Write This Way: Top Writing and Editing Links for November 1, 2009 November 1, 2009
Posted by creativeliberty in Uncategorized.Tags: blogging, digital storytelling, editing, editing links, newspapers, online journalism, social media, write this way, writing, writing links
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NaNoWriMo
The fall madness known as National Novel Writing Month, known as NaNoWriMo to insiders, starts today. The goal for this annual exercise in fictional speed-writing is to finish a 50,000 word (175 page) novel by midnight on Nov. 30.
Although I’m not a fiction writer myself, I like the challenge aspect to the event for several reasons:
• It gives writer-participants a near-term goal for completing a major work.
• It forces them to write consistently—probably every day—for an extended period.
• The consistency and goal pressure may actually relieve some writers’ perfectionist tendencies. The goal is to finish the novel—not write a great one! Writing what Anne Lamott would call a “shitty first draft” is definitely encouraged.
In 2008, NaNoWriMo had over 120,000 participants, more than 20,000 of whom crossed the 50k finish line. One variation of this event that might be of interest to writers in a variety of genres is NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month. The contest (and its website) is more of a social network for daily bloggers, or those looking to improve their blog through marathon posting, and the challenge can be started at the beginning of any calendar month.
The Reconstruction of American Journalism
This link takes you to a watershed report by two esteemed professors at the Columbia University School of Journalism discussing the monumental changes in print journalism these days and proposes action steps to support and maintain quality public affairs reporting.
I haven’t read the PDF version of the report yet, or a shorter synopsis article written by the report’s authors that is posted on Columbia’s popular journal on the state of media, the Columbia Journalism Review. However, I do plan to read these documents, as well as the robust section of responses to the report that’s also on CJR’s website, and post my own take here at Write Livelihood.
For now, here’s beginning of the CJR synopsis version of the report, which lays out the stakes of the questions being asked and offers a hint as to the direction that the authors’ answers will go…
“Newspapers and television news are not going to vanish in the foreseeable future, despite frequent predictions of their imminent extinction. But they will play diminished roles in an emerging and still rapidly changing world of digital journalism, in which the means of news reporting are being re-invented, the character of news is being reconstructed, and reporting is being distributed across a greater number and variety of news organizations, new and old.
The questions that this transformation raises are simple enough: What is going to take the place of what is being lost, and can the new array of news media report on our nation and our communities as well as—or better than—journalism has until now? More importantly—and the issue central to this report—what should be done to shape this new landscape, to help assure that the essential elements of independent, original, and credible news reporting are preserved? We believe that choices made now and in the near future will not only have far-reaching effects but, if the choices are sound, significantly beneficial ones.”
Which Type of Digital Journalist Are You?
After you’ve taken time to read the Columbia University report on the future of journalism, you’ll want to read this post from Michelle V. Rafter’s WordCount blog.
Rafter links to a survey conducted by Northwestern University that explores the current online and social media habits of 3,800 journalists working in 79 newsrooms. (You can download the PDF of the report’s findings.)
The report places journalists who participated in the survey into one of six categories, based upon their desire for digital change …
Digitals: Spend the majority of their time online, perhaps have never worked for a print-only operation, feel comfortable at events hosted by the Online News Association.
Major shifters: Spend a lot of time online outside of work, wonder why they’re not being asked to spend more time exploring online potential for their content when they are at work.
Status Quos: Comfortable with the modest amount of time (average: 30 percent) that they spend producing online content.
Turn Back the Clocks: Only 6 percent of survey respondents fit this category. These folks hope the Internet somehow implodes and print will once again rule.
Moderately Mores: Wouldn’t mind dividing their work time evenly between print and digital content production.
Leaders: According to Rafter, this group is comprised of high-level publishers and editors who typically spend more time focused on print but would like to shift more of their attention to online operations.
Obviously, between the Columbia report and this one, there’s a lot of introspection being done on what journalism means in a blogging, socially networked world, and what it will take for today’s journalists (especially the veterans) to function successfully in a transformed industry landscape. (And if you’re wondering where I fit in the six groups mentioned above, I’d say somewhere between a Moderately More and a Major Shifter, with my tilt being toward a Major Shifter mindset.)
