Online Ghosting Pays

Ever wonder how much $$ we could make as blog or Twitter ghosts? It's a matter of much controversy and strong opinions aired in forums like #BlogChat. Equally ephemeral is information about "standards" and how much to charge.

Whether you think ghostblogging is "a lie!" or "just a job," find out what's really going in in this article The Ghost Speaks - Entrepreneur.com:

Ghost rates vary, but generally, it costs far less to create a ghosted blog or Twitter account than to launch a traditional PR campaign. McCord charges $18 to $32 per blog post, and $150 to $500 a month for multiple daily tweets. Lindsay Manfredi, a social media strategist in Indianapolis, charges $75 to $100 for a blog post, a fee that includes research, writing and editing.

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Trash Proof News Releases

Save your news release from immediate deposit in the circular file. Most of them drop directly from hand to can, you know. Some publications run them as is, some rewrite, but they are inundated with releases and use only a few.

Want to be sure yours is read by the publication's audience? Paul J. Krupin of Direct Contact PR is testing an offer of a *FREE* copy of the ebook version of his Trash Proof News Releases, available from Smashwords. He says, "The book contains 200 plus pages of strategies, tactics, psychology, and sample news releases and can help people do the right thing better than anything else I've seen in the marketplace to date." Get 'em while they're hot!

And if it's so valuable, why would the king of PR give away his secrets? Because, he explains:

My business model doesn't rely specifically on publishing income. But I will be using my writing as a calling card to drive multiple streams of income.

Now this may not fit for those who simply derive income from published works. But I highly recommend this approach to those who can do it diversify their intellectual property, their skills, abilities and knowledge and contract or package their knowledge in other small bite size service deliverable that people will buy whether it be by the page, by the hour, by the day or whatever.

Here today I offer you a two-fer: a free ebook to help you market whatever and insight into the meaning of "platform" and how self-publishing non-fiction books can work for you.

DISCLAIMER FOR THE FTC: I didn't get anything for publishing this post, and it should not be construed or used as a testimonial. I downloaded, but I did not read...yet.

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Bibliodicks & Tricks

The publicity had me at "bibliodick." I've known a few "dicks" in my days, but never one meriting the prefix "biblio". The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Bartlett is one of the few I really could scarcely put down once I began reading. And I hope the author won't be insulted when I say I kept forgetting it is a true crime story. It reads like a novel. Enthralling. I was also enraptured and encouraged to find a veteran journo who could switch to a long form and write such a lyrical and erudite narration. Kudos! That the story is about old books is a bonus.

Not so enticing is Jill Dearman's bang the keys "Based on eternal principles that work for scribes of all stripes." I hesitate to trash the production of someone I've connected with on LinkedIn for fear she'll drop me, and I won't be able to stand the rejection. Well, let's just say that I am not persuaded by her acronymic B.A.N.G. "four steps to a lifelong writing practice." And I was totally turned off by her style--a breezy affection of a 40's noir film star channeling Tallulah Bankhead (darling!) If you're in need of prompts, the back cover promises "an armful of clever and penetrating exercises." That, there are in abundance. Oh, and lots and lots of name dropping.

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Magazine Freelancing

Every once in a while I visit Ed2010.com to check out the Helpful Links list. This time I puzzled over the first set of resources. What are these, scandal sheets? I'd only heard of Gawker:

• Jossip
• Gawker
• Gothamist
• iwantmedia
• The Kicker
• Romenesko

It was the magazine list I wanted to review. Just for fun, I looked at ones for which I'd written: Bon Appetit, Family Circle, Harper's, Redbook -- yes, still in business if having a website counts. Many others weren't even listed. It was when I reached YM that a jolt came. The link redirects to a site for Teen Vogue with this notice:

If you're on this page, you most likely came from one of our sister sites, YM.com or Flip.com. Unfortunately, both YM and Flip are no longer being published. In their place, we invite you to explore Teen Vogue magazine and TeenVogue.com.

Magazines have always come and gone like fashion fads, but it's sad to see some old standards MIA (or DOA). Of course, I have Reader's Digest and it's recent bankruptcy filing in mind. Yes, I sold a piece to them, too, in the late 1960s.

Magazine freelancing is a fast-paced kind of work. You must pay attention to all sorts of details, as well as the [cliché alert!] big picture. I recommend following sites/feeds/pubs like Publishers Weekly and Mediabistro to help keep up. Or better yet, set up Google and Yahoo alerts for news about changes in the magazine publishing world. Even Ed's on Twitter (and seems to have abandoned his blog). See http://twitter.com/ed2010news for the latest, and beware, he tweets a lot!

Twitter, a news source?

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Slanting Topics

If the Cheapskate Mom got together with The Ultimate Cheapskate, can you just imagine the frugal children they would have?
I spotted the Mad Boastings of a Cheapskate Mom in the Blogs of Note on my Blogger Dashboard this morning, took a look, and thought about the difference in approach she takes to the same topic from Jeff Yeager's. They both offer information on saving money and the planet. The Mom's is evident in her blog's title and badges and posts with labels "green" and "planet". Jeff has recorded video segments on the cable channel "Planet Green" and made audio appearances on satellite radio programs.

Jeff started with a book, threw up a sadly neglected blog site, and moved right into big media with his publisher's help. He has an upcoming TV program, while Tamara Niewolny hurled herself into the blog scene and utilizes her status as chick/Mom in the New Media.

Jeff likes to persuade you to spend as little money as possible; Tamara teaches how to spend wisely. She reviews products and makes the most of her Internet connection, passing along tips on making money from home. I love her tag line: "Hugging Trees and Taking Names." Both are on Twitter: Tamara and Jeff, whose best tweet IMHO is from July 22: Am I the only one who wants the recession to end so that - most of all - Suze Orman and Jim Kramer will stop yelling at me on the TV?? See his slant toward financial management?

This technique of slanting material is one of the more difficult learning hurdles for new freelancers. It might help to study how different writers carry it out long term and in a broader spectrum than just a few articles. Starting with these two writers would be a good beginning.

