For Doubtful Women Writers – 3 Tips for Increasing Your Confidence

For Doubtful Women Writers – 3 Tips for Increasing Your Confidence

As a woman writer, do you struggle with self-doubt? If you do, you’re in good company. Female writers are almost always paralyzed by self-doubt, self-criticism, and fear – even the most successful published, most well-read authors. I don’t think male writers struggle with the same self-doubts. Here’s what Lisa Bloom writes in Think: Straight Talk [...]

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Writing Tips and Quips From the Great Fitzgeralds

Writing Tips and Quips From the Great Fitzgeralds

Need inspiration and courage to keep writing? Heed the great authors of the days of yore. These writing tips and quips are from Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald (he wrote the classic The Great Gatsby). This month on Quips and Tips, I’m featuring quips from mothers who weren’t well-behaved and (as always) practical tips for [...]

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4 Most Popular Ways to Attract Readers to Your Blog

4 Most Popular Ways to Attract Readers to Your Blog

Written by on April 24, 2013 in Increasing Website Traffic, Online or Web Writing with 5 Comments

You don’t need 20 or even 10 ways to use social media to attract blog readers – you just need a few “best practices.” Here, Honor Clement-Hayes describes how to get people to read what you’ve written. “How are you expecting people to find you?” she asks. “If you don’t have at least a blog, [...]

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How to Hire a Social Media Marketer

How to Hire a Social Media Marketer

Your hands are full doing what you love (writing, creating products, running your business) – you have no time to market your books and brand online! It’s time to hire a social media marketer. Here’s what an author says: “I’ve read a million ‘how to’s’ about social media, and have spent a ton of time [...]

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How to Get Your Book Published – Advice From Publishing Pros

How to Get Your Book Published – Advice From Publishing Pros

Written by on April 11, 2013 in Literary Agents, Publishing Tips, Writing Tips with 3 Comments

These tips for getting published are from a panel of writers, literary agents, and editors who answered questions from a roomful of eager writers at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference (phew – how’s that for a run-on sentence!). Before the tips, a quip: “If the doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I [...]

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6 Reasons Your Blog Doesn’t Make Money

6 Reasons Your Blog Doesn’t Make Money

The main reason your blog isn’t making money is probably because your traffic isn’t high enough – you don’t have enough readers clicking away on advertisements. But, traffic isn’t everything! You can make big bucks even if you only have a few hundred readers a day, depending on where your ads are and what they [...]

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How Do You Get Paid for an Article After the Editor Leaves?

How Do You Get Paid for an Article After the Editor Leaves?

You write an article for an editor – after agreeing on a fee – and the editor leaves the magazine. How do you get paid for that article? Here’s what one blogger says: “I was commissioned to write two articles by a publishing company for their new magazine, which is launching this month. After agreeing [...]

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10 Creative Ways to Challenge and Improve Your Writing

10 Creative Ways to Challenge and Improve Your Writing

Written by on March 25, 2013 in Freelance Writing, Writing Tips with 0 Comments

My writing skills improved dramatically when I freelanced for Reader’s Digest, because the editor would go over every sentence with me. She’d call me up and we’d analyze my articles – and I’d learn what Reader’s Digest readers were looking for, what editors want from writers, and even how to pitch future articles. Most editors [...]

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How to Write an Author Bio When You’ve Never Been Published

How to Write an Author Bio When You’ve Never Been Published

It’s a conundrum: you can’t sell your articles because you haven’t been published, and you can’t get published because you haven’t sold anything yet! It’s similar to getting a job in many fields: you can’t get hired without experience, and you can’t get experience without working. What’s a writer to do? The worst part is [...]

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5 Reasons to Write for Free

5 Reasons to Write for Free

A reader recently asked if she should write for free for a website, and give up copyright of the article. Here’s her dilemma: “I volunteered to write an article for a website for free, assuming that I would at least get to retain rights to the article and pitch it to other websites. Come to [...]

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