Four Gardening Tips Writers Can Use to Improve Their Businesses

Spring is finally sticking around my house, and more than my mood and dress is affected by the new season. Things are blooming outdoors, and I love to see the shoots and stare in awe at the blossoms. While I spend more time looking out my window at the lovely new green growth, however, my gardening duties can translate to ways of improving the harvest for my writing business in the upcoming months, too. Not just pitches for gardening articles, but ways to improve my writing business.

Leftovers Can Sprout New Roots (and Sales)

See this lively little garlic clove? Herbs and vegetables, like potatoes and onions too, are great at letting us still use them even if we’ve let them sit on the counter too long. We can plant the potatoes and let the ‘eyes’ produce a new crop, or plant the shoots of onions and garlic and have great seasoning for our fall stews and sauces. In this same way, writers can use snippets cut from stories, or ideas reworked in a new way to produce new sales. Here’s an example:

• I learned one of my local museums was welcoming a world class exhibit of French Impressionist paintings in a few months. I made plans with my daughter to attend–we love these shows–but I didn’t stop there.

I immediately contacted the museum PR person for a press packet, which included slides of the pieces available for media use, and sold three stories–

1. First to a local magazine that focused on the way the museum was bringing the world to our home city. One sale. That’s great, right?
2. Then I let my ideas take root and contacted a regional magazine that focuses on places and events for travelers to our state, with my query tailored toward the timing of the event. Another sale.
3. Next, I contacted the AAA magazine Home and Away, and added the element of where tourists in our city could stay and other attractions available at the time. Sale three!

There’s more, but this three-point example shows how reading one small blurb about an event of interest to my family landed me sales in local, regional, and national venues. I had to re-slant each article and used parts of the story in different ways, but the ‘roots’ given in my query helped keep me on-track in that respect–just like the differences in each magazine’s format helped me stay true as I chose phrases to color my writing and picked quotes to use to bring out the necessary information each publication required.

The Right Sun, Water, and Fresh Air Produce Good Things

This tiny bloom is a cutting I took last Indian summer from the camellia bush in my front garden. Though much smaller than its potential size once it becomes a camellia bush in soil outside,  since it’s just roots and leaves in a bottle of water right now, I think having any size bloom is pretty darned great. This cutting wintered in the same glass it’s in now–I simply kept the cutting in a window that allowed enough sun without too much direct heat, and kept the water topped off regularly. The camellia cuttings we’ve planted outside in soil, where our geographic location can produce way too much heat and cold, often take three years before we see a bloom. With this cutting, it came the first spring. In fact, the camellia plants I have outside still haven’t shown even the hint of a bud yet.

The writing lesson I take from this is to find a good place to thrive as you write, and do all the right things to produce good work. For instance, I can write in the living room, on my laptop, with the TV going and thinking about what I’m going to make for dinner–but the writing will be more stressed, will take longer, and may not be “very pretty” in first draft form. However, the more I use my office to write, where I have a nice window that lets me dream quietly and soak up brainstorming ideas in moments of contemplation, where I can sip my tea or drink my water without the temptation of popcorn and candy (like I do when working near the television), where I can write uninterrupted by external noise when ideas strengthen, my drafts improve from the get-go, and writing work becomes more of the pleasure it should be. Stopping periodically to take walks in the fresh air also helps me brainstorm, and lets my brain re-boot as it relaxes.

Weeding Out the Old Makes Room For the New

Weeding a garden can be a thankless job, but it is critical for making your crop come in at its best. For writers, we can take two lessons from this one practice:

1. Revision is like weeding out the words that weaken your product. The more work you put into revision, to keep your writing clear and focused on the outcome you want, the more fruitful your efforts. Yes, one can over-revise, just like gardeners can over-weed and accidentally pull up new plants they actually want to keep. But the more we cull those extra words and phrases that weaken our prose, like the weeds that steal nutrients from our garden, the better our final product.
2. From a business perspective, a working writer must weed obsolete files and data from the storage cabinets or risk having a business too cluttered to work efficiently. The more time writers spend searching for information in their files, the less time they have to produce new writing. Like a gardener weeds regularly so the task doesn’t get too big, spend a little time every month or quarter going back into old files and cull out what you no longer need. You’ll have more breathing room in your office, and find things in the future much quicker.

