… and how to put them right! Advice and opportunities for new, aspiring and upcoming journalists and writers of non-fiction
A very quick post which I hope you’ll forgive – though it does at least suitably reflect the urgency of today’s advice: drop everything at once and go buy a copy of Woman’s Weekly’s special centenary collector’s edition – if you can still find one. Not because it’s a nice investment for your grandchildren, not …
I’m suddenly feeling a bit ambivalent towards … agreement, I guess, is the only word for it, although it doesn’t feel quite right. Agreeness? Agreeance? I see a lot of letters – ie letters to editors, for letters pages – which make a point of agreeing. “I agreed with your article on extreme knitting, and …
It’s a mistake to think this means “we don’t use freelance contributions”. It means “we don’t read articles you send us that we’ve not asked you to send us”. If they really want to try to put you off, they’ll say something like “Unsolicited articles are not read and cannot be returned” and perhaps add …
Disclaimers to start: I don’t much like to travel, I don’t much like to hear about people’s travels, I don’t write about travel (two published travel articles in a fifteen-year career, if you want the figures), and, although I do enjoy a beautifully crafted and fascinating travel article when I stumble across one, I’m fairly …
There are a lot of perfectly competent but otherwise fairly unremarkable writers earning a decent living from words. There are a few poor writers getting by as well. If you’re scratching your head, unconvinced, thinking that you rarely see average or poor writing in print, I have to declare a possible unfair advantage over you …
It is the anniversary of this blog. On 28th February 2010 I made this deposit on the blogosphere — and I refused to clean it up. Gratitude eternal to first-writer-to-comment Lorraine Mace for posting what she posted and not, say, ‘Sigh. Not another writing blog.’ So, ‘anniversary’. ‘The date on which something occurred in a …
I’m guilty of this. I’ll know it’s time for another mistake-writers-make, but I’ll dither about which one to cover. There are dozens in my ideas file, so you’d think it would be easy. But no, that one’s not quite right yet, that one’s a bit advanced, I’m saving that one for the 100th… there’s always …
It comes to you in the bath – and you know instinctively it’s a good one. You leap out and run dripping to your computer, soap suds still hanging off your ears, to bash it out and submit to an editor. Job done. A few days later, it’s rejected. A few months later, you see …
Namely, one of these: * The Origins of Halloween / Valentine’s Day / Guy Fawkes’ etc; * The History of Tea / Coffee; * My Intelligent Dog (and why he is the best); * My Dead Cat (and why he was hilarious); * Why I’ve Decided to Become a Writer; * My Interesting Family Tree; …
If one more new writer tells me he has twenty hours a week to spare to write but “I don’t have the time to read!” I may ask to be shut away somewhere dark for a bit to wail until rescued. Any naughty middle-aged ladies out there want to stroke me, pick me up – …
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