Effective Editing: It Spells the Difference!

by Lizzie R. Santos

If you think proofreading equals editing, then you're wrong! Editing is a lot more than just scrutinizing your manuscript for misspelled words or missing punctuation marks.

As a whole:

• Edit only *after* you've written the *whole* piece. If you stop to edit after every paragraph or sentence, you will disrupt the flow of your thoughts.
• It is better to take a break before starting to edit a long manuscript so you'll have a fresh perspective.
• Revise only *hard copy* especially if your manuscript is quite long. Revising from a monitor is confusing.
• Verify the spelling of names, figures, dates, and addresses. These are the most murdered items in manuscripts!
• Be sure of what you put between those quotation marks! Otherwise, rephrase the line and omit the quotation marks.
• Did you follow the writer guidelines? e.g., number of words required, font/font size specified, spacing, margins...

Edit your content:

• Be sure that you did not stray from your topic. Are your paragraphs coherent?
• Did you fulfill your purpose for writing that piece? Is your entertainment feature article entertaining enough? Did your personality sketch bring out your subject's unique and distinct qualities?
• If necessary, did you provide enough supporting data (graphs, charts, figures) for your piece?
• If applicable, did your article answer the 5 Ws and H? Who, what, why, were, when and how.

Edit for tightness:

• Remove redundant and useless words.
• What about diction? Did you use the right word to express what you mean? For example, 'He stared at her' is more intense than 'He looked at her.' 'Devour' is not the same as 'eat.'
• Did you vary the length of your sentences? Combining long with short sentences makes your article easier and more natural to read.
• Did you check that the body of your article is longer than the introduction (lead)? Some writers get carried way. They focus on an effective lead to hook the readers but neglect the body of the article!

What about tone and style?

• Does your work reflect your writing style or does it sound like a copied work?
• Did you use the active voice? Are you consistent with the point of view you used?
• Do your title and the words you used match the tone of your piece?

Copyright © 2005 Lizzie R. Santos

About Lizzie: Lizzie writes features, literary pieces, radio and comics scripts, and school supplemental reading materials. She is the author of two print books. Her e-book, Appetizers for Creative Writers: A Workbook for Writers, is published by iMusePub.com and it's at http://imusepub.com/lrsantos-1.php

The Writing Life: Tips for Dealing with Procrastination

by JJ Murphy

I know something's up when I'd rather do laundry than write.

Another more subtle sign of procrastination is when I conduct endless research, but never write a rough draft. I'm in trouble when I'm hunting in the refrigerator after every sentence.

But what can I do about it? Here are a few ideas that have helped me negotiate this rough terrain in my writing life:

1. Define your most productive times. I write best first thing in the morning. Nothing has happened to distract me from my thoughts. This is the best time for me to free write, review materials I wrote several days ago, or proofread. Another good time for me is when I'm hiking or when I take a break after a 45 minute hike to a pleasant sit spot.

2. Assess your writing environment. I write best when there is natural light. At night I need correctly placed light. Shadows or glare are distracting obstacles that contribute to procrastination.

3. Remove distractions. I have a place where I can sit and write regardless of the weather. I like being outside better, but when I need research and support materials, my library and the Internet are important. If music is playing, it has to be something that is not intrusive. TV or videos are deadly. Turn off the TV - even the Weather Channel. The difference is amazing. If you do not have a room, office or a space all your own, dedicate a corner of a room or a quiet place in the library where you do nothing but write.

4. Write everything down. Freewriting, brainstorming, lists, outlines, organic notes (those diagrams with spokes) - whatever floats into your head - write it down. Worry about organizing later. The idea is to fill up the page with words. If you have to start with "I hate this, it's dumb, I can't think of where to begin..." - do that. The more words that turn up on the page, the greater the chance that some of them get to the heart of what you want to say. If your hand cramps, talk into your voicemail or consider purchasing voice recognition software.

5. Take baby steps. I recently set a goal to publish a writing-related article once a week. That would be scary, but I have broken the task down into baby steps. I established a list of topics that I can add to whenever I think of something. If an idea grabs me, then I'll write down what I'm feeling, thinking, learning or any other comment. I may have written about this topic before. Eventually I will have enough notes to begin a freewrite, which often turns into a rough draft. That is often enough to keep my momentum going through the rest of the writing process.

6. Write the easiest parts first. If I am stuck for a beginning, I write a middle. If I have a conclusion or strong opinion, I write that first. Sometimes a little push is enough to set the process back in motion.

7. Reward your small victories. If I have been writing for 15 minutes to an hour, I take a well-deserved break. It soothes my eyes to shift from staring at a screen or notebook to looking out at the horizon. I may just stretch or get a cup of tea or I may use that time to break for a hike or some other treat. Taking breaks helps avoid burn-out, which kills productivity.

