Hello all, Michy here first. I’m writing this to you from stormy Galveston area, where we had a fantastic thunder and lightning storm last night. It was so beautiful. I still have not managed to make it out to get sushi, but we’re going soon! I’ve been having a good time, sleeping later than usual, got to lounge in the pool yesterday, and having fun with the mutt (yes, we brought the dog with us!)

Right now, I’m sitting here on the couch and thinking about whether I want to get up and move or not. Until I decide, I guess I should start with an apology to Susan, because I had said on Thursday I would have her post up the following day, and that was like three or four days ago. Ooops.

Michy goes on vacation and leaves her brain at home!

Seriously, the truth is, my computer decided it didn’t want to boot for me, so between travel and computers and mushy brains and thoughts of sushi, Michy was bad and didn’t post Susan’s blog.

I will correct that now. Susan was speaking to me about how difficult the job of freelance writing is, especially in the beginning, when you have no clips, are getting rejection after rejection, only negative feedback and not a lot of positive, and you are wondering if you’ll ever make any real money at this crazy thing called writing.

The post she made below I am sharing with you because I have a feeling some of you have thought the same things before too. This post of hers was an ‘assignment’ I gave her, and I think she re-connected to that part of her that remembers why she writes in the first place.

Remember, when you are feeling your worst, reconnect to that part of you that writes for the love of writing, find the passion, and let the words flow from that place – that place where rejections don’t matter, where you know you would write always, even if you never made a penny at it.

Let’s see what Susan had to say to us:

Living the Dream

Who was I kidding? I wasn’t a writer. At least I wasn’t the kind of writer that people wanted to read…or buy.

I felt like I was pretending to be something I wasn’t. I felt like I was bobbing along in an endless see of disappointment with no hope of ever reaching the shores of where I wanted to be.

I didn’t expect the writer’s life to be like this. I wasn’t sure what I really expected, but I know what I was hoping for and it didn’t include the multitude of rejections that gathered in my inbox or my mailbox. I knew there would be rejections, I just didn’t know there would be so many.

Did what I had to say interest no one? Was my writing really that bad? Was I really cut out to do this?

Each rejecion I received was a devastating blow.

“Chin up. That means you’re one step closer to being published,” they told me.

But I didn’t feel any closer. If anything, I felt even further away. At least before I submitted each piece, I had hope. I needed that hope to follow my dreams. Dreams without hope were just wishes.

Once upon a time, I felt like every step I took was leading me closer to fulfilling my dream. Even as it was happening, I could see the universe working its magic on my life.

Knock, knock…there’s an opportunity.

Six short months ago I was chomping at the bit to quit my full-time job to commit to freelance writing. I wanted it so bad I could taste it. So I couldn’t understand why fate would bring me so close to my dream only to slam the door in my face and tell me no.

I was ready to give up.

How Bad Do You Want It?

I got in touch with Michy and told her how I was feeling. As I sat there on Instant Message with her, I had tears streaming down my face as I told her I was going to give up.

“Write me an article about how you’re feeling right now,” she told me. “Then finish with reasons why you know you need to keep trying.”

Keep trying? I could handle the first part. I could go on and on about how each rejection I received sent me spiraling even further down into a pit of discouragement. But how was I going to handle the “keep trying” part? What could I say?

As I prepared dinner that night, I thought about what I would write. I had my notebook close by and as a thought would pop into my head, I wrote it down. And I thought, Why do I want to keep going? Why do I want to keep putting myself out there?

And then I heard the voice. You know…that voice that whispers in the back of your mind?

It said, “How bad do you want it?”

I’ve been around long enough to know that there are a lot of people in this world who want to be a writer. I’ve also been around long enough to know that not everyone is going to make it. I think what sets them apart the most is their determination to succeed.

Did I have that determination?

As unlikely as it may sound, my answer was yes. Oh, it obviously wasn’t in an easily accessible place. After all, I was ready to give up just a short while before that. No, I had to reach down deep to find it.

But it was still there.

I Believe in You

A couple weeks ago, my mother asked me how the writing was going. When I told her it was chock full of rejections, she was quiet for moment. Then she said, “You can do it. I believe in you.”

