Diversify Your Writing Portfolio
You know it and I know it — it’s hard to make it in this writing gig. And nowadays, with heightened competition and innovative marketing practices, it’s almost mandatory that you extend your writer’s hand down a variety of promotional avenues.
It’s about building a business – your writing business – and you and your thoughts are the product. What are you going to do to build your name, enhance your capabilities, and brand yourself with high level expectations?
Take the pro-active approach to your writing business and diversify your portfolio with the following items:
1. Blogs, Podcasts and Videos. A triple threat of sight and sound. Engage your potential readers with a regular writing schedule, your blog, giving snippets of your style and a name they can follow. Create podcasts and video linked to your blog and virally distribute on websites such as YouTube and FaceBook.
2. Articles. Write and submit, write and submit. Seek out magazines within your writing genre or those that may compliment your story or writing style. Brand yourself with specialized knowledge. And get published, even if it’s in a monthly edition.
3. Writing Associations. Embrace your industry and attend annual writer’s conferences. Become involved in writing communities and network with fellow writers. Get to know industry editors. Carry a professional portfolio of your writing, published works, awards and any press coverage.
4. Seminars. Seek out opportunities to speak to potential readers and industry professionals. Speak for free if you have to. You can start small — writer’s groups, bookstores. Prepare a presentation with a niche and present it to your writing associations for next year’s conference.
5. Facebook and Twitter. Get e-socially connected. It’s a must and it works. Haven’t you heard a story of a friend of a friend…well, that can be you and your writing the friend is speaking of. Get involved in social networks, treat it as an element of your business, and promote your writing.
Start small and understand that this combined effort will take time. It’s one of those things — you give it all you’ve got and it feels like your efforts are slow paced. But with consistency and the extra mile, the payoff can be grand.
Life, Routines and a Little Writing
Life messes with my routine. And especially my writing schedule.
It wasn’t so long ago that I would light the midnight oil with flowing words. The less sleep the better for me, it seemed. I would then get up in time to make breakfast and tote the little ones off to preschool. I adored this preschool, not only for the excellent learning environment, but for its excellent location as well — down town, just blocks away from a savvy little coffee house. My seat was claimed — a street side window that so afforded movement and noise. Life turned inspiration. (And amazing, soul warming coffee.) There, I would write.
But then life offers road blocks and decisions, growth and change. These things transform you. Some a hindrance to your very being (but adjustable) and others incite new beginnings and a new piece to you.
It may be something big or small, with high or low emotional involvement. Either way, any subtlety of change calls for self-realignment. And my alignment is out of whack.
A new direction, change of scenery, and an elementary school later, I am far from my peaceful comfort zone. Driving South (away from downtown and my faithful window), I have yet to find my place — that nook that welcomes you in and opens you up.
And it’s not that I, or any other writer, can’t write unless we’re in a particular place. It’s just that writing varies with how the writer feels. And my quality is better in the ambiance of the familiar — it’s what I know, what I’m used to.
So what now…well, I’ll find a new routine. It may take a few test runs, some cozy chair analysis and a lot more editing, but I’ll get there. In the mean time, do me a favor life, slow down a little…yet, don’t let up.
(What is your writing routine? And what do you do if life messes with your writing?)
Rejuvenate Your Writing with Three Easy Fall Chores
Clean the windows. Check. Pack away all summer items. Check. Write. Check. Uncover new inspirations and Rewrite…
I absolutely love the cusp of a new season. Change – a refreshing start to something new and a shift in the pace and flavor of life. There’s something cozy in this cooler transition that makes me want to reacquaint myself with my words and get comfortable – fall into my writing.
Here are a few ways to rejuvenate your writing:
- Get back to nature. Go for a walk. Sit beneath a tree. Listen to the sounds of silence — of life. Breathe the simplicity while observing each intricate detail. Re-center yourself and clear your mind. Then ask yourself: Why am I a writer? And what is it that I write?
