Essay Online

You may have heard about the five phases of grief. Psychological professionals have outlined the pattern of emotions that humans cycle through during the grieving process. As a writing professional, I’ve discovered the five phases of receiving feedback. Any writer who is advancing in their career has been through the sometimes shocking experience of having her work critiqued. Cycling through these five feedback phases is normal. Getting stuck in any of them, however, could bring your writing career to a painful halt. See if you recognize yourself at any of these phases:

Denial. Defensiveness sets in. How could they say that about your character? Can’t they see how perfect she is? You go home and rant to your spouse about how clueless your critique group is. You shore up a line of defense and tick the points off on your fingers while your beloved nods and smiles.

Depression. What? Your draft isn’t perfect? After all that work… you realize that your blossoming talent doesn’t hold up without some pruning. You may hole up for weeks, or months, in this phase, daunted by the real work of writing: revision. Your balm: forays to the library and to read all those other successes.

Integration. You’re still alive, and is that a glimmer of desire to have another look at your manuscript? Take a deep breath and look clearly at the comments you received. Which feedback can be integrated and what needs to be chucked?

Enthusiasm. Okay, you know what to do now. You’ve found some grace and you’ve taken the criticism. Outlining a plan for revision, you’re ready to go. You’re over the worst of it. You’re even kind of excited about it. You can write a bestseller!

Acceptance. You move into work mode and start working through the details.

You realize that writing is suitable work for those who can handle the long haul. You recommit to the work of being a writer. There’s a lot to do, but with support you can write this thing!

To move through the five phases more effectively, here are some tried and true methods that I have used with my coaching clients.

To handle the denial, ask yourself this simple question: “What’s true about this feedback?” Take a step back from the work and be as objective as you can. Is it true that there is a lot of exposition in your novel? Is it true that your characters don’t seem developed enough? Making this kind of assessment strengthens your skills as a writer. Taking your work apart, piece by piece, will allow you to delve into the craft of writing.

For the overwhelming emotions that drive you to hide under the covers, try giving yourself an acknowledgment. This simple coaching tool can help you to recognize your progress, and what you have done right. An acknowledgment could look like this: “You gave the draft as much as you could when you wrote it. Look at how far you have come since you said you wanted to write.” Working through the emotions goes more quickly if you are able to talk them out with a compassionate listener.

Call up your writing buddy or coach and give space to the feelings that without expression might keep you trapped for months.

When you get to the integration phase, give yourself a pat on the back. You’re maturing as a writer. Realizing that writing is more than the first flush of inspiration is a powerful step toward success. Give yourself a better chance at success by outlining a plan, creating a schedule, and sticking to the work of revision.

Enthusiasm is the fun part of the process. Here you reconnect with some of the original passion for the piece, but with the added commitment and knowledge that you are willing to show up to make your writing shine.

In the final phase, the flare and spark of enthusiasm settles into a warm, steady fire.

You are fueled by the respect you have for yourself for sticking with it, for your love of writing, for your admiration for others who have done this work and triumphed.

If you do find yourself stuck, if getting feedback has stopped you cold, get help. Meet with a writing buddy to talk out the feedback. Talk long walks and ponder your commitment to the work. What drives you to keep going despite the challenges?

Understanding your motivation to write, and to write that particular piece, will help you to move through the five phases of feedback more quickly. Receiving feedback gracefully is part of any writer’s process, so make it work for you!

“When length is a problem, I’d rather cut out sections — entire thoughts — than chisel off the texture and color from the most important parts of the story. Cutting is hard and painful work, but I’d rather do it myself than leave it to someone who doesn’t know the story as well as I do.” - Warren Wolfe

For some the idea of actually having writing deadlines would be a dream come true. They enjoy writing, but have never experienced the ruthless demand of completing an article by a preset time.

Deadlines have been the nemesis of writers for generations. Writers are notorious for seeing a deadline as being so far in the future the need to work on an article ‘right now’ seems nonexistent. In the end they simply make a mad dash to the finish line hoping they have everything in place to make the article shine.

