How to Cope With the Insecurities of Freelance Writing

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Inspiration from Margaret Laurence

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Quips & Tips for Freelance Writers.

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Freelance Writer

Thanks for stopping! To read this post, please visit me at my new and improved site:

Quips & Tips for Freelance Writers.

Hope to see you there, fellow scribes…

Setting Up a Blog For Writers

Thanks for stopping! To read this post, please visit me at my new and improved site:

Quips & Tips for Freelance Writers.

Hope to see you there, fellow scribes…

No 10 Easy Steps to Writing

I read a lot about writing, and sometimes I wonder how much I’m actually learning. Since I don’t take notes, highlight, or even buy the books so I can reference them later – is reading a waste of my time?

A professional, published, seasoned writer says, “No!” (but not in so many words)

Writing quotation: “In the end, writing skills are mostly absorbed, not learned. Like learning to speak as a native speaker, learning to write well is not just learning a set of rules or techniques,” writes Philip Martin in The New Writer’s Handbook 2007 (Scarletta Press). “It’s a huge, messy body of deep language, inspired by bits of readings, conversations, incidents; it’s affected by how you were taught and where you live and who you want to become.”

That’s good – and there’s more:

“For every convention, there is another way that may work better. For every rule, there are mavericks who succeed by flaunting it. There is no right or wrong way to write, no ten easy steps.”

Writing tip: I think the most successful writing mavericks or renegade writers (Linda Formichelli!) are those who don’t try to be different. They just are. They trust their gut, they take those little glimmers of inspiration and nurture them into blossoms of orange and yellow and red. Writing mavericks tap into their personalities and souls, and let themselves be vulnerable.

It may sound easy, but it takes a lot of courage not only to be who you are, but share it with your readers.

PS – I’ve now been on the radio twice, talking about my articles! I really should blog about it……

The skin of a rhino & the soul of an angel

“The skin of a rhino and the soul of an angel” is Albert Schweitzer’s advice for being a great leader. It’s also perfect advice for being a great writer, poet, novelist, journalist, or essayist. It’s necessary if not required to have the tough skin of a rhino when you’re writing, because the rejections outnumber the acceptances (for most of us).

And I know I’m not supposed to call it a “rejection.” It’s an “opportunity to do it better” or an “ignorant decision of an editor” or “business decision.”

Anyway, if you have the skin of a rhino, you don’t take things personally and you don't let the rejections knock you down. And if you have the soul of an angel, you've got enough spirit and wisdom and courage and creativity to try again. You also have imagination, hope, faith, goodness and light, too.

Writing quotation: “In my dream, the angel shrugged & said, “If we fail this time, it will be a failure of imagination” & then she placed the world gently in the palm of my hand.” – from Brian Andreas’ “Imagining World.”

Writing tip: Writers imagine, and writers fail. (Here’s a good opportunity for me to talk about my recent mistake regarding sourcing for an article, and my ulcers and lost sleep and that awful stress hormone cortisol running through my veins, making me fat and gray haired and anxious and afraid that that magazine won't hire me again. But no – instead I will talk about writers who have soul.).

Imagine an angel – one who shrugs and dismisses failure – has placed the world in the palm of your hand. All you have to do is summon the courage to figure out what to do with your world.

Mentoring for writers

Writer Julia Cameron realizes the importance of mentoring relationships for artists. To keep inspired and motivated, Cameron urges artists to find a biography or autobiography that details an artist’s life. Here’s what she advises regarding mentoring.

Writing quotation: “You are on the look out for experience, strength, and hope. You want to hear from the horse’s mouth exactly how disappointments have been survived,” she says. “It helps to know that the greats have had hard times too and that your own hard times merely make you part of the club.”

Writing tip: Julia Cameron doesn’t just look for mentors who are alive and able to converse with her. She’s also into mentors in non-fiction books (autobiographies or biographies) who offer guidance when she’s sitting quietly and listening. “Very often you will find that there is a wisdom available to you that does not seem to be your own,” she says.

"In writing musicals, I look to books about Rodgers and Hammerstein. Their success is laudable but very hard won. Rodgers once faced such discouragement that he almost quit the music business to become a lingerie salesman." (From Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance by Julia Cameron).