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Book Income Unlikely

Lit agent Donald Maas, Jon Talton, veteran Seattle journalist, are featured with me in the lead story at Jilted Journalists. Jim Gold's piece rounds up advice for laid-off news persons who might want to write books in their now abundant spare time. I suggest a focus on non-fiction, but Gold quotes successful author Jennifer Weiner from Poynter Online: "...I think the best thing for being a novelist is having been a reporter."

I turn journalists back toward their strengths in a time of need. It seems obvious to me that those who worked as reporters full-time to feed a family, are probably grabbing for an immediate source of income. Writing a novel does not provide a living wage, at least not until they become established authors knocking out best sellers--and that happens to a tiny fraction of all who make the attempt.

Gold estimates 20,000 reporters have lost their jobs in the last 12-18 months. Lookout freelancers, here they come!

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Writing Nostalgia

Nothing productive happens here until this homage emerges:

Today is the 92nd anniversary of Mama's birth. She arrived in a little house on River Street in Franklin, Ohio, and lived in a succession of those houses along the Great Miami until the Great Depression and her parents' divorce kicked her out into the work world. At the age of 12, she had to leave her mother and school to keep house for her father and two brothers.

Ten years later, George swaggered into the lunchroom where she worked, hoping for a 7-Up to ease his hangover. He liked her cooking, and she liked taking care of him, so they got married and knocked up, all in the same day.

WWII took them to Sandusky, where he made bombs, and their baby girl died in Mama's arms. Against doctor's advice, she conceived and carried me while working at an NCR plant in Dayton, where I was born. The doctor was late, and the nursing sisters held Mama's knees together to prevent the birth.

I was nothing like the beloved baby I replaced. I was exactly like George, who kept on drinking and 17 years later wound up dead as a direct or indirect result. All that was left for Mama to do was to send me through college and, she prayed, into marriage.

Mama spent most of the rest of her life riding herd on another drunk and taking care of her little house. That was about all she cared for, staying in her home, the last one my father had built in the 1950s. She accomplished her goal. In late May 2006 on Thursday afternoon, feeling faint, she lay down on the floor and pressed her emergency call button. She died in the hospital on the following Sunday morning.

Happy Birthday, Mama. I miss you so terribly.

Thus we continue, along the lines of the Nostalgia is in Fashion post I wrote a couple of days ago. In it I failed to mention that it appears that Garrison Keillor and I also wear the same style Sacony running shoes, red with a silver stripe.

I'd been thinking about the Baby Boomer generation sliding into the time of life when we treasure nostalgia like Van Tassel's memoir, and how the sense of smell stirs memories so well. In the last month I've noticed at least two creative endeavors that take advantage of olfactory stimuli: an opera staged in New York City, I believe, and an installation in an art gallery in Oceanside, CA.

Here's my proposal: a scratch 'n' sniff book of Boomers' remembrances, reminders of fragrances along with the events and places of the past. There was a certain "little old ladies' hanky drawer" smell that I would love to experience just one last time--it was a combination of orris root, lavender, and ... what? The stink of Armco's rolling mill on a stagnant, humid summer morning. Apple Blossom toilet water for little girls (Hello Kitty® of the 1950s).

Words and photographs can recreate many details of those memories, but nothing stirs up how we feel about them like the smells. That is where we live, in our emotions. Yes, I saw and heard, touched, kissed and smelled my mother as she lay dying, but that memory is meaningless. When I catch a whiff of Coppertone® and the tang of ocean air, I am right back on a certain Florida beach with Mama, enjoying a Christmas vacation. Happy.

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Nostalgia is in Fashion

Garrison Keillor has a bookstore in Saint Paul, MN where Carlsbad, CA resident, Daniel Van Tassel (below) last month signed his book about boyhood in Minnesota.

Last night I watched a PBS special on Keillor. He mused about his early ambition to become a New Yorker (magazine and city) writer, his chosen geographic relocations and settling back in Minnesota, where he began. I felt such kinship, we are the same age, raised as Midwestern Lutherans, and longed for similar writing careers. We even both began in our respective universities' radio stations, him at the UM reading continuity that I went to NU to learn to write. What is more uncanny, I never made it to the microphones at WNUR, and the UM's transmitter was off the air (but they didn't know it). Our early voices went unheard.

I moved more times than Keillor, but he achieved his New York dream, briefly. Mine was just to have a normal life, but possibly that's an illusion. Now I've embraced living in California, while he has managed to go home again (take that Thomas Wolfe!) Keillor accepts, as he calls it, an ordinary life and he says he finds it good enough. He has the extended family to support him in that choice. I could not determine if he sounded wistful and resigned or at peace with himself at last.

And here in Cali, doncha know, I met someone originally from Minnesota, embarking on a nostalgia tour back there to promote a memoir of "Life in the Heartland at Mid-Century". Back to Barron, by Daniel Van Tassel, delights the Boomer generation no end with true tales of farm life, town trips to Lake Wobegones as well as the big city and all the trouble little boys can get into.

If you're over 60 and still living in the Midwest, you'll chuckle at the memories. If you're over 60 and living somewhere else, you'll chuckle at the memories and perhaps heave a little sigh of sad fondness or relief--your choice, or your luck.

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Citing Electronic Sources

"Cite Your Sites" first popped into mind. Cute. Dumb SEO. Clever wordplay. All of the above. This proposed title is a nice play on rhyming words and the cliché "set your sights," but it would confuse search engines and not help people looking for information on the title used.

Paula Offutt's comment about the lame Anderson Plagiarism Apology prompted this post. Anderson's lame claim was that plagiarism in his recent book resulted from an inability to find a way to cite electronic sources. Such information is available in any style manual. Finding the citation styles online for free is another matter. Presumably Anderson can afford to own current copies of all style guides. Where was the publisher's editor in all this? What about a fact checker? It is difficult to check facts with no sources cited.

