A Balancing Act: Mother and Writer

            How to Begin a Freelance Writing Career at Home When You're a Mom

            You love your kids and you love to write. How can you do both?

Whether you have small children, middle-sized children, or big children – moms have a lot on their plates. We’re great at multi-tasking but usually it is for others and not ourselves. 

I’ve been a mom for 30 years and counting. With a 17 and 11 year old at home (and homeschooled) and my tendency to write only when inspired, I’ve learned it is imperative to work consistently if I am going to have a home-based, freelance writing career.

Once you have made the decision to be purposeful in your writing and have identified your yearly goals and weekly objectives, here are some tips for busy moms:

• ·   Scheduling

There’s no doubt that the kiddos come first. But that doesn’t mean you cannot find time to write. Even very young children can learn to respect mom’s time. Of course, life happens and there may be interruptions to work around. But if you do not have a designated time scheduled for writing every day, it won’t happen. You have to have a target to aim at or you will not hit it.

• Space

You need a writing space. That doesn’t mean you can’t sit on the couch with your laptop while the children are nearby. But your writing space will be one spot to keep your supplies and a place to go when you sit down at your designated time. It also makes you feel more professional. I fit a small desk in my bedroom. It immediately took my writing from casual blogging to writing magazine articles with a purpose. 

• System

If you don’t buy the groceries this week you won’t be preparing any meals! Rarely do things go well when it’s hit or miss. This was my difficulty. I am very organized and efficient when it comes to managing my home but the writing kept falling through the cracks. That's because I only wrote when inspired. I learned if I sat down at my designated time, inspiration would come.

Choose certain days for specific tasks. For example, on Tuesdays and Thursdays I check the freelance job boards for assignments and apply. Once a week I write an article and submit it to the 3 magazines I'm interested in. Twice a week I research various topics I need to learn such as keywords, driving traffic to my site, etc. The internet is bursting with free courses!

I also bought a composition notebook and keep a "diary" of my daily writing accomplishments. It really helped me stay encouraged when I had an off week due to sickness, interruptions, and appointments.

• Sanity

Let’s face it, moms are in demand! Yet, it’s alright to communicate to family and friends that you are unavailable when you’re working from home. 

If your children are very young and an hour a day is all you can manage, make that hour count. Plan on writing in the morning before the children are up, during naps, or after they go to bed. Or provide a quiet activity for your children while you write.  If your children go to school then designate 2-4 hours each day and stick with it. 

If you don’t treat your freelance writing seriously, no one else will. It’s a business that will provide an income and that’s serious stuff.

• ·  Successful

Since joining an online writing group, I have learned to believe I can have a freelance writing business from home.  If you are a stay-at-home mom, you are used to working and not getting a paycheck. To think you can actually get paid for a writing assignment or publishing a book seems out of reach. 

I’ve got great news for you: it is within your reach.

However, it’s going to take patience and work. Don’t discount submitting one magazine article each week to an article directory or taking a resume writing course and begin offering resume writing services – it all counts. Just keep plugging away and don’t give up. 


Even if you have a goal of writing a book or a becoming a regular contributor to a magazine, you have to start somewhere. Dream big, but don’t forget to make it happen with earning money from writing projects that will help develop your platform, develop your writing skills, and get you where you want to go.

Do you have any ideas to add? Please share them!

                                                          ~

Kathleen Moulton lives at the foothills of the beautiful Adirondack Mountains in Upstate NY. She is a 25 year veteran homeschooling mom, a member of the Working Writer’s Club, and monthly contributor to Heartbeat the Magazine. You can find her passion to encourage at "When it Hurts" - http://kathleenmoulton.com

 

Notable Dialogue

Dialogue is important to our stories. Without it our story could be rather boring to the readers. Dialogue can add emotion such as anger, excitement, humor, etc. It can lend mystery, suspense, and terror. Dialogue can provide our stories with backbone. So it stands to reason we need to get it right.

When we edit our work, there are some things for which we need to watch. For instance, explanations that are outside the dialogue. These are generally emotions. Try cutting them and see if it reads better. If it doesn't, you may need to rewrite your dialogue.

We all know about the -ly words. Most of these are associated with adjectives which describe an emotion (angrily, lovingly, etc.). Cut as many as you can of these or rewrite it. Not all can be eliminated, but do try to eliminate as many as you can.

