Articles written by Guest Poster

If you missed part 1 of Deb Dorchak’s fantastic guest post yesterday, check it out before continuing.

Formatting Your Word Document

To format your Word document, you’re going to have to get used to using the manual procedure instead of the convenience provided by the toolbar. The upside of this is once you have a specific document set up for your manuscript you can save it as a template to use over and over without formatting everything each time you want to write a new novel or chapter.

To start, create a new Word doc file for each section of your book. This includes the front matter (your copyright and publisher information, ISBN), acknowledgements, introduction, prologue and each individual chapter. I mentioned above that ePubs don’t recognize page breaks. eReaders are all about flow and work the same way as a web page. They’ll scroll through a whole file in one long line without any breaks. The only way to get or make a forced break is when the HTML files inside that ePub zip file come to a new HTML file.

Now, with your fresh new Word document opened, you’re going to start putting in the types of formats you need. To do this go to Formats > Styles and Formatting. Click on that and a window will open up. In it you’ll see some basic formats already (Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, etc.)

The “Normal” setting is for the body of your content. This is for all your regular paragraphs. In it you’ll set your paragraph indents, spacing and font style.

Next you want to add formatting for your chapter headings. Since most eReaders disregard fonts and use their own, you can use Heading 1 for your chapter headings. So each time you start a new chapter and give it a title, you will highlight that line of text and then click on Heading 1 in your Styles and Formatting window. The text will automatically change according to your settings.

Now, to create the other basic formats like “Bold” or “Italics“, type out a single line of text and highlight it. Click on the Bold button in the toolbar. You should see a new format show up in your Formatting sidebar. From now on when you want something bolded in your content, you will click on that format to make it so. Continue to do the same for italics, underlines, bullet points if you are using them in your book.

In short, if you’re changing or adding a new format to your document, you want to have a style for it in the sidebar with the other formats and use only that as you write. This is what’s going to keep your Word doc as clean as possible for your designer.

Once you have all your formats set up, save the blank document as a template. On my computer I have it saved as “6x9_trade” because it’s set up with everything I need for doing a trade paperback or hardcover.

Not Just for ePubs

The process of setting up formats and styles in Word docs goes beyond getting them ready for an ePub. Printed novels and PDF ebooks also begin the same way, with just a few differences:

• Unlimited Fonts: for print and PDF you’re not limited to only web friendly fonts. These are the fonts that come installed with every computer. If your computer does not have a certain type of font, it will substitute the closest one. Print files are bundled with the required font for any given book. The printer installs them on their computer if they don’t have it already and work with the layout files that way. For PDF, the fonts are embedded into the file and therefore show up as they should no matter what computer you open them on.
• Images: ePubs have a difficult time with inserting images and wrapping text around them. There are a few adjustments needed in the HTML version of the ePub files that need to be made in order to do that and it involves some basic knowledge in coding. Similar to the embedded fonts, a PDF also embeds the images, like text wrapped images, background images and so on. One important point to remember when using images in your print or PDF book is to include the images in hi-resolution as jpgs in a separate folder you send to your designer. Images cannot be pulled from a Word document and set up into an InDesign file. When an image is placed in InDesign, it links to that specific image in the InDesign final bundle. High resolution is important in case your designer has to reduce or enlarge the original image to fit the layout. It’s alright to put the images in the Word doc for placement only (FPO).
• Interactivity: Many PDFs allow you to click on hyperlinks (live links within the document), or on graphic images to take you to other pages or sites on the web. Right now, hyperlinks are the only form of interactivity you can use in an ePub with any kind of accuracy. Creating live linked images is still labor intensive for the designer and again requires coding knowledge to get them to work in the ePub file. Adobe Acrobat Pro has special tools that make this easy when you’re doing a straight PDF ebook.

Even though you have to go through a few extra steps to format your Word document, the results will be worth it. You will have a clean file ready for your designer to work with and trust me, your designer will thank you.

Deb Dorchak, the co-owner and Lead Designer of Blue Sun Studio, Inc./Sirius Graphix. Deb’s been a graphic designer for more than 25 years and an artist since she could hold a crayon. She’s worked in the graphics industry doing everything from newspaper and glossy magazine layout, to animation in Las Vegas’ largest and oldest sign company. Deb got her start in Illustration, and her passion for telling stories through images hasn’t wavered yet. She and her business partner, Wendi Kelly, have finished their first novel Bonds of Blood & Spirit: Loyalties, due to release late October 2010.

