… and how to put them right! Advice and opportunities for new, aspiring and upcoming journalists and writers of non-fiction
“Is my font okay? Should I indent my paragraphs? My margins are all right aren’t they? Shall I centre justify my title? Ought I number the pages? Is my cover letter too long? Too short? Too casual? What did you say about my font again?” If it’s a font I have seen before, doesn’t have …
I’ve written about ingratitude previously in Mistake No. 48 so perhaps it’s only fair gratitude gets a turn. I am not suggesting you do not thank your mum. She wiped your bottom once, after all. But I am suggesting you consider doing it in person rather than in an article. If thanking someone is the …
I will say upfront that the decision on whether to write for free or not is yours and yours only. As someone who has been making his living from words for 16 years – writing, translating, editing, proof-reading, tutoring – part of me, admittedly, thinks giving away words for free undermines the business in which …
Three or four times over the few years this blog has been running I’ve been asked ‘why don’t you write about writer’s block?’ – and I’ve never got around to it. Reasons? I feel a lot of it has been said already, and most writers who write about writing have had something to say on …
Question from a student: “After submitting a letter, how long should one wait before assuming the letter will not be used? Should one treat letters as ‘disposable’?” Send one off and if you don’t hear anything, forget about it and write another?” I have been asked this many times before, and I probably always give …
A long, long gap since my last post, for which I apologise, but I took a much-needed holiday in August. Italy, to see some nice relatives and eat some nice food and enjoy some nice weather – and to deal with some not so nice lizards trespassing in my bedroom and some un-nice snakes seeking …
Some weeks ago I wrote Mistake No. 69 and received a tweet from a writer who told me bluntly he’d stopped reading at a certain point during the post, fairly early on. That point was: “But it’s not really about the writing. Most people can write.” I asked him neutrally whether the post had bored …
Here’s a wise quote from a writer of whom I’d not previously heard, but who contributed a piece for the latest edition of The Author. Her name is Juliet Gardiner. She wrote: “Writers have never sat at home writing books. What they have done – and continue to do – is sit at home writing …
If you’re a new writer, having a good idea is good, but submitting a good idea may not be good enough. You don’t need me to tell you that breaking into magazines and newspapers is hard. Attracting an editor’s attention – merely getting a reply to your emails – is tough enough. And there are …
I see a lot of student papers which come to me a day early. By that I mean that the writer should not have sent it to me when he sent it – but slept on it instead. The article-writing process – from the first glimmer of the idea, all the way through to submitting …
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