The Writer's Perspective by Maria Schneider

Hi Writers,
Now is the time to bring your website to the attention of the WD editors. We're taking nominations for the best writer's website to feature in the October issue of Writer's Digest.

Here are the details:
We’re looking for the writer with the best personal website or blog that was created and is maintained without outside help. Sites will be judged on presentation, ease of use and marketing effectiveness. Send your nominations—and don’t be shy; you can nominate your own site—to writersdig@fwpubs.com with “Best Writer’s Site” in the subject line. The deadline is June 10.

Sites will be judged by Writer’s Digest editors. The top 10 sites will be listed in our October issue, in our e-newsletter and on WritersDigest.com. The writer with the best site will receive a one-year subscription to writersmarket.com and a subscription to Writer’s Digest; the nine runners-up will receive one-year subscriptions to Writer’s Digest.

If you post a link to your website in the comments section of this entry, I'll make sure your website ends up in the running. So let's see your sites!

Keep Writing,
Maria

blogs and online writing | Writer's Digest news

Tuesday, May 13, 2008 2:54:10 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [40]

Friday, May 09, 2008

Journalism: Breaking In
Posted by maria

Hi Writers,
To follow up on my last post about landing a journalism career, I asked our newly hired managing editor, Zac Petit—who graduated from J-school three years ago—to share his thoughts.

Here's Zac:
Ahh, journalism—long hours, low pay, shrinking newsrooms, coffee overdoses, sadistic deadlines, weekends spent covering garage sales boasting glamorous taglines such as “world’s largest.” But don’t fret.

There’s also a glorious upside: seeing your first 1A story, building impenetrable staff camaraderie with your “war” buddies, getting paid to write and edit regularly, seeing readers take an interest in your work, knowing you didn’t get a job in mathematics.

Journalism can either be your worst nightmare or your best friend. For many professionals, it’s both. As one writer here put it, “Basically if you want to go into journalism you have to look at it as a calling. … you have to do it because you love it, and live it, or else it’s not for you.”

My advice? If you’re just starting out and you don’t have any strong connections or solid clips, start small. Try a newspaper, a routine launching pad for scores of media professionals and authors (including greats like Ernest Hemingway and Kurt Vonnegut). For me, a jaunt out to a small rural daily was an ideal place to quickly learn the trade. Not only was it a journalism boot camp, but it also provided a rare opportunity to experience everything in the profession at once, from basic reporting and photography to advancement in bigger beats (in newspaper jargon, beats are basically your hallowed turf, such as the police or county government beat). If you work hard, lose a little sleep, get all your facts right and build some solid clips, often you can be out and on your way to a bigger publication in a year.

As for the college degree, it may not be necessary at every publication, but it definitely helps. A quick glance at the reporter hub JournalismJobs.com affirms that most places require a journalism or mass communications credential as a prerequisite. If you’re in a college journalism program, embrace internships, write for the school paper and seek out some freelance opportunities. If you’re not enrolled, do everything you can for starter clips, experience and connections: Write for free, network and talk to professionals to gain an understanding of the industry. When it comes to that first journalism gig, these are the things publications will be looking for—and it just might prevent you from having to move out to the middle of nowhere.

Yeah, journalism is hard. But when you talk to media professionals who have stayed the course, they’re likely to begrudgingly admit that it was well worth it—even if they did have to cover the occasional “World’s Largest Garage Sale” once or twice in their early days.

Zac will be contributing to The Writer's Perspective from time to time, so please welcome him. Also, feel free to post any comments or questions for him here.

Keep Writing,
Maria

journalism

Friday, May 09, 2008 4:15:43 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [5]

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

So you want to be a journalist?
Posted by Brian

Hi Writers,
I just hired a new editor this week to join the Writer’s Digest editorial team. In the process of screening applicants and going through the whole interview process with a number of fine journalistic candidates, I realized a few things that I thought might help those of you who are looking for a career in journalism.

The media landscape that new journalists now face has changed quickly and dramatically, and, unfortunately, merely being a superlative writer isn’t enough any more. Magazines and newspaper staffs have been downsized at just about every media company, and the editors and journalists who remain need to have a whole new set of skills.

So for the aspiring journalists and editors out there, here are a few old school and new media tips for landing a paying gig.

• Good writing and editing skills are still critical. Take all of the journalism classes you can because they will teach you to think of writing as a job and not to be too precious about your words. English classes are extremely useful too—to help you to recognize good vivid, imaginative writing. Being an excellent verbal communicator is as important as it’s ever been. But being an excellent verbal communicator who’s flexible enough to write for varying platforms—print, blogs, community sites, video scripts—will land you a job.