If you don't understand about citing sources at all, read the information on the Long Island University (C.W. Post Campus) Library web page on Citations. I particularly like:

Use this rule of thumb: If you knew a piece of information before you started doing research, generally you do not need to credit it. You also do not need to cite well-known facts, such as dates, which can be found in many encyclopedias. All other information such as quotations, statistics, and ideas should always be cited in your papers.

Advice on which style to use, Citation Style for Research Papers, also applies to nonacademic articles and books:

# APA: psychology, education, and other social sciences.
# MLA: literature, arts, and humanities.
# AMA: medicine, health, and biological sciences.
# Turabian: designed for college students to use with all subjects.
# Chicago: used with all subjects in the 'real world' by books, magazines, newspapers, and other non-scholarly publications.

This all reminds me to write on Site vs. Cite vs. Sight.

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Memorial Day for Writers

American "Decoration Day" has morphed into "Memorial Day." People once flocked to cemeteries to decorate the graves of loved ones with flowers, abundant at the end of May. We could not help but think then of our recent and long-gone family members and friends. Some people don't want to recall their roots. They have worked hard to overcome the influences of dysfunctional dynasties or just plain rot.

I suggest that they are still who you are. Members of your family of origin are the characters who people your fiction and color your views of facts gathered for nonfiction. It is those people through whom your feelings are filtered every time you pen a poem. It won't hurt the person you've become to pause a moment and think about where you became from, recall who you've evolved through.

Thinking over old family stories, even the painful ones, can spark your writing career and provide insight to ongoing personal struggles. It wasn't until my mother's death almost exactly three years ago, that I glimpsed a fuller view of my personality's genesis. These are elements that make us writers and form our writing, worthy of remembering, if only once a year.

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NY Times Eats National Press

Well why not? Most of the big stories in our local newspaper come from the New York Times News Service anyway. Smaller metropolitan papers are struggling, changing hands, folding, shrinking and in general deteriorating.

Last weekend, I bought a The New York Times instead of subjecting myself to the usual teeth-grinding ordeal of "reading" The San Diego Union-Tribune, recently sold to...someone whose name I didn't recognize. I'd almost forgotten how pleasurable it is to experience a good, nay, great newspaper. I haven't seen the L.A. paper for several years, probably since it closed its San Diego bureau.

Consider:

* the NY Times is international
* it is already distributed nationwide
* presses exist in all parts of the country
* markets for printed pubs still abide
* higher quality is in demand
* local reporters are in place

How difficult would it be for the Times to take over foundering metro medias' physical plants and human capital, leveraged by its existing news and advertising services, and plug in local "stuff"? We'd keep our area's coverage, vastly improve the quality of the product, and save some jobs. And just think of the Sunday books section!

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Profit from the Recession

Write about all aspects of the current economic condition. You don't need to know high finance to find a timely article topic. Today's San Diego Union-Tribune carries a jobs supplement with three excellent employment articles by different non-staff writers. Diane Yohe's piece on coming jobs created by the federal stimulus package is a great example spinning gold from straw.

The article fills three half-page columns, about 30 inches in newspaper speak. A nice size for freelance work. In it Yohe quotes four local experts from Manpower Inc., San Diego Workforce Partnership, SDSU Research Director, and San Diego County Department of Public Works. She cites a multitude of numbers and facts from the San Diego Association of Governments, Summer Youth Program, and the federal government.

The meat of the piece for readers is in each expert's description of the kinds of jobs that will be created by the federal stimulus funding. It answers the target readers' deepest need and their question, "Where can I find a job?" Filling out the article is a sentence or two about each organization mentioned, giving readers a basic understanding of the perspective the quotations come from.

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Writers Inspiration Coming Soon

You can sign up for email delivery of A Writer's Edge via Feedblitz in the right column. I'd really prefer you visit the web page, however. I put a lot of work into it.

I'm also putting work into something else you can subscribe to and have delivered by email: weekly one-minute inspirational messages for writers. I'm reaching out to touch you! Anticipate a gentle kick in your writing pants and a pat on the shoulder.

Soon I'll have a sign up on the site. When the feeds are working, I'll post again about this new service and maybe add it to the feed footer. If you can't wait, slip me a note with "SUB" in the Subject line. Send it to the editor[AT]writers-edge.info or writers.edge[AT]gmail.com and I'll hold a spot for you on the waiting list. I'll start sending the cheerful missives toward the end of this week.

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Bed Side Reading

TBR is a label or heading seen in many other lit blogs, meaning "To Be Read". Because I retire to read, my TBRs pile up beside my bed. Hence, BSR, Bed Side Reading. The current tower is topped by an advance uncorrected proof of CAPENTARIA, Alexis Wright's insights of contemporary Aboriginals around the Gulf of Carpentaria, northern Australia. It is just the place I have wanted to visit--and didn't know! Wright's depiction of the blackfellas is quite different from everything else I've read. Although it is fiction, I can't help but believe the view is true, as the author is a member of the indigenous Waanyi tribe.

Remember all my carping about poorly-written YA vampire novels? I have to take some of the bitching back with my first reading in Jeaniene Frost's A Night Huntress series. AT GRAVE'S END (gift from a friend) is goooood! Good story, characters, interesting different vampire lore and best of all well-written. I have three other vampire books waiting, the first of another series and also from the same friend (Fangs, Betsy!) Well see if Richelle Mead's writing measures up.

Solidifying my leaning pillar of prose are both the ARC and finished copy of THE INVENTION OF AIR by Steven Johnson, whose publicist expected a reviewer to be able to evaluate nonfiction about Joseph Priestly sans notes, index, biblio or any other supporting material. I protested. He caved (the PR guy, I mean).

Others in the pile include the softcover of MATALA by Craig Holden (the hardbound version left me speechless, so I guess they thought they'd try sneaking it in again. It still goes down fast, but I'll spout about it this time. Promise!

MISTRESS SHAKESPEARE by Karen Harper sounds good (what if Shakespeare's wife wrote...?) and a surprise offering plunged into my back yard in the form of an expensively bound REVENGE OF THE SPELLMANS by Lisa Lutz. As if the hard copy silver binding isn't flashy enough, the dust jacket sports cutouts, and the colors (yellow, hot pink, chartreuse) just scream CHICK-LIT!!! Don't they? It's touted as humorous. I'll read any funny. And vampire. Any funny vampires out there? Oh, riiiight. There was one, CLUCK! the zombie chicken. Not chick-lit.
Rim shot.

