Free Writing Center

5 Mistakes to Avoid When Writing Children’s Books

Writing children’s books requires authors to understand children. If the story grabs the attention of the children it is written for, it will also grab the attention of the publisher. Publishers know what will interest children—they have a lot of experience with this.
You need to write for the correct audience and keep this audience in [...]

How to Publish a Book [Editor's Tips]

As I have found out over the years, trying to get your book published is damn hard, and it isn’t getting any easier. There’s too many wannabe writers that want to know how to publish a book, and not enough editors to read all the submissions, which means that there is a real risk [...]

Avoid Burnout as an Online Writer - Choose Jobs Wisely

Along with the plethora of new opportunities that are available throughout the Online Content industry, there is the issue of too much work and not enough time. If you’re anything like me and you hate passing up good income-generating opportunities, it can be hard to say no.
The Schedule of an Online Writer
Making an income from [...]

How to Write Your First Nonfiction Book

If you’ve ever considered writing your own nonfiction book, this video of a talk offered by Dan Poynter is one that you must watch. Dan is the owner of Para Publishing. He started Para Publishing in 1969 in North Quincy, Massachusetts in order to publish his own non fiction books on parachute design safety and [...]

A Stephen King Interview and Commentary on Stephenie Meyer

This week, I’d like to share a great video interview with one of my favorite writers of all time - Stephen King. Mr. King was born and raised in my home state, and he has always served as an inspiration for young Maine writers. In this interview, Borders interviews Stephen King on writing short stories, [...]

3 Great Writing Contests for Kids

August 18th, 2010 No Comments

girlwriting Teachers, homeschooling parents and children may be interested in writing contests for a fun and rewarding activity. The act of writing in itself is a necessary part of education; however, adding a competition into the mix can increase a student’s motivation.

Three such writing contests for kids that are held by reputable organizations/companies include: The Young Voices of America Premier Fiction Writing Contest, PBS Kids Go! Writers Contest and the Scholastic Kids are Authors writing contest.

The Young Voices of America Premier Fiction Writing Contest includes three winning categories according to age: category one, grades 7-12, category two, grades 3-6 and category three, grades prek-2. Prizes range from $15-25 for the lower grades to $100-250 for the higher grades. The grand prize is $500.

This year, writers are asked to submit a funny, fictional story by August 30, 2010. For more information, visit Young Voices Foundation.
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Tips to Edit Your Articles for an Online Audience

August 17th, 2010 1 Comment

closeupkeys When I started writing for an online audience, I soon learned one big rule – that writing for the internet is completely different to any other kind of writing.

As a former journalist working for newspapers, this was something that took some time getting used to. My former newspaper style wasn’t going to cut it with my online audience so I had no choice but to re-invent my whole style of writing.

Over the years as the editor of MakeUseOf.com, I have learnt the following :

- The attention span of an online audience is extremely short. Therefore you need to get to the point rather quickly, preferably within the first two paragraphs. If you don’t show people what the point of your article is by then, then you can forget it. They will already have moved onto other websites.

- Audiences like bullet lists! Instead of piling one big heap of text onto the page, split it up into nice short bulleted lists (like this one). Those short attention spans will love you for it as it allows readers to digest huge chunks of information quickly.

- Grammar bloopers & spelling mistakes will hurt your reputation! – you might not think it’s a big deal if you misplace an apostrophe or say “peice” instead of “piece”. But trust me, your audience will think it’s a big deal and they won’t hesitate to unleash their grammar police upon you in the comments. It doesn’t help your reputation either as you will come across as slapdash and careless. Buy a good style guide and refer to it often. Yahoo has a good one - http://styleguide.yahoo.com .

- Readers love articles with good pictures – the old adage of “a picture paints a thousand words” is especially true on the internet. A page full of text is not enticing to that short attention span. On the other hand, text with some interesting, attention-grabbing photos will make them want to stay on the page a few minutes longer. Remember to credit all photos to their proper owners.