• Publish everywhere you can. Don’t be afraid to start small: your school paper, the local alt-weekly, whatever. Being published, even in smaller outlets will prove your tenacity, which is crucial if you want to survive in 21st century journalism. Note: a MySpace page doesn’t count as being published. But an essay published in a reputable online journal does—even if you didn’t get paid for it.

• E-Media skills worth developing:
A working knowledge of HTML
Experience with managing an online community forum
Professional blogging experience
Some graphic design knowledge, including InDesign
Digital Photography and PhotoShop
Video production and editing (in this era of free commercials via YouTube)
Digital audio recording and podcasting

And above all, you have to love it. Also, it doesn't hurt to marry well, too, just in case (sorry, couldn’t help myself).

If you have more tips for landing a journalism job, please share here.
Keep Writing,
Maria

journalism

Tuesday, May 06, 2008 8:14:39 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [12]

Monday, May 05, 2008

PRINT WINS!
Posted by maria

Congratulations to our sister publication [at F+W Publications] Print magazine, for once again winning an Ellie Award—its 4th—for general excellence in its category at the National Magazine Awards!

Here's a link to all of the ASME award winners; as always, an impressive, inspiring lineup.

Pictured here: a close-up photo of the Ellie Award, and the Print magazine team.

publishing news and views

Monday, May 05, 2008 6:12:50 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [3]

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Hey, Graphomaniacs!
Posted by maria

Hi Writers,
I know I said Friday was going to be the official rant day here on The Writer’s Perspective, but you never can predict when a good rant is going to come on.

I read an essay in the New York Times Sunday Book Review: "You’re an Author? Me Too!" that really gets to the heart of what we do here at Writer’s Digest. The piece was written by NYT Book Review editor Rachel Donadio.

Here’s an excerpt:
In 2007, a whopping 400,000 books were published or distributed in the United States, up from 300,000 in 2006, according to the industry tracker Bowker, which attributed the sharp rise to the number of print-on-demand books and reprints of out-of-print titles. University writing programs are thriving, while writers’ conferences abound, offering aspiring authors a chance to network and “workshop” their work. The blog tracker Technorati estimates that 175,000 new blogs are created worldwide each day (with a lucky few bloggers getting book deals). And the same N.E.A. study found that 7 percent of adults polled, or 15 million people, did creative writing, mostly “for personal fulfillment.”

In short, everyone has a story — and everyone wants to tell it. Fewer people may be reading, but everywhere you turn, Americans are sounding their barbaric yawps over the roofs of the world, as good old Walt Whitman, himself a self-published author, once put it.

“As publishing has become less expensive, the urge to write my own self has become the opportunity to publish my own self,” said Gabriel Zaid, a Mexican critic and the author of “So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance,” a meditation on literary life in an over-booked world. Today, he added, “Everyone now can afford to preach in the desert.”

The gist of the piece I agree with. With all of the outlets now available to writers: POD, blogs, etc. it’s easier than ever for writers to get published, since the gatekeepers are taken out of the equation. And it’s true that the number of published books is increasing substantially (mostly due to POD), while the reading public, or at least the book-buying readers, is on a downward decline. I can’t disagree with any of this.

What bugs me, though is the between-the-lines implication that perhaps writers shouldn’t be getting their writing out there any way they see fit.

Think about this in comparison to the other arts.

For example, have you ever heard anyone say something like this: “There are just too many street musicians. They really shouldn’t be playing music in public if they’re not with a record label.”

Or this: “Who is buying all of the art at those neighborhood art festivals? Why do these artists even bother—nobody is going to enjoy or buy their paintings!”

Why is writing held to a different standard than the other arts? How does a writer know if he’s good or not without getting his work out there any way he can?

Power to the people!
That’s my rant. Please feel free to add yours here, too.

Keep Writing,
Maria

publishing news and views | the writing life

Tuesday, April 29, 2008 7:43:05 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [13]

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Speaking of Fonts
Posted by maria

Hi Writers,
As I mentioned in the previous posts, I'm switching fonts for my blog posts—a minor face lift you might say.

Fonts seem like a trite thing for writers to concern themselves with. But in the visually oriented magazine world, I've observed first-hand that how you present your work really can make a difference in terms of your reader's experience with your writing.

I discovered early in my writing/editing career a cool trick. Whenever I was working closely with an editor (as a writer or a lower-level editor), I'd make a point of learning that editor's preferred editing font. Usually it was a sans serif font, Arial or Verdana, 12 point, double-spaced. I worked under some tough editors who were quick with the red pen and I soon learned to give them exactly—or as close as I could get—what they wanted. And part of my method was delivering the manuscript to them in their preferred editing font.

