Essay Online

There was a time when you needed to relocate if you wanted to become a successful writer. In essence you went where the work was.

The Internet has opened a whole new world for writers. The idea of telecommuting has become a welcome component to the mechanism of freelance.

Today you can sit in a kitchen in Iowa and write for a publication based in the heart of New York. You can write for a firm in Australia from the comfort of your home office in Ontario. You can also write for clients from any point on the globe while wearing your sweats.

There is still a need for local writers to cover local events, but freelancers tap into the human experience and pass that information along in a way that can defy time zones.

The truth is there is a growing acceptance of freelance writers for both print and cyber content. I suppose one of the primary reasons has to do with the cost-effective nature of relying on freelance writing. As publishing businesses have worked to streamline operations they have come to rely more on freelancers who can provide copy on an ‘as needed’ basis. For the freelancer this provides a sense of personal freedom and income. The benefit for the publisher is in not paying a full time writer when their may not be enough work to warrant their employment.

More Reasons to Hire a Freelance Writer

1) You don’t have to pay freelancers overtime.

2) You don’t have to pay freelancers sick leave.

3) You don’t have to provide benefits to freelancers.

4) You can pay a freelance writer well and still pay less than a full-time counterpart.

5) Most freelancers are eager to please and will likely provide their best work. If they don’t, you have the satisfaction of knowing there are many other freelancers available.

Reasons to Become a Freelance Writer

1) You set your own hours.

2) You can always refuse to work with a hard to please client.

3) You can work as much or little as you want.

4) A happy client not only returns, but they often bring referrals.

5) If you need time off, you only need to ask yourself.

The possibilities for a freelance writer seem to expand each day. The need for content from writers is huge and even the start of a part-time freelance business may provide a better income than you could have imagined. There’s no doubt that it’s hard work, but it’s also doing something you already love to do.

When you are a writer, you cannot separate your writing from your life. Writers cannot not write, so writing for you is like breathing. It is so natural you don’t even think about it. I think it’s a shame that so many writers treat their writing as anything from “special time” to the last thing on their to-do list. Writing is life. And so the principles of life, or the truth about life, are also the principles of, or the truth about, the writing life.

I recently re-read a favorite spiritual book, and in it I found a quote from the author’s high school drama teacher. This drama teacher must have been a wise man because he always taught his drama students the following:

The Truth About Life

1. Leave your personal problems at the stage door.

2. Treat the material with honesty, dignity and without embellishment.

3. Show up fully no matter how many people are in the audience.

I was suddenly struck with a simple thought: The Truth About Life is exactly the same as The Truth About The Writing Life, and so many of us forget these simple truths, as often in our everyday lives as we do in our writing lives.

So as a reminder, for all the writers out there, here is my version of The Truth About (The Writing) Life

1. Leave your personal problems at the stage door.

When you are writing, IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU! What? Not about me? Well then who is it about?? It’s about your view of the world, your take on things, how the world appears through your own unique lens, and yes, you need to write from your own emotional experience, or at the very least you need to write about something you care about. But that’s where it ends. While you are writing from a place within yourself, or you’re channeling something from the depths of your unconscious, you are still doing it with one very important proviso. You are disengaging your ego, and writing from some deep inner truth, or emotional place. Get out of your ego and into the soul or spirit of your characters. You are a writer. You are there to serve the story. It’s not there to serve you.

A great idea is to have an imaginary hat stand, coat rack or even a cardboard box outside the door of the room where you write. Every time you enter the room to do some writing, mentally drop all your baggage, problems, ego issues and any other personal issues into the box or hang them on the racks and walk into the room unencumbered. Then, while you are writing, imagine that someone or something comes and whisks all your baggage, problems and issues away, so that when you’re finished, the doorstep is empty.