Bonus Links!!
Keeping a project alive
David Hewson, author of the popular Nic Costa novel series, has provided a great set of tips for keeping your writing projects on track, even when you’re not at the keyboard working on them.
People Watching for Character Development
From Shelby Rachel, guest blogging on the If You Give A Girl A Pen blog. Great thoughts on how to use observation in your fiction development.
Viral Loop Chronicles Part 1: Forget Everything You’ve Heard About Book Publishing
From the The Penenberg Post on Fast Company.com. The first in a series about how to get a book published in the social media age.
Write This Way: Top Writing and Editing Links for October 6, 2009 October 6, 2009
Posted by creativeliberty in Uncategorized.Tags: e-books, editing links, journal writing, nonfiction storytelling, publishing, social networking, story coaching, storytelling, top writing blogs, write this way, writing links
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International Association for Journal Writing
A tip of the blog to Eric Maisel’s Sunday newsletter for bringing this link my way. The IAJW is a coalition of journaling experts (therapists, writing teachers and others) and those who have been helped by the practice. The association says on its home page that it aims to help members “juice up (their) journaling” and it provides plenty of tips for doing just that. The site offers help for budding journalers, articles related to specific journal writing issues, and merchandise to help get the most out of journal writing, including e-books, classes and journaling software.
The association charges $49/year for membership, but also offers quite a bit of “sample” information for free. If you teach journal writing, or take the practice seriously as a writing-related discipline or a healing/self-discovery tool, this site may be worth checking out.
Top 10 Blogs for Writers – The 2009/2010 Winners
Michael Stelzner of Writing White Papers has once again tallied the best writing blogs and announces the winners. This year, there were 27 finalists. Winners included blogs that I regularly link to and admire, including Editor Unleashed, Write to Done, Urban Muse and Quips & Tips for Successful Writers, plus a few blogs new to me, such as Michelle Rafter’s WordCount and Fuel Your Writing.
The lists of winners and finalists form a great blueprint for setting up an RSS aggregator that provides a quick, enjoyable education in writing’s craft and business sides. For writing bloggers such as myself, it also provides a wonderful cadre of aspirational peers to admire and emulate.
Three Hot Books You Can’t Download
FastCompany.com reports on why three new books by the late authors Vladimir Nabokov, Frida Kahlo, and Ted Kennedy won’t be coming out on Kindle or another e-book format. It’s not (necessarily) because all 3 authors have gone to that great writing garret in the sky; and it’s not (necessarily) because of the subject matter, or printing requirements of the books, although those do factor into the decision to hold off on e-publishing in at least two of the three books. (Kahlo’s book is image-rich, of course, and Kindle doesn’t currently reproduce color imagery; and Nabokov’s unfinished work “The Original of Laura” was originally written on index cards and never organized by the author during his lifetime, so the printed version allows the reader to punch out the pages and rearrange them and he or she wishes.)
No, there’s no common theme that unites this paper-bound trio of books, but it does illustrate that despite the sharp rise in the popularity and profitability of e-books, and Jeff Bezos’ aggressive vision “to have every book ever printed, in any language, all available in under 60 seconds on Kindle,” not every book is appropriate for digital distribution, and that it’s still important to consider the individual title and its requirements before determining whether to go the e-book route.
A brief, powerful post from social media expert Chris Brogan’s blog. He quickly demonstrates why “the very best content is that which leaves us feeling like the hero.”
He elaborates on the hero-making theme, saying,
“Think about the movies you love. Think about the songs you replay over and over. Think about the books you read. When we participate in stories, the ones that move us the most are those where we see a bit of ourselves in the storyline, right?”
His tips for achieving this goal are as relevant for corporate deliverables as independent projects. They include:
- Let them feel smart and included by letting them be introduced as “part of the group” or “in the know.”
- Give them a solid map. The only time readers shouldn’t know where they’re going, Brogan says, is if they’re reading a mystery, or a Chuck Palahniuk novel.
- Reward readers of longer pieces with checklists, summaries, etc., anything that validates that they’ve reached a certain level and are ready for your next step.
- Respect their time by being as brief as possible.
