have disk files or notebooks full of these exercises. But you don’t have many finished stories or novels written. How much time do you think the average beginner spends working with writing exercises? How much time creating short stories or novels?  Where is the disconnect? What does it take to move to the next step? To begin looking at your own work? It takes questioning. Not much else.

Ask yourself questions like these:

• Does the exercise paragraph mean anything?
• Can you use this for a character study?
• Can you use this as a piece of dialogue? 
• Can it be expanded into a scene or a hunk of narrative? 

Your answer might be, “I’d say, the way it reads now, a lot more work’s needed.”

Unhappily, if you work the way some novices do, the way I started out working, you’re constantly exercising, but anxious about the rest. You’re glad for the immediate gratification, and attention, in feedback of the polite, “That’s good work.” But you’re afraid to try writing something really whole that begins, has a middle, and ends.

You’re afraid of something that requires a quantity of re-writing, editing and revising. That is, you, functioning as a writer by looking, questioning and working with those drabbles.

Let’s take a look at that sample paragraph. And ask it some questions.

After you’ve exercised, start by asking the questions above. Take notes. Call these notes of yours pre-work, if you want. You can then turn questioned exercises into a new start of a scene or story.

*     *     *     *     *

Looking for some exercises to practice EJ’s techniques?
Try James Scott Bell’s The Art of War for Writers, which
features strategies, tactics and exercises for fiction writers!

*     *     *     *     *

Not every exercise will blossom into a viable story, but then, if you’re given an exercise you can always make sure it will: Focusing on what you want the exercise to become.  Make the exercise work for your writing, not the other way around.

Let’s use the sample paragraph to work though what we have on our page. After the sample you can move on to your own exercises. Getting them to work for you. Here’s what to ask:

Does the paragraph mean anything?
No, not much now, at least not the way I left it. Nothing I can see.

Can you use this for a character study?
I can probably write a girl who is bored with her job, but can’t let herself take up writing for a living.  Or a guy who got a new journal from his girlfriend for his birthday—maybe she’s a real artsy type—he’s trying to score some points with her.

Can you mold it into a piece of dialogue?
It might work for internal dialogue, how she talks, putting herself down. To her mom? Or hey—about what she says to a shrink, or a best friend? Yeah.

Can it be expanded into a scene or a hunk of narrative?
The wandering into the kitchen, getting coffee is a good part. Maybe more with descriptions? How the kitchen looks, things like that. 

Maybe the guy can be talking to his girl over coffee on the weekend, when they’re together and she gets on his case ‘cause the journal she gave him is still empty.

Do you see where looking at your work can take you? Exercising is only the first step.

Posing these types of questions and answering them is step two.

And acting on those answers is step three—that’s the getting down to writing that counts the most.

About EJ Runyon: I’m a lucky soul. I’m living my dream. I began my transformation in 1992. Started writing NaNoWriMo in 2001, and in 2006 I sold my house to go back to school, for degrees in English/Creative Writing and Online Teaching & Learning.

Now it’s writing and coaching daily. It’s my new life and I love it.

NaNoWriMo sent me on the path to reach writer’s nirvana. In 2012, six short stories pulled from various NaNo novels became part of “Claiming One,” a story collection from Inspired Quill (UK). Then, in 2013, my 2008 NaNo became Tell Me (How to Write) A Story, a writer’s guide. This year, 2003 NaNo’s became my debut Literary/LGBTQ novel, A House of Light & Stone.

I’m a Scrivener pantser all the way, and even created a jumpstart template for coaching clients. It’s been everything wonderful I’d possibly dream. 2016 & 2017 will see another how-to and a second novel. I alternate literary fiction with how-to guides.

There’s an unspoken perception of bestselling authors that reminds me of the 1987 vamp flick, Lost Boys. You know, the one with Kiefer Sutherland in his pre-Jack Bauer days when mullets were still en vogue.

The film’s tagline was, “Sleep all day, party all night. Never grow old, never die. It’s fun to be a vampire.” Ah yes, the eighties. Good times.

Replace the vampires with marquee authors and you might get something like, “Write all day, play all night. Never go unnoticed, collect fat checks. It’s fun to be a bestseller.”

This guest post is by Kevin Kaiser, who has helped authors and publishers reach over 20 million fans worldwide. His online community, 1KTrueFans, helps writers find their voice, build an audience from scratch and create for a living.

Follow him @1KTrueFans.

The thing is, there is a dark side to being a bestseller. There are secrets they don’t share publicly.

I know because I’ve worked inside the Publishing Machine for nearly a decade, advising multi-million dollar bestsellers and publishers on everything from creative development to grassroots marketing. I’ve been equal parts strategist, editor, and counselor.

Bestsellers carry secrets, and if they were to share a few it might be these.

[Did you know there are 7 reasons writing a novel makes you a badass? Read about them here.]

Expectations Change Everything

A New York Times bestselling novelist once told me, “You’ll never be as free as you are at the beginning. It’s easy to forget how to take risk and write as if no one is watching.”

She went on to explain how success creates a cycle that few authors know how to handle expertly, especially when recognition comes early.

Everyone loves the popular kid. In that way, life (and publishing) is a lot like high school. But, the popular kid is expected to not only stay popular, but to do a better trick next time so they can become even more popular.

Publishers expect it (who doesn’t want to be the popular kid’s parent?), retailers expect it, and readers expect it, too. Expectations can feel unrelenting and I’ve seen the pressure it brings to authors who feel the weight of it as they sit down to create.

Truth is, they don’t know why something becomes popular. No one does. But in a day when publishing decisions are made based on two to four weeks of sales performance, and not the long-term promise of an author, expectations are everything.

The best of the best superstar authors at work today offer you a rare look behind the scenes in The Writer’s Digest Interviews: Bestsellers. Including Sue Grafton, Anne Rice, Nicholas Sparks, Khaled Hosseini and more.

Download your copy now.

Fear Doesn’t Take Hush Money

Success begets success and opens doors that were previously closed. It’s true and it enables you to “trade up” to higher social circles and opportunities. But even that too is a twin blade.

I’ve watched time and again as authors who were once large fish in a small pond find success. But inevitably, they find themselves surrounded by others who have sold more books than them, command a vastly larger platform, and might have even been on Oprah.

Like the rest of us, they often slip back into the comparison game. The tendency to play the game always leads to self-sabotage and fear. Fear of missing out, fear of not being successful enough, fear of being found out as a fraud.

No amount of money will quiet those fears, which is why refusing to play the game at all is so important. Authors who log decades of prolific output create their own rules, and the most important one is childlike in its simplicity.

[Learn important writing lessons from these first-time novelists.]

Only one thing really matters.

If there’s one core lesson that has embedded itself deeply in my psyche, it’s that doing the work is what matters most. It is the point. The point isn’t having written, as many are so fond of saying, but the actual activity of creating that matters most.

You see, once you’ve released a story into the world it no longer belongs to you. The reader brings their world to the edge of yours and what they experience from there is a process we don’t control.

Doing the work for the sake of it truly is the staying power. It’s the love the craft, our surrender to the art of exploring and illuminating new ideas that matters most. Of course, recognition and compensation are nice, but the shine wears off quickly. Every success carries within it the seeds of suffering.

[Do you underline book titles? Underline them? Put book titles in quotes? Find out here.]

Act Like No One is Watching

Take my friend’s advice, no matter where you are in your writer journey. Write as if no one is watching. Write as if no one will ever read it or judge your work. That’s where the magic lies, and that is ultimately what readers want to experience, too.

I might change one thing. You’re never as free as you are right now, and the beautiful thing is that you can choose just how free you really are.

Thanks for visiting The Writer’s Dig blog. For more great writing advice, click here.

Brian A. Klems is the editor of this blog. Purchase his popular gift book Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.

Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Sign up for Brian’s free Writer’s Digest eNewsletter: WD Newsletter

Reminder: New literary agents (with this spotlight featuring Victoria Selvaggio of Jennifer De Chiara Literary) are golden opportunities for new writers because each one is a literary agent who is likely building his or her client list.

 
About Victoria: Victoria A. Selvaggio joins The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency as an Associate Agent with a strong background in business ownership and over six years of actively working as a volunteer and Regional Advisor for SCBWI: Northern Ohio.  Drawn to the publishing scene first as an author writing all genres, with her most recent publication in the 2015 Children’s Writer’s and Illustrator’s Market, Vicki’s passion for honing the craft carried over into reading manuscripts for the agency. Currently, she is excited to read compelling manuscripts that will resonate with her long after she’s done.

(Hate writing synopses? Here are nuts & bolts pointers for you.)

She is seeking: “I am currently looking for all genres (lyrical picture books, middle grade and young adult fiction, new adult, mysteries, suspense, thrillers, paranormal, fantasy, narrative nonfiction, adult fiction), but find I’m drawn to middle grade and young adult. I especially love thrillers and all elements of weird, creepy stuff. If it’s out of the box, and it will make me think and think, long after I’m done reading, send it to me. On the flip side, I yearn for books that make me laugh, cry and wonder about the world.”

How to submit: Please e-mail a query to vselvaggio [at] windstream.net. Put “Query” in the subject line of your e-mail. For queries regarding children’s and adult fiction, please send the first twenty pages in the body of your e-mail, along with a one-paragraph bio and a one-paragraph synopsis.

For queries regarding a nonfiction book, please attach the entire proposal as a Word document (the proposal should include a sample chapter), along with a one-paragraph bio and a one-paragraph synopsis of your book in the body of your email.

“I usually respond within three to six months. If you haven’t received a response after six months, feel free to query me again.”

(Do you need different agents if you write multiple genres?)

The biggest literary agent database anywhere
is the Guide to Literary Agents. Pick up the
most recent updated edition online at a discount.

Other writing/publishing articles & links for you:

• 5 Networking Tips for Writers.
• Agent Amy Tannenbaum reps new adult, romance, and women’s fiction.
• Bring More Authenticity to Your Historical Novel: 11 Ideas.
• What It’s Like to Work With a Publishing House Editor on Your Book.
• Agent Andy Ross puts out a call for queries.
• Follow Chuck Sambuchino on Twitter or find him on Facebook. Learn all about his writing guides on how to get published, how to find a literary agent, and writing a query letter.

Your new complete and updated instructional guide
to finding an agent is finally here: The 2015 book
GET A LITERARY AGENT shares advice from more
than 110 literary agents who share advice on querying,
craft, the submission process, researching agents, and
much more. Filled with all the advice you’ll ever need to
find an agent, this resource makes a great partner book to
the agent database, Guide to Literary Agents.

“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” ― Toni Morrison

I’ve always loved Morrison’s saying. The idea that everyone has the potential to write his or her own favorite book is an appealing one, and it’s natural that writers will want to write the kind of books they like to read. But it’s not always as simple as that. What if you enjoy reading about courtroom dramas, and you’re not a lawyer or a judge? What if you love the idea of creating layers to your novel by using architecture, but you’re not an architect?

How do you write the book you want to read if you’re not an expert in the field? Here are a few tricks I learned while writing my debut novel, THE SECRETS OF MIDWIVES:

Column by Sally Hepworth. A graduate of Monash University, Melbourne,
Australia, Sally started writing novels after the birth of her first child. She has
lived around the world, spending extended periods in Singapore, the U.K.,
and Canada, and she now writes full-time from her home in Melbourne,
where she lives with her husband and two young children. Her debut US
novel is THE SECRETS OF MIDWIVES (St. Martin’s, Feb. 2015), a novel
about three generations of midwives that author Liane Moriarty described
as “women’s fiction at its finest.” Connect with Sally on Twitter.

