August in Review

August is just about in my rear view mirror, and I for one am happy to see it go. This month brought the death of my friend of 30 years, Tim, due to complications from diabetes. Add that to family turmoil, the writing project from hell and a nice crisp 110 degrees of heat on a nearly daily basis, and you’ve got a month I can’t say goodbye to fast enough. On the bright side, this was a pretty good month for ol’ Poewar.com. My article “Want to Write a Novel Badly? Here’s How!” went viral as we in the business say and was read a whopping 25,000 times. That is a new site record for a single post in a month. Overall Poewar.com did very well, with 112,000 page views. That is a 10,000 page improvement over last month though still a tad shy of June. A month like August is usually a pretty down month on the web. Everyone is on vacation, so I’ll stand by those numbers proudly. Stay tuned next month. I’m dedicating September to poetry. You don’t want to miss it!

Before I sign off for the month I wanted to thank this month’s commenters, for taking the time to write in. Here are just a few of the interesting things people had to say:

Mary Klaebel on 5 Ways to Start Making Freelance Money TODAY!
I hate cold calling. While I understand that it works, I prefer to use direct mail or e-mail marketing. When I market myself and my copywriting that way, not only do I save myself the gut-churning stress of cold calling, but the prospect has in his or her hot little hands a solid sample of my work. That’s just me. Yes, it’s a slower way to build my business, but slow and steady and all that…

Marjani on 5 Ways to Start Making Freelance Money TODAY!
The only part I can’t stand about freelancing is sales. But no one can own their own business if they are unwilling to be the sales team as well as the manager, director, writer, distribution, classified, and production team.

Sandra on 5 Ways to Start Making Freelance Money TODAY!
Truth be told, I would rather have to cut my arm off while dangling three hundred feet above ground pinched between a boulder and a cliff than make cold calls. But that’s just me.

Mike on Wronging Writers: Don’t Get Taken
If you got accepted by EW and you really need the money, then I advise you to try it out once with a small project and wait until they pay you through paypal (they won’t pay you through bankwire unless you accumulate at least $50 which is reasonable given the transaction fees). If you’re still sketical after they pay you for one project then you can just take a little at a time. All I can say is that they did pay me and they still do. You just really have to be worth your salt.

Kathryn on 200+ Articles for Bloggers
It is amazing how popular blogging is becoming. When all the news stories have a specialist that is there BECAUSE of his/her blog, it proves that blogging has made it to mainstream.

Doc Kane on College Majors for Aspiring Writers
…as a former academic advisor and history major (who know runs a freelance writing business covering everything from marketing to journalism), I think ANY social science discipline would be a nice addition to this list. Anyone pursuing a degree in the social sciences will, no doubt, research, write and analyze their writing time and time again to greater proficiency. Writing in these styles also helps a writer developing his/her writing chops to think beyond 500 words, and to draft material with a story in mind.

Crystalwizard on Want to Write a Novel Badly? Here’s How!
Write it backwards. Start with the ending and then add on to that till you figure out how it started.
Sprinkled lots of weird punctuation marks through the dialog.
Always make sure you never use a characters name with their dialog. Use only pronouns.
String as many sentences together with the word ‘and’ that you possibly can. Periods are extremely expensive.

Rianon Rose on Want to Write a Novel Badly? Here’s How!
Who knows how bad a book really is until you read it yourself, when you hate it you know it’s bad!! For instance, what if your main character has a love interest, then all of a sudden kills herself for no apparent reason by chapter 2. Then, say your reading a novel and you just start, when it takes 20 minutes to read the first page, you know it’s bad. Other than that you look forward to finding out if the main character is mute or not. Although you did fing out that her wardrobe is outstandingly huge and her first breath did last longer than one should. But she is excited about her first day….. Somewhere?