I find that when I write on deadline, my stuff sometimes reads better, because I don’t spend as much time trying to write the perfect sentence or capture the perfect image. In other words, allow the deadline to force you to be concise, crisp and to write with urgency.” - Jim Souhan

A deadline does contribute to the tyranny of the urgent, yet writing for a deadline is a close cousin to Pressure Writing. When you are forced to work quickly your brain actually works harder and faster to process and compile only the most relevant facts. When you allow yourself to spend too long on an article you can begin to second-guess article construction and language use. Many writers will tell you that writing for a deadline actually works to make their writing clear and concise.

“Some people freeze on deadline. My cure for that: Start typing. The simple act of typing in possible leads or details frees you up. Sometimes writing a bad lead on deadline helps you remember what a good lead looks like, and allows you to jump-start your writing.”

- Jim Souhan

As you develop a writing career you will find there are more and more deadlines to greet you. These deadlines are important and may ultimately liberate your writing to become something that is crafted in a timely manner and set free for the enjoyment of others.

Writing for a deadline also allows you to discover there is more writing to be done once you’ve met your cut-off date.

Writing prompts can offer tremendous writing help for writers at every level of experience and expertise. Who can use writing prompts?

Beginners can use writing prompts to help them learn and grow as writers as well as gain valuable experience in the craft. The only sure way to improve your writing is to write regularly and prompts can help you sharpen your skills on a regular basis. Perfection will never be in your writing future, but it is very true that regular practice is the only way to improve your work. While you may have a long list of ideas and projects to work on you may also want to employ prompts from time to time to fill in the gaps in your schedule.

Experienced writers can use writing prompts to stretch their writing muscles to prepare for their writing assignments or each day’s work. They can also use exercises and prompts to create a swipe file of ideas for future reference.

Professional writers can use writing prompts to give them a creative jump start when necessary and to experiment with other forms of writing. If you feel your work is going stale or that you need some inspiration, then using prompts can make a huge difference in your creativity and overall work.

All writers can use writing prompts with writer’s block and improving their work. No matter what level your word craft may be, every writer experiences some form of writer’s block from time to time. Forcing yourself to write through it with a series of prompts can be a very effective way to tear down your writer’s block. Many times we fall into a rut with our work and writing prompts can challenge us out of that rut. This stretching can greatly improve your writing. Every day, week, month and year that you work on your craft you improve as a writer.

Whether you are a beginning, experienced, or professional writer you can use writing prompts to help you improve your word craft.

As a writer you may be ready to cash in on the need for web content. There is a lot of money that can be made through content writing if you know what web publishers are looking for in high quality content. If you are a very versatile writer you will find that you can actually make content writing your full time job! The new trend of article marketing has writers very excited because webmasters all over the Internet are hungry for talented writers who can’t pump out the high quality content fast enough.

What to Write

Exactly what you should write will depend on whom you are writing for. If you are a writer that is writing pieces for an article directory you will want to keep things as generic as possible. The more nonspecific you can keep your articles the more likely a webmaster will choose your article to be displayed on his or her website. It’s important not to mention websites or specific products, as this can limit the usefulness of the article to webmasters because they generally do not want to promote anything other than themselves and especially not their competitors. Most web publishers are looking for content, not marketing pages.

If you are writing for a specific web publisher you will want to keep in mind what their business is all about. Think about key phrases or words that are often associated with their product, business, or service and include them in the article. Be sure that the key phrases you come up with or are provided don’t seem unnatural and they don’t disrupt the flow of the article. Key words and phrases are only as helpful as their placement. Remember, we are talking about quality content, which reads well and helps search engines figure out what the website is all about at the same time.

Research Required

Make sure that if you are writing on a topic and you don’t have first hand knowledge that you research! Content provided by websites is only as useful as the author that is writing. If you only provide fluff and no real meat in articles visitors will be less likely to come back to the website again, so you are actually working against the plan to increase traffic with the article. Always look at your article the way that a visitor would and try to provide all of the information you would want if you were that person.

How to Write

Your style of writing is really a matter of opinion. Many web publishers like for their content to be written in a very conversational style. This writing style allows for readers to feel as though the author is talking to them, and it’s just a very comfortable way to get information on the Internet. If you take an official tone many visitors may be turned off even though you are providing all of the information that is needed.

