Feb 06
Hello,
Welcome to this month's newsletter. Last month I asked you all to 'get writing' – and you didn't disappoint! Despite there being problems getting the newsletter to you there was a fantastic response to the competition and I spent a lovely Sunday afternoon curled up on the sofa being inspired by your enthusiasm. I learnt about a Sicillian detective and a Ugandan poet, an Indian Nobel Prize winner and a Mallorcan farmer. Quite a mix! But who won? Full details in the Feedback section below.
I'm also excited to announce that details of our Writers Bureau Writer of the Year award winners are now posted on the website at www.writersbureau.com. Have a read of their stories and then dare to imagine that next year, it might be you!
I hope you all have a great writing month,
Teresa.
"Since starting the course, I have been published in Today's Therapist, Yoga magazine, Devon Life, Italia!, My Weekly, Reach magazine, Massage magazine (US) and Nature & Health (Australia). I have earned (£2,500) this past year, mainly from commissioned pieces. I know for certain that none of my success would have arisen without The Writers Bureau and I can't thank you enough. Your tutors are professional and thorough and have changed the meaning of a 'home correspondence course', as generally they are deemed as inferior to attendance-based courses. I have an HND, a degree, and several diplomas, but I can honestly say that my Writers Bureau course has been more valuable to my writing career than any of my other courses. Thank you so much for allowing me to free the skills that for so many years were lying dormant." |
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"Until I did this course I had little or no idea about the difficulties one would encounter in getting the attention of editors and publishers nor did I know how important approach and presentation was. In these regards the course has been invaluable. Being a novice I was trying to make my way in an environment where advice and guidance has been hard to come by. My tutor, apart from consistently boosting my morale has been a terrific help in this respect. Considering the cost and the easy guidelines for the course I believe the course is excellent value and would warmly recommend it to any aspiring writer.
I have done three articles for Outdoor Life and have been paid US$1,800 for each of them, Magnum SA have accepted two at US$150 each and I am still waiting to hear from Sports Afield. Safari Press paid me US$5,000 for the book and 10% of profits.
Close to the end of my course I'll miss being in touch with my tutor who has been a much appreciated, helping hand in the dark. I am grateful to your organisation for all the help."
Hannes Wesels, South Africa.
Thanks to Marie and Hannes for their stories. Let us know what success you've been having by emailing ezeewriter@writersbureau.com with 'Success Story' in the subject line.
an essential guide for freelance writers
For up-to-date market information, Freelance Market News is invaluable.
Issued 11 times a year it's packed with information on markets in Britain and around the globe, plus you get all the latest news and views on the publishing world.
Every subscription comes with FREE membership of The Association of Freelance Writers. Your membership also entitles you to discounts on books and competitions, a free appraisal worth £18 and a Membership Card which confirms your status as a Freelance Writer. For full details and to subscribe visit: www.writersbureau.com/fmn/
IN THIS MONTH'S ISSUE OF FMN:
MELANIE BUCHER SHOWS YOU HOW TO
BREAK INTO THE EX-PAT MARKET
THE NET FOR NEWBIES
You’ve finally made your mind up you’re going to be a writer. You’ve enrolled on a course, subscribed to writing magazines and are thinking of joining a writer’s circle. In short, you’re doing all you can to get published. Or are you? Are you getting free advice from experienced writers? Do you know what magazines are currently seeking submissions? If not, then you’re not making use of one of the best resources for the newbie writer – the Internet.
The Internet is home to writing sites – thousands of pages of free advice for writers of all levels, and in all genres. Learn how to get the most from these sites and you’ll increase your chances of success.
The best sites offer general writing advice, genre specific articles, forums, places to post and critique work and archives. Here you will find all the writing advice you’ll ever need when you need it. Do you want to know more about writing a column? Or self-publishing? Or creating believable children’s characters? You’ll find the answer on a writing site. Best of all, most sites also offer free newsletters.
Newsletters are an excellent way of improving your craft if you are short of time as most newsletters contain at least one article of interest to a newbie. Many newsletters also come with market listings, competition news or a calls for submissions section. What better way of improving the likelihood of having an article accepted than to read these listings to find out what editors actually need? If nothing else, when you’re out of ideas, the listings can spark off your creativity. As a bonus, some newsletters come with a free newbie orientated e-book. To begin with, subscribe to a variety of newsletters to find the ones which best meet your writing needs – you can always unsubscribe at a later date.
