This week’s guest post comes from freelance editor Amie McCracken.

Those moments in your life when everything falls into place, those are the times when you are happiest. But what if you can make that happen instead of waiting for it?

For the past few years I have been trying to break into the editing market, whether that meant working for a traditional publisher or freelancing or copyediting the local church newsletter. I was completely lost as to how to start. I tried a few things. I did some things I regret, including working for a vanity publisher. But I’ve learned some tricks, and now I’m a full time freelance editor. Want some insight into those tricks? I’m here to disclose. It’s nothing spectacular; you’ve probably heard it before. But it’s essential nonetheless.

Network

Network, network, network. Everything that gave me my start was from networking. That doesn’t mean going around to other editors blogs and begging for mentorship; it doesn’t mean spamming people with your information. It means building relationships. Become friends with people. And that’s not just Facebook friends but honest friends who know personal things about each other. From there you can find out what they do. You can explain what you do. Who knows where that can lead just because people know lots of other people and they might have a cousin or friend of a friend who they could connect you with, or they might be the person you need to talk to.

Hunt

There are tons of websites out there. Find exactly what kind of editing (or writing) you want to do and look for jobs. This is where you have to be careful. Before you go asking for a job somewhere, check up on them. Google is an amazing tool. Typically, just typing in a company’s name and the word ‘scam’ into Google will yield results. If you can’t find anything, go for it. Apply like crazy because there’s no other way to build up clients than to find jobs. In the beginning you might have to take a few low-paying or non-paying jobs. If it’s legit, go for it.

The Finish Line

When you’re there, you’ll know it. Since the beginning of this year things have just been falling in my lap. I still have to network and hunt – I still have to work – but the more work I find the more finds me. I’ve made my happiness; I’ve realized my dream. Go realize yours.

Some websites to check out:

Bookjobs.com

Bookcareers.com

Freelancewriting.com

Workathomespace.com

Pw.org

Pred-ed.com to verify legitimate publishers

Linkedin.com a resume and networking site

Amie McCracken is a voracious reader. Her calling in life is editing. Her ideas tend to take over and most of the time you’ll catch her staring off into space. You can find her on her website here or on twitter.

Is the way you feel about yourself holding you back as a writer? This is an NLP exercise about creating inner alignment, about reducing the gap between the person (and writer) you’d like to be and the way you behave and think now. It can help you see how to reach your ideal future, what you already have that will help you to get there and what you need to do differently.

So if you dream of winning a booker prize but haven’t opened your notebook for 6 months, if you just struggle to take your writing seriously or if the voices in your head saying it’s all rubbish have won the battle, this is for you. It’s an exercise we do on the 4 Week Get Writing! Bootcamp.

Find a quiet space with enough room to walk a few paces forwards. Think about your vision for your future, what you would like your life to be like in a year, taking time to think in particular about yourself as a writer. Where would you like to be with your writing and what would you like to have achieved?

I’m going to ask you to imagine various things (you may find this easier with your eyes closed). Although you’re imagining your life as you’d like it to be in the future, try to imagine the scenarios as if they are actually happening to you (as if you are actually in the future, if that’s an easier way to look at it). Spend some time on the first stage of the exercise, fully immersing yourself in the detail of your ideal writing life, then take your time fully exploring each of the levels. I’ve adapted this for writers from on a more general exercise I learned from the wonderful people at Pegasus NLP, who I can’t recommend highly enough if you want to explore how you use your brain and how to do it better.

———-

• Look at the floor in front of you and imagine that the patch on the floor represents a time a year from now. This is your ideal future. What have you achieved? What have you written? How has that changed your life? Make sure this is YOUR vision of your ideal writing life, not what you think you should want. Imagine yourself as you really wish you could be, in as much detail as possible.

Take a step forward into the picture, so that you are standing right in this ideal future.

• When you’re in it, imagine this ideal life in as much detail and colour as you can. Where are you? What is your daily routine? Who are you with? Follow yourself through the day – what is your routine and who are you with? What success have you had? What are you writing? How do you feel about your writing?

Now we’re going to get more specific. Take one step forward.