Speaker attributions are something you need to analyze closely. Are any of them physical impossibilities? Example: "Call me tonight," she smiled. This type of attribution can brand you as an amateur. Are there any verbs other than "said"? There can be an occasional exception, but for the most part "said" is all you need. Speaker attributions are for clarifying who is speaking. You may be able to eliminate them altogether or replace with beats. Do not overdo the beats because they can be distracting. A balance of attributions and beats is preferred.

Do not start a paragraph with a speaker attribution. Always start with dialogue and place the attribution at the first comfortable spot. Example: "Stand back," he said, "or I'll shoot." Also make sure you put the pronoun before the verb (he said). If you have several characters speaking in a scene, you can have a string of "saids" which can be monotonous. Using a beat can solve this problem.

Remember! Ellipsis is for gaps or a character's voice trailing off. An example of a gap would be when you are showing one side of a telephone conversation. Dashes are used to show an interruption.

When writing dialogue, paragraph more often, especially when it is something you want to stand out or you have new speakers.

I hope these pointers help as you self-edit your work.

Keep wrting!

Faye M. Tollison
Author of: To Tell the Truth
Upcoming books: The Bible Murders
                            Sarah's Secret
Member of: Sisters In Crime
                   Writers On The Move
www.fayemtollison.com
www.fayetollison.blogspot.com
www.fmtoll.wordpress.com

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

Have you thought about writing a novel?

November is National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo. This event has been held since 1999. About 300,000 people are expected to participate this year.

You can sign up online and it’s free.  At the end of November, you upload your novel and if you meet the 50,000 minimum word count, you win prizes!

It sounds like fun. Write a novel in 30 days. Not a novel you’ve already started, but something brand new and fresh. Don’t worry about editing for proper grammar and punctuation. Just write and worry about the rest later. You can keep a copy and continue working on it as long as you like.  

People all over the world participate in NaNoWriMo . You might be able to find a group in your area. Some of them meet in person to write and socialize.

On the website of NaNoWriMo, you will find the rules, the history of the event, forums and more. The website will be updated soon for 2012. The information regarding last year’s event is still up if you want to take a look and get an idea of what to expect.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/.

Hope to see you there in November!

Debbie A. Byrne has a B.S. in Mass Communication with a minor in History. She is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and is currently working on her first children’s book.

Writing and Marketing with The Muse Online Writers Conference

Every year in October writers have the opportunity to learn and grow through writing and marketing workshops and chats in the Muse Online Writers Conference. And, they have the even bigger opportunity to pitch their books to agents and publishers.

While you might be thinking you can't afford a week-long conference, you'd be wrong.


The Muse Online Writers' Conference is absolutely FREE!

Whether you're a newbie or your experienced, whether your book is published or your just writing it, whether you're going the traditional route or the self-publishing route, there's something in this conference for you.

I co-instructed a marketing workshop last October with Maggie Ball and the attendees got some great information that they were able to use right away. All the workshops are geared to help you move forward.

The conference starts October 8th and runs through the 14th. So, if you're not registered yet, do it right now - the extended registration ends September 30th. Don't dilly-dally.

Just click on the link (registration is on the left sidebar):
http://themuseonlinewritersconference.com


