Writers Unbound

Jeff Davis wrote this book about how particular practices and philosophies of yoga can benefit the writer. I bought it at a library book sale (I should have been at home writing) and then read through most of it (I should have been writing) and jotted down a few notes (which I count as writing).

• On page 85, Davis tells about advice that Rainer Marie Rilke received from Rodin: Stop thinking in the abstract and work with your eyes, learn from your eyes.
• Page 85, Rilke’s response: Somehow I, too, must come to make things; not plastic, but written things - realities that emerge from handwork.
• Page 87: It’s easy to bemoan this world of things, more challenging to praise it.
• Page 89: Giving your attention for several minutes, hours even, to coffee grains or worn-out socks rather than to “big” ideas like global warming or economics sends your ego and mind a message: “Be small.” The ego can quiet down as it stops trying to figure out things and instead appreciates and receives a thing.
• Page 39:So to render universals, being with particulars.

Writing and yoga. A match made in samadhi.

Read Monday’s article on 5 Tips for a Better Writing Week and tweak it to apply to your weekend, especially if you’re one of those who works full-time and must squeeze writing into the edges.

• If you’re feeling in a rut or just need a break, incorporate the tips from this article on getting the most from your holiday. Consider your weekend a mini writer’s retreat, a mental spa.
• Check out 10 Tips for Getting Started as a Freelancer as well.

Tuesday’s article was about How to Build a Successful Freelance Foundation; if you haven’t already, read it! Writing is a business and a craft. Being a well-organized and prepared business person will help you be a better writer. So start getting your foundation in place this weekend.

• Learn how to Hold Yourself Accountable As a Writer.
• Make sure you don’t have any of these bad habits.
• Learn How to Set a Schedule, a basic must for a freelance writer.

Wednesday’s article, How to Become a Prolific Writer, states my definition of success. What is yours?

• LifeScript’s article, How Do You Define Success, can help you answer that question.
• Still not sure? Browse a few of these thoughts about success…

Thursday was Part 2 of How to Be a Prolific Writer: I theorized and proposed a freelance writing experiment of sorts.
Here are some other writing experiments:

• This one will help you get started on a poem.
• Inkwell Editorial’s 30-day Article Marketing Experiment e-book (must purchase).

Finally, since today is, according to my little freelance time experiment, the day I get to search for jobs, here are a few sites to check out for your own job-hunting:

• Great leads at JournalismJobs.com.
• Not a lot, but some good opportunities at Idealist.org.
• Freelance Job Bank is another site to check. Lots of SEO stuff here. Check the company and make sure it’s all legitimate.

Have a great weekend!

You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair, the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.” - Stephen King

Why are there so many websites for freelance writers? Have you noticed? Job hunting sites, resource sites, sites to post your work and get a critique, sites to compare various freelance employers, sites that whine about how difficult it is to write, sites that proclaim the continual joy of writing, and a mass of blogs by writers, about writers, for writers, through writers, with writers, and between writers. (Yes, including this one.)

Many writing sites are there to gain profit through the ad revenue generated. I have no problem with that, I just think it’s interesting that we, the ones who are supposed to be writing, can create enough traffic and ad clicks to support all these websites. Writers are notorious for avoiding the act of writing.I know I waste more time reading about writing, thinking about writing, researching writing, and looking for writing jobs than I spend actually writing.

Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. - Gene Fowler

I have a theory that if I reduced the time I now spend on researching, reading, connecting, marketing, and finding jobs to about 20% and used that other 80% for actual writing, I would be more successful.
(Remember my definition of success: “Success as a writer is when I, through my writing, reach people and make money.”) My theory is unpolished, I admit, and I don’t even really like it. Why? Because I love reading about writing, thinking about writing, researching writing, and looking for writing jobs. Writing itself? Writing and I have kind of a love-hate relationship. Or maybe it is a codependent relationship. I think I will start an organization called Writers Anonymous, a safe place for those of us abused by but unable to leave the Writing Urge.

Love it or hate it, I’m going to test this writing success theory. My normal schedule is, on the ideal day, 4 to 5 hours of work time, 5 days a week. Not every day is ideal. I have two children under two, a hairy mammoth masquerading as a dog, a spontaneous husband, and about, oh, two dozen other regular obligations. It’s like every writer’s life: packed full and wouldn’t have it any other way.

