Hope the new year is treating everyone well!

As you may have noticed, I’ve been posting very sporadically over the last year. It’s entirely possible, though I haven’t counted, that I had more guest posts in 2009 than posts by me!

The good news is, nothing bad happened to me. 2009 was perhaps the busiest year I have ever experienced, and I put in motion several major projects that are just starting to take off now. Among other things, I accepted a position as a regular contributor at Outright Entrepreneur, writing about issues related to freelancing. Outright Entrepreneur is a project of Outright.com, the online bookkeeping system I’ve written about on this blog (Take Charge of Quarterly Estimated Tax Payments with Outright). The marketing director there saw my post here (and another at FreelanceSwitch) and after a short correspondence asked me to write for them. There’s a lesson there for anyone who’s wondering why freelancers should blog…

In addition to starting my new gig with Outright Entrepreneur, I also pitched, built, and launched an ebook publishing platform at Stepcase Lifehack. I wrote the first ebook, Back to Basics Productivity, based on a popular series of posts I’d written the year before on personal productivity. I also edited the second ebook (forthcoming this month), and solicited contributions for the third. I’m wearing just about all the hats – managing editor, marketing director, acquisitions editor, copy editor, layout and production – so you know it’s keeping me busy.

And so on – life happens.

The better news is, I haven’t abandoned this site. I love The Writer’s Technology Companion – the other stuff is my work, but this is my baby. I can’t keep up the pace I set in the first year of the site’s existence, when I was posting 3 posts a week most weeks, and sometimes 5 or 6. But I’ll try to post on an at least semi-regular basis over the coming months.

Another interesting lesson: Posting here was never all that hard, but a weird thing happens when you get pulled away for a while. The bar raises – not “out there” in the audience, but in your head. The longer I didn’t post, the harder it got to post. I felt… I felt like I owed my audience something special for their patience. And I didn’t have the time for that. Coming back to the site now means I’ve had to really come to terms with the imperfection that a busy schedule imposes. It means posting shorter pieces (and that really goes against my nature…) and posting sporadically and not always making a Grand Statement.

And yet another lesson: Though it’s been over a year since this site was regularly updated, I’ve lost almost no subscribers and, even more surprisingly, very little traffic. I attribute this to a conscious decision made early on to write posts that would come up in Google and other search engines, following the strategy I outlined here. A lot of the content on WTC is “evergreen” – that is, people are constantly searching for help on the topics I cover. And when they do, my content comes up.

And that’s the bottom line: to write what you can and have an audience for what you write. What more could I ask?

See ya soon!

For writers looking to improve their blogs quickly, Darren Rowse’s “31 Days to Build a Better Blog” program might be just the thing. Rowse runs Problogger, one of the top blogs on the Internet and the place to go for information about making a living as a blogger. For the next month, starting April 6, he’ll send out an email every day to everyone in the “31 Days” program with a quick, 10–15 minute task they can do to make their blog a little bit better.

I know little beyond that — like you, I’ll have to wait until the 6th to see what kind of tips Darren is sending out. But, Darren is a) super-smart about blogging, b) very good at explaining things, and c) about the nicest guy you’ll ever meet, and therefore one ofthe givingest, so I’m sure the tips will be effective, well-written, and generous.

The program is free — you just need to give your name and email address to receive the daily emails. IF you need to get your blog in order — or maybe even get your blog started — this looks like a good, quick way to pick up a little steam.

Image via Wikipedia

So, you want to be a writer.

It can be daunting to know how to get started as a writer. A lot of us feel we can write, know we can write – or better yet, know we can’t not write. We love the unfolding of stories beneath our pens, the spray of words across a computer screen, the sound of imagery narrated in our heads. We are story-tellers, truth-seekers, teachers, and sharers of life’s joys and sorrows, beauties and uglinesses.

But there’s a huge gap between scribbling our thoughts in a journal or writing a couple of essays in a college class and actually being a writer. I know I’ll be contradicted by… well, by everyone on the Internet trying to make a buck selling you their Super-Amazing Get-Rich-Quick-Writing-from-Home System for only $97 or $297 or $497, but while writing may come easily to you (and it doesn’t especially matter if it doesn’t), actually being a writer is hard, hard work. Not the hardest ever, but hard enough.