How to Tutor Writing

August 11th, 2010 No Comments

Tutoring others in writing can be a very rewarding experience. During my undergraduate years as an English major, I had the privilege of working in the college writing center. I tutored a wide range of students, most of whom genuinely wanted to improve their work and, ultimately, become better writers. Whether they struggled with simple grammatical errors or needed input on theme, content or structure, it was a pleasure to help.

One of my most memorable experiences involved working with a foreign exchange student during one summer. This girl came to the U.S. from Somalia with limited English language skills, but she had a great deal of determination to learn. We spent the summer working on sentence structure, grammar and exploring some of the general oddities of the English language. It was easy to work with this student because she tried so hard and made so much progress. At the end of the summer, we assessed how far she had come and we were both proud of the outcome. I even received heart-felt thanks from her parents when they realized how much she had learned.
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Avoid Burnout as an Online Writer - Choose Jobs Wisely

July 9th, 2010 1 Comment

The Schedule of an Online Writer

Making an income from writing is unfortunately still scorned upon by older, traditional folks who believe that a job should be something that you “drive into” by 8am and then “drive home from” by 5pm, along with the rest of the rush hour crowd. This is the right thing to do.

Well, let me tell you something about the right thing…when you are capable of generating a high volume of quality writing, and you can get paid for that writing, you best believe that the income you can earn from your skills will be just as good as any 9-to-5 job that you’ll find with any corporation.

The issue is the stereotype of the Internet. Many people still believe that the Internet is only for playing games or wasting time. Yet, as they sit down for their morning coffee, they’ll read the news on their favorite news website, or the latest gossip on their favorite blogs and forums. I think there are a lot of people who think that the content they enjoy is free. Little do they realize that someone gets paid (and paid well, I might add) to research and write that content.

Too Many Opportunities

Most major websites out there now realize that if they want to offer better content than their competitors, then it will require investment into high quality writers. Only good writers can get the job done. So now, if you’re a writer fresh out of college, with an English degree in your back pocket (or just lots of writing skill), you are now a very rare and in-demand commodity. Online publishers need you! The race is on, and as countless websites start investing into hiring and paying high-quality writers, you will find yourself faced with making some very difficult decisions. Which opportunities do you take, and which do you turn down? And yes, you will need to turn down opportunities, or keeping up with everything will burn you out - and then you’ll be no good to anyone.

4 Signs of a Good Online Writing Opportunity

Some of the opportunities you come across will be one-time writing gigs where you produce a bulk-lot of 20 to 50 articles and get paid a moderate amount per article. Other times, you may be offered to submit single pieces to blogs or websites and, if accepted and published, you will get paid. Best of all, there will be opportunities where you are assigned a certain number of articles to write every month, and you get paid a fixed amount per article.

So how do you know which opportunities are good ones? Watch for the following signs.

Per article payment, not royalties - Many sites try to get content that’s essentially free by offering writers “royalty payments” from the ad revenue the article generates. For the most part the revenue will be a few cents a month, if that. Your efforts would be better invested elsewhere.
Fair rates - It may be tempting to throw together a 500 word article for someone for peanuts, just because you can do it quickly. However, how well will it reflect upon you when, down the road, someone discovers this poorly written article that you failed to revise because you were racing through it for a quick buck?
Respect - You may be paid well per article, and even promoted into a management/editor position for a blog or a website, but if you aren’t treated respectfully and with dignity by the website owners or upper managers, you’ll find that you’re forever feeling insulted and patronized. This is a common symptom where a new writer shows up within another community - you are treated as though you have less experience simply because you are a new member there, despite the fact that you may have more experience or better ideas than the people actually running the site. Either say no to those promotions, or learn to bite your tongue and simply do your job…conflict and misunderstandings are too easy when you work with people remotely.
Prompt Payments - If you do work for a webmaster and he or she is a week late sending your Paypal payment, the odds are good that the person will be habitually late, or may even fail to pay you. It’s difficult to collect such payments in small claims for an Internet job, especially if the client is overseas, so if you sense a problem early on, just walk away.