Some sites also offer free e-courses on writing. An e-course is an electronic course, sent via email, which consists of a series of articles giving specific writing advice. There are currently free e-courses available on writing fiction, journalism and writing query letters. E-courses are usually between 5 and 12 lessons long.
If creative writing is more your thing, then try the BBC’s Get Writing site (see below). Although the site is no longer updated, it still offers a wide range of free online Mini-Courses on Creative Writing, created by tutors from British Universities. There are courses at all levels, covering all genres.
Many writing sites also offer forums where you can discuss topics with other writers such as, "Should I query or write a letter of introduction?" Forums not only keep you up to date with recent developments in the world of writing, but are yet another place where you can find answers to your writing questions.
Some sites offer areas where you can post your work online and have it critiqued by other members of the site. These can be useful, especially when finding your voice and confidence, but if you’re submitting work regularly, you should ask yourself: “Should I be working on this or a paying article?”
And that is the only drawback of the writing sites. If you’re not careful, you will spend all your precious writing time reading! So, set yourself limits as to how long you will spend online, target specific areas you want to improve upon and read only articles relating to that area, then write and put the theory into practice. After all, it is only by writing that we really learn to write.
Useful Sites:
www.bbc.co.uk/dna/getwriting
www.mridukhullar.com/forwriters – offers a free 12 part e-course on writing query letters. If you sign up to the free newsletter, you get an e-book on 400 paying freelance markets.
www.easywaytowrite.com – free e-classes on writing fiction, free newsletter and e-book “The Easy Way to Write Stories That Sell”.
http://writingbliss.com – wide selection of free and low-cost e-courses.
www.writing-world.com – 78 articles on Getting Started alone. A huge, comprehensive site.
www.filbertpublishing.com – free e-book "Power Queries".
www.absolutemarkets.com – sign up for free newsletter and get “Writers’ Online Guidelines" e-book.
www.writingfordollars.com – free newsletter plus free e-book, “83 ways to make money from writing”.
AUTHOR'S BIO
Dawn Copeman is a student of The Writers Bureau and editor at www.newbie-writers.com. Subscribe and get a free 85 page e-book “The Newbie Writer’s Resource Guide”. Dawn was also placed as a runner-up in our Writer of the Year award. Read her full story at www.writersbureau.com.
YOUR FEEDBACK
Firstly, let me thank everyone who entered the competition for taking the time to get involved. I really enjoyed reading your entries and have been inspired to try some authors I might not otherwise have come across.
There was such a mix of entries, with authors from around the world, and we touched on a diverse range of genres – from horror to children's writers – with some poetry and literary criticism thrown in too!
The winning entry was chosen primarily for being an extremely well-structured piece. It was persuasive and yet retained a clarity and smoothness of style. Congratulations go to Nicola Mostyn who won a copy of The Writers' & Artists' Yearbook 2006. Her entry is posted below with a selection of the best runners-up.
When asked to choose a favourite writer, my mind lands at once on several whose work I return to time and again for comfort, inspiration or pleasure. These are writers who bear little in common, except a quality of saying something to me that is both beautiful and true.
Philip Larkin, Jeanette Winterson, Margaret Atwood and Virginia Woolf jockey for position (a lovely image, don't you think?) but, in the end, I've chosen British author John Wyndham as my 'favourite': A Science Fiction writer, no less.
If Science Fiction has a bad name then Wyndham is the novelist to challenge it. Born in 1903, he started writing short stories in 1925 for American publications, eventually settling on a style which he described as "logical fantasy".
This is the heart of Wyndham's appeal for me. In his fiction, acts of telepathy, time travel and, indeed, Armageddon occur in real life; he sets them off like bombs in his fusty, middle class, 1950s England and watches as the tea-and-scone façade falls apart. His sparse, self-possessed prose is more evocative in its economy than any hysterical melodrama could be, insisting on a chilling plausibility. Not for Wyndham the monsters from outer space, but rather atrocities caused, very likely, by our own nuclear folly. Not for him the vision of a world pulling together to overpower the enemy, but rather a society fighting one another for survival and supremacy.
Wyndham's best known book, The Day of the Triffids, begins with magnificent matter-of-factness. "The way I came to miss the end of the world – well, the end of the world I had known for close on thirty years – was sheer accident: like a lot of survival, when you come to think of it."
It could happen to you, Wyndham says. And then makes you believe it.
Nicola Mostyn.
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An author who can find the time to write whilst working full-time, bringing up two daughters and caring for a sick husband, demands the respect of any aspiring writer. PD James not only successfully squeezed writing into her busy life (she plotted her stories on the way to work) but did so before the luxury of word-processors and their ability to cut and paste, spell check and print.