1) Start by making a list of ALL the elements in the book you want to read

The book you want to read is more than just ‘courtroom drama’ or ‘architecture’ or ‘midwives’. While planning your novel, think about all the things that excite you when you read. Do you like a bit of romance? Some mystery? An unforeseen plot twist? (Remember: It’s okay to have more than one of these in your novel, in fact, it’s a good idea). Look at your favorite books and see what they have in common. Ask yourself: what drives the plot in the books I like to read?

Once you have your answers, make a list.

It will look something like this:
–    Mystery
–    Menace
–    High stakes – death?
–    Romance

This list will become your roadmap to writing the book you want to read. And once you have your roadmap…

2) If you are not an expert in your chosen topic, read widely

The best way to sound like you know what you’re talking about is to know what you’re talking about. In preparation for writing your novel, read as widely as you can about your topic—fiction and non-fiction—until the terminology and practices become second nature. As you read, keep your list (point 1) at the forefront of your mind, making notes of how you can incorporate what you’ve learned to create mystery and menace, heighten the stakes, and test the romances you’ve created.

(When can you finally call yourself a writer?)

3) Enlist an expert

Books are a wonderful start when researching a topic, but nothing will ever beat a flesh and blood expert. If you already know that person, wonderful. If not, don’t panic. I’ve found that when I tell people I am writing a novel, they are generally happy to answer my questions as long as I am respectful of their time. I always follow up with a small gift or note of thanks (particularly important if you want to ask them again.)

4) Stop talking to your experts

When it’s time to start the actual writing, focus on the story. If you’ve immersed yourself in enough research you’ll be surprised by how much knowledge you’ll bring to the page. Now is not the time to double-check the type of gasoline your protagonist’s car would take or what kind of plants would grow in the garden at this time of year. Write the scene as best as you can and mark areas with an X that need to be followed up on or fact-checked. And remember, when it comes down to it, you’re writing a novel not a text-book. Readers will forgive you for making a few mistakes if your novel is gripping enough.

5) Don’t lose sight of what your book is really about

Sometimes, in an attempt to jam everything on your list into your book, your plot can start to feel random. But the book you want to read should be bigger than its topic, or the sum of its plot points. The theme is what your book is really about…in effect, it is the glue that holds your novel together. Sometimes the theme presents itself right away, and other times you don’t see it until the second or third draft. Regardless of timing, when your theme emerges, grab it and use it to add meaning and layers to your plot. And when your plot is more than what happens next, guess what? You have a novel. Maybe even a great one. Maybe even the book you want to read.

(Should You Sign With a New Literary Agent? Know the Pros and Cons)

This guest column is a supplement to the
“Breaking In” (debut authors) feature of this author
in Writer’s Digest magazine. Are you a subscriber
yet? If not, get a discounted one-year sub here.

I (Chuck) Will Instruct At These Great Writing Events Soon:

• Oct. 24, 2014: Atlanta Writers Fall Conference (Atlanta, GA)
• Feb. 6, 2015: Kentucky Writers Conference (Louisville, KY)
• Feb. 7, 2015: Tennessee Writers Conference (Nashville, KY)
• Feb. 20, 2015: Portland Writing Workshop (Portland, OR)
• Feb. 21, 2015: Seattle Writers Workshop (Seattle, WA)
• March 27-28, 2015: Chesapeake Writing Conferences (Baltimore and DC)
• April 17-18, 2015: Carolina Writing Workshop Conferences (Charlotte, NC and Columbia, SC)
• May 15, 2015: Milwaukee Writers Conference (Milwaukee, WI)
• May 16, 2015: Chicago Writers Workshop (Chicago, IL)
• June 25-28, 2015: Jackson Hole Writers Conference (Jackson Hole, WY)
• July 31- Aug. 2, 2015: Writer’s Digest Conference East (New York, NY)
• October 2015: Books by the Banks Book Festival (Cincinnati, OH)

Your new complete and updated instructional guide
to finding an agent is finally here: The 2015 book
GET A LITERARY AGENT shares advice from more
than 110 literary agents who share advice on querying,
craft, the submission process, researching agents, and
much more. Filled with all the advice you’ll ever need to
find an agent, this resource makes a great partner book to
the agent database, Guide to Literary Agents.

Editor’s Note: The following content is provided to Writer’s Digest by a writing community partner. This content is sponsored by American Writers & Artists Inc. www.awaionline.com.

When a writer — or aspiring writer — asks me about the single hottest opportunity for writers, my answer never changes …

No matter the season, the year, economy, or the individual’s background, passion, interests, degree — or lack of — the answer is always copywriting.

There simply isn’t another writing skill that even comes close to the income potential and variety of paid writing gigs …

In fact, there are literally hundreds of ways to live the writer’s life using copywriting as your foundation.

And you can choose the type of writing that fits your style and goals …

Short copy … social media updates … product descriptions … long copy … websites … it’s completely up to you.

Of course, so many options can be a little overwhelming. So today I’m going to give you four ways to get started making a living as a copywriter …

#1: Manage and Write Social Media Campaigns

This copywriting opportunity is exploding! In just a few years, it’s grown from being referred to as “social media” to now often being called “the social web.”

It’s integrated into everything we do online.

Because of that, companies need more social web content than ever … to the tune of social media revenue reaching $34 billion by 2016! (Gartner Inc.)

And that’s up from $11.8 billion in 2011 and $16.9 billion in 2012.

Huge growth!

Plus, check this out: According to a recent article from social web expert, Nick Usborne, “88% of companies know they’re not doing well on social media.”

Additionally, “Fewer than 15% of companies have dedicated social media experts on staff.”

Social media might as well be an opportunity on a silver platter!

The demand is so high, yet this is another area of direct-response copy where just a few clients can keep you completely booked.

What does a social media writer do, exactly?

As a social media writer, you work with companies to manage their social media campaigns. This can include a range of services from creating initial social pages to the day-to-day management and updating of the accounts.

There are also posts and updates that need to be written and scheduled, shareable content that needs to be found and re-shared, and fans and followers who need to be engaged with.

And since social media requires ongoing attention month after month, you could have a full-time project — and full-time pay — simply managing a company’s social media strategy.

Get started today by setting up or optimizing your own social media channel. In other words, prove that you understand social media and participate in social media.

Then, share (or re-share) valuable content, tell people about your services, and use social media to attract new clients.

#2: Revise Web Copy So It Can Be Found

SEO (search engine optimization) is a copywriting opportunity that sadly does not receive the attention it deserves.

Yet it’s something every writer should learn …

1. Even if you’re a brand-new writer, you can jump in right away and start making solid money from day one. It’s likely the easiest and fastest way for a web writer to start working with paying clients.

2. SEO skills will make your services more valuable — meaning higher rates and better pay. So — if you are doing any writing for the Web at all — don’t miss out on the added value of SEO.

But, let’s back up a little to make sure we’re on the same page …

In order to sell anything online, a website needs to attract people (commonly called “visitors”). The number of visitors a website receives per month is called its “traffic.”

As a business gets more traffic (or people visiting their website), they increase their selling opportunities.

And, it just so happens that SEO is a great way — if not the best way — to get more traffic …

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

A search engine is a tool that helps a person find what they’re looking for online. You’ve certainly heard of Google, Yahoo!, or Bing …

You type something into one of those search engines and they return a list of recommended sites. These are known as “search engine results.”

SEO is the process of tweaking a website so it appears higher in those results … increasing the website’s exposure to more potential customers.

That’s where you, as the SEO copywriter, come in …

What does a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) writer do?

The way a search engine ranks all of the websites on the Internet can be a bit complicated … and, it changes from time to time …

As an SEO writer, you would follow these changes and ensure your client’s website copy is written (and revised) in a way that allows the search engine to find and rank it high in the results.

Depending on your preference, your service might include writing all the copy and content for a website, or simply tweaking existing copy to optimize it.

For your clients, more Search Engine Optimization equals more traffic. More traffic means more profits. That’s why just a few clients can keep you busy writing (or enhancing) content that will improve their SEO ranking!

Get started today by exploring SEO. Try going to your favorite search engine and searching for something you’d like to buy. Then, review the results to see how the websites use the words (called “keywords” in the SEO world) that you searched for on their website.

You’ll find that the most optimized sites (those that are most relevant to what you searched for) appear first …

What about those other sites? The ones who aren’t ranking well are all potential clients just waiting for you to help them.

#3: Write Online Content (Like what you’re reading now!)

This copywriting opportunity ties everything we already talked about together … and it’s an easy opportunity to break into …

You see, most companies are desperate for content — like articles, blog posts, case studies, free reports, reviews, and more — because this content attracts new prospects, helps them make purchase decisions, builds rapport, increases credibility, and more.

Content — or “content marketing” — is now a major part of the sales process. In fact, I discovered that 9 out of 10 companies in North America are using content marketing to boost their sales.

And, get this … 60% of them plan on increasing how much they’ll spend on content!

Writing content is one of the easiest, fastest-growing opportunities there is …

And, for the most part, you’ll be writing short pieces of copy that are informative, engaging, and entertaining. No need to “hard sell” or be hype-y.

Get started today by writing an article about a topic you are passionate about. It doesn’t have to be long — aim for 500-800 words. The point of this exercise is for you to see just how easy content writing can be.

As an example, let’s say you enjoy yoga. You could write something like, “4 Ways Yoga Changed My Life.” That’s exactly the kind of content a yoga studio, yoga supply website, or yoga instructor would need to market their business.

#4: Write Emails

Last, but certainly not least, on my list of copywriting opportunities, is email writing.

This opportunity is so huge because email is one of the main ways that smart companies stay in contact with their potential prospects as well as past customers.

You may have seen sign-up forms on various websites … companies asking for your email address in exchange for a free report, discount, insider information, or access to their newsletter. In the world of email, that’s called “building a list” of prospects.

Once a company builds this list, they want to follow up with it often — sometimes even daily — to prompt the reader to take an action …

That action could be to visit the website, request more information, or purchase something.

But, here’s the thing that makes this a huge opportunity …

Companies don’t want to mail the same email twice!

They need someone to write a unique email — or even a whole series — for every product they launch, every new email list they create, and every new affiliate offer they want to promote.

They also need emails for upsells, discounts, holiday promotions, and more.

Every time they reach out to their list, they need a new email.

If they like what they see from you, they’ll keep coming back. That’s why you can live the writer’s life just by writing email copy and nothing else.

Get started now by signing up for an offer on a website you like. Then, follow their emails to see their process. If you think you can write a better email, why not reach out to the company and propose it?

2015 Will Be a Bright Year for Writers!

There you have it …

Four wide-open, enjoyable, potentially profitable writing specialties: social media campaigns, search engine optimization, content writing, and email.

Whether you’re writing an article, helping a company with their SEO or social media strategy … or even convincing a reader to support a cause, download a special report, buy a product, or request more information …

You’ll always be in demand!

It doesn’t matter what your background is, what your passions are, or even if you have experience.

All that matters is that you’re willing to take the first step …

Choose one of these four copywriting opportunities and do the “get started now” step as soon as possible.

Just don’t spend too much time deliberating. After all, any of these four opportunities can be your ticket to making a living as a writer.

