writer2writer.com

Yes, I really am bad.

It’s been ages since I posted, and I’m truly sorry.  Life has been a little complicated of late - ever since a crazy person side-swiped my car and left me with whiplash.

I was sitting quietly, waiting for the traffic to clear so I could do a left-hand turn, when this person smacked the side of my car.  She was so close I couldn’t open my door even a fraction.  According to my GP, the impact jerked me side-ways, which is how the whiplash occurred.

I am defnitely not happy, particularly since my cute little car is only one-year old, and is the first brand-new car I’ve ever owned. <sigh>  The repairer has promised to make it good as new.  I hope he keeps his promise.

Okay, now some good news…

Next week I’m off to the Romance Writers of New Zealand writer’s conference.  This will be my first trip to NZ in over thirty years, and I’m really looking forward to it.

I’m going there as a writer, but I’m also going as an editor for The Wild Rose Press.  I will be giving a talk on publishing and TWRP, and will also be taking pitches from writers.  This will be a new experience for me, and one I’m a little nervous about. 

I’ve organised my schedule so I will have some time to just laze around for a day or so after I arrive, and also don’t have to rush off after the conference ends.  I’m looking forward to spending time with cyber friends I’ve made over the years, but have never met personally.

I’ve booked into a couple of workshops at the conference, but from my perspective, networking is one of the most important issues at conferences. I’m in the process of getting all my gear ready to go, and that includes my marketing materials.  I’m currently awaiting bookmarks, which are being printed as I type. If you’re ever lucky enough to attend a conference, either for writers or readers, bookmarks are a really inexpensive way to get your message out to loads of people in the shortest possible time.

One disclaimer with bookmarks is to try and target the right audience.  For this particular conference, the audience is romance writers.  So the bookmarks are double-sided, with Writer2Writer on one side, and the new romance sub-site on the other. That way I’m specifically targeting romance authors, and on the other side I also promote the ‘general’ site.  Win/Win.

I’ll try to pop in again before I leave next week, but if I don’t, I’ll definitely post details of the conference on my return.

Oh, and if you’re going to the conference, make sure you come up and say ‘hi’!

Cheryl

I stumbled across a blog where the owner discussed an epublisher that had contracted two of her books. 

This publisher, according to this person, both of whom shall remain nameless, has a policy of not editing contracted books — at all.  I don’t know about you, but I want my work edited. 

I especially want it edited by someone who knows what they’re doing, and knows how to bring out the best in me and my writing.  But even a bad editor is better than no editing at all.

According to the blog owner, readers don’t see errors, they just skip over them.  Ahem, I’m a reader, and I find every tiny error that appears in a book. Okay, I’m an editor; my job is to look for errors. But when I’m in reader mode, I find errors without trying.

As an editor, I know firsthand that writers will always miss problems with their work, be it a typo, physical characteristics, continuity issues, or something else.  As a writer, I do this with my own work.  (Everyone thinks that because you’re an editor your work will be perfect.  Not possible!)

I guess the bottom line - for me anyway - is that editors are a necessary evil, for want of a better term.  Personally I’m going to steer clear of that particular publisher since they obviously don’t put much value on the content of their books.

I’d love to hear your views.  Would you prefer to have your book edited, or do you think the raw form, the way you submitted, is good enough?

And my final thought - I wonder if this is a genuine belief that readers don’t see the errors, or whether it’s a cost-saving exercise.

Cheryl

If you’ve been a subscriber to my newsletter for any length of time, you’ll know I’ve been ‘dabbling’ in copywriting over the past year or so.

I’ve been marketing my butt off, and was on the verge of giving it all away because I felt like I was constantly marketing my services for little return.

Don’t get me wrong, the jobs I was doing were each worth doing, (up to $1,000 each job) but I certainly didn’t have a constant flow of work.

If you haven’t done so already, read my editorial for the last issue where I talk indepth about writing keyword articles.

The update on that job is the client asked for some changes.  They took me all of one minute maximum!

Last week I had a ‘networking’ workshop to attend, where I picked up a few potential new clients.  The next day I had a meeting with another potential client, (another client recommended me to him) and walked away with several hundred dollars worth of copywriting work, and the promise of more in the future.

This week I’ve worked my butt off producing the work that was requested.

In the midst of all that, I have had the keyword article client ask for more work to be done, plus another potential client - from a few weeks back - come back to me with a request for an article.

The end result is the last two are now booked in for next week.  There’s no way I can get their work done this week, partly because of the current project, and partly because my writing group is having a retreat this weekend.  I’m presenting two separate ‘workshops’ so I also have to prepare the information for those.

Naturally, I want to do justice to the project I’m working on, and I’m not prepared to jeopardise that by taking on too much work. Nor do I want to put myself under pressure.

It’s a really nice feeling to be able to tell a client (or two) you can’t fit them in until next week!

Cheryl

Welcome to the Writer2Writer.com blog!

Wow, I didn’t think I’d ever get around to organising a blog, but luckily, my tech guy installed it, otherwise I’d still be floundering. 

Thanks Craig, you’re worth double (even triple!) your weight in gold.

The purpose of this blog is to show you that if you really want to, you can make money from your passion of writing. Whether that’s in the form of fiction, articles, non-fiction books, novels, short stories, or any other area of writing.

The biggest problem most writers face is they don’t know where to begin. And that was my stumbling block too.  Once I understood how to do something, you couldn’t hold me back.

I want you to view this blog as your blog, so I’ll try not to ramble, or go off on a tangent.  Hopefully you will keep me in line.  <g>

If you have any questions, I’ll try to answer.  If you have any suggestions, I’ll do my best to take you up on them. My aim is, and always has been, to help writers. Some writers want to do this for a hobby, and that’s fine; it’s how I started out.

One day I was presented with the necessity to make money from my skill, so I turned it into a business - a business that’s grown and thrived over the past five and a half years.

If your quest is to make money, good money, from your writing skills, then you’ve come to the right place.

Cheryl