The last few days, as I’ve been thinking over this theory, I’ve noticed a pattern in my work time. I write two posts every morning (Hour 1 of work time): one on this blog and one my other blog. Then it’s time to get kids up, breakfast, laundry, ad infinitum. When I get the kids down for morning nap, I spend time writing on my longer projects (Hours 2 and 3 of work time). However, I usually only push myself for about an hour, and then I piddle around for about an hour. Hours 4 and 5 of work time occur in the afternoon. I tend to realize I haven’t actually produced much, so I push myself through an article of some kind, something shorter that I can complete. I feel so accomplished when I’ve finished one of those that I piddle away the remaining time until it’s time to get the kids up, start dinner, etc.

Out of a potential 5 hours of actual writing, probably 3 go to things other than writing. Related to writing, yes, but not actual writing. So. Let’s reduce that 3 hours (180 minutes) to 20%, which means 36 minutes. The rest should go to writing. If the rest does go to writing… hmm. I might become prolific, after all.

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. - Thomas Mann

Trivia Library has an interesting little page on the 20 Most Prolific Writers in Literary History. In number one position is Mary Faulkner, who produced 904 books in her 70-year life. Assuming she probably didn’t begin writing books until after adolescence, say, around 20 years old, then she produced an average of 18 books a year for 50 years.

The most well-known name on the list is Alexandre Dumas; he produced a mere 277 books in his 68-year life. Assuming the same starting age as Faulkner, that’s still more than 5 books a year. And I’d venture to say that Dumas’s work is of a slightly higher caliber than Mary Faulkner’s.

And then there’s me (and possibly you). “Ten articles by the end of the week?” I whine. “That’s impossible!” I want more jobs, but when I get more jobs, I panic because how am I going to keep up with all the jobs? And in keeping up with all the jobs, how am I going to find time to work on my own novel, my poetry, my non fiction masterpiece?

We blame time, obligations, our “real” jobs, family duties, the broken computer, the library’s lame hours. (”They close at 6:00 pm. Who can do research before 8:00 pm?”) Distractions and obstacles have been part of the writing life long before our days of two-hour commutes and internet information overload. Consider this: Dumas wrote his 277 books without a computer or typewriter. By hand.

The key to becoming prolific is deciding, first, that you need to be prolific in order to be successful. Of course, this leads us to the standard question: what is success? Is success the production of 200 novels of fluff or 1 novel of depth, promise, questions, and true experience? How about the production of 200 novels of depth, promise, questions, and true experience?

You’ll have to define your own success, but here is mine: Success as a writer is when I, through my writing, reach people and make money. Writing is a calling, for me, and its primary purpose is to tell people what I see and hear and think and wonder, to share my experience in hope of helping them have greater vision, deeper understanding, and better lives. It takes a lot of audacity to think that what I can say might accomplish that rigmarole; still, it’s what I want to do and it’s worth trying.

Then there’s the money angle. I need to make money. I must eat. I must pay for this internet access. And making a fair wage for one’s work is a good thing; it’s how economies are built and people step out of poverty. Money is tricky, though, and if I were writing solely to make money, I would be doing different writing than I am now. So it’s a part of what I call success, but it is the secondary purpose. We must acknowledge money as a real, necessary part of writing, but not as the primary motive for it.

To reach people and make money with what I write means that I need to write. The more I write, the greater the chances that something I have written will 1) be read and accomplish something and 2) sell in a legitimate writing market. Prolificacy is not necessary to success, but it certainly helps my chances.

