By Cheryl Rushing

I’ve been reading the The Renegade Writer blog off and on for a while now.  Linda Formicelli posts things there that usually hit a topic I want to find out more about.

The past few months she has been offering a series of free teleclasses, and alas! I have signed up for many of them and something always seems to come up.  Sometimes it’s an emergency and sometimes it’s ennui.

The teleclass offered this past Tuesday was on freelance writing success, and I was really interested in it, but unable to attend the class.   I was sick and chose sleeping over attending a class I likely wouldn’t be able to comprehend anyway.

Luckily, Linda records the classes and puts them on her website.  I downloaded this one, and on Friday night when I got home from work I hooked up the wireless headset to the computer and listened to the class while I swept and mopped my house.

I am so glad I listened.  This short teleclass was chock full of really great information, and the question and answer session was even more helpful.  I finished the class feeling positive and excited.  Now that’s a good class.

Check out The Renegade Writer.

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This is more of a tease than a sneak peek, but I just had an amazing idea and I can’t wait to get started on it.  It’s a businessy sort of idea for writing, and I got the idea from an RSS feed I get for a work-from-home opportunities company.

I’d tell you more, but I want to see if it works first.  I’m really excited about this!

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My main source of writing income for the past couple of years has been paid postings on other blog sites.  It hasn’t amounted to much, but sometimes it is gas money, and sometimes it is grocery money, and sometimes it is play money.  Hey, it’s money, you know?

It seems I’ve hit the wall with these sites, though.

Site A – I’ve made a decent amount of money from them, though they generally only pay $5 per post.  The posts are short, but there are far more requests for diet pill posts than anything else.  I’ve stopped doing the pill posts, and it’s been about two weeks since they sent me any assignments.  I think they are on to me.

Site B – when my high PR blog site went to automatic “nofollow” I lost a lot of post opportunities. My other site has a very low PR and so there are less posting opportunities available to me.

Time to find a new source of income.  I suck at affiliate marketing.  Any other ideas?

Title: On Writing
by Stephen King

I’m reading the Kindle edition.

My confession for this review is that I am not a fan of Stephen King.  I read about half of Pet Sematary in high school and it gave me nightmares.  On the recommendation of several other friends I tried reading a couple of other books by him and didn’t get very far. 

I purchased this book several years ago on the recommendation of a writers group and started reading it then.  It was very good, but life happened and the next thing I knew it was 2010 and the dusty paperback ended up in a garage sale.

And that brings us up to this past week, when I finally read it all the way through, nearly in one sitting. 

So why did I read it?  Well, in case you didn’t know, Stephen King is quite the prolific best-selling writer.  Again, I am not a fan, but if this guy is going to take time out from counting his millions to give me the secrets to his success, who am I to turn my back on that?

I like to meet and know people who have passion for what they do.  There is nothing more attractive in a person, and no one more interesting than someone who can wax eloquently over the minutiae of his or her job.  King is that passionate about writing.

The Kindle allows one to highlight passages and post them to Facebook or Twitter, or keeps them in a notepad in your Amazon account.  This is the only book so far where I think I highlighted something on every page.

King’s whole book can be boiled down to these two rules:

1.  To be a writer you must write.

2.  There are no other rules.

This is very simplified, of course.  The book is many pages of interesting biography, gleeful nose-thumbing at the establishment, and examples of how and when to follow actual guidelines.

While this book is focused primarily on fiction writing, it is a breath of fresh air for any writer who feels like they can’t or won’t or shouldn’t.  You want permission?  King will give it to you.

Do I recommend this book? Definitely. Sometimes we get bogged down by the rules, or thinking we’re not doing it right.  King’s philosophy of “who cares if you’re doing it right, just write!” is one we all need to hear sometimes.

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“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

from On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft
by Stephen King

(review coming Monday!)

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Over the past couple of years I’ve been trying to focus more on writing of the paid variety.  I like to write, and I like money, and I’ve heard there are people who are able to marry those two concepts.  I’d like to be one of those people.

My problem is, I’ve been going about it the wrong way.  I started out by searching for blogs about “freelance writing” and then subscribing to them.  ALL of them.  Then I started subscribing to those job posting sites for writers.  ALL of them.

I had come to the point where my RSS readerwas over 2,000 unread items, almost all of it freelance-writing-related, and I began to feel equal parts guilty and overwhelmed.  I unsubscribed from about half of them, but just the ones I was consistently skipping over.

Then I found a few freelance sites that offer classes and ebooks, and I started buying ebooks (the classes always seem too expensive).  Those ebooks are mostly unread.

