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Welcome to the first day of Write Nonfiction in November! The title of this blog post reminds me of all those timed tests I took in high school. I hated taking those tests, but hopefully you won’t hate the Write Nonfiction in November Challenge. It’s supposed to be fun, educational and productive all at the same time. I love it, because it forces me to stop procrastinating and actually start and finish a project in just 30 days – something I don’t normally do. (More often than not I either don’t start at all or I start and don’t finish.)
Plus, this year, as I promised, I’ve got some great guest bloggers joining me, so I’ll be learning some new things along with you. Last year I did a massive brain dump and offered up as much nonfiction writing advice and information as I could think of at the time. I still have a bit more in my head to share this year, but it will be nice for me to read what other writing and publishing experts have to say and to gain some new tips from them. Plus, even I can get tired of reading my own writing – or listening to myself speak, as they say.
On that note, I thought I should start off with a bit of a bang and broach a topic that may have brought some readers here to begin with: writing for pay or for free. (If you don’t know what I’m speaking about, check out the post titled “Forced to Blog Before November.”) I did mention that everything that needed to be said about the subject had been said already in the post titled “To Blog for Free or Not to Blog for Free, That’s the Question,” but I really said that in reference only to getting paid to guest blog. And guest blogging seems to be a different animal all together. So, let me tell you what I think about writing for free or for pay when it comes to other types of writing.
Going back to my early beginnings as a writer, or would-be writer, while I was in high school and in college I often wrote for local publications for free. Why? I’m sure you can guess the answer: to obtain those coveted bylines or published clips that would one day get me paying assignments and, hopefully, a full-time job when I graduated from college. Yes, indeed, in the world of journalism, a newbie writer does sometimes (not always) find herself choosing (if not forced) to write for free to show she can write well enough to get a paid gig.
While in college, however, I had a lovely professor named John Keats (not THE John Keats, mind you, although this one wrote some best sellers), who taught me never to write anything unless I knew in advance I was getting paid for it. In other words, always send out a query letter; never write the article first. Always send out a book proposal; never write the nonfiction book first. For many, many, many years I headed his advice. I also didn’t make a lot of money as a freelance journalist. Till this day, however, I won’t write a reported article without a contract from a publication telling me I will get paid for that work.
Yes, it’s true (despite what some might think). I firmly believe that if a writer wants to take on a reported article or a nonfiction book, they should,
