Angela Booth's Writing Blog

How do you know your writing's good?

You know by the degree of satisfaction you feel when you read it.

 

Give yourself some distance from your writing. When you've finished a piece of writing, leave it for a day or a week (longer is better) before you reread it. Are you surprised and pleased at what you wrote?

 

Whatever you feel, understand that once it's on the page you can fix it.

 

The more you write, the better you'll get, it's inevitable. So your first  aim is always to write MORE.

 

You CAN succeed at your writing career

My most-asked question, from students and others, is: "Can I make a living from writing?"

 

My answer is always YES. However it comes with a rider. You can make a fine living IF you can take the reins into your own hands and commit to marketing your work and services consistently.

 

Marketing is a MUST. No one knows you, or knows what you can do, until you tell them. You need to keep putting the word out. Think about how much advertising and promotion large corporations do. They promote week after week, month after month. They know that not to promote is the kiss of death.

 

I also explain that YOU CAN'T STOP. You need to keep making contacts, and keep sending your work out into the market. If you're just starting out, it will take around three months for you to get steady, ongoing work.

 

Easy electronic portfolios

Paper portfolios are becoming obsolete. The easiest and fastest way to send clients and editors a portfolio of your best work is via email, or on a CD-R, using PDF files. That is, using the ubiquitous Adobe Acrobat format, which runs on any computer platform. PDF allows you to format your portfolios precisely the way you want them. You can include scanned newspaper clippings, scanned brochures, Microsoft Word documents, photos, and images.

 

Handy as PDF files are however, creating your PDFs has been a challenge because Adobe Acrobat is expensive software if you only need to create one PDF a week. Bargain software to the rescue.

 

Check out:

 

PDF995  — Free software that allows you to create PDF documents as easily as hitting the "print" key from within any application.

 

PDF ONLINE  — A free online service to create PDFs.

 

Electronic portfolios are a wonderful marketing tool. One tip: never send anyone a PDF attachment without asking them first. It's much better to burn your e-portfolios onto CD-Rs and slip them into the postal mail. Of course, you can also deliver them in person --- take a couple of CDs with you, to use as a leave-behind after a meeting.