And if you’d like to learn how to take advantage of – and write – all of the projects I shared with you today, check out the Home Study from our recent Web Copywriting Intensive. You’ll get incredible professional-grade training on all of these writing opportunities, taught by the industry’s top experts, from the comfort of your own home.

Next week I’m interviewing a writer who has made millions – both as a published author AND as a copywriter. He’s a brilliant writer … but more importantly he’s a wonderful teacher who has mentored dozens of other writers over the years on building successful writing businesses of their own.

He’s promised to give useful and actionable advice for writers looking to follow in his footsteps. You won’t want to miss it!

Until then,
Rebecca Matter

P.S. If you have any questions for me, or have a topic you’d like me to cover in a future issue, I invite you to contact me on Facebook, through AWAI or via my website, rebeccamatter.com.

As a former motion picture executive and current instructor of fiction writing, I’ve heard too often the incorrect definition of a sympathetic character. It is not necessarily someone we like. It is not necessarily someone we admire as a doer of good deeds. We follow characters with interest and compassion when we have a deep understanding of their feelings, their motives and their personal history. Simply put, to be sympathetic is to be understood.

This guest post is by Lisa Lieberman Doctor, author of the writing book, Accidental Poetry: Improve Your English Through Creative Writing and the novel The Deflowering of Rhona Lipshitz. She has been working with writers since 1977. Over the years she has served as: a development and production executive at Universal Pictures, Warner Brothers, TriStar Pictures (where she was Vice President of Robin Williams’ company, Blue Wolf Productions) and several independent production companies; a staff writer on ABC’s General Hospital, where she was nominated for a Daytime Emmy and Writers Guild Award; an expert witness in motion picture copyright law; and a writing instructor at the UCLA Writers Program; the California State University; The Esalen Institute; The University of the Balearic Islands; and the TV Writers Fund For The Future. For more info, visit lisadoctor.com.

Create people, not characters. This was Hemingway’s advice to authors, and I humbly concur. It’s long been my belief that when writers connect to their characters through their own dark emotional colors of shame, fear and anger, they’ll find not only a rich common ground, but also that which motivates their characters’ behavior and therefore makes them understandable to readers. Over the years, I’ve compiled several hundred writing exercises for the protagonist to answer in his own voice, each one designed to reveal these forbidden emotional colors. Questions like, when have you been held hostage by your own fears? Or, when has fear stopped you from moving forward? Or, what old wounds have not yet healed? I ask writers to get out of their protagonist’s way and function as a court reporter might do, transcribing onto the page the words of the character in that character’s first person voice, without judgment or censorship from the writer. Once this task is completed—and it often takes a series of prompts to achieve the goal—the writer has a clearer picture of the protagonist’s internal issue, the inevitable result of a faulty belief system created in childhood that has prevented the character from lessening the heavy burden of shame, fear and anger. Of course, most of the anecdotes and feelings expressed in the protagonist’s words belong to the writer. This is a good thing; it means the writer has found the profundity of shared emotional truth and can now imbue the protagonist with the same level of emotion.

[Learn important writing lessons from these first-time novelists.]

I’ve used this practice thousands of times during my nearly forty year career of working with writers, and the results are equally satisfying to them and to me. Recently, a successful writer of romance novels took my course, “Deepening The Characters We Create,” in order to move from the plot-driven romance genre to literary women’s fiction. After a focused curriculum of exercises whereby her protagonist and important secondary characters underwent a series of probing questions, she sold her literary novel in the genre she’d been hoping to conquer.

I’ve also found that the exercises work well to alleviate writers block. More often than not, when novelists get stuck, it’s because they don’t fully understand the emotional issue of their protagonist. At this point, I offer specific exercises designed to shake the character—this emerging person—into a new level of self-awareness. I might ask, for example, what do you not want people to know about you? The exercise focuses both author and character on the previously unspoken emotional issue that serves as the engine, driving the central story problem forward.

The prompts have been a mainstay in my role as instructor for novelists and screenwriters. And then, serendipitously, I discovered a new use for the exercises.

[Get Query Help: Click here for The 10 Dos and Don'ts of Writing a Query Letter]

Several years ago, I accepted a position teaching English at a university in Spain, and was hit with a revelatory thought: what if I took my compiled writing exercises, designed to deepen protagonists along their journey, and applied them to new speakers of English, allowing these new speakers the opportunity to write with depth and meaning in a language that was new to them?

I asked my students in Spain to answer the questions in their own voice, writing from their heart. Questions such as, do you yearn for what seems impossible? And, when has compassion for others changed your life? To my delight, what might have been embarrassing or too revealing in their native language became fun for them in English. It was remarkable; writing in a language they were in the process of learning took away the fear of exposure. They wanted more and more prompts to try, and they relished sharing their words with the group, thrilled that they could be understood with their limited English vocabulary. The words were beautiful, filled with truth, and instantly relatable. I put my writing prompts into a new book and called it Accidental Poetry: Improve Your English Through Creative Writing. How exciting it’s been to find an additional purpose for the exercises.

I bring my long list of writing exercises to every workshop I lead, both at home and abroad, and I find a use for them every time, whether it’s alleviating writers block, improving English language skills, or deepening fictional characters. As Mr. Hemingway suggested, we must connect our own truths to the fictional beings we create, and then get out of their way in order to allow them to become people whose feelings and motivations we understand.

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Brian A. Klems is the editor of this blog, online editor of Writer’s Digest and author of the popular gift book Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.

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I’ve been selling books for more than fifteen years and learning to write novels even longer. Of all the author readings and Q&A sessions I’ve hosted (and attended), one of the most common questions among beginning writers, even curious readers, is this: Do you start with an outline?

You’ve heard the pros and cons. An outline helps organize your thoughts and prevents you from spinning your wheels and traveling down dead-end storylines. The flipside, of course, is that constructing an outline boxes you in and limits the possibility of discovery, which is the most creative and rewarding part of writing.

Column by Jamie Kornegay, author of SOIL, to be released March 10,
2015, from Simon & Schuster. The book, a combination of literary suspense
and Southern gothic, was called “gripping” and “haunting” by Kirkus Reviews.
He lives in the Mississippi Delta, where he runs an independent bookstore,
Turnrow Book Co. Connect with him on Twitter — @JamieKornegay.

First, it’s important to note that there are no ironclad rules to novel writing. Every writer works differently and stumbles upon his or her preferred method through trial and error. The novel, rather than writing advisers, should tell you what it needs.

The traditional term paper outline, with its Roman numerals and letters, is helpful to organize a finite amount of information, but a novel is more amorphous. I couldn’t begin to collect a novel’s potential in an outline, though I certainly understand the impulse. There’s something terrifying about the blank page and its stark white emptiness. What could you put there that anyone would want to read?

It’s only natural that a writer would wish to escape such a daunting task. If an outline is a way to get the paper dirty, then go for it. Just remember that those first scratchings are exploration. Don’t lock yourself into a story that you haven’t discovered through hard work. The wheel-spinning and dead ends and wasted time are part of discovering what your book is about, and if you bypass that, you’re opting for ease and convenience over depth of storytelling. Nothing worthwhile comes easy.

After the spark of an idea, the fuel for your story is character. If you don’t yet know the character as intimately as you know your best friends, then how can you decide what that character will do when matched with the conflicts of the novel?

While imagining your characters, you will naturally develop scenes and storylines and bits of history. Once these begin to accumulate, then you have something to attach to an outline. For me, an outline is an expression of the novel’s structure, which gradually reveals itself, like hacking a totem out of simple log.

My first published novel, Soil, began like many other books – with a single image. I was driving past flooded farmland and saw a stump sticking out of the muck. For a fleeting moment, I thought it was a corpse. What if it had been? That would be a nightmare to deal with. I began to imagine a landowner happening upon the body, growing scared and paranoid.  He might worry about becoming a suspect. What if he didn’t tell anyone, just got rid of it? How would he cover it up completely, taking every precaution so that no trace of it would be discovered? This kind of morbid daydreaming is the stuff of novels.

I reasoned out creative answers to my own tough questions. I slowly began to understand the main character, his motivations and obsessions. I wrote wasted pages and dead ends galore. Eventually I found the right path. I could feel the story gaining traction as new characters arrived and ideas poured forth. It was time to make the outline.

I kept my outline informal, intuitive. I used the outline almost like flypaper to trap scenes and ideas that were coming quicker than words, as my characters were finally alive and could make their own decisions about the story.

The outline helped me negotiate the tricky framework of Soil, which is told somewhat out of sequence. It’s one of my favorite aspects of the book. The structure came out of a desire to maintain that initial sense of mystery I felt after discovering the “body” in the field, all the hows and whys and the slow discovery of my characters’ secrets and motivations.

The novel is divided into five sections comprised of several chapters each. Each section opens with a strange, hopefully compelling episode, and then goes back in time to reveal how the characters reached this point. I thought this looping effect generated a nice suspense, and it also informed the deeper themes of Soil, specifically the cycles of nature and our inevitable return to the earth. If I did my job right, then the complicated structure should not present a stumbling block to the reader. It took careful planning, and my own specially designed outline.

The book I’m currently working on has a linear structure, told over the course of a week. Each chapter is a day, and understanding that from the outset allows me to work out of sequence easily, depending of what inspiration strikes me or what I find during my day-to-day life to steal and apply to the novel.

Just remember that an outline shouldn’t decide the story, your characters do that. An outline is where you string up the pieces to see the big picture and make your novel is a coherent whole.

This guest column is a supplement to the
“Breaking In” (debut authors) feature of this author
in Writer’s Digest magazine. Are you a subscriber
yet? If not, get a discounted one-year sub here.

Other writing/publishing articles & links for you:

• Ask Not What Your Readers Can Do For You.
• 3 Good Things About Disturbing Fiction.
• Happily Ever After: Romances Aren’t Meant To Be Reality TV.
• Agent Spotlight: Cate Hart (Corvisiero Literary Agency) seeks YA, MG, Romance and select Erotica and LGBT.
• Follow Chuck Sambuchino on Twitter or find him on Facebook. Learn all about his writing guides on how to get published, how to find a literary agent, and writing a query letter.

Your new complete and updated instructional guide
to finding an agent is finally here: The 2015 book
GET A LITERARY AGENT shares advice from more
than 110 literary agents who share advice on querying,
craft, the submission process, researching agents, and
much more. Filled with all the advice you’ll ever need to
find an agent, this resource makes a great partner book to
the agent database, Guide to Literary Agents.

Many writers hear that they should start blogging to build their platform, help them get published, or sell more books. But is blogging right for you and your career? If so, what should you blog about? And perhaps most importantly, how can you do it effectively and without wasting important time you could spend on paying work?

In this live 90-minute webinar — titled “How to Blog Meaningfully and Grow Your Audience” — publishing industry guru Jane Friedman covers the best practices of worthwhile blogging and how it can make a difference to the growth of your author career. You’ll learn the secrets of shareable & spreadable content, the best ways to get new readers, and how to attract more opportunities (and improve your writing skills!) by posting great content. It’s also critical to understand how online writing is different from print-based writing, so you’ll get a crash course in how to write blog posts that are online-reader and SEO-friendly (optimized for search engines), to increase your blog’s discoverability and traffic over time.

Professor Jane Friedman has been professionally blogging since 2008 and is the former publisher of Writer’s Digest. Her blog for writers at JaneFriedman.com has won multiple awards and enjoys more than 100,000 visits per month.