2. Treat the material with honesty, dignity and without embellishment.

I firmly believe that when you are writing, you are co-creating with a force larger than yourself. Whether you call that force God, the Universe, the collective unconscious, the spirit of your dearly departed grandmother, Allah or simply your Higher Self, when you truly enter the creative imagination you are only one element in many that go into making up the totality of your story. So when the material comes through (when you write it) you do need to treat it with honesty, dignity and without embellishment. Let it flow through you honestly. Don’t try and change it as it flows. Just let it flow, get it down on the page, and if there are changes that need to be made, address them in the rewriting and editing processes. Dignify the material with your time and your skills, and for goodness sake, don’t embellish. There is nothing worse than a wonderful story and good writing being asphyxiated by attempts at literary high-mindedness. If the character gets hit in the head, tell us he gets hit in the head. Don’t tell us that a large object projected itself into his cranium. Be blunt and use simple language. You will find the greatest writers do that. At the risk of sounding like another American self-help guru, you’re best served to “tell it like it is”. Thanks Dr Phil!

Go back over some of your own writing and see where you may have been guilty of embellishment. The beauty and complexities of great novels come from the story, the narrative, the rich drawing of characters and their relationships to each other, not from using lots of big words.

3. Show up fully no matter how many people are in the audience.

Write for the sheer joy of it, the pleasure, the beauty, peace and satisfaction it stirs in you. Write because you have to, because you can’t not write. Write because there’s a story that’s bursting to get out of you. Don’t write to please editors, publishers, readers, your mother, teacher or partner. Write for the sense of abundance it brings into your life. Turn up at the blank page or screen and write just for the heck of it. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the only one who’ll read your words or whether you have a print run of 1,000,000 books ready to roll when you finish your manuscript. What matters is that you show up fully at the page, every day. Because writing in and of itself, is all that matters, isn’t it?

So next time you’re sitting at your page thinking “what am I doing here?” have a look at these 3 simple Truths About (The Writing) Life and remember how simple it really is. You write because you can’t not write. So leave your personal problems at the door, treat the material with honesty, dignity and without embellishment and show up fully at the page, no matter how many people are in the audience.

And watch your writing improve.

Ideas for developing subjects for your ebook.

Successful eBook writing is productive eBook writing. Productivity requires ideas, and ideas are all around you, you just have to know where to look. Once you open you eyes to the possibilities, your will have more ideas than you ever thought possible.

1. Personal Experiences can generate astonishing possibilities for eBooks. Never discount the value of the day to day mundane activities and places that your daily chores take you. Even standing in line at the grocery store can produce ides that may take your next writing project to new heights.

2. Keep your eyes open! Many writers credit people watching for producing many of the ideas that became some of their best work. Pay attention to everything around you and make notes. What may seem like nothing today may become the answer to your writing dilemma tomorrow or next week.

3. READ! Writers are readers. Reading is not only for researching and entertaining, it can jumpstart your own creative juices and spark new ideas that you can develop into your next eBook. Books, magazines, newspapers and even billboards can provide that spark which becomes your next great idea.

4. Talk to people. Talking to people can help you to generate ideas for themes, character and even dialogue. Every day is another opportunity to meet someone new, someone different that you and expand your base of knowledge for writing.

5. Surf the Net! Not only is net surfing more than entertaining, but it is a fantastic way to generate new ideas for your writing. The Internet can take you anywhere you want to go without ever packing a suitcase or leaving your home.

6. Keep a notebook. Maintaining a notebook of your ideas is an excellent way to avoid loosing that gem of an idea for which you have not yet found a home. Some writers have said that they would be lost without their notebooks and write in them everyday without fail.

The literature explains articles to be a collection of words written in neat paragraphs on particular topics. Articles are basically written to give a glimpse of the topics that are discussed. There are millions of articles that are found on the web once you start searching for it. The best example would be searching for information. When you go into a particular website to search for a topic that you would like to have more information on, you type in the work in the search window and wait to be presented with thousands of articles related to the same keyword that you have typed into the box.