This probably seems like a trivial matter in the big world of writing and publshing, but it really can help. I think it all comes down to respecting your reader.

Keep Writing,
Maria

the writing life

Thursday, April 24, 2008 4:32:30 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [10]

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Reaching Your Audience
Posted by maria

Hi Writers,
A lot of writing books come across my desk and I try to give most of them at least a quick read before stacking them on my bookshelves.

So I thought, instead of just hoarding these books, I'd share a tiny bit here. I'm not going to be doing book reviews, just pulling out some interesting excerpts that I think hold some writerly wisdom.

Here's an excerpt from Standing at Water's Edge: Moving Past Fear, Blocks and Pitfalls to Discover the Power of Creative Immersion by Anne Paris, PhD, on finding a rapport with your audience.

How do you fantasize about your audience? Are they hostile and critical? Appreciative and giving? Are they willing to follow you in your expression?

Make a reality check about the nature of your assumptions. Are these assumptions based on your past experience with an audience? Or are they based on your previous experience in personal relationships?

For effective communication of your artistic message, your audience must be considered. View the audience as a potential new relationship. Your goal is to engage the audience in a two-way experience. Listen to them and reach out to them to invite them into your artistic space. Attempt to share your immersive experience with them rather than presenting it to them. This may involve considerable feelings of vulnerability, especially if you have negative assumptions about the audience’s willingness to engage with you. Finding trust with an audience and becoming skillful at eliciting a relationship with them is perhaps one of your biggest challenges.

Keep Writing,
Maria
p.s. I'm considering a font change. What do you think about this one? Verdana: Ya! or No way!

the writing life | writing books

Wednesday, April 23, 2008 7:24:55 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [8]

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

National Editor's Day
Posted by Brian

Hi Writers,

Is there such a thing as National Editor's Day?

Well, there should be. Maybe I'll send that one in to Chase's Calendar of Events, where I was most recently the primary contact for National Word Nerd Day—January 8 (this is the sort of thing that happens when editors get bored).

If you love—or hate—an editor, please read this amusing, satiric piece by Michael Kinsley, courtesy of Time Magazine:

Writers vs. Editors: A Battle for the Ages

Here's an excerpt:
Like the detectives and the prosecutors on "Law & Order," two very different groups of people are responsible for the words that fill the world's magazines and newspapers. There are the writers, who produce the prose, and the editors, who do their best to wreck it.

Writers are sensitive souls--generally intelligent and hardworking but easily bruised. Treat them right, though, and you will be rewarded. Writers shape words into luminous sentences and the sentences into exquisitely crafted paragraphs. They weave the paragraphs together into a near perfect article, essay or review. Then their writing--their baby--is ripped untimely from their computers (well, maybe only a couple of weeks overdue) and turned over to editors. These are idiots, most of them, and brutes, with tin ears, the aesthetic sensitivity of insects, deeply held erroneous beliefs about your topic and a maddening conviction that any article, no matter how eloquent or profound or already cut to the bone, can be improved by losing an additional 100 words.

Of course, all it takes is a few hours surfing the Internet to make you appreciate the value of a well-edited book, magazine or newspaper.

Please feel free to leave all of your fawning remarks about editors here. You can use all of the exclamation marks you want—I know it's hard to contain your praise. When you're finished commenting, let me know what day you'd like me to submit to Chase for National Editor's Day—and no, Leap Year is not an option.

Keep Writing,
Maria

the writing life

Tuesday, April 22, 2008 3:10:49 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [7]

Friday, April 18, 2008

Friday Rant Day: Googleganger Woes
Posted by maria

Hi Writers,
I'm officially declaring Friday Rant Day here on "The Writer's Perspective." Got a rant? Come here on Fridays to share a tizzy fit with me.

To start things off, I came across an article about Googlegangers recently. Names that Match Forge a Bond on the Internet and it brought up some of my own unresolved Googleganger issues.

Here's an excerpt:
Now that the telephone book has been all but replaced by the minutiae-rich Web, searching out, even stalking, the people who share one’s name has become a common pastime. Bloggers muse about their multiple digital selves, known as Google twins or Googlegängers (a term that was the American Dialect Society’s “most creative” word last year).

The thing about writers is, they need to be found. Preferably easily found, when it comes to their work, and in case someone would like to hire them, their contact info. Well, if you think it’s easier then to find people now via the Internet, you must be blessed with some obscure name. I’ve never really understood the need for pseudonyms, but maybe there is something to be said for employing a nom de plume, after all.

I offer myself up as an example of the problem with googlegangers.

Googleganger #1: The Maria Schneider who tangled with Marlon Brando in the 1960s soft-porn art house flick Last Tango in Paris. So in all propriety, I must pre-warn you that if you google my name, nudie pics of some other not-me Maria Schneider will come up first. You can see why this might present a small problem for me.