It may be difficult to say no to new writing opportunities, but if you choose your work wisely, you’ll end up building a very strong and solid foundation for a very lucrative and successful online writing career.

An Example of a ScribeFire Formatted Post

July 1st, 2010 No Comments

This post is a sample of what ScribeFire is capable of. To create this post, all I did was highlight a word on a web page and click “Blog This.” The template I created did all of the formatting work for me!

Let ScribeFire Format Your Blog Posts

I wrote this blog entry up in just minutes, because I didn’t have to worry about all of the coding. The ability to focus on the creative process of writing, without worrying about the technical aspects of blogging, really offers a sense of freedom. ScribeFire really creates the reality of blogging much more often and in less time.

The images I chose for this example were based on the Google Alert page, so hypothetically this entry would be a review of Google Alert (which I guess I’ve actually been meaning to write - it’s a great service!)

Hopefully, having the ability to pop open a window and whip together quick blog entries about interesting topics, without the need for formatting the entry, will give me the incentive and motivation I need to write more FreeWritingCenter blog entries! It hasn’t always been easy to keep this blog updated, but in the coming year, with this great new blog design and the ScribeFire tool saving a lot of time, updates should really start flowing, so please stay tuned!

This is How Easy it is to Post from ScribeFire

April 5th, 2010 1 Comment

I’m currently writing an article for MakeUseOf that shows how efficient (and awesome) the Firefox addon ScribeFire is. In this example, I’m demonstrating how easy it is to highlight text from an online article or news story, and then quickly “Blog this page” - ScribeFire opens up a new post entry for you and inserts the title and blockquote exactly how you defined it in the options template. It really doesn’t get a whole lot easier than this!

ScribeFire vs DeepestSender: One Blogging Addon to Rule Them All!

“The tabs on the right offer broad support for WordPress’ other post-writing features, including categories, tags, timestamp, trackbacks, and ping options. You can even scroll through older entires and make changes to them on the fly. Is there anything this addon can’t do?”

Video and Audio Blogging With Your Mobile Phone

March 23rd, 2010 No Comments

I’m working on a review of a very cool application called Qik, which lets you both distribute a live video stream directly from your mobile phone, or you can record and share video snippets - like a video podcast of sorts. Just copy and paste the embed code into your favorite website, and your done. Better-yet, you can configure Qik to auto-post to Twitter or Facebook, not how cool is that.

The video below is a 20 second shot I did with my Motorola Droid - this is our pathetically bad-looking pug. She’s ugly - but she really does have a great personality.

And then there’s iPadio, which lets you embed audio blog posts to your blog - awesome!

Are There Legal Real Work from Home Jobs?

March 22nd, 2010 1 Comment

suitman I am currently facing what many of you who are reading this are probably facing as well — the company you work for is passing on rising health care costs to employees, your salary is flat or sinking every year, you’re told to use up your vacation time or take unpaid time off. This is the situation that you can find yourself in when you work for a corporation. You’re ultimately subject to the whims of the corporate leadership, and as most of you probably know by now - the corporate world isn’t exactly soaking neck deep in ethical behavior or concern for workers.

Unfortunately, worker loyalty and company loyalty is a thing of the past. In the 1940’s and the 1950’s, you would join with a prestigious company, work there for 25 or 30 years, and then retire on a sweet pension into your golden years.
are there legal real work from home jobs

The company cared about you and took care of you, so in turn you devoted your entire life to giving the company your absolute best. The 1980’s seem to be the turning point, with NAFTA and the exportation of jobs to foreign workers. Companies started getting greedy, loyalty to workers (at least in the U.S.) plummeted as corporate leadership started doing whatever it took to cut overhead, increase profit, and win those coveted stock options and bonuses.