• In your one-year-from-now fantasy, what is different about your behaviour from the ‘old days’? What specifically has changed or is new? What are you doing differently as a successful writer? What is different in your behaviour on a day-to-day level? What do you do when you hit a snag? What is your routine? How much time are you spending writing? How does it feel?

Take one step forward.

• What skills or inner resources are you drawing on to engage in the new/changed behaviours you just saw? Were the skills there already or have you recently developed them? If you had to learn new skills or develop new routines, how did you do that?

Take one step forward

• In this new future, what is different about what you believe about writing and about your own abilities? What has become more important or less important? Do you believe different things about other people (whether that’s family or professionals) and their part in or relationship to your writing?

Take one step forward

• How do you now think and feel differently about yourself? What does the new way of being and behaving say about you as a person? Who do you feel like now? Do you have a new opinion of yourself? What do you say to or about yourself? How do you treat yourself that’s different?

Take one step forward

• Still living in your ideal life, how does this new way of being change how you think about the future, your life goals, and where you’re going or your purpose in your life? How does it change how you think about others?

Step forward and open your eyes.

Take a minute to think of a simple phrase that is a mission statement for the new you, a statement that describes/encapsulates who you are and what matters to you.

Then turn around so you are facing the way you came.

What message would this future self give the current you?

Now take one step forward (i.e. back down the path of steps).

• With your new mission statement and this future self in mind, how do you think and feel about yourself? Is it any different?

Take one step forward.

• With this mission and your new feelings about yourself, what do you now believe about the situation, about your writing/you as a writer and your abilities?

Take one step forward.

• With your new mission, feelings and beliefs, think about what inner qualities and resources you are able to access, and what skills you are able to draw on to engage in new behaviours? What skills and behaviours can you learn to help?

Take one step forward.

• If you act in accordance with your mission, feelings, beliefs and capabilities, what are you now able to do differently? How are you able to change your behaviour? How does it feel? How can you approach your writing differently? This one is important so be as specific as possible about what you can do differently to make your ideal future a reality.

Take one step forward.

• With these new ways of being, how are you able to relate differently to people (again, this might be family or professionals) and situations (from social situations to getting stuck) you might encounter in your writing process?

Step back out and open your eyes.

———-

How do you feel now about your writing? Can you see new ways of getting to where you want to be? Write down the message from your future self, and as much as you can about the new behaviours, feelings and beliefs you saw in that future as well as changes you can make right now to make it happen.

Now go make those changes!

You can find a downloadable pdf version of this exercise here. This is an exercise we do in the 4 Week Get Writing! Bootcamp, but you can use it for any area of your life to help you see how to get where you want to be and what you already have to help you get there.

This week’s guest post comes from Antonia Chitty, author Blogging: The Essential Guide.

Have you just started writing? Or do you have fabulous ideas but struggle a little with spelling and grammar? There are some common pitfalls that writers make that I see time and time again. Read this post and you will be able to avoid them.

Here are my top 10 mistakes to watch out for:

1. Your / you are: Use ‘your’ when showing ownership, as in ‘your blog’ and ‘you are’ when you mean ‘you are’.

2. It’s / its: It’s is short for ‘it is’, while ‘its’ is a possessive pronoun. E.g. ‘It’s going to be a long day’ or ‘My blog has rather lost its way’.

3. There / their: there is a place, ‘their’ is something belonging to them.

4. Practice /practise: think of advice and advise: practice with a c is a noun, whereas practise with a s is a verb.

5. Effect / affect: Effect is a noun – you can create an effect, while affect is a verb – someone affects someone or something else.

6. Complimentary / complementary : the former means something free, while the latter is something that fits well with something else.

7. Loose / lose: loose is an adjective, a word that describes a noun’ my tooth is loose’, ‘there is a tiger on the loose’, and lose is a verb, ‘to lose your tooth’, ‘I always lose my tiger’.

8.  i.e. / e.g. i.e. means ‘that is’, whereas e.g. means for example.
9. Could of, would of / could have, would have: Never write ‘could of’ – the correct English is could have. This applies for would, should, etc.
10. A company is always singular e.g. ‘Dickens and Jones is opening a new branch’, rather than ‘Dickens and Jones are…’

Antonia Chitty is author of 15 practical non fiction books on business, health and parenting. Her latest book is Blogging: The Essential Guide which is useful for any author who wants to raise their profile online. 