I don’t say this to discourage you, or to test your mettle, or anything like that. I want you to be a writer. Or I want you to at least have given it a shot, to have at least tried it on – better that you try and fail than to not become a writer out of fear, laziness, or simple lack of knowledge. But if you’re going to become a writer, I’d like you to be prepared for the long haul, and all those scammy “anyone can write” programs and products do a piss-poor job of preparing would-be writers for the job of actually writing.

So this series, which I intend to be 4 posts long (but that’s subject to change if I feel like it), will look at what it takes to get into writing as a professional pursuit. The goal is to take you from getting started to the point where you’re just getting your feet under you and “standing up” in the writing world. I hope you won’t quit your job and hole up with this blog and a stack of legal pads – writing is a dangerous career and all writers have to make sure they have a steady, reliable income, whether at a “day job”, through an established network of publishers and editors, or via a constant stream of freelance commercial work.

Building Up Your Chops

The first step you need to take if you’re going to become a writer is to build up the basic skills you’ll need to write well. If you dream of becoming a writer, you might already feel you write pretty well – get over yourself. While you may have a way with words, there is no writer who can’t do with a little improvement (read in most cases: “a lot of improvement”) .

Learning to write well is more than just learning command of grammar, structure, and narration – though those are all important. On top of that, you need to learn the jargon of your new industry – what a “dek”, “lede”, and “nut graf” are; the difference between a novella and a novelette; the ins and outs of direct submissions vs. using an agent; how to write a query letter or proposal; how to identify an appropriate market for your work; and so on.

That’s not to say you  shouldn’t be writing while you’re learning. By all means, write! But make sure you’re working on the other stuff too. Taking writing classes and workshops, reading books about writing, and blogging are all ways to build up your basic writing chops – get into them!

Take classes

If you have the time and money, you might consider pursuing a college degree in creative writing or journalism. While the jury’s out on whether these programs are a fast-track to fame and riches – or even to publication – the skills you learn will certainly help you in whatever path you decide to pursue as a writer.

However, a college degree is by no means essential – plenty of writers, even most writers, don’t have a degree in writing, and many don’t have any degrees at all.

But the classroom experience can be quite useful – you’ll get some feedback (at least from your instructor; students are supposed to give feedback but somewhat notoriously most do not, or give useless feedback) and you’ll have ample opportunity to push your skills into unknown territory.

Your local community college probably has dozens of writing classes you can take for usually rock-bottom process. Semester-long for-credit courses at the community college I teach at run about $130.

Community colleges, and many universities as well, also offer shorter not-for-credit courses through their adult extension programs. These courses might meet only once or twice a week for 6 weeks or every other Wednesday for two months or whatever. Because they are intended for adults they often offer courses in the evenings and on weekends to accommodate working schedules.

Other options include the Learning Annex if they have it in your city, local writing conferences (which often offer workshops as part of the program), or short programs offered nationally with 2–4 weeks residency.

Books

These are some of my favorite books on writing, the ones I’ve found most useful over the years.

• William Zinsser, On Writing Well: This book is my go-to book for writerly style. With clear, likeable language, Zinsser spells out how to craft solid, readable, and stylish prose. This book is a joy to read, and I find myself “dipping in” quite regularly when I need a dose of inspiration.
• Stephen King: On Writing: Easily one of the best books ever about the process of writing. You don’t have to be a fan of King (I’m not) to recognize that the man knows how to write in ways that reach deep into the hearts and souls of readers. Here he gives advice both on how to reach your audience and how to structure your life as a writer – all wrapped up in an inspiring and at times heartbreaking auto-biography of King’s own writing journey.
• Robert Bly: Secrets of a Freelance Writer: Although intended for aspiring freelance writers – and particularly for commercial writers – Bly offers plenty of advice about managing your career as a writer, as well as very strong tips on crafting persuasive language.
• Michelle Ruberg: Handbook of Magazine Article Writing: This is on my list because this is closest to the kind of writing I do, and the direction my own career is heading in. Covers the nuts and bolts of coming up with ideas, pitching stories, and working with editors, as well as the steps to research and write a compelling article (most of which would apply to any non-fiction writing).
• Philip Martin: The New Writer’s Handbook (2007): A collection of articles all offering practical advice on everything from tracking your writing goals to brainstorming ideas to building your author’s website. There are articles about every possible kind of writing in here, which means plenty for everyone.