Market Yourself

Don’t forget your resource box! The resource box is the section either at the beginning or end of an article that tells the reader who you are, any websites that you are affiliated with, and may even provide links to the websites. This is a great way to market yourself. While a web publisher may first find your work on an article directory he or she may contact you personally for your services, in which case you usually stand to make a lot more money!

I was editing a passage in my novel CONDUCT IN QUESTION, the first in THE OSGOODE TRILOGY. The villainous Florist was about to march down the stairs to kill the young man, Donnie, hiding in the cloakroom. The boy had soaked the stair carpet with gasoline and was about to set it on fire. Would that, I debated, cause the impressive explosion of flames I had described? Who could give me advice on pyrotechnics? Moments later, when the doorbell rang, I was stunned to find two firemen on my doorstep. Once I had convinced them of my innocent intent, they told me the stairwell would certainly “blow up real good.”

And that is synchronicity! Which we’ve all experienced in our lives. Remember the time you were thinking for days of a long lost friend and then suddenly he appeared at your door? Such experiences take our breath away and make us think we are all connected in some warm cosmic soup!

But what is synchronicity? Of course, it’s a coincidence, which is meaningful to you, the person whose breath is stolen away. It can’t be explained by cause and effect. As far as anyone knows, you [or someone else] didn’t do anything to cause the event. What coincides? My psychic state [wondering how to test out the blaze without actually setting one] and the event [the arrival of the perfect people to answer my question].

Carl Jung [the Swiss psychiatrist] is the ‘father’ of synchronicity, in that he experienced, studied and developed theories about it. One of his female patients had a highly rationalistic attitude toward life and was consequently resistant to much psychotherapy. As she was recounting a strange dream about receiving a golden scarab [a costly piece of gold jewelry] there was a persistent tapping on the window behind Jung. Opening the window, the doctor reached out and brought in a large scarab beetle. The appearance of the ‘real’ beetle at the very moment she was recounting her dream punctured her rational, intellectual approach to life and permitted her to carry on successfully with her therapy.

Some people think synchronicity operates throughout the universe as a grand ‘cosmic force.’ Have you seen the new movie by Mel Gibson, Apocalypto? In the Mayan culture, it was understood that vast synchronistic forces governed the universe and were related to the motion of the planets, stars and galaxies. Does this seem far-fetched in our ‘modern’ times? Certainly not! In the book, Cosmos and Psyche, by Richard Tarnas, published in 2006, synchronicity and the influence of the planets are impressively linked.

My experience and fascination with synchronicity caused me to devise two stunningly ‘coincidental’ events in my novel, FINAL PARADOX, which is the second in THE OSGOODE TRILOGY. Harry Jenkins, the protagonist, is an estates lawyer in Toronto, Canada. For years, Harry and his father have been estranged. When his sister died at the age of twelve, Harry’s father, crippled with grief, withdrew almost completely from the family. And Harry, now in his late forties and childless, cannot understand how the loss of his sister could have so horribly affected his father. Now his father lies near death in hospital. Harry is in the Quiet Room of the hospital, mourning the lost years between them and wishing he knew how to pray. Suddenly a woman and her husband enter the room. Hysterical with grief over the murder of her son, the woman screams and curses until, finally, a doctor sedates her. Immediately, Harry understands the wrenching agony of the loss of a child. At the very moment of his asking, he has the answer. Harry is transformed by the sense of deep connection to forces he only dimly perceives.

So, how do such events actually happen? A study of quantum physics leads us to believe that our distinction between our inner and outer world is illusory and that we do, in fact, swim in a cosmic soup in which there is no distinction between the soup and us. And so, our psychic energy may really influence or ‘cause’ events in the ‘outer’ world. Consequently, in a moment highly charged with concentrated emotion, Harry Jenkins asks for and receive his answer in a most dramatic fashion.

It’s been said that you should “write about what you know”. It’s also been said that doing that condemns you to a life of boredom as you’ll never grow beyond your current limitations.

Not very helpful, is it?

It’s also been said that you should write about what you’re passionate about, interested in or otherwise taken by, as you’ll spend so much time researching it, writing it and rewriting it, that it had better light your fire, or it will drive you insane. And then again, others say don’t tackle a topic you know nothing about, you should write what you know….