- Write about them, not you. Or, if you have to write about you (memoirs or biographies come to mind), give them something they can do to make meaning of what you’ve shared.
Overall, this is a great post, which can be consumed and digested in the time it takes to read it on your coffee break.
Bonus Links!!
She Writes is a social networking community for female writers of all levels and genres. It also welcomes men to its community.
The Only 12 1/2 Writing Rules You’ll Ever Need
A great poster about writing from AllPosters.com.
Write This Way: Top Writing and Editing Links for July 21, 2009 July 21, 2009
Posted by creativeliberty in Uncategorized.Tags: citizen journalism, discipline, editing, habits, homophily, novels, practice, pre-existing bias, smart phones, write this way, writing, writing links
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Novelist Pens First Book on Smart Phone; Succeeds In Making Us Look Like Slackers
A fun and inspiring story from Laptop.com’s blog. Peter V. Brett, a fiction writer with a day job and a long commute used his travel time, spent mostly on the subway, to type in writing drafts on his “smart phone” (it had a tiny keyboard!). The manuscript became his first published novel, “The Warded Man.”
While I don’t agree with the sub-title of the article, the interview reveals an inventive way to keep up one’s creative output under challenging (time/space/equipment) circumstances! Brett has continued his phone-writing habit now that the day job is history—he’s working on a new book, and the presence of a new baby in the household has made it easier for him to sit at a nearby park and thumb-type away than to try to keep the keyboard-based racket down when he’s at home!
Information Literacy and Habits of Mind
From Michele Martin’s Bamboo Project Blog. Martin, a workplace learning and career consultant, provides interesting commentary on a study reporting that most people filter information to mostly confirm their pre-existing biases. Martin notes that even the habits we cultivate to be good info-processing creatures may set us up for biased thinking.
“In light of our tendencies toward homophily and pre-conceived ideas, it would seem there are deeper issues at work that we need to consider … when we are scanning, how do we combat our natural tendency to only “see” information that fits with our preconceived notions of the world? … In developing our filtering skills, how do we ensure that we are not filtering out information that doesn’t fit with our existing concepts and frames?
“I suspect that many, if not most of us, are likely to apply our filters in a way that shields us from data we may not want to consider. But this is not effective filtering behavior, particularly if we end up filtering out key data that would change our decisions or ideas about how things work.”
I think the study Martin is discussing has real impact when one considers the sharp rise in recent years in the number of people getting their news from Internet-based sources; depending on how the news is gathered and distributed (and by whom), reading updates from new citizen-journalism sites or politically oriented blogs may encourage even more bias-confirmation than ever.
Martin links to an earlier post she did on the challenge of Web-enabled homophily and while it is oriented primarily toward learning professionals and career-seeker clients, communications professionals (including journalists and bloggers) can gain a lot from reading both posts.
What to Do When You Don’t Have Deadlines
Linda Formichelli offers four solid tips for making self-imposed deadlines stick on her blog, The Renegade Writer.
I especially enjoyed the commentary on her suggestion to “tweet” one’s deadline goals on Twitter. One correspondent, Jacqueline Church, nixed that idea, asserting,
“I would strongly caution against tweeting deadline goals. It’s not something I want public to any and all editors and publishers. I have never missed a deadline but if they’re new to me, and see me procrastinating or struggling what kind of first impression is that?”
Church suggested instead broadcasting one’s self-imposed deadlines to a narrower audience, say in a forum at Inked In or another smaller online writing community.
The post by Formichelli is brief but good. Read it when you need a positive kick in the pants to get moving on your “enterprise” projects.
Bonus Links!
5 Evergreen Editing Tips
By Maria Schneider on her Editor Unleashed blog. Five classic blunders and the editing fix for each.
50 Free Resources That Will Improve Your Writing Skills
From the Developer’s Toolbox section of Smashing Magazine. Great compilation of writing-related resources.
50 Useful Google Apps for Writers
From the somewhat embarrassingly named Learn-gasm blog. A comprehensive roundup of Google apps that could smooth your online writing experience.