8. Be prepared for setbacks. Even with the support provided by these guidelines, setbacks happen. If I focus on being stuck, I stay stuck. Instead I look for ways to move on. I might write about the topic from an opposing point of view, I might write a dialogue between me and the procrastination monster, or I might switch from writing nonfiction to fiction. The important thing is not to substitute washing the kitchen floor for writing.

9. Have a plan. When caught in the grip of procrastination, recognize the symptoms and make a commitment to change the pattern. For me, procrastination typically sets in when my hiking is curtailed by a stretch of bad weather. Walking or any kind of rhythmic movement is part of what I need to do to write. In my part of the world bad weather is a fact of life. I will get stuck indoors. At that point, I have my tips list, an idea file, magnetic poetry and a whole range of ways to get words on a page. I don't need a final product. I just need to get my hands or my voice moving.

10. Accountability. Whether you write or not is entirely in your power. I cannot blame the weather, a sprained finger or anything else for my decision to write or not to write. If I want to provide my clients with work on or before a deadline, I have to write. If I want meaningful content for my readers, I have to write. I enjoy writing, but if it ever becomes a chore or a daily burden, I'll look for something else to do.

JJ Murphy is a freelance writer who helps a variety of companies, small businesses and individuals to express their awareness and dedication to developing sustainable technology and to preserve our natural resources. She provides articles for natural magazines, hiking publications, simple living publications in print and online. She also writes curricula to help public schools home schooling groups, private schools, wilderness camps, adult learning groups, continuing education programs and others stretch and expand their students’ knowledge.

She holds a Master of Arts degree from the William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas and a B.A. degree in English and Anthropology from the University of Connecticut. Her client list includes writers, business consultants, motivational speakers, psychologists, financial planners, educators, and politicians.

Visit her website http://www.WriterByNature.com

Do You Really Want to Get Published? Write for Trade Magazines!

by Mary Anne Hahn

Have you been repeatedly snubbed by consumer magazines? Do you have little to show for your research and querying efforts other than a folder of form rejection letters? If your writing dream includes earning a halfway decent to excellent income writing magazine articles, there are editors at thousands and thousands of publications worldwide who would open their doors (and their wallets) to work with you. You've probably never heard of most of them, but they have loyal readerships. They're called "trade magazines."

Trade magazines are periodicals that are published for and read by members of specific trade groups, occupations, and/or persons involved in particular types of business. From nurses to building contractors, electrical engineers to restaurant owners, there's a magazine (and sometimes several) that is produced with their interests, needs and issues in mind. Most are available by subscription only, or as a premium for membership in an organization or association. They range from award-winning glossies to modest, staple-bound publications.

And many of them would love to hear from, and work with, reliable writers. Moreover, most of them pay--some of them, very well.

But how do you get started writing for trade magazines? What qualifications do you need to write for them, what types of articles do they need, and where do you find them? Let's look at each of these questions separately.

1. Getting Started

My personal experience in writing for trade magazines came after examining my own career background. What did I know about, what jobs had I held, with what industries was I familiar? I listed everything, from my high school and college job as a supermarket cashier to my experiences as a trainer and supervisor. I then decided to focus initially on the occupation that most interested me, supervision, and began to brainstorm article ideas and search for potential markets revolved around that.

This isn't the only way to break into writing for trades, however. Are there occupations or businesses you would love to learn and write about, but have no work experience in? Do you know people who do them, or could you go through a local Chamber of Commerce or trade association chapter to meet such people? You can also conduct a search for professionals in nearly every field online, via such sites as http://www2.profnet.com or http://www.experts.com (typing "find an expert" into the Google search box will provide you with a plethora of similar sites).

Once you find your "experts," ask questions and listen. What are their work days like? What tools and skills do they use to do their job? What challenges do they face? What would make their jobs easier, faster, of higher quality, and/or more cost effective? What kinds of information, products or services would make them more successful? The answers to these questions will lead you to all sorts of possible article ideas.

2. What qualifications do you need to write for trade magazines?

While it may help immensely to have an education or background in a particular trade or industry to break into writing for its trade magazines, it's not essential. As with querying consumer magazines, showing that you have done, or can do, research on the topic, and mentioning the sources you'll tap when writing the actual article, will go a long way in piquing an editor's interest.

3. What types of articles do trade magazines carry?

Except for the fact that trade publications have a narrower focus than their consumer cousins, the types of articles they carry fall into familiar categories:

news items specific to the magazine's occupation or industry focus
products and trends
how-to articles
personal/professional experience articles (e.g., case histories, company and professional profiles, etc.)

As stated above, use your own experience as a springboard or your interviews with people in the field to generate article ideas appropriate to the magazine's readership that you are targeting.