Paying Attention to the Calendar Produces the Best Crop

Just like gardens must be prepared, planted and harvested at specific times during the year, the writing business has its schedules and deadlines as well. If you write fiction, scheduling how you’re going to complete a book, noting on a calendar when you’re going to start and setting benchmarks for completing the work, your writing garden will come in on schedule. If you start (plant) late, and don’t do the rest of the writing in the timely manner your schedule requires, you’ll harvest late–or not at all.

In the nonfiction world of writing articles, we live and sell by editorial calendars. Editors look for specific themes early each year. Pitch back-to-school ideas in March, not August. Query about how to save on your taxes in June–when tax people finally have time to talk to you, and you can sell an article that offers the time frame magazines need for this kind of end-of-the-year article.

These are only two examples, but like a gardener needs to start preparing the soil in March, planting in April, then weeding and harvesting until around August, a writer has to start pitching at least six months before the proposed publication date of the article.

Just a few ways we can use lessons learned in other hobbies to make us better writers. Feel free to share any you’ve found in the Comments section.

Share What You Have

My postman reminded me today that this Saturday is the Stamp Out Hunger drive. As he drops off my mail this weekend, he knows he’ll be carting away a sack of non-perishables for the 1 in 7 Americans who struggle with hunger each day. Being a geek in a former life, I know that calculates out to just under 14.3% of our country’s population. Being able to research and calculate these kinds of statistics not only drive me to give what I can share, but are ways I can strengthen my writing assignments.

Remember Tim Russert’s White Board?

Until Tim Russert passed away in the summer of 2008, I remember seeing his white board at every Election Night recap. The fall presidential election of 2008 truly wasn’t the same. No matter how many NBC news people threw out opinions and forecasts, you could always count on seeing Russert pull out his media board and write black numbers and graphs on the white surface, showing clearly what he was talking about and why.

We don’t all have to be math whizzes to get a writing project completed, but it is important to be able to quantify facts that pertain to your argument or article. Giving “a bunch of people” is never as good as saying “nearly 15% of the population”. People may not always like the numbers, but they want to see them. However, while I love all the School House Rock episodes, and use the image here for Three is the Magic Number, we can’t just pull a number out of a hat. Research is critical. And numbers from more than one source are pretty important, too. As I tell writing students all the time–just because one person on the Internet says it’s true, that doesn’t mean it’s so. News sources are more reliable than most, but with the dearth of editors now at down-sizing papers, knowing where your numbers come from is critical.

Some Times Numbers Can Help Writers Save the World

Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but here’s where I’m going with this. In a writing field like grant writing, knowing the role numbers play in any project you’re trying to fund is critical to winning a grant award: How many children will get a breakfast they wouldn’t otherwise receive? How many adults will get a tutor who can teach them to read and help them fill out a job application? How many trees will get planted along interstate byways to offset XXX tons of carbon emissions every year?

We’ve all seen the commercials where we’re told for the price of one cup of coffee a day we can feed a child, save a puppy, buy an insurance policy to help our family in the event of our deaths.  All those little touches–using numbers in a creative way–help make the big picture more manageable to our brains.

Editors Love Knowing Where You’re Getting the Numbers

Before I write any query, I always brainstorm who I can go to for quote sources. I may already know the statistics–that’s why I do research ahead of time–but if I’m not an expert in the field, my just saying the numbers are true won’t necessarily make anyone believe it. Editors look at queries all the time. They know what your article needs before you do. The writer who turns in a query that not only tells what the problem is, and what solution the article will provide, but also gives the names and credentials of the expert source who will be used to back up the statistics, will often find a return email from the editor saying “YES” before the end of business day. Providing that information, telling the numbers you know and how you’ll prove them right, immediately takes a huge worry off the editor’s shoulders.