Write This Way: Top Writing and Editing Links for June 18, 2009 June 18, 2009
Posted by creativeliberty in Uncategorized.Tags: beat blogging.org, editing, editing links, health journalism, journalism, online journalism, twitter, write this way, writing, writing links
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For this month’s link roundup, good things seem to come in twos.
Conversations on a “sick” topic
We’ve all heard about the health-care reform legislation that is making its way through Congress on the news, but how good is the coverage of health issues in general. I saw a pair of articles recently had experts giving a guarded prognosis to the current state of health journalism.
In a Columbia Journalism Review “Talking Shop” column, Los Angeles Times health reporter Karen Ravn, who recently had her story about patient dishonesty, “Body of Lies,” published in her paper, discussed the future of her specialty with Sanhita Reddy.
Ravn had an interesting point to make about the role of health blogs in the public’s perception of medical information:
“I noticed … (on WSJ’s Health Blog!) that a new survey from the Pew Research Center found that 25 percent of all American adults have read someone else’s commentary or experience about health or medical issues on an online news group, Web site, or blog. More generally, 61 percent look online for health information, and 42 percent say they or someone they know has been helped by info found on the Internet, while only 3 percent say they or someone they know has been harmed by info found on the Internet. These figures suggest that blogs and other Internet sources are playing a largely useful role in health awareness.
“Blogs have the benefit of letting readers interact with writers: ask questions, make contrary points, describe personal experiences (that other readers then get to share). On the other hand, not all blogs are as responsible as the NYT’s and the WSJ’s may be assumed to be. And quality control on reader postings ranges from limited to nil. … I regret (understatement) any extent to which health reporting is a zero-sum game—where the growth of health blogs on the Web means the shrinkage of health sections in the paper.”
Over at the University of Minnesota’s alumni magazine, there is a great interview with Gary Schwitzer, an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota who is an expert on health journalism. Schwitzer publishes an award-winning Web site critiquing health care journalism, maintains a health-related news and resource site, and is helping to train the next generation of health care journalists.
In “Sick About Health Care,” Schwitzer is especially critical of the way journalists cover disease and treatment.
“It’s a troubling time and there isn’t time to waste space or air time or column inches on breakthroughs and cures and miracles and fluff. We’re not asking tough questions: What’s the quality of evidence? Who’s going to have access to it? What’s it going to cost? Who’s your source? What are his or her conflicts of interest? This is not only a lesson for journalists, but a lesson for consumers. These are things we should be asking of anyone who makes health care claims. Including your own caregiver…”
He also has tough words for the medical, drug and insurance industries:
“We are over-medicalized. We sell sickness. We fearmonger. We disease-monger. We are actually again being sold on the weapons of mass destruction in our lives, but these are weapons of mass destruction inside us. You’d better have a scan, although nothing is wrong with you. Under the banner of doing good we are doing harm.”
Both articles are excellent ways to inform yourself about the quality of reporting being done on this urgently important topic. Schwitzer also mentions the work of AP medical writer Carla Johnson, who has utilized her attendance at evidence-based journalism workshops to produce stories that take a close look at the results of a new treatment or approach before hailing it as a “breakthrough” or “miracle” (which are two words Schwitzer says health writers should never use).
Cyber-journalism and linking: making it click
BeatBlogging.com had a couple of nice links recently relating to the ethics of hyperlinking and tools that may enable reporters to be even more wired and mobile than ever.
In “Why We Link,” Ryan Sholin discusses why outside links are not just good in a news story, but vital. For those involved in online writing who are not trained in journalism, this may seem like a no-brainer, but there are significant questions of accuracy and quality of link-based information that traditional journalists have rightly raised.
Sholin lists five reasons why linking often and intelligently benefits journalists, and one of his best arguments is that it is one of the best ways to connect with the online community in one’s town:
“If you’re writing about human beings, businesses, organizations, government institutions or any other life form with a presence on the Internet, linking to them in the stories you publish about them is the low-hanging fruit when it comes to participating in your local online community.
“Skipping the link to the city council’s calendar when you mention the next meeting, leaving out the link to the Little League’s online scoreboard when you write a story about its resurgence or not bothering to link to the full database of restaurant inspections when you choose three to write about — these are all easy ways to miss an opportunity to connect with your community and your readers.”