4. Where can you find or learn about available trade magazines?

You can obtain fre^e one-year subscriptions to hundreds of different trade magazines at TradePub (http://i.nl03.net/ltr0/? _m=01.009i.2f.mfm.2f ). From "Today's Chemist at Work" to "Poultry International," from "Beverage World" to "Diesel Progress," you'll find a bountiful garden of potential markets that can keep you in writing business for years to come.

You'll also find Kendall Hanson's book, "Writing for Trade Magazines" (http://tinyurl.com/yqher) enormously helpful. In it, he includes information on many of the major publishers in the trade magazine industry, as well as many additional tips on breaking in.

Finally, just keep your eyes and ears open--trade magazines lie in waiting rooms everywhere, from doctor's offices to automobile repair shops. And don't hesitate to ask your friendly neighborhood plumber, hair stylist, CEO, salesperson or pet shop owner if they receive any magazines specific to their industries, and whether or not they have back copies they could lend to you.

While writing for "Aqua" (the pool and spa trade magazine), "Equipment Today" or "Sign Builder Illustrated" may not sound as glamorous as getting published in, say, "Glamour," you'll find these markets immensely more accommodating, their editors more accessible, and the bylines and paychecks satisfying. Plus, you can always use your clips to make the leap into better known magazines, or re-slant your trade articles for consumer publications.

No matter how you look at it, writing for trade magazines is an excellent way to get published, and get paid for your writing.

About The Author
Mary Anne Hahn publishes WriteSuccess, the free biweekly ezine that helps writers pursue *successful* writing careers. Subscribe today by visiting http://writesuccess.com.

hahnmah@aol.com

How to Make a Living Writing Ebooks

By Sean R. Mize

A lot of people are making a living through ebook writing. They write about topics that can potentially help online users and they share their knowledge in the hopes that they can bring huge difference to the lives of their readers. In return, these people are rewarded with not only financial gain but also a positive reputation over the World Wide Web. If you are one of them, you must know how to stay on top of your game amidst the growing competition online. You can do this by simply following these latest 3 big steps that can help you excel at ebook writing:

1. Go with profitable topics. When choosing the subject for your ebooks, you will need to consider two things; first, it must be something that you are very passionate or knowledgeable about and second, it must be something that is truly interesting to the eyes of your potential clients. Remember, you need to be a great source of information to your potential clients and you must be able to offer them the kind of information they need so you can easily give them their money's worth.

2. Impress your readers. You need to make these people happy and satisfied through your content so you can easily promote repeat business later on. You can easily do this by filling up your content with the kind of information they need; offer them solutions to their pressing issues, give them some trade secrets that can help them advance in their chosen careers, or share a slice of your expertise and provide answer to their burning questions. It would also help if you can make sure that your content flows smoothly and that your ebook is free from any types of errors to give these people great reading experience.

3. Keep your ebooks short. If you have been writing ebooks for quite sometime, you must already know that the audience you are serving have a very limited attention span. These people will appreciate if you can offer the information they need without wasting any of their precious time. That is why, I recommend that you keep your ebooks short and concise as much as possible. Go with highly specific topics, don't beat around the bush, don't use fillers, and just get straight to the point. Try your best to communicate your knowledge in 25-30 pages to make your ebooks more compelling to the eyes of your potential readers.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article writing success, 'Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide'

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Writing

Do you want to learn how to build a big online subscriber list fast? Click here: Secrets of List Building

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 9034 articles in print and 14 published ebooks.

Write Strategy: Think, Believe, Attack

By Shery Ma Belle Arrieta-Russ

Think of writing like karate...it's about DISCIPLINE.

Writing, like other forms of art, work or talent, requires discipline. It won't ever be enough that you say to yourself that you are a writer. Only when you write and write with discipline can you call yourself one. Before you can earn a black belt in karate, you have to dedicate yourself, practice and instill discipline in yourself to learn the moves and techniques.

The same goes for writing. Don't just read books. Devour them. Ray Bradbury, author of Zen in the Art of Writing, suggests books of essays, poetry, short stories, novels and even comic strips. Not only does he suggest that you read authors who write the way you hope to write, but "also read those who do not think as you think or write as you want to write, and so be stimulated in directions you might not take for many years." He continues, "don't let the snobbery of others prevent you from reading Kipling, say, while no one else is reading him."

Learn to differentiate between good writing and bad writing. Make time to write. Write even though you're in a bad mood. Put yourself in a routine. Integrate writing into your life. The goal is not to make writing dominate your life, but to make it fit in your life. Julia Cameron, in her book The Right to Write, sums it best: "Rather than being a private affair cordoned off from life as the rest of the world lives it, writing might profitably be seen as an activity best embedded in life, not divorced from it."

Believe that EVERYONE HAS A STORY -- including you.

