Writing and Stuff by Anthony Chatfield

Before I write anything, let me toss a big fat disclaimer at the top here. Don’t quit your job unless you’re ready. This post is for writers who have reached the point where it’s necessary to take a risk and go for that next step. If you’re not at that point, check out one of my other posts about prepping for a career change. Using micropay sites is a good one, as is starting your own blog.

For the rest of you, read on, because I’m sick of seeing fantastic writers torture themselves by working a cruddy day job while their true passion languishes on. Just remember, quitting your job is a big decision. Don’t follow my advice alone – talk to your family first.

1. When You’re Making a Profit

The second you start making a real profit with your writing is the second you need to consider quitting your job. You might be writing 100 articles a week or just 10, but if you’re making enough money to supplement your income, you can likely scale it up to cover your living expenses.

A few things can temper your decision, however. First, if you have a high paying day job and you’re making $5 per article, it might be hard to replace that original income. A rate boost is going to be necessary. Second, if you’re writing 25 hours a week already in your spare time, it might be hard to double that when you quit (writing can be mentally exhausting). Finally, you need to create a steady source of work. Generate an Elance profile and start building your portfolio so you can bid on new projects.

2. Your Job Isn’t Fulfilling

If you’re at a job that eats away at your soul, it may be time for a change. Even if you’re writing is only covering 10% of your income, evaluate the benefits of boosting your writing time and cutting your job. When I switched I cut my day job hours down to 16 a week and started writing 4 days a week. I quickly learned that I could survive on that and so I pushed on. Do some math and see where you stand.

3. You’ve Reached a Wall

If you’ve been enjoying your segue into writing for money but have hit a wall where you cannot do anything more, it may be time for a change. When I quit my job, I was writing short articles for piddling pay. The result was that I didn’t have enough time to focus on larger projects and more serious deadlines. I still had a day job that took priority. So, when I hit that wall, I considered my options and promptly took the leap.

4. You Have Savings on Hand

Quitting a job in this economy is a big move, and one that can quickly backfire if you’re not ready for it. Even if you feel confident that you can make a good living writing, make sure you have money set aside before you make the move. I spent five months prior to quitting setting aside as much cash as I could. It allowed me to underperform for 3 months into my writing career before things finally took hold and I made a real profit.

5. You’re Ready for a Risk

Let’s face it – you’re taking a risk no matter how well prepared you are. You’re shutting the door on traditional work and jumping into the wild west of freelancing – where the work is never steady and the opportunities can be slim. Don’t wait for it to work out perfectly because I can guarantee you it will never happen. No matter how much planning or preparation you do, you’ll eventually need to just go for it.

Writing for a living is a passionate career – one you must have a number of traits to succeed at. You need self motivation, a willingness to change, flexibility in thought, and a big vocabulary. You also need the guts to jump ship and move away from the traditional grind and into the online frontier. Do that and you may just be the next big success story.

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Facebook is an interesting thing for me. I was never one of those people who decided early on “never” to be a part of social networking. I had a Facebook account from the start – when it was available to college students across the US. But, I’ll be honest in that I almost never used the site. Sure, I would approve requests, reply to messages, and occasionally say “happy birthday”, but I would almost never actually use Facebook for anything.

That is until now. These days, it’s different. As a 26 year old guy with friends scattered across the country, Facebook lets me keep tabs on people, which I sometimes do. But, as an entrepreneur with a new business, it lets me do so much more – accessing prospective clients and other business owners across the globe.

And that’s why I actually use it, and why you should be on there too.

Facebook is entirely too powerful to ignore if you have a brand on the Internet. It might be a blog, your business, a short story you wrote – whatever it is, Facebook is the way to stay in touch with people who like you and like what you do. If you’re not using it, you’re wasting a tremendous opportunity.

To top things off, Facebook is super easy to use. You can hook it up to your Twitter account or your blog and have automated posts uploaded every day. You can then have comments and wall posts forwarded to your phone for quick, on the go replies. I might spend a grand total of 15 minutes a day (at the most) on Facebook, and that’s on a busy day.

I think my answer to the title question is pretty obvious. Should you be on Facebook? Absolutely. Should you spend hours of your time on Facebook? That’s a whole different question – one that usually ends with a no.

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The all important part 2 of writing your eBook is here and is going to be an incredibly important aspect. Not only is this the part where you actually start to commit your ideas to the screen (a profound moment for any project), but it is where you start to see just how much cool stuff there is to talk about.

How Should an Outline Look

Personally, I like an extremely detailed outline – for a couple of reasons. When I used to work on projects, well before I became a freelance writer, I would just wing it. My college papers were done the night before and I didn’t outline anything. I got away with it, but I never quite learned how to balance my ideas and ensure everything was covered.

It's time to start writing

Once I started writing eBooks for my clients, that all changed. I didn’t have the luxury of winging it because someone was paying me money to ensure they got what they wanted. If I did it half-way, I’d probably just cause myself more work. So, I learned very quickly that before I started any project I would need to outline everything I could think of for their book.

With time, I learned that this wasn’t just good for my clients’ peace of mind, but for my own writing process. It makes it sooo much easier to be able to look back and see where I am between days, especially if I take two or three days off of a project and come back to it mid-chapter.

So, I’m going to show you my in-depth outlining process. Keep in mind that you can outline however you like, but to me, this is the best way is to know exactly what you’re going to write in the book from step one.

Create a Basic Outline

Start by creating a list of things that need to be covered in your book. You’ve already done a LOT of research by now (hopefully), so start listing out everything of value related to that research. If you were writing about dog training, you would start with puppy behaviors, clicker training, house training, and so on. Write it all down in one big, messy list.