Back to the Pantry

I’m still filling my sack of foodstuff for Saturday. As you do day-to-day activities, think about ways to use common chores in a new way to query editors. Then brainstorm how you can add numbers and graphics to help sell your story.

If you have any “food for thought” to share on the subject, feel free to add a Comment. I love to hear other people’s ideas.

Spring Means New Growth — So Let Your Writing Business Grow, Too

It’s unusual for me and my neighbors to experience a night of freezing temps after Tax Day, but this year we reached sub-32 degrees and even snow along our eastern border as late as May 2nd. Unbelievable, and a garden killer if we hadn’t taken measures to keep warm those plants we optimistically put out on our regular annual schedule. But the year’s new spring isn’t any different than anything else in life–surprises keep us sharp–and that goes for a writing business, too.

I usually get new clients in spring–people have settled into the year’s budget, are anxious to get big media jobs going before people want to start taking off on summer vacations, and we all just get out and meet more, so it’s expected that new ideas will be enacted. This year, I’ve been working for several months on a company history, writing three or four hours each day using my right-brain, and spending about that much time again on left-brain activities like research, reviewing previous days’ writing, scheduling and conducting interviews, composing lists of questions I need someone at the client company to answer before I can consider a section(s) of the book done. And, of course, figuring up and emailing PDFs of my invoices for work done on the project.

New Season, New Challenges

For the past two weeks, I’ve been working harder than ever. I’ve still started my days by writing on the company history book, but I took on a fiction manuscript editing job as well. This job was a new, nearly 80,000 word manuscript I received from one of my favorite return clients. Her work is fresh and fun and thought-provoking and just the best at getting a reader sucked into the story. The book, a YA, was longer than I expected when she sent it near the first of the month, but I promised her I would try to have it completed for her by the end of the month because I want her to be able to offer it at the height of signing season for the publishing world. While manuscripts are sold year round, I’ve noticed from watching Publishers Weekly that the months between April and August are the months when the most buying activity seems to be reported.

Because I was juggling both clients’ big projects, I had to work on both projects every day. After three hours of writing the company history, I took a nap, ran some errands, and generally gave my brain a break, then spent another three hours or more each night working on the fiction manuscript edit–and work in all the miscellaneous business chores as well. This makes for a very long day, but one every freelancer will identify with–when the work comes in, and you agree to do it, you must commit the necessary hours to get everything done professionally and on-time.

Don’t Get Me Wrong. I’m Not Complaining

I would much rather have too much to do than not enough. Duh, right? But more importantly, I’m grateful that if I had to budget my time between two projects I had two big ones like these, projects that are completely dissimilar, and which had deadlines based on weeks or months in the future–not days.

When I freelanced for magazines all the time, I often had to juggle the deadlines on a half-dozen or more projects all the time. One month, I actually wrote–and sold–twenty-four magazine articles in six weeks–and more than half of those articles went into national magazines that included People Magazine, Time Magazine, and Parents. I stress this because national magazines not only pay more per word, but can be a lot of extra non-writing work on the writer as well, as those stories are often vetted by copy editors at the magazines. So along with the composed article, I had to furnish contact information for my sources, and be ready to answer all kinds of questions the copy editor had when she read the piece ahead of the story editor.

Starting Small Was My Saving Grace

While today I have a greater range of writing assignments, my career began with small bread-and-butter writing gigs. I rarely have to write full-fledged queries anymore, but when I started more than a decade-and-a-half ago, I set a morning aside every week just to brainstorm query ideas and write up the letters. At first, I only got a couple of emails written each week, but before my first business quarter was over I was submitting five to ten each week, and getting assignments on nearly every one. My success rate getting assignments came because I actually read every magazine, cover to cover and including the ads, that I submitted to every month. When an idea hit I knew exactly which editor was likely to want the piece, and which had just run a similar story, so would turn down that query.

