Taking Time Off
We have an ill pet, and I’m going to spend my blogging time on supporting his health for the next week or so. Thanks for your understanding.
Related Posts:
Categories: Uncategorized, writing
Archives from month » March, 2010
Writing Roundup, March 19
Today, the roundup is late and short. The motherboard on my HP laptop died seven days after my warranty is up. So far, HP has not been particularly interested in helping me out with this problem, unless I pony up pretty much the cost of a replacement laptop for them to fix mine. I have to wait until Monday or Tuesday to hear from one of the Quality Case Managers to discuss the issue further. But I digress from the real reason you are here. Let the links begin.
Expectations of a Disgruntled Reader
With the number of books being published and the scarce resources of the average reader, we writers had best keep the readers’ needs at the forefront. Katie shares some reactions to recent books that could be instructive as we craft our own works.
Letters from the Query Wars
A set of query do’s this week.
Status Updates
More query do’s, this time focused on the request for an update on the status of your query.
I Am My Own Boss
Christi Craig discusses the things that keep her personally accountable, even though she is not writing under contract. What keeps you writing?
The Organized Writing Process Resource Post
Looking for tools to help you work through your writing process? Look no further, as Jessie Haynes provides the steps and some tools to help you.
Is the Business of Freelance Writing Too Bitter and Twisted?
This is a nice piece that addresses the grumbling of we writers who don’t like seeing the value of writing decline in the Internet world. It provides strategies for building a career.
5 Ways You Can Improve Cash Flow with Your Invoices
Freelancer Thursday Bram shares good tips on ensuring that your invoices are processed and paid in a timely manner.
Learning about Promotion
Tricia Schneider shares some good resources to help you promote yourself and your writing.
How Magazines Use Social Media to Boost Pass-aLong, Build Voice
PBS hosts this discussion of the ways magazines are making social media work for them. How can you adapt their methods to build your writing business?
Related Posts:
Categories: Uncategorized, writing
Use Universal Human Characteristics and Beliefs to Make Your Fiction Seem Real
Some researchers just released a study that proves that men like ladies with curves. Duh!
OF course, there is a little more to it than that. The researchers found that looking at women with an hourglass figure affects the same pleasure centers in the male brain as drugs and alcohol. They also found that this crossed cultures and ages—all men reacted the same way to women with curves.
Truisms like this can be used to create characters and settings that ring true.
Does every man who meets your heroine fall head over heels for her? Does she have an hourglass figure? If not, it might make men’s reactions to her more believable if you give her an hourglass figure.
How can you use other research findings or long-held beliefs to create characters that anyone can relate to? Or to set up situations that any reader can understand?
Sometimes we do this instinctively, so you might look at your work while you are editing. If something goes against common ideas, make sure it works in context. Back to the heroine that all men adore. If she doesn’t fit the hourglass figure ideal, you can create a world in which she fits the ideal.
Related Posts:
Categories: Uncategorized, writing
Writing Roundup, March 12
Query Etiquette
Agent Kathleen Ortiz posts some really bad sentences to include in your query letter. Please, follow her advice.
How to Decide What Blogs to Read
I’ve gotten a little ruthless in my blog reading, and I cut quite a few out of my Google Reader. It has helped me not only keep up with the blogs I need to read but also stay on track with my own writing rather than wasting all of my time blog surfing.
Be a Joiner, But Don’t Be a Sucker
Christina Katz offers her thoughts on how to select a membership organization or writer’s group to join.
Self-Publishing: Is It a Viable Alternative for Authors?
This post from Entertainment Weekly is an interesting look at self-publishing. Would you consider it a more valid method of publishing success if, say, Stephenie Meyer and Stephen King began going the self-pub route?
Being Part of a Community
Should editors and publishers be part of the reader community? mean, most of them went into this line of work because they love books and reading, right?
Writing More, Writing Better: 6 Ways to Find More Time to Write
The key to improving your craft is by writing more. 10,000 hours of focused practice can make you an expert, according to Malcolm Gladwell. Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen shares ideas to help you get those 10,000 hours in.
P.D. James and Detective Fiction
Keith Oatley attended one of P.D. James’ speaking engagements, and he shares some of what he learned. The nice thing is that he discusses how James’ words made him reconsider his novel and decide what worked and what didn’t. If you get that much out of a seminar or a talk, you have spent your time wisely.
Two Critiques and a Challenge
Can you sum up your story in one sentence? One engaging and thought-provoking sentence that makes people want to read the story? Randy Ingermanson critiques two summaries and offers a third up for reader critique.
I Wrote a Novel
Ready for a little inspiration? Read Stephen Parrish’s publication story.
Don’t Be a Victim: Stop Content Thieves Dead in Their Tracks
Good tips for preventing your hard work from being claimed by or sold to others without your knowledge.