James’ crime books are carefully plotted, peopled with well-drawn characters and they also exude atmosphere, whether the murder scene be a church, museum or Norfolk beach. Her most famous detective, Adam Dalgleish (his surname is that of James’ former English teacher), begins to feel like part of the family as we meet him and his passion for poetry in novel after novel.
Phyllis Dorothy was born in 1920 and is now a great-grandmother as well as a Baroness. She began her career in fiction by making up stories for her brother and sister as they lay in bed. The second world war intervened and put her literary ambitions on hold but in the following years she realised, ‘…there was never going to be a convenient moment to write,’ so this determined woman decided just to get on with it.
One of the reasons that James chose crime writing was because it was a popular genre and therefore would stand a better chance of publication. Her first novel Cover Her Face was published in 1962, after being accepted by the first publisher to whom it was sent.
PD James is an example of someone who wanted to write, studied the market and then got stuck in and produced good quality work in spite of whatever else was happening in her life.
Let all us would-be writers resolve to follow suit in 2006!
Sally Jenkins.
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So mild-mannered was the man himself, it is hard to equate Montague Rhodes James with the creeping horrors of his stories. An accomplished medievalist and Provost of Eton, he lived the life of the stereotypical academic. His stories, initially not intended for publication, thrilled and chilled his students as he read them aloud each Christmas, in what became a traditional Yuletide treat. A candle-lit chamber full of youngsters, gathered around a roaring log fire, would savour the moment, agog at the unfolding tale of horror. One story per year maintained the quality of this treat – a quality that persists in the single volume of stories he left behind, aside from his academic writings.
At the end of most collections of his stories, there is a piece entitled ‘Stories I have tried to write’. Here, James shares some ideas that did not reach print. It is written almost conversationally and the shy humility of the man rises from the page. Most of his stories concern characters not unlike himself in background and habit: an unmarried, unassuming, cloistered academic. If we superimpose these characters, one upon the other, might we come face to face with James himself?
His equanimity seems at odds with his hapless protagonists, driven by curiosity, scepticism or greed. More incongruous, though, is the nature and variety of his ghosts and demons. In his perfect, almost Victorian prose he presents us with normality, only to invade it with some horrific entity or another. By extrapolating James from the sum of his characters, we are witness to his humanity when he teaches each one of those characters their own lesson. These same lessons form a theme that pervades all of his fiction – that no matter how much we think we know, far more lies beyond our ken.
Chris Collins.
* * * *
When I think of my many favourite authors and who has
inspired me most of all, the first name that comes to
mind is Agatha Christie. Not because I’m a ‘who-dun-it’ fan, for I’m not one, strictly speaking.
But to me Christie symbolizes all that I would love to
be myself – a compulsive story-teller who is “unputdownable” and yet tells the story in such a
simple, lucid and down-to-earth style that it is
intelligible to every class of reader.
One does not
have to be a scholar or a specialist in a particular
field to enjoy her books. Her language is lyrical
without being highbrow. It is pictorial without being
bizarre. She is expressive
and realistic without ever lapsing into vulgarity. Her characters stand out as real individuals – I’d have recognized Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Parker Pyne, Tommy or Tuppence anywhere if I ever bumped into them,
yes, even in India! Her stories deal with everyday
incidents that could happen anywhere in the world and
to anyone. Yet they are interesting enough to make the
story gripping.
What I find particularly attractive is
the way she portrays human nature, which rings true
every time, no matter where the story is located. I
am sure that is the reason why her books, including translations, continue to remain popular even today, all over the world. I have never aspired to be an author so erudite or futuristic as to give the reader a complex. I’d rather write stories that are understood and enjoyed by all – school children as well as adults – like Christie’s stories are. I don’t care to be the critic’s delight or the scholar’s dream. I’d rather be loved like Agatha Christie!
Swapna Dutta.
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If you would like to comment on any of these pieces, or have any other thoughts to air, get in touch in the usual way at: ezeewriter@writersbureau.com with 'Feedback' in the subject line.
THE WRITING CLINIC
If you have a question you want answering then send it to: ezeewriter@writersbureau.com with 'The Writing Clinic' in the subject line. We only answer your questions in this section of the e-zine and not individually.
"I have recently come up with an idea for a creative project, the project will involve a blog site. My only concern is how do I copyright my work? As it will be an ongoing project."
Alex Morgan.