My mother knows me as well as anyone. There have been many times in my life where she has known me far better than I have known myself.

And she believed in me.

As much as I needed to hear that, I knew that the real question was did I believe in myself? Did I really think I had what it took to be a writer?

Honestly? I don’t know.

But I do know that I’m never going to find out by giving up. When you give up your dream, you have nothing left.

So I will continue on this path and I will keep my hope and determination close to my side as traveling companions.

I will live my dream. Not someday, but now. Even if the now is full of rejection, I’m still living the dream. I realized that it’s all a part of it. I may never be one of those writers who beams with pride at a rejection. But I can still be a writer who tried.

I can still be…a writer.

My mind has traveled a path
No one will ever see,
This path is mine and mine alone
It starts and ends with me.

My feet have walked this path
This path that’s meant for me.
They’ve walked the stones and hills and dales
That only I could see.

My tears have stained this path,
These tears were shed by me.
With heavy heart and joys unknown,
These tears were shed by me.

My heart has known this path
In times I could not see,
It sang its song and held me strong
To follow its melody.

And as I travel this path,
This path that’s meant for me,
In perfect love and perfect trust
I will follow eternally.

~~~~
Susan Sosbe freelances part time from her home in Indiana. She has written over a hundred articles online and hopes to break into the world of print publications soon. She shares her home with her significant other, two sons and her dog. You can read more of her writings by clicking here.


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One of my favorite things about freelancing and writing is what’s about to happen tomorrow morning. I’m leaving to go to the Galveston area for a month, take a bit of an extended vacation, and yet, I can take my computer with me, and still make money doing what I love from just about anywhere a laptop can get power.

There’s nothing like it. When I start to get a little down on being stuck in the house and all alone (writing is a very solitary job, you know) I can pick up the computer and go somewhere else.

If you’re a freelance writer, a writer or any kind, and you don’t have a laptop, I suggest you get one soon. If you’re thinking of freelancing, invest in a laptop. Seriously.

I learned something from my AC Month-long challenge. I don’t like writing in a vacuum.

See, fiction writing is mostly written in a vacuum you create in your head, and inside that vacuum, you build a viable universe, a world in which your characters and novel exists for real, but you get little feedback as the writer and creator of that universe. While the characters talk to me in my head, once the novel is written, the only feedback I’m going to get is from editors, agents, publishers – and most of those are going to be ‘thanks but no thanks’.

When sending in magazine articles and queries, it’s very similar. We get a lot of negative feedback about our writing, but not a lot of positive feedback, and then add to that, we sit in houses or offices all day and write all alone by ourselves, and it’s no wonder a lot of the best writers of our time are insane.

Anyone would go insane if they had to be alone that much, living and working in a vacuum.

I’ve coached writers who have left their office jobs to write, and I’ve warned them… however much they think they are going to enjoy the peace and quiet, and they might at first, if they aren’t aware of the way being alone all day long, day in and out, doing nothing but writing is going to affect them, they are in for a huge surprise.

It’s hard to stay motivated when all you get are rejections and little positive feedback. It’s hard to stay positive about a writing career when things are all in this writing vacuum. I had an IM conversation with Susan Sosbe last night, where she was talking to me about these very feelings. Tomorrow, I’ll put up an ‘assignment’ of sorts that I made Susan write out. It helped her. I think it will help many of you too.

My advice in this blog is to make sure when you’re freelancing or writing from home that you make the time to socialize too. Get that laptop and go sit in the park or at a coffee shop. Be around people during the day. You’d be surprised how much you really do need it.

Secondly, find some positive interaction as it pertains to your writing. For me, I have two things that keep me sane – and it was the month-long AC challenge that showed me this.

See, when I can get several hundred bucks per article in print, I have, many times, wondered what it was that kept me coming back to AC over and over again, knowing they often frustrated me and paid a lot less than print venues did.

I just don’t like the vacuum. AC, with the feedback, comments, forum and such along with making money keeps me from feeling I’m in that vacuum.

The other thing that keeps that vacuum from absorbing me into a writer’s depression is my writing forum. Without it, I might very well be criminally insane and not just clinically so (giggles).