I’ve already blogged about Building a Writing Business With Bread-and-Butter Sales and if you’re just starting in the business you might want to go back and read that blog. Getting into the small local magazine, the kind of writing gigs I call bread-and-butter sales, was critical to my success for a number of reasons:

1)      Even if I got paid after publication, these magazines ran on a much shorter calendar, so I could often turn in a article by the first of the month, and have my paycheck from the magazine before the end of the month. I got to the point of selling so many articles to one magazine that I could count on their check each month to pay my car payment.

2)      These local magazines usually build relationships with their writers. They let you know how much they appreciate their writers, and are quick to offer encouragement and advice. They want to know what you’re interested in, so if they have an article to assign, and they need a quick turnaround, they know who most likely will jump at the assignment.

3)      These publications are great for helping you build a quick clip file, since your assignments are accepted and often put into the next issue. Best of all, you can query the smaller market even if you don’t have clips of your own yet. I gained my first nonfiction sale when I won a short fiction contest held by one of these magazines, then pitched a profile story when the editor called to tell me my short story won and would be printed in the next issue. I got my first assignment from a local parenting magazine on the recommendation of a writer who was a member of the same writing club I belonged to. My friend wrote a monthly column for the magazine, and introduced me to the editor. Then I just had to write a good query, secure a source, nail the interview, and turn in a good article. The rest is history.

4)      Local markets that pay small but offer big opportunities for honing your craft and gaining clips are also a good place to sell those articles about your hometown, your school, your kids. I answered the question Why Write What You Know? in a blog post last year, and you might want to check it out to see if it gives you some ideas, too.

Spring Forward–Don’t Fall Back

So with the change in season, look for new ways to build your business. Even the recent crazy weather could be an article or essay sale for you. Find a problem, suggest a solution, discover a mystery, reveal a secret. People want to know, and editors want to buy the story.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some fragile garden plants that need to be uncovered again. The morning weatherman said it won’t freeze again tonight, and I’m going to hold him to his words.

What new ideas have you sold to editors recently?

The Best Kind of Recycling? Referrals

To finish off Earth Week, let’s talk about recycling your clients into new work. It’s said again and again that eighty percent of your business will come from twenty percent of your clients. As you build a writing business you will likely find your client number shrinking as your workload increases—as you choose who you want to work with and who you do not. But the “writing market” is a ever evolving frontier. Magazine editors change mastheads and book editors change houses. Or the publishing house gets swallowed up by one of the big conglomerates. Even writing gigs with design groups and ad agencies can suddenly take a nose dive if the economy changes (remember fall 2008?).

For all of these reasons, it’s not a good idea to get too complacent and keep your writing business down to a few core clients—no matter how comfy it feels. The best way I’ve found to do this is through personal referrals–think of it as recycling your clients.

The people who like your work will hire you over and over again. This core group will also often refer you when someone else needs a good writer. Best of all, before I accept or decline the job, I have that referral person to contact, to give me the scoop about why they referred me, and to offer any quirks I need to be aware of about the new prospect.

So, do I just wait around until referrals fall my way? Never! Here’s my top ways to get referrals:

1. Just ask. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard clients say, “I know a couple of great people who can use you, but I didn’t know if you were taking on new work.”
2. Help them by making suggestions about people they might know.
3. Give them time to think. Keep the request friendly, and don’t expect an immediate answer. Good referrals usually come after the client has a chance to think about it.
4. Try to get your client to introduce you. Suggest a lunch meeting with your client and the referral, or ask your client to phone for you or write a letter of introduction.
5. Thank the client for the referral. More importantly, tell the client why this referral was a good referral. Don’t assume the client knows.

Good work is always rewarded by more contracted work, but whenever I implement these quick tips I not only increase my number of referrals, but the quality of referrals as well.

Do you have any tips to gain new clients? Feel free to share.

Going Green Saves Green $$$

Yesterday I started off  Earth Week by giving ways to make some green while you help green the planet. Today’s tip is on saving the green in the first place and help save some trees at the same time.