How to Tell When Its Time to Take a Break
Another reminder of the need for downtime. Billable hours are awesome, but make time for rest, too.
oDesk: One Writer’s Experience and His Plea to Clients
Freelancers thrive when they feel trusted by their clients. Does monitoring software, such as that used by oDesk, make you feel as if you aren’t trusted.
Staying Relevant with Targeted Email
Looking for ways to generate better response to your email marketing? Try targeting your messages better.
What to Do If Your Marketing Plan Fails
Everything needs to be tweaked or updated every now and then to stay effective. Your marketing plan is no different. This post gives you tips to figure out when your marketing plan is due for an update and how to update it.
Related Posts:
Categories: Uncategorized, writing
A Call for Financial Education
When I was in high school, the honors students were offered the option of testing out of the required year-long personal finance class. The assumption was that we should not waste our valuable college prep time learning such banal tasks as managing household finances.
But, how many college graduates bounce checks, get into overwhelming credit card debt, or purchase homes and cars they really can’t afford?
According to mortgageloan.com, the average college graduate has $2,000 in credit card debt and $20,000 in student debt. When you add in all of the other societal pressures for nice cars and big houses, that can add up to poor choices be even the most well educated person.
How can we ensure that all of our students, rich or poor and at all levels of academic achievement, enter the working world with the skills to manage their earnings?
We can start by not thinking of personal finance as a throw-away subject that students can just test out of unless they want the easy A. And we need to provide consistent, developmentally appropriate finance education thought both public and private education.
The standards released by the Jump $tart Coalition provide a good roadmap to ensure that students learn good financial skills.
How do we ensure that financial literacy is included in education? And what technology tools are best suited to providing this education?
Related Posts:
Categories: ed tech, Uncategorized
Tax Tips for Writers
We’re just over one month away from the deadline for filing your taxes. Have you put it off, or have you already taken care of them? I have put it off, not because of the IRS fear, but because this year has completely gotten away from me so far. I mean, really, how did it get to be March so soon?
I enlisted the help of a few experts to create list of tips to help you prepare this year’s tax returns and to prepare for next year.
- Make record-keeping easy on yourself. Debra Yergen, author of the Creating Job Security series, has an easy system for keeping your receipts organized. “Carry a ‘receipts’ envelope in your purse, briefcase, or car. When you get a business-related receipt, jot any relevant notes on it and add it to your envelope. When the envelope begins to get thick, drop it in an IRS box at home and grab a fresh envelope. Every few months organize your receipts,” Yergen said. Having your receipts together and labeled when tax time comes around will make it easy to account for all of your deductions.
- All expenses directly related to your business are fair game. Many writers forget some eligible expenses when completing their tax returns. Retired CPA and author Jeffrey Taylor reminds us that “anything that has the direct benefit of generating income, i.e., computer, business phone, isp, website development, publicist, accountant, tax advisory, book publisher, business driving and travel to conferences, education” are eligible deductions.
- All deductions should make sense. When writing off an expense, think about whether you can justify it easily. Because, Yergen said, “if you get audited, you are going to have to make a case to the IRS for the decisions you made.”
- Sometimes, its better not to deduct everything. “The worst threat is being declared a hobby by the IRS instead of a business,” said Taylor. “A business must generate income at least for two years within a five year period.” If you haven’t generated a profit recently, you may not want to write off everything. Generate a profit this year to keep your status as a business.
- Keep up on your quarterlies. Cathy Golsticker, a CPA who works with freelance writers, has an equation to help writers who have day jobs know when they need to makes quarterly estimated tax payments:Self-employment tax rate of 15.4% (assuming day job wages are below $106,800, other-wise SE tax rate is 2.9%) + income tax rate (estimated (25-28%) = 40% (rounded) tax rate times net income from freelance
Deduct from this amount the expected tax refund (what you usually receive in a typical year)
Equals: Annual federal tax estimates to pay in
Now divide by 4 for the quarterly amount.
Goldsticker also cautions writers not to forget about state estimated tax payments. Check with your accountant or your state’s department of revenue to get rates and deadlines.
- Consider incorporating. According to Michael T. Hanley, CPA and author of Effective Tax Planning for the Microbusiness, “Most writers who earn $250 or more each year will end up paying less tax each year by operating as an S-Corporation.” In addition, Hanley said, writers who incorporate have “an audit risk that is approximately nine times lower than the audit risk of any writers who report all income/expenses as if they were personal income/expenses.” [Note: I'll be going back to Hanley to find out a little more about incorporating. Stay tuned for an April post on this topic.]
Writer’s Digest also posted some further tax tips. What are your favorites?
Related Posts:
Categories: Uncategorized, writing
Writing Roundup, March 5
Prospering in the Gig Economy: Simple Habits for Writers That Pay Off Quickly
Christina Katz has a quick list of tasks you can do on a regular basis to help yourself keep on task, allocate your resources effectively, and become more properous.
