Tag Archives: Writers Resources

Guest Post: Four Effective Tips for Becoming a Successful Online Writer

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Please enjoy this guest post by Ruth Hinds from All The Top Bananas:

 

For budding writers, the internet has opened up a whole world of new opportunities. With writing gigs becoming much more publicized and accessible to just about anyone with some skill and a broadband connection, there’s never been a better time to make a living online as a writer.

Here, we look at some tips for getting work and forging a successful career.

1. Build a diverse portfolio of your work

Before anyone considers taking you on for writing jobs, they’ll want to see what you can do. As such, you should have a portfolio of your work that you can show to any potential clients. Depending on the nature of your expertise, this might include articles, blog posts, website copy and product descriptions. If you’re just starting out, you need to make up for your lack of experience. Try writing articles and uploading them to free sites. It’s a great way to get your work published quickly and easily.

2. Sign up for freelancing sites

There are dozens of freelancing sites out there where people are looking for talent just like you. Popular ones include People Per Hour, oDesk and Freelancer. Sign up and sell your skills on your profile. You’ll be able to pitch your ideas for available contracts, and you could even be headhunted by those looking for writers with your particular skill set.

3. Develop a strong social media presence

You’d be amazed at just how many opportunities you come across when you start networking on social media. Set up your profiles and take a little time each day to schedule updates and chat about your work. Of course, you should remain professional at all time, and bear in mind that the whole world, including potential clients, can see what you’re saying. Make sure that you upload a head shot so people know who they’re talking to, and make it crystal clear in your bios what you do.

4. Network with prolific writers in your field

It makes sense that you should learn from the top writers in your field, and many will have newsletters that you can sign up for to see what they’re up to and receive their top tips for success. Wherever possible reach out to them and strike up conversation. They might even have a few trainee jobs coming up that they’re looking for up and coming talent to fill.

As you can see, increasing your chances of success isn’t rocket science. With a plan and some determination, you could quickly build up a portfolio of great contents and regular writing contracts.

Are you thinking about pursuing a career as an online writer? Which of these tips will you be putting into action?

This article was brought to you by Ruth Hinds on behalf of AllTheTopBananas. ATTB allows you to search for and browse through UK jobs in one place, from London engineer jobs to Liverpool receptionist jobs. You can also upload your CV to increase your chances of being headhunted. 

 

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Writing Tips–7 Tips to Kick-Start Your Summer Writing Projects

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Summer Fun |

photo credit: Just Jefa

Welcome to the dog days of summer. On the east coast of the U.S. it’s been a sizzlingly hot summer with heat wave after heat wave keeping people indoors to escape the 90 degrees plus temperatures. But writers must write everyday despite the distractions of the oppressive heat, kids coming in and out of the house, and vacation travel. I’m a writer, so I can tell you first hand that it can be challenging to stick to a daily writing schedule when everyone around me is in fun, vaction mode. I realized that if I’m going through these challenges, there must be other writers out there who are finding it hard to keep their butt in their chairs and write during summer break. To help both of us out, I’ve come up with a list of seven creative tips that you can try to see if they help you boost your writing production this summer:

1. Connect some fun rewards to your daily word count goals. It’s like a drinking game, but instead of doing shots you’ll be writing pages. Let’s say your daily writing goal is 2,000 words. Set up a small reward for every 500 words you write. You know yourself, so you know what rewards will motivate you to be as productive as possible. Make it fun and keep it light. (Avoid using food as a reward because then I’ll have to write an article about weight loss for writers. . .)

2. Keep your writer’s notebook handy wherever you go. Make it a point to take notes and make observations wherever you go. Capture snippets of dialogue that you heard when you were eavesdropping on a nearby conversation, take notes about historic places you visit, write about new foods that you try, or new people that you meet. Take it all in because you never know what will inspire your next story or article.

3. Participate in a writing challenge or contest
National Novel Writing Month is still a few months away, but there are many other opportunities to participate in a writing challenge or contest. Here’s a few links to some summer creative writing contests:

  • be-a-better-writer.com/creative-writing-contests.html
  • wow-womenonwriting.com/contest.php
  • bookrix.com/precontest.html

4. Find a writing partner
Having a writing partner can help both of you to boost your productivity. Enlist the support of a writing buddy and share your goals with each other. Not only will this inspire you to stick to your goals, you’ll feel good about helpin your friend reach her goals.

5. Scout out some new writing locations
Don’t stay in your house staring at the same wall all of the time. Get out and find some alternative spots to write. Find a park bench, sit on the grass and write, find a table in the library, a coffee shop that’s not too loud, or your car. I heard from another writer that she would take her laptop to her car to write in order to escape the chaos and noise in the house. Sometimes a new location will spark new energy and creativity to your work. At the very least it will keep you from getting bored with your writing desk at home.