You can find more of Deb’s articles on design, writing, and publishing at Sirius Graphix, or follow her @SiriusGraphix on Twitter. If you’re an author who needs a new site, or book for print, PDF or ePub designed, send her and the team an email at info@bluesunstudio-inc.com.

Self publishing is a hot topic these days. Everywhere you look you’ll see the ongoing debate over which is better, print or digital. When it comes right down to it, only you can choose which media fits your needs.

Before you get to the point of publication, regardless of the medium, you have to know how to format your files properly. Formatting files is much more than writing out your novel in a Word document.

There’s a common misconception that a Word document can be easily converted to PDF or HTML file. What you don’t see when you do that kind of conversion is all the extra code Word adds to the invisible back end.

You may have experienced this effect if you’ve ever copy/pasted a post from Word into a WordPress site. If you open up a new post and paste a Word document into the Visual view you may notice some odd things happening to your text. Maybe the font changed, or the bullets aren’t lining up right, or you have breaks and indents where you don’t want them.

Switch over to the HTML view and you’ll see why. In that view you’ll see all the extra garbage Word adds to the document.

This extra code is what often makes book designers tear their hair out and why it’s so important that you format your Word document properly before handing it over to your designer – or attempting to do your own book layout.

Styles and Formats

Chances are your designer will be using a program like Adobe’s InDesign to layout your book. This is a high end program created specifically for laying out files for print, whether it’s a book, pamphlet or glossy magazine. It is also created for digital layouts the designer can convert to PDF or ePub (electronic publications).

When it comes to ePub, everything is reduced down to it’s most simplistic form. The media is still in it’s infancy, so incorporating things like images and interactivity still have a lot of bugs and don’t always transfer well when converted to the many ePub formats (Kindle, iPad, Sony, Nook, etc.).

The simplicity begins with your Word document and for this you are going to become very familiar with your “Styles and Formatting” (SF) button.

Usually when we write a Word document we don’t give SF a lot of thought. Want a bolded line of text? Click the “B” button in the toolbar. Want italics or indents? There are buttons for those, too.

Each time you click on one of those buttons, you’re creating a new style or format. Start to add bullet points, pull quotes, colored text or numbered lists, each with their own bold or italics, and the styles begin to add up.

By the time your designer gets this single file, there could be anywhere between a dozen to a hundred different styles and formats wrapped up in one Word doc.

Designer Meltdown

After the designer receives your Word doc, they will import the file into InDesign. When this is done, every single format and style you unwittingly created shows up in a style sheet within InDesign.

It’s meant to be a help, but when you’re dealing with ePubs, it’s a huge time sucker.

Here’s the thing I’ve discovered about ePubs: Less is more. Only a quarter of the formatting we have available to us in a Word document is used in a final ePub file. ePubs are far from the fancy, image laden PDFs we’ve been used to in the past. An ePub is the hybrid child of an HTML website, CSS and word processing.

The ePub files are delicate, picky creatures. Each ePub file is actually a type of Zip file, comprised of many separate HTML files like the different pages on a website. They don’t recognize a lot of spacing formats, like paragraph breaks and indents. They don’t like numbered lists, graphics or fancy pull quotes. Anything the ePub file doesn’t like, it will ignore or override in the reader. And above all, ePub files don’t recognize page breaks.

This is where making your Word document formatting as clean and basic as possible will help your designer and save you money on layout expenses. The less the designer has to strip out and clean up just to start, the more time they’ll have on laying out your pages.

Deb Dorchak, the co-owner and Lead Designer of Blue Sun Studio, Inc./Sirius Graphix. Deb’s been a graphic designer for more than 25 years and an artist since she could hold a crayon. She’s worked in the graphics industry doing everything from newspaper and glossy magazine layout, to animation in Las Vegas’ largest and oldest sign company. Deb got her start in Illustration, and her passion for telling stories through images hasn’t wavered yet. She and her business partner, Wendi Kelly, have finished their first novel Bonds of Blood & Spirit: Loyalties, due to release late October 2010.

You can find more of Deb’s articles on design, writing, and publishing at Sirius Graphix, or follow her @SiriusGraphix on Twitter. If you’re an author who needs a new site, or book for print, PDF or ePub designed, send her and the team an email at info@bluesunstudio-inc.com.

Editor’s Note: Deb shares more fantastic insights into formatting files for electronic publishing. Stay tuned for part two tomorrow. Subscribe right now so you don’t miss out.

Are you an aspiring writer? Do you want to make some cash online but you don’t know where to start? There are a number of websites that will pay you for your work. You don’t need to be a professional writer. To get started, all you need is a PayPal account to receive your payments.