Then I started reading those freelance blogs I was still subscribed to, and this is what I read:

• Freelance writing is so easy, anyone can do it.
• Freelance writing is not for the faint of heart.
• With a little hard work and some pluck, you can have a successful freelance writing career.
• If you don’t already have a two-page writing resume and a degree in marketing, you will never make it in this business.
• You have to pay your dues to be a true freelancer.
• Forget about “paying your dues” – get paid for your work!
• There are plenty of great writing jobs out there.
• All the great jobs are taken, and print work is dead.

And so on, and so on.  There are some freelance sites that want to teach you to be a freelancer (for a fee, for a course, for a book), and there are sites that want to discourage you from it (to reduce competition?).

I got caught in the trap of thinking I needed every resource, and then getting overwhelmed by the number of resources out there. 

The bottom line is: I want to write, I want to freelance, and I want to make money at it.  I’m smart, I think I’m talented, and the opportunities aren’t going to come to me.

I think I have managed to cobble together enough good and positive information that, when added to my desire to succeed, I can probably get somewhere.  The journey begins here and now.

I’ve been mulling this over for a while, and I decided that I might try it and see how I like it.   Probably the most important advice I’ve ever read but can’t remember the source of is “If you want to be a writer, write.”

So I shall write.  I think I write much more and more often than I realize, so here is where I am going to try to start keeping track.

Today, January 12, 2010, I wrote the following:

1.  Website copy for my local Mensa chapter.

2.  A blog post for my personal blog.

3.  A paid blog post/SEO.

4.  Another paid blog post/SEO.

The plan is, if I wrote it and I can link to it, I will.  This helps me keep track of my productivity, and might provide some work samples for prospective clients.

Today I received a copy of the 2010 Writer’s Market Deluxe (the one that includes one year of access to writersmarket.com), and the plan is to start scouting the magazine markets for a series of articles I would like to write about a certain topic.  I’ve got some great ideas for the series, and I am going to start writing those this weekend, if not sooner.

I also have a couple of novels in the works, though those are just for play at this point.  I will probably do a little work on “JT” tonight.  That’s the one foremost in my brain lately.

I hope that you have a productive week.  That’s my plan.

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When my favorite writers group splintered last year, I went looking for a new group.  A new one had been created from my old one, but it met too far away.

The same state association also created another group that meets in my area, but it didn’t have the same feel for me as the first one.  I then tried a different association, but it was also far away.

Most of these associations focused on book authors, something I do not believe that I am.  I have books in various stages of work, but nothing complete and I don’t know if that will ever happen to me.

I met with my friend and mentor, Lisa Wroble, last year, and she told me that she was a part of the Florida Freelance Writers Association.  I had never heard of it, but she told me about the group, and I thought it was worth looking into.

The group doesn’t have any meetings, but they have a ton of resources.  I joined online and got a (non-canned) confirmation e-mail and then a big packet of paperwork in the mail that included press credentials (!!) and the last 4 issues of the national and state association newsletters.

I decided not to renew my memberships to the other two state associations, which paid for this membership.  Already I’m impressed by what I’ve learned from the newsletters, and the amount of resources they provide.  I’ve only had the new packet less than a week.

I highly recommend Florida Freelance Writers Association.  If you decide to join, please let them know Cheryl Rushing referred you!

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It’s been a long time since I posted here, which is probably the most obvious statement ever typed in a blog post.

Over the past several months I’ve been shifting my focus when it comes to writing.  You see, I always figured that to be a writer, you had to be writing a book.

Well, I’m writing a book.  Three, in fact.  Which, in case you are wondering, is about two too many for someone who can’t seem to finish anything that is longer than a magazine article.

I’ve also been involved with writers groups that mainly focused on writing books, not that there is anything wrong with that.  I’ve made some great friends and I’ve learned a lot.  The most important lesson I’ve learned is this:

Writing books doesn’t pay the bills unless you are Stephen King.  Or David Baldacci.  Or Danielle Steel.

I wrote for the school newspaper and the yearbook.  I started out as a journalism major in college.  I like writing short stories and articles.  These days, blog posts and other articles are where the money is.

Not that I am writing just for the money.  I do love to write, like I love to breathe.

I just spent two years working on a professional designation that gives me more credibility as a writer of articles in my chosen field, which is how I plan to get my foot in the door (thanks for the advice, Lisa!).  I’ve got the designation, and now it is going to be full speed ahead.

I’m also considering taking Angela Booth‘s course Sell Your Writing Online NOW (SYWON).  If anyone has any information on this, I’d love to hear it.  I have yet to see a bad review and that makes me kind of suspicious!

If you’re still reading this blog, thanks for hanging in there.  More content soon!