6. Take a writing class
Take a writing class from your local university or community college. You can also take an online writing class or workshop. Either way, taking a class is a great way to force yourself to write, and you get the advantage of having the instructor’s feedback on your work.

7. Be accountable for your writing goals
How often do we set goals and then after a few days blow them off? What if you had someone who would hold your feet to the proverbial fire and expect that you are going to do what you said you would do? A writing coach can do that for you, or an accountability partner can also fulfill that role.

*Bonus Tip: Use the summer to inspire your writing
Whether it’s the wildfires in the west, drought in the midwest, the heatwaves, interesting news stories, a visit to a new, or exotic location for summer vacation, let the summer season inspire your work in some way.

If you think you might benefit from working with a writing coach, please feel free to contact me. I am putting together a writing productivity program that will kick off this fall. If you are interested in really accomplishing your writing goals, send me an email and we can make that happen.

Please leave a comment with your favorite tip for kick-starting a summer writing project.

Evelyn Bourne is a writer, blogger, spiritual coach and artist. Evelyn is a heart-centered writer who is passionate about her craft. She loves showing business people how fresh, relevant content can elevate their brand and increase sales. The proud mother of three daughters, Evelyn is also a vegetarian, fine chocolate loving Yogini.
Find her on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook

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My Blogging Dilemma: The Importance of Choosing an Audience

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Image credit: sxc.hu

Lately I’ve been in a quandary about what to do about this blog. I’ve been filling in with guest posts and trying to buy time while I figure out how to proceed. I wasn’t sure what the problem was. I’m a writer. I love to write. I write for my clients all day long, but when it came to writing for this blog I faced a brick wall of resistance. Then one day while I was listening to the Internet Business Mastery podcast, a little light bulb came on over my head.

Sterling and Jay were talking about the, “The 5 Most Common Mistakes When Choosing a Niche,” and I think the first one was not selecting a specific audience when you select your niche. I realized that was my challenge with this blog. When I started this blog back in 2007, the purpose was to be able to provide examples of my writing to prospective clients for my writing services. As time has gone by, the content has evolved into a few main themes: online writing, online/content marketing, and personal development. Lately I’ve expanded the focus to include indie publishing and ebook publishing, but I have yet to clearly define an audience.

So, I’m using my little dilemma to show you what not to do when you are creating a blog. Selecting an audience is a vital, foundational step to creating a successful blog. When you are clear on who you are writing for, it makes content creation a breeze. The content that you do create will also naturally attract that perfect audience because you will be speaking to their needs.

When you are in the process of selecting a niche and doing keyword research, don’t leave out the vital step of getting to the root of the wants, needs, hopes and fears of your target audience. I will be going back and doing that work so that I can re-launch this blog and start reaching the right audience. I’m grateful to my current readers and subscribers who have hung in there while I sort all of this out.

 

 

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Five Reasons to Write What You Know

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Guest post by Debra Johnson

You’re stuck. You have no idea what to write, how to start writing, or even where to set your story. You are frustrated, getting angry and wanting to give up this gig. Don’t give up. There is one simple trick to get writing- write what you know. What do I mean by that? Read on.

1. Write emotional- You feel things intensely. It might be your love life, your pets, even your love of food. Whatever you love or even hate will come through in your writing. The more emotion you have behind the words, the more they will connect with readers.

2. Write opinionated – don’t blend in with the crowd. You have your views on subjects, so share the. Don’t try to please others, even the hypothetical readers you’ll have. The more you sound like the group, the less people will want to listen because they’ve heard it all before. Stand out and dare to be different!

3. Write truthfully– They will know when you are lying. It will sound forced, faked, or just too complex. Real life is crazy, fantastic, and bigger than anything you can make up. So write the truth. It has more impact when people know you are just being honest. Even if you are writing fiction essential truths are always there.

4. Write local – You know where you live. You know what it smells like, sounds like, how hard it is to get around, how the people act and relate. Use that. Even if the location is just a tiny blip in your story, the realism will bleed through. It will make your story a richer, more vibrant place for your characters to roam.

5. Write life –You’ve lived. You’ve experienced. Even the most boring and normal person has done and seen things that few others ever have. Share your life with your readers. It doesn’t have to be non-fiction, maybe your character visited the bathroom and saw a Daddy Long Legs on the wall. Maybe she walked past a department store and could swear the mannequin winked at her. It doesn’t have to be anything complex, but just adding that little spark of real life makes your stories more powerful.

