Jen's Writing Journey

Here is a handy table of contents that will help you quickly reach the topic of your choice. Let me know if you like it this way.

• The Business of Writing
• Craft
• Fiction
• Freelancing
• Platform

The Business of Writing

Freemium for Writers Is Two Debates
Don Holloway provides interesting insight into the concept of using free content to increase readership and, we hope, encourage readers to buy our paid content.

The Library in a Digital Age
If you were building a library from scratch, what would you put in it? Scads of books? E-book readers? Digital televisions? Internet-connected computers?

How I Spent My Summer Vacation
Kassia Kroszer shares her story of the founding and then closure of Quartet Press. I was sad to see Quartet close down this week, and I wish all of th best to all who were involved. Kroszer makes some interesting points about the future of publishing and the need for authors to stay on top of the new developments so we can figure out how they may affect us.

Maybe You Shouldn’t Quit Your Job Just Yet
Agent Rachelle Gardner gives a great breakdown on just what you can expect with your first advance. She describes the payment process and the amounts that will go to your agent and that you should set aside for taxes. It’s a nice dose of reality that we can all keep in mind when we plan to trajectory of our writing careers.

Craft

Identifying and Eliminating Your Habit Words
Patricia Stoltey gives some good tips for using technology to weed out your most repeated words. What are yours? I find that my habit words change from WIP to WIP, but they tend to be the connector words, such as “however” or “in addition.”

People Watching: For Spies or Writers?
Kristine Meldrum Denholm likens writers to spies. Both vocations require you to observe people, looking for their habits and their tics, and then to process those actions through a filter. How often do you spy on people to enrich your characters?

Fiction

The Value of the Unanticipated
Novelist Camy Tang offers a tip to enliven a scene that is missing that little something special: an unanticipated conflict.

Where Do You Write?
Kimberly Farris share her writing location of choice and asks you to share yours. I find that different locations work best for different types of writing. Nonfiction? In the office with no distractions. Blogging? Just about anywhere. Fiction? In the living room with my two dogs and the TV on.

A Limited Number of Words
Novelist L.J. Sellers isn’t writing as much on her novel this year, and she thinks the culprit is her other writing job. I definitely feel as if I have a limited amount of writing juice, and my day job has been getting the bulk of it lately. What about you? Do you have an infinite pool of words to put on paper?

Stay Fresh
Elle Scott discusses the use of brand names and important figures in your writing. Don’t do it, she says, it will only make your writing sound dated, even by the time it comes out. J.R. Ward, are you listening? If you insist on including brand names in your fiction, Jessica Faust gave some good tips on how to do so last week.

Freelancing

10 Reasons Why Old-School Freelancers Need to Lighten Up and Stop Whining
Deb Ng looks at the realities of web writing. Many of us got our start in print, and we try to apply our print logic to the web. Print pay is typically higher, so we get offended by lower-paying online gigs. That’s fine, until we start judging our fellow writers who write for those sites. Read Deb’s thoughts and the comments.

20 Not-So-Obvious Blogs for Freelancers
We all have our favorite writing and entrepreneurial sites, but what about productivity sites? Or innovation sites? Even money management sites? Freelance Folder lists some great resources for business building and management that you might not have thought of.

Platform

Building a Platform: Day 1
Jacqueline Vick provides some guiding questions to help you decide on your niche. Once you have a niche, you can begin to build a platform that targets that niche.

How to Write a Really Good Query Letter, Part XI: What do you mean you want me to talk about my writing credentials?
Anne Mini discusses the importance of describing your platform in your query letter. As part of that discussion, she gives some great ideas to help you build a platform, including contests, article writing, and education.

• 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......
• Writing Roundup, July 31 Ah, another month draws to a close. We are nearing the end of a stretch of record warm weather in the Portland area, and the heat really sapped my energy. I did not do as well this month as I had hoped. What keeps you from meeting your goals? I've......
• Writing Roundup FictionDialogue: Creative ListeningUse these tips to make your dialogue shine.Platform Development for Fiction WritersPlatform has typically been the least important consideration when agents and publishers choose which novels to pick up. But, with the competition increasing, it may become more important. Rachelle Gardner gives some tips for building your platform......
• Writing Roundup, February 5 The Business of Writing Craft Fiction Freelancing Platform The Business of Writing Perseverance Without the ability to stick to our goals and complete our writing projects, all of the talent and study in the world won't mean a thing. How do you keep your motivation up even when you......
• Writing Roundup, August 21 We've got a lot of interesting news posts this week in addition to the regular blog suspects. The Business of Writing The Limits of Control This article from the American Journalism Review provides a good synopsis of the ethics policies and guidelines major newspapers are asking their reporters to follow......

• What is CIT And Why Am I Out $17 Because They Went Under? One of the biggest companies you've never heard of went bankrupt yesterday.  It was the 5th largest in US history.  CIT Group, which is not...
• Advertising on Facebook If you are not already making use of Facebook as a method of marketing your business or niche, then you are absolutely missing out on...
• Start Online Business The site of the Internet-shop is the difficult, structured site with which help it is possible to make purchase online. The Internet shop approaches those...
• Networking – A Great Way to Motivate Yourself As an entrepreneur you may hear a lot about networking and wonder what all the hubbub is about. Networking, both online and off, is a...
• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-14 Have an all new look blog, lots of photography, poems and articles. http://bit.ly/47XSb5 # It's a bit more of a 'fun' look then the main...