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Self-Published Book Reviewed

Stop the presses! A major newspaper reviews a self-published book. The San Diego Union-Tribune staff writer Caroline Dipping today interviews David Nuffer, author of The Best Friend I Ever Had, yet another book about Ernest Hemingway. Well, O.K., to be honest, the article in the Currents/Passages (obits) section is not really a book review, although Dipping writes,

...Nuffer reveals Hemingway in a personal light that even early reviews by scholars grudgingly admit they never knew....

and mentions the publisher, Xlibris, on the front page. Towards the end of the article she mentions Nuffer's decision to self-publish after shopping his manuscript to only five agents, and she quotes him, "They all came back and said 'No.' I knew I had to self publish."

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Writing a Life Story

How to tell the story of your life is a writing goal I hear and read about frequently. At a recent gathering of San Diego bloggers, a young man asked me for help for his father, who is trying to produce such a manuscript. "He's had an amazing life, and the situation in [another country] is so terrible!"

Questions revolve around where to start, what to include, how to get a point across. On that last issue, memoir veers off into persuasive essay and the purpose of the writing changes. That is not a good idea. The young man was surprised to hear me say that memoir isn't just a biography with feelings and neither would be successful books if they are therapeutic writings or change efforts.

"If we could just get this story out to the right people in Washington," urged the writer of a different book. He hopes to capture the attention of governmental movers and shakers to correct a condition (that no doubt affects him).

How to untangle the confusion about books of personal persuasion, biography and memoir? All involve at least a part of a person's life, true stories, too. They may disclose heretofore unknown information, like the wife of an "unfairly" convicted murderer insisted when she asked for assistance telling her husband's tale. I could hear rage and indignation; she was fairly frothing to "set the record straight."

I told her that a book based on anger or revenge or a grudge isn't a very good reason to write. It is, however, a perfect example of therapeutic writing, but not a viable candidate for sale to a publisher, so it would not fulfill her purpose of "getting the story out there."

"If you can present verifiable facts, or maybe if your husband is someone famous, then such a book might be successful," I said. It was not what she wanted to hear, I'm sure. "Otherwise you would be wasting a lot of time and effort." I wasn't surprised when she didn't call again.

A biography, on the other hand, is a dispassionate review of the events of a person's life, often beginning to end or to the current time. Once it was fashionable to break it up into a series, but I think few have the patience for that kind of reading these days.

Far more compelling are memoirs, which slip into the newer genre of creative nonfiction. Good ones have a clear focus, a theme, and may cover only a brief period of the author's life. They include emotions and represent a personal view of what the writer experienced. More latitude is "allowed" in writing about the facts of a situation, exactly because it is only one person's interpretation of what happened. Literary devices seen in fiction are common in memoirs.

Too many essays and book proposals (usually a first book written, even novels) have great therapeutic value for the writer. Just don't confuse your enthusiastic investment in the topic for potential readers' interest. Really, one description of the bipolar state, miscarried babies, dysfunctional families, alcoholism and/or drug addiction, sexual abuse, and struggles with depression is enough. At a conference, an editor privately mentioned this list. She said, "If I see another synopsis about one of these, I am going to scream!"

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Answers from Agualusa

"Finally!" some people are saying. "Last summer she promised us an interview with international author José Eduardo Agualusa, held a contest for the best question, and what? Nothing for months!"

The delay produced a sad and ironic twist, especially for the contest winner, Sonya Chrisman. Her entry, "If you could be any character in your book, which would it be, and likewise, which would you not want to be?" won her a copy of Agualusa's THE BOOK OF CHAMELEONS. She was also interested in the memory aspects of the book. Upon winning, Sonya wrote:

A memory is very precious to people. They are not only something very personal, they're free. Then, when we begin to lose our memories due to illness or old age, it's a tragedy. In Mr. Agualusa's book, memories are more than just precious. They are a precious commodity. If his world were a reality, which end of the spectrum would he rather be on character wise, the one that sells the memories or the one who receives them?

Then in October, Sonya and her husband, Michael, were injured in a motorcycle accident. These weren't crazy kids, either, just a sedate middle-aged (I think) couple out enjoying a ride in the Midwest autumn when suddenly their lives were changed forever. Sonya wrote recently:

...my comment...was foreboding of what was to come in my life...Michael sustained a severe traumatic brain injury. His memories are blurred, and yes, some have been lost. His short-term memory is shot. Memories are precious and to lose them is tragic. My own words have a deeper meaning.

It is with a heavy heart for Sonya, Michael, and their family and many friends, that I dedicate the interview with Agualusa and my review of his fascinating book (with some of the interview information more artfully arranged, I hope).

Other posts and pages in this saga:

Writing Mini-Reviews
Contest to win a Book
Questioning Jose Agualusa
Book Reviews
Author Interviews

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Winter Reading -- Mini-Reviews

Last year J.M.G. Le Clezio won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Simon & Schuster has reissued the first novel he wrote, The Interrogation: A Novel, first published in 1963 when the author was only 23. It sounds like a first novel for that era, all deep, mysterious and philosophical. At least it's not a boring juvenile "my first sexual experiences" or "my horrible childhood". It is interesting just to examine the first product of an author who years later wins the most prestigious book prize. This version resembles a facsimile copy of a manuscript, but in English (Le Clezio is French). In the story, a young man tries to figure out what has happened to him recently, and we the readers are left with the same questions. An alternative title could have been One Summer in Nice. Very intriguing.

Just a quick note that James Murdoch's GRAY APOCALYPSE ships this week in a hard cover edition. I reviewed this rollicking sci-fi thriller here and at BlogCritics.