You’ll notice the absence of Elements of Style. I own it, of course, but I find that I almost never open it – and have never just sat down with it and soaked it all in. Your mileage may vary, of course – Stephen King swears by it, and will lay a curse on any writer so full of pride as to not own a copy (I just squeak in under the wire on that one!), so it’s probably worth your while to at least have a copy. I just can’t promise you’ll learn much from it.

Blogging

I’ve been pretty vocal about why writers should blog, but in this context, the important thing is that blogging a) gives you a regular outlet to practice writing, b) puts work (potentially) in front of an audience and therefore invites feedback, and c) helps build your “platform”, that collection of marketable qualities that make up your salability as a writer. (I’ll talk more about platform later in this series.)

The Passion Test

One of the side-benefits of investing time and energy into improving your writing is that it functions as a kind of self-test of your passion for writing. This is important because, contrary to our idealistic desires, a lot of writing is a deadly slog through idea-less wastelands. If you’re going to do commercial or journalistic writing, you’ll find yourself writing about topics you could not care less about – and it had better be scintillating prose. If you’re going to write novels or non-fiction books, there will come a day when you absolutely do not care one whit about what happens next.

What’s more, while you might have plenty of ideas right now, you’ll use them up – and without passion, it can be damned hard to come up with new ones. Even worse, you’ll find that the ideas you do have simply don’t interest you any more.

Then there’s all the dull-work. Oh, yeah, it’s not all martinis and nymphomaniac fans in the writing world. There’s a lot of bookkeeping, doing taxes, filing, networking, filling out obscure paperwork (non-disclosure agreements, publication contacts, image licenses, etc.), legal mumbo-jumbo, and so on – all the stuff that you probably thought you were escaping by becoming a “creative person”. Oh, no no no – in fact, given a writer’s income and lack of institutional support, you are probably going  o be doing more business stuff than any business person you know. And if you don’t have a real passion for the writing, for the whole kit-and-kaboodle of the writing life beyond the simple act of putting word to paper, you won’t make it.

Next time: Breaking into the writing world.

Twitter is one of the most significant social media platforms to emerge in the last couple of years. If you’re not familiar with Twitter, have a look at this post where I explain the general concept, then head over to Twitter.com and sign up for a free account.

I’m always interested in finding new people to follow on Twitter, especially writers (because, let’s face it, if you’re gonna read something someone wrote, even in 140 characters or less, it’s always better if that person can write!) and I figure many of the readers of this site are, too, so here’s the deal: drop a link to your Twitter profile (In the form http://www.twitter.com/username) into the comments along with your name, and every few days I’ll shift them into this post to create a single list of Twitterers. Follow them and join the conversation!

Check back every couple of days and see who’s new and who you might want to follow!

Here’s the list to date (names link to website, when it’s given, @username links to Twitter profile):

1. Dustin M. Wax (@dwax)
2. Kimberlee Ferrell (@kimferrell)
3. Sonja Faust (@Sonja_Faust)
4. Johne Cook (@theskypirate)
5. Curt Wingerter (@Artistcw)
6. Douglas (@palisade14)
7. Alex Lobov (@alexlobov)
8. Thursday Bram (@thursdayb)
9. Copywriter Underground (@ChandlerWrites)
10. James Chartrand (@MenWithPens) 
11. Brandon J. Mendelson (@BJMendelson)
12. Elspeth Murray (@ElspethMurray)
13. Monica Valentinelli (@mlvalentine)
14. Rich Chastang (@richcat1989)
15. Tom Colvin (@tomcolvin)
16. Carolyn (@WordCountess)
17. Nathan E. Lilly (@nelilly)
18. Silvia Straka (@silviastraka)
19. Jetse de Vries (@Shineanthology)
20. James Mallinson (@jmallinson)
21. Roy Jacobsen (@rjacobse)
22. Jeff Wetherington (@thewordofjeff)
23. Zoe Westhof (@zoewesthof)
24. Danielle Marie Crume (@sumsette)
25. Michael Pokocky (@michaelpokocky)
26. Carly Tuma (@ThePiratess)
27. J.M. Strother (@jmstro)
28. Sina’i Enantia (@SinaiEnantia)
29. Jennifer Aderhold (@jjaderhold)
30. Who’s next?