Look for Susan’s assignment sometime tomorrow… until then, stop by the forum and share with us in this thread all the things that keep you from being in a writer’s vacuum. What do you do for yourself when the rejections are rolling in that keep you motivated and keep you writing and moving forward anyway?

Love and stuff,
Michy

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I’ve been seeing recently some improper use of the word ‘nor’. I know that a lot of you have been informed that either / or is the ‘positive’ and neither / nor is the ‘negative’. Because of this, I’m seeing people use ‘nor’ improperly when it should be ‘or’ just because the sentence contains a ‘negative word’.

Negative words include: can’t, not, cannot, won’t, will not, don’t, do not, no, etc.

JUST because a sentence contains these negative words doesn’t mean you use ‘nor’. You ONLY use ‘nor’ when it is being used with the word ‘neither’ or ‘neither implied’.

Let me explain how ‘nor’ is being used wrongly first, then I’ll explain the right way.

WRONG:

“I don’t think we should go to the store, nor should we go to the lake.”

RIGHT:

“I don’t think we should go to the store, neither should we go to the lake.”

You see, it’s important to understand that ‘nor’ is the ‘or’ counterpart, not the ‘either’ counterpart. If you can’t replace the ‘nor’ with ‘or’ and have it still make sense, then you can’t use ‘nor’.

Example: I don’t think we should go to the store, or should we go to the lake.

See how that changes the meaning?

Negative: I don’t think we should go to the store, neither should we go to the lake.

Positive: Either we should go to the store, or we should go to the lake.

Hummm…

Negative revision: Neither should we go to the store, nor should we go to the lake.

I mean, really, who talks like that?

Now, let’s look at listing when using negative and or.

WRONG:

I don’t want that truck nor the car.

RIGHT:

I don’t want that truck or the car.

JUST because it’s negative (don’t) doesn’t mean you use ‘nor’. What don’t you want? That truck or car.

Now, how could you write to use nor?

Negative Example: I want neither the truck nor the car.

Got it?

I know, it’s probably confusing you, but the thing to watch for is this: if you aren’t using ‘neither’ in the sentence, don’t use ‘nor’. If you feel you should use ‘nor’, check yourself and see if perhaps you truly mean ‘neither’ instead.

Example: I don’t want chocolate and neither do I want vanilla.

Make sense?

I hope so… I’ve only recently started seeing this, so I’m not sure why I’ve either not noticed it or somehow there’s a sudden rash of contagious ‘nors’ running around the internet.

Either – or

Neither – nor

Negative doesn’t mean nor, unless neither is included!

ARgh. Now I’m confusing even myself.

Did you get it? Please, tell me you got it!

Love and stuff,
Michy

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-AC is giving out a $100 award for the Best Book reviews published in April. Be sure to publish as many great book reviews as possible, with or without an assignment.

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Rissa Watkins, a fellow freelance writer and friend, wrote a very poignant article on Associated Content entitled: Please Honor My Baby on April 20th.

I would like for you all to go read that article. It’s okay. I’ll wait for you to come back here.

Okay, all done?

Good.

In that article, Rissa asked everyone to please perform one act of kindness to honor the memory of her baby, so the love can spread.

Today, I thought long and hard about what I wanted my act of kindness to be. Nothing seemed ‘enough’ to me, so I found myself wanting to do lots and lots of little things.

So I did.

The last ‘official’ act of kindness I’m going to do today though is this blog post, where I inform all my blog readers and forum members or any stray writers wandering around the blogosphere who happen upon this blog….

… today, I have decided that for the next quarter of Accentuate Writers Short Story Anthology contests, I am going to give everyone who wants it ONE free entry into the contest. You can choose to use your entry for the themes: Fantasy, Reality, Science Fiction.

If you’re more into poetry than short stories, you can enter two poems for free.

All you have to do to enter for free and use your freebie is send me an email (read the instructions on submissions for the contest at the link above) and say you want your Rissa’s Free Entry to the contest, tell me which theme you’ll write to, and I’ll send you back a number. (One free entry, but you’re welcome to pay for additional ones if you want!)

If you have already paid for stories for this quarter’s themes… you’re welcome to request a Rissa Free Entry for next quarter’s themes.

So there you have it – free contest entry, one per person (or two per poet).

All I ask is that you spread the kindness… oh, and also, read Rissa’s article, and spread the word about it and about the free contest this quarter.

(HUGS) to all, and special ****HUGS**** to Rissa!

Love and stuff,
Michy

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A few years back, I worked in acquisitions for a small publisher. I had an assistant who read through all the emails first and forwarded only those on to me that met the submissions guidelines. Everything else, he rejected.

Today, I am taking submissions for the Accentuate Writers Contest, the Unsent Letters blog and print collection and the Accentuate Erotic Short Story Anthology.

