By Terreece M. Clarke By now, every writer knows to promote their blogs and web articles through various social networking sites. Almost as soon as you hit publish, you’re sending the url through Twitter and that’s great, but have you ever thought about using social networking and email blasts to promote your print work? It’s pretty easy when the magazine or newspaper you’ve gotten a clip from has the clip online. Then it’s just a matter of zipping it out to all of your Facebook, Twitter and Digg friends. When the clip isn’t available online, you then have a great [Read more…]

You’re a writer – and a darn good one too. You’ve got tons of magazine or newspaper clips under your belt, you’ve been a freelance writer or blogger for years, but for some reason your web article stinks like an old, half-empty can of tuna fish. What gives? Writing for the web is different than print writing and blogging and making the transition takes a bit of tweaking. Just like a hunt for the strange smell in the fridge, let’s see if we can sniff out your web article’s issues: It’s Too Long Web readers have a shorter attention span. [Read more…]

As a freelance writer, you get to meet all sorts of people and often you make some unlikely friends. I’ve been lucky to cultivate friendships among many of my interview subjects and some of my editors, however, friendships with editors can be a dicey subject. Editors often feel besieged by writers who want to be “friends,” but that friendship often entails the writer really only being friendly enough to get a writing job. Writers are also weary of friendships with editors because they fear being taken advantage of. So can writers and editors be friends? Well, there’s friendly and then [Read more…]

Here at FWJ we tend to be a happy, sharing, encouraging bunch. We look out for each other, congratulate each other and share info. What about contacts? Some of my best and most lucrative gigs have come from a shared contact – an editor’s email, a forward of insider information and even better, a “you can use my name” when submitting a query. These “hook ups” are essential to the writing community and sharing works best when it’s a two way street. I have a writing mentor that has boosted my career (and confidence) tremendously by shooting me a helpful [Read more…]