xexagon on Want to Write a Novel Badly? Here’s How!
i) make the bad guy’s foreign in some way
ii) make sure there is a very bad guy
iii) make sure your hero is very good at having sex, and the sex is described using tip 5 above. That way the reader feels as if s/he is also good at having sex
iv) don’t use stream of consciousness - tell the reader what the characters are thinking and why they do things
v) don’t bother describing things, just make sure things are happening all the time
vi) alternatively, describe everything in great detail, because that’s what writing is
vii) novels should be long, at least 400 pages
viii) if you’re not sure what should happen next, have someone hit your hero over the head
ix) alcohol makes characters interesting

Michelleon Want to Write a Novel Badly? Here’s How!
Follow slavishly any advice about writing that you found published…anywhere. For example, that opening sentences of bestsellers should be twelve words long and contain three adjectives, two adverbs, and precisely one comma. Or that every chapter of a mystery must end with the sleuth thoughtfully posing a long list of obvious questions: “Does the knife sticking out of Charlie really mean he’s dead? Would Agnes have run away if she weren’t guilty? And what about Naomi?” Above all, weight all advice equally, without critical evaluation. In fact, don’t even bother noting who gave the advice. Your time is much better spent writing it down so you can follow it right away.

Richard on Want to Write a Novel Badly? Here’s How!
Another one I’ve noticed, although this is more for a series of novels, is if a plotline or group of two-dimensional characters ain’t completely broken, then why fix it? You can use the same characters and plot structures again and again in novel after novel (e.g. a ritual murder, a guy in a wheelchair with secret motives, a love interest related to a murder victim, etc etc). It’s worked for Dan Brown!

Writing Your Way Out of a Wet Paper Sack

Has anyone ever told you that you couldn’t write your way out of a wet paper sack? It really isn’t that difficult. The important thing remember that this is not a job for a computer. You are much better off using a pen or a pencil. You should press down very hard when you write. That will be helpful because, as you remember, the paper sack is wet. You can use that moisture to your advantage. Wet paper sacks tear more easily than dry paper sacks. Keep that in mind at all times. The key to writing your way out of the wet paper sack is to write in such a way that the wet paper begins to tear. Once you’ve torn a hole in the wet paper sack, you’re halfway out of it.

Write on the side of the wet paper sack (either from the inside or the outside depending upon the size of the sack you find yourself in). Press down hard, preferably with a pencil or a high quality pen. This should get the paper, weakened by the moisture, to tear. Once it begins to tear, you will probably want to increase the size of your letters. Writing with small letters is great in the beginning, when you want to establish a hole, but tiny handwriting will become an impairment later on. In the later stages, You will want to write large, swooping letters because this will help to open up the tear in the sack. The larger the tear, the easier it will be to write your way out of it. Towards the end, you might want your letters to be several inches, or even a foot or so high. This will broaden the hole until the entire sack tears away.

Note: Avoid felt tip pens. A felt tip pen or a marker may prove to be insufficient for the task at hand.

Now you are almost done. In the final stages, it is important to remember that you are writing your way out of a wet paper sack, not acting or dancing your way out of a wet paper sack. Those tasks require an entirely different skill set that we won’t go in to here. Keep your pen or pencil in hand. Use it to remove the individual pieces (wet paper sacks tend to fall apart). Place the pencil over the remaining pieces of wet paper sack and let your prose flow. Write with a slight flicking motion so that the paper seems to almost fly off your pencil. Be diligent. Make sure that every piece of paper sack is off of you. At that point you will have written your way out of a wet paper sack. Congratulations! You can proudly tell all of your friends that indeed, you do have this skill and have proven it.

Note: You might want to have someone film your escape from the sack so that you can avoid having to perform this act multiple times. As important as the skill is, writing your way out of a wet paper sack isn’t particularly enjoyable, so you will probably prefer to perform this task only once.

10 Ways to Make Editors Hate You Before They Even Know You

You wouldn’t think that writers would want to make editors hate them. Unfortunately, judging by terrible submissions writers keep sending in, that must be the goal. Always one to give guidance, even when it is bad guidance, I offer this short guide to making editors hate you.