“The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them.” Denis Watley

1. Put together your resume on the computer in a format that is easy to print or copy and paste into email. Double check your dates, spelling, etc. Put in a nice summary at the top and be sure to include your contact information. Save it on a cd and file that along with a printed copy.
2. Put together samples of your work on the computer in a format that is easy to print or copy and paste into email. If you have published clips, print a few hard copies (and save them on a cd with your resume) and file with your resume.
3. Choose your niche/specialization. I know not every writer feels the need to specialize; isn’t being a great writer enough? And the short answer is, yes, it is. Good writers can research anything and write about anything. But as you begin your freelance writing, the question you will encounter everywhere is this: “What are you qualified to write about?” It’s not enough to simply be a good writer until you are established. So choose an area you love and know something about, and use it to establish yourself. Then you can break that mold into a million pieces.
4. Establish yourself as an expert in your area of specialization. Write articles and posts about your topic. Read books, magazines, newspapers, trade journals, and anything else you can get that pertains to your topic. Talk to people. Get your finger on the pulse of what is happening in this area. Act like a professional in this field, and you will begin to think and talk, and write, and market yourself, like one.
5. Set up a website. If you have no money to invest, a simple blog or free hosting service will provide a simple space for your biography, pictures, and links. Include your resume and samples of your work on your website. Keep the lay out simple and streamlined. Avoid cutesy pictures, patterns, and distractions. It’s fine to have color and to reflect yourself, just remember that you are reflecting your professional self. If you have a little money, purchase a domain name (something like www.yourname.com is usually best) and hosting. This is not expensive. I use Godaddy, which cost me around $15 for 2 years of the domain name and $5 a month for hosting.
6. Set up a dedicated email address. Make it professional as well, as in firstname.lastname@emailclient.com, or initial.lastname@emailclient.com, or lastname.writingservice@emailclient.com You can still use your preferred free email client, gmail or hotmail or yahoo or whatever makes you happy. In whichever email client you use, go to the Settings and use the Signature feature. As always, make it professional. Mine is my name, physical address, phone number, email, website, and blog address.
7. Set your financial goals. How much do you want to make per month, per week, per day? What does that mean you need to make per hour? Keep in mind that if you make enough money, the government will want some of it. On every payment I receive for freelance writing, I take 50% as my actual “salary.” The other 50% doesn’t belong to me: 10% I tithe, and 40% I save for taxes. If I don’t need the full 40% at tax time (which I hope I won’t), I will have a nice stash to invest in marketing or supplies… a nice laptop, maybe.
8. Once you’ve set your financial goals, set your schedule and compare. If you want to make $500 a week but you only have 4 hours a week to put towards your writing, you have trouble. I’m sure it’s possible to make $500 in 4 hours, but in the beginning… not so much. Your financial goals and your schedule should give you a number that is your per hour goal: you must make X dollars per hour in order to reach your financial goals in the amount of time you have scheduled.
9. Set your standards for what you will accept as payment and what type of content you will produce. What is your minimum pay rate? Consider the amount of money you need to make per hour, as you determined in Step #8. Will you do those “$5 for 500 words” jobs? Can you afford to? What about content? Are you willing to write anything? Do you care if your articles go on spam sites? Do you have standards about topics? Decide, and stick to your decision.
10. Finally, what you’ve been wanting: find your jobs. Be careful here, especially if you are interested in writing for online venues as a beginner. The internet has opened an entire new job market for freelance writers, but as with any profitable system, there are scams and frauds a-plenty. Beware job postings that don’t give you a pay rate, that want you to rewrite articles, or that don’t provide job details. Do a search on the company name. Check out what the websites look like. If you are satisfied that the business is legitimate, go for it.

More:
Help for writing a Freelance Writer’s Resume (good if you have been writing freelance for a while).
A Resume Workshop from Purdue’s Online Writing Lab.
If you don’t have any writing samples yet, read this article on Presenting Your Portfolio by Mandy Hougland.
About’s guide to Make Yourself an Expert by Laura Lake.
And the jobs! A great place to start is Freelance Writing Jobs - a new list compiled every weekday.

First day of the work week: we’re all tired from the weekend (ironic, since weekends are supposed to be when we get more rest), and we tend to treat Mondays like a hangover: just live through it.
Monday is the make-it-or-break-it day of the week. Being productive on Monday means less stress and more productivity through the rest of the week. Pushing ourselves a little harder on Monday means we can coast a little at the end of the week.

1. Take 20 minutes with your planner and/or wall calendar to write in your appointments, meetings, social events and deadlines. Now, with the time that remains, write in (with ink!) WRITING at least once a day for an hour.
2. Write out a Master List of your to do items for the week. Put on your writing projects, writing jobs, personal obligations, family events, things to do around the house, and other errands and projects. You can use the Master List to compose your daily to-do list for each day of the week, and at the end of the week you will know what you didn’t get to. That’s much better than the hazy, guilty feeling of knowing you’ve missed something important that can ruin a perfectly good weekend.
3. Take some time during your Monday to make sure you have what you need and where you need it: books for review or research, paper and ink for your printer, pens, paper, and if you can, go ahead and get the groceries and household items so you don’t have to waste time thinking about while you’re in the middle of writing a great scene later this week.
4. Towards the end of your Monday, set aside thirty minutes to an hour, set a timer, and attack the pile of busy work. Open your mail and deal with it. Answers important emails. File your papers, pay your bills, sort your photos, clean out your in box. Then straighten your desk. If you work full-time, you’ll need to do this at work and at home.
5. Before you go to bed on Monday night, straighten up your house. Pull out your clothes for the next day. Get your lunch in the refrigerator, ready to go. Put your purse or briefcase by the door. Then grab your Master List and your planner and decide what you’re going to do on Tuesday.