Meanwhile, the same week that the above article came out, BeatBlogging also published a post by Patrick Thornton on tools that may help redefine reporting. He discusses MiFi networks (which are like small-scale Wi-Fi wireless networks), the newest iPhone (which can easily edit and share, as well as record, video and photos), and the increasing affordability of digital cameras and netbooks.
All this points to reporters being able to blend online research and good old-fashioned legwork out in the field, Thornton says. It also means the days of hearing “that’s not my job” in the newsroom (or over the phone!) are gone.
“The era of specialized journalists may be coming to an end. By specialized, I mean people who only write, edit, take photos, etc. Most content producers should be able to at least write and take competent photos and video. A news org may still want a few dedicated photographers and videographers around for big stories and high-end content. Journalists will probably be specializing more in beats and niches and less in a specific content production means.”
I agree with Thornton on this last point, and argue (as a writer and editor with video production experience) that once one gets to a certain point with tool knowledge, what counts in producing media content is the ability to frame a story and tell it well, not one’s expertise in a niche skillset.
Bonus Links!
Even our bonus links are a two-fer this time. Both are from Mashable.com.
Everything I Need to Know About Twitter I Learned in J-School
Great description of parallels between reporter training in journalism school and successful Twitter posts.
Nonfiction Tweets: 70+ Authors to Follow on Twitter
Lists Twitter feeds for numerous nonfiction writers from various genres.
Write This Way: Writing and Editing Links for April 27, 2009 April 27, 2009
Posted by creativeliberty in Uncategorized.Tags: citizen journalism, compelling content, consulting, content management, crowdsourcing, editing, journalism awards, journalism education, pulitzer, write this way, writing, writing links
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Getting Journalism Education Out of the Way
I have to thank Amy Gahran of Contentious for this link: It’s a provocative essay from 2002 on the potential obsolescence of journalism education by Betty Medsger.
Writing in Zoned for Debate, NYU’s faculty’s webforum on current issues in journalism, Medsger, the former head of the Department of Journalism at San Francisco State University and founder of its Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism, found in 1996, as she analyzed surveys taken for a national study of journalism education, that 27 percent of “new journalists,” people who had worked for one to 11 years said they had never studied journalism.
Further research by Medsger revealed that a majority of winners of major journalism awards, including Pulitzer Prizes, Alfred I. DuPont Awards for broadcasters, Nieman Fellowship and Knight Fellowships at Stanford University never studied journalism in school. Many of the winners majored in literature or history, with the rest majoring in a wide sampling of liberal arts and science disciplines.
What to make of these facts? Why have post-Watergate journalism graduates (of which I am one) not made the same sorts of impact as those who never set foot inside a j-school?
Medsger writes:
“The greater achievement of journalists who did not dedicate their academic years to learning how to fill the vessels of journalism, (in contrast to what goes in them), suggests a profound challenge to what journalism educators have assumed was their raison d’etre: training people in how to fill the vessels. The finding suggests that radical changes, or at least intelligent experiments with new approaches, are needed at both the undergraduate and graduate level. The way things are done now seems to get in the way.”
The rest of the essay suggests a more interdisciplinary approach to teaching journalism that seems positively prescient in light of the challenges that print journalists and other media professionals are facing in 2009. I believe Medsger put her finger on a long-term trend in journalism that has caused the industry to lose its way and struggle as its business model eroded out from under it—a focus on the how-to-fill-vessels technique end of things to such an extent that thinking about reader (or audience) needs has become, at best, an afterthought.
KCNN: A guide to crowdsourcing
The Knight Citizen News Network is an information-rich site for community-focused new media start-ups, run by American University’s School of Communication and funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. It has a number of helpful guides for citizen reporters and traditional journalists on how to use Web 2.0 tools to create high-quality local news sites.
“Crowdsourcing” is a term that’s gained much interest of late—Jeff Howe, author of a book by the same name, defines it as “the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.”
In journalism circles, crowdsourcing means letting ordinary people help you with your writing research. It’s a complicated business to balance the power of “open source” reporting with the journalistic tenets to vet information thoroughly and the tendency to rely on statements from public figures as credible. This helpful guide explains the best way to do it without compromising accuracy.