Hope to see you there!

~~~~~~~~~~
To keep up with writing and marketing information, along with Free webinars - signup for The Writing World newsletter on the right top sidebar!

Karen Cioffi
Multi-award Winning Author, Freelance/Ghostwriter, Editor, Marketer
Writer’s Digest Website of the Week, June 25, 2012

Karen Cioffi Professional Writing Services
http://karencioffifreelancewriter.com/karen-cioffi-writing-services/

Jumping Head First into Publishing

Guest Post by Bonnie  Rokke Tinnes

Several times during my life, especially after I graduated from Bemidji State University in Minnesota as an English and Russian teacher, I wanted to be a writer, but something always got in the way of the time and energy I needed to actually sit down and produce something of worth. I taught school for a while.  Then my husband and I were married and I worked on our farm.  We had children who took a lot of my time.  After my husband became ill, I returned to school, attaining a nursing degree from the University of North Dakota just in time to take over as breadwinner and caregiver.

We were lucky when I was given a job as a registered nurse in a Minnesota state hospital for mentally ill adults in the middle of lake country, which was the one thing that made moving and taking the job inviting.  The demanding job stressed and stretched my nerves and energy to their max so when I was home, I’d sit down at the computer and try to change my thoughts and mood by writing something of worth, something that was beautiful.  Writing had become a survival technique taking me away from the harsh realities of what seemed a cruel and heartless world.

Lucky me, I bought my first computer a couple of years after I moved here in 1995.  After I learned how to use it, I found it the best tool a writer could ever have.  It was easy to write, delete, cut, copy, and paste, quite different from sitting at the typewriter ruining paper with typos and other mistakes.

It was after retirement that I became more serious about writing.  Having a lot of time on my hands, I began organizing all those pages of thoughts I had worked on for years, many about my childhood and growing up in the middle fifties on a farm in northern Minnesota.

Book signing
Franklin Arts Center,
 Brainerd, Minnesota

I hired someone to edit my work and began writing Growing Up Margaret, a story about three sixth grade girls growing up in rural Minnesota in the mid- fifties who become best friends.  Following that, I wrote Margaret Inc, a story about the girls’ seventh grade year, which is my second book in a trilogy I plan about Margaret. These books appeal to anyone from middle school to those who grew up in the mid- fifties because they portray the culture, setting, and time in history realistically.

 During my lifetime, I had also written numerous poems and organized some of my nature poems into a book called Snow Presents and Poems.  I also plan to organize more of my poetry for future publication.

Not getting any younger and having all my poems and stories in my computer or on copy paper, I began to dream of having them published.  I knew that if I didn’t do something, all my work would be in vain if something happened to me, and I wanted to leave these stories to my grandsons.  If I wanted my dream, I needed to jump in myself and try something because I was finding it almost impossible to get my foot in the door of a publisher, and I didn’t have time to waste.

 During July, 2010, I attended a Highlights Foundation writers’ workshop at Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, New York. It was an educational and rewarding week, and I learned what I needed to improve my writing for publication. The manuscript I submitted at Chautauqua to my mentor, published children’s author Helen Hemphill from Tennessee, was Margaret Inc.  I was pleased and encouraged when she said that my writing was almost there and would just take some tweaking.  She also said that I had strong characters and plot.  What I needed was to use more dialogue and to show more and tell less what was taking place in the story.  Hemphill’s works include The Adventurous Deeds of Deadwood Jones, Runaround, and Long Gone Daddy. 

I probably rushed the submission to a publisher when I returned home.  It came back to me with a note that said that my writing was probably too Midwestern to sell nationally.  The editor suggested I publish it locally.

With the help of my editor, I continued to perfect my writing.  Since he was older, I also enlisted a younger reader for a second opinion.  Between the two of them, I was able to tweak and polish my writing, making it acceptable for publishing.

I studied published books and learned how to set up the title page, dedication page, and all the other introductory pages.  I learned how to set up page breaks so a new chapter began at the top of its own page. I even went to the internet for an ISBN number and also uploaded my manuscript to the Copyright Office, paying for the whole thing electronically.   I was learning and doing things I’d never done before and even enjoying it.

When I felt everything was ready, I uploaded my book to Amazon.com for Kindle, and it worked.  Once it was uploaded, I could see how it looked and make adjustments before I saved it for publishing.  It took a few times, but it was finally uploaded as I wanted it.  Next, I uploaded to Barnes and Noble for Nook.  And just like that, I was published.

It didn’t end there.  Some people wanted a hard copy, a book they could hold in their hands.  I am not an illustrator so I found a website, Dreamstime.com, and there I found photographs that I could pay very little for the right to use on a book cover.  I hunted through them until I found the perfect one for each book.  I searched the internet until I found a reasonably priced, good printer, DiggyPOD, in Michigan who would print as many books as I wanted at a time.

Before I ordered any printed books, I went to Facebook and to my email and asked my friends if they’d buy a book if I printed some.  I received enough monies to pay for the first printing.  They kept their word, and they also loved the books.

Tuesday, September 4, I had my first books signing right here in Brainerd, Minnesota, at the Franklin Arts Center.  It was thrilling to watch as people bought my book.  I also was featured in the Brainerd Dispatch’s magazine, HerVoice, 2012 fall issue. 

  A good friend once told me, “Everyone wants to be a writer, but no one wants to do the work.”  He should know because he teaches college writing.  I can tell you from experience that those words are true.  None of it was easy, but it was worthwhile.  It took jumping in head first and a lot of guts, but I am happy where I am today as a writer. I just told my husband that I am beginning to feel like an author.  

Please visit my website www.bonnierokketinnes.com.  There you will learn more about my writing and me and also how to get in touch with me.  I would love that.

--Bonnie Rokke Tinnes