The difference between a few years back and now is that now I don’t have an assistant going through the slush pile of submissions weeding out those that don’t meet the submissions guidelines.

You know… I have something to say to all you aspiring writers out there…

FOLLOW THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES!

Less than HALF of the submissions I’m receiving follow the guidelines I have posted to the letter.

Seriously.

Freelance writing is a lot more than just being a good writer. It’s a business. I’ve talked about this many time before, but to be a professional freelance writer, you have to do a lot more than write. You have to query, invoice, market, get clients, submit and run your freelance writing career like the business it is.

If you can’t even follow the simple instruction, or even the more complicated ones, you’re a lot less likely to get an editor to even read your work.

Think about it this way – would you show up to a job interview in shorts and flip flops with a resume with typos and misspellings?

Probably not. As a freelancer, the submission is the same as the ‘interview’ and if you don’t follow the guidelines, then you’re showing up dressed wrong for your interview.

But there’s more…

You know how you’ve heard some editors say they will toss out any submissions that don’t adhere to guidelines, without even reading them? This is true of not just freelancing but novel submissions to agents and publishers too.

Well, I know now why they do that.

There is a direct correlation between the quality of the writing when comparing to those who did meet the submission guidelines versus those who didn’t, with a few notable exceptions. In fact, those who followed the guidelines properly are far and away better writers, cumulatively, both mechanically and emotively than those who failed to follow the submission guidelines.

I have my email set up to move submissions directly into a folder, based on the subject line of the email. I tell people to put a particular subject line on their submissions. People who fail to do this (and there’s a lot of them) might end up without their submission being seen, because I get LITERALLY over 1000 emails per day. Many come into my bulk email and many I scan quickly. There’s a chance I will simply miss the email if it doesn’t come into the right folder.

It’s not an arbitrary guideline I’ve put up just to make your life harder. It’s a guideline I put up there to make my life easier, and ensure you get reviewed in a timely manner.

The other guidelines for style are to make it easy for me to format and edit if I purchase your writing for publication.

When you make my job harder, I offer you less money because I had to do more work. If you make my job too hard, you won’t get an offer at all.

So the moral to the story is: make an editor’s job as easy as you can by submitting your writing following the submission guidelines to the letter, submitting the proper way, and by editing and perfecting your writing so it’s as close to publish-ready as possible. Not only will this improve your chances of being published, but it might even improve the dollar amount offered to you when you are published–not just for me or my ventures, but others as well.

Follow the guidelines! Put your best writing foot forward!

Love and stuff,
Michy

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Love and stuff,
Michy
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I woke this morning, and as usual, went to check my overnight page views on AC. Aimee’s account (my challenge account) actually has earned more than half of last month’s bonus in just the one week or so for this month. Sorta goes to show that when you’re first starting out, promoting a bit so folks can find you is sorta important for your bottom line. Trust me, when you have been with AC longer, promoting won’t be necessary at all if you write good content that is properly findable on search engines will do all the work for you. Right now, if you’re newer (less than a year or so) you need to plant the seeds to get your content started growing.

It’s strange to me, since we veterans tell you Associated Content newbies that you don’t have to promote, and while we ARE right about that, in the beginning, promoting does seem to be crucial to getting ‘known’. You do need to get traffic flowing your direction so the links on your profile are ’seen’ and ‘known’ to Google bots. You do want to increase your page rank. Plus, the more places you can be ‘found’ on the internet, the more likely others are to stumble across your writing and follow you. Developing a readership is crucial to any online writer, regardless of the site for which you write.

It’s really the same practice for getting your websites and blogs seen too. AC, Helium, other content sites aren’t any different than running your own site, sorta. Your home page is your profile, and then your articles are pages on your site, and you need to at least write quality content that sort of relates to the ‘theme’ of your site.

Again, this is why it would be awesome for AC to offer us a chance to write articles and categorize them on our profiles by niche or theme or category or something.