The guide is part of a more comprehensive toolkit for citizen journalists on KCNN, which includes how to generate or uncover story ideas, credible story research, mining data banks for relevant corroborative material and finding and training good reporters. The site is full of useful tips for anyone wanting to do in-the-trenches public interest writing, whatever their level of professional training in journalism.
49 Creative Ways You Can Profit From Content Marketing
Writers, particularly those who have a defined specialty niche, often wonder about how to best showcase their expertise without sounding cheesy. Sonia Simone, senior editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication, has developed a comprehensive list of products that any author with a specialty (whether it’s a beat or something the author is considered a bona fide expert in) can use to create new information products or guide their content planning for their website, blog, webinar schedule, e-newsletter, etc.
Yes, a few of the suggestions are a little off-beat (example: write a column from your pet’s point of view on your specialty topic), but most of them represent solid new ways to connect with present and potential readers/audience members and keep them interested in reading (and buying) what you have to offer.
Bonus Link!
The #1 Untapped Income Source That Freelancers Forget
Skellie, writing on her newly revived (?) Anywired blog, has developed a nice post on how to take your freelance skills (and income) to the next level by offering consulting services to your clients.
Write this Way: Writing and Editing Links for February 16, 2009 February 16, 2009
Posted by creativeliberty in Uncategorized.Tags: editing, writer, editor, write this way, freelance writing, freelance success, writing links, editing links, twitter, microblogging, online journalism, digital journalism, newspapers, 60/40 rule, freelance, freelancing, storybest, corank, consumer safety
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Tips for “tweeting” productively on Twitter, confusion surrounding the best way to save journalism in the digital age, and myths and truths about freelancing are all on tap today in our monthly link-fest. Plus, a couple of fun and useful bonus links (as always).
Our first featured link comes from Maria Schneider’s excellent blog, Editor Unleashed. Like many writers, I’ve been struggling to figure out the best way to use Twitter, a social networking application centered around text-message-length communications (140 characters or less), and she has come up with writer-specific Twitter tips, plus a list of 25 folks to follow on the service, including authors, agents, book publishers and publicists.
Schneider, a former editor of Writer’s Digest, admits that Twitter can be intimidating at first:
“At first, Twitter feels like being at a cocktail party where you know no one. But if you focus on making the right connections, Twitter can actually be quite useful.
“There’s a bunch of publishing types using Twitter and following them is tapping into the zeitgeist—a never-ending stream of conversations, random thoughts and links. It gives you access to lots of smart, interesting, connected people.”
In case you’re wondering what you’re actually supposed to say/do (or “tweet,” in Twitter parlance) once you’re connected to these people, she has also written a very insightful post on how to build up your Twitter “street cred.” For example, I learned that you should follow the 60/40 rule when promoting your own stuff to the Twitterverse, as well as the fact that you should never ask for followers—Schneider calls it Twitter suicide.
All in all, her posts are a friendly introduction to the fast-moving, almost ephemeral world of Twitter—and a good guide to using it for more than detailing what you had for breakfast.
Our second stop today is at the Knight Digital Media Center’s News Leadership 3.0 blog, where veteran journalist Michele McLellan has posted parts one and two in a multi-part series on ideas that get in the way of saving journalism.
It seems everyone with a pulse (or at least a journalism degree!) is aware of the business struggles of daily newspapers across the nation. In her first post, McLellan takes on the idea that only the newspaper industry can produce quality journalism, and that endowments should be used to save newspapers in communities where a for-profit model is failing:
“Right now, the newspaper industry does produce the bulk of original reporting that we find in print and on the Internet …. But the superior performance of the Internet for a growing number of users and advertisers is transforming the journalism and the business model, and thought leaders in the industry itself recognize there is no going back.
“As long as people believe that only the news industry equate newspapers-only with good journalism, the debate is heading down a blind alley. It might be possible to raise an endowment for a beloved newspaper in a few communities. But I don’t see a lot of monied people—much less taxpayers if that is proposed—willing to underwrite a product that is only one player, albeit an important one, in the field.”