Write What You Want
• Associated Content – At Associated Content, compose a well written article on any topic that you want. You upload your content to their site and after an editor reviews it, they will offer you an upfront payment for your work. After the piece is published, you can also earn money from how many people view your article. Posting your links in social networking sites, like Facebook, is a good way to increase your page views.
• Helium – Helium is similar to Associated Content, but it’s more difficult to earn money with. The amount of money you can earn is based on ratings that other writers give you. This is a cause of frustration for many because the ratings that you are given aren’t always fair.
• Constant Content – Constant Content is a place for more advanced authors. They are pickier when it comes to the quality of your submissions. It’s a great place to work if you can meet their requirements. At Constant Content, you get to decide how much to sell your articles for and what kind of licensing options to offer.

Write On Assigned Topics
• Textbroker – Textbroker is a great site. You’ll be ghost writing for people who need content for their websites and blogs. Textbroker only allows you to select one assignment at a time, but most of their work is easy to write. They have a low $10 minimum payout and you can earn that in just one day.
• Demand Studios – Demand Studios pays anywhere from $5 to $15 for articles. You can write as many articles a day as you want. It’s a wonderful place to start for beginners.
• Break Studios – Break Studios pays around $8 per piece and they have a lot of easy topics to choose from. You’ll mostly be writing for male-oriented websites, but you don’t have to be a man to sign up.
• eCopyWriters – eCopyWriters is much like Textbroker. You sign up and start taking assignments to write. If you decide to use eCopyWriters, you should be aware that they are slower than other sites. It takes more time for your work to get reviewed and there are fewer assignments available.

Freelance writing is a great way to earn money. You’ll need to really dedicate your time and efforts to writing, but you can earn a full-time income online. The opportunities are available for anyone willing to work at it.

Melissa Tamura writes about accredited online schools, higher education and distance learning for Zen College Life. She most recently ranked the best online schools in the USA.

Creativity is the lifeblood of writers, whether we write fiction, non-fiction or blog posts to promote our business. People in every profession come to me during a Feng Shui consultation and want to find easy ways to enhance their creativity. Feng Shui is about the observation, collection and distribution of chi, or energy, throughout a space. When the chi flows, the residents of the home are healthier, more vibrant and perform better which will contribute to their wealth and ability to take advantage of opportunities to achieve their goals.

Activating the Creativity Area of Your Home or Office

It all begins with the bagua. Once you understand this simple Feng Shui tool, you can activate the energy (the chi) in the creativity segment of your home or office. When you lay out the Bagua in your home or apartment, you’ll see nine different sectors in your home, corresponding to various areas of your life. If you are looking into the room from the door, the children and creativity area is the section against the right wall, up to the center of the space. To enhance your creative mind, you want to focus on the energy in this space.

You can also lay the bagua over your office floor plan or your desk, enhancing your creativity by focusing on that area of the bagua in any space.

Assess the Chi

When you enter the area of the room where you write, how do you feel? Look around: What colors are dominant? What objects do you see? If you feel you have uplifting chi in that space, chances are your creative energy isn’t suffering at all.

But if the area makes you feel down, depressed or simply “stuck,” this could explain why you are not having as much success as you should in your writing career. Your creativity may be suffering.

Enhance the Creativity Segment of the Room

The children and creativity segment of the bagua corresponds with the element metal and the color white. Placing anything metal in that area, including creative sculptures made of metal or colorful artwork in metal frames, will enhance the chi in that corner.

Here are some other objects you can use the children/creativity area of the room to encourage the flow of uplifting chi:

• Metal windchimes or a bell. These objects not only represent the element of metal, but they increase “sound chi“ with bright, lively chimes. Wind chimes also add movement to an area, helping the chi flow.
• Metal Toys. What can be more playful and creative than toys? Add fun metal toys — such as race cars or a fun metal toy that swings with kinetic energy — to your creative area to add a sense of playfulness to your workday.
• White flowers. You can enhance a space with “living chi,” by adding objects such as plants or flowers. White plants, which correspond to the color of the element metal, work best in the creative area of your home or office. Be sure to replace flowers as soon as they become wilted. Fresh flowers bring living chi to a space, but dead flowers should be removed immediately.

The Command Position

Whether you have a home office or work at your kitchen table, the place where you write should have you sitting in the command position of that room. The command position places you so you can see the door, but are not directly in line with it.