A few weeks ago I sent out a newsletter asking writers to share their stories, if they’d be willing show us snippets of their writing lives. Today’s post is Jennifer Russell’s answer to that question.

Hi,

Keeping my writing alive is the most important thing I do. The best days are those when I start with a list in the same way that I do for other things I want to achieve in a day. There is a great deal of research to indicate that list-makers get more done. So I write on my list; do four drafts on my poem, a new scene on my play, submit a poem to X journal. You get the idea. I cross each item off when it is finished.  I also agree with myself the time I will spend and I write that on the top of my list. If I cannot do anything and am filled with self-doubt, I read. This, after all, is part of being a writer.

The second most important thing is my writing group. We meet every Wednesday for two hours. Cakes are an important ingredient. This weekly artificial deadline is very motivating and on days when I wonder whether I would not be better employed cleaning the windows, it gives my efforts credibility.

Thank you for asking.
Jennifer

Jennifer Russell has had a career in health care and now works part-time teaching Public Health in a university in Cork in the south-west of Ireland. Only now, in her late sixties, is she able to give time and concentration to writing. She has published poetry in several journals and is currently working on a screen play. She set up and co-manages three writing competitions – see www.hungryhillwriting.com

Today’s super-useful guest post comes from Chella Ramanan, who would like us to please stop snarling angrily and gasping in prose.

Writing fiction can seem like a minefield sometimes. There are so many things to remember. So many things waiting to trip you up and spoil all your brilliant story-telling. But that is part of learning our craft. Nobody said it was going to be easy and if they did, they were lying. You won’t get it all right first time, but that’s what editing is for. These five simple rules can help you polish your writing style and avoid the most common mistakes.

Don’t whatever you do let these rules paralyse you into inaction. Read them, consider, absorb and keep writing.

A cull of adverbs
Never begin a sentence with “suddenly”. It’s the king of adverbs and you almost never need it. If a door bursts open, it doesn’t need to do so suddenly. The word ‘burst’ is enough. The reader will get it. They’re smarter than you think. Instead of “walked slowly” use “sauntered” or “edged” – each conveys a different mood. Don’t use “shout loudly”, just use “shout”. And replace “laughed heartily” with “guffawed”. Adverbs tend to be a lazy way round taking the time to search for the right word.

Do your writing a favour – before you send that manuscript off to prospective publishers or agents, hit CTRL F and search for ‘ly’ adverbs. Take a careful look at every use of an adverb and if in doubt, replace it with a strong, descriptive verb. Of course, the odd adverb never hurt anyone, but just keep an eye on them, as they are apt to multiply.

Ditch the creative dialogue tags
For some reason, a lot of new writers (and some published ones) seem to be afraid to use the word “said” when dealing with dialogue. Avoid the temptation to hit the thesaurus and sprinkle your dialogue with the likes of retorted, exclaimed, gasped or bellowed. More often than not “said” will do just fine. And never use an adverb with a dialogue tag – that’s just double trouble.

If you feel you need to use dialogue tags to differentiate between characters and convey their emotion, then you need to work on your dialogue.

Each character should have a distinct voice that conveys an aspect of their character. This makes it easy for the reader to tell them apart without the need for “he said” at the end of every line. Maybe character A uses formal language and lots of long words to patronise people or simply because he is an academic. Character B could be a master of the sarcastic quip, setting her apart from other speakers. You can also use accents to give dialogue an individual flavour. Be warned, too many different accents or overuse can leave the reader feeling exhausted.

Try using action to bring visual cues to a dialogue scene. If one character is seated, they can stand up once the exchange becomes heated or stub out a cigarette to show their anger.

Compare:

“I’m not going with you,” Ella gasped.

“What makes you think you’ve got a choice?” he snarled angrily.

“This,” she said defiantly, brandishing a knife.

With:

“I’m not going with you,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

His eyes narrowed.

“What makes you think you’ve got a choice?”

She saw her chance and grabbed the knife.

“This.”

The first set of dialogue uses adverbs and dialogue tags to clumsy effect. The second example uses description and action to frame the dialogue. Try it.