To learn more about the benefits of mentoring relationships, read 8 Ways to Find a Mentor.

Elmore Leonard’s writing advice

Writing quotation: Novelist Elmore Leonard disapproves of “Thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he’s writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character’s head, and the reader either knows what the guy’s thinking or doesn’t care. I’ll bet you don’t skip dialogue.”

Writing tip: I’m not 100% sure what “hooptedoodle” is, but I can guess. Elmore Leonard is talking about those neverending paragraphs of prose that don’t add much to the action and that lose most readers fairly quickly. Instead, dialogue and short bursts of information should weed our writing so only the most important, vibrant stuff remains.

The above paragraph probably has 20 unnecessary words. Though my blog may not show it, I have learned to write tightly through my magazine writing. When they give me 200 words to summarize a long-term scientific experiment that described multiple important findings and a list of possible implications as well as future plans, I had to learn to write short and snappy prose.

Again, the above paragraph has about 20 extra words. The best way to apply Elmore Leonard's writing advice is to edit until you use one word instead of three to make your point.

Writing tips from Barbara Taylor Bradford

This writing advice from Barbara Taylor Bradford comes from the book Bestsellers: Top Writers Tell How by Richard Joseph.

Writing quotation: “Basic writing ability is not enough. A would-be novelist must also observe what I call the five ‘Ds’:

D for desire – the desire to want to write that novel more than anything else.
D for drive – the drive to get started.
D for determination – the will to continue whatever the stumbling blocks and difficulties encountered on the way.
D for discipline – the discipline to write every day, whatever your mood.
D for dedication to the project until the very last page is finished.

Finally, there is a sixth D – to avoid! This is for distractions – perhaps the most important D of all, the enemy of all writers, whether would-be or proven.”

Writing tip: Since I can’t really add to the infamous Barbara Taylor Bradford’s writing advice, I’ll tell you that Woman’s Day magazine accepted one of my proposals! Woo hoo, it’s time to celebrate (well, it will be after I write the article and they publish it hopefully with little or no edits because those make me nervous even as they teach me how to be a better writer).

You know, it’s an upward spiral: the more I write, the more I want to submit proposals and ideas. Be ware the downward spiral: the more distractions we allow, the less discipline we have, and down we go.

Here’s to using our D’s to take us up, up, and away!

writing advice from poet Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton was a poet and writer who struggled with bipolar disorder for most of her life. Suicide was her final escape.

Writing quotation: “Until I was 28 I had a kind of buried self who didn’t know she could do anything but make white sauce and diaper babies. I didn’t know I had any creative depth. I was a victim of the American Dream, the bourgeois, middle class dream. All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children,” said Anne Sexton.

Why didn’t she know she had any creative depth? Maybe a better question is: what’s holding you and me back from our creative depths? Answering that may provide insight into Sexton’s writing life. Even if it doesn’t, it could help us understand ourselves as writers.

Anne Sexton goes on to say: “I was trying my damndest to lead a conventional life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one can’t build little white picket fences to keep nightmares out. The surface cracked when I was about 28. I had a psychotic breakdown and tried to kill myself.”

Writing tip: Revealing and accepting yourself – what you really think, where you’ve really been – is one of the hardest parts of being a writer. It’s not just about rejection, though that’s huge. Since elementary school we’ve been conditioned to be quiet, tamp ourselves down, stop crying, colour in the lines, and wear big boy pants (some families are much more “stiff upper lip” and reserved than others). Letting ourselves go in writing is really, really hard.

When we expose our true selves in writing, we’re vulnerable to rejection, teasing, mocking, and labeling. But if we let fear stop us from writing, we’re vulnerable to things that are much worse: losing ourselves, breakdowns, and burying our dreams in food, booze, shopping, and bad relationships.

writing advice from Ernest Hemingway via Natalie Goldberg

For how long do you pursue your writing goals? For instance, my goal is to earn a living as a freelance writer (at least $30,000 per year). Do I send out article queries and book proposals for a whole year? Two? Ten? Fifty? I’ve already been trying for almost two years, and have barely earned 10K.