This is just one of the possibilities of the internet that has made access to information easier than ever before. Articles are being searched by internet users on every possible topic for use in any field. Like information to prepare for a presentation, information to write to articles for monthly magazines and local dailies. There are umpteen numbers of reasons and these articles written out by various authors stand out as the billboards of information. The articles also provide useful information on the requested topics. Increasingly even students seem to be taking to the internet searching for articles to complete their course work.

There is however a downside to this strategy though. One cannot verify the facts given in the articles unless it is from a known source. For example, anybody can write up an article stating that there is life on the moon and host in their website. Now a child when it is searching for information to write about the existence of life in the universe will come across this website displaying fictional information about the existence of life on the moon. This will lead to false information being displayed on the screen and hence confusing the child with the basics. There is no particular method to regulate these articles on the net and this makes the situation quite like a cat on the wall.

All set aside if you look for the literal meaning of an article, it can be described as short pieces of paragraphs that are published in a larger publications like magazines, newspapers and of late in the internet websites. Articles are meant to provide in-depth information on current research or any other news stories. If you were looking for dependable information then you would be looking at scholarly articles that are written by the scholars and reviewed by their peers. This will assure of the dependability of the information that is made available to you.

There are a lot of things nowadays that we don’t really want to talk about. These are everyday things that we do and don’t even think about what we are doing exactly. We get so focused on our everyday routine that it never occurs to us how dirty we sometimes play. Society has always been competitive, but today life is perhaps more competitive than in any previous era. Since childhood children are taught how to show that they are the best, the strongest, the smartest the very best. This is where from competition starts. And we continue to compete against each other every hour to prove somebody something that we really don’t have to prove. People are used to think that their lives, possessions, belongings are the best, the biggest the most attractive. That keeps us wanting for more and we never stop thinking that it will be enough for us to be satisfied. But no, we continue to jump higher than our heads and push ourselves to that point when it doesn’t matter how fair you play, you just play to get whatever you need. Why is this happening? We swear that we have overcame that animal instinct in us and are now to call ourselves very civilized and very educated. But never the less we continue to get our teeth into each other’s necks and rip muscles apart. I guess, there is nothing that can be really done to those instincts that we were born with. It’s true if to speak about any person. Race, financial, or social status doesn’t matter. When we are accused of playing dirty, everybody tries to prove the jury wrong even if jury is them. A human being is a unique personality that has never been before and will never again exists. It is a matter of time when he discovers that he also possesses that curse of the humans that and can not be a master of it. Every day one gets up, takes whatever needed and goes out into the open.

No matter what is one occupied with, what is essential for him, he follows his instinct not thinking about what it may turn into. Psychologists get deep into their researched topics and field to find the answer to the question why people are likely to cheat, lie and fight in difficult situations. Human nature will be the answer. Since kinder garden we are taught how to differentiate between good and evil. Loyal teachers read a lot of books and teach how to be a good citizen but, going out of the building start a new line of the day, which is full of that dirt that is considered a taboo for children. At school they make up different essay topics to be sure those children are aware of how to behave properly. The main essay topic is “Love and Peace on Earth”. With some corrections of course but the aim is one and only, to show how we are to behave in society. But when school and essays are over, young generation forgets about the moral aspect of life and plays the same dirty game that their ancestors had played hundreds of years before.

Everybody knows the decipher of the famous “SOS”. Save our souls, it says and that means do everything you have to do but save the mind and body you possess. So that is exactly what we are doing, going up using other people’s heads as the ladder. No one can say why it is so important for us to be on top. Is it the basic instinct of survival, or is it just the desire to satisfy inner ego and let others down by own example. We try to keep to the positive, but it is impossible to do under the constant influence of others pushing you to the middle of nowhere, teaching you the laws of survival that you have to accept, and knowing that you have no choice but to go with it. No one is to blame for the destructive attitude that we possess during doing business. But there is always hope for us to get better and correct mistakes. Human conscience is another curse of ours that makes us rewind all we’ve done during the day and let the bad go. It is quite natural that humans should look for a positive result in everything they do, even if it is created with wrong attitude. We’ll continue to play dirty and be competitive. But now we at least think before playing dirty and every time we hit under the belt, our conscience gives a powerful blow to our brain to remind that there is always a control freak inside that will never drop the smallest fault of yours. And that’s how we live, in an eternal struggle between angels and demons of human soul.