And so we go around in ever decreasing circles.

I actually subscribe to the “write what you know” line of thought, but with a bit of a twist. I encourage writers to write about what they know on an emotional level.

Try writing a story that heals YOU. Emotions are the universal language. We all feel the same feelings, we may just experience them in different ways. We all recognize joy, love, peace, anger, resentment, jealousy and fear and when you tap into this universal language with your stories, you speak to the hearts of all readers. As you and your characters go on the roller coaster ride, your readers will go with you, and as you and your characters heal, so too will your readers see a way out for themselves.

Have you ever read a novel that’s changed your way of looking at the world? I certainly have. Try this simple tip, and you’ll soon be writing stories that change lives as well, including your own.

Write about something that will change your life.

Now by this I don’t mean sitting back and thinking, “What would change my life? I know! Divorcing my wife/leaving my job/selling my business and trekking across Africa/buying a ski lodge in Switzerland/running for President”. That’s not the type of change I’m talking about.

I’m talking about real change - the type of change that starts on the inside and works its way out. And while it may eventually manifest in divorce, resignation, liquidation, traveling, new businesses or political aspirations, it is not the way the change looks on the outside that matters as much as how it looks on the inside. And once you get the inside right, the outside takes care of itself.

As writers of fiction we are constantly living inside our own imaginations, aren’t we? True creativity occurs when experience meets imagination. The best way to write stories that resonate with others, that capture them from the first page and don’t let them go until the last, is for you, as the writer, to delve into your own basement of emotional experience and retrieve images of universal resonance to deliver to your readers.

JK Rowling said that the Dementors were definitely born of her own depression. The mirror of Erised was her own desperate desire to spend just five more minutes with her own mother, who passed away as she wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Harry’s search for a family of his own was paralleled by Jo Rowling’s desire for the very same thing in her own life.

You need courage to be a fiction writer. Courage to expose your own wounds, courage to go to the places you haven’t been before to heal them, and courage to decide you have the strength to go on the journey in the first place.

We have all had our ups and downs in life. And saved somewhere in our unconscious databases, are all the emotions, all the traumas, all the joys and all the images of our lives. As you access these buried emotions, a curious thing will happen. You won’t necessarily relive the actual events that happened to you. By drawing on the emotion, and allowing it to be your guide, your imagination will fill in the missing bits, and you’ll find yourself retrieving images, scenes and situations that may be very different to your own actual experience. Writing a memoir or autobiography is not the goal. Writing a story with emotional resonance that others will want to read is.

Try this simple exercise: Sit with your feet flat on the floor, hands resting on your thighs, your eyes closed. Take 3 to 5 deep breaths. Now in your mind’s eye, see a spotlight shining on a brightly lit stage. Step into the spotlight. Take a few seconds to grow accustomed to the shift in perspective. Now I want you to feel real anger. Feel the heat of it coursing through your body. How dare they? What right do they have? Ask yourself these questions over and over in your mind until you have worked yourself up into a white heat of fury. Now in your mind’s eye, allow an image to form around you, the source of your anger. What’s happening? Who is there? What can you hear? Coming up with a first sentence, write for 10 minutes on what happens next.

When you’ve completed this exercise, take a break, or come back tomorrow and try this next exercise. Following exactly the same process, feel forgiveness instead of anger. Allow the sense of true forgiveness to envelope you. Then when you are ready, allow an image to rise in your mind’s eye, and coming up with a first sentence, write for 10 minutes.

Did these two pieces of writing connect at all? Did the forgiveness relate to the anger, or vice versa? Don’t worry if they didn’t. Just know that as you utilize this process when writing a story, you will write a progressive story of great emotional resonance, and in so doing, you will be unconsciously training yourself to experience this journey in your own life.

This is a simple exercise to show you the power of accessing your unconscious through emotion. Once you become accustomed to using this method, you will find all kinds of magical thing occurring to your writing, and all kinds of wonderful healing occurring in your own life.

Writers of non-fiction are bound to an extent by the limitations of science and provable fact. They can speculate, philosophize and hypothesize, but until someone can come up with “proof in a test tube”, it is essentially speculation.

