Angela Booth's Writing Blog

Can You Sell Your Blogging Services?

Blogger for hire: what can you offer your clients?

Consider:

• The topics and industries you cover;
• Your social media profiles — how many followers do you have?
• Technical experience. Can you publish a draft post to a WordPress site, with suitable and optimized images?
• Are you au fait with the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? Can you research keywords?

Don’t worry about the technical details. Your clients will tell you what they want. Some companies prefer that you submit the content as a DOCX or as a Google Doc, rather than setting you up as a creator on the blog.

via peneloperedmont.com

You Hate Your Novel. How Do You Finish It?

I started my writing career as a novelist. I’ve also ghosted dozens of novels for clients. In my experience, the worse a first draft looks, the more likely it is that there’s an excellent novel hiding in the mess.

Here’s why. The chaos shows that you’re thinking — you’re captured by the story, and that passion will be felt by your readers.

A smooth first draft can be wonderful; your imagination handed you the complete story, all you had to do was write it down.

I’ve never had that happen, nor have any of the authors I know, but it could happen. Maybe.

It’s far more likely that your first draft is (predictably) horrid. Let’s assume that you think it’s beyond help, and do what professional writers do — we deal with it.

via medium.com

For Stressless Writing

1. Words flow: meditation tunes your brain like a garage tunes your car

The biggest benefit of my ten-minute daily meditation is that I get into a state of flow when I write.

My writing anxiety vanishes. My focus sharpens, effortlessly.

In summary: I write more, more easily, without stress.

via medium.com

Thinking Of Writing A Novella? (Sale)

In upcoming articles we’ll cover these topics:

• Plotting novellas and other short fiction;
• Story beginnings;
• KDP Select and novellas;
• From short story to novella; and more.

Black Friday sale: Write And Sell A Novella In 7 Days

I hadn’t thought of scheduling a Black Friday sale. However, after reader requests, Write And Sell A Novella In 7 Days: Your Blueprint For Success is available as an offering until December 2.

The program gives you a step by step plan for writing novellas, as well as a marketing strategy.

via www.angelabooth.com

How To Develop Characters In Your Novella

Short fiction: what your characters DO creates your plot

One of the most common questions I receive is: how do I plot a novella.

This is very easy, so let’s look at plotting.

Your “plot” is what your characters DO.

Unlike real life, where we do weird stuff for no particular reason, in fiction, motivation is everything because fiction is always causal. This happens, which causes this to happen, which affects this…

When you’re writing, you’re always thinking about causes. If you don’t, you won’t have a plot, and readers will be tempted to toss their Kindle against the wall.

For example, you can’t have your novella’s character, Tom, deciding he’ll skip work today and head to the beach on a whim: you must motivate him. He has to think, or say: “I’m going to the beach because (reason.)”

via www.angelabooth.com

Too Scared To Write

Perhaps you want to write, but you can’t do it. With every hour that passes, your deadline comes closer.

Alternatively, you’d like to write a book or a blog, but you stare at the computer screen for an hour without writing a word.

Feeling anxious when you sit down to write is common. Although few research studies into this condition exist, one study reported that it affected academics:

… around 50 percent of doctoral students in the U.S. and Canada drop out during the research proposal or dissertation-writing phases of their degrees before finishing their programs.

If writing anxiety is so common, what can you do about it?

Realizing that it’s a phenomenon which affects many writers can help. Years ago, when I wrote my first novel, I sobbed for ten minutes every day when rolled paper into my typewriter.

via medium.com

Secrets To Winning Great Writing Gigs

Put yourself in a client’s shoes for a moment. Let’s say you’re running an advertising agency. Your clients trust you. They keep you in business and pay your mortgage.

Suddenly, you win four pitches and you’ve got four new accounts. No way can you handle all that work in-house. You need subcontractors.

Who do you hire? You hire writers you know.

Jake, one of my writing students, built up a full calendar of great writing jobs within three weeks. I asked him how he did it.

He said: “I got out of the house every day and made as many appointments as I could. Basically, I talked to everyone who would talk to me.”

He said that he was shocked at how well people responded to him. He got his first gig on his first day. “Their writer let them down — they needed someone, and I walked through the door.”

via medium.com

Social Media For Authors: 3 Tips To Reach Fans In 2020

The big benefit of social media for authors is that it makes you more visible.

Tip: one way or another, you need to become visible, if you want to build your readership.