A Twitter Tip for Writers

One of the cool things about Twitter is you can search the tweets of virtually everyone on Twitter (except a few holdouts whose stream is marked “private”). Go to search.twitter.com and search on any keyword to see what people are saying about it (try your name or the titles of your books to see what kind of buzz is out there).

I use Tweetdeck, a desktop Twitter client, which allows you (among other things) to set up a live search in a column that is automatically updated whenever a new tweet is posted by anyone on Twitter that contains the keyword for that search. The most useful search term I have is “for writers” (with the quotes), which is updated whenever someone posts a job “for writers”, a question “for writers”, or a link to a good post “for writers”.

Have another good search term “for writers”? Add it to the comments along with your Twitter ID!

Want More Writers on Twitter?

Twittterpacks.com is a site that collects sets of Twitterers you should follow and orders them by category. CHeck out the WRiting Twitterers here.

The whole point of a blog is that the author, or blogger, wants to share something. What they’re sharing could be anything, from 401K investment advice to tips on bathing your cat without incurring major injury. There is a dizzying array of topics that people blog about, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that all bloggers have one thing in common: they want the information they’re providing to reach readers. Otherwise, what’s the point of having a blog to begin with?

There are many ways to go about building a blog, but generally your top priority is going to be making what you have to say easily accessible to your readership. If no one’s visiting your site to read your brilliant account of backpacking in Paraguay, then you’re essentially talking to yourself.

That’s why I’m here today — to discuss something that many bloggers seem to take for granted, the RSS feed. Dustin wrote a great post about the basics of RSS here, so I won’t go into the nuts and bolts of syndication. Instead, I’ll take it a step further and talk about the finer points of linking to your RSS feed.

I can tell you from personal experience that if I stumble upon a website with content that I find interesting or useful, you’ve got about thirty seconds for me to locate the link to your feed before I get annoyed and leave. I don’t like having to search the text of your page for the words “subscribe” or “syndication,” and if I’ve gone through all that and still can’t find your feed, you’ve lost me as a reader. The link to your RSS feed needs to be clearly marked for the world to see and subscribe to. If folks can’t find it, no one will subscribe, and you’ll be left staring woefully at your dwindling web stats.

With that scenario in mind, I’d like to introduce you to my friend the RSS icon:

This little guy is pretty much the standard for clearly marking the link to your blog’s feed. Most people know it, and they look for it. When it’s not there readers get confused, then annoyed, then they navigate away from your page. This standard is a good thing, because it creates a common navigation between your site and the rest of the internet — no longer are we left to scroll through blogs in vain looking for a subscribe here link, because we know what to look for. You even have a plethora of options when it comes to stylizing your icon to fit the look and feel of your blog.

Now, let’s talk about placement. You generally want your feed link at the top of your page, usually near the top of your sidebar. Look over to the right corner of this very page – see how easy it is to find the RSS feed for the Writer’s Technology Companion? Dustin has done a good job of placing his feed icon in a location where it’s hard to miss, and goes a step further by putting a second link at the bottom of every post. If someone wants to subscribe to his blog, they don’t need to hunt all over for the link.

Many prefab blogging services, such as Blogspot and Blogger, do not clearly mark your feed by default, instead creating a little, nondescript link way down at the bottom of your page that says “Subscribe to: Posts.” This is very difficult for potential subscribers to spot, and unless they’re searching your text for the word “subscribe,” they’re not going to see it.

There are many ways to add a more obvious feed link to your blog, but if you’re not comfortable getting elbow deep in html, I recommend using a feed service like FeedBurner. They’ll let you create a feed for your site with all sorts of nifty features, and then will provide instructions on how to add the code to whatever blog platform you happen to be using. Easy! Feed services also tell you how many people have subscribed to your site, so you’ll be able to see firsthand how the placement of your feed link is affecting your returning readership.

