Thursday 15 October 2015

A freelancer's gotta hustle

Hustling is a life skill you need to learn if you're self-employed or writing on the side and hoping to get published. With savvy tactics and persuasion you'll rustle up opportunities when your inbox goes quiet. Sometimes gifts from the universe do drop into your lap – work offers, surprise tax rebates, awards – but for the most part you get out what you put in. As a freelancer it's up to you to create your own success, income, publicity and reputation. As Truman Capote famously remarked, 'a boy's got to hustle his book.' For most of us, this applies in some way.

1. Do something to promote yourself online every weekday. A daily practice is key. Even if you merely commit to one daily tweet in your field of interest, for example, it's a whole lot better than doing nothing. It's similar to the compounding effect of saving: within a few months of repeated small actions, you could have a substantial and growing following. Keep your message and offering consistent, and ensure it's of high quality. This requires discipline, but once you're in the habit these 10 minutes devoted to online marketing are just a normal part of your day.

2. Up your Google rankings. Use long-tail keywords in all your online text, from blogs to tweets, advised Paula Wynne, author of Pimp My Site: The DIY Guide to SEO, Search Marketing, Social Media and Online PR, during a talk at the Cape Town Book Fair. A few relevant, specific words strung together to form phrases that describe your work (such as 'online creative writing course, The Peacock Book Project') should be used whenever you write something on the internet. Do this, and your Google ranking will climb. Ensure these keywords feature in your website’s metadata – the description of your product or service that comes up under your website’s name during an internet search. Read more tips at  http://thepeacockbookproject.blogspot.co.za/2012/06/how-to-become-googles-no-1-website-for.html)

3. Keep producing new material. Short Sharp Stories Award convenor Joanne Hichens was gratified to see writers who'd entered the competition a few years in a row make it into the 2015 shortlist and Incredible Journey anthology – proof, she said, that as a writer 'you've just got to keep churning out new material'. Submit work to new competitions, offer new stories to both previous buyers and new buyers. If one short story doesn't get published, move on and write something new instead of getting hung up on one item you desperately want published. You'll feel more creative, productive and successful, and increase your chances of getting published.

4. Pitch new ideas when things go quiet. When there's no work flowing in, don't panic; use the time productively. Think about the sort of work you'd like to do next, then approach publications with outlines of your ideas. See step-by-step instructions on how to find article ideas and pitch then to publications in my book Writing for Magazines: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know. http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Magazines-Absolutely-Everything-Need-ebook/dp/B0058OJL4Y

5. Constantly build your network of contacts. Don't only use social media for personal purposes; make use of Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest to connect with others for work purposes. LinkedIn in particular is a worthwhile business tool, especially for keeping abreast of new freelance contracts around the world. Post a good photo of yourself and keep updating your profile with recent contracts, publications and achievements. Consciously grow your social media contacts: track down interesting people in your field you've met, heard interviewed, seen on TV or read about. When you need a case study, idea or answer for work, putting it out to your social media contacts is the fastest track to a solution.

Catriona Ross is a journalist, author, and creator of The Peacock Book Project: Write the novel of your dreams (www.peacockproject.net). Her books are available in the Kindle Store: Little Diamond Eye, The Presence of Peacocks or How to Find Love and Write a Novel, The Love Book, Writing for Magazines: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know, and The Happy Life Handbook.

Thursday 13 August 2015

10 ways to find a winning short story concept

The Book Lounge in Cape Town's Roeland Street was packed last night at the launch of Incredible Journey, the 2015 Short Sharp Stories Award anthology curated by Joanne Hichens. Joanne, cultivator of sharp literary talent, interviewed the authors and discovered how they came by their story ideas on the prescribed theme, 'journeys'.

Mix up a few explosive ingredients. Young men, alcohol, a fast car on a Friday night: as Andrew Prior said of his story 'Terraplane Journey', 'with the right ingredients, things are  going to happen.' He acknowledged Stephen King's On Writing for teaching him the how of constructing a short story.

Mine the emotions of your past. In 'Pyramid of Light', Sean Mayne explored the paradox of having nostalgia for his apartheid-era army days while knowing, as he does now, that he was 'fighting on the wrong side'.

Hook into current issues. 'I was noticing the problem of homophobia in our society,' said Tebello Mzamo, who in 'My Room' followed the personal journey of a young gay man who moves from sleepy Lesotho to the Mother City.

Launch from a landscape that touches you. In his story 'Red Dust', Stephen Symons wrote about lives that intersect, with the unifying red dust of Africa figuratively covering them all. 'We as South Africans are all intimately connected to landscape,' he explained.

Choose a key symbol that draws characters together. In Bridget Pitt's 'The Infant Odysseus', it's a baby. 'An infant offers the possibility of engagement for people in a divided society,' she said.

Embellish a shocking or unusual tale you've heard. Dudumalingani Mqombothi, author of 'Memories we Lost', grew up in a village in the former Transkei where a family member had a mental illness and a sangoma (healer) claimed he could cure such conditions by baking the sufferer...

If a poem or true story haunts you, use it. Bongani Kona recalled reading a six-line poem entitled 'Requiem' in a poetry journal from a second-hand shop. 'I loved the way the final line of that poem echoed,' he said. That, and a report he read about two brothers who hadn't spoken in 25 years, combined to spark his story, 'At Your Requiem'.