Hate writing articles? Too bad. Read on.

Well Get over it! Your online or off line business will be DEAD in just months with out solid articles.

There are far more failures out there, than successes.

Writing articles will give your business the blood of success. Isn’t that why you are in it for?

This is the wild west and you have to stake out your claim. Do you want your business to flourish?

Do you want to shape this business the way you want? Or leave it to chance?

Well get over the notion that you hate to write articles! Start short and sweet. Let your potential customer know why they should go to your site and do business with you. Or just tell them to go to your competition!

So what are your options? How can you make this work without the stress?

When I first started in business, there was a lot I did not know and did not want to do. Let me tell you, what a big mistake that was. It cost me money, it cost me time and a couple of times it cost me my business!

Don’t let this happen to you! Stop right now and stake your claim for your future. Your business will only succeed when you take control of it!

There are a couple of solutions to this problem. If you have a lot of money go hire the best copy writer you can find. Or take a course given by one of the experts.

Writing becomes easier and easier every time that you do it. Become that winning copy writer. It is your business, so what was it that made you want to start it? Was it your passion? Well get out there and tell the world!

“The pen is mightier than the sword.” Shakespeare Passion is what wields that sword, so write with your passion. Learn how and the world will beat a path to your website.

Help is out there, if you really want to give your business a chance. Get a good coach to guide you along the way. If you are like me you will see the value of good coaching.

Success of your business hangs on the ability to write good copy. Don’t let your business die like so many others.

Take control, turn your hate for writing into your strength.

You’re about to learn the real secrets to success online. Taking this next step is like getting a breath of fresh air to a drowning man!

Don’t be a statistic, another business failure. Start learning what it takes to succeed…

Do you have trouble finishing your writing projects? Do you sometimes wonder what’s the point? Do rejections make you want to give up all together? You’re not alone. Writing isn’t always fun, especially when your efforts don’t seem to make a difference. But if you want to succeed, you can’t stop. You must keep going even when you don’t feel like it. Here are eight great ways to stay motivated:

1) Read biographies. What you’re feeling or going through isn’t anything new. Find out how others worked through it. Find someone whose career you admire and read about how they kept going and the strategies they used. Read articles on various authors’ websites - many share how they’ve broken through doldrums and what helped them along the way.

2) Find a buddy. Find someone who you know will lift your spirits. Don’t go for anyone ‘sensible’ &ndash their rational approach may not be helpful. Instead, it may feel like bad news. Find a ‘rainbow’ friend, someone who can smile in the rain of doubt and discouragement. Let them help boost your ego and give you the pep talks you need.

3) List your successes. We all have daily success, no matter how small. List them. Sitting at your desk, writing a paragraph, answering a phone call, all are steps towards your writing success. Far too often we forget them too quickly. Remember a time when you achieved something you wanted. Wouldn’t you like that feeling again? Then keep writing and you will achieve this and much more.

4) Treat writing as a job. Forget about being in the mood. Take the “I have to write if I want to eat” viewpoint even if it isn’t true. Like any job, there are the exciting things you like doing and the mundane. Staying motivated to write when you’re depressed after receiving your 20th rejection letter is hard. BUT, by continuing to do your job (write) your work (writing) will bring you the income you want.

5) Don’t critique your work. Just write. As a rule, we are our own worst enemy. You’re a terrible judge when you’re in a bad mood so forget about critiquing your work. Just put it down on paper, you can always go back and fix it later. At least you will have something to work with as opposed to nothing at all.