Once you have that list completed from memory, take a few minutes and start researching elsewhere to make sure you didn’t forget anything. A method I occasionally use is to sift through the table of contents in books on Amazon.com and see what other subject areas I might have missed for the niche. DO NOT steal any ideas from these books – that’s plagiarism. Rather, just see if there was a general topic area that you missed. For example, if you wrote a Dog Training book but forgot to mention leash training, your book would be missing an important part. Never copy an outline from another book. This is why you create your own list first – otherwise the urge to just copy it out would be too great.

Fleshing it Out

Once you have a full list of topics, you should start filling it in. The easiest way to start doing that is to group everything in your list together by category. These categories will be your chapters. Ideally, you should have between 6 and 15 chapters, but no less or more than that. Too few chapters makes a book too bulky. Too many chapters makes it disjointed. Keep things combined for ease of flow.

Then, when the chapters are nice and organized, create a flow chart of what will be included in each chapter. Here is a sample of what an outline for this blog post would be (pretend it’s a chapter in an eBook):

II. Outlining an EBook
A. Introduction to Outlining
B. How Should an Outline Look
C. Creating a Basic Outline
D. Fleshing it Out
E. Creating Notes
F. Some Tips

As you can see, I’ve separated the chapter as number 2, then added each subsection below. You can add additional subsections below that fairly easily. Microsoft Word or Open Office SWriter both have easy features to do this automatically.

Creating Notes

Once you’ve created your organized outline, go through and add a short sentence or set of notes next to each marker to remind yourself for later what will be included in that section. Sometimes it can help you to remember what details are most important in that part of the chapter. Here’s an example:

E. Creating Notes – Describe the need to add notes for each part of a chapter. Show example.

I’ve just told myself exactly what I should write in that section, making the process much easier for me when I am in the middle of a massive writing project.

Some Tips

If the above seems a bit vague to you, it’s on purpose. Everyone’s outline is a little different and you need to find what works for you. But, I want to be sure I give you some parting tips to keep you from being totally lost when you get started:

• Don’t Try to Do Everything – Don’t try to cover everything in your niche. It would be impossible. A good eBook is as long as it needs to be to provide value to your reader. For that reason, aim for between 8 and 10 solid, useful pieces of information, fleshed out into chapters or subchapters as needed. If you write on 20 or 30 different topics, you may never get done.
  

  Never understimate the value of research

• You Can Always Add or Delete Things - Don’t feel like your outline is written in stone. You can always come back later and change anything you want from it at will. I like to keep it open whenever I’m researching or working on a book. That way, if I find a new idea or decide an old one is no longer good, it’s easy to delete or add.
• Do Your Research – Don’t create an outline on only topics you know about. You should be willing and able to go out and do research on things you may not be 100% familiar with. This will add value to both the eBook and your experience.

The ideal outline is one that will prepare you for the writing process. It will create an organized timeline by which you can write your eBook without getting too overwhelmed with potential topics. If you can do that, you’ll be set when it comes time to start writing.

Next Time

In the next post, we’re going to discuss how to conduct research and gather information for your book. It may be dull, but it’s the backbone of all good content.

Writing Guides ebooks, freelance writing, how to write an ebook, internet marketing, Writing Guides

So, I’ve been trying, to little avail, to use Twitter in recent months to do some basic networking and marketing. I know it can work because I’ve written about it a few times in the last year or so and seen the results of dedicated marketing only through Twitter. It’s pretty awesome when it does work – but I haven’t hit the magic formula yet.

Here’s the problem – I can’t get myself to post 20 times a day. I see people doing it and I’m sure they’re getting a lot out of those posts, but wow – really? Who has Twitter open all the time and who has something valuable to say that often. I’m probably just opening myself to a slew of responses about how many ways there are to use Twitter, and don’t get me wrong – I love it. I find all sorts of cool stuff on there when I’m reading other tweets and I’ve gotten some good answers at times when I need quick help. But, enticing people to click on links is harder and harder these days with all the marketing being done out there.

My bread and butter seems to be article marketing – that stuff is gold and I’ve been racking them up of late. In August I had one article that I posted on the 22nd get 1000 views and 545 clicks. That was only 10 days. Anyways, I’m realizing that this post has minimal value other than me complaining about Twitter and bragging about my articles. It’s getting to that time of the day again – time to go find some dinner. Maybe tomorrow I’ll work on analyzing exactly why I can’t do well on Twitter and then maybe…you know, fix it.

As always, any Twitter experts are welcome…no, encouraged, to leave their comments and suggestions. I enjoy tweeting a little too much to give up just yet.

Marketing Projects article marketing, ezine articles, internet marketing, social network marketing, twitter

It’s one of those days that tend to pop up when I’ve been doing just a little bit too much work. After a dismal August in which it seemed like the entire content writing market had completely dried up, September has been anything but. Old clients that I hadn’t heard from in a while came knocking and now I have plenty of work to get me through the month (and a bit beyond).

It’s exactly what I wanted, but to be honest, I rather liked having all that free time to tweak with some Internet Marketing ideas I had and to try some other fun stuff on the side. So, I’m trying to keep up with those plans without letting it all get the best of me.

Anyways, the goal was to get a new set of PC related PLR articles up today as well as some for Christmas and Mafia Wars. I got my topics and my research done, but time is running short and the brain is drying up. So, hopefully tomorrow or Thursday, I’ll have three brand new sets of PLR up and ready over at ArtisanPLR.

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