Click Here to Register

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

• 4 key benefits to blogging
• How to begin developing a content strategy for your blog
• 7 principles every blogger should follow
• The best practices of professional bloggers (those who do it for a living)
• Do’s and don’ts of writing for an online audience
• How to write post headlines that get clicks and shares
• The basics of SEO (search engine optimization) that anyone can understand
• How to use categories and tags
• How and why to use images-and where to find them for free
• Using site analytics to improve your blog over time
• Adding email/RSS functionality to your blog
• How to begin monetizing your blog

While this session will recommend and reference specific blogging tools, such as WordPress and Blogger, it will not cover the technical aspects of setting up a blog. However, links to tutorials will be offered.

Click Here to Register

INSTRUCTOR

Jane Friedman is the former publisher of Writer’s Digest and has been a professional blogger since 2008. Her blog at JaneFriedman.com receives more than 100,000 visits per month and has won multiple awards. Jane currently teaches digital media and publishing at the University of Virginia, and is the publisher of Scratch magazine, a digital publication that offers insight into the business side of the writing life.

Click Here to Register

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

• Writers who are curious about blogging and wonder if they should start
• Writers who have a blog, but don’t feel like they’re getting anything out of it
• Writers who have blogged in the past, and want to return to it in a more meaningful way
• Writers who want to build their platform
• Writers who have a book coming out in the next year
• Writers who are thinking of blogging to get a book deal
• Writers who want to improve their online writing skills

Click Here to Register

How can you tell if a piece of writing is strong? Whether you’re editing for a publishing company, working as a freelancer, or self-editing, correctly assessing the quality of the work is imperative. In this excerpt from The Editor’s Companion, Steve Dunham discusses four marks of good writing and how you can recognize them in every piece you review.

1. Good Content

Communication, even in writing, requires two people. Every time a writer begins putting words together for publication, one fact should always be foremost: The writing is (at least partly) for the benefit of someone else. Even if a writer begins without a specific audience clearly in mind, the goal of communication remains. The writing must achieve a link between author and reader.

The editor, too, must always remember the reader. Both writer and reader may benefit from written communication, but editing is done primarily to benefit the reader, to smooth the process of communication.

The content of any piece of writing ultimately must be of personal interest to the reader. From news headlines to novels, from apartment leases to the Bible, every piece of writing attracts readers by providing something that concerns individual people.

An editor faces the task of taking a piece of writing and heightening its relevance to those individuals who constitute the publisher’s readers or market.

2. Focus

Each sentence, says editor Margaret Palm, should convey one idea. So should each paragraph and each chapter, with the ideas becoming more general as the writer progresses up the scale. This sort of cohesion does not limit the number of ideas a writer is able to communicate; rather, it organizes them. Focusing on one idea at a time makes for clear, direct communication. It does not leave the reader guessing where the writing is headed. It does not distract the reader with digression. Instead it takes a general idea as the subject of a chapter, develops an aspect of that idea in each paragraph, and provides details in every sentence. Focused writing, like a focused photograph, presents information clearly.

The classic style of newswriting, with the “most important” facts at the top, followed by less and less important facts in descending order is called the inverted pyramid. Inverted pyramid leads begin with who, what, when, where, why, and how, all in a few sentences.

Those five Ws of journalism also provide a guide for both writers and editors of nonfiction. In a news story, the writer must tell the reader who, what, when, where, and why—preferably in the first paragraph. Although not all nonfiction needs to be as compact as news writing, the editor must be sure that the basic facts are communicated.

Even in fiction, the five Ws need to be addressed somewhere in the story, although depending on the genre—mystery, for example—key parts of the story may be withheld until the end.

3. Precise Language¹

The writer’s biggest job is that of combining words—and often numbers and graphics—to share ideas. Organizing the material and choosing precisely the right words require more effort than just writing down what is in the writer’s head. The knowledgeable writer possesses information or ideas that the reader does not. To make that information accessible, the writer must use words that the reader understands (or explain any that the reader does not). The writer must choose which information to include and must decide what is superfluous or would burden the reader. Appendices, footnotes, and bibliographies are all communication tools. So are abbreviations. They help the reader understand what the writer has to say.

The editor’s job is to help the writer communicate with the reader, and just about all of us—including editors—need some help with our writing. Sometimes we have a little trouble saying what we mean. Editors do make sure the commas are in the right place. (It does make a difference: My favorite comma error was in an ad in the church bulletin for a supper hosted by the youth group; it read, “Don’t cook Mom!”) Editors also do a lot more, ensuring good content, focus, precise language, and good grammar.

Editors are on guard for much more than missing commas, however. Writers might, for example, get a little repetitive: “The analysis phase of the project consisted of analysis,” stated one report I read. A job ad required “program related experience in related areas”—one of those “necessary conditions that must be met.”

“Better say nothing at all. Language is worth a thousand pounds a word!” as Lewis Carroll wrote in Through the Looking-Glass.

The reader’s time is worth something, too. Let’s not waste it by stating the obvious. If our work is read voluntarily, we will lose readers if we waste their time. Often, though, we may be editing a piece of writing that people are obligated to read, and we owe it to them to communicate simply and clearly.

In The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells, the Monkey-man— a monkey that Doctor Moreau had been trying to turn into a human—“was for ever jabbering … the most arrant nonsense” and “had a fantastic trick of coining new words. He had an idea … that to gabble about names that meant nothing was the proper use of speech. He called it ‘Big Thinks’ … He thought nothing of what was plain and comprehensible.”

Writers can commit Big Thinks by using imprecise language or misusing words entirely. Some writers may impress themselves by using big words they don’t understand. Utilize may sound more impressive than use (but has a specific meaning of its own: to find a use for). Comprise is not the same as compose (it means “be made up of,” as in “New York City comprises five boroughs”); a nation-state isn’t merely a sovereign country (it’s the country of a single nationality); coalesce isn’t transitive (things coalesce, people don’t coalesce things). Emulate means “do at least as well as,” but imitate, the word that is more likely appropriate, doesn’t sound nearly as impressive. Respective is often used where it is not needed, as in “The adjutant generals report to their respective governors”—well, of course they report to their own governors. Writing to impress oneself or others is what editor Dave Fessenden called “the curse of Babel.” He pointed out that people built the Tower of Babel to make a name for themselves and ended up with their language confounded—a result still obtained by vain and pompous writers, he said.

Editors must be alert to misused words. Words Into Type has an excellent twenty-three-page list of “Words Likely to Be Misused or Confused”; The Elements of Style has a similar list, and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary has usage notes for many entries.

In his book Doublespeak,² William Lutz described another way of misusing big words: “gobbledygook or bureaucratese … a matter of piling on words, of overwhelming the audience” or “inflated language that is designed to make the ordinary seem extraordinary.” That language is meant to impress, and specifically to deceive, the reader.

Aside from writers who deceive themselves, readers are usually the victims of misused words. As William Safire wrote in his book In Love with Norma Loquendi,³ “Meanings can be assigned to words to suit the speaker, corrupting communication and derailing intelligent discourse.”

For example, one job description stated, “Demonstrates technical achievement at the highest Government and corporate levels.” In plain English, what does that mean? It sounds as if the job applicant must have been president, chief justice, or speaker of the house. Such overblown prose corrupts communication and derails intelligent discourse, to borrow Safire’s wording.

When writing and editing, let our first concern be the reader. Let’s not try to impress anyone, least of all ourselves. Instead of engaging in Big Thinks, let’s pursue the goal of “plain and comprehensible” communication.

4. Good Grammar⁴

“I don’t care about grammar,” a writer told me when he brought his article in for editing.

In fact it seemed that the writer, like many others, didn’t care about a lot of things.

“This merger does not seems to posse any intimate security risks to the United States” was one statement in the article. I called out the posse of language deputies; we changed posse to pose and fixed dozens more errors, grammar and otherwise. We had to query the author to find out what intimate was supposed to be (he’d meant to use immediate).

Unfortunately this writer was not alone. Not in making mistakes—we all make those—but in not caring. George Orwell cited two common faults in English writing: “staleness of imagery” and “lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not.”⁵

If a writer doesn’t care about grammar, the writer at least should care about the reader. If you have something worth saying, then care about communicating it.

The editor, who is assisting communication between writer and reader, must scrutinize every piece of writing that is intended for publication and, to the greatest extent possible, make the text conform to the marks of good writing.

Author Stephen Coonts, in a July 2001 interview with Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute,⁶ discussed the editing of his books (the Naval Institute Press published his first novel, Flight of the Intruder).

Proceedings: How were you treated, editorially, at the Naval Institute Press, compared to your subsequent publishers?

Coonts: The Naval Institute is unique, because it probably publishes more first-time writers—not so much first-time novelists, but first-time writers—than any other publishing house I know. So for me it was a great place to learn how to write by working with the editors and to learn how to get a manuscript up to what is called “commercial quality.”

Subsequently, I went to Doubleday, where they have a line editor who looks at the manuscript and puts in some commas and takes some out. How you wrote it is the way it’s going to be in the book. It’s tough for most beginning writers to get their prose ready to be published. It was a really great educational experience at the Naval Institute. I worked with a great editor, and I learned a lot.

Proceedings: So you’d say you were edited more at the Naval Institute Press?

Coonts: Yes. They edited the living hell out of the book. I think they overedited some of the passages. In some cases they improved it; in some cases they made it worse. Looking back, I don’t think they had much faith that I knew what the story I was telling was all about. On the other hand, the folks I worked with knew their English, and what a sentence was, and how the prose had to come together. On balance, it was a great learning experience for me.

As Coonts pointed out, editors make mistakes, too. Sometimes we attempt to improve clarity and end up muddying the water instead. Worse, we sometimes accidentally change the correct meaning to something incorrect. “One of my greatest dreads as a copy editor is that I will change something to make it wrong,” wrote copy editor Laura Moyer in her Red Pen blog.⁷ “Changing things on the proof is risky, as it raises the possibility of introducing an error while attempting to correct an existing one,” she wrote in another blog entry.⁸ Editing for focus, precision, and grammar are essential and less hazardous than editing for content, which requires some knowledge of the subject matter.

Furthermore, overconfidence can lead to wrongly second-guessing an author’s meaning. An editing error in Under Two Flags: The American Navy in the Civil War by William M. Fowler, Jr.,⁹ led to a cure that was worse than whatever the supposed illness was: “Galena was far smaller than New Ironsides, 738 tons versus 3,486; her topsail schooner rig and exaggerated tumble made her home immediately recognizable.” When I read that, I suspected that it should have read, “… her exaggerated tumblehome made her immediately recognizable”—tumblehome being the inward curving of a ship’s sides as they rise (some ships, anyway). Galena indeed was immediately recognizable because of her exaggerated tumblehome (see the photo). Evidently the nautical term tumblehome was unknown to the editor, who rearranged the sentence into immediately recognizable words (the author confirmed that this was an editing error but added, “Alas, I read proofs”).

An extreme example of second-guessing the meaning was a reference to a story in the Atlanta Constitution headlined “Mock Bioterror Attack Spooks Some in Denver.” Someone citing it decided it was a mistake and, in a footnote, changed it to read, “Mock Bioterror Attack Some Spooks in Denver.”

Both the word tumblehome and the Atlanta Constitution headline were verifiable with a little research. Second-guessing the meaning (rather than looking it up to verify it) is one hazard for editors.