Extraordinary things happen to ordinary people. As a writer, your job is to capture as many of these things and write them down, weave stories, and create characters that jump out of the pages of your notebook. Don't let anything escape your writer's eye, not even the way the old man tries to subtly pick his nose or the way an old lady fluffs her hair in a diner. What you can't use today, you can use tomorrow. Store these in your memory or jot them down in your notebook.

Jump in the middle of the fray. Be in the circle, not outside it. Don't be content being a mere spectator. Take a bite of everything life dishes out. Ray Bradbury wrote, "Tom Wolfe ate the world and vomited lava. Dickens dined at a different table every hour of his life. Moliere, tasting society, turned to pick up his scalpel, as did Pope and Shaw. Everywhere you look in the literary cosmos, the great ones are busy loving and hating. Have you given up this primary business as obsolete in your own writing? What fun you are missing, then. The fun of anger and disillusion, the fun of loving and being loved, of moving and being moved by this masked ball which dances us from cradle to churchyard. Life is short, misery sure, mortality certain. But on the way, in your work, why not carry those two inflated pig-bladders labeled Zest and Gusto."

Attack writing with PASSION.

The kind of writing you produce will oftentimes reflect the current state of your emotions. Be indifferent and your writing will be indifferent. Be cheerful and watch the words dance across your page.

Whenever you sit down to write, put your heart and soul in it. Write with passion. Write as if you won't live tomorrow. In her book, Writing the Wave, Elizabeth Ayres wrote: "There's one thing your writing must have to be any good at all. It must have you. Your soul, your self, your heart, your guts, your voice -- you must be on that page. In the end, you can't make the magic happen for your reader. You can only allow the miracle of 'being one with' to take place. So dare to be you. Dare to reveal yourself. Be honest, be open, be true...If you are, everything else will fall into place."

Copyright (c) 2004 Shery Ma Belle Arrieta-Russ

About The Author

Shery is the creator of WriteSparks! - a software that generates over 10 *million* Story Sparkers for Writers. Download WriteSparks! Lite for free - http://writesparks.com

How to Choose a Good Topic For an Article

Editor's Note: This is a guest post from Peter Phillips, an accountant from Canberra, Australia.

If you really want a topic to write on that will interest others, pay attention to what is going on around you and determine what interests you and other people. Think of any problems you may have recently had and solved also other problems that others have had and solved. Any problem that you have personally experienced and solved could easily be translated into an interesting article or book. Chances are that other people have had the same problem, and they would love to read how someone else have solved the same problem they have.

So, have a think about any problems in your life and in the lives of your friends and relatives. They do not necessarily have to be life threatening problems, but they do have to be interesting ones to which other people can relate. Has anyone lost their job lately? How did they manage? Did it give them a new start in life, one which they may not have considered while they had a steady job? While you're on the case, think of other unsolved problems you have come across. Are there any which are not yet solved? Good! People will really be interested in those. Here are a few ideas:

• How can a middle aged sedentary male lose ten pounds?
• How do you fix the registry on a PC?
• What's the quickest way to make money online?
• Has there been a teenage pregnancy in your family?
• If so, how did you deal with it?
• Do you know any money saving tips to cope with the ever-increasing cost of living?

Answers to these questions problems would be great topics for your articles or e-books. Remember, you don't have to know the answers yourself; you can always hire someone else to research the topic and write the book for you, or you can do your own research, using a search engine. You can do an online search for just about anything.

Research the most popular books from amazon.com. Click on "best sellers" - this will show what people are currently buying. Choose a book preferably non-fiction, and perhaps do a paraphrase of certain bits of it. Why non-fiction? Fiction readers tend to like physical books with covers and pages. They like to read books by their favorite authors - that's why the books you see at an airport usually have the author's name in bolder type than the actual title if the book. Of course fiction is difficult to write well, and you certainly wouldn't write an article of fiction. So stick with nonfiction unless you're feeling particularly bold and experimental.

Nonfiction books such as self improvement or making extra money are always popular, and will provide good topics for your article.

Don't worry that you are breaching copyright by paraphrasing parts of a book. Ideas are not copyrighted - copyright law only protects the way in which ideas are expressed, so provided you have done a complete rewrite, and have not copied book text outright, you will be safe. As an example, compare the storyline of "West Side Story" with that of "Romeo and Juliet". The idea of both works is exactly the same, yet they are completely separate works.

So, to summarize, find out what people are interested in, write about it, and become a successful article writer!

Peter Phillips is an internet entrepreneur living in Canberra, Australia

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Google Chrome

In case the wonderful world of Google makes the writing process a lot easier for you, you might want to try its new browser Chrome.  I downloaded and tested the browser this morning.  I have good and not so good things to say about it.  But by and large, I think it's a browser that can help writers work more efficiently.

Download the Google Chrome browser and try it yourself.  The installation process is a breeze. If you've tried using this browser, I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions.