MORE Writing Tips

Written by Lin Stone
 Copyright © 1999 by Browzer Books

My first published efforts at writing did not endow my wallet with warm and fuzzy feelings. However, I took each new published piece and had Kinko's print it on an 8.5 by 11 sheet of goldenrod for me, with a growing list of other articles I'd had published, on the reverse side. This could be presented on first contact for a better first impression, then left with anyone I was trying to interview if they wanted to think about it. Doing this led people to let me interview them for paying markets. Then I put the paying market work in a portfolio (Kinko's again) and used the first (non-paying) work as an "Etc."

The problem for beginning writers there is FIRST to find places where you can get pieces published.  SECOND, to find something to write about that those places will accept, and THIRD, to find someone you can write about.

shareyourstate.com will help you there.  Share Your State accepts stories of Good Old Days, humor, business features, and interesting people or events. You can even do a restaurant review.

You will get a byline inside the article.  You can have a short biography at the bottom.  Your picture can often run with the piece.  

Sure, every writer dreams of getting paid for their work, but think of this as a step in that direction, not always necessary, but definitely always beneficial.  Even top notch writers like Robert Bly let their articles get published without asking for payment, so there is certainly no shame to the process.

Note though that Bob has a series of links in his bio at the bottom.  These links bring him traffic, and money.  Can you do the same?  SURE!

All you need is something to sell, that WILL sell.

For instance, you go to Commission Junction and from their thousands of products you pick out one you are sure will sell from your article.  In your bio you would write (Your Name) is an affiliate for (your product) that (delivers great benefits).  With your text link to that product you have the opportunity of earning money.  And, you will also be getting a fairly good count of how many people LINGER on your article long enough to have read it.  In other words, that link won't count (at Commission Junction impressions counters) unless the surfer sticks around for more than a few seconds.

Other programs are available.  Click HERE for dealerships.  Click HERE for work at home projects.  Click HERE for books and informational products in an electronic format.  

My next step was to form a target. Mine was to write a story about every major corporation in our megatropolis. I listed them, and as each one was written about, would check it off to look for other opportunities to write about the others. The list was used just as the portfolio was. "I have written about Systematics, Twin City Bank, Strouds, ETC." The Etc. was important. Somehow I always managed to leave the impression the reason I used the word Etc. was because there were MANY more on my list, when in reality there was always only the one more for awhile.

Using proofs of success in this form will build confidence in your skills, and speed up the time it takes you to succeed and switch over to full time.

<I am new to the writing field, how can I find some one to look at my stories?>
There is really no mystery to it.  Send them to magazines.  The editors will read them.

If what you really want to know is if your stories are good, bundle like-minded stories up as a book, and send samples to literary agents who are working in that field.  You will find a list of the top literary agents in a book by Jeff Herman, "Writer's Guide to Book Editors."  You can read more about it on http://www.talewins.com/Nook.htm  Then, there are agents who are progressive and easier to reach listed on Writer's Net.  The URL address is posted on http://www.talewins.com/Golden.htm  If you are already sure your stories are good, access the publishers page where the best publishers themselves tell you what type of material they are interested in.

One writer was having trouble with applying the rules for commas. No amount of constructive criticism would get him to change the way he wrote the next time. His logic with the commas was that he was consistent, even if he was wrong, and if he tried to use them correctly he would be inconsistently right, and wrong. 

Now, I can identify with that. Let's say you absolutely cannot tell the difference between their and there (believe me their are a whole bunch of offenders who can't tell which word goes their in there manuscripts). (then and than have the same problem for some reason completely beyond my comprehension) If your work comes to an editor on disk or by E-mail, in a format s/he can use, s/he can correct each mistake you made CONSISTENTLY wrong, with little or no trouble. It is when you are inconsistent that editors have trouble finding them all.