As for blogs and websites and other content writing, it’s all really very much the same. If you take the same strategies you use on AC to write and promote and you do the same thing on your blogs (SEO, keyword phrases, good titles and topics, timely but evergreen information, promoting, etc.) your blogs can become quite successful on page views and revenue (if you’re monetizing). The hope is to get your content to go viral… going viral for content is a good thing, not like a computer virus. Viral content means that people want to read it, comment on it, link to it and otherwise pass it on to others, essentially doing the promoting for you.

A lot of folks don’t seem to get how to monetize blogs like that. Each blog should have a niche topic, and you should write keyworded but informational posts about your niche if you want to monetize your blog.

Essentially, if you’re writing for ANY online content site, information-rich properly SEOed content is what every site needs and wants. Doesn’t matter who you’re writing for. When some people ask for SEO content, they mostly only care about the keywords so they folks can find their sites and buy their products. For writers who are paid on ad revenue (whether it’s a blog, content site, or other website), it’s the information that is important because there are no products to sell. The information IS the product.

So when writing online, no matter where you’re writing, the practices you should use are nearly identical. The steps are the same for every online site:

1. Quality, well-written, information-rich content
2. Properly keyworded for SEO (keywords phrases too)
3. Timely and topical content that can be evergreen too
4. Properly promoted without spamming
5. Linking to high-quality sites
6. Getting links from high-quality sites
7. Viralability
8. Lather, rinse, repeat

So whether you write for Suite101, Helium, Associated Content, Daily Article, Textbroker, Elance customers, Guru, private customers, blogs, your own website… you will use the same practices for every piece of content as any other site.

If you’re having problems monetizing your blogs, consider focusing your blog topic more tightly and have more than one blog for different topics. This way, you get a good following for people who want to read about your niche topic. For example, if you have a pish-posh blog that is one post about parenting, one post about healthy eating, one post about saving money, one post about relationships, one ramble about personal stuff, etc… no one is going to want to follow you to read except people who know you personally.

If, instead, you have an entire blog that is about parenting and a separate one about healthy eating, then you will get followers, a readership, that is interested in what that blog is about without having to wade through blog posts about things they aren’t interested in.

Target your readership, market your niche, follow the instructions above, and you’ll see page views (in total) increase across the board, and monetization is easier and you’ll get a better clickthrough if your doing your own monetization and better page views if someone else is monetizing it.

Good luck & happy writing!

Love and stuff,
Michy
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I know some of you might follow this blog and not the other one, so I wanted to be sure to link you to the important posts of the challenge last month on AC.

First, indexing remains problematic, so I think it’s important everyone knows HOW to check to see if your articles are indexed, and if they are not indexed in Google, everyone should know how to get them indexed the right way.

To learn how to check for indexing in Google and how to index the right way, read this post:

http://michysthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/03/associated-content-challenge-good.html

To see what Indexing looks like in Google, let me show you the two ways articles are indexing. This blog have pictures of the two indexing looks:

http://michysthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/03/associated-content-challenge-confused.html

If you have a lot of content, checking all of them is very time consuming. The best thing is to start by looking for articles that you thought would do better than they have… articles that might have low page views, when similar articles are doing better. Chances are, they might not be indexed. Be sure to check those first, and then as you have time, you can check the others, then keep up with the new ones as they post.

Making sure articles are indexed can make the difference between a handful of page views and several hundred or even thousand page views, so it is that important.

Lastly, if you’re interested in reading the final analysis of the Associated Content Challenge, you can see it here:

http://michysthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/04/associated-content-challenge-end.html

Thank you to everyone who followed along with the challenge and commented. If this is your first look at it, I hope you enjoy reading what I learned. If you’ve followed along, I hope my analysis has helped you figure a few things out.

As always, please feel free to ask questions.

Oh, and what did my hourly rate end up being? Over $9.00 per hour… that’s not bad for kicking back in my recliner writing about what I know.

Ya’ll have a good one!

Love and stuff,
Michy

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