The Plague of Outsourcing

Over the last couple of decades, Western workers are forced, more and more, to make difficult decisions. Many of our jobs are being outsourced to 3rd world countries where the pay is a fraction of that for industrialized nations, and the standard of living is even lower. Citizens of those countries are exploited, and citizens of the Western world are gradually coming to terms with the fact that company loyalty is dead. This is the world we live in.

However, there’s another amazing reality that’s shaping up, thanks to the Internet. The Internet is leveling the playing field, so that no matter where you live, you can produce something that people all across the world want. Let’s face it - whether you’re sitting in the UK, the U.S., India or China, if you have information or knowledge that a large majority of folks want and are willing to pay for, then you have the potential to create your own work at home job.

Finding Legal, Real Work from Home Jobs

Are there legal and real work from home jobs? Yes. I’ve personally successfully accomplished several. One was working as an Ebay Powerseller of Antiques. The product you sell doesn’t matter, all that matters is that you identify a source for goods that you can get at a decent price, and list and sell on Ebay at a higher price. However, the work is grueling - taking pictures, writing up listings, dealing with customers, packaging - it takes a great deal of time and often the profit margin is very small.

There are other things you can do to take advantage of the Internet in order to draw an income. These are legal, real work from home jobs that only require your skills, not your pocketbook. If you can write, there’s great demand for professional bloggers, and the pay is increasing every day. Creating your own website or blog may take some time to launch, but if you put in the effort you could potentially generate some impressive residual income. Don’t forget the value of intellectual property like writing quality, useful eBooks (or even real books) and selling them online. If you have a skill or knowledge that people are asking for - then you can serve a niche that no one else can access.

Yes - there are ways to find legal and real work from home jobs and opportunities. All it takes is a little bit of creativity and a pinch of nerve to work for yourself rather than a corporate madhouse. And, of course, you’ve got to find a way to cover your health care costs….and that is a major sticking point for most U.S. workers. Hopefully, this is something that will get resolved soon so that more people can start working for themselves, rather than “the man.”

New voicemail from (xxx) xxx-xxxx at 11:30 PM

March 1st, 2010 No Comments

This is a test of using google voice to post at my blog. Hopefully global voice can transcribe my voice accurately. Let’s see how well pool voice can do. Thank you.

Writing on Your Blog From Your Mobile Phone

February 28th, 2010 No Comments

blogging from a mobile phone About eight yours ago, I purchased my first PDA. It was a Windows Mobile phone from Cingular, before it was bought out by AT&T. Back then, I never considered that I’d be writing on my blog from a mobile phone, as I’m doing now.

That first phone was a Cingular 8125, and I bought it so that I could access Ebay while attending antique auctions. My plan was to look up the market value (average completed sale price) of an item so that I knew the max I could bid on an item without taking a loss.

Riding the Wave of a Technical Trend

The plan was clever, because at the time, noone was using mobile Internet…it had just hit the market and hadn’t quite caught on yet.

The plan wasn’t foolproof though. First, I had to figure out how to get the phone to access full browsing, not the scaled-down ‘media-net’. As insane as it sounds, most of the help desk folks didn’t know the difference. So, I was on my own to figure it out using tips fromk the gurus in the various mobile phone forums.
blogging from a mobile phone

Next, I learned that the mobile version of Facebook didn’t offer a view of completed items. Once again, I had to figure out how to trick the Ebay website into thinking I wasn’t a mobile phone. Once I accomplished that, I was in business.

Unfortunately, in full browsing mode, conducting the completed item searches on Ebay was unbearably slow. I realized that living life on the technological edge of the mobile Internet was not going to be easy.

Finally, the ease of use of mobile technology is becoming much more manageable. Everything comes pre-programmed and ready to go. Upgrading to the Motorola Droid this year was the best thing I ever did.

It helps me to blog more often than I ever could before, with a very cool mobile Wordpress app called WPtoGo. It let’s you post full blog entries, complete with formatting, pictures, links and more. It rocks, and I highly suggest it to other blogger riding this mobile tech wave into the future.