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Tighter Market, Tighter Message

This is a guest post by Peter Bowerman, author of The Well-Fed Writer.

Gloom. Doom. Dark prognostications. Gathering clouds. The end of prosperity as we know it. Wooooo. You can't pick up a newspaper or flip on the news these days without hearing the latest evidence of the "slowing economy," "the economic downturn," the "national reversal of fortune." Yeah, whatever.

In the past few months, I've received a small flood of e-mails asking me about the viability of starting a freelance commercial writing business in these changing economic times. I can just picture the furrowed brows and chewed-up nails as they type away. So whether you're a struggling commercial freelancer or pondering the leap, read on… (more…)

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Are You Sure Your Query Is Ready?

One magazine. Hundreds of writers. Thousands of queries.

One editor. One desktop ... and a trashcan that appears to be incredibly, almost unimaginably deep. Where exactly will your submission go?

It has all the makings of an editor's nightmare. Stacks and stacks of submissions, and some of them are dreadfully inappropriate and unprofessional. It's enough to give our poor editor a splitting headache at the very least. No wonder that some of these submissions have only a brief existence before being filed in the circular bin. (more…)

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Writing in Rhyme

This is a guest post by Laura Backes, Publisher, Children's Book Insider, the Newsletter for Children's Writers.

© Copyright 2001, Children's Book Insider, LLC

Dr. Seuss did it, and in the process changed the face of the publishing industry and became a beloved household name to children for several generations. So why do so many editors say they don't want stories written in rhyme?

Many beginning writers ask about this well-known submission "Don't". The truth is, some publishers do have a strict policy against rhyming stories - they simply don't publish them. But most would snap up a good rhyming story in seconds. The problem is that reading bad rhyme is like listening to nails on a
blackboard, and it's so easy to write bad rhyme. So if editors say they don't like stories in verse it's probably a way of discouraging the people who don't know what they're doing.

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Get Into Your Writing Space

This is a guest post by by Christine Stewart.

I know, you're brilliant, you don't need any touchy feely advice on how to create an altar to your writing. You're doing just fine, thank you. If this is true, great! But I hope you'll read on anyway, because I may say something interesting (it has happened at least once that I know of).

It's important to have a space set aside in your home for writing. It can be a big cushion in a corner of your closet with a notebook and pen, if that's all you have room for, but it should be all yours, waiting for you whenever it's time to write.

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