Whidbey Island Writers Association hosts an open house the first Tuesday of every month at the Rockhopper in Clinton. This Tuesday I hopped on a ferry to Whidbey Island to attend the meeting. I’m so glad I did.

The focus of the July meeting was Hedgebrook, a retreat for women writers that is located on Whidbey Island. A thousand women from around the world have been hosted for residencies of two weeks to two months. The retreat can host six women at a time, each in one of six cabins. A seventh cabin hosts an established writer in residence. Gloria Steinem is the most recent writer in the seventh cabin.

The tagline at Hedgebrook is Women Authoring Change.

Gitana Garafalo, Director of Alumnae Relations at Hedgebrook, was the speaker Tuesday night. An engaging speaker, Garafalo was passionate about Hedgebrook and as an alumna herself, she is particularly knowledgeable.

I had the best of intentions to take wonderful notes on all the Hedgebrook details, but upon reviewing my notes I discovered I had, through the course of the meeting, written 4 pages of story ideas and outlined a couple projects. Just sitting in that room full of writers inspired me in my own writing.

To the aspiring writers in the crowd: Have you ever gone out of your way to put yourself in a (real world, not online) room full of writers? If not, I highly recommend you give it a try.

Both Hedgebrook and Whidbey Island Writers Association offer numerous literary events throughout the year. Stop by their websites to see if they offer something that might ring your bell.

The 25 chapters in this book are divided into six sections:

1. Welcome to Writerland: Discusses what it means to be a freelance writer, and how the freelance writing process works. Included in this section is a chapter in which Editors give their commentary on what they are looking for in new writers.
2. Learning the Basics: An overview of the process of freelance writing including the key to getting an editors attention – writing a good query letter, along with brainstorming for article ideas, how to handle your first assignment and tips on conducting an interview.
3. Who’s Gonna Buy Your Stuff? Newspapers, Glossy Magazines and Trade Magazines – what they’re looking for
4. Online: the Newest Frontier: How to leverage online resources and opportunities to increase your writing profile and find new opportunities
5. A Short Course on Writing Effective Articles: An excellent overview of article writing, parts of the feature piece, the hook, and the the shorter pieces editors are looking for today
6. The Business of Freelancing: Freelancing is a business, and to be successful you need to learn how to run it like a business. This section covers marketing, branding yourself, potential for book deals business practices, taxes and contracts.

While not so useful for the seasoned freelancer, I would highly recommend this book to those interested in becoming a freelance writer or those just getting started in this line of work.

While the title of the book focuses on making big money blogging, the advice, questions and information provided within the book will help all bloggers, regardless of their income aspirations. My focus for this blog, as well as my personal blog at coffeejitters.blogspot.com, is not about getting rich.  My focus here is to explore and learn about the process of becoming a writer, if I happen to make a profit (or at the very least, cover my expenses) in the meantime, so much the better. 

The book is full of useful lists.  I love lists, the writers the book love lists, readers love lists, and the writers even suggest that you use lists in your blog.  One of my favorite lists in the book was “20 Types of Blog Posts.” For each type mentioned they went into detail about how to complete that type of post, why readers would be interested in that type of post, and how that type of post might affect the traffic and comment activity on that post. These lists are so helpful and with each item’s description, I could easily visualize their suggestions as applied to my blog.

Other lists that I found particularly helpful were

-          Improving comment activity

-          Know Your Audience

-          Be Remarkable

True to the title, the book dedicated a great deal of real estate to the topic of making money with your blog.  Of note is the fact that each of these options require steady traffic to your blog before they will do you any good.  So comment on other blogs to get readers to come to yours, find the right balance of quality and quantity to keep readers coming back to your blog, then you can really start to focus on the money.

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income was written by Darren Rowse and Chris Garret.

Darren’s blog can be found at problogger.net

Chris’ blog can be found at chrisg.com

Have you read this book? What were your thoughts on it?

I read Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones the first time in 1990. I was twenty and had just decided that I want to be a writer when I grow up. I had never imagined such a book: a writer writing about writing. It’s a simple concept, I know. But it blew my mind. I devoured every word and then went back and read it again. I was so full of hope and ambition and passion. I went out and bought myself a big beautifully bound journal in which I would practice my craft.

