15th November 2009
This is a perennial question for writers. Many of them give unhelpful answers, e.g., "they just come to me." But ideas are truly all around us; it's just a matter of grabbing them and running with them. Here are some tips to get you started, whether you'r...
06th November 2009
Most of us are readers, so it stands to reason that we believe we know at least a little bit about writing. This is true to a large extent - writing, the act of stringing words together in coherent fashion, is not neurosurgery. But many myths about writin...
05th November 2009
My grandmother always used to say, "With everything, there is something." (She also had many other colorful catchphrases too profane to repeat here.)
Grandma Wanda was right - there are tradeoffs inherent in everything. Sleeping in means you don't have...
27th October 2009
You could write a book - and many have - on what to do and not do when writing fiction. We're not going to get into that degree of detail here, but there are lots of little things you can do that make your writing exponentially better. Here are 6 to start...
22nd October 2009
Every week, I get a lot of questions from lawyers eager to begin writing. Some want to become full-time writers, while others just want to complete the novel or screenplay that's been kicking around their heads forever.
Most are highly committed to mak...
14th October 2009
Lawyers are notoriously short on time. It's the nature of the beast - even if you're self-employed, you're largely at the mercy of court schedules, deals that come together and fall apart at the most inopportune times, piles of paperwork that need your re...
14th October 2009
Free samples are a good idea with cookies...why not with writing?
If you're a new writer, you probably lack published clips to show to prospective editors - you know, the people you're querying so that you can write for them and, you guessed it, get so...
01st October 2009
Unlike other types of writing, which are meant to inform, entertain, or persuade in a general sense, copywriting is writing designed to make a reader take action and buy. Sometimes the price of the item being "sold" is nothing more than a reader's email a...
01st October 2009
As a freelance success story, Linda Formichelli walks the talk. She's written for more than 120 magazines, including Woman's Day, Health, Writer's Digest, Redbook, Business Start-Ups, Fortune Small Business, and Family Circle. She's also the author of two...
19th September 2009
Like law, writing has a language all its own. Here, in no particular order, are some terms you'll need to be familiar with as you make the transition to writing:
TK: Editorial abbreviation meaning "to come" - used by writers and editors as a placeholde...
10th September 2009
Law is like a bad marriage - easy to get into; hard to get out of. The primrose path starts in earnest in college, when you pore over the websites and request the glossy brochures. You might even talk to a couple of real-live law students - all of them ha...
08th September 2009
Any successful magazine writer will tell you that query letters are the key to breaking in to the business.
In a query letter (these are increasingly emails rather than hard-copy letters), you pitch your fantastic story idea to an editor and request th...
06th September 2009
Last week, we covered some of the features of a good magazine query letter. This week, we're going to provide a sample of both a good query letter and the query letter from hell:
QUERY FROM HELL
Dear Editor(1):
I have an idea for a story I think ...
17th August 2009
"So I just talked to my agent, and...."
Admit it - this is something you've always wanted to say. And while there's a great deal of mystery surrounding the process of how to find an agent, it's relatively straightforward. This doesn't mean you'll be ab...
10th August 2009
You've pulled all-nighters. You've burned the midnight oil. You've worked through the wee hours. It's what lawyers do (as well as law students, though generally more pizza is involved).
But what I'm suggesting is a radical departure from this. I'm sugg...