Don’t get to the point. Editors are very busy. When they read a query letter or a submission cover, what they really want to know is what you are proposing and how it fits their needs. The longer you can keep yourself from telling them that, the better your chances of getting an editor to hate you.

Don’t use enough postage. Guess what? No one is going to pay the mailman just to see your submission. If you really want to aggravate an editor, send your submissions via certified mail and make them sign for it.

Get the editor’s name wrong. There’s no quicker way to get on an editor’s bad side than to misspell their name. This is a great way to get your query letter thrown away before it even gets opened. While you’re at it, get their title wrong too. That should ensure a quick trip to the garbage can.

Ignore the editor’s needs. Send the editor of an arts journal an article about ways to avoid a hangover. Send your proposal for a microwave recipe book to a publisher specializing in historical fiction. It may not quite make the editor hate you, but it will certainly be good for a laugh.

Insult other people’s work. The book you’re proposing? It’s way better than any other book in the genre and the editor should know that. Take the time to insult the competition. If you get lucky, you may just insult something the editor has worked on in the past. That should really tick them off.

Send the editor a letter that stinks. Chances are, your proposal will stink anyway. What I mean is send them one that smells bad. Smoke while you write it, or scent it with perfume. While you’re at it, use an obnoxious paper color like pink or orange. Make your query as unpleasant to smell as it is to read.

Talk money. Make it clear in the first few sentences that you expect a certain amount of money for your efforts and you will accept nothing less. Whether your demands are in the editor’s range or not doesn’t matter. Your demands will make them hate you either way.

Tell the editor how much your friends and family love your work. If you’re really out to convince the editor that you know next to nothing about the publishing industry, including the opinions of people the editor doesn’t know and has no reason to respect ought to do it.

Try to sound cocky and sarcastic. You know you’ve got the goods, why should you try to be polite and businesslike? This should make it clear to the editor just how big of a hassle it will be to work with you. Note: Feel free to use this article as a guide.

Use a cheap printer, or better yet, a typewriter. Nothing screams “not worth the effort to read” more than poorly printed, smudged text.

Want more bad advice? Try these guides!

• 40 Fabulous Faults of Freelance Failures
• Want to Write a Novel Badly? Here’s How!

Link Love

I’m not at my creative best today, so I am turning to the old blog standby of linking to other sites. Just because I don’t have a good article in me today, doesn’t mean there isn’t someone out there who does.

Poet Takes Extra 5 Minutes To Vague Up Poem A cute, too short article about purposefully vague poems by The Onion.

How to Write a Hit Song The most important thing, apparently, is a smooth impression.

Write First, Edit Later Good advice. If you edited before you wrote, what would you edit?

Why Freelance Copywriters Go Hungry There’s some good advice here, although the image of Michel Fortin glowering at me from the masthead was a bit unsettling.

72 More Blog Tips from the Blogging Community The Problogger linkfest continues. I especially recommend:

11 things to do before you hit the publish button by Shankar Ganesh

How to Create and Publish Your Own eBook on a $0 Budget by Skellie

23 Great Ideas For Blog Posts by Pat B. Doyle

How to Enhance your WP Writing Experience by Karthik Kastury

Finally, I would like to link to Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International. My best friend Tim just died of diabetes-related complications, and I sure would like to see this disease eradicated before it claims anyone else I care about.

Four Ways to Publish Your Poetry

Updated 8/27/2007

There are four general options for publishing a collection of poetry:

1. Web Publishing
2. Subsidized Publishing
3. Self Publishing
4. Traditional Publishing

Each method has its own shortcomings and benefits. For example, web publishing is the least pricey and has the lowest reputation, but surprisingly it is capable or reaching a much wider audience than most other methods. My site, such as it is, reaches over 30,000 unique visitors a month.

Option 1: Web Publishing

Web publishing is, quite simply, setting up web pages to display your work. This is an easy process, even for someone with limited knowledge of web page creation. You can make use of a service such as www.blogger.com (free) to create your own site and you simply need to paste in your poems. It is hardly more work than e-mailing.