When do I give up for my own good?

Writing quotation: “Hemingway writes in Green Hills of Africa about young American men who went to Paris for two years to try out being artists. If they weren’t successful, they planned to go home and work in their fathers’ businesses,” writes Natalie Goldberg in Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life. “Hemingway said that that is the wrong attitude, that you have to be willing to give as long as it takes.”

Writing tip: On “giving up for your own good”, Ernest Hemingway says (via Natalie Goldberg): NEVER. You don’t give it a year or two, or ten. You give it as long as it takes.

Luckily, “as long as it takes” is up to us as individual writers. For me, as long as it takes could mean I keep pursuing my writing goals until my husband insists I get a paying job and stop neglecting him (at least 10 years). For Hemingway, it could be until…I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s profound.

What is “as long as it takes” for you? Tapping into that clarity and determination will make you a better writer, and perhaps spur you to stick with your writing goals.

a writing tip about judgment

This writing quotation isn’t really about writing. It’s about not stifling your life force (or writing muse). It’s about loving something for what it is – whether it’s a person, animal, house, poem, research short, or manuscript.

This works because excellent writing advice is often found in wise quotations about life, not just quotations about writing.

"Writing" quotation: “The life in us is diminished by judgment far more frequently than by disease. Our own self-judgment or the judgment of other people can stifle our life force, its spontaneity and natural expression,” says Rachel Naomi Remen in Kitchen Table Wisdom. “Unfortunately, judgment is commonplace. It is as rare to find someone who loves us as we are as it is to find someone who loves themselves whole.”

Writing tip: Don’t judge your writing, or your painting, or your thoughts, or your actions. Express yourself fully without hurting others. Be clear and direct – and be authentic. Do your best to write well, but don’t judge the content of your writing. Maybe you’ve already learned to discern the difference between editing yourself wisely versus judging yourself harshly, or maybe you didn’t even realize there is a difference. Either way, practice writing well and not judging your own uniqueness and creativity.

x

Stand out in red while everyone else wears white.

c

This writing inspiration came from Rachel Naomi Remen’s book called Kitchen Table Wisdom.

writing quotation about self-acceptance

Natalie Goldberg offers writing inspiration to gazillions of both emerging and established writers. The following writing quotation is from Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life. Goldberg also wrote Writing Down the Bones and Thunder and Lightning. She has a new book, out in February 2008, called The Great Failure. She’s an amazing role model. She and Anne Tyler and Annie Dillard rock, man. So does Martha Beck and Robert Bly. And Stephen King has some pretty good writing tips too.

Anyway, on to Goldberg's writing advice.

Writing quotation: “We have to accept ourselves in order to write. Now none of us does that fully: few of us do it even halfway. Don’t wait for one hundred percent acceptance of yourself before you write, or even eight percent acceptance. Just write. The process of writing is an activity that teaches us about acceptance,” says Natalie in Wild Mind.

Writing tip: We can’t wait for life (or ourselves) to be perfect before we pursue our writing dreams. For me, this means I can’t hold off until I have the ideal office before I set my writing goals. I can’t wait until I accept myself or even love myself before I send out those article queries and book proposals. All I can do is take my writing ideas and inspirations, and put them on paper (or the screen), and send them out there. That may increase my self-acceptance. Or maybe it won’t. It doesn't really matter.
d

What's holding you back from setting and achieving your writing goals? The sooner you figure it out and practice self-acceptance, the sooner you'll be writing the way you want.

writing tips about brainstorming

After reading the first couple chapters of Think Better by Tim Hurson, I brainstormed 60 article ideas – sixty – and really 11, which I will write and send to magazines soon. Sixty writing ideas is huge, because finding new ideas can be the bane of a writer’s existence. It's the bane of mine, anyway.

Here's two of Hurson’s ideas about brainstorming: write or say all the ideas that pop into your heard no matter how crazy and, more importantly, keep going after you’re positive you have no more ideas. That’s the secret to fresh new plot twists, themes, characterizations, book ideas, and general writing ideas.