Arthur Plotnik, author of The Elements of Editing, noted another: Editors “must stop short of a self-styled purism and allow for some variety of expression.”¹⁰ All editing requires care to ensure that the writing communicates better than it did in its original form.

Plotnik posed ten questions for editors to critically examine their own work:¹¹ Has the editor

1. “weighed every phrase and sentence … to determine whether the author’s meaning” was preserved?
2. “measured every revision … against the advantages of the author’s original”?
3. “pondered the effectiveness of every phrase”?
4. “studied every possible area of numerical, factual, or judgmental error”?
5. searched “for typos and transpositions, especially in” parts that were “retyped or reorganized,” and “edited and proofread” the portions altered by the editor?
6. “groveled in the details of the footnotes, tables, and appendices”?
7. “cast a legal eye upon every quoted phrase, defamatory comment, trade name, allegation, and attribution”?
8. “stepped back to consider the impact of the whole as well as the parts”?
9. “provided all the editorial embellishments to the text—title, subtitle, subhead, author notes, sidebars …”?
10. “cleared every significant revision and addition with the author?”—if that “is the policy of the publication.”

As Plotnik’s list indicates, editors must be certain that they are actually improving the author’s writing. Overconfidence comes all too easily, and we need to handle the author’s creation with care.

This article was excerpted from The Editor’s Companion by Steve Dunham. Filled with advice and techniques for honing your editing skills, this book provides the tools you need to pursue high quality in editing, writing and publishing—every piece, every time.

Footnotes

1. Portions of this section appeared in Precision for Writers and Editors, September 1999; “Writing for Everybody,” Precision for Writers and Editors, spring 2001; “Better Writing: Stating the Obvious,” Transmissions, June–July 2001; and “Big Thinks” and “Word Abuse,” Precision for Writers and Editors, Autumn 2001; all copyright Analytic Services Inc. and are used with permission.
2. William Lutz, Doublespeak (New York: Harper & Row, 1989).
3. William Safire, In Love with Norma Loquendi (New York: Random House, 1994).
4. Portions of this section appeared in Precision for Writers and Editors, September 1999, copyright Analytic Services Inc., and are used with permission.
5. George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language.”
6. Fred L. Schultz, “Interview: Stephen Coonts,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 127, no. 7, July 2001, p. 68.
7. Laura Moyer, “Rock. Copy Editor. Hard Place,” Red Pen blog, Fredericksburg, Va., Free Lance–Star, June 7, 2011.
8. Laura Moyer, “Lie/Lay. I Had to Tackle This Sometime,” Red Pen blog, Fredericksburg, Va., Free Lance–Star, Aug. 2, 2011.
9. William M. Fowler, Jr., Under Two Flags: The American Navy in the Civil War (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990).
10. Arthur Plotnik, The Elements of Editing, p. 3.
11. Arthur Plotnik, The Elements of Editing, pp. 35–36.

For this week’s prompt, write a patchwork poem. Patches are literally everywhere–in quilts, on clothes, and hey, even bandages and tape are a sort of patch. Then, there are the patches we place on our hearts, souls, and spirits. Cabbage patches, patching through for communication, and the more one thinks about patches the more one realizes they are all around us, holding us together.

*****

2015 Poet’s Market

Publish your poetry!

Get the most trusted guide to publishing your poetry: the 2015 Poet’s Market!

Edited by Robert Lee Brewer, this edition of Poet’s Market includes articles on the craft of poetry, business of poetry, and promotion of poetry. Plus, interviews with poets and original contemporary poems. Oh yeah, and hundreds of poetry publishing opportunities, including book publishers, chapbook publishers, magazines, journals, online publications, contests, and so much more!

Click to continue.

*****

Here’s my attempt at a Patchwork Poem:

“dress”

she wears a dress made of patches
& each patch on that dress matches

the feeling she got the first chance
that she gave him with each romance

he had with some other woman
because he came back a new man

at least those were his intentions
but they fell through as I mentioned

her white dress covered in patches
& each patch on that dress matches

all of her new second chances
to that guy whose love entrances

& she knows that he will wrong her
but she’ll hold out a bit longer

*****

Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer’s Digest Writing Community and author of the poetry collection, Solving the World’s Problems (Press 53). He edits Poet’s Market, Writer’s Market, and Guide to Self-Publishing, in addition to writing a free weekly WritersMarket.com newsletter and poetry column for Writer’s Digest magazine.

He likes to write poems that rhyme…from time to time…while sucking on a lime…and listening to a mime.

Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.

*****

Find more poetic posts here:

• Wednesday Poetry Prompts: 295.
• Gogyohka: Poetic Form.
• The Poetry World A-Z.

It can strike while you’re working on any piece, anytime, anywhere. You’re writing along like butter, and suddenly a stomach-wrenching jolt slams you up against a concrete wall. That thunderous voice in your head rebukes: “THAT’S THE WORST, MOST HORRIBLE, STUPID PHRASE SINCE . . . .” And you’re paralyzed.

This guest post is by Noelle Sterne, author, editor, writing coach, and spiritual counselor. She has published more than 300 pieces in print and online venues, including Author Magazine, Fiction Southeast, Funds for Writers, Children’s Book Insider, Inspire Me Today, Pen & Prosper, Romance Writers Report, Transformation Magazine, Unity Magazine, Women in Higher Education, Women on Writing, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer. She has also published pieces in anthologies, including Chicken Soup for the Soul books; has contributed several columns to writing publications; and recently became a volunteer judge for Rate Your Story. With a Ph.D. from Columbia University, Noelle has for over 28 years assisted doctoral candidates in completing their dissertations (finally). Based on her practice, she is completing a handbook addressing dissertation writers’ overlooked but very important nonacademic difficulties. This book, Challenges in Writing Your Dissertation: Coping with the Emotional, Interpersonal, and Spiritual Struggles, will be published by Rowman & Littlefield Education in 2015. In her book Trust Your Life: Forgive Yourself and Go After Your Dreams (Unity Books, 2011), Noelle draws examples from her academic consulting and other aspects of life to help readers release regrets, relabel their past, and reach their lifelong yearnings. Her webinar about the book is on YouTube.  Noelle invites you to visit her website: trustyourlifenow.com.

Take heart. Such a message doesn’t have to plunge you into a full block. Recognize it for what it is—your ever-present inner editor, often old programming, maybe residue of parental strictures, telling you you shouldn’t be writing, you’ll never be a writer, and you might as well go sell burner phones (if that’s not your day job already).

Like all of us writers, I’ve experienced this forbidding voice many times. But its fearsome fireworks, like those of the Wizard of Oz, mask its instability. And, as Dorothy and her friends proved on the yellow brick road, the terrifying presence is vanquished by taking one step after another and trusting that you’re on the right path.

When I first heard the inner editor’s deafening, dismissive voice, it stopped me cold. First I sat staring at the blank screen. Then I wandered hopelessly around the house, like an orphan in a canyon. My current project lay abandoned, drafts yellowing and computer files corrupting.

I longed for a savior on a white Ipad. But realizing that only I could break that catatonic state and pierce through my paralysis, cowering I continued.

As I punched out the offending words (or phrases or clichés), the dread voice continue to intone, and as usual I almost froze. But from some subconscious forest, the excalibur appeared. It charged me to type one more word that calmed, commanded, and cut through the hailstorm of criticism. The word: FIX.

I’ve found that this innocent three-letter word triggers a palliative magic that renders the inner monster powerless and keeps me writing.

Why?

1. It tells me that what I’ve just written isn’t typed in cement.
2. It reminds me that this is only the first draft, or the fifth, or fifteenth.
3. It assures me I’ve got as many shots as I want.
4. It reminds me I can go back, and where to go back, any time to fix
5. It acknowledges that I know, I know already, that this word/phrase/cliché is much less than my best.
6. It admits that this might not be my finest hour, but so what?
7. It gently confirms that the writing process is one of trial and error, coaxing and courting, boldness, patience, and courage.
8. And, most miraculously, it shows me I can trust my mind.

How?

Writing FIX at the offending passage does more than buckle the inner-editor giant at the knees. It also, mysteriously, releases my imprisoned creativity.

After I type FIX, two seconds or two minutes later, as I’m deep into the next paragraph, my eyes flit back up the screen. With hardly conscious thought, like apples bobbing up in water, new words surface. They’re invariably better than those first horrific ones, and sometimes even the right ones.

For example, a few lines back, that orphan simile came rather easily. But the words directly before it ignited the inner ogre’s abuse:

I mope around like an orphan . . .

I feel like an orphan . . .

I wanted to run for the coal cellar. Yet, swallowing and following my own advice, I weakly pecked out FIX. Three lines and barely five minutes later, the right phrase popped up, and I wandered hopelessly no more.

You’ve probably already thought of your own examples, even if your methods are different. Maybe you just haven’t given yourself credit. Now you can FIX that.

So, the next time you hear your own version of the frightful condemning inner editor’s voice, just greet it with a FIX. This little word enables you not only to keep going, meeting your word or minute count for the day. It also, astounding, sets your creativity free. And you’ll be thrilled to discover greater confidence in your mind, your abilities, and your work. Accept the process. You’ll see that you can FIX anything.

This is a recurring column I’m calling “7 Things I’ve Learned So Far,” where writers (this installment written by Samuél L. Barrantes, author of SLIM AND THE BEAST) at any stage of their career can talk about writing advice and instruction as well as how they possibly got their book agent — by sharing seven things they’ve learned along their writing journey that they wish they knew at the beginning.

Samuél L. Barrantes is an essayist and novelist from Chapel Hill,
North Carolina. His work has appeared in Paris Lit Up Magazine,
SLAM Magazine, and The International Forum for Logotherapy. He
is a specialist in Viktor Frankl’s philosophy and the Three Viennese
Schools of Psychotherapy. He currently lives in Paris. His debut
novel is SLIM AND THE BEAST, part Mark Twain, part Coen Brothers.
Connect with him on Twitter or on Facebook.

1. Harness Failure. When I thought I wanted to “be a writer” I applied to fourteen MFA programs. When I got my fourteenth rejection letter, I knew I had a choice: Would I let this be a sign that I wasn’t cut out to be a writer? Or was I going to use it as motivation to get down to actually writing? Writing isn’t something you are, it’s something you do. And the only way to get good at something is to practice. A lot. This has become somewhat of a trope in the literary world, but you really have to harness failure every night. “Success” is a ridiculous word that doesn’t mean anything to me—success, at this point in my life, is trying to write every night. After fourteen MFA rejection letters, I decided I would still finish my first novel, which is a hodgepodge of words I can’t stand to look at now. But I finished it—it didn’t finish me—and it led me to the second novel, Slim and The Beast. And fourteen drafts later, I was finally proud. (Fourteen drafts, fourteen MFA rejections … maybe that should be a new rule).

2. Be Wary of Workshops and Literary Communities. In my experience, most writer groups and “literary communities”—spoken words, workshops, etc.—are great places to meet writers, but are less helpful for the act of writing itself. This isn’t to say these communities aren’t beneficial, just that they have never helped me write. The most “successful” writers (and by successful I mean getting the words down) are too busy writing to care what others think or about “being seen.” Writing is deeply personal and also paradoxical: although you spend thousands of hours by yourself, you have to separate your words from your own ego.