THE INDEPENDENCE OF MISS MARY BENNET by Colleen McCullough arrived unexpectedly just after I'd pretty much panned everything of hers I've read since THE THORN BIRDS. So, I gave it to a friend who agreed to take a look. Her reaction was underwhelming. "It's O.K." she conceded and gave me list of almost a dozen authors who've written similar followups for the characters in PRIDE AND PREDJUDICE. As if I cared.

I didn't think I liked historical fiction until I read Beverly Swerling's CITY OF GOD, fourth in a series about the Turner and Devrey families. It takes place in old New York City in the years right before the Civil War, providing fascinating peeks at Chinese customs, the struggles of Jewish families, medicine, religions and the shipping industry as steam was overtaking sailing vessels. What I liked most, however, was the major story line about a woman who found the strength to do as she wished with her life despite enormous oppression, even by other women. I'll be looking out for the earlier novels in this series and any to come. Even Swerling's acknowledgments were fascinating, especially her nod to research assistance from Google and (surprise!) Wikipedia.

Finally, because A Writer's Edge participated in Blog Action Day '08 (remember poverty? It's still around), I received a copy of Tom Watson's new CAUSEWIRED: PLUGGING IN, GETTING INVOLVED, CHANGING THE WORLD. I can see that I will be dipping into this one like a Whitman Sampler to discover more on how blogging, social media and "social entrepreneurship" are doing good to change the world. Stay tuned!

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Writer's Block Book: The Saga Begins

Back in June I put my money where my mouth is, so to speak an inaccurate cliche, by committing to gather up the most popular posts on Writer's Block into an eBook. That would be a brief, tidy little project, I thought. Maybe something to offer as a holiday gift in a month or two. I still might do that, but read on.

Later in the summer at the Writer's Digest Forum, I ruminated about whether or not I wanted my ideas to stand on their own or risk tainting them with the influences of previously published works on Writer's Block.

Simultaneously a friend published her novel with Amazon's CreateSpace and lent me a reference book on using MS Word to format a manuscript for printing. Just like in Betsy's murder mystery, I suddenly had the means, motive and money (very little needed) to perhaps self-publish! My eBook developed a tree book specter, the same one that haunts most all writers ... just to hold a book I wrote! An utterly irrational, unfeasible, nearly irresistible urge.

I realized the product would be a "slim volume" indeed with only a few dozen posts, and thought I might examine other books on the subject after all. To be honest, my fear of researching was less that they would influence my thinking than that I would find either duplication, no support, or worst of all, deterrence. Yes! I feared that I might develop a block and become unable to carry the project through. How ironic would that be?

Nonetheless, trepidatious research began last month with Amazon and the local library system. As I read the first books I could borrow, I found vindication of the positions I'd been stating, albeit couched in scholarly terminology, sourced by notes. Am I the only person who drools over footnotes? The excitement of research--tracking down references, cross-checking, consulting indexes for journal articles--overcame me.

I think I might see a niche for a book that knits up the various strands of research, theory and advice into a comprehensive, but readable and useful guide for the contemporary everyman (especially every woman) writer. Visions of self-publishing dissipated, replaced by plans for more research and proposal writing (with nonfiction, you sell the proposal, then write the book).

There is still the possibility I'll happen onto a publication that does exactly what I have in mind, or I'll get too caught up in researching (love those details!), or Life might intervene. I've only just begun to consider the work seriously.

See the Original Commitment Post.

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Writing in Leap Years

Did you know the exceptions to the rule that every four years is Leap Year (has a February 29 on the calendar)? Look what I discovered at Ancestor Search thanks to Catherine Tulley at Freelance-Zone.com blog:

Leap Year Rule

All years divisible by 4 are leap years unless the year can be divided by 100. There is, however, an exception to this 100 year rule exception. Any year that can be divided by 400 is a leap year. So while the years 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not leap years because they are divisible by 100, the year 2000, because it is divisible by 400, was a leap year.

Why should writers care? For nonfictioneers, accuracy. For fictionalists, veracity. Pretty much the same meaning. In journalism the need for accuracy is self-explanatory. Journalists write about facts, so they'd want to get the date correct, writing about a past or a future event. In fiction, the need for correctness lies more in the tone or authority to be projected throughout the piece. In sci-fi and fantasy, it may not matter at all. For an historical romance, it may be critical to getting published (fact-checkers may give demerits for wrong days/dates).

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Editing Nonfiction Development

Most people have at least a vague idea of what copyediting entails, starting with proofreading tasks. Many writers perform their own editing; others are more confident in hiring a professional to spot mistakes and "clean up" the writing. However, in traditional publishing, a very different type of editing takes place long before the copyediting stage.

A developmental editor may consult with the writer before any writing is started. The developmental editor can help organize the document or book, determine what features to include, and set a level and framework to evaluate the finished or in-progress work. A method for handling copyrights and trademark issues is often needed. Other tasks may include:

• determining headings, subheads
• setting a format
• finding missing information
• determining graphics style
• checking for timeliness
• rearranging text for flow
• rewriting or moving material to fit format

When the time comes to hand off the manuscript to a copyeditor, the developmental editor might provide a very basic style sheet and/or edited pages that display the required styles of form and usage. The developmental editor may also tell the copyeditor how to achieve a particular level, tone, and focus for the writing.

See all the posts on copyediting.

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To Knol or Not

Last January in Writing on a Bloggy Knol, I told you about Google's hush-hush secret web authoring project, Code Name, Knol. I didn't get invited to beta test this one, sigh. Yesterday, while I was looking elsewhere, Google announced the public release of Knol in the Official Goolgle Blog. It says, "Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects. Today, we're making Knol available to everyone."

In the Blogger Buzz blog, however, it is suggested that Knol can be used to complement a blog. Ufortunately, it didn't explain how. A method of connecting a blog with a Knol is not mentioned, which is my interest. This product add more collaborative, interactive tools, including ways for readers to make suggestions, review or comment on a Knol, like an edited Wiki.

Sounds like a blog with benefits, to me. I'm thinking of authoritative people who already blog with extended posts that accumulate long chains of comments, including conversations among readers and with the author. Of course, it is not usual for the author to change the post in response to the comments, if that is the point of the Knol collaborative features.