- Take in the change. Embrace your surroundings and allow its progression of change to fuel your inspirations. Look out — outside of you. Imagine scenarios of people passing by, understand the relationship of time with the emotions of these characters, and adjust the details of your scenes to fit the moving tone of your story. Be a watcher. And pull many bits of inspiration from what you see right now.
- Find your nook. Right now I’m sitting in an over-sized chair, sweater socks up to my knees, breeze through the open window, a hot cup of coffee … and it feels pretty darn good. Whether you have a routine for writing, a place you depend on, or fancy a little variety, know your nook. Know what it is that you need to write.
It all seems pretty simple — find the you in your words, appreciate the movement of life and of others that surround you, and write what you feel where you feel most comfortable. (Oh yeah, and don’t forget the cozy socks.)
A Week In Pictures: Some Visual Inspiration
Remember to check out the Writer’s Tip and Prompt located to the right (yep, scroll down just a bit).
Melissa
Peer-Critique: A New Day’s Gift
I recently wrote a post on poetry and am pleased to say that the poets have come out to speak. This excites me because poetry is such a mysterious language that reaches deep into the soul of its writer.
And so today, one of our readers, a poet, is allowing us to enter the beautiful world of poetry. Please read the words and offer any insight and helpful opinions.
A NEW DAY’S GIFT
It is not that birds sing melodiously
Nor does the morning sun shine meticulously
Nor that the skies are azure and clear
And the fields healthy green do appear-
That we are strengthened,
But there is a feeling of grace within us
Through the gift of life in a new day.
It is not by trials that we break
Nor through insufficiency that we work
Nor by pressure that we are compelled
And through scarcity that we are propelled,
But through necessity we are influenced
Motivated to maximize the gift of life’s potentiality.
Hope does not make us to achieve
Neither can worldly wisdom show us to perceive
People don’t prosper by pilling wealth
Nor in riches are they guaranteed good health,
But through the sense to belong we are ignited
Our will adding marrow to our bones.
— Caleb Wanda
**Submit your writing for a peer-critique. It may be an excerpt from your current project, a sample of your creative writing, or even your interpretation from one of our writing or visual prompts. The idea is to evaluate the nature of words and writing and to reflect and learn from the technique of others. Email blog@wordclay.com.
A Writer’s Thoughts in Solitude
I examine the everyday life and pull in bits and pieces of sparked inspiration. I’m an observer and observing is a task I set out to fuel the missing pieces of my stories — a possible plot line, the details of a character, a more suitable scene, new phrasing for descriptive storytelling.
I watch motions, listen to language and seek unusual details in the mundane.
I think most writers are watchers. Our thought process looks for those small pieces and we can’t help but pull life from our surroundings.
But, I’m left to wonder. Is the creativity of a writer derived from the world around us? Or is it deep within our internal make up? Is our best work created in the mix of urban ambiance or the escape of suburbia to a place of solitude?
Many writers have fled the concrete utopia for a life of seclusion and thought. A decision to give up on the routine of this increasingly fast-paced life. Here, stories have evolved — the kinds of stories that last. Is it a clearing of distractions that allows the deepest of internal search? A place where our truest form of a voice is discovered?
Or, is it those same distractions that add life and personality to your words? The muse of everyday that connects us to readers.
Perhaps it depends on the writer. And maybe we need the struggle and the joys of each to truly find ourselves in our writing. What are your thoughts?
Wordclay Author, Jane Schulte, Does It Again!
Jane Schulte does it again. Author of Work Smart, Not Hard!, a 2009 National Best Books Awards Finalist, has extended her know-how on effective time management and healthy living to the youth of our job market — the college student.
Schulte decided her time-organization and efficiency tips laid out in Work Smart, Not Hard!, geared towards the office worker, could just as easily be applied to the studies and management of college life. An idea inspired by her own college freshman, her son, who would relay the difficulties of all night study groups and missed deadlines.