So when you surround yourself with competing egos, where publication and pedigree always become part of the conversation, you end up feeling like a salesman who doesn’t quite know what he’s selling. I always think about Hemingway’s response to a question about the “group feeling” of Paris in the twenties: “There was no group feeling. We had respect for each other.” And this respect, I think, comes from knowing that writers need to be alone, time to write. So workshops and communities are great to exchange ideas, but too often they feed the ego and distract from writing.

(How to be a literary agent’s dream client.)

3. Writing = Re-Writing. I used to have a romantic notion of writing as a frenzy of creativity, where the words poured out of me, the Muses singing by my side. But the truth is writing is as much about editing and re-writing as it is about creation. You really have to love what you’re working on to stick with it. I think of the first draft as the sculptor’s block of cold stone—there is something there, buried within, but the sculptor spends years chiseling away.  For example, I cut approximately 35,000 words between the first and final drafts of Slim and The Beast, with countless rewording and revising throughout.

4. Discipline Breeds Discipline. When I first started writing with intent, I made myself a promise: three days a week, 2,000 words/day. This grew to four days a week, and now it is at five. This doesn’t necessarily mean all of those words are related to the novel I am working on, but it does mean that I berate myself if I don’t reach my goal. This is masochistic, maybe, but it is also essential—writing is as much of a choice as it is a “calling,” so I constantly ask myself the question: “If I don’t write today, then when?” But discipline breeds discipline, so whether it comes to eating healthier, doing pushups, playing piano or reading, if I don’t set routines for myself, everything falls to the wayside. This is why it is impossible for me to write when traveling, perhaps, because I lose track of all of my daily routines. The biggest challenge for a writer isn’t the writing itself but sitting down to write. No book has ever helped me more in realizing this than Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art.

5. Keep Human!  One of the dangers of “practice makes perfect” and lesson #3 is that you can end up in a robotic-type lifestyle that leaves you creatively barren. One of my favorite “rules of writing” is from Henry Miller: “Keep Human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.” When I reach a point where I’m mentally exhausted—or if I simply can’t create that night—I’ve learned to step back and leave the land fallow, so to speak. Miller points out that when you can’t create you can still work: meeting people, sitting in the park, watching Seinfeld, playing music, drinking wine on the river—all of these experiences are part of the writing process. Since my favorite kind of writing is about the human experience, it’s important to remain open to the goings on outside in order to try and immortalize them on the page.

6. Wisdom Isn’t Communicable. One of the biggest detriments of having a liberal arts education is you come out thinking you’re smart and interesting. But no one cares, nor should you. Pedigree means nothing. The more you try and “prove” to the reader what you know or how good you are at emulating Foster-Wallacean sentences, the worse your writing becomes, period. In Herman Hesse’s Siddartha, this is stated perfectly: “One can find [wisdom], live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”  Avoiding didactic writing is an ongoing challenge for me because of the dangerous dictum “write what you know.” For a long time I thought this mean intellect versus experience, because academic writing is so often concerned with how much you understand about a given theory. Of course, the best writing communicates philosophy without ever once mentioning the philosopher that said it, and I’ve spent years trying to get away from academic writing in my fiction.

(Read tips on writing a query letter.)

7. Write Because You Love. There is an incredible poem by Charles Bukowski called So, You Want To Be A Writer. For the first few years, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a writer, or if I wanted to write. But once again, writing isn’t something you are, it’s something you do. And if you’re doing it to “be something,” the best advice is to stop. The only reason I put on my headphones, turn off the Wi-Fi, listen to ambient sounds (usually a thunderstorm, beach waves, or noisli) and sit down to write is because if I didn’t do it, I’d feel shittier the next day. In the same way I need to read for my own well-being, or how I get antsy when I don’t play music for a while, I write because it makes me happy. We don’t ask people on the basketball court “why?” or if that guy in the nightclub wants to become a professional dancer. It’s not about proving something to anyone, especially yourself. Like with everything, in the end all that matters is you write because you love.

Agent Donald Maass, who is also an author
himself, is one of the top instructors nationwide
on crafting quality fiction. His recent guide,
The Fire in Fiction, shows how to compose
a novel that will get agents/editors to keep reading.

Other writing/publishing articles & links for you:

• Agent Spotlight: Rena Rossner (The Deborah Harris Agency) seeks Children’s, Fiction, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy.
• How I Got My Literary Agent: Elizabeth Blackwell (Fiction, Fantasy).
• 3 Ways Military Service Has Made Me A Better Writer.
• 6 Steps To Seeing Your Book Published.
• Follow Chuck Sambuchino on Twitter or find him on Facebook. Learn all about his writing guides on how to get published, how to find a literary agent, and writing a query letter.

Your new complete and updated instructional guide
to finding an agent is finally here: The 2015 book
GET A LITERARY AGENT shares advice from more
than 110 literary agents who share advice on querying,
craft, the submission process, researching agents, and
much more. Filled with all the advice you’ll ever need to
find an agent, this resource makes a great partner book to
the agent database, Guide to Literary Agents.

Reminder: New literary agents (with this spotlight featuring Heather Flaherty of The Bent Agency) are golden opportunities for new writers because each one is a literary agent who is likely building his or her client list.

About Heather Flaherty of The Bent Agency: “I grew up in Massachusetts, between Boston and the Cape, and started working in New York City as a playwright during college. This pushed me towards English as a focus, and after a lot of country-hopping in my early twenties, I wound up finally beginning my publishing career in editorial, specifically at Random House in the UK. That’s also where I became a YA and children’s literary scout, which finally landed me back in NYC, consulting with foreign publishers and Hollywood regarding what the next big book will be. Now as an agent, I’m thrilled to turn my focus on growing authors for that same success.”

(How long should a synopsis be? Is shorter or longer better?)

She is seeking: authors who write children’s, middle grade, and young adult fiction and nonfiction, as well as select new adult fiction, and pop-culture or humorous nonfiction.

“Currently I’m looking for YA fiction across-the-board, though my heart does sway towards issue-related YA with humor and heart – not depressing, or mopey. I also love love love hard, punchy, contemporary YA that’s got no hesitations when it comes to crazy. I’m also always up for seeing contemporary stories with sci-fi or fantasy elements, as well as a clever respin of an old or classic tale. And then, lastly, really good horror and ghost stories… not gory-for-gory’s sake or overly disgusting, but cringing, dark, bloody twisted, and even lovely. That said, the one thing I love above all else in a YA novel, regardless of sub-genre, is a strong and specific character voice. A real person, not another ‘everygirl.’ As for the middle grade I’m looking for, I want it stark, honest, and even dark; either contemporary or period, as long as it’s accessible. Coming-of-age stories, dealing-with-difficulty stories, witness stories (adult issues seen through the child’s p.o.v kinda thing), anything that makes you want to hold the narrator’s hand… for your own comfort, as well as their’s. I am also ok with these stories having slight magical or fantasy elements as well – as long as they’re subtle. In new adult, I like to see story… not just romance and/or erotica. For me, it should pretty much be a great YA novel for an older audience. On the nonfiction side, I’m looking for strong teen memoirs about overcoming crushing situations. ”

How to submit: Review The Bent Agency’s updated submissions guidelines online, and then e-mail flahertyqueries [at] thebentagency.com.

(How successful should a blog be before agents/editors will take notice?)

The biggest literary agent database anywhere
is the Guide to Literary Agents. Pick up the
most recent updated edition online at a discount.

Other writing/publishing articles & links for you:

• Agent Spotlight: Andy Kifer (Gernert Company) seeks Literary, Sci-Fi, Thrillers & Nonfiction.
• 5 Things To Look For In A Critique Partner.
• It Starts With A Good Book.
• How I Got My Literary Agent: Natalia Sylvester (Fiction).
• Follow Chuck Sambuchino on Twitter or find him on Facebook. Learn all about his writing guides on how to get published, how to find a literary agent, and writing a query letter.

Your new complete and updated instructional guide
to finding an agent is finally here: The 2015 book
GET A LITERARY AGENT shares advice from more
than 110 literary agents who share advice on querying,
craft, the submission process, researching agents, and
much more. Filled with all the advice you’ll ever need to
find an agent, this resource makes a great partner book to
the agent database, Guide to Literary Agents.

Lately, I’ve been reading quite a lot of excellent published fiction. Books that make me cry; stories that make me ache. I love those stories, the ones that unexpectedly grab hold of something deep inside of you and yank. And there it is; you suddenly feel vulnerable, as though the author knows what he or she can’t know. Books can do that.

This guest post is by Jonathan Friesen, an author, speaker, and youth writing coach from Mora, Minnesota. His first young adult novel, Jerk, California, received the ALA Schneider Award. When he’s not writing, speaking at schools, or teaching, Jonathan loves to travel and hang out with his wife and three kids. His latest YA novel, Both of Me, was released December 2014.

Not all, though. Some, while well crafted, have as much chance of touching my heart as a dishwasher repair manual, and I think I have discovered why. In most fiction, the final layer of the onion, the mental state of each character, is left unpeeled, mainly because it is painful to do so. Delving into the mental health of characters is dangerous, as it will serve as your own mirror, but to ignore the exploration is perhaps more damaging still, relegating your otherwise excellent work into the pile of works featuring “hard to relate to” protagonists. For here is the fact: the vast majority of your readership have at one point experienced, or are experiencing now the effects of mental illness, and that likely is the most emotionally-charged point of their lifetime.

[Learn 5 Tools for Building Conflict in Your Novel]

3 Reasons Writers Exclude the Mental Health Aspect of Their Characters

1. Misunderstanding of scope.

According to the Mayo Clinic. Mental illness refers to a wide range of mental health conditions that affect mood, thinking and behavior. Depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders and addictive behaviors all fall into this list. Mental illness too often conjures up images of incoherent babbling and rubber rooms, but with increasing frequency, society is realizing just how prevalent these conditions truly are. Our own children struggle, our parents struggle … we struggle. When mental illness moves from “them” to “us,” and we understand that the panic attack in eighth grade or the binge eating in college plants us firmly within the mainstream of the human race,with all our mental fragility, we start to see that unless we address theseissues in our characters they are incomplete. The presence of a possible mental health condition in your character is likely a thought you may have entertained, although perhaps without the stigma-forming term mental illness. Has your protagonist ever broken down emotionally? Mentally? Has your character experienced a mental or emotional death? Likely so, and that is probably one of your story’s most gripping moments, but not for the reason you might think. I’ll wager it’s not your fantastic writing or the tense situation. Breakdowns grip readers when readers connect to them personally. All this speaks to the universality of mental struggle.

2. Motivations based on situations.

Motivation is one of the most discussed elements in writing, and for good reason. The “why” of things opens up new dimensions of character depth. Seven books ago, while writing my debut YA novel JERK, CALIFORNIA, I was told I needed an external motivation and an internal motivation for my characters. Being a beginner, I took the advice as gospel, plunking down two motivations for each character, one based on external situations, the other on a logical internal goal. That was all fine, until I thought about my own life, especially my teen life, when panic attacks, epilepsy, O/CD and Tourette syndrome were my lot.When in the throes of mental illness, my motives were not so clear cut, andnothing I did was logical, at least to my observers. Sometimes my motives were singular. During a panic attack, there was no external motivation. My brainheld me captive, demanding I get out of the room. It didn’t make sense. It didn’t have to. The compulsion was real and raw and unrelenting. Other times, when a kid would mock my Tourette tics, my motivations for immediately cracking jokes were myriad. Humor shifted the focus from my jerks to my jokes; filling the air with words silenced others’ condemning voices; jokes gave me time to plan my escape and think of a good lie to explain what was seen; making people laugh felt like control, something I felt nowhere else I my world, etc. How much more dynamic and nuanced are characters become when their motives are rooted in our shared mental struggles, our shared humanity. How emotionally charged our writing can become.