If you must sit with your back to the door, placing a mirror in front of you will help you avoid the feeling of “being stabbed in the back” by clients and people you work with.

Dress for Creativity

Along with organizing and decorating our workspace with objects designed to enhance our creative energy and enhance the flow of chi, we can also dress in colors that raise our creative chi. White, as the color that corresponds with metal, is a good color for writers, as is bright blue and green. Green represents new hope and new ideas. You can also incorporate rainbow colors into your wardrobe to enhance your creative thoughts.

Ken Lauher advises individuals, businesses and organizations on how to implement practical Feng Shui solutions to help achieve their goals and live a more fulfilling life.

His inspiring and transformational work with well-known actors, actresses, TV hosts, singers, songwriters, CEOs, businesses, and corporations has made him a sought-after speaker on feng shui and life enhancement. Ken recently appeared on NBC’s Weekend Today show and TLC’s Moving Up!

Based in New York City, Ken works with local, national and international clients. To learn more about Ken, to download your free Feng Shui Guide, or to schedule a Feng Shui consultation, please visit www.kenlauher.com.

by Jack Blair

Parents today are often worried about their children’s reading. In part this is encouraged by schools, whose agenda of testing, leveling, and standardized scoring concerns many parents and leads them to fear that their children are somehow subnormal or failing.

In fact children learn to read at different ages, depending on their level of maturity. This does not mean that some children do not have problems reading, they do; however, many parents feel they need support to help develop their children’s reading skills.

What can you do, as a parent, to help your child with their reading?

Have many books in the house. It doesn’t matter whether your child is a baby or ten years old, the presence of books matters, because it gives children the opportunity to seek them out independently. It also creates an impression of the importance of books. Parents should also be members of the local library and take their children there as often as possible. Trips to bookshops and browsing book-selling websites are also helpful.

Parents should make time to read to their children. Some parents are surprised to find that children will enjoy this for many years – you should not stop simply because your child is an independent reader. Reading to them, and with them, encourages them to visualize stories and to ask questions about characters and situations. Try not to treat this time as a class: do not stop every page or so to ask the child “comprehension” questions, instead put on voices, change your tone, make the story come alive, and include your child as you read.

With older children who are reluctant to read, this time can be adapted into a story-CD time, giving them and you the space to listen to a book together. Many books for older children have been successfully adapted for CD. There is also no reason why parents should not share comics and magazines with their children. Some parents think that this is not “real” reading, but often the language used and sentence structures employed in magazines are as varied as many children’s books. Boys in particular may read sports magazines written for adults – this involves complex skills and should not be criticized.

Parents should be readers themselves. You should have a book “on the go” as much as possible, and you should be seen reading for your own pleasure or education. A parent is a model of behavior and this applies to reading as much as it does to table manners.

Parents should not agonize about their child’s choice of reading. If a child is reading and enjoying it, there is no such thing as a book that is “too easy”. Ignore the temptation to force books onto your child that they do not want or for which they are not ready. If you are cynical or critical of their reading, it will persuade them that they are not good at it, and it will discourage them.

Reading is a skill, but it is also a great pleasure of life. Children need every opportunity to develop this pleasure in their own time and in their own way. Let your child’s love of books blossom, and encourage them as much as you can. They will, certainly, thank you when they are older.

What memories of reading (and being read to) do you have from your childhood? As writer’s we often start as enthusiastic readers. How do (or could) you create similar memories for the children in your life?

Photo Credit: 10-22-07 © iofoto
Photo Credit: 03-30-09 © Damir Cudic
Photo Credit: 02-19-10 © Noam Armonn

I have a confession to make. I have written for peanuts. Even though I believe freelance writers should earn a fair rate for their writing, I have – in the past – written for rates that were low, low, low. I had my reasons and at the time it seemed like the right thing to do. Besides, taking low paid writing jobs can have some advantages, especially for writers who are just getting started.

The way I see it, there are three major advantages of taking low paying writing gigs. The first – and perhaps the most important – is that you never run out of work. There are hundreds of opportunities posted every day for all kinds of writing so if you want to, keep as busy as you want to.

Gain experience/build skills

That’s also a driver of the second advantage of low paying writing gigs. Getting experience in all kinds of writing and building skills. Never mind about your feelings of working for nothing; it’s a great way to try out different types of writing and become proficient enough to charge more. In this case, writing for peanuts is a stepping stone to greater things because you will also …

Beef up your resume

… improve your writing resume, which means you can charge more for your services. The greater your offering to your clients, the more impressed they will be and the more likely to hire you. They will also be less likely to quibble at your new improved rates. You’ll be moving into a different client pool, where the overriding factor is quality rather than simply price.