The two teamed up, her son reading the original Work Smart, Not Hard! through the lens of a college student and suggesting how to make it more accessible to fellow students.
Work Smart, Not Hard!: For College Students equips the reader with tips for effective time management in this new environment as well as the tools needed to ensure work organization and success in the classroom. Such tips include Schulte’s PEND (or “pending”) system — a cabinet or drawer with file folders marked by date — which syllabi, assignments and other needed classroom materials can be stored. Schulte explains, “Just check it everyday. You are trying to figure out what are your priority items, what do I have to do today?”
Additional tips for students include the importance of a clean work space, the use of professional and proper grammar and etiquette when communicating with professors, and the ability to track and resolve problems on their own before reaching out to parents.
Work Smart, Not Hard!: For College Students is available for purchase on Amazon.com. Visit Jane Schulte on the web at www.stop-struggling.com. And pick up your copy of Work Smart, Not Hard! or Work Smart, Not Hard!: For College Students. Get your work on track towards being well-balanced and time-effective and give life a piece of the pie.
–Melissa
Attention Wordclay Authors: Making the News? Email in at blog@wordclay.com and let us celebrate with you.
Peer-Critique: the one that i want, Allison Winn Scotch
I write and I read. They go hand in hand.
I find authors within my particular genre and a writing style that compliments my own, and I study their writing as I indulge in the read. My books have folded down pages and ink marks of thought scribbled on the extra space along the bottom or side. I note technique, style, phrasing — studying the craft of writing.
I would like to share with you an excerpt from a favorite author of mine whom I turn to for inspiration or simply a good read.
An excerpt from the novel The One That I Want, written by Allison Winn Scotch:
I lose track of time as I filter through the files, all stuffed with hopes of a better future. My neck muscles flare, begging me for a reprieve, but I want to be done with these heady declarations that there is life outside of Westlake. Not because I no longer believe it. I do now. I can see this now. But because they are also constant reminders of the road I ignored, the road I didn’t think to take when I had the possibility.
A knock at the door releases me from my haze.
“I saw your light on,” Eli says. He has called three times since Darcy’s catastrophe, but I’ve since been too swallowed up with everything to phone him back.
“What are you doing here?” I say, smiling widely because, both in spite of and because of everything, I am happy to see him. My neck relaxes, my shoulders spread, bursting the wads of tension that are scrunched up inside of me, and I wave him in.
“How’s your sister?”
I share the details, and he tilts his head and listens, watching me intently as I speak, so I tuck my hair behind my ears, embarrased, and look away.
“Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Your friend, the one from the avalanche. What happened to him?”
“He didn’t make it.” Eli’s chin drops slightly toward his chest, a subtle sign that we carry burdens, anchors that can pull us under the depths.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Did you ever go back up? I mean, did you ever go climbing again after that?”
“I did.” He leans back into the couch as if the memory is releasing him. He stares at the halogen lights on the ceiling. “I went back up once, a few months later. Only once, though, and probably never agian.”
“Why?” I probe, a simple question that begs a complicated answer.
“Because I didn’t want the mountain to beat me,” he says, not complicated at all. “I didn’t want it to win. There are enough things in life where it will. But this one, I couldn’t. I couldn’t let it. It had already taken enough.”
I push my chair back and move to him now, sinking next to him on my faded purple couch and laying my head against his chest, where I can hear his heart beat a steady beat, like a metronome on my mother’s old piano. We sit there as the second hand circles the clock, in comfortable, easy silence, each of us bearing our wounds, only one of us already versed in how to sew them all the way back up.
(An excerpt from the novel The One That I Want, written by Allison Winn Scotch.)
I enjoy Mrs. Scotch’s style — there is a comfortable ease to the flow of her words. I’m taken to this moment in her descriptive writing and can feel the motions of her characters. What are your thoughts?
Do you have a favorite author you turn to? Would you like to share an excerpt of writing style in which we can all learn from? Email in at blog@wordclay.com.
–Melissa