When you write a story, with a character confronting their issues, overcoming their obstacles, facing their demons and changing their lives, you are unconsciously writing a guidebook that shows others how to make those changes too. Fiction writers offer real solutions. Real emotional solutions. We may not show you how to fly to the moon, or how to crack the property market and walk off with millions, or how to build a successful e-commerce business from home, but we can show you how to really live your life, how to relate to others, how to relate to yourself, how to heal relationships and how to lead more blissful lives.

And that’s pretty terrific, don’t you think?

I revised my Civil War novel Hearts of Stone many times before selling it to Dutton Children’s Books. My editor only had one major suggestion: Consider a new beginning.

If you’re revising a novel, considering the first scene should be one of your last steps. It’s hard to know how best to begin until you’re sure how the story ends. And although everyone needs to revise in a manner that works for them, writers who perfect every sentence along the way can fall in love with sentences or scenes that ultimately don’t best serve the story.

Skilled novelists convey character, conflict, setting, and voice in the first page, paragraph, even sentence. It’s a tall order! But here are eight strategies that command readers’&ndashand editors’&ndashinterest.

1. Grab readers’ attention.

Katherine Paterson begins Lyddie, one of my favorite children’s novels, this way: “The bear had been their undoing, though at the time they had all laughed.” Or how about this, from Richard Peck’s A Long Way from Chicago: “You wouldn’t think we’d have to leave Chicago to see a dead body.” Who wouldn’t want to keep reading?

2. Begin with Action.

Here’s Walter Dean Myers powerful opening of Monster: “The best time to cry is at night, when the lights are out and someone is being beaten up and screaming for help.” Action can also be quiet, as in Beverly Cleary’s The Mouse and the Motorcycle: “Keith, the boy in the rumpled shorts and shirt, did not know he was being watched as he entered room 215 of Mountain View Inn.”

3. Arrive mid-conversation.

E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web begins like this: “Where’s Papa going with that axe?” Lisi Harrison uses dialogue to start The Clique: “‘Massie, wipe that confused look off your face,’ Massie’s mom, Kendra, said. ‘It’s really very simple&ndashyou’re not going.’” Both opening lines convey conflict.

4. Begin with an omniscient passage.

Occasionally, skilled authors begin high above their protagonist before zooming in and continuing with a more intimate point of view. Swallowing Stones, by Joyce McDonald, is about the repercussions a teen faces after he discharges a rifle and accidentally kills a schoolmate’s father. In the book’s beginning, readers travel with the fatal bullet: “There is no stopping it; the bullet rips through the hot summer haze, missing trees, houses, unsuspecting birds, coming to roost, finally, like an old homing pigeon….” The stage has been set.

5. Begin by mirroring the ending.

An Na does this beautifully in A Step from Heaven. In the opening chapter, the young protagonist describes how being in her father’s arms at the seashore makes her feel safe: “I am a sea bubble floating, floating in a dream. Bhop.” Her father ultimately leaves his family, and yet in the end readers feel hopeful when they read the same words used to describe her sense of security. Laurie Halse Anderson employs a similar technique in the opening and closing of Fever, 1793. The main character experiences daybreak quite differently in the first and last chapters, which reveals how she has matured.

6. State the problem.

Simply stating the problem in the first sentence immediately takes readers to the story’s emotional heart. “He did not want to be a wringer,” Jerry Spinelli writes in Wringer, about a boy destined to wring pigeons’ necks in a local event. Many authors use this technique: “All I’ve ever wanted is for Juli Baker to leave me alone.” (Flipped, Wendelin Van Draanen.) “I am Mary. I am a witch.” (Witch Child, Celia Rees.) “Chapter One: Summer 1849 &ndash In which I come to California, fall down a hill, and vow to be miserable here. (The Ballad of Lucy Whipple, Karen Cushman.)

7. Let your character reflect.

Julie Johnston begins Hero of Lesser Causes with this reflective moment: “It started out as a peaceful, plodding kind of summer, the summer of 1946. We didn’t know that our lives would charge wildly out of control.” For another example, see Jennifer Donnelly’s lovely Northern Light.