Now that we have computers with huge hard drives and cloud backup systems that give us even more options, I find I don’t print as much as before. Research web pages I find online, ones I would have once printed and filed or put into a topic binder, now more often get saved as a PDF file into a desktop folder on the subject instead.

And no, you don’t have to go out and buy Adobe software to do this. Just use your printer setting options.

Browse Your Browsers

I use Google Chrome, but what I’m going to tell you works in Explorer, too. I imagine Mozilla and Fire Fox have the same option, but since I don’t use those browsers I’m no authority.

When I find a web page I want to save for later reference, I hit Ctrl-P, just as if I wanted to print. But when the Print Dialog window pops up, I hit the CHANGE button under the name of my normal default printer, and I have the range of printing options available on my computer. At that point, I click on Adobe PDF, and when that window closes I’m left with the Printer Dialog window again, but now the active printer showing is Adobe PDF. More importantly, the PRINT button at the top has now changed to a SAVE button. When I click Save, a File Save dialog window pops up, and I can choose not only the name I want to save the file under, but in which directory. There’s usually a default name automatically created based on the web page, but that’s easy to delete and change to something more meaningful to you. I simply click until I’m in the right folder, then make sure the file name reads as I want it to, hit Save in the lower right corner, and Voila! I now have the information saved, quickly and easily and completely, as a PDF file I can pull up and read later, over and over, and even print if I find it necessary. I don’t have to wade through bookmarks or have an Internet connection to find the info again, and I’ve saved printer ink and paper.

In Internet Explorer, the process is the same. When the window pops up and shows your default printer, just click the Down Arrow to the right of the printer name box, then choose Adobe PDF at the top of the expanded window. Again, you’ll have the option to name your file and put it into your folder of choice.

Select Only the Very Best

Another option I’ve always loved is the one where I print only a selected portion of a web page–or document, for that matter. Google Chrome first threw me for a loop when they enhanced their printing options, and gave me the “what you see is what you get” view, so I more easily can see which pages I want and which I don’t. The enhancement was great for avoiding unnecessary page prints, but the new version seemed to eliminate my ability to print only the text I’d blocked out previously. Then I noticed at the bottom in a blue clickable link:

Print using system dialog…(Ctrl+Shift+P)

Shazam! Clicking that link shot me back into my old Internet Explorer Print Dialog box, and I could click the little circle next to Selection, then the Print button at the bottom right, and I printed only the text I needed.

Saving Can Be Easy

Using these two options, along with always double proofing onscreen before printing, will keep the green in your wallet by saving unnecessary paper and ink.

I’ll be sharing more simple green tips throughout the rest of this week.

Got any tips you want to share?

10 Ways Writers Can Make Some Green By Thinking Green

Today is Earth Day, and a perfect time to revisit ways we can not only save the planet, but also put some extra green in our wallets and writing-business bank accounts. Here are 10 tips to give you some ideas:

1. Note stories and topics you’ve noticed are covered today, and in the next six months or so look for ways to put a spin on it and query a magazine editor. Most of the best paying magazines need completed stories at four months or more before publication, so if you pitch in October of this year the editor will likely be trying to find stories for next April.
2. Research magazines that focus on environmental issues, or topics such as nature, ecology, conservation, recycling, profiles on people who make an environmental difference, or businesses that promote eco-friendly practices. Look for specialty journals that publish short stories and poetry on green topics. You could look at ways to spin environmental history–for instance, a story that compares the world when Rachel Carson wrote her landmark book and the way things are today. Don’t forget gardening magazines; it’s amazing some how some of the best ideas can come out of your own backyard. Oh, look, a butterfly…
3. More book publishers are implementing practices to reduce their carbon footprint. Some donate a portion of sales to nonprofits that plant trees, others are using more recycled paper to save trees and reduce greenhouse gas admissions. But more than ever are taking electronic submissions. So save paper, save ink, and save postage by submitting electronically at every opportunity.
4. Recycle ink cartridges at the big box office supplies stores (Office Max, Office Depot, Staples) and get $2 or more in rewards to use for your next purchase. This time of year these same stores tend to run specials on recycled paper, too. And one of the best and easiest way to stretch your business budget and save a few trees has always been to print on both sides of the page. I keep a box under my desk just for paper that’s already been printed on one side to use later on the other side when I’m printing drafts. And, of course, before turning in ink cartridges for the rewards you can have them refilled several times at sites like Cartridge World and even the Walgreens photo department.
5. If you don’t already have an e-reader, prices are more competitive than ever before, and every book you read saves space and paper. A lot of writers discount single e-book titles in a series to attract new readers, so you save dough that way, too. And if you’re afraid to buy without reading the first few pages first, you can get “samples” sent to your e-reader, and read the first chapters before making a purchase.
6. Ways to have fun, save the planet, and possibly gain a writing opportunity is to join in Earth Day events in your area. Writers are always wanted to help in literacy programs, and this time of year there are usually library and school events that promote environmental awareness.
7. Donate outdated computers through http://www.EthicalConsumer.org, or look for local technical schools and companies that recycle parts or refurbish the units for nonprofits.
8. Give yourself an Earth Day gift and grab the laptop and spend the day in a park or the woods. Get a friend or two to go along and you can have your own mini-writers’ retreat. Your creativity will soar!
9. Recycle story ideas you’ve already sold once, and sell a new and improved version of an article to another publisher. I’m not talking just eco-stories here, but anything you can put a new spin on. Or maybe you’ve found a new magazine and recycling one of your old stories would make a perfect query. Look for new people to quote, a new slant to take, maybe try to sell pictures this time and get photography credit–and pay–as well. If you’ve recently published a nonfiction book, try to sell an excerpt, or sell an article on the book’s topic–you’re an expert on this subject now.
10. Finally, look for new opportunities to sell reprints. The best thing about reprints if that they’re not only already written, but they’ve already been proofed and edited. A lot of magazines accept reprints because they know they’re “ready to go”. I have a file on my computer at all times that contains my “reprint catalog”. These are all stories available for reprint, with the title, a short synopsis of the article, and miscellaneous info–such as notable people quoted or if photos or graphics are available. When I get find an editor interested in reprints I email my whole “catalog” and usually make multiple reprint sales.

Most of these ideas can be used throughout the year to green the planet and your wallet. But, like Earth Day, we have to start somewhere.

Got any other ideas for saving or making writing money through recycling or personal eco-favorites? Feel free to speak up in the Comments section!

Be Ready for Your Writing Business–Always!

It’s never ceases to amaze me how people get to this blog. Some come via search engines, of course, but more and more arrive via click-thru referrals that make me scratch my head when I try to figure out a connection. For example, I’ve never written about high-performance cars, but one such photo-heavy blog was the origination point for someone who recently visited. Yet, while the process may seem incomprehensible, it is exactly like some of the strange ways I’ve made writing sales and gained clients.

Opportunities come out of left-field a lot of times. I’ve given out business cards to people I met in the post office who were, say, printers–only to get business later writing web page prose for clients who learned about me through that business card exchange after the printer gave my card to another client, who passed the card on to a mentor, who then offered it to the client who actually wrote the check that I cashed. I’ve had oversees novel-editing clients who learned about me from people I originally met through nonprofit work in the middle of America. These are just a couple of instances out of many, I assure you.

‘Be Prepared’ Isn’t Just a Motto for Scouts

The lesson is to always be ready to answer questions about your business, know how to give people ideas of pricing without committing ahead of getting the project parameters (for more tips on this check my post - How Long Will It Take? Estimating a Project’s Time to Bid a Writing or Editing Gig) , and always have promotion tools ready so potential clients can contact you later with new or more business. We all know writers who make sales from carrying boxes of books and bookmarks around in the trunks of their cars (yes, I admit I’m one of these, and I have the reduced gas mileage figures to prove it). But being a long-time fan of The Rockford Files I also know how important targeted business cards can be to any commercial enterprise, and having the right one can open a lot of unexpected doors. So, I not only have cards with my name and contact info, but I carry my “power” cards for all the different types of writing specialties noted in my writer resume.

