Sunday, December 9, 2007

Unique to You Writing



There are so many ways to use your writing talents. You don’t need to be a New York Times best selling novelist. You may aspire to be a journalist, a magazine columnist, or a plethora of other writing careers, where your writing is important and sharable. Perhaps you are in the healthcare field and would like to share your experiences with others. Maybe you are a traveling nurse for example. You could combine your career, your travel and your writing as Epi Larue does at http://travelnursinghighway.blogspot.com/ Or educating nurses about new technology and more at http://21stcenturynursing.blogspot.com/

As a genealogist you would be more than apt to find fodder for stories from ancestors as Janet Elaine Smith does in her Keith Trilogies. To see some of the creative uses she has for her research into her family tree http://www.janetelainesmith.blogspot.com/ . She proves history (including family history) does not need to be boring. She proves you can take what you know and what you need to know, what you love and you want to share in more then one direction. A deep subject handled with a light hearted approach becomes a lesson learned without being aware you learned it.

Your faith, your belief in others combined with your writing skills can lead to much enjoyment and satisfaction for your readers as well as you. It is a marriage of talent and careers that makes rainbows possible. Helping others help themselves sometimes is managed when teacher meets the student. As a writer you know other writers, a good place to exercise your talents, flex your career muscles and help others is through author interviews or book reviews. Joyce Anthony does both with a flare and so much more.
http://joyceanthony.tripod.com/blog

Sometimes you can reach people with humor more then serious nagging. Sometimes your lessons in life can help another to smooth sailing. Look at the Chicken Soup for the soul books — in some small way your writing can do the same. If you are an author, if you have an experience that could help others in their struggle to cope in a sometimes perplexing world — write it, send it out. If you touch one life you will have accomplished a great deal. There are light hearted ways to deal with a plethora of angst, except a depressed or struggling individual rarely sees them. Even in writing you may experience something others can learn from. http://www.talkingallthingswrite.blogspot.com/ Allyn Evans shares some of the lessons she has learned the hard way. It can surely lighten your load, but also sharpen your pencil.

You may be saying all well and good, so I write. How do I know my writings good enough? How do I get my manuscript polished so that it is accepted by publisher, agent, magazine or whatever venue I’ve chosen? http://www.thefrugaleditor.blogspot.com/ will surely offer you enough help to answer these questions and more.
A good critique group will help you gain confidence, while helping you shape your writing. Do some research on them, test out a couple. Pick one that is compatible with you, not all of them are. The watch, listen, learn, test, and go for the brass ring.

Then you will more then likely ask If I do find a publisher or I self-publish my worries are over right? That my friend is a knotty situation, with solutions. Very few publishers, (certainly if you self-publish) have marketing plans in place for you. You will very likely be left to your own devices – you need to market and promote and yes even if they do—you still should because, who knows more about your book then you. Who has the passion that wrote the book in the first place? Who believes in it enough to want it to succeed? You had a message you wanted to deliver when you started writing. In order to deliver that message you must get your book into the intended audience’s hands. How do you do that? There is help everywhere, but a good place to start would be http://www.authroscoalition.blogspot.com/ or visit http://www.carolynhowardjohnson.com/ for another one of her writer helps, The Frugal book Promoter by Carolyn Howard Johnson or Janet Elaine Smith’s Promo Paks (soon to be available in print as well as e-book) will offer you many low or no cost ways to jump start your promotional efforts.

Writing is so much more than putting words on a page. Sharing what you know or what you want to know about can take as many forms as there are methods and genres to present your work. Knowledge is everywhere with the internet all you need to do is search.

The pen is indeed mightier than the sword. http://www.warpeacetolerance.blogspot.com/.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Well written! You've selected the creme de la creme of writers to spotlight.

Ron

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much for the link!!!

Carolyn Howard-Johnson said...

Mmmmm. Seems to me you've recommended some STARS here, Billie. Thank you for including me. I am especially excited about that new Amazon Short because I can share important info on writing for only 49 cents! (-:

Best,
Carolyn Howard-Johnson
www.howtodoitfrugally.com