You can try out Knol for yourself. Before you start one, you might want to brush up on the Basics of Writing a Knol, one of the only two availaable Knols on writing.

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Writing Media Releases

One of the several projects I'm currently working on is a media release about an event. I thought this would be a good time to review the basics on how to prepare such a piece of work. Keep it to one page with release information (Embargo or For Immediate Release) and date in the upper right, contact information at the lower left (bottom of the page). Single space. Align text left (ragged right). Do NOT justify the text. Use a clear, easy-to-read font and size.

Start with an attention-grabbing lead sentence. In the middle include required or important information such as the date, time, cost, and location. Save interesting, but unnecessary, details for the end. Editors "cut from the bottom" when they fit copy to available space.

The most important aspect belongs in the lead sentence. This could be a person, organization, purpose, event or product. The date and time are straight-forward items, but details about the location (if you're writing about an event) depend on the size of the surrounding area and the span of your audience. In San Diego, for example, it's useful and common to find map coordinates included (everyone uses the same map books). In my Ohio hometown, stating "River Walk" would be sufficient direction. It's good to indicate the cost, if there is one, and a phone number for further information.

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Writing Watchdog Journalism

CONTEST ENTRIES MUST BE RECEIVED BY JULY 10th!

Do you know the differences among a Quit Claim, Trust and Grant deeds? How about cross-checking with a DEF 14A proxy statement? Where would you go to find information about these documents? Public records. Everything that happens in U.S. life that has to do with "the public" or involves public funding is supposed to be recorded; we all have rights to view or obtain this information. That's what Danielle Cervantes, an analyst for the San Diego Union-Tribune, told our writer's group last month. Cervantes is part of the paper's Watchdog & Projects Team. She functions as a "computer-assisted reporting specialist" who crunches the numbers and cross-checks data to back up muck-raking reporters. One of those news-breaking stories won the paper a Pulitzer recently.

Cervantes explained that computers and public records are the tools of watchdog journalism these days. When reporters want to ferret out the truth about major issues, institutions or individuals, they turn to the computer analysts to verify tips and backup stories.

The only exception to the availability of public records are law enforcement cases. If you want to investigate a story in your area, it helps to have a handle on the names for the kinds of records you might want to review. Cervantes provided a list of terms commonly used for public records. While some of these might be specific to California, your state or country will have something similar. If you know the definition, you'll be able to discover the name applicable in your area.

I'm making the Public Record Terms document one of the free articles available on the Writing Help page here at A Writer's Edge. In the future I'll post more about this kind of writing and more resources to help those interested.

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Writing Dialogue

In the beginning (and forever, for some writers) dialogue can be the most difficult aspect of writing. Nonfiction dialogue is easier, especially in journalism, because you are recreating a real conversation. If you've recorded, say, an interview, extracting sections perhaps for a Q & A is fairly straightforward. I say fairly because you wouldn't want to write the true conversation, reproducing every "um", "uh" and other pause-filling sounds.

Beware of being too faithful to your notes or a recording and allowing the speaker to use incorrect grammar. I tried this once with a school superintendent who, in truth, sounded like the idiot redneck that he was. The dialogue didn't get by my city editor, however. He threw the copy back at me with a charge to "clean it up!"

Dialogue for fiction is even more critical because it is part of characterization and moves the plot along (we hope). No one wants characters sounding stiff, weird or anything other than what they are supposed to be. Ordinary people use contractions in daily speech, so don't forget to include them in your dialogue, unless your characters are robots or aliens (from another planet or outer space).

One practice opportunity is to simply listen to ongoing conversations. I find sitting at Starbucks with a coffee the perfect situation for hearing all sorts of people talk. I note distinguishing words and expressions that reveal personalities and perhaps unseen characteristics. I like to listen to the half of mobile phone conversations in which we seem to drown. Also, I imagine what the other half is saying as another dialogue exercise.

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Quotidiana on Writing Essays

Last week or so, I wrote about the personal essay. Take a look at Quotidiana, Patrick Madden's website on classical essays and writing essays. He teaches creative writing at Brigham Young University and is no slouch in the department of published essays. The site opens on a page of classical essays with a search engine and listings by last name, period in which an essay was written by name, and strangest of all, women.

You can also listen to interviews performed by Madden's students with published writers and read contemporary essays. From those essays the viewer could assemble a list of publications that accept essays. Many of them have links to the publications. The site contains lots of useful links for someone interested in this kind of writing and pursuing self education.

Quotidiana is a quirky website, definitely in need of an introduction and explanation of what's there, maybe why, and how it works. For example, cryptic navigation links labeled "EAE" and "BEC" provide no clue about their destinations. Behind one of them is an apparently private forum at a different website. Granted, if you dig deep enough, you'll find that the website was developed as a teaching aid for BYU students, but because Madden has made it publicly available on the Internet, other viewers could benefit from a little more direction.

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Free Writing Mentors

This is for future or recent (last two years) undergrad or graduate students who want to freelance or work on publication staffs. How would you like to spend an hour talking with a mentor in the field you want to enter? How would you like it if the expenses were underwritten? Well, Ed2010, the website of seemingly infinite resources for budding journalists, offers such a service. If you're located in New York City, you might meet one-on-one. If you're outside the city, the communication would be via email or phone. To apply, copy the questions on the referenced page, answer them, and email them to ed@ed1020.com. Good luck!

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Writing Personal Essays

Writers often ask where they can try to sell short nonfiction opinion pieces. These fit into the category of "personal essays"-- easiest to write, hardest to sell. The usual advice is to query or submit them to general interest and literary publications, but those take precious few such works. Even fewer pay for them.

Think analytically about the subject of your essays. Match them with more specific markets. So-called "niche" magazines and websites provide ready-made homes for such tailored pieces of writing. Sometimes these are called 'front of the magazine' or 'back of the magazine' articles, as well as 'opinion pieces' and 'personal essays'. Sometimes they are simply called 'shorts'.

