Where Do I Get Ideas? That's the most common question I get from fellow writers looking to break into article marketing. The truth? Steal them. Yes, you literally steal ideas and twist them a bit to make them fresh ? make them yours. That leads to another question, how do you make old ideas yours so that they're fresh, new and ? dare I say ? revolutionary? Actually, it's not as tough as you may think. Here's a quick and easy formula I use for turning old content i...

Is it better to participate in content writing or write for magazine publication? The above question is actually multifaceted and can help you determine the overall thrust of your freelance writing career. It has been estimated that a writer will need to pen a million words before a publisher is likely to accept their first work. That means a lot of rejection slips. So, does that imply that content writing is preferred to the crafting of a book or magazine article? ...

Have you ever had anyone criticize your writing? Maybe they were just having a bad day. After all some people just can?t seem to say anything nice. Not everyone is comfortable with criticism, but there may be times when it provides just what you need to move forward in your writing. There is a man that?s been called the ?Simon Cowell of Christian Publishing?. A few quotes from Chip MacGregor might allow you to see that he?s far from being the touchy-feely type. The foll...

There was a time when you needed to relocate if you wanted to become a successful writer. In essence you went where the work was. The Internet has opened a whole new world for writers. The idea of telecommuting has become a welcome component to the mechanism of freelance. Today you can sit in a kitchen in Iowa and write for a publication based in the heart of New York. You can write for a firm in Australia from the comfort of your home office in Ontario. You can also wr...

"U.S. consumers purchase approximately 7 billion greeting cards each year, generating nearly $7.5 billion in retail sales." * Have you ever wondered who actually writes all of those greeting cards you purchase? Sure there are staff writers who may develop themes and specific greeting cards. However, there are numerous freelance writers who have received checks for the use of one or more of their greeting card ideas. "There are an estimated 3,000 greeting card publishers...

I just finished a set of conferences with my students which inspired me to write about the most important rule of writing -- writing is a process. So many of difficulties struggling writers face occur when they ignore this simple rule. Once you embrace the fact that writing is a process rather than an event, once you recognize that the more time you give the process to work the better, then not only will writing be easier you will also write better. Writing is a process...

Many struggling writers come to me asking what they can do to improve their writing. They continually face problems with sentence and paragraph structure as well as surface errors such as spelling, grammar, and punctuation. They know the basic rules of English and can often be very effective helping other writers revise their work but somehow manage to overlook the errors in their own drafts. It is a common problem and the solution is a dirty little secret among writers. I...

"Careers, like rockets, don't always take off on schedule. The key is to keep working the engines." - Gary Sinese If you pay close attention to the words and inferences of some who use freelance writers you will see that freelancers must be superhuman. The Top Ten Signs you Have Found a Perfect Freelance Writer 1) They are never too busy to work on my project. 2) They are always efficient enough to have the project completed yesterday. 3) They are willing to write ...

Many of the best stories in fiction have both an antagonist and a protagonist. The protagonist is the main character or hero that we cheer on and hope conquers all. The antagonist is the story?s villain. The best bad guys are the ones we love to hate. We don?t need to know why they are bad, we don?t need a play by play of the choices they made early in life, we simply recognize they are bad and we don?t want them to win. A story can operate without an antagonist; how...

Do you like to write letters to those who have meant something to you? Do people like receiving your letters? Have others said they always look forward to your letters? If you answered yes to any of the above questions you could be an Epistolary Novelist. This novel approach to fiction writing is unique in that the entire novel is composed with letters written between main characters or a solitary writer. One of the classic Epistolary Novels in Christian fiction is t...