Writing quotation: “What if? What if? My mind raced, and my emotions kept pace at the sidelines, the way it always happens when a story idea arrives, like a small explosion of thought and feeling. What if? What if an incident like that in the park had been crucial to a relationship between father and daughter? What would make it crucial? Well, what if the father, say, was divorced from the child’s mother and the incident happened during one of his visiting days? And what if…” Robert Cormier's writing advice could make you a better writer.

Writing tip: Even if you don’t have the same passion and intensity as Cormier, you can sit down and brainstorm. In Tim Hurson’s Think Better, he urges readers to drop the judgmental censor and generate ideas that aren’t conventional. “It’s in the digging for more that your thinking becomes truly creative and novel,” he says.

Dig for more, fellow writers. It’s hard work to go deeper – and it’s infinitely more rewarding.

learning from great writing quotations

Writing quotation: “Writing is not an unintelligent art. Writing is a craft before it is an art, and writers can and do discuss their craft in terms we can understand. There are good reasons teachers and students of writing should hear what writers say about their craft,” says Donald Murray in Shoptalk: Learning to Write With Writers.

Writing tip: Read writing quotations from authors such as Anne Lamott and W.H. Murray, and learn from their experience. They’re talented writers. They’ve put in their time, and they’re willing to tell you what they’ve learned.

Here’s Henry David Thoreau on the writing muse: “Write while the heat is in you. When the farmer burns a hole in his yoke, he carries the hot iron quickly from the fire to the wood, for every moment it is less effectual to penetrate it. It must be used instantly, or it is useless. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled…”

Writing tip: When you have a writing inspiration, get it down as soon as you can. The other day I had a great article idea, and I put it on my “to do” list, and…three days have passed and now I think it’s not such a hot idea after all. From now on, I’m heeding Thoreau’s writing advice. As soon as I have an idea, I'm writing it.

Whitman's writing quotation about style

Writing quotation: “The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote – wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught,” says Walt Whitman.

His great writing quotation is in itself great writing. Note the pace of the sentences, the use of dashes and commas to create a faster and slower tempo. This writing quotation also contains a passive sentence (normally a no-no in most writing advice books). I think it works here.

Writing tip: Don't wait. Just write. Another take-away of this writing inspiration is: forget your writing style. Write it all down; you can edit it later. For now, make it your writing goal to just write. Of course that's easier said than done, especially when you want to tap into or develop your writing style. But you'll achieve your writing goals faster if you forget your writing style and just write for now.

This writing tip is based on Walt Whitman’s writing quotation, found in Quotationary by Leonard Roy Frank.

Updike's writing quotation about ideas

Writing quotation: “A few places are specially conducive to inspiration – automobiles, church – public places. I plotted Couples almost entirely in church – little shivers and urgencies I would note down on the program, and carry down to the office Monday,” says John Updike.

Writing tip: When you do come up with writing ideas, make sure you write them down right away.

And don’t dawdle once the writing inspiration strikes! E.B. White said, “A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”

These great writing quotations came from Shoptalk: Learning to Write With Writers by Donald Murray. The writing advice in this book comes from hundreds of quotations from successful writers.

writing tip: commit to your dreams

Writing quotation: “Unless one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the Providence moves too,” says W.H. Murray.

Writing tip: When you commit yourself to move in the direction of your writing dreams, the universe will work with you. It's the law of attraction, and it's all about writing advice. Watch:

“All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: ‘Whatever you can do, or dream you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.’ ”

Thanks to my friend Maggie Raynor for this great writing quotation and writing tip! It was from W.H. Murray and his experience with the Scottish Himalayan Expedition.

To learn more about how the universe responds when you take action, try:

• How Positive Energy Affects Your Life
• Highlights of the Secret Movie
• Applying the Secret to Your Life

a writing quotation about hoarding ideas

It can be tempting to save your best for future articles, short stories or poems. However, Annie Dillard has some great writing advice.

Writing quotation: "One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book: give it, give it all, give it now," says Dillard.

"The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water."

Writing tip: Don't be cheap. Use your writing ideas, plot twists, characters and imagery freely. When you have a writing inspiration, wrestle it until it becomes yours.

This great writing quotation is from Shoptalk: Learning to Write With Writers by Donald Murray. The writing advice in this book comes from hundreds of published writers.