There it is; five reasons to write what you know. You know a lot more than you give yourself credit for. You’ve lived a full, rich life and you need to share it with the world. It might be through poetry, fiction, or non-fiction, but any style of writing can be improved by just knowing what you are writing about.

About the Author: This guest post is contributed by Debra Johnson, blogger, editor & a knowledge gainer of  being full time nanny.  She welcomes your comments at her email Id: – jdebra84 @ gmail.com.

 

 

5 Practical Tips for Blogging Your Way to Writing a Book

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Last week I published a blog post, Blogging Tips: How to Blog Your Way to Writing a Book. I wrote about the process that I used to write the content of my upcoming book from a series of blog posts.  I received a comment from a reader named, Tamara who said,

“Congrats on finishing your manuscript! I love the concept of blogging your way to publishing a book. I am a dessert blogger, so my question is do you think this can work for me too? I already have a few concepts in mind for cookbooks, but I think recipe development is key for me as opposed to writing lengthy blog posts. What are your thoughts?”

Tamara also left a similar comment on my Facebook business page, so I answered it there. As I was thinking of a response I got the idea for a blog post because there may be others of you out there who are thinking about using your blog to help you come up with the content for a book.

Here is our exchange on Facebook:

Now here are five practical tips for blogging your way to writing a book:

1. Announce your intention to write a book on your blog

Announcing your intention of writing a book publicly on your blog serves several purposes at once. It creates a sense of accountability. Now that you’ve announced it publicly, you better believe that your readers are going to ask you about how it’s going, and it makes the project more real to you and that might motivate you to stick with it until it is finished.

2. Blog about the theme of your book

If you are working with a publisher, then you’ve already done the work of creating a book proposal for your project. Now you will tailor your blog posts to fit in with the outline of the book. You will not be writing the entire book—word for word—on your blog. You will still have additional sections to write outside of the blog, but if you are having trouble finding time to fit writing a book into your crazy schedule, and you already have an established blog, your writing gets to do double duty for you.

3. Set a deadline for completing your book

Working towards a deadline can be a great motivator. Let your readers know what your deadline is for finishing the manuscript. You might even put one of those countdown clocks on your blog that displays how many days you have left to finish. This will create a sense of urgency and drama and help pull your readers in. It will also spur you on to stick to your writing schedule to avoid public humiliation if you don’t finish on time.

4. Get your readers involved

In the case of Tamara, who wants to write a dessert cookbook, she will not necessarily write most of the cookbook on the blog. As I mentioned in the Facebook comment, she can use her blog to share photos as she goes through the recipe development process, she can write about the ingredients she is using, where and how she sources them, her inspiration for the dessert items, where she gets her ideas from, and how she narrows down which recipes get included in the book and which ones get cut. She can involve her readers in all of these kinds of posts by asking them questions and soliciting their feedback.

5. Set a daily or weekly writing goal and stick with it consistently

Setting and keeping a daily or weekly writing schedule is the only way you will get you book finished. I set a time limit of 30 days, and the goal to write a blog post every single day for 30 days straight. You will have to figure out how many pages your book will have, and then estimate from there how many of those pages you want to write on your blog, and then set your deadline date.

An additional bonus to using your blog to help you write your book is with every blog post you are building your writer’s platform. You are establishing the audience for your book well in advance of publication.

I hope you found those tips to be helpful. I think that with just a little bit of creativity you can find a way to write many different kinds of books on your blog. If you have blogged your way to writing a book, please include a link to it in the comments so we can go take a look.

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Blogging Tips: How to Blog Your Way to Writing a Book

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I’ve been blogging for many years, and looking over my blog archives I’ve often figured that there was enough content there for a book. I’m a freelance writer, so much of my writing time and energy is devoted to writing for my clients. I’m also a single mom with three kids and I run a business from my home, so I had lots of excuses for not finding time to write a book.

There are countless benefits of being a published author. Whenever I introduce myself as a writer, people almost always ask if I’ve published a book. I have grown weary of making excuses for why I haven’t published a book, so last year I decided to use my blog to help me come up with the content for a book. I gave myself a focused challenge and I write a post every day for a month. I then took those thirty blog posts and expanded them and added additional content. Now I have got an almost completed manuscript for a book based on the content of my blogging challenge.

This morning I came across this article, 7 Things You Must Do Before Writing Your Book, which is full of great tips for those who are thinking about writing a book. The author, Ofili, writes about the power of blogging to help you get your book written, ” I put myself on a strict and disciplined regimen of writing at least one 1500 article every month. I did this unfailingly starting January of 2011 and at the end of the year, I had 20+ quality articles chapters and over 25,000+ words in my book.” The secret is to commit to a focused writing schedule and be consistent.