6) Use bribery. We all like pleasurable things and writing isn’t always so. Come up with a way to give yourself a treat after accomplishing a task. The task can be big or small, whatever works for you. There’s no right or wrong way to reward yourself. (Unless of course you treat yourself to a sugar-glazed donut for each sentence you complete!)

7) Create an audience. You can develop a newsletter or blog. Because people will be expecting something from you (either weekly, monthly or quarterly), you’ll be forced to continue writing. This is an excellent way to stay motivated because you’ll know that someone, somewhere, will be reading what you write.

Create a winner. On a wall or bulleting board, tack up the cover of the magazine you’d like to be featured in. Create a cover or use the existing cover of your book with a banner that says ‘bestselling author’ and dream about the success you’ll have when you’ve finished your current project.

Staying motivated can be difficult, but not impossible. Use one or all of the above tips to help you stay motivated. A successful writing career starts one word at a time.

Your first time out of the gate, you’re going to be tempted to tackle an information product project that is much too complicated. After all, you know so much and can’t leave out any of the valuable points! Or, you lack confidence that anyone will pay you a dime unless your ebook, book or course is crammed with every imaginable tip and technique.

Don’t give in to this temptation, or you’ll be hamstrung and unable to finish that crucial first information marketing project. Instead, choose one of these easy formats for compiling and packaging useful information, and you’ll have your first product on the market &ndash and making money for you &ndash in no time.

Five Easy Information Product Formats

1. Compilation of expert contributions. Here you request others who are respected in their field to provide you with content that you bring together into a product. Why would busy experts provide you with original, thought-provoking and useful material? They often will do so at no cost if you come up with an interesting enough question for them to answer and tell them their contribution should be a page or less.

Promise them a copy of the finished report, where they’ll be able to see how peers and competitors responded, too. Also tell them how you’ll be publicizing the product. No matter how well known they already are, prominent people love publicity. After all, that’s how they got to be renowned in the first place. In most cases, you’ll set up this compilation as a downloadable PDF report.

Examples: “Online Profits at the Speed of Light” by Bob Serling (.directmarketinginsider.com/online-profits.html) and “First Contact Secrets” by Chip Tarver (.firstcontactsecrets.com).

2. Q&A report. Instead of asking many others one question, you can create a product by asking yourself &ndash then answering &ndash many questions. This works well when you simply collect commonly asked questions. You can also focus or the hardest ones, the most unusual ones or the funniest questions. If you find the idea of writing a formal article or a book intimidating, this may be the ticket for you. When it comes to anything you know more about than the average person, you’re probably in the habit of answering questions on a daily or weekly basis anyway. This one too would get sold as a downloadable PDF report.

Examples: “Answers to the World’s Toughest Questions about Law of Attraction” by Andrea Conway (.successfulselfemployment.com/toughest-law-of-attraction-sse.htm) and “An Insider’s Guide to Small Business Success” by Tim Knox (.book-titles.ca/SuccessSecrets.htm).

3. Audio interview of an expert. In this option and the next two, you create an audio product in just one hour plus a little preparation time. Simply persuade someone whose opinions, experiences and knowledge others want to hear to be interviewed for an hour, and record the session. Voil

Hopefully, when you want short story ideas, you don’t sit there waiting for inspiration. It’s better to write anything, and do it right now. English writer Graham Green attributes much of his success to a simple habit: He forced himself to write at least 500 words daily, whether he felt like it or not. Perhaps creative inspiration can strike at any time, but it strikes more often when there is work instead of waiting.

What do you write though? Here are a couple new ideas for generating new short story ideas.

Explain This

I once created a car travel game called “Explain This.” Someone suggests an unusual scenario in a sentence or two, and then each player explains it in a plausible way. It’s an entertaining way to pass the miles, but also a great way to come up with short story ideas.