After that treatise, she takes on the even stickier issue of whether readers will pay for online content in her second post. She admits there are no easy answers. The newspaper-centric model of paying a set fee for all content bundled by a single provider hasn’t worked, and the potential for micro-payments to take up the slack from traditional publication advertising is extremely controversial. Other models, which include voluntary consumer funding of projects they deem worthy of coverage (keeping tabs on the local school board, for example), are still very much in the development stage.
Whatever your belief about the future of American newspapers and/or journalism, this series of posts will give you food for thought.
Finally, if you’ve worked as a freelance writer or editor for years, as I have, you tend to rub up against some very odd notions of what your life as a freelancer must be like. And if you’re a newbie freelancer, you may very well wonder if the ecstatic or apocalyptic claims of the joys or sorrows of the freelancing life could possibly be true. Laura Spencer, a contributing author at Freelance Folder blog, did a great job recently of sorting out some lies, myths and half-truths related to freelancing.
She covers everything from needing money to get started freelancing (a myth, she says) to freelancers typically working for next to nothing (a half-truth, she asserts). Here’s her take on the number one item on her list, “freelancing is an excuse for not working at all.”
“According to this myth, none of us are working . . . not really. We are either spending our days playing computer games or in front of the television with a box of chocolates….
“The real culprit here is the difference between the experiences of a significant portion of the population and that of most freelancers. For many people, work is synonymous with a place that you go each day. If you don’t go anywhere, then you must not be working. Technology is changing this perception, but it will take some time before it is completely gone.”
Bravo! And if you like that train of thought, Laura also posted a companion piece on 10 things you’ve heard about freelancing that are actually true.
BONUS LINKS!
Storybest is a “social content network” for storytellers (of any genre) powered by the filtering/ranking service coRank.
CPSIA: Book Banning in the Guise of Safety
A cautionary tale from the Bookshop Blog on (we hope) unintended consequences of Consumer Product Safety Commission’s updating of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA).
Write This Way: Writing and Editing Links for October 23, 2008 October 23, 2008
Posted by creativeliberty in Uncategorized.Tags: blogging, blogging journalists, creative nonfiction, editing, journalism, new media, short-short stories, write this way, writing, writing contests, writing exercises, writing links
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Two perspectives on blogging and journalism, two calls opportunities to submit your work to be published online, and one very solid entry on the importance of craftsmanship in a freelance writing career are the catches of the day for our ongoing writing and editing link-fest.
First, over at Columbia Journalism Review, an article by Ann Cooper reviews the impact that bloggers are having on mainstream media reporting. In “The Bigger Tent,” she covers shifts in the way organizations outside of journalism are treating bloggers, and the issues this trend raises for mainstream journalists. Along with many pundits, she concludes that the journalist-versus-blogger smackdown is over, but Web logs continue to reshape what journalism, as a profession, really means. In this segment, she quotes NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen.
“These days it’s more the act of journalism that gets you entry into the tent, not whether you’re doing it every day, or doing it for pay….Does this mean we’re one big happy family in the big new tent? Far from it.“In an interview, Rosen said many bloggers still fume that they have second-class status; even when (bloggers) break news, ‘there’s still a sense that a story hasn’t really arrived until it’s picked up by the mainstream media.’ And while some traditionalists may be enjoying the breezier writing style that blogging allows, they wonder what it’s doing to journalism’s hallowed standards.”
Overall the article lays out the current trends and tensions quite well, and seemingly with little bias for or against blogging.
For those who have already recognized that journalism and blogging don’t have to be an either/or proposition, there is a 7-part series over at the Online Journalism Blog that covers the results of a survey of 200 journalists in 30 countries who blog. Posts cover topics ranging from blogging’s role in generating story ideas to its impact on the post-publication “life” of a story. This series might be quite useful for writers wanting some ammo to gain permission to start a blog associated with a print or online publication.
The Writing Journey blog has been posting a series on “How to Start Your Freelance Writing Business,” and has an especially good post on honing your craft. Author Bob aptly summarizes the need to take the skills and technique involved in writing for Internet sites seriously and offers several good tips on how to do it, including my favorite:
“You write. Plain and simple. Write every day. Write many kinds of things, test out different ideas, and see what you’re capable of and interested in.”