Mix mythology with the modern. In 'Lift Club', Jumani Clarke used a car lift club journey to explore the classic idea of the soul's descent into the underworld.

Make notes, then distil them. Story award winner Andrew Salomon, an archaeologist, related how he started making notes of characters and conversations during his daily train trips to and from work. 'So much stuff happens in a carriage in a 24-minute journey; truth really is stranger than fiction,' he said. As for plot, 'it's much easier to note it down than to think it up.' To concentrate many quirky happenings into one train trip for his story 'Train 124', Andrew created a protagonist with a neuro-developmental disorder that causes one to focus intently on one's surroundings.

Don't force it. 'When a story doesn't work, allow something else to pop out,' said Joanne. Sean Mayne began with 'a guy with a body on a train' but abandoned it for the new idea that had appeared, inspired by his army days.

www.shortsharpstories.com

Tuesday 28 July 2015

Notes from the ghost of a Scottish writer

In a moment of synchronicity, a writer ancestor paid me an unexpected visit a few months ago.
My friend Alex Smith, author of Devilskein & Dearlove, phoned to say with amazement, 'I was looking through some of my grandfather Leonard's literary journals and found an article about your great-grandfather!' She immediately emailed me pages from The Bookman December 1931 issue about Scottish novelist and poet Neil Munro (1863-1930).
Leonard, 'a lover and buyer of rare books' according to Alex, had probably read the article on Munro, and may even have bought and read his novels. Fast-forward 84 years, and two of the literary men's grand-daughters meet up regularly, as they have all their adult lives, for tea and conversation about life and literature. In fact, when Alex found the article, she and I were living in the same road, just a few houses apart.
You've probably never heard of Neil Munro, unless you took a course in Scottish literature, but during his time he captured the imagination of the Scots with his historical novels offering commentary on the shifts in contemporary Scotland, his light-hearted Para Handy tales about a crafty boat skipper on the River Clyde, his poems and newspaper columns. Munro's younger son, Neil junior (also a journalist and writer of fiction), was my mother's father.
The Bookman article raises aspects of writing relevant to South African writers today. With our diversity of languages, many novelists and poets may write in second-language English – and thereby stand to benefit from the influence of their mother tongue. The article's author writes of Munro, 'Though expressing himself in the purest English, he kept a Scottish accent of mind.' And, 'He thought in Gaelic and wrote in English, and it was this bilingualism that lent such charm to his rich and allusive style – a style pregnant with the rhythmic cadences, suggestive turns of speech and poetic metaphors that come straight from the Gaelic.' (Read the article for more).
Secondly, Munro's love of the Scottish Highlands - an 'exquisite responsiveness to the moods and suggestions of nature' - infuses his work. My great-grandfather wrote about the places he and his fellow Highlanders loved, the places they yearned for when far from home. Writing powerfully about a place you know intimately is something you do not only for yourself and your current audience, but for posterity. As Cape Town author Henrietta Rose-Innes noted in a recent interview about her new novel, Green Lion, 'I want to write my patch of the world into existence, and trust that others around me are writing theirs. Otherwise, I fear these unique locales will vanish from our literary map.' (I recommend Helen Moffett's anthology Lovely Beyond Any Singing: Landscapes in South African Writing for a tour of local places through the eyes of our novelists, past and present.)
A portrait of easy-going, witty Neil Munro stands on my desk, gently reminding me to keep writing, to keep going - as does Alex, whom I've known since the age of five. If only Leonard were here to see the titles written by his granddaughter lined up on bookshop shelves...

The Neil Munro Society publishes a twice-yearly magazine. See http://www.neilmunro.co.uk







Monday 6 July 2015

The 5 keys to collaborative writing

Want to write a book even though you're short on time? Co-authoring a book with another writer (or two) can be a satisfying experience, since it brings the benefit of another brain, imagination and pair of eyes, and halves the amount of writing you have to do. Here's how to make it work.

1. Plot out the whole story before you start writing. Collaborative writing   works best when everyone involved knows exactly what will happen in each chapter. When writing a novel on your own, you can get way with plotting as you go along, but in a collaborative effort it can be disastrous. List the events per chapter together and, importantly, agree on what the ending will be.

2. Crunch the numbers. Decide how long your book will be, and how many words each chapter should contain. If the entire book is to be an 80,000-word thriller composed of snappy 2000-word chapters, that makes 40 chapters, 20 per person.

3. Divide up the work fairly, upfront. It's best to be scrupulously even-handed, taking it in turns to write each consecutive chapter (unless you're two specialists writing a handbook together, in which case it's more sensible to write those chapters relating to your area of expertise). Assign chapters to each writer at the start.

4. Work to weekly deadlines. They're a great motivator. If you're part of a two-person writing team, you'll have one week on and one week off. One chapter a fortnight is doable, no?

5. Hold a weekly meeting to ensure the writing's on track, to egg each other on, and to discuss and resolve any issues that arise with plot, performance or, er, personalities. Good luck!

Catriona Ross is the creator of The Peacock Book Project: Write the novel of your dreams (www.peacockproject.net). Her books are available in the Kindle Store: Little Diamond Eye, The Presence of Peacocks or How to Find Love and Write a Novel, The Love Book, Writing for Magazines: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know, and The Happy Life Handbook.