Professional writer
Joanna Penn has launched a new series of free videos on the theme of how to make a living from writing.
After a year of prevaricating about using Scrivener as my main writing tool, I am rapidly heading towards doing so. The reason is that I discovered that I can have a view on my work in which I can see everything I need to see all at the same time. I call this “My Scrivener Dashboard”, and in this post I point out what each part of it is, and why I am starting to fall in love with Scrivener.
If, like me, you enjoy writing and you would like to earn money from it, should you go down the freelance writing route or write books, or both? In the first part of this two-part series I looked at the advantages and disadvantages of freelancing, ie writing articles for newspapers and magazines. In this part, I consider the advantages and disadvantages of authoring, ie writing books.
Polish Your Fiction is another title in Jessica Bell’s “in a nutshell” series. It is subtitled “A quick and easy self-editing guide”, which is a very apt description.
If, like me, you enjoy writing and you would like to earn money from it, should you go down the freelance writing route or write books, or both?
From my experience, here are the pros and cons of freelancing.
This article is not about writing or related matters as such; it's more about my experience of attitudes to paying for work. It's worth reading, I think, if any of the following applies to you:
A recent piece of research from the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) makes for some depressing reading – unless you are extremely optimistic.
The figures relate to 2013, and are not as good as their equivalents of ten years ago, in 2005. Well, not for the most part anyway. Here are some of them:
After quite a long gap, I’ve decided to self-publish a few books. I thought it might be interesting to write up my journey, because perhaps the research I undertake will be beneficial to others.
Today I’m looking at why have I chosen self-publishing rather than traditional publishing.
After quite a long gap, I’ve decided to self-publish a few books. I thought it might be interesting to write up my journey, because perhaps the research I undertake will be beneficial to others.
Today, I’m clarifying what the term self-publishing means because, unfortunately, it’s not as obvious as you might think.
Starting tomorrow, a new series of occasional posts about my research into self-publishing.
The first two articles are:
There are lots of books about writing – so many, in fact, that you could comfortably avoid doing any writing at all simply by setting out to read them all. There does come a point where you need to actually sit down and write. But if there is one book that is worth taking time out to read, and use as a reference, it's Business for Authors.
It's important to be published by a traditional publisher
Image by Terry Freedman via Flickr
In this day and age, in which anyone can publish and distribute their books electronically, or self-publish them by going down several routes (none of which need include the traditional vanity publisher), why should anyone bother approaching a traditional publisher? After all, very few of the thousands of manuscripts that publishers receive find their way into book form, and of those that do, very few hit the big time. There are, in fact, at least 4 reasons to try to get published by the age-old process of going to publishers.
Writer Beware is a blog that alerts writers to scams, and possible scams. In some respects it is like a consumer organisation for writers.
I love books that you can dip into, and I am always interested in what writers have to say about their craft. Jurgen Wolff’s Your Creative Writing Masterclass has proved to be highly rewarding on both counts.
Many moons ago I took up amateur dramatics for a while. That may seem a bit odd for someone who likes to keep himself to himself, but someone invited me to see a play he was in, and I thought it looked like fun.
I have to say that the thought of going on stage was a terrifying experience. Note that I said the thought of it, not the experience itself. I’ll try to explain.
In the article 3 reasons that non-fiction authors should speak, I suggested why public speaking can be important to an author. But the question arises: should that be at any price?
My natural inclination, my default position if you will, is that if you’re good enough to be asked to give a talk, do a presentation or run a workshop, then you deserve to be paid for it. As my wife so succinctly put it to me: “Nothing doesn’t buy anything.”.
However, situations, like people, are different from one another. At the end of the day, if you are asked to give a talk without payment, your decision of whether or not to accept is one that involves weighing up the (perceived) costs and benefits. Here are the considerations you might wish to take into account.
One of the things that authors are expected to do is public speaking. Even if you hate the idea, it’s a good thing to do for three reasons.A short while ago I published an article called 5 reasons for using Scrivener for writing books.
I wondered: could Scrivener be used to write blog articles?