8. Provide a prologue.

Some writers hate prologues, but I say if it works for your story, use it. A prologue can help readers feel how desperately a protagonist does not want something to happen, as Jerry Spinelli does in Wringer. It can help readers understand what a character is about to lose, as Pam Munoz Ryan does beautifully in Esperanza Rising. And it can set a tone, as Gary Paulsen does in the marvelous prologue to The Winter Room.

Ultimately, I decided to write a prologue for Hearts of Stone. The novel originally began in the summer of 1863. Fifteen-year-old Hannah’s father had already left their home on Cumberland Mountain in East Tennessee to fight for the Union Army. Hannah is estranged from her friend Ben because his father had joined the Confederate Army. Soon orphaned, Hannah shepherds her younger siblings on the long trip to a Nashville refugee camp, all the while longing to get back home.

The problem? Too many crucial events were lost in back story. My new prologue is set in 1861, when Hannah’s father announces that he’s joining the army, and it allows readers to meet Ben while his relationship with Hannah is still good.

Finally, I worked on a first sentence that could reveal both Hannah’s conflict with her father and her strong sense of place. The book now begins this way: “Pa ripped our family apart just as spring began whispering sweet promises up on Cumberland Mountain.”

Hearts of Stone’s review in Kirkus concluded with a prediction that “Readers will be hooked from the start.” I’m glad my editor asked for a new beginning. Sometimes it really does make sense to save the first for last.

“Best of Friends” is a novel about the lives of the “Fabulous Five.” The Fabulous Five is a group comprised of five wonderful, loyal ladies who have been best friends for years. Each woman in the group has her own issues to deal with and to learn from. The story mainly centers around Liz, whose mother has just passed away. Liz’s family is about as dysfunctional as a family can be. The siblings have taken sides with each other. Liz always tries to be neutral, but when their backstabbing antics are directed at her, she finds herself unable to do so anymore.

Kim is another lady in the group who has finally met Mr. Right. Kiona, a female player, is deciding to settle down with one of her catches. When she and her boyfriend decide to move in together, they both have to learn to make compromises and to get over their commitment phobias. AJ allowed a bad marriage to tear her down and take her out of a promising career. Struggling

to care for her twin daughters, while she is on welfare, she fears that all is going to be lost. But her perseverance finally pays off and she finds herself back on track. Quineeta is single and loving it, however, when she has a health crisis, she relies on herself to get through it, when really she should have let her friends be there for her.

“Best of Friends” is truly an enjoyable novel. The author, Sherry Brantley has an awesome imagination which she puts to use in dreaming up plots for Liz’s family to use against each other. She does an excellent job of character development. These ladies are very three-dimensional and Brantley lets you into their heads and hearts to make them seem more real. I could relate to so many of their experiences, and the doubts and fears that invade their minds were so similar to my own. Brantley also incorporates a touch of spirituality throughout her writing. I loved this because as she addresses Liz’s dilemmas, she does so in a way that has Liz evaluating her actions on a higher level and making the realization that if she had taken the higher road, things would have been better. It wouldn’t have been as fun to read about though!

“Best of Friends” is a must read for a women’s reader groups. This will be a fun book to discuss. It is also the perfect book for a lady that needs an evening to herself, where she just wants to cuddle up with a great story. Don’t miss this one!

Best of Friends

Sherry Brantley

Lulu (2005)

ISBN 9781411645455

Reviewed by Paige Lovitt for Reader Views (4/07)

Imagine yourself sitting in an employer’s desk with hundreds of resumes falling in on your desk against a vacancy declared by you in your company.

Number of vacancy - 1, and number of applicants - innumerable.

As an employer it is your responsibility to select the most deserving, suitable and competent candidate. So it is up to the candidate to snatch the employer’s attention out of those hundreds of resume application. As such, writing a resume is all about knowing what employers specifically look for in an applicant’s application. So, never make the mistake of underestimating the importance of a “good and eye-catching resume”.

Now, a good and a perfect resume is not an allegory. Neither has it anything to do with the elite schools or exceptional work experience. A blue collar worker may have a exceptional CV, while the resume of a white collar professional may have a poorly written one. A good resume is your first step at the door of a good job; you must well-understand that it is your representative to an employer before you get there. A resume centers round the detailed info about a candidate that is truthful, brief and to the point; not something that is exaggerated or unnecessarily long.