Please be kind and clearly mark your RSS link. You’ll save your blog’s visitors a lot of time in superfluous page scrolling!

Stephanie Stiavetti is a feature writer, copywriter, and all around technical savant. Having spent the last decade ensconced in both the editorial and computer industries, she’s comfortable in either world and often combines the two. Her areas of expertise are food, cooking, nutrition, health/wellness, technology, and the writing lifestyle, though if she had her druthers, she would spend 100% of her time writing about her culinary exploits. Read more about her and her work at Wasabimon.

I visit a lot of blogs as a part of my day-to-day life, and my number one pet peeve with finding information within the blogosphere is the inability to print efficiently. Anyone who’s tried to print a recipe from a blog post can attest to the fact that in order to get one page of cooking instructions, you also end up with sheet after sheet of paper wasted on the superfluous printing of ads, sidebars, and empty tables. Even if you fish through your print preview to look for the meat of the printing job, you’ll often find that the post itself is splayed across several pages, interspersed with the aforementioned bloggage. This is no good if you’re trying to conserve paper and printer cartridges.

This isn’t just a problem with cooking blogs, either. I read through a vast number of interesting blog posts everyday on an array of subjects, and occasionally I want to print out something to hang on my wall or pass on to someone else. Again, I find myself wading though a ton of blog chaff to get to the wheat of the post.

To sum it up, printing from a blog can be a complete and utter headache.

Thankfully, the developer community is a great source of additional functionality for those of us running WordPress. There are countless plugins available that allow us to customize our little slice of the web in whatever way we see fit. WP-Print, a plugin created by Lester Chan, allows you to add tidy printing functionality to your WordPress blog by automatically adding a link to every post that will lead to a clean, printable version of your content. Here’s an example of what the output looks like:

• Original post
• Printable post created by WP-Print

Installation instructions are located here, but I’ll summarize the steps below.

First, go here to dowload the zip file. Once you’ve decompressed the file, you should have a folder titled ‘wp-print.’ Upload this entire directory to the server where you host your WordPress blog, and put it in the wp-content/plugins folder inside of your blog’s master directory.

Next, go to your WordPress control panel and navigate to the plugin management screen by clicking the ‘plugins’ link in the upper right-hand corner of your control panel, next to ‘settings’ and ‘users.’ Scroll down until you see the WP-Print listing, and click the ‘activate’ link to the right.

After you’ve activated the plugin, you’ll want to edit its preferences. Click the ‘settings’ menu in the upper right corner of the control panel, and you should see a listing of installed plugins under the main control panel navigation bar. To get to WP-Print’s settings, click the link that says ‘print.’ Here you can edit a multitude of setting, such as if you want images or comments to print with the post (I don’t recommend you turn on comment printing, as often your readers will just want the information in your post and not necessarily extraneous information).

That’s all there is to it! WP-Print should automatically insert a link to every post you make, offering your readers a tidy way to print the entry. If you have trouble installing or configuring WP-Print, the support forum can be found here.

Stephanie Stiavetti is a feature writer, copywriter, and all around technical savant. Having spent the last decade ensconced in both the editorial and computer industries, she’s comfortable in either world and often combines the two. Her areas of expertise are food, cooking, nutrition, health/wellness, technology, and the writing lifestyle, though if she had her druthers, she would spend 100% of her time writing about her culinary exploits. Read more about her and her work at Wasabimon.

This year, I will be meeting people I’ve worked with for a long time but never physically met, as well as folks I know as bloggers or on Twitter, and even a couple of people I’ve interviewed on the phone. So I’m pretty excited about that – and about hanging out on the show floor and talking with the vendors. I suppose if you run a blog about technology, even in the relatively small niche of technology for writers, it stands to reason that you’d get off on spending time talking with the folks who make all the neat technology that makes blogging possible. Plus, of course, when you’re in the midst of 3,000 or so bloggers, you are by definition among 3,000 or so writers.

If anyone who reads this blog is going to be in Vegas for the conference, let me know – I’d love to have a chat. Email me or send me a tweet on Twitter (I’m dwax). And hopefully I’ll have some cool stuff to talk about after the Expo.

