(www.thegoldenpencil.com)
The other day a writing buddy of mine called. He was tempted to take a writing gig that paid way less than half of what she normally gets. True, it was a rather unique opportunity with a major trade publisher. If he did this job well he’d have an excellent contact which might lead to more lucrative work in the future. It wasn’t, however, a book, nor did it earn royalties. In my mind, the “might lead to more lucrative work” some day, some time down the road is, well, most often futile.
We’re close so I asked him what …read more

(www.thegoldenpencil.com)
I suspect many of you are like me. I started writing because I had some sort of a need to write. Somehow, maybe as early as sixth grade, I loved getting words on paper. It was probably around that time that the romance of being a writer began to creep in. Although I started reading Writer’s Digest magazine as soon as I discovered it, and buying Writer’s Market annually in college, I didn’t even submit anything over-the-transom until I was 32.
Of course, at any and every job I’d end up with the writing chores – never paid directly, but loving …read more

Graham Strong, who writes a blog called A Few Strong Words and also writes white papers, has a post called: Cutting Out the Noise
There he talks about his own experience shutting down IM and email most of the day as an experiment to see if he really did get more done. Not surprisingly, he found he did.
Sometimes I wonder, no, I recognize that I like to be connected – to have the radio on, to let email notify me with a sound that more mail (spam) has arrived only because I don’t want to hear the constant chatter in my …read more

BuzzNetworker, another b5media blog, has a post today called: Citizen Journalism. It highlights the Center for Citizen Media, which is new to me, then goes on to talk about the fact that the San Jose Mercury News has called for neighborhood bloggers.
In one sense citizen journalism isn’t new at all. When you stop and think about it, Thomas Payne was a citizen first, so was Ben Franklin and countless others who broke news and changed worlds. In fact, professional journalism is really the new kid on the block, developing, according to some, in the early 20th century.
What’s different, of course, …read more

I’m normally at my computer writing by 6:30 or 7 in the morning. I’m one of those folks who likes getting up at first light and mornings are my most creative time. It’s just flat easier to write in the morning for me than at any other time.
Today, however, I’m doing it differently. First of all, I’m pretty well caught up with writing for clients at the moment. Secondly, I have two important appointments this afternoon. Afternoons are when I usually do my running around. I needed to go to an office supply store to get stick on dots so …read more

Sigh! I suppose it should be obvious, but until I read Joe Wikert’s story called Kindle Book Conversion: One Author’s Story that I realized there would, of course, be formatting problems when it came time to get your book, or mine, into shape for whatever ebook reader I wanted to be able to sell it for.
Actually, the story is a Q&A with Francis Hamit is the author of The Shenandoah Spy, but the bottom line is it will cost either coin or extra effort to get your book ready to display on Amazon’s Kindle, and I’ll bet the same thing …read more

How many of you recognize this scenario, or something like it?
You give a client two styles of writing, and they choose one. You dig deep and send them a couple of thousand words in the style they picked and email it off with your fingers crossed.
A couple of days later, an email from the client arrives in your mail box and you just know it’s their response to what you sent… but you have no idea if they will like what you did or not. You can’t quite bring yourself to open it right away so you… make a cup …read more

Have you ever been editing your work on screen and had trouble erasing what you thought was an errant period? Except it turned out to be a spec of who knows what masquerading as misplaced punctuation. Or, if you’re like me, you’ll notice weird spots on your screen… mine are usually toward the bottom and probably come from the last coffee I sprayed everywhere laughing at some joke.
Then there’s simple dullness… it’s amazing what can collect on our screens. I guess it’s because of the static electricity or something.
Jennifer Hofmann, over at MyOrganizedBiz suggests: Clean the screen so your …read more

If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you’re probably at least vaguely aware I live in San Diego. Well, now that I’ve moved, I live in a town called National City, but it adjoins San Diego so it’s almost the same thing. Not only do I live in sublime weather now, I was born here, so I’m super spoiled.
Right now it’s raining… not hard, just enough to catch your attention. There’s something about raid that makes me want to curl up and read. I want to read mind candy, like the latest thriller. Or something fairly esoteric …read more

Writing skills have a fairly predictable path. In the beginning we’re really not good at it. Oh we can get words on paper and our sentences are usually complete, but we tend to be awkward and far less than smooth. With practice and maybe the luck of finding a few good editors, our confidence increases, we find our voice and our writing begins to work well, maybe even sing. By this time we know what we like to write, are willing to explore new areas, and generally are a true professional in our chosen work.
It’s at this point, just when …read more