Authors become visible by:

• Publishing more; two and three times a month, to register with Amazon’s algorithms;
• Advertising on Amazon as well as on other sites;
• Publishing on every book retailer they can;
• Blogging…

Let’s look at three tips to help you to reach readers on social media.

via peneloperedmont.com

Streamline Your Content Creation In 2020

Ideas are currency.

As content creators, we need a constant flow of ideas from: conversations with colleagues and clients, our personal reading, research for specific projects — we collect bright and shiny ideas from anywhere and everywhere. Even from TV. One of my friends is a lifestyle blogger, who admits she gets most of her ideas from TV and press releases.

Tip: get onto the mailing lists for press releases from companies in which you’re interested. Large companies spend money on research. Their discoveries are useful to you.

via medium.com

The Ultimate Guide to Improving Your Productivity - evernote.com

Widely Used Productivity Tips

To achieve your full potential, use the following productivity tips. All the techniques have been tried and tested. More than 30 million people have read my articles since 2015. I’ve received thousands of emails from people all over the world. The techniques I share below are the most effective ones according to readers.

• How To Journal For Self-Improvement — While you might think that journaling has nothing to do with improving productivity; keeping a journal is one of the most powerful tools on earth. Many historical figures kept one. It can’t be a coincidence. If you’re starting with personal development, I recommend starting with journaling as well.
• The Pomodoro Method: Take Strategic Breaks To Improve Productivity — This method instantly improves your focus. It’s been highly researched. And the results are clear: The Pomodoro method is one of the best productivity techniques that exist.

via evernote.com

After a decade of using Evernote I still feel as if I'm just scratching the surface in using this amazing app.

Whatever you need to accomplish, Evernote will help.

Make The Most Of The Holidays If You’re A Writer

... One of my friends split from his partner in June; he won’t see his children until January. Another friend is dreading the holidays because in her family, quarrels and arguments are guaranteed whenever they get together.

Whether your holiday season promises to be happy or stressful, remember, you’re a writer. Not only can you cope, you can mine the season for story ideas to keep you happily writing all next year.

Want to make the most of the season and enjoy it too? Here are some ways to do that.

via medium.com

Find your best journaling method

Do you want to journal, but can’t seem to find a journaling method you like or that you can stick with? The best journaling method is the one you will actually do, and that serves the purpose you need.

First ask yourself, what is the purpose of your journaling? Do you want to journal to vent your feelings but not necessarily to look back on later? Or do you want to write as a record of your life and to preserve memories?

For venting, any notebook will do. Some people even like to burn their notebook when they are finished, to let go of the bad feelings.

If you want to write to preserve your memories, you are in the right place! All Quo Vadis planners and notebooks use acid-free archival paper to keep your memories safe for years to come.

via blog.quovadisplanners.com

5 Tips To Manage Your Goals And Your Life

Let’s look at some tips to help you to achieve your goals using mind maps.

1. Start where you are: identify your obstacles

What’s making you miserable and holding you back from achievement? Obstacles can be physical — or they might be emotional or mental blocks.

Use your first “obstacles” mind map as a brain dump. Add all your obstacles: the big ones like financial problems, as well as little irritations and emotional challenges.

via peneloperedmont.com

No Imagination? A Famous Novelist's Secret

He said, ‘Imagination! my dear fellow, not a bit of it; it is cobbler’s wax.’

Seeing that I was rather puzzled, he said that the secret of success was to put a lump of cobbler’s wax on your chair, sit on it and stick to it till you had succeeded. He told me he had written for years before he got paid.

What’s cobbler’s wax?

Presumably cobbler’s wax was once used by cobblers — shoemakers. According to this instructive tutorial from Eunan Hendron, it’s a sticky substance made of beeswax, rosin, and olive oil. Nowadays fishermen use it to tie salmon flies.

via www.angelabooth.com

Write A Novella: Want To Write Short Fiction? (Novella Series 1)

What’s a novella?

Let’s start by defining what a novella is. In a nutshell, a novella is a work of short fiction.

Word counts are arbitrary; you can set your own. For what it’s worth, here’s how I estimate the word counts of various forms of fiction:

• Short story: very short fiction up to 10,000 words;
• Novella: short fiction from 10,000 to 40,000 words;
• Novel: fiction from 40,000 words to… whatever. Your novel can be as long as you please.

Your mileage may vary. One author I know calls short fiction under 5,000 words a short story. For her, novella territory starts at 5,000 and goes up to 20,000. Anything above 20,000 is a novel.

via www.angelabooth.com