Jen's Writing Journey

Ten Characteristics of a Good Client
Use these tips when evaluating whether you will continue to work with your current clients. Also, the comment from Kelly Parkinson has great tips to evaluate a potential client.

Proving You’re Worth More Money
In this post, Heather Boerner helps you negotiate for higher rates from current clients.

Follow Your Passions to Find New Clients
Passion is what drives most of us to writing, but sometimes economic realities force us to look beyond our passion to what best pays the bills. In this post, Shelley DeLuca suggests that we return to our passions and find ways to make them pay our bills. If poetry is your passion, make it your greatest focus. If macroeconomics gets you going, find the clients who will best appreciate your skill and your interest.

Busy Parent Writer: Keep an Eye Out for Tax Deductions
What do I learn from tax season every year? “This year, I need to keep better records.” In this post on the Writer Mama blog, Sharon Miller Cindrich reminds us of things we can write off. I’ve already done my taxes for 2008 (and spent most of the refund, to tell you the truth–Ducks season tickets are not cheap), but these tips will help me keep better records for 2009.

Defining the Blog Tour
L.J. Sellers defines blog tours, then solicits feedback about how to handle a tour. I am planning a tour for this summer, when my book comes out, so I found this very interesting. Ican’t wait to see all of your comments on her blog.

Business Building on a Shoestring
Goals. Goals bedevil me, even though I know they are necessary. Tiffany Colter provides tips here to help set the goals for your writing business.

Lift Every Voice: In Search of the Writer’s Voice
Voice is one of the key components of a query, either for a book, short story, or article idea. How can you find your voice and ensure that it shines through in all of your writing?

Do Magazines Publishers Have an Irrational Fear of Digital?
The popularity of digital publishing avenues strikes fear in the heart of many in the print world. I think digital and print can co-exist–some types of publications make sense in print, while others work best online. This exploration of the hypocrisy of print executives who use their Blackberries to complain about the death of print gives a little perspective.

• Writing Roundup, May 22 A short and sweet pre-Memorial Day roundup. The Business of Writing So-N-So Recommended Me Referrals can be a great way to get an agent to look at your work--but only if they are done right. Here you'll find some examples of good and bad referrals. Main lesson? Make sure the......
• Writing Roundup, December 18 The Business of Writing Craft Fiction Freelancing Platform The Business of Writing Digital ARCs Make Progress Novelist L.J. Sellers looks at the move toward digital review copies. How will that affect writers. Backlist Title Dilemma How should authors deal with their less than stellar backlist releases? Shrug and hope......
• Diversification The main reason we are in this whole writing game is that we love to write, to tell stories. But we also have real needs--bills must be paid, food must be purchased, and so on. Thus the desire to earn money for some of these ditties we write. I've written......
• Top 5 Posts With the end of the year approaching, it seemed like a good time to look back at the year and see which posts you found most useful. Here are the top 5, based on traffic and repeat visits. (Side note: The writing roundups are typically the most visited pieces, but......
• Writing Roundup, Aug. 14 So many great resources, so little time. Thus, I avoid preamble and move directly into this week's links. The Business of Writing 5 Reasons Pitches Can Be Detrimental Rather Than Helpful Jane Friedman, who took pitches at the Willamette Writers Conference, offers a little advice to writers making pitches: Don't......

• Professional Blogging Roundup - Blogging Tips and Resources Good morning and welcome to another Sunday edition of Buildify's weekly roundup. From general blogging tips to articles on very specific topics there's a lot...
• Increase Traffic To Your Blog, pt3 Here is Part 3 in our series on increasing traffic to your blog. We hope you enjoyed the series, and that you can take these...
• My first week with Kontera from Blogging Tips Here's a great post from Blogging Tips on Kontera advertising. I have been considering signing up for Kontera but didn't know a lot about it....
• Keeping It Fresh If you want to keep readers coming back to your website, you should produce fresh blog posts to keep their interest. Look to the biggest...
• Quick and Dirty Tips for Effective Corporate Blogging, pt 2 This is part two in a series about tips for good corporate blogging. We touched on three tips in the first part of this series...