More:
Read Donald Latumahina’s great article on The Art of Nonfinishing; it’s an important concept for busy writers (and other busy people, too…).
And this article by Allen Galbraith at Life Is a Journal can help you Let People Have a Bad Day (they will be the ones not making Monday count.)

I’ve loved literature since I could read. Then I learned how to write, and there was no stopping me. I produced a prodigious amount of sappy poems through my adolescence, then moved on with all the maturity of age to college papers.

And I got stuck there.

Oh, I wrote some great papers. And I took as many creative writing courses as I could fit in and I loved them. I sweated words out, terrified that I was somehow immature, still sappy, unable to recognize the abysmal quality of my own poetry and prose. Then I erased and sweated new words out, even more terrified that I was being untrue to myself, fawning to a teacher whose style I could easily imitate, letting myself be molded into some kind of writer I would hate being.

I survived, I got good grades, I got compliments, I graduated. My Mom got sick, and I stayed home with her and Dad for that year after my college graduation. I debated going for my Masters, going for a job, going for success as an amazingly young and mature writer, or going for the man I had wanted to marry for 8 years. (We met when we were 14.)

Dear Reader, I married him, and I have never been sorry. But a funny thing happened; actually, it had been happening that whole year in between college and marriage. I didn’t write. I couldn’t. I wanted to, but I produced nothing…

I was in a strange haze. I had accustomed myself for the last four years to writing for my teachers: producing poetry, short stories, essays, research papers with the goal of getting a good grade. Sure, I tried to be true to myself, too, but I know if it came to a choice of getting an A and compromising my voice a little, or getting a C and saying what I wanted, how I wanted, I would choose the A.

It’s not all bad to write in order to please someone else. I needed to learn a certain control over my expression. The difficult part comes when the control is removed and the freedom replaced. Having been trained to please and appease for those years, it was impossible to immediately produce stuff that was challenging, true, individual, and open.

In fact, I am still learning to produce what I feel and know from my gut and not what I feel from that fearful, placating part of my mind. I love approval. I love a pat on the head, and that’s what every good grade felt like to me. Now I look for things to replace the big red A on my papers: a comment, a place to fit in, a positive response. And I look for ways to get those marks of approval, even if the methods don’t suit my real, long-term goals.

This is a battle for every writer. I am starting to win mine more than lose. But I still wish I could get an A for every post I put up…

Writing poetry - whether or not you’re a poet - is one of the best ways to strengthen your expression, cull your dead words, and become more aware of the sound and flow of your writing.
Even if you are a poet, getting started can be difficult.

Guardian Books hosts a Poetry Workshop each month. Here’s the summary: “Every month, our poetry workshop is hosted by a different poet who sets an exercise, chooses the most interesting responses and offers an appraisal of them…” Past poets include Sean O’Brien in February, David Morley for January, and Jean Sprackland for the last month of 2007. Matthew Francis was the poet for March’s workshop; he received submissions until April 27 and will, I assume, soon post his short list and responses. I don’t see a new workshop listed for April/May, but I’m hoping that’s just a delay on the part of the WebMaster.

I took a little time to go through Francis’s workshop for March. His first instruction is simple: Complete the sentence, “When I think of summer, I think of…”
Easy enough, and not exactly inspiring yet. My list was lack luster and predictable at the beginning: grass, playgrounds, vacations. (For some reason I went straight to summers as a child, not summers now, as an adult. Hm.) But, as Francis said, I started thinking of things “very personal to you, the sort of associations that not everyone else would have, while others may be general experiences that nevertheless wouldn’t occur to many people.” Thing such as (more…)

I am amazed at how many writers don’t spend time reading. I’ve been that kind of writer before, and I produced mainly shallow, meaningless stuff I kept regurgitating and rephrasing from a shallow, meaningless pool of my own snot.