[Get Query Help: Click here for The 10 Dos and Don'ts of Writing a Query Letter]

3. Misrepresentation fears.

This is a valid concern. Just as I would never write Moby Dick (my knowledge of whale oil in all its forms is too minimal) it would be easy to say, I can’t address this condition or that. I don’t know how it feels. I do not agree that this disqualifies you, but I myself have also shied away from topics, but never completely. I’ll explain. If you have never experienced a down day—if every day is better than the day before—you probably are not the one to write a novel in which on every page, the main character is in the dark place of bipolar 1. But even you, Ms. It’s a Wonderful Life, could bring mental illness to bear in the motivations and decisions of your characters. Think of this dynamic like an earthquake.Millions of people in Southern California feel the earth move. That is shared experience. Some tense, some flee, some feel crushed, some experience confusion. No two responses are alike. Mental illness affects each so differently. You might be a fortunate one never to feel your mind betray you, but you HAVE felt the conditions that cause so many others to crumble. You have felt the ground move. You can explore that shared experience, and from thatplace begin to understand why others might come a bit unglued. My latest novel, BOTH OF ME, includes a main character with DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder. I have not lived with two different identities within my brain, alternatelytaking control and each completely unaware of the other. But I have felt the ground shake. I know what it is like to hide a secret from myself. To wear different masks for different audiences. To feel both love and hate for the same individual. I more than did this character justice.

Do not be afraid to explore the mental health realities of your characters; be afraid not to. Yes, it might make the ground shake under your feet, but in the end, the shared humanity you portray will only make both you and your novel stronger.

Thanks for visiting The Writer’s Dig blog. For more great writing advice, click here.

Brian A. Klems is the editor of this blog, online editor of Writer’s Digest and author of the popular gift book Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.

Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Sign up for Brian’s free Writer’s Digest eNewsletter: WD Newsletter

Editor’s Note: The following content is provided to Writer’s Digest by a writing community partner. This content is sponsored by American Writers & Artists Inc. www.awaionline.com.

Making a living as a writer …

Whenever I read that phrase, I immediately think about all the opportunities for writers to make money doing what they love — copywriting, web writing, resume writing, grant writing … writing case studies, white papers, online content, social media posts — the list goes on and on. And typically, that’s what I cover in this blog.

After all, there’s SO MUCH opportunity for SO MANY writers in these fields. And for over 18 years now, AWAI has successfully been training writers on how to find the best-paying assignments and acquire the skills they need to do the job well.

Yet I also realize that for many writers, there’s a passion to become a published author — along with making a good living.

Since making money as a fiction writer isn’t my area of expertise, I called up rising star author Becky Masterman, who promised to hold nothing back …

Becky has had quite a bit of success in the past two years …

Her first book, Rage Against the Dying, was nominated for seven awards for Best First Novel, including the Edgar, Anthony, Gold Dagger, Macavity, Barry, International Thriller Writers, and Audie, and was recommended by the AARP and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” It was named Pick of the Week by Publishers Weekly and will be translated into 11 different languages, including Japanese and Czech.

And Fear the Darkness, the follow-up, which just hit shelves January 20^th, appears to be following in its footsteps with glowing reviews. According to Janet Maslin, reviewing for The New York Times, ” … another strong display of the author’s ingenuity … this novel is no replay of the first … ” and Tom Nolan in The Wall Street Journal declares the book, ” … idiosyncratic and engaging … pulls the rug out from beneath expectations.”

But her success didn’t come overnight …

Prior to hitting her break with Rage, Becky wrote six novels … but nothing sold. It wasn’t until she challenged her husband to a competition for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) where they’d each write a book in a month that things started to change …

With a background in forensic science book publishing, connections to some of the most famous scientists and experts in that field, and a desire to compete head-on with her husband, the character of Brigid Quinn was born …

An FBI special agent who now — in her retirement — is finally getting married, making friends, owning Pugs, trying to fit into the civilian world she always sought to protect for others. A woman whose priority is to keep her Book Club from finding out she can kill people with her bare hands.

And while it took Becky six weeks instead of the month to finish the first draft, she loved the character so much, she thought maybe someone else would like her, too.

She sent a query letter to an agent who responded, “Nobody is interested in a woman over 30.”

And though she shelved the book for a few years, she didn’t lose hope.

A few years later, something happened to change the world — maybe it was how Helen Mirren wowed at the Oscars — all of the sudden, older women were hot. Becky saw the opportunity and decided to send out query letters about her book one more time …

This time, the literary agent Helen Heller called. “I’ve been looking for this character for years. I think you can write, and if you’re willing to work hard, I think this book can be something.”

It took you 20 years to experience the success you’re experiencing now. Did you ever think about giving up? And if so, what made you go on?

I joke sometimes about giving it up and raising therapy cockapoos, but after all this time, I can’t see life without writing. It’s not about the publishing or the money, that’s just the game. For me, it’s about loving to write. I feel down when I’ve been away from it more than a week. I keep doing it because I can’t stop.

Where do you find the inspiration behind your writing?

You never know where an idea is going to come from. It could appear in a book, or in watching two strangers interact, or a news item, or a magazine article, or a friend telling you their troubles. That means you have to stay alert and ready to make that leap into story. You have to be ‘writing’ all the time.

What writers inspire you most?

John D. MacDonald, Richard Ford, Lee Child, Anna Quindlen, James Lee Burke, Walker Percy, Elmore Leonard, Daphne du Maurier … I get such different kinds of inspiration from so many writers, the list is endless and could change daily. I think it’s important to read widely and not stick to a genre.

What was your biggest challenge, and how did you overcome it?

My biggest challenge was recognizing that there’s a difference between writing the first draft for my own pleasure and writing every draft after that for love of the reader. Luckily, I was granted the counsel of an agent and editors who had been serving readers for a long time.

Why did you choose to go with an agent versus self-publishing?

I was familiar enough with publishing to know I’d likely sell a couple hundred copies tops if I self-published. There are self-published authors who make it, but the chances of that are equal to my getting a movie role that Meryl Streep wants. No, when I decided to play the game, I intended to do whatever it took, short of nastiness, to win.

What advice do you have on getting a good agent?

Write a great query letter, for starters. Make sure it shows your writing chops. Keep the part about you short. If you’re somebody, you don’t need to say much, and if you’re nobody, it doesn’t matter what you say. The good agents get a thousand queries a week, and in order to manage this quantity, they look for a reason to say no.

Next, try to find an agent who will criticize your work. Praise is useless. You want someone who will work with you to polish what they like, and who won’t just throw the manuscript as-is at five publishers and see if someone bites.

I know it’s exciting to get a call from someone who wants to represent you, but take a little time, find out who else is in their stable. How long have they been an agent?

You want someone who has experience with names you recognize, who specializes in your genre, but doesn’t have so many clients they haven’t the time to bring you along.

How long does it take to go from an idea for a book to actually getting published?

Because I’m writing in the thriller genre, publishers want a book a year. Rage Against the Dying took nine years. Fear the Darkness took three years. I think I’m making good progress.

How much research do you do for your books?

Lots, but the question for me is not how much, but when. I do initial research when I’m developing my ‘what if.’ For example, googling executions at Raiford Penitentiary in Florida. But you shouldn’t get bogged down in fact-finding because you’ll never start the book. Get enough information to do a quick draft. Then figure out if the plot is viable, revise, and then find out the procedure for visiting a death row inmate.

Do you use an outline?

In this way: I list a bunch of possible scenes. I put them in some kind of order. I write a draft, changing things in the writing. I revise the outline to see what kind of book I’ve got. I write another draft. I revise the outline. Repeat.

What percentage of your fiction is based on real-life experiences?

You know how they say ‘write what you know?’ I think what it means is that you take what’s in the darker corners of your mind, and what you observe in the world, and then you distort it, refine it, or exaggerate it. One small example: I sometimes use a cane. My protagonist uses a walking stick when she hikes. It has a sharp blade attached to the end for killing … snakes.

How do you keep your fictional life separate from your real life? And if you don’t keep them separate, how do you keep people from getting upset with you?

You mean your narcissistic cousin who can’t hold a job? According to author Anne Lamott: “If people don’t want us to write about them, they should have behaved better.” Distort, refine, exaggerate, even change the gender, and they probably won’t recognize themselves. If you’re worried that they will, don’t do it. It’s all up to you.

What are some life experiences that led to some of your character development?

I worked as an acquisitions editor in forensic science and law enforcement. My retired FBI agent Brigid Quinn is an amalgamation of so many of the people I knew and loved. Also, I married late in life to a retired Episcopal priest. People ask if Brigid’s husband Carlo, a smart, sexy, good-looking ex-Catholic priest turned philosophy professor, is my husband. He denies it.

What was it like to write a follow-up book?

The challenge was that I needed to keep my protagonist and yet I didn’t want to write the same book again, perhaps with a higher body count. So I took risks, turned from a serial killer plot to one with a slower build into psychological suspense. The funniest line about my protagonist came from my editor during revisions: “What’s heart-breaking angst in the first book, in the second book is just whining.” The best advice is succinct like this. You have to keep a sense of humor.

With the praise Rage got, were you intimidated at the thought of following it up?

You bet I was! But the choices are to go on, or stop. It’s quite simple.

Will there be a third in the Brigid Quinn series?

I’m working on the fourth revision right now. When you say revision to some people who aren’t writers, they seem to think it’s tweaking sentences. You’ll understand when I say ‘revision,’ I mean the stage where your agent is advising, “You’ve got this character who’s just a walk-on, and he’s too important. You need to give him more of a role.” This time around, I’m figuring I’ll drop about 10K words and add another 10K. This is good progress.

Since this is a blog about making a living as a writer, I have to ask … Can you actually make a living as a fiction writer?

There’s a statistic about how many authors make their sole living at writing. I don’t know the number, but I think it’s single-digit small. I recommend having a day job. Be a hospital orderly. Work as a receptionist in a police department. Clean other people’s houses. Clerk in a bookstore. Just think of all the rich material you get from the people you encounter and the profession you have. Observe conflict. Take notes.

Do you have any income streams other than your books?

I had a full-time job until last year. I had saved my retirement fund and was close enough to Social Security that I could stop working. If I were younger, I wouldn’t have quit my day job.

Is it true you got your start as a copywriter? Anything you learned that helped you as a novelist?

Like journalism, copywriting is good preparation because you’re working on a deadline. Novelists don’t wait around for inspiration either. You churn out the words and then revise. Good advice from a mentor: You can’t rewrite nothing.

What advice would you give a writer who has a dream of being published?

Don’t stop at one book. While you’re shopping and revising it, be writing the second. If a publisher is going to invest in you, they want to know what else you’re working on. Besides, the pleasure of the writing will cushion the knocks of the business.

If you could go back and do something different, what would it be?

I’d rewrite Rage an eighth time. Someone once told me books are never finished, they’re abandoned.

When you sit down to write, are you ever overcome by the possibility that, when all is said and done, there will be no one there to read what you write?