All about Sequels
How many times have you read the nth book in a series and thought, “I am not having fun reading this, but I have to finish the series. I’ve already invested so much time into this world and these characters.” Agent Nathan Bransford discusses the disease acute sequelitis, in which an author can no longer work on new stories and new worlds because they are too tied to the series they have already invested in. Of course, when a writer loses passion and focus, the readers lose out.
Jamie Novak on Organization
Professional organizer Jamie Novak gives tips for turning clutter into cash–and what writer doesn’t need an influx of extra cash every now and then?
How Are Multiple Book Deal Advances Divided Up?
Moonrat shares the typical details of payment on a multiple book contract.
Where Do You Write?
Julie Jordan poses an interesting question: Where do you write? I do a lot of my writing in the living room or in my office downstairs. The living room is easy and ensures that everything I need is in close reach. The office is great for uninterrupted stretches of writing. I find that the easiest cure for writer’s block is shifting your environment, so when the living room isn’t working, I head down to the office, and vice versa.
Selecting the Tense for Your Story
In your initial drafts, just write the story. Don’t worry about past, present, pluperfect, or anything else. But, when you are editing that draft, think about what tense is appropriate, then use the guidelines here to make sure it is consistent throughout.
The Idea Tree
Where do your ideas come from? Personally, I have found that having ideas isn’t the problem–shutting off the flow of ideas once I enter into idea-generation mode is!
No Checklists Here!
Lauren Dane reminds us of the importance of treating each story as its own beast. Not all stories need to hit all genre tropes.
Seven Reasons Not to Meet with Prospective Clients
Who would have thought of advising a freelancer not to meet with clients and potential clients? This post does that, with solid logic behind the reasons. If you can’t wow potential clients in person, but you can over the phone or on email, do what works for you.
Types of Companies That Need Freelance Writers
Are you looking for new clients or looking to broaden your reach? This post at Freelance Writing Jobs could give you some ideas for new companies to approach.
Final Lessons Learned from One of the World’s Highest-Paid Copywriters
Dan Kennedy gives tips on how to apply tried-and-true marketing techniques to online media. This is part three in a series. Read parts one and two, if you missed them.
Author Platform: What Are You Waiting For?
Joel Friedlander gives a nice pep talk on how easy it can be to begin building your platform–and how important it is.
Related Posts:
Categories: Uncategorized, writing
Guest Post: Working from Home? Well, Get to Work! by Pamela Hilliard Owens
Today I welcome professional writer Pamela Hilliard Owens. Pamela is sharing her advice on one of the hardest things about freelancing: making sure your work-at-home lifestyle actually includes a bit of work.
Working from Home? Well, Get to Work!
As I write this today, it has been snowing all night here in Michigan and there are several inches of snow on the ground. But why should I worry? I don’t have to warm up my car, navigate snow-covered streets, beware of careless drivers, or arrive at work late (again). I work from my home office! I got up, watched all of the “winter watch” warnings on the local morning news, did my yoga practice, got dressed, ate breakfast, and was at my desk ready to work at 9 am; all without any mess or stress.
Working at home gives you flexibility and freedom, but it comes with its own set of challenges; not the least of which is learning to properly structure your time so that you actually get some work done! Depending on your situation, you can work early or late—matching your work hours to your natural biorhythms. Or, you can work in several spurts—a few hours at a time.
It is just important that you decide on what schedule works best for you and stick to it. It will take discipline and the ability to keep distractions to a minimum. In the situation I just described for myself, if my children weren’t already grown and on their own, I would have not been as happy with the snow as I am. My children would have had a “snow day” and been home all day moaning: “I don’t have anything to do!” If you have school-aged children, I hope you have made contingency plans, just as if you had a “real job”, because you still have work to do.
Each work-at-home situation is different. If you work almost exclusively online, you may be able to rearrange your work hours when necessary. If you are under deadline, you are under deadline, no matter what. Only you know what has to be done and when your projects are due. But only you have the ability to set your own schedule. Just remember that you still have a “boss”; but as I always say, I work for the best boss in the world: Me!
After a career of 35+ years in education, collaborative sales and sales management and marketing, I started my own freelance writing and editing business in July of 2008. My company, Writing It Right for You knows that “It Matters How You Say It”! I work with individuals, graduate and post-graduate students, and businesses throughout the United States, Canada, the Middle East, India, Russia, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom on a variety of academic and business writing and editing projects.
My specialties include working with graduate students–especially ESL students, anything involving education, ghost-writing and working with authors, writing web content, social media marketing and networking, direct sales, and writing and editing various papers of any length involving research and/or APA citations. I also do affiliate marketing and maintain more than three personal, political and business blogs and guest blog for several clients around the world.
My office is open Mondays-Fridays 9am-5pm US ET; I can be reached at any time by phone, fax, Skype, Gtalk, Yahoo IM, and email. I am a full-time, mature and experienced researcher, writer and editor; my office is fully equipped with the latest hardware, high-speed Internet, FTP and MS 2007 Office Suite. I am also proficient in Web 2.0 apps and social media.
Related Posts:
Categories: Uncategorized, writing