Some writers (usually not very good ones) are afraid that if they read, they’ll lose their own voice and simply become mimics. I say, better to mimic a great voice than to coddle your own not-so-great one. Of course we want to grow past mimicry. But let’s be honest, guys, we’re not all great writers. I know my prose isn’t sparkling; about 95% of the time it’s muddier than it is anything else. I get wordy. I use the same examples over and over. I get preachy. I irritate myself sometime.

So if I’m ever going to grow as a writer, I had better start being a good reader. My own voice might get squished sometimes. You might notice choppy sentences. Or fragments. Or perhaps I will become verbose, dangling word after word before you, throwing down metaphors like peanut shells at a roadhouse restaurant, stretching each point out to the very limit of human attention until all you want to do is reach through the computer, grab my wordy neck, and shake it until I spit out the point, the meat, the only thing you started reading the stupid sentence to find out.

Whew. At least it won’t be boring.

So read! Get a book! Sit down. Find time. Make time. Carry a book in your purse, or briefcase. Keep a couple in your car. Use your lunch hour. Listen to audio books during your commute. Turn off the television and pick up a book. Read a chapter every night before you go to sleep. What the heck, read two chapters! Get books into your life, somehow, some way, every way.

And your own voice? The one you sit down and hope will speak to you? The one that hides behind excuses before it finally comes out? The one that’s a little weak, a little timid, a little confused still? It will grow in the company of many clean, strong voices. It will stretch out. It will expand. It will still be yours; it will just be better.

More:
Paul Combs at Suite101 provides a list of books every writer should read. A great list to start on if you’ve been slacking in book life and don’t know where to begin.
And here’s a rather different perspective on reading from the accomplished writer of Word Munger.
And from Stuart Evers, a post supporting writers who read: in particular, writers of contemporary fiction reading the same. He doesn’t buy that “lose-my-own-voice” argument, either.

Good morning, fellow Writers. I’m happy to be at Writers Unbound and eager to keep making it a rewarding resource. I won’t take up much space introducing myself; you can read about me here if you’re interested. I’ll be tweaking the site a bit: stay tuned for a survey so you can let me know the topics most pertinent to you. I’ll also be sounding a call for guest bloggers and sponsoring contests (with prizes, yes!) as we get things rolling again.

For today, tips on our most important asset, drawn from one of the best books I’ve ever read about time management and productivity (and I’ve read a lot): Dan Kennedy’s No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs: The Ultimate, No Holds Barred, Kick Butt, Take No Prisoners Guide to Time, Productivity, and Sanity. With a title like that…

• Understand your per hour rate.
  If you don’t know what your time is worth, you won’t use it well. It’s easy to waste minutes and hours when they don’t matter in terms of dollars and cents. Set a goal for what you want to make each week and then divide by the number of hours you’ll be working. There’s your hourly rate; simple, eh? The not-so-simple but most important part is using those hours, every moment of them, in a way that helps you make that amount of money.
• Avoid meetings, conference calls, trivia, and other time-wasters.
  Easier said than done, but it’s possible. Once you know how much your hour is worth, it becomes much easier to say no to the stuff that distracts you from the real work. During your working hours, with every opportunity, ask yourself if it will make you money or waste your time. If you’re not sure, then it is probably just wasting your time.
• Make yourself difficult to find.
  If you work from home, as many freelance writers do, you can make yourself nearly impossible to find to other writers, to editors, to job possibilities. But what about to your spouse, your kids, your neighbor, your Mom who calls in, your dog who needs to be walked? It’s important to have a workspace at home and make it as off-limits as possible to potential interruptors. You can still love ‘em; just let them know you will be available later.
  If you work in an academic or office environment, you have to make an appearance and keep a certain amount of hours in your office. While there, though, make sure you look busy; don’t just sit back in your chair and stare at the ceiling for ideas. Get your computer going with your office program open and some words on the page; get your files and notes out on your desk; close your door; put your cell phone away; have a big clock handy. When people stop by, you can encourage them to move on by starting to type again, shifting through your files, looking at the clock, or kicking them in the butt.
  Okay, maybe not that last one.

More:
Read this article: 12 Ways to Beat Procrastination. (Don’t wait until tomorrow to read it.)
From Steve Pavlina, read how to Triple Your Personal Productivity.
Finally, but best, click through this Time Management for Anarchists movie/slideshow by Jim Munroe at nomediakings.org.