Use your senses
If your descriptive passages seem a bit flat, try using all the senses to paint a scene or character. What does a place sound or smell like? Maybe the air tastes sour or the girl’s lips taste like strawberries, but her hands are cold and dry. What does this say about her? Is she hiding her true feelings?

It’s easy to rely on visual description, but adding smell, sound, taste and touch brings texture and new layers to a passage.

Show, don’t tell
The key to good prose is showing not telling. Don’t tell the reader that John was scared. Instead use setting, dialogue and description. Tell us how John feels.

For example:

The room felt airless and my throat tightened. Scans. Brain scans. I couldn’t think. The doctor’s calm, impassive face seemed to fill my vision. I couldn’t see anything but his reassuring smile, urging me not to panic or cause a scene.

The above uses short sentences to convey confusion. Our protagonist’s tight throat shows he’s scared, but at no point does he say that. The doctor’s “reassuring smile” contrasts with the narrator’s state of mind, heightening the effect.

Variety is the spice of life
We’re lucky to be writing in English, one of the richest languages in the world. So don’t forget to use it. Keep your prose fresh by expanding your vocabulary. Use sentences and chapters of different lengths to create an interesting rhythm. Make sure you don’t rely on too much description, mix it with some dialogue and action to help increase the pace of your story. It’s all about balance.

And don’t forget to read a variety of books. Maybe switch fiction for non-fiction – it might give you a new story idea. If you usually read literary fiction or sci-fi, try something different. Dabble in a thriller or a mystery – a new genre might inform your writing in a way you hadn’t anticipated.

Of course there will always be examples of authors who break all these rules and still get four-book deals, hit the best seller list and snag a movie deal to boot. But bad writing is bad writing, no matter how successful it is. To give your novel the best chance of hitting the big time, craft the best prose you possibly can. Learn the rules of good writing, then you can decide whether to break them or not.

Chella is a professional copywriter, working in Taunton Somerset under the name Chella Ramanan Copywriting. When she’s not helping businesses improve their sales and marketing messages, she is working on her novel and hanging out with other fiction writers. You can find her words and stuff at www.wordsarama.co.uk

Today’s guest post was brought to you by Rachelle Nones, whose e-booklet, Wrestling a Tornado: Overcoming Writing Challenges is on Amazon. Click here for the UK version, and here if you’re in the US.

Are you afraid to fail? Writers fail all of the time. Are you willing to take the risk of failing to get to where you want to go with your writing? It is best to step slowly and softly through your early attempts and keep a low profile because I guarantee you will make mistakes. Keep writing. I have made many mistakes while emerging as a writer and many of my mistakes were self-sabotaging. I managed to recover and also recovered nicely from Zombie writing trances, frozen  brain attacks, faux Hemingway syndrome, midnight moonlit 90th revision  stints and other writing challenges.

Do you need paper to write? One of the best things about writing is that it is portable and you do not even need a computer. I know quite a few writers who prefer to write their first drafts in longhand. I jot down short notes and serendipitous ideas in longhand and use my computer for longer writing stints.There are lots of little tips and tricks to resolve just about any problem. If brilliant ideas rain down upon you while you are singing in the shower, you might want to check out waterproof notepads. They are cool and you will not have to worry about guarding your handwritten notes from coffee spills and other occupational hazards. If noise is distracting you, download a white noise MP3 to drown it out.

You might not need paper at all during the early incubation period in which ideas brew slowly in your mind. At times, the simplest and most unexpected thing or event stirs your imagination. “A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral,” mused the French writer and poet, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

I have had several ideas given to me on a silver platter simply by walking around and processing fairly mundane daily events and sightings in my life. When I wrote “A Dream Gone Wrong” I was reading a lot of Poe and Emily Dickinson while working on my tax returns. After weeks of simmering in my mind, words and images became so strong and powerful that I felt compelled to sit down and write. It took about fifteen minutes to get it all down on paper. “A Dream Gone Wrong” was born and soon published.

Struggling writers can probably relate to these two verses in my poem “A Dream Gone Wrong:”

She filled out code 711510
on IRS tax form 1040 C
that read: “If line three records a profit
the IRS agrees
that your dream has come true
with taxes due by April 15th
when the tiny baby buds on trees
are just about ready to bloom.