What is an Essay?  An esssay is a coherent expression of thought on a particular subject.
Example:

I discovered fear again tonight.  It's been a long time since I knew fear on an intimate basis.  But tonight it came, a wondering what was walking in the shadows as I stumbled  down the forest trail in the dark, if that was wolves howling on the hill behind me.  When I went walking this afternoon I wanted to walk in the woods too, but did not for there were people in there.  I realized I no longer trusted people to be human, and I had no one with me.

Fear is an awful thing. Fear locks us in a prison we call safety, behind doors we lock ourselves and worry they are not sturdy enough.  It makes me appreciate the lone homesteader whose door was barred ere the evening shadows fell.

Fear must spring from the very bowels of loneliness. Fear strikes hardest when there is no one but ourselves to rely on for succor, and no one to protect.

Check out our PERMISSIONS page for details on borrowing from other creators.

You will note at the bottom of many of our pages for authors, and sometimes at the top, I have laid out a passage for copyright observance. "This sample of original work on display here has all rights reserved to the creator. All other contents of this site are Copyright © by Tale Wins All rights are protected by International Agreement. Any disputes of ownership should be submitted immediately if not sooner."

Go thou, and do likewise.

There is usually not an ion of truth in anyone's statement that such and such a person will not give an interview to anyone "except me." The only time I believe a statement of that nature is when that person is grabbing my hand and leading me to the interviewee. THEN I am quite willing to cast all doubt aside. If that person won't help you get the interview, go for broke. Call on the Interviewee directly. As you are leaving after the interview is successfully done, ask him (nonchalantly of course) if he and "Ian" are still good friends.

The ONE thing you never want to tell an editor is: "And then I decided I to write Fiction." This one tiny little sentence is known to make even big hairy ape editors cringe and run for cover.

I was talking to an artist a few days ago, and naturally began talking about pictures. A sample was at hand and I showed it to him. He glanced at my picture and began telling me WHY it was so beautiful. He made me see that picture with new eyes, but more importantly, I learned how he looked at things, and this might work for you in a book somewhere. When he sees faces, he doesn't see colors, he sees shadows first, then contours, and finally color. "I trained my mind this way because shadows are what bring a drawing to life. Contours hold the shape, and color is an enhancement."
Good enough? He gave me more. "When I walk into a room I don't see a wall. I never see a flat wall. The first thing I see are the corners, the angles where the corners meet the ceiling, the floor, the doors, the windows. After I see the room in its true perspective then I look at the rest of what's there." Try looking at your world this way and see if you don't see the world with different eyes too, then get it on paper, in words.

Don't Rock The Boat

Speaking of boats, my heart was nigh onto bursting with gratitude as I sent the little company yacht skimming over the lake just at sunset. The first touch of fall was a burst of iridescence in the evening glow. My eye leaped from tree to tree, from shadow to shadow, from bird to bird. Always there was the water stretching out away from me, on and on.

Waves have always fascinated me. When I rocked the boat the smooth velvet surface of the 150 acre lake swelled up with waves which reached out to the very farthest limits of my vision. There was so much to see, great herons, landing ducks, boat docks, green bushes springing live from dead tree stumps. I wanted to see it all, to breathe in deep the glory and the privilege of being there in my little yacht. I put more bite into the yacht's single, kinetic thrust engine to see more and more, until the shadows were lengthening into bare infinity. The skipping jacks caught my attention as darkness fell. Amazement filled my soul as I realized they were actually flying fish, right here, on my wonderful lake. Once more, gratitude filled my soul. Thanks Father, for letting me be here, to see this, to feel it, to hear it, and wrap myself up in joyous living.

Then, I took my little eleven foot yacht up next to the pier. I did it so beautifully, even though this was only the third time I had docked it. Pride flooded my heart as the little yacht just barely clicked against the pier. "Why, not even Captain Walter Mitty could have brought the Queen Elizabeth into dock with this much aplomb."

And that is when disaster struck. There I was at the pier, darkness falling rapidly, visions of sugar plums dancing in my head, and I hurriedly tossed my only kinetic thrust engine onto the pier, preparatory to disembarking. Then I grasped the tie rope firmly in my hand, stood up, and began to shift my weight from the boat onto the pier.