I went to a bustling cafe, sat down with my big steaming cuppajoe, got out my new pen and stared at the blank page while I waited for a jewel of inspiration. Nothing. Nothing in my head was worthy of that fancy journal. Crap. Drivel. Cliche. Not a single thought that tickled my brain or twitched the nib of my pen was good enough to commit to paper. How the hell do writers do this? Everyday?

Damn.

I missed the basic premise of the book: just do it. Don’t wait for it to be perfect, don’t repaint your walls to create the perfect writing room, don’t wait for the soundbites that everyone will still be quoting 50 years after you’re gone. Just write. You find the good stuff in editing.

Eighteen years later I reintroduced myself to an old passion that never died; the dream of making a living as a writer. It’s different this time. I write every day. Most of what write is crap, and that’s a beautiful thing. I celebrate the shit. I write in spiral bound notebooks that pile up and clutter our apartment. I write, I doodle, I daydream, I do timed writes, I write even when my head is completely empty. I write when I don’t know what to write. Sometimes I just write “I don’t know what to write” over and over until my pen writes something else. It’s not glamorous, it’s not inspirational, it’s not perfect. It’s just writing down the bones.

I re-read Writing Down the Bones and this time I got it. You have to be willing to be not perfect. I still have times when I find it critically important that I reorganize my files, or transcribe an entire spiral bound notebook into my computer, but on closer inspection that usually means I’m procrastinating and I’m afraid I might write crap. So then I sit down and write crap anyways.

check out Gaping Void 

Do you know of any more communities that I should add to this list?

Jobs I’ve held so far in my life
-McDonalds drive-thru cashier
-kitchen store sales clerk
-JCPenneys Bath Shop sales clerk
-Sam’s Club forklift operator
-Tour Guide
-Cruise Agent
-Project Manager travel industry
-Project Manager telecommunications industry
-temp agency (receptionist, secretary, typist, mail sorter, inventory clerk, ect.)
-customer service
-secretary
-payroll clerk

Things I liked about my work experiences
-variety of work experiences
-travel
-being able to take a project and run with it
-sense of pride when a project is completed
-being able to take ownership of a project
-being able to learn and acquire new skills
-being able to amaze co-workers and managers with my skills

Things I didn’t like about my work experiences
-micromanagers that are more involved in minutia than the quality of the end product
-needless meetings
-too much time trying to acquire consensus when the decision has already been made
-office politics
-excessively sensitive co-workers
-office drama
-dress codes
-lack of respect
-constant interruptions
-constantly on the phone

What are my values?
-honesty
-integrity
-quality
-improvement
-learning
-family
-personal time
-privacy

What do I like to do?
-learn
-write
-design
-figure things out

What am I good at?
-learning
-figuring things out

SMART Goals:
(Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-Framed)
Within one year I will have sold 5 stories and have a good understanding of the publishing industry and how to navigate and earn an income in that industry.

___

Value of the exercises

Nothing groundbreaking here, but it’s good to take a pause and evaluate what
you value and how well your work experience connects with your values. These exercises underscore how unhappy I was while caught up in the throws of corporate America.

I think for me it starts with a lack of confidence along with a pesky tendency towards perfectionism. Perfectionism is a lovely trait in an editor, but lousy when you are trying to undertake any kind of creative endeavor. Not that the end product cant be perfect, the problem is that the perfectionist in me wont let the brainstorming process really get rolling because every idea tossed out has to be perfect before it lands on the paper.

I haven’t really found a good way to deal with this issue of perfectionism, other than just plowing through it and trying to write despite the little voice in my head detailing everything that’s wrong with what I just wrote.

But the confidence issue compounds the perfectionism issue, or perhaps they are related. I don’t know where the lack of confidence comes from. I sit down to write at times and think I have nothing of value to contribute to all the printed words out there. Again, my solution for this is just to write anyways – even if it’s not perfect, even if it’s not any better than anything else out there. Just write. Maybe someday a stroke of genious will find its way through my fingertips and on to the page. Until then, I’ll continue getting practice writing and I’ll work up the courage to start submitting my work for publication.

today’s link: Confident Writing

todays questions:

• why do you write?
• how do you reign in your internal editor?
• how do you deal with issues with confidence or perfectionism?

The question is: how do I make a living as a writer?

This blog is my exploration of that question. Tag along with me as I learn the ins and outs of the publishing industry, how to write, how to get published, how to get paid, and how to keep my sanity while I’m at it.