There are certain things that a good and perfect curriculum vita has within its set margins.

1. First of all, decide the format of your resume. Decide whether you want it to be in a functional or chronological format.

2. Write your resume in active verbs.

3. Highlight your skills and objectives. Make it your resume headline.

4. Be specific about your professional background. If you are an experienced person, mention your tenure with previous employers; and in case you are a fresher, define your professional qualifications.

5. Define your current pay scale. And don’t forget to put down your expected salary.

6. If your CV is targeted towards a specific career path or employer, then you must know all their requirements and mention them in your resume very clearly. Research and know the qualities that will prove to be beneficial to the employer and think about how your capabilities match those qualities.

7. Next, be particular to provide every minute personal detail. Highlight your contact details.

8. Be professional, concise, brief and clean. Avoid from being too flashy with your resume design.

9. Stick to writing one page cover letter as far as possible.

10. Last but not the least, be sure to edit and re-edit your resume once you are done with writing it.

Remember, the objective of your resume is to unleash your accomplishments and qualifications to the employer’s committee. Think it to be a promotional brochure, a pamphlet displaying your organizational and career skills.

The most valuable thing you can collect if you are selling your book from a website when a visitor comes to your book’s sales site is not their money… it’s their email address and/or other contact information.

If you have no clue how to create a website, do not worry about feeling intimidated. It is actually a lot easier than you think. There is a simple site that teaches people all about creating websites for free at .LissaExplains.com

You can also learn a lot by doing a search for a phrase at Google.com like “how to make a website” and “free html tutorial.” You will find tons of very good free training that way and can learn how in no time. Anyone can learn the basics of creating a website in just one day.

Ok, back to collecting your website visitors contact information.

I know, I know you’re probably saying… “I’m an author. I want to write my book, sell my book and become a recognized expert. WHY do I need to get their contact information?”

The simplest answer is: Because you will NOT become wealthy from the sale of your book. You will become wealthy and achieve celebrity status through the ongoing relationship you build with your readers.

If you don’t know who they are, how can you continue to keep in touch with them &ndash and they with you.

If you’re an expert on the subject and they already have your book, don’t you think they’ll want MORE information and MORE books from you?

ABSOLUTELY!

Your book makes you an expert on the subject, your interactions and relationships will propel you to a recognized expert and position you for long-term success &ndash not just a one-hit wonder.

The service you need to collect email and contact information and automatically respond to the person is called an Autoresponder.

There are paid autoresponders and free autoresponders. Normally the free autoresponders paste their own marketing message at the bottom of the emails you send out.

Not the best scenario, obviously, but if you want to do this will limited or no upfront investment then a free autoresponder service will work just fine until you start to see profits coming from your book.

The service I use is a paid service called Aweber. It is located at .aweber.com

Do your own research and find a company that meets your needs. I recommend this service because it’s been around for a long time and many of my high quality marketing friends recommend this to their clients and wouldn’t continue to do so if it was a shoddy service.

What should you do with your autoresponder service when you get it?

1) You should place at least 1 or 2 “sign up” boxes on your book’s sales page. You can offer an ongoing “newsletter” or “ezine” (as it’s called online). Or you can create a “special report” related to the subject of your book and offer it free to anyone who signs up.

The purpose of this sign up is to capture “visitor” information. This way even if the visitor doesn’t order your book, you still have their contact information and can keep in touch to promote your book and yourself to them on an ongoing basis.

Maybe they won’t buy your book, but because of your newsletter or special report, they might recommend your book to family and friends.

2) After PayPal.com and before your download page.

When looking at PayPal.com, we saw that after they took the person’s payment for your book, they would send them back to your website.

The first page the person &ndash now a client &ndash should see is a “register” page. This page can simply ask for their name and email or you can have optional fields like address, phone number etc. Obviously the more information they are willing to provide the better for future contact with them.

This is a different list than those in #1. #1 is a list of people who visited your book’s website who may or may not have purchased your book. These people are registered buyers.

History proves that it’s far easier to get current clients to order more from you than trying to get someone who hasn’t already ordered. Both lists are valuable &ndash but this one is the most valuable to you for ongoing success.