I moved too fast, or maybe it was too slow. The boat rocked beneath me, and to keep my balance, I settled back down into the boat so I could catch my balance and try once more.

There are tides in the affairs of men which, when grasped at their flood, can carry us upward to heights beyond our wildest dreams. Snow Lake is a small lake, and the tide is small too. It was nonetheless appreciable that the tides in the affairs of men were flooding just then. They were flooding OUT into the lake. I was riding that outward bound flood in my little yacht.

One glance behind me, two glances behind me, even three glances behind me, and I did not see one shred of beauty remaining on Snow Lake. No, as it dawned on me that I was heading out to that darkened sea, terror gripped my soul. Being out there all night, alone, suffering all the pangs only a born-again hypochondriac can even dream of, did not appeal to my sense of adventure at all. I leaned over and stroked the gooey water with my hand, trying to stem that horrible tide. My sovereign demands were not met; my yacht kept right on following the flood.

Once more I glanced behind me. It was dark out there. It was deep out there. I did not want to be out there, alone, helpless throughout the night, at the mercy of mosquitoes, the victim of thirst, hunger and (gasp) there was probably an E-mail message waiting on my precious computer on top of all that.

It was time to act, NOW, now before the water was over my head, if it wasn't already, now while I still had the strength to drag in my eleven foot, aluminum model yacht.

So, I bailed out. Sooner said than done, tt took some doing, for that is one stable boat. Rock it, rock it, rock it, and finally out I splashed bottom up in the water. My soul was not prepared for the shock I found. While the bottom of the lake looked to be only four feet from the surface, there was a degree of uncertainty about just where terra firma begins to firm up down there. My feet kept going down, down, down, and I knew that I had better pretend the bottom was just extra heavy water or my lips would soon be bubbling. Just like I was swimming, I began struggling towards the shore, dragging my boat behind me. The shoe came off my right foot; it did not come to the surface. I could not find it. I left my right shoe behind, then the left one too, and concentrated on reaching the pier ahead of total darkness.

As I hauled myself out onto the pier, shivering in the sudden chill, I realized how thankful I was to be OFF that beautiful lake I had so yearned to be on, even if I did still have half a mile over gravel road to traverse on my bare feet. There was gooey mud up past my knees. Lucky for me, I had made it. Lucky for me I'd had sense enough to begin making it in time.

Even then, my mind leaped back through time to view the beauty I had found by being allowed on the lake, and compared it with the terror I'd gone through when almost forced to be on the lake, and realized that many things are like that in life.

Man can be happy in any set of circumstances, ONLY as long as he has command of the situation. Remember that, the next time you want to put your own Walter Mitty into jeopardy. Meanwhile, I have determined to carve an oar out of wood and thus have another kinetic thrust engine to keep with me always in the boat, just in case.

After reading the foregoing Mark Stevens drove out from Colorado to bring an oar for me.  As and I were sitting on the placid lake down on the end where all the old roots grow we looked out at all the root tips sticking out above the water and our imaginations took root. "Now, if those were alligator snouts," Too far north for alligators, he protested.

"We'll move the boat then."

Mark took the bait: Okay, down on the edge of the Everglades a father took his youngest daughter out in a small boat. It was a perfect day until the young girl shouted, "Daddy, look at the teeth he's got!"

The point is, anywhere you are, your mind should be clicking on new situations you can get excited about. We pointed at some brush at the end of the lake. What would make that exciting? A dog howled behind us and we had it, Throw a man out there, scrambling up the bank, and slipping because of the leg irons. We had the beginning of a good story.

You will too.

Other than for classification needs, Word count does not count with editors.

Let me rephrase that.  With editors, only good words count. There is some kind of dubious honor bestowed on those who produce epics which actually get read. It is kind of like having a twelve pound baby: Everybody wonders how you survived long enough to get it done, but very few of them offer to babysit for you so you can have another one) My advice is to just shoot at producing good words and let the word count fall where it may..