There are a few benefits of blogging your book. One of those benefits, as Ofili mentions in his post, is the opportunity for instant feedback from your readers. Another benefit is that you are establishing a platform, building an audience for the book and getting your name and writing out there in the world. The best benefit, I believe, is the responsibility to your readers to blog consistently. Once you hook your readers in with what you are writing, they are going to want to stay in the loop and find out what happens.

Bloggers who want to become authors should go ahead and give it a whirl. Choose the topic of your book and focus your blog posts around that theme. Tell your readers what you are doing and get their support and encouragement. The positive comments I received when I did my blogging challenge really motivated me to stick with it no matter what.

Now that my manuscript is almost finished I am researching publishing options. It will launch first as an ebook, so you will be the first to hear about it when it drops. Keep on writing.

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Writing Tips and Tools: ProWritingAid.com

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I stumbled across this writing tool when they started following me on Twitter. I checked out the website and gave it a try. There’s a blank field on the main page of the website where you can paste your written copy and then click the ‘analyze,’ button. The pro writing aid software analyzes your writing and gives you suggestions for revisions in categories such as:

  •  Overused words
  • Sentence variation
  • Clichés & Redundancies
  • Repeated words & phrases

The pro writing aid tool also analyses sentence length, clichés and the pacing of your writing. If you are going to hand your writing over to a human editor, you might want to first pop it into this free tool and make the suggested corrections that you agree with and then see what your editor has to say.

I tried it with an article I wrote this morning, and I found the edits useful. It pointed out to me how much I overuse certain words, it revealed my penchant for beginning sentences with conjunctions and prepositions, and it showed how I could improve the pacing or my work. I also tend to write long, rambling sentences. Long sentences are fine as long as you vary the length of all the sentences in that piece of writing. Every single word should carry its own weight.

I often coach beginning writers about the importance of separating the creative process of writing from the mechanical process of editing and revising. After you have written something, set it aside for awhile and then run it through prowritingaid.com to help improve the finished product.

While it’s never going to replace a human editor, prowritingaid.com is a handy, free tool that you can use to run your writing through to clean it up and catch common errors.

 

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Blogging for Writers and Authors: How Blogging Can Transform Your Writing Career

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Blogging provides an effective platform for writers and authors who want to get the word out about their newest book, their latest insight, or commentary on events going on in the world around us.

Writers share an abiding affection for the written word. They seek to give expression to their deepest fears, desires, and passions using their writing to make sense of the world. Most writers realize that most of what they write will never be published in book form, but having your own blog gives you an instant publishing platform where you can share your uncensored ideas with the world without the hassle of trying to get a book deal.

In this post, I’m going to share some links to other blogs on the topic of blogging for authors. This speed linking mashup will bring together several resources on the effectiveness of blogging for authors, and you’ll see in some of these articles the possible negative impact blogging can have.

  • Create a platform for current and future authors

As yet unpublished writers can seize the opportunity to start building an audience of readers who like their work.  As your blog readership grows it can become a valuable asset when you are looking to get a book deal. These articles speak to the utility of blogs to help establish authors and develop a platform.

Using Your Blog to Build a Platform

http://www.bloggingauthors.com/blogging_authors/2010/8/3/using-your-blog-to-build-a-platform.html

The Author’s Dilemma: To Blog or Not to Blog,  By Claire E. White

http://www.internetwritingjournal.com/nov05/cew4.htm

9 Good Reasons to Start a Blog, by Diane Eble

http://www.publishingcoachweekly.com/Start-a-Blog-9-Good-Reasons.html

  • Could eventually be turned into a book

The blog itself could morph into a book. This has happened many times recently, and Brenna Ehrlich chronicles six such cases in her article.

From Blog to Book Deal: How 6 Authors Did It, by Brenna Ehrlich

http://mashable.com/2009/12/17/blog-to-book/

  • Develop and expand your personal brand

There’s been a lot of buzz for the past few years about this concept of the ‘personal brand.’ Personal branding speaks to how you show up in the world, and purposefully crafting an image, a message and establishing you as a brand.

Personal Branding

http://www.personalbrandingblog.com/

5 Personal Branding Tips to Help You Gate Jump

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/183073

Seven Branding Gurus on How to Build a Personal Brand

http://www.bnet.com/blog/career-advice/seven-branding-gurus-on-how-to-build-a-personal-brand/101

If writing is your passion and you want to get your ideas out there and interact with your audience, blogging is an effective way to get you started. It will give you the opportunity to hone your craft, get into the habit of writing daily, and as your blog grows you will develop a relationship with your readers that can be very rewarding to writers whose work tends to be a solitary endeavor.  If done properly, a blog truly can transform your writing career.

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