Many disadvantages

Of course, there are many disadvantages to this kind of work, many of which have been discussed ad nauseam by both myself and my fellow writers. For one, if you are working longer hours for less money, what’s the point of having escaped the cubicle? Working on low paid writing jobs without having a good reason such as those listed above is senseless. That’s because you will need to work even harder than most to earn a decent income and will be sliding down the slippery slope to writer burnout.

Sharon Hurley Hall is a professional content writer and blogger. See more of her posts on writing at Get Paid To Write Online.

Is It Worth It?

Does that mean writing for peanuts must be avoided at all costs? Not at all. The trick is to have an exit strategy and work towards it from the moment you take your first gig. Once you feel confident in your niche, have built up some knowledge and can match client requirements without too much difficulty, it’s time to start trading up. You have nothing to lose by raising your rates a notch and – if the world doesn’t end when you do – raising them again when the time seems right. For new writers, taking low paid gigs can be their first step on the path to a lucrative writing career – it certainly worked that way for me.

What other pros and cons do you consider when asked to write for low or no pay?

Photo Credit: renwest

by Jacob Malewitz

Encouraging children to read isn’t quite lost. Children often do read! They read comic books, they read Harry Potter novels … but more often than not they sit in front of the TV first. Television has hurt the amount of reading our entire society has done. Instead of short stories, we watch Television sitcoms. Instead of reading history books, we turn on the History Channel.

The front line of reading is children. If you want to create a love of reading within your child, here are some helpful tips.

Read to Them:

This may sound simple, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to say often parents don’t instill the basics of reading in their children. They leave it to the schools to do it. So what can you do? One example is to simply read to them for ten minutes before putting them to bed.

Read Aloud:

Reading aloud to them is quite important. Some children take longer to read than others. It’s fun for both you and the child, and it helps them learn to read themselves (even the big words).

Buy Them Books:

Books are still around and still read. Millions sell every year. There are countless children’s fiction series, for example, while also many short history books. Some older children like to read scary stuff; it wasn’t too long ago the “Goosebumps” series by R.L. Stine was selling out. Try to see what they like in television and films, and apply that to buying them books. Often children’s books can be bought for pennies on the dollar at used book stores.

Take Them to Libraries:

Libraries are an even better option for parents. It gives the child the choice to pick out what they like. Make it a regular event to go to the local library on weekends or after work. Many libraries also have reading programs for children, some even use “bookmobiles” to travel to schools and let children get books.

Illustrations Help:

A picture can still say a thousand words, so don’t be shy about getting your child picture books. Sometimes even comic books are a good way to encourage reading for a child.

Make Reading Fun!

Reading should be fun and not a chore. Turn the TV off for a half-hour to an hour every night. Read to your child and instill a love of words in them. Tell them they can write their own stories, and even draw pictures of their favorite characters. Reading is an art, so let’s make sure it’s not a lost one.

Jacob Malewitz is a published author, professional web copywriter, marketing consultant, blogger, and ghost writer. He’s the author of over 600 articles, two ghost written eBooks, hundreds of pages of web text, several successful blogs, and a small press book on creative writing, coming soon. He specializes in many online business and web marketing topics such as SEO, social media, branding, and earning money from blogging.

by Anna Miller

It’s a job that everyone wants to do, because they think it’s easy as pie and the perks are great – you can work from the comfort of your home, at schedules that suit your convenience, and all you need as investment are a computer, word processing software, a good Internet connection, and some creativity with words. But being a freelance writer, especially one who is successful, is not exactly a bed of roses. Yes, the job is great if you want to choose writing as a profession, but before you take to freelancing, here are a few things you must know:

1. Procrastination never pays

When you’re a freelancer and able to set your own schedules and work at your own pace, you tend to put work off when you’re caught up in other activities. You convince yourself that you have all the time in the world, and then when your deadline looms closer, you find yourself rushing to complete the work in the little time that you have. When you do this once too often, you could end up compromising the quality of your work and losing valuable clients in the bargain. So avoid procrastination, and if you feel yourself delaying work for some reason or the other, nip the habit in the bud.

2. You must avoid distractions

When you work from home, there are numerous distractions to contend with – the television, your chores at home, children, visitors and family members taking up your time, and other diversions tend to take up your time if you’re not dedicated to work. And worst of all, the Internet is a very tempting and hard-to-avoid distraction if you work in an unsupervised environment and keep your own hours. Unless you make a concentrated effort to avoid distractions, you’re going to waste away the better part of the day.