Most of these sites use WordPress (dwax.org uses Drupal) and it’s easy enough to log into a WordPress site and write a post, but even with WordPress’ visual editor I find that I’m not very comfortable writing directly into WordPress. It works, but it’s pretty basic, and there’s certain “creature comforts” I enjoy when I write. What’s more, since each site is running a slightly different version of WordPress and slightly different extensions, it’s by no means a standardized experience.

So while I still log in and post directly once in a while, for the most part I write my posts off-line using Windows Live Writer which is, despite it’s Microsoft ancestry, one of the finest applications available (if not the finest) for posting to blogs.  The benefits are many, including:

• A standard interface for all of the sites I post to – I just select the site I want to post a piece to from a drop-down menu and click “Publish”.
• Saved drafts, so I can start posts and leave them to simmer while I work on other stuff.
• Plugins for things like reusing snippets of text or inserting links to books on Amazon.
• Use of each site’s stylesheet so I can see what my post is going to look like before I post it.
• Running word count (in WLW 3 Technical Preview, available at the Windows Live site; this is technically not finished software, but it’s run fine for me for the couple of months I’ve been using it)
• The ability to easily add categories (which WLW retrieves from the site, so you just check the appropriate boxes), tags, and a publishing date in the future.
• Spell-check – which can be set to trigger automatically before a post is published.
• A source editor, so I can muck around with the underlying HTML. I actually use this as an HTML editor for sites that I don’t post directly to; I write my post and cut-and-paste the generated code into a new text file and email it to my editors.
• Off-line use, so I can write even if I can’t get online for some reason.
• A stripped-down Word-like interface, with most functions available using keyboard shortcuts, so I can easily add formatting, links, tables, etc.

Best of all, WLW is free – you don’t even have to register it.

If you blog, whether you do it every day or only as the mood strikes, check out Windows Live Writer. It is easy to set up, auto-detecting the settings for most popular blogging platforms, and easy to use. It is perhaps the only piece of Microsoft software that I can whole-heartedly endorse – it does exactly what it needs to do and it does it well.

For a few tips and tricks about using WLW, check out my post from last year, 9 Ways to Get More Out of Windows Live Writer, at Lifehack.

• They’re “push” technology: Instead of waiting for a reader to visit your blog, or check their RSS reader, you “push” newsletters directly into readers’ email inboxes. Since most people check their email daily (at least!) there’s a good chance they’ll read your newsletter the day you send it (or shortly thereafter).
• You build a list: You have a record of the email addresses — and often the name and other information, such as location — of your newsletter readers. This is valuable information for anyone with some marketing savvy; most importantly, it means you can always reach the readers most important to you.
• You have pretty exact numbers: It can be hard to analyze website logs to determine how many people are visiting your site and what they’re doing there. Are unique visitors more important, or daily hits, or time spent on site? How do you put it all together? With email newsletters, you have numbers that are more like a magazines subscription count: while you can’t be positive the people who get the newsletter are reading it, you know exactly how many are getting it.

Use Feedburner to Create Your Newsletter

The easiest way to set up a newsletter is to use Feedburner’s email service. Feedburner is an RSS feed service, but they can take the content of your RSS feed (which is generated automatically by most blogging sites’ software) and send it via email. They handle the signups and confirmations, providing a sign-up form you can embed on your site, and will auto-generate a newsletter whenever there’s new content in your feed.

You can use Feedburner to simply recreate your blog in email form — every time you post, your list will get a copy of the post via email. Since only a small percentage of websurfers really “get” RSS, this provides a way to turn first-time visitors into regular readers. You can customize the header of your newsletter with a logo, and include ads in your newsletters if you want.

With very little work, you could also create a specialized newsletter “channel”, offering premium or bonus content in addition to your blog — or instead of blogging at all. In WordPress, you can easily set up a category of posts that don’t get published to the front page, and generate category-specific feeds (they’re at “http://yoursitename.com/category/categoryname/feed” for each category). Create a “newsletter” category, and feed its URL to Feedburner. If you’d like to send newsletters out on a specific day, simply schedule all your posts to be published on that day using the WordPress “Schedule” function. On the allotted day, Feedburner will collect all the posts from your RSS feed, apply your custom formatting and header, and generate a table of contents that will appear at the top of your newsletter.