Because web sites are inexpensive and easy to create, there are many people out there doing it. This means that it carries less prestige than any of the other methods, yet web pages are easier to promote than books and because they are free, will often attract more readers than a book if you do a little marketing and publicity work.

Option 2: Subsidized Publishing

Subsidized publishing is when you pay someone to publish a book for you. There are many options of varying expense. Print-on-demand services are the cheapest, and www.lulu.com has been gaining in reputation among those services lately. www.xlibris.com and www.iuniverse.com are two other established services. Print-on-demand publishers only print books when they are ordered. This means that you do not have to pay for a set run of books and therefore have little (sometimes no) upfront fees.

The downside of these services is that there is often very little variation in the printing process. In other words, you have limited control over how the book looks. You may also have to create the formatting for the book on your own, which many people do not know how to do. If you can’t do it, you’ll have to pay someone who can. This publishing segment is still relatively new (only five years old by my count) and much like the Internet, you have to be careful to make sure what a service offers is what they provide.

A more expensive, more established option is to go with a subsidized publishing company that will work with you individually to tailor the book to your vision. The publisher will then print a run of books (100 is usually the bare minimum and 1000 will generally get you a reasonable price-per-book). You pay upfront for the books and you sell them on your own through advertising, readings and whatever other means you can come up with. A new, inexpensive option is to go with a print-on-demand publisher such as lulu.com.

The benefit of subsidized publishing is that you get an actual book that you can hold, show and even sell. It doesn’t quite have the prestige of traditional publishing, but people do respect almost any book more than a web page.

Option 3: Self Publishing

Self publishing is a challenge. It means taking charge of every aspect of the publishing process from formatting the book to obtaining the ISBN number to printing the book to marketing the book. It is not a simple process, but it is a rewarding one. Every part of the process can be done by an individual working out their own home with the right equipment (computer, printer, desktop publishing program, telephone, personal resolve). On the other hand, any part of the process can be hired out, from designing the book to printing the book to hiring a publicist.

Many poets start with a chapbook. The definition of a chapbook is that it is stapled (like a magazine) rather than bound. Because of this, chapbooks are relatively easy to produce on a printer or through a copy shop. They aren’t quite as attractive as bound books and most book stores will not carry them because you can’t read the name on the binding, which is how book store patrons generally find books. You can, however, sell these books through Amazon or other online outlets as long as you have an ISBN number.

Option 4: Traditional Publishing

The “traditional” publishing world (in which the publisher assumes all expense and sometimes even pays the poet) is a tough nut to crack. Major publishers do not publish books of poetry, except when they see a clear profit in the activity or they are appeasing an otherwise profitable writer. This leaves most poetry publishing to university presses and other small presses. There are virtually no agents who work with poets and small presses. Most of these publishers struggle to break even, much less turn a profit. Because of this, small presses often exist to publish works or poets that the publisher loves, not just likes or appreciates, loves. Often, the publisher knows the poet on a personal basis or has discovered them through journals or recommendations from other poets. That is why it is important to become active in the poetry world. If you are sending your poetry to these publishers without getting to know who the publishers are and what they like, your chances of finding the right publisher for you are slim.

The best way to become a published poet through the traditional route is to become a part of the poetry community. How do you do that?

1. Buy books of poetry, especially books by current writers working in the field.
2. Subscribe to poetry journals.
3. Go to poetry readings. Check your local arts publications. Almost any sizable town has readings every week or every other week. This is a great opportunity to meet poets and people who care about poetry.
   When you go to readings, donate money and buy books if you can. Support the community you belong to.
   Host a poetry event or organize a reading. This is a way or recognizing the poets you enjoy and a way of promoting yourself in the community.
4. Publish your own poetry journal. Even a web page or a few sheets of paper stapled together gets the word out.
5. Form a poetry circle or group. If you want to swap poetry and criticism with your peers, form your own group. Many local arts publications let you list your group for free.

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