Incidentally, if you tend to write this kind of work, especially if you want to express your opinions on a specific topic, you're a good candidate for blogging. Blogging isn't just for rants and digital diaries any more. People are blogging for pay, and some say they are making a living at it.

If I were to essay an essay on this post's beginning image, it would be an article to persuade people that it is better for all of us to wear clothing constructed of renewable natural fibers rather than creating synthetics from our finite oil supply and to eat food, rather than convert it to fuel. This addresses several issues: world hunger, the rising cost of food, rising gas prices (and all items associated with petroleum, which is just about everything), global warming, ecology, the "green" movement, even economics and business. It is within those topics that I would look for publications that accept such shorts.

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Writer's Block Book: The Commitment

A swift or slow perusal of past posts reveals the most popular and passionate ones, as measured by comments, are about Writer's Block. I'm thinking it's about time to gather these and tie them together into a coherent bundle. This will most likely take the form of another e-Book, easy to download.

Although logic and logistics can cause Writer's Block, the most common sources are psychological. And there I'm more than qualified to comment, to offer explanations and advice. I don't mean to lean on my two degrees in psychology, either, but also on my intimate understanding of fighting fears. Yes, I have generalized anxiety, a fear of everything, even of being afraid. I suspect many writers suffer this in one form or another or from agoraphobia or social anxiety. I know the paralysis of analysis and the funk of fear.

The confusing aspect of fear and Writer's Block comes about because fears are multiple and can be expressed in so many different forms. If you don't believe that, just consider how many types of phobias exist. The referenced list includes "graphophobia" (writing) and "scriptophobia" (writing in public) Seriously, I don't think that those contribute to Writer's Block.

When fears aren't attached to a particular object or situation as with phobias, they are called "anxiety". For writers, it is easy for anxiety to focus on the instruments, location, or the action of trying to create writing. The specific fear can involve criticism, disapproval, rejection, or the opposite, success, which would thrust the writer into a spotlight, attract attention, require a performance before others.

For some, the causes are deeper and more complex. I don't want to go all psychoanalytic on you here but if the ending of the unconscious script of your life reads "failure", then your unconscious will force you to make decisions and to act in ways that sabotage success. O.K., Dr. Freud will leave the room now.

Having written this post and released it to the universe, I have taken the scary step of committing myself to this project. It could fail. Correction, I could fail. What's the worst that could happen if I fail? I will have spent time in a labor of love that is reward enough in itself.

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Freelance Writing Markets

Websites with databases (some require a subscription, some are free to use) for nonfiction freelance writers to find markets for their works:

http://www.writersweekly.com/markets_and_jobs.php
http://www.worldwidefreelance.com/markets.htm
http://www.writingfordollars.com/GuidelinesDB.cfm
http://www.writerswrite.com/writersguidelines/
http://www.freelancewriting.com/guidelines/pages/
http://www.absolutewrite.com/Markets.htm
http://www.woodenhorsepub.com/
http://www.50states.com/news/
http://www.writersmarket.com
http://www.firstwriter.com
http://www.fundsforwriters.com
http://www.woodenhorsepub.com
http://www.freelancewriting.com/freelancejobs/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freelancewritingjobs/

And be quick now, subscribe to the free Worldwide Freelance Writer newletter, and editor Gary McLaren will send you a free report listing 25 markets that pay "up to or around 20 cents per word."

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Get Business Writing Jobs

When the email arrived with the image and message below, I should have checked the calendar. It was March 31. Oblivious to the impending day for jokes, I read as serious:

LOS ANGELES - Apr. 1, 2008 - In an attempt to spark the economy through entrepreneurship and quell people's fears of unemployment, PerfectBusiness.com-a networking and resource Web site for entrepreneurs based in Los Angeles-is proposing an ordinance that will replace the numbers 9 and 5 with exclamation points.

Joking aside, I found the PerfectBusiness - The Entrepreneur Network Events page dovetailing nicely with some notions about how to use these gatherings to further a freelance business writing career. Look up all the events you can attend. Think of them as more than networking, as mass marketing opportunities for your writing/editing services. Here are some tips for success--suit up and show up with material that demonstrates your abilities:

• samples or copies of clips
• copies of your resume
• an ample supply of business cards
• specific practiced pitches
• comfortable shoes
• high energy

Many such gatherings publish maps and lists of participants in advance, so have targets selected and a strategy to maximize your time and energy. Go!

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Editing Style for Cookbooks

A question often posed by both male and female beginning writers: how do you format a cookbook manuscript? How are recipes presented? In the many decades that I've been writing and cooking, I never gave this a thought, and I have an extensive collection of cookbooks and recipes. Indeed, after inheriting many from my mother and grandmother, I have an embarrassment of cooking literature. Most of it is easy to follow because it is fairly uniform in presentation. Difficulties show up most often in the home brew versions--collections put out by clubs as fundraisers, one of the original true self-publishing efforts.

One source of advice for cookbook authors comes from Ten Speed Press' Editorial Director, Lorena Jones. The "Ten Speed Press Cookbook Style Sheet" even offers tips on preparing an electronic file for submission to a publisher. The advice is based on the Chicago Manual of Style, 14th ed; Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th ed; Recipes into Type, Whitman & Simon, and The New Food Lover's Companion, 3rd ed, Herbst, if you want to go to the sources for more details.

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Copy Editing Rules

I wish I had seen the original when it first ran on the Des Moines Register website:

An article in the Des Moines Register by one Larry Ballard announced the other day that legislators were pondering a tax to be levied on lapses in grammar: "The tax would be levied on bad grammar in signs, advertisements, etc. It would target typos, misspellings, strange punctuation and dangling participles (they are nowhere near as painful as they sound) and would be enforced anywhere English is used."

That's the lede into The Baltimore Sun John McIntyre's take on editors as grammar cops. Seems to me that he is well-suited to lead raids, being the Sun's assistant managing editor for the copy desk, a past president of the American Copy Editors Society, and an adjunct instructor in journalism at Loyola College in Maryland.