Listen, observe, and ask questions to improve your writing.  

It isn't often that a writer gets to save the world from the callous creeping crud. But, I got to talking with a goat farmer here in Mississippi. As we walked around his farm I kept noticing that parts of the OTHER SIDE of the fence looked almost burned, and the rest didn't. "Are you using Roundup?" I asked, pointing. He glanced that way then shook his head. "No, what you see dying there is the kudzu. Goats will do anything to get at it."

I was instantly interested because kudzu is taking over the whole south. I looked around then, inside the fence. There was no kudzu anywhere. He followed my gaze and nodded. "When I put goats in here this whole farm was covered with kudzu just like you see across the road there. The goats keep it cleaned out." I marveled because Mississippi alone has enough kudzu to feed every goat in the world. Now all we have to do is figure out a way to sell goats. Anybody need a kid?

Here is a small part of a larger article I once wrote, and then dropped. You will notice it is full of facts.  Facts are in the public domain.   Feel free to use any of the facts you find in it.

As You Were, Ladies by Earl H. Roberts

Even in the good old days, women did not know their place. During the 18th century, 1732 to be exact, When women were seen riding in regulation habits the Spectator called them "masculine females."

By 1750 "the Ladies' Revival of Learning" was infuriating men all around the globe. "Warlike women, learned women, and women who are politicians abandon the circle which nature has traced about their sex, and convert themselves into men."

19th century

1848 the Albany Register mentioned the first Women's Rights convention and its "unsexed women." "Wild women," the Saturday Review called them.

1850 the first perambulators were condemned by Lady's Newspaper "Since it is easier to wheel a child than to carry it, what will prevent a mother from wandering from home many hours every day?"

1852 The Saturday Review called the Women's Right convention the "Tomfoolery Convention." Other papers called the women there part of the "Shrieking Sisterhood."

1860 the Queen said: "A woman may give her leisure to literature, but let her once set her foot within the pale of professional life and she is practically unsexed."

1860 the New York Herald wrote: "Thirty years ago it was thought unsafe for a lady to visit a public place in the daytime. Now they wish to go to the theater alone at night. Several women in New York whose social position secured them from criticism have already taken the freedom of attending the theater alone."

Harper's Bazaar was sternly criticized for "exposing women's faces in public prints."

1870 the Queen announced: "It is certainly time to condemn every step taken toward the individualization of women lest their children become the gammins of the gutters."

1872 Brigham Young's granddaughters censured for exposing their ankles in public.

1874 the Queen said: "Out of 100 Englishmen, 99 refuse to allow their womenkind to belong to a ladies' club."

By 1890 clubs for women were everywhere.

1882 the Queen said: "A generation ago it was not proper and hardly possible for young ladies of good repute to walk alone in the streets of London. The modern girl scouts the idea of dangers to be concealed from her, of dark places in life which she is not allowed to penetrate. A curious state of things, but one which has to be accepted whether we like it or not."

1890 the Nation declared: "One would naturally expect that these bold innovators would have to go through a long period of probation. But no such thing has taken place. The sweet girl graduates have quietly glided in among us and become familiar figures; they seem to find lovers and husbands in the ordinary course of nature, and among men who are not looked upon as visionary or eccentric."

1890 The greatest nuisances in travel were those Kodakers who snapped pictures of women's ankles as they got on or off public transportation.

1894 the Queen remarked again: "The Ideal is now a strong, athletic, breezy womanhood, which has no tenderness and no reserve -- which talks slang and smokes -- which is out in all weathers and all day long, which hunts, fishes, shoots, cycles, goes to its clubs, gives dinners to its male friends and is something of a boy itself with its comrades. It has no fears, no sense of shyness. To it a man and woman are interchangeable terms; what one does, the other may do also."