If line three equals zero
Emily, dear friend
you are declared a fraud
according to your records,
it’s time to suspect that your dream
has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Do you equate money with writing success? I love to see writers and artists do well financially but there is danger in measuring success with money. For a large part of my writing journey, I had been basically broke on purpose because finding the time to write was more important to me than financial success. Time was my most precious possession because it takes time to develop as a writer. How much time are you willing to devote to your writing? How much money does your writing have to generate before you feel successful? Do you appreciate the time that you have or are you wasting it instead of using it to write? Are you caught up in the consumer culture? If you are spending your time buying things that you want instead of paying attention to what you need to do in terms of writing success you are not going to make much progress.

 —

Freelance writer Rachelle Nones sprinkles magical fairy dust on words for maximum impact. Her interests include songwriting, photography, baking tasty muffins, and rambling around green open fields, mountains, urban landscapes and quirky vintage shops. This post comes from her e-booklet, Wrestling a Tornado: Overcoming Writing Challenges. You’ll find it on Amazon, here if you’re in the UK and here if you’re in the US.

Well. It’s finally started.

Every large piece of writing I’ve ever finished has been terrible. I mean both in terms of quality and writing experience. I love writing but have somehow turned long fiction into a massive drama and go through week after week of agonising struggle to get through it.

Actually I seem to have made my entire life more of a struggle than it needs to be. But I’ve recently discovered the power of planning, realised that it doesn’t have to be confined to academic essays. Who knew that when you aimed at something and make a map of how to get there it was easier?!

Well, duh.

Seriously though, it’s been a bit revolutionary. I’ve stopped drifting along wondering what to do next and made a plan for something. It almost doesn’t matter if it’s not quite right because you learn more about what might be right for you that way than by sitting at home letting the sofa suck your soul away. Anyway. That’s a roundabout way of saying I decided to actually plan my novel.
That took a good 2 weeks, although it isn’t really finished yet. I had intended to work harder and have it done in a week, but when you get to certain stages your brain needs to let things simmer and settle a bit, so I allowed myself a break. And I wanted to go to the beach… How long this stage takes depends very much on how much research you do, but once you get to the point of sorting and shaping the information, it’s a day or two of intense work.

Then, according to the Nail Your Novel method I’m using, you flesh out your outline then leave it again to settle. What I did was flesh out the first section then get inspired to write it! It does mean I need to go back and do another couple of days’ work on the outline before continuing, but having spent so long avoiding writing it seemed silly not to make the most of inspiration and get it started.

And I loved it! I’m still not fully in the swing of it, but it’s started and I know where it’s going, which is unusual. I now have around 3 days to get the outline completed and write some more before I take off for another week of travel. I wanted to be writing 1,000 words every day by now, so let’s see if we can reach 5,000 by the time I go.

We’ve decided to do a not-very-official 3 Month Challenge in the Writers’ Playground. I’m aiming to finish the first draft by then. Want to join?

I’ve given myself time to write and come away to Bali to do it. It’s scary and arguably not sensible (‘are you sure it’s a good idea to quit your job in this economic climate?’) but I couldn’t be happier about finally taking my dreams seriously.

I’ve stopped doing all the things I think I should. It’s not that I don’t feel the pull of it and worry, but the feeling of freedom overcomes that. I feel like a little bird who’s been set free, and I don’t care how cheesy that sounds.

‘Should’ is such a horrible word.

It’s compelling, subtle and insidious. It’s also complicated. There are many things writers think they should be doing instead of writing, like focusing on your work, putting your family first all of the time, doing the cleaning. After all, we all know how few writers actually make a full-time living so it’s a selfish pursuit for most of us.

But who’s really telling you you should do this stuff? Chances are that the people you love want to see you happy and fulfilled, and if that means getting takeaway on a Sunday because 3-9pm is your writing time, they probably wouldn’t have an issue with it. It’s you who feels guilty.

If you think you can’t write because you’re putting in overtime at work, then it might be true. You be so busy that you can only afford a small amount of time at the weekend. But think about why you’re really doing the overtime. Is it because you feel guilty about spending time on email in the working day? I’ve been there. There’s a solution to that one. Or if you’re genuinely busy and think you just have to finish this one thing before you go home even though it’ll take until 8:30… who says so? It’s you who decided you should. Will anyone literally die if that email doesn’t go until morning? If not then maybe you should consider why you’re punishing yourself.