Just start with an odd scene, anything that pops into your head. You might start, for example, with “Todd handed out the dollar bills to the people as they walked by, trying to distribute as many as he could quickly, before the police could stop him.” Now explain that. Our minds insist on explaining things, so you’ll find an explanation if you try. If it’s interesting enough, you have your next short story.

As I look at the scene in my mind, I imagine the dollar bills are signed or otherwise identifiable, and they can be traded at a big seminar for a gift worth even more. A person could spend it and get a soda - or get something truly valuable for it. Maybe this will go in the marketing ideas file instead of the short story ideas file.

Maybe Todd is handing out the last of his money as per the instructions of his spiritual leader. Could it be a “get rich quick” cult that requires all members to start from zero? A religious movement based on getting rich? Someone could make it into a plausible story.

Short Story Ideas From Combining Stories

Here’s a fun technique that is hopefully useful, but is at least worth a few laughs. Just combine old stories into new ones. The less similar the stories you start with, the better. The story of Adam and Eve combined with “I Robot,” for example, could lead to an interesting new story. Maybe a pair of robots start a new world. “Original sin” might be the arising of their own consciousness, or their rejection of man as their master.

Hmm… “The Miracle Worker” and “Gorillas In The Mist?” Struggles of an ape that learns at last to speak and be independent? “Star Wars” and “Cool Hand Luke?” The story of a man who livens up the deathly atmosphere of a penal colony in space? “Frankenstein” and “Gone With The Wind?” The possibilities are endless. Start cranking out those new short story ideas.

So you’re published! Congratulations! Now if you’re like most authors you may be asking yourself, now what? There are so many ways to market yourself, so many in fact it’s sometimes tough to know which one you should chose. Now without getting into all your choices, let’s look at some basic things you can do to surround yourself with enough education and experts so you never have to wonder: I’m published, now what?

1) Find some good books to bury yourself in.

2) There are a lot of marketing choices and if you’re not sure which one to chose here’s a tip: if it seems to good to be true it probably is. Stay away from hype because hype rarely pays off. Ask for references, talk to other authors.

3) You can find a lot of information online if you’re willing to do some research. Whether you’re looking for promotional ideas or people to help you promote your book you should definitely Google them first and see what you can find.

4) Find someone you trust to talk you through the process. Whether you hire someone or met someone in your writing group, find someone you can bounce ideas off of who knows the industry and understands current book marketing trends.

5) Don’t live in a vacuum. Get out and meet other published authors. Go to writers conferences, check out your local PMA listings (Publisher’s Marketing Association) and consider joining them on a national level. Also SPAN (Small Press Association of North America) is another fantastic organization to join. Both of these places offer a monthly newsletter with tips, articles, and advice columns.

6) Do some online networking via publishing and book marketing forums, here are a few for you to get started with:

Pub-forum &ndash .pub-forum.net

Publish-L &ndash .publish-l.com

Smallpub-civil finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/smallpub-civil

Ind-E-Pubs &ndash covers ebooks .ind-e-pubs.com

POD publishers finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/pod_publishers

7) Subscribe to some great publishing newsletters, there’s a lot of information out there and a lot of it is packed in some of the best newsletters you’ll ever read:

Dan Poynter’s Parapublishing Tips: .parapublishing.com

Readers and Writers .writersreaders.com/

John Kremer: .bookmarket.com

Brian Jud: .bookmarketing.com

Book Marketing Expert: .amarketingexpert.com

Get your book reviewed: maybe this sounds like a no-brainer but you’d be amazed how many authors forget this step but it’s important and here’s why: people like what other people like. What someone else says about your book is a thousand times more effective than anything you could say. Do reviews sell books? Well, yes I believe they do and here’s why: if your book is up on Amazon or some other online portal and no one’s talking about it a potential new reader might not be motivated to buy. Readers rarely buy “naked” books.

9) Outline a few goals and hit the promotional “road”: keep it simple and keep it realistic. Long, complicated, and involved marketing plans are not only tough to stick to, they’re probably gonna cost you a bundle.