                    
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Writers, we have once again initiated a place for you to post your own short stories to the web.  When you do post, those stories will be FLUNG to the far corners of the web for millions of readers to see.  Add your moneymaking sales copy in the resource box at the bottom of the article.  Our readers are invited to read those stories published here.  Look on the right hand side for instructions.   Don't wait to be a writer. Write now. start with fillers. start with jokes. start with vignettes. START. Remember, there are some people making a good living who don't do a thing but come up with IDEAS other writers can develop. The key is to begin scribbling and don't look back. If nothing else, start yourself a blog. When positive feedback begins to trickle in you'll gain confidence to stretch out to bigger and better things. Click on the Cover and  Get the Free Book,  The companion title has now been published too..... Sell Everything You Write... Take advantage of every subject and every author in this book.  Any one of them could be worth a million dollars to you.  You can stack the odds in your favor and sell virtually everything you write.  You will find over 30,000 words of pointed advice here telling you how to do exactly that.  Articles by Lin Stone, Robert Bly, Judy Cullins, Kathy Burns-Millyard, Robin Nobles, Max Shifrin, Michael Carr, Lynda Lotman, June Campbell, David Vallieres, Bill Platt, Maria Stefanova, jl scott, ph.d., and others have been assembled into one powerful package that you can use to catapult your career into high gear.  There is a resource box at the end of most articles.  If the author has given you good value then be sure to visit their web site or resource facility to see what else the author has available for you.  This has been published by Browzer Books in pdf format for your instant pleasure.  RIGHT CLICK HERE to download.   Now there is a third book ready for your perusal.   It is a 100 page book, a series of shortcuts in learning to write and speak well. Book Four Article Writing Secrets reveals the easy, proven and simple way to pump out High Quality Articles and turn them into long term Residual Income.  Eight Special Tools for Writers, Click HERE Have you ever dreamed of becoming a professional cartoonist? Now you can get your own cartoons PUBLISHED and EARN REAL $$$$ within THREE MONTHS... GUARANTEED! Some people begin making money immediately.   http://yourcartooncareer.com/ordernow.htm Productivity begins by recognizing and valuing your brilliance, time, and space. It starts with awareness of what works and what does not. It continues with examining what needs grease, or other needs. Search for the truth for what you need in order to rev up your writing.   $10 Book Covers  Use your cover to make your books look real  BEFORE you write them -- and this will help you to sell your books to publishers and editors.   Book Sales Made Easy   Bullet Proof your Proposal  When your book DIES  Sell Your Books While Asleep   Why Should You Get e-Published? A success story from Lin Stone. Cafe Hemingway, news, peace and rest. Do ebooks want to be free?  Every writer needs to get away from it all so, Get Your Own Country Estates  DIRT CHEAP! There are many success systems available to the world of writers, including the Christian's Self Improvement Plan.   How to tell if you are helping web pirates.   CONTACT Travel Writing Search Engines  Writer  Friendly Insurance  Free pictures that can help get you published in a hurry. Golden Writing Resources Over 100 articles are available to help you write better, faster, and find the readership you crave.

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Literary Treasures
Last Forever

The heroes of Homer still romp through the Trojan plains.  The wisdom of Confucius still rings with truth.  The last minutes in the life of Socrates shall never die.  Christ rises triumphant from the tomb.  The immortal works of Shakespeare shall yet claim the thespian boards of deepest space.  Gulliver shall travel on forever. Maybe none of the writers you see working here at Tale Wins will ever be that good, but we intend to give them every chance to make it into the Literary Hall of Fame.  Remember too, you don't have to be THE best to be proud of doing your best. It is said you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. On the web that is very definitely NOT TRUE.  Writers on the web can change the ending of each story twice a day, or even change it every time a new visitor comes, according to whether it is a man, woman, or child visiting, or some other criteria entirely. On the web you can go on improving your story any time and every time you feel like it.  You can have your own web site and rearrange each page in it as often as you like.  You can change the links and the navigation system as often as you like.  If you aren't getting paid enough you can find better advertisers.

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