Who says you have to clean the oven every month? Who cares? You decided it’s something you should do and you’re the one who makes yourself feel guilty if it isn’t done. A little slovenliness can be a good thing when it comes to creativity

My point is that we pick up ideas as we go through life about what we should be doing and who we should be. It’s part of growing up and becoming a functioning member of society, to learn what’s expected of you. But the problem is we don’t stop to question these ideas later on, we just internalise and accept them. It’s just possible that you’ve developed more of an idea that you ‘should’ do the washing or make money than that you should be creatively fulfilled and happy.

It’s as though you’ve got Windows 95 loaded into your brain. It’s laughably old and restrictive. What you need is to update what’s in your head according to the reality of life today (you know, the reality where nobody benefits from you being unhappy or unfulfilled so it’s pointless being trapped there), rather than working off ideas you built up years ago. That change isn’t easy. I’m nowhere near. But you can begin to notice what you tell yourself and question whether it’s really true. How important is is really for you to do that sensible, boring thing instead of using tonight to write?

But this is where it gets more complicated. Sometimes that should is an excuse. It masks a fear of exposing yourself, which is a necessary part of writing. So we give ourselves more jobs to do and procrastinate more because really we’re afraid. Yep, I’ve been there too. In fact, I’ve spent the last 2 days stuck there.

And there’s another way we punish ourselves with should. You can decide that you ‘should’ write something. You can turn this thing you really want to do into a chore and end up putting it off. I’m not entirely sure about this, but my feeling is that fear is underneath this too. It’s worth asking whether you’re writing something you genuinely want to read, the makes your heart sing, or if you’ve fallen into the trap of writing what you think you should but secretly dread. What’s the point of writing a terribly literary and high-brow tome (and probably doing it badly) if your heart lies in satire or sci-fi?

Even if your current project is absolutely the right thing for you to write and fills you with joy, putting it off will make it loom scarily in the back of your mind and turn it into a should. Hello, downward spiral.

Makes no sense, does it? None of it is logical. The only logical thing is to decide that your job is to write, and to get on with it. But people aren’t exactly noted for being logical.

The next time you hear yourself think that nasty little word though, just stop and ask yourself what’s behind it. Is it serving or hindering you?

This is only my perspective; should is my personal battleground. I’d love to know what other writers think though. What are your shoulds? What do you tell yourself that you’d be much better off not listening to when it comes to writing? Or are you free, do you merrily sail your own way and ignore all negative voices?

I’ve quit my day-job and moved to Bali for 3 months. Cool, huh? It’s not a holiday though. I’m finally taking my writing dreams seriously. I want to come back having written a novel. This time is the best gift I could ever give myself, and I’m terrified and exhilarated in equal measure.

I want to have completed this by the end of June.

I did think about making this novel-writing a big Urban Writers challenge. It’s a programme I’ve wanted to run for ages, to help people get their novels actually completed. But this time I think I need to do it first and to give myself this time because I know from the Get Writing! Bootcamp that these things are a lot of work and I’ve spend the last 3 years using the writing retreat business as an excuse to avoid the scary writing. And the novel has to be more important at this stage. But I’ll do something next time.

It’s important not to do these things alone. So I’m using the following tools:

• A book called Nail Your Novel by Roz Morris. I’m one of those people who likes to be told what to do so I don’t spend ages dithering over every decision then wondering if I’m doing it wrong. So being given a structure, not for the book itself, but a roadmap to the writing process is tremendously helpful. My job is to just follow the tasks in order, regardless of self-doubt.

• The Urban Writers’ Playground. This started when someone suggested that I could do writing retreats online, but it’s so much more. It’s a support community and it matters to me. I’m going to use the online writing retreats, Friday Club and weekly goal-setting to keep me motivated.

Perfection is not the aim. A gloriously craptastic rough draft is. In fact, I’d be happy with most of a draft and knowing where it’s going. But it’s time to do it.

Like I said. I’m not doing a guided programme this time but if you want to join me in my challenge, I’ll be in the Playground