Amen. I would add that there are all sorts of great resources for writers wanting to improve their craft, including the book Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark, and the old stand-by On Writing Well by William Zinsser.
Finally, here are two links to calls for writing submissions you may be interested in:
BREVITY: Searching Through the Blog Fog
BREVITY, a magazine featuring short works of creative nonfiction, has put out a call for short nonfiction narrative blog entries. The deadline for submissions is Oct. 31, and authors whose work is chosen to reprint in “The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 3,” edited by Lee Gutkind, forthcoming in August 2009 from W. W. Norton. Those bloggers chosen as contributors will receive $50 for one-time reprint rights.
If brief fiction is more your style, Shortfolio, a blog/website which publishes short stories of 500 words or less, has put out a call for new submissions. The only requirements are that you meet the word limit, would like to have your story commented upon, and that the story not have been published anywhere else beforehand.
Write This Way: Writing and Editing Links for September 10, 2008 September 10, 2008
Posted by creativeliberty in Uncategorized.Tags: writing, write this way, writing links, editing links, writing blogs, book publishing, book authors, top blogs for writers, blog contests
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Photo courtesy of SXC.
After a brief delay, we’re back with our monthly literary link-fest! This episode includes words of blogging wisdom from an online journalist, a bit about using software to increase your writing productivity, a terrific blog on book publishing, and a contest deadline to nominate your favorite writing blog!
In a Web 2.0 world, one year seems like a century. Wasn’t it only yesterday that we thought faxes were a great way to exchange edits on a manuscript?
The good folks at the UK’s Online Journalism Blog are celebrating the site’s 1000th post with an entry on 1000 Things I’ve Learned About Blogging. It’s a pithy romp through all the ways in which our writing has been influenced by trends in the blogosphere.
Just to give you a sample of the sorts of observations the OJB authors are making, here are the first five items on the list:
1. Blogging is not ‘writing a blog’. Blogging is linking and commenting. Any writing is a bonus.
2. Regular posting is important…
3. But quality posting is even more important. Spending a week or more on a single post can be one of the most important things you ever do.
4. First knowledge, then analysis, then ideas.
5. A picture is worth a thousand words. More importantly, a picture is worth a thousand words in two hundred countries. The fact that readers don’t need to speak English to understand what you’re communicating can make a word-free post – or at least one with a good image – your most successful one.
It’s a great post, although I’m going to be a spoiler (or perhaps a messenger of relief!) and let you know there aren’t 1000 items on the list. What the OJB folks have collected in terms of wisdom over the years is definitely well-distilled and presented here.
There was also an interesting post last week at Web Worker Daily on 6 Tools for Changing Your Writerly Rhythms. I don’t normally think of software as being key to producing prose on time and without sweating bullets, but this post mentions a number of tools and hacks you might find interesting, such as 7 lesser-known tips for getting the most out of Microsoft Word.
If you’re aiming to get a book published soon, or if you just find the process authors go through to get their books out in the world sort of interesting, you’ll want to check out Alan Rinzler’s The Book Deal
blog.
Rinzler calls his blog “A Publishing Blog for Writers and Book People,” and it is full of interesting interviews with published authors, notes from Rinzler’s editing work, and more. Start your trip into Alan’s blog with this hilarious guest post by author Lisa Haneberg detailing her implosive experience at a Barnes & Noble while out on a book-signing tour.
Finally, if you want to give some props to your favorite source of writing inspiration, Michael Stelzner’s Writing White Papers blog is having its annual Top 10 Blogs for Writers contest. The deadline for nominations is this Friday, September 12, and the comment field on this post already has 250+ nominations!
If you reach this post after the deadline, or you just want to see what other blog writer-readers are finding inspirational, you can always peruse the blog’s list of last year’s winners.
And while it didn’t occur to me while I was gathering links for this post to suggest that readers nominate Write Livelihood, I certainly wouldn’t mind if you shared the love, and spread the word, about this little blog! (Thanks in advance if you are so inclined!)