I’ve mentioned before my love of the show Shark Tank, and the lessons writers can learn from watching the show. One of the first lessons I caught as a Shark Tank viewer was one that paralleled information gained at writer conferences–Be able to succinctly describe my project, and know it and my business better than anyone else–not only for pitching, though that is critical, but to keep a project going from start to finish. The better I know the total parameters of a project, whether a novel or a nonfiction assignment, the easier that project is to complete, and the more marketable it will be at completion. The same works for your business. You never know when some will ask, “What do you write?” and the best answer is not usually, “What do you need?”

Making conversation, listening to what someone else’s business or interest is, offers the best way to know how to market your business with others. On the Shark Bites section of the show’s web page, different sharks talk about what makes good business prospects for them. In one case, one of the entrepreneurial pairs who pitched watched every episode of the show, wrote down every question asked, and came up with three answers for each question, then rehearsed the answers for several months ahead of their pitch date for the show. Those guys got a deal, and have become heroes in their home state for the jobs that venture created with their success in the past year.

Writers can’t watch past episodes of the lives of people they meet, but we can listen when people talk about their own businesses and interests, and note where the purposes of our businesses and theirs intersect. Then, being ready with a set of questions to start with when a project is proposed will help more quickly define parameters when your nerves and adrenaline are pinging at the highest level. And this is critical. As I mentioned above–the better you understand the project, from back story to ultimate conclusion, the easier it is to write. That goes for both fiction and nonfiction, my friend.

The need to know your project inside-and-out is a lesson that becomes quickly apparent each week on Shark Tank–sometimes painfully so. However, something else is quickly apparent as well–what is important to you, or is a major problem for you, likely is equally important and/or a problem for a lot of other people. That’s how entrepreneurs and successful writers are born.

Know What You Know

Case in point:

• If someone wants an article on living with allergies, I’m your girl!
• Your business needs a business plan to take to the bank? Call me.
• Want a speech or a professional resume written?
• Needs a thousands words what every wife needs to know before her husband takes early retirement?
• Need help with promotions or have an event that needs a press release?
• Want a monthly column on organizational methods or frugal tips to help make ends meet in a down economy?
• Looking for a researcher?
• Need an biography, business management book, or company history book ghost written?
• Want education articles relating to finding and getting admitted to the college that’s the best fit, successfully parenting a child with learning disabilities, locating a daycare that works best for your family needs?

For any of the above–Here’s my card. These are just a few example of the kind of diverse topics I’ve pitched and sold to clients, magazines and small press publishers.

Helping Others Helps Yourself

One good way to get referral work, and also provides a way to ask about a client before you sign on for a job, is to network at every opportunity. Helping out at church will connect you with people who might not have realized you are a writer–who will not only refer you, but can offer you background on the client before you meet. Volunteering to help at the library or with a local nonprofit may get you grant writing opportunities, as well as connecting you with business people interested in community needs, and like working with people (like you) who share those interests. Teachers often look for writers who can come in and speak to a class on different topics, and these kids have parents who may be looking for someone to help with editing those kids’ college essays. And, finally, the obvious–get involved with local writers. A writers’ group will not only offer opportunities to learn about open writing gigs, but the membership will likely be the best way for you to vet an unknown client and make sure you’re not walking into the proverbial lion’s den.

Stay Active, Stay Interested, Stay Working

We’ve all heard stories about the reclusive writer toiling away in isolation, and some days that isolation sounds heavenly. However, a working writer–whether a novelist or a freelancer–needs contact with the outside world for writing success. Learning to market your writing business helps you also learn how to market the products you produce. And as lovely as it sounds to live the introverted life, it’s our connection with the outside world that most often makes life worth living. So, get those business cards printed, my friend–the world is waiting!