A few years ago, I'll admit that I tried to cast myself in a policing role. Ever vigilant (or was that vigilante?) I spotted mistakes and pithily pointed them out to their owners. Nit-picking run amok. Eventually I realized that I really could not see the forest for the trees. The cliche; is true. I'd lost the meaning of messages by putting the focus on individual words and punctuation. This does not make for a good fiction editor at all.

Since that time, common sense finally knocked into my mind, I've relented and try to ignore the chatter of the interior editor and read for enjoyment and understanding. That is, unless I'm editing nonfiction, where grammar and syntax matter most.

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Fiction + Fact = Faction

Self-designated struggling writer, R.J. Mangahas has a nice round-up of the latest scandals in fake books in Out in WriteField. I'm not referring to the fake books that singers use (lyrics-only song sheets). I mean the James Frey type of a million little lies presented as the truth. Like the also pseudo-memoirs by Misha Defonseca and Margaret Seltzer, that's what I'm talkin' about.

I would disagree with Mangahas' statement that, "In a lot of people's eyes, there is an unwritten understanding between them and the author of the memoir that the events are true and accurate as possible." That may be a misconception many writers and readers used to have about memoir writing. I doubt the reading public is that naive any longer.

I submit that writers like Frey, Defonseca and Seltzer are perpetuating a genre that perhaps began with Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. I call that confounding of fiction and facts "faction". Perhaps bookstores, publishers and critics should establish this as a legitimate literary form. After all, memoir is really elaboration of biography. Faction is more elaboration of memoir.

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Writers Tackle TMIS

Right now my "To Do" list reads:

Write a memoir
Resume watercolor painting
Redesign A Writer's Edge website
Start a book on cooking
Secure a paid blogging gig
Sell excess junk in house
Advertise for more editing jobs
Edit or create a new blog on cooking

Abmitious? Yes. Ridiculous? Yes! I printed the list in large text and taped it to the front of my printer where it is in view every time I sit to compute. Result: I futz around going from one project to another, accomplishing little. It's too much to do to reach ta daa!

That's why I was delighted to find Leigh Anne Jasheway-Bryant's article on Creativity: Overcoming Too Many Ideas Syndrome. Skip the lengthy introduction and ignore the cutsy subtitles and you'll find nine suggestions for coping with TMIS, including to talk about the ideas with other writers, use mental imagery to manage the mess and evaluate all the ideas to find the best one on which to focus. Some of the notions she recommends are conflicting, so it's up to you to find what works best in your situation. This could be a goal for your new year: get your ideas organized.

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Holiday Gifts for Writers

If you have writers on your holiday gift list (or want to drop hints to others)-- how about a present that will further careers? Be a Successful Writer and the two volumes on Effective Websites for Writers will provide useful information and show how much you care!

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Fair Use and Copyright Infringement

Sarah Bird claims to be an attorney (I think--if that's what being a "former litigator" means). At the SEOmoz.org website, she offers a lengthy article on What's Fair About Fair Use? Defending a Copyright Infringement Claim. Fair use, of course, is kind of the flip side of copyright protection, and it's a most controversial part of the law. This is mainly because the law is vague (in my opinion) concerning what constitutes an allowable reproduction of copyrighted materials. Instead of citing a specific amount of material that can be used, the law requires certain conditions be met. Again, they are open to interpretation, usually by lawyers:

⇒ There are four factors to consider when determining whether you are illegally infringing someone’s copyright or merely employing fair use of the material:
→ The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is nor nonprofit educational purposes;
→ The nature of the copyrighted work.
→ The amount and substantially of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
→ The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The purpose of Bird's article, however, is not to help you protect your writing, but rather to help you with the "fair use" defense. If you recycle someone else's work, as we bloggers often do, and the author feels you've infringed on the copyright, understanding the fair use section of the Copyright Act may help you. Seems to me that a comprehensive understanding would benefit all writers, no matter on which side of the fence of fair use they sit.

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Writing Memoirs and First Novels

Lives I didn't live have been on my mind for the last year. This is also a dilemma for writers trying to create a memoir. The temptation is to follow the "what ifs" and become entangled in resentments. In his excellent THE MEMOIR AND THE MEMOIRIST, Thomas Larson suggests that this is fallacious reasoning, because it doesn't consider the value of the life you did live, and that the one you didn't, the road not taken, might have lead to different disasters.

A similar pitfall awaits young writers in attempting first novels, books best left unread. Knowing nothing of life but the brief one they have recently lived, their novels become thinly disguised memoirs. Perhaps reaching for drama, they air injustices, real or imagined, unaware that we all had similar angst-filled childhoods. Better to wait to use this material when you are much older and able to distinguish true tragedies.

If only I'd resisted that cute sailor and fulfilled my plan to attend Standford and become a clinical psychologist, wouldn't my life have been so much better, more fulfilling? Or I might have been lured by the flower children in San Francisco and languished as a hippie poet and a Lawrence Ferlinghetti groupie.

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Editor's Bugaboos in Writing

When clients send me documents for editing, I always warn them that not all editors are created equal. We don't agree on every element. We have individual quirks, mainly in our notions of what constitutes good/bad creative writing. If the writing must follow a particular style guide, then that is the reference I'll use in editing. However, left to my own preferences and in ambiguous situations where style guides conflict, these elements I will usually flag as needing elimination or rewriting:

* the verb to be
* sentences beginning with "there [to be]"
* passive construction
* avoidable ellipses and dashes

"Why?" braver clients whine. Depending on what kind of a day the editor is having, the response may range from "because I say so" to an explanation that using strong, action verbs and sentences causes clearer, more colorful, exciting or readable writing. If the document under scrutiny is for business, ellipses and dashes have no business in the text, anyway. Academic writing is another animal entirely with its own restrictions and formats. My thesis chair described that form of writing as "constipated".

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Books for Writers

One of the most spot-on listing of resource books for both fiction and nonfiction writers is Lisa Gates' Top Ten Books for Writers from her blog, "design your writing life". Indeed, many of her selections appear on my Amazon Wish List and my Listmania, which you can see in my Amazon Profile . Hmm. It appears that I should update some of the selections. The 2008 editions are probably becoming available.

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