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FIB - Scams 101 - Ye Olde Archives
Posted By: Mel. White In Response To: Continuing the freelance writing thread..... Mel, this scares the nachos right out of me: (MaaMaw)
Monday, 18 July 2005, at 4:38 p.m.
> WHAT to write.
Oh, believe me, I don't have a list to write about. But what most of us do is keep a notebook about "things I want to write about." At first you'll probably get an idea or two about, say, home schooling, or things to avoid for transcriptionists or something funny that happened or something that someone you know dealt with and got into a real mess. Note them down.
Maybe you've got a prayer or a religious inspiration you'd like to write. Maybe you'd like to write about things adoptive parents should know or about adopting kids in middle age (so many grandparents our age are ending up parenting their grandchildren). Write 'em down, no matter how lame they sound.
They won't all be golden. Sometimes you write down a brilliant topic and then go back and say "nah." Keep it anyway. Sometimes an angle comes up and the lame topic becomes a good one. If you wrote about it before, you can take a fresh angle on it and write about it again.
Something quick. Write and send off.
Recycle something you've already written for the boards, in fact. Avoiding scams for the newly unemployed, for instance.
> You asked if five articles a week is doable. Well yes, timewise it's
> doable, but what do I have to say EVERY DAY that's printworthy?
Five a week is what the pros do (actually more), but in the beginning just get 5 to send out and then write one a week or one whenever. But the first time you send out, send out five articles to five different places. Not one article... and wait.
> Even as I read the columnists in the newspaper, I always wonder how the
> hell they come up with something new all the time.
> How do they do it, Mel?... Tell me how.
Practice. And threats. If someone dangled a paycheck over your head and said "come up with a column within 6 hours," I imagine you could hit the news and find something to write about. Remember when I did a weekly gardening column? Money is a great motivator.
And we're not writing Deathless Prose. We're writing to tell people about something. Deathless Prose is for novelists who starve in garrets. We're hack writers, informing the public.
Ain't nothing wrong with being a hack. If we all waited till the articles were perfect, nobody would ever submit anything to be published.
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