Googleganger #2: The Maria Schneider I’m most jealous of is the talented jazz musician Maria Schneider. She also owns the domain mariaschneider.com, which, I think, fully entitles me to hate her. (Petty, I know. I told you it was rant day.)

Googleganger #3: Most disturbing on my googleganger front is Maria Schneider cartoonist and writer for The Onion. I’ve come across several instances of mistaken identity in which she and I have apparently morphed into one and the same person. Here's one instance on Zoominfo (that photo isn't me.) Not only do I not work for The Onion, or draw cartoons, I don’t even draw very well, and this strange morping leaves me feeling somehow lacking.

Feel free to add your own sad tales and rants about your doppelgangers. And if you have a good pseudonym for me, don’t hold back, I’d appreciate any ideas. I’m sure Maria Schneider, cartoonist and writer for The Onion, would appreciate it, too.

Keep Writing,
Maria Schneider (but clearly not the only one)
p.s. don't you just love umlauts?

the writing life

Friday, April 18, 2008 5:52:30 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [15]

Monday, April 14, 2008

Before You POD
Posted by maria

Hi Writers,
With all of the chatter surrounding Amazon’s recent announcement that they’ll now only sell POD (print-on-demand) books printed by their subsidiary BookSurge, I wanted to offer some important questions to ask yourself before you enter into any POD arrangement.

Writer’s Digest has occasionally been criticized for accepting POD advertising. I’ve already stated my stance about that here. You can go to My Manifesto, if you’re interested in my point-of-view on advertising.

To be perfectly honest, when trying to publish a book, it’s almost always the best first course of action to attempt to land an agent and get on with a commercial publishing house so you don’t have to underwrite the expense of publishing the book yourself.

But there are instances when good books don’t fit into the right business model or the right trends to garner attention from commercial houses.

Whatever your opinion on PODs, it’s a legitimate industry made up of publishing companies that run the gamut from the good to the bad to the truly ugly.

With that in mind, here are three essential questions to ask yourself before you go POD:

1. What’s your Goal?
So you’ve written a book. You probably think it’s a great book given that you’ve put a lot of time and energy into it.

But if you’re going to publish your book and attempt to sell it, it’s essential to put some distance between you and your book and start thinking of it as a product. Who’s your target market? If it’s just your family and friends, realize that and proceed consciously knowing and accepting that you’re probably not going to sell 500 books.

Have you brought it to trusted readers who will offer you honest, objective opinions? This should be your first step before any attempts to get your book published, POD or commercially.

2. Are you a good self-marketer?
If you already have an established platform—a newspaper or magazine column, a popular blog, etc., or if you have some expertise and make frequent appearances on TV and radio—POD might actually be a viable alternative for you. If you’re a businessperson or motivational speaker with regular speaking engagements, that’s actually a great way to sell books.

Of course, “sell” is the operative word. If you’re shy about selling, think twice before going POD because the selling impetus rests entirely on your shoulders. If the idea of cold calling a local bookstore gives you cold sweats, think twice.

3. Have you done the research?
Enter into a POD agreement with the due diligence you’d give any contractual agreement. I’d strongly consider running any POD contract through a lawyer (one with experience in publishing law or, at the very minimum, intellectual property law), since the language and terms vary widely. Make sure you know the bottom line number you’ll be paying and the specific terms of what you’re getting.

Have you seen first-hand examples from the POD company you’re considering? Make sure you’ve seen at least several examples of their work. Is the binding firm? Are the pages intact? Is the cover art attractive? Check references of other authors who’ve used the POD’s services.

A few more things to consider:
There are some professional associations that overshadow the POD industry. These are the current affiliations you should know about in order to make an informed decision if you do decide to go POD:
• BookSurge is a subsidiary of Amazon
• Barnes & Noble is a shareholder in iUniverse
• Most POD books are actually printed by Lightning Source, which is owned by Ingram (the industry’s primary book distributor and wholesaler). Infinity is one notable exception.

If you’re interested in learning more about PODs—and self-publishing in general—here are two good primers:

The Evolution of Self-publishing by our online managing editor Brian A. Klems

Print on Demand article at Writer Beware (sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America)

I hope this post wasn’t too basic. But I really wanted to put some solid, factual information and suggestions out there for any writer who’s considering POD as an alternative because it can be very confusing. I don’t want any writer to get blindsided.

Please consider this is an open forum. Feel free to post any thoughts, questions or experiences with POD companies here.

Keep Writing,
Maria

publishing news and views

Monday, April 14, 2008 9:14:38 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [16]

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