THE WRITING CLINIC'S ANSWER
Dear Alex,
The copyright in your work, as we’ve said so often before, automatically belongs to you unless you sell it. Make sure, however, that you make it very clear that your site is copyright protected. To see an example of this got to our site (www.writersbureau.com) and scroll down to the bottom of the home page. You will see that there is a copyright notice and also ‘Conditions of Website Use’. Click on this to see the wording we use to protect our copyright.
After saying this, the Internet is a very free-wheeling medium and if someone does decide to ‘lift’ chunks from your blog site you might never know. On the other hand, if your blog is so interesting that people want to do this you can congratulate yourself on your literary skills and the interest factor. But, on a more serious note, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Put your copyright notice on your site and good luck with your project.
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"There are lots of e-books for sale on the Internet. Is this a good way to get a book published? If so, what is the best way to go about it?"
Debbie Summers.
THE WRITING CLINIC'S ANSWER
Dear Debbie,
Although e-books are not the runaway success that they were first predicted to be, their sales are continuing to grow and their quality and reputation are improving; so they are definitely a market worth considering. People can be wary of downloading books and reading them on screen but once they get used to it they tend to come back for more, so e-books are gaining in popularity. But before making the decision to e-publish or not, it’s best to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages:
E-publishing isn’t restricted by the market and genre specifications of traditional print publishers so you have a better chance of publishing if you’re writing a book outside the ‘normal’ format of style or length.
E-publishing is cheaper than print publishing so isn’t governed by the need to generate high sales figures. Because of this, e-publishers are more willing to take a chance on new authors with a good story to tell even if they don’t fit a recognisable mould.
It can get your foot in the publishing door and could lead to a contract for a print book.
The Society of Authors now accepts e-published authors as Associate Members providing they have a contract from the e-publisher. This means you are entitled to advice on the contract.
E-books don’t gather dust on bookshelves and, as most people only read the majority of fiction books once, e-books can be a more economical way to read.
There are, however, disadvantages:
E-books are still not generally considered ‘proper’ books so there can be a professional stigma. This means that some online bookstores don’t stock them and many magazines and book review sites won’t review them.
There is usually no advance payment for e-books and although royalties are higher, the sales are much lower than for print books.
E-book publishers don’t usually promote their books as much as print publishers, much of the marketing is often left to the author.
E-published authors are more vulnerable to copyright piracy than print authors as, once a customer has bought an e-book, they can print out any number of copies and sell them on. It is illegal, but it’s virtually unstoppable.
Most people still prefer a ‘proper’ book – you can’t read an e-book in the bath!
But if, after weighing up the pros and cons, you decide to go ahead then you might want to consider enrolling on The Writers Bureau Course – Writing for Profit Using the Internet. Plenty of useful information is given about different kinds of e-publishers, checking them out and making sure they are not involved in any kind of scam. Full details of the course are available at www.writingfortheinternet.co.uk
In the meantime, you could check out www.ebooksnbytes.com, an e-publishing resource site with lots of info and a list of e-publishers.
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Note: If you are a student of The Writers Bureau and have a question relating to your course please contact the Student Services Department direct at: studentservices@writersbureau.com
www.ABCtales.com is, "probably the most exciting story and poetry site in the world. The site where you can explore and develop your creative writing skills, get support from our editors, publish your short stories and poems online, get feedback and writing tips and meet fellow writers, all for free."
If you enjoy blog-watching then you might want to bookmark the following Writers' Blog, contributed to by one of The Writers Bureau tutors: www.weejie.blogspot.com. It's a, "cornucopia of opinions, advice, instruction and stirring words from experienced writers on the art and craft of writing, and a forum for aspiring and established writers to share views, experiences, gossip and tips."
Michael Gasson contacted us to say, "I publish a short story book that may appeal to your readers as a suitable market for their work." www.grimmyproductions.co.uk
The following site is a must for anyone currently writing or planning to write a biography. Among other useful information there are details of the annual Biographers Club Prize – with a £1000 prize for the winner. www.biographersclub.co.uk
That brings us to the end of this month's issue. Next month, Writers Bureau tutor Sue Wilkes talks inspiration in her article, Biscuits & Butterflies.
As usual, if you've any suggestions or would like to comment on content then please contact Teresa at:
ezeewriter@writersbureau.com
And don't forget – if you've enjoyed this issue of E-zee Writer and found it useful, tell your friends about it so that they can subscribe too!
www.writersbureau.com/resources/ezewriter.htm
THE WRITERS BUREAU, SEVENDALE HOUSE, 7 DALE STREET,
MANCHESTER, M1 1JB, ENGLAND.