You mean like we’ll have hit the zombie apocalypse? And there’s no market for zom-com?

Okay, seriously. Writers will talk about wanting to be published. I tell them just because they’re published doesn’t mean they’ll be read. “How many readers will make you happy?” I ask.

No, you either love the writing or you do something else that satisfies you more. Sometimes my agent will call with changes that the editor wants and she’ll apologize that it will mean several month’s work. I always tell her not to worry, because it means I’ll be writing and that’s all I want. If you love writing that sentence, and then throwing it out and writing a better one, at the end, you will have lived an enviable life.

***

It was a thrill to interview Becky Masterman …

If you have questions or comments for her about the interview, you can connect with her on Facebook or at beckymasterman.com.

And if you’re interested in learning more about making a living as a writer from some of the most successful writers in the industry, I also invite you to check out AWAI’s Barefoot Writer Magazine …

Each month, we feature an interview with a writer who is willing to share specific insights and advice on how you can follow in their footsteps. I’m always amazed at how generous they are with their information (like Becky was), and how many great actionable tips they give away. I highly recommend you check it out.

Next week, I’ll share with you five ways you can start making money as a writer while you’re working on your novel …

And I’ll even give you the one you should jump on right away if you’re looking to turn your writing into a full-blown career.

Until then,
Rebecca Matter

P.S. A quick thank you to all of the writers who posted questions on my Facebook page for Becky! It was fun to work on this interview with you. Felt like a team effort

Your are going on a blind date for Valentine’s Day. In case the date is a dud, you have your best friend on standby. Your friend is to call you at 9:30 on the dot. If the date is going well, you answer and use the phrase “I already took care of that.” If it’s not, you answer and claim your friend has an emergency. The date is going well and your friend calls at 9:30 as planned—only problem is, the friend calls with a real emergency. What is it and what do you do?

Post your response (500 words or fewer) in the comments below.

Want more creative writing prompts?

Pick up a copy of A Year of Writing Prompts: 365 Story Ideas for Honing Your Craft and Eliminating Writer’s Block. There’s a prompt for every day of the year and you can start on any day.

Order now from our shop.

If you haven’t caught it yet, check out the results of the 2014 November PAD Chapbook Challenge. Then, get back on over here…

For this week’s prompt, write a disappointment poem. I honestly didn’t think about the timing of announcing the challenge results with this prompt, but there you go. It can be disappointing to not win, I know, but there are so many other ways to be disappointed as well (with presents, affection, attention, motivation, and so on). I hope this prompt does not disappoint.

*****

2015 Poet’s Market

Publish your poetry!

Get the most trusted guide to publishing your poetry: the 2015 Poet’s Market!

Edited by Robert Lee Brewer, this edition of Poet’s Market includes articles on the craft of poetry, business of poetry, and promotion of poetry. Plus, interviews with poets and original contemporary poems. Oh yeah, and hundreds of poetry publishing opportunities, including book publishers, chapbook publishers, magazines, journals, online publications, contests, and so much more!

Click to continue.

*****

Here’s my attempt a Disappointment Poem:

“jury duty”

i am happy to serve: so let’s get
that out of the way first thing, okay.

it’s just that i had plans this week,
you know, and really, it’s not like

i’m going to get selected, and anyway
there’s a better than good chance we

will be dismissed before lunch, because
that’s what always happens, and then,

you know, i’ve been here for nothing
and rearranged the stars and the moon

because the lawyers had to wait until
the last minute to finally sort things out.

*****

Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer’s Digest Writing Community and author of the poetry collection, Solving the World’s Problems (Press 53). He edits Poet’s Market, Writer’s Market, and Guide to Self-Publishing, in addition to writing a free weekly WritersMarket.com newsletter and poetry column for Writer’s Digest magazine.

He is married to a paralegal who is on jury duty today.

Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.

*****

Find more poetic posts here:

• Wednesday Poetry Prompts: 295.
• Gogyohka: Poetic Form.
• The Poetry World A-Z.

Q: Sometimes I see “everyday” as one word and sometimes I see it as two (“every day”). Are both correct? Is there a difference? —Karen S.

The English language is tricky sometimes, and this instance is a perfect example—yes both “everyday” and “every day” are correct, but they can’t be used interchangeably. While they ultimately mean the same thing, they have different functions.

“Everyday” is an adjective that describes an object. My work clothes are separate from my everyday clothes. Around our office, fax-machine meltdowns are an everyday event.

“Every day” is an adverbial phrase (where “every” is actually acting as an adjective describing “day”). I start every day by giving my wife a kiss. Also, don’t tell anyone but I watch “The View” every day.

If you’re still in doubt, use this little trick to keep it straight: Try to substitute “each and every day” in the place of the “everyday/every day” in question. If it works, go with two words. If not, it’s one word.

Want other Grammar Rules? Check out:
Sneaked vs. Snuck
Who vs. Whom
Lay vs. Lie vs. Laid 
Which vs. That
Since vs. Because
Ensure vs. Insure
Home in vs. Hone in
Leaped vs. Leapt

Thanks for visiting The Writer’s Dig blog. For more great writing advice, click here.

Brian A. Klems is the editor of this blog, online editor of Writer’s Digest and author of the popular gift book Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.

Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Sign up for Brian’s free Writer’s Digest eNewsletter: WD Newsletter

BY MICHAEL KARDOS

I recently interviewed fellow crime novelist Gregg Hurwitz about his new thriller, Don’t Look Back. It’s an action-packed story set in the jungles of Oaxaca, Mexico, and I was interested in how much on-the-ground research he did. It felt like he’d done a lot. Turns out, I was right.

“I shot down Class IV whitewater rafting runs,” he told me, “hiked through ruins, chased after (large) snakes, encountered giant colonies of sweeper ants that ate everything in their path, and saw much of what Eve Hardaway [the novel’s protagonist] encounters in the course of the book.” By immersing himself in the novel’s world, Hurwitz hoped that the reader would “hear the thunderstorms, feel the downpour, smell the dew on the foliage.”

He also, I learned in this same email exchange, zip-lined—upside-down—over a raging river. I began to understand one subconscious reason for setting my own novels in New Jersey, where the rivers are unraging and the sweeper ants nonexistent. Hurwitz’s method of research is not the kind I’m equipped to survive.

All novels, of course, must bow to the god of verisimilitude—that illusion that the story’s world is absolutely and unquestionably real. But crime fiction in particular frequently involves intricacies of plot, place, and profession that demand research. Had Tom Clancy fudged the technical aspects of submarines, or had Michael Connelly faked his way through police procedure, their careers would have stopped before they ever started.

Some writers love doing research. Others avoid it because the very word evokes memories of all-nighters and stale coffee and the worst kind of schoolwork. Dull, dull. But if you’re writing a crime novel, sooner or later you’re going to have to do research. And when it comes to researching a novel, the important questions are: How? and How much? and When?

The answer to “How?” is “however you can.” That is, you’ll want to tap all your resources and contacts. I’ll admit that police procedure intimidates me. Always has. Writing my first novel, The Three-Day Affair, I sneakily avoided anything involving law enforcement (not easy for a crime novel!). But my second novel demanded a few scenes in a police station. Readers are pretty savvy about police procedure these days because of all the novels and TV shows that have steadily been raising the bar. Fortunately, my stepfather-in-law is a very patient retired cop. Bingo. But what if you don’t have any law enforcement professionals in your life? Try what I did when I needed additional information: I walked into the local police station and asked if one of the officers—at their convenience—would be willing to talk to me. Someone was.

Write your way around a crime scene with award-winning author and TV show consultant D.P. Lyle, M.D. who offers an insider’s view of each area of forensics-from the crime scene to the autopsy and everything in between. Written specifically for writers, Howdunit: Forensics provides detailed information to make a story realistic and believable.

When you write a novel, it’s as if you’re making a movie for which you’re the writer, director, cinematographer, and pretty much everything including Craft Services. Because of the difficulty of working all those jobs simultaneously, during my first go at writing a novel I gave myself a break by including many elements that I already knew. The main character of The Three-Day Affair is a drummer, as am I. The two settings—the Princeton University campus and the inside of a recording studio—are places I already knew well. The geography—North Jersey—was, again, a place with which I was familiar. By minimizing the research, I was able to focus on the art and craft of shaping the novel.

But in my new novel, Before He Finds Her, the main characters aren’t musicians: One is a long-haul truck driver and former utility company employee. The other is a 17-year-old woman living off the grid in rural West Virginia. Prior to writing the novel, these were not things I knew about. At all.

Fortunately, it turns out that truckers (and people in every profession) keep blogs. They post in forums. They make YouTube videos of themselves doing their job. If you’re diligent and patient, you can begin to learn the vocabulary and ethos and struggles of any profession, and visit nearly any location, without leaving your home. (Several truckers even filmed walkthroughs of “Iowa 80,” America’s largest truck stop. Very useful.) Online, you can learn many of the details you need to know to write with some degree of verisimilitude.

And yet the Internet is rarely sufficient. For readers to “smell the dew on the foliage,” to use Hurwitz’s words, a novel will almost certainly require some on-the-ground research. For me, that meant visiting truck stops and the local utility company and interviewing some of the people who actually do the job. It meant visiting my locations and walking around and snapping photographs (add “location scout” to the author’s list of roles), and hitting up my stepfather-in-law with questions about police protocol, and running plot threads by him to see if they passed the “sniff” test.

If you aren’t sure what exactly to ask your experts, you might consider a simple but very useful interviewing prompt I learned once in a folklore class: Ask your subject to walk you through a typical day. That single request nearly always gets the interviewee talking, and encourages digression, brief narratives, revelation of feelings, and insider “shop talk”—exactly the stuff a writer needs.

How much research should you do? As much as you need to know exactly what you’re talking about, though maybe not a whole lot more than that. One the one hand, your goal is to convey total authority on the page. It’s imperative that readers feel confident that you know what you’re talking about. On the other hand, research can become one more way to avoid actually writing, a less obvious version of checking email or Facebook or Twitter. More insidiously, the research can start to overtake a story. After all, you’ve learned all this cool new stuff and don’t want to waste it. But as Stephen King reminds us, “You may be entranced with what you’re learning about the flesh-eating bacteria, the sewer system of New York, or the I.Q. potential of collie pups, but your readers are probably going to care a lot more about your characters and your story.”

And that’s really the paradoxical truth about researching a novel: the research is absolutely essential, yet it isn’t the story. The story is the story.

And finally, when is the right time to conduct all this research? For Gregg Hurwitz, the answer was early on in the process, because his Oaxaca setting made up the very fabric of his novel.

But if lots of up-front research feels intimidating or threatens to stall the work, you might consider waiting until the point when you can’t wait any longer—until you feel yourself beginning to fake it. For me, with Before He Finds Her, I let myself write a few chapters to find my way into the characters and the voice before putting the draft aside temporarily to expand my knowledge.

One last piece of advice: I remind my students to resist the temptation of clicking away from the story and over to the Internet every time they need a fact. Writing fiction requires extended periods of uninterrupted concentration, or wakeful dreaming, and that isn’t an easy state to achieve and maintain. It’s worth protecting.

You might, therefore, keep a running list of everything you need to research, and then take periodic, planned breaks from the writing to conduct your research as thoroughly and efficiently as possible. Hunt down the facts, interview the cop, go out and ride that zip-line. Then get back to writing.