3. Keeping commitments is important

A freelancer’s success is based on their regular clients perceive them – if they come across as writers who are always on schedule and continue to produce quality work time and again, it’s not going to be hard to find regular work. Unlike a regular job, a freelancer must work at getting each assignment, and the best way to establish themselves in the industry and gain regular gigs is to earn credibility as a responsible and skilled worker who honours commitments and also writes well.

4. Schedules help

Although you have the freedom to choose and set your own schedules when you work from home, it’s best to establish a regular schedule for work, just like those that are enforced in offices. This not only helps you avoid distractions but also reinforces to other people the fact that you’re working and should not be disturbed.

5. Maintaining connections is necessary

And finally, it’s important to stay connected to other people in the business and your clients so that you continue to get assignments on a regular basis. The best way to do this is to join forums for freelancers and also set up profiles on social networks through which you can connect to fellow professionals and potential clients. When you prove that you’re committed to your work, it’s easy to establish yourself as a successful freelance writer.

This guest post is contributed by Anna Miller, who writes on the topic of online degrees. She welcomes your comments at her email id: anna.miller009@gmail.com.

What are the most important things you think aspiring freelance writers should know?

This post is part of the Guest Post Giveaway at the blog Unready and Willing. If you think articles about writing or personal development (or personal development for writers) sounds like a good fit for your blog, please take a look at the Guest Post Giveaway page and see if any of the articles spark your interest.

You may be familiar with the phrase “Murder your Darlings.” This is the mantra repeated over and over again by teachers of the revision process. For many writers this is a painful ordeal that seems to take the life from a piece. Painful as it is, cutting out the parts that seem most precious to you is essential in polishing your work. Oftentimes when an editor will suggest that you cut a passage out of your story or novel, it’ll be one of your favorite sections–this is probably because you felt very good writing it. You were in the flow, and everything that fell onto the page just “felt right” to you. And now this editor wants you to cut it? To trash it as though it never existed? How could they be so cruel?

Is this the part of the writing process that you hate the most? Do hate the feeling that the passages that you had had so much pleasure writing will not see the light of day? I certainly did when I started out writing, but there are good reasons for cutting the fat. Although certain passages are beautifully written, they may do nothing to contribute to a story’s plot or give any insight to the characters. Exchanges of dialogue, though clever, may not really be important at all. The character that you snuck into chapter three was forced into the story just because you thought he or she was interesting. Lost in the flow of your writing, you might have spent two paragraphs describing a horse-carriage and not even know it. These passages simply don’t belong.

Instead of getting out your ax and murdering your darlings right then and there, however, why not consider dropping them off at the orphanage so that another story might be able to pick them up? Essentially you can create a database of written material that just didn’t make the cut for your other stories. Not only does this take some of the pain out of revision, but it also can give you a place to access characters, descriptions, and clever turns of phrases that simply didn’t fit in your other work. Whenever you feel writer’s block coming on, you can infuse some of the good stuff you didn’t use from your previous work into your new one.

To establish this orphanage, create a folder on your computer for your rescued darlings and then make sub-folders with names like “characters,” “descriptions,” “dialogues,” “settings,” and so on. Every time you cut a substantial part from your story, copy it and paste into a new document. Title the document in a way that you’ll be able to recognize it easily when you come back to it. Your “settings” folder would have documents titled “Roadside Cafe,” “African Village” and so on. The “Characters” folder could have documents with the character names, or just a short description like: “Nerdy Mobster” or, “Obsessive-Compulsive Stockbroker.”

Personally I find that I tend not to use too many of my rescued darlings in my new work. It’s comforting, however, to know that they’ll always be there waiting should you ever need them.

Kenji Crosland is a creative writing major who, scared of becoming a starving artist, became a corporate headhunter in Tokyo. Since then he’s regained his sanity, quit his job, and now blogs about creating an ideal career at unreadyandwilling.com. He is also developing a web application that just might change the internet. Follow him on Twitter: @KenjiCrosland.

Have you ever cut a part of your story that you really wished you’d kept? What do you do with the darlings you cut? Have you used a character or scene that didn’t make the cut in one story for another? What kinds of safety nets do you use when editing and revising your work?

by Laura Cross

Book industry insiders estimate that ghostwriters author 60% to 80% of books published each year. And with book ghostwriting fees range from $10,000 to $100,000 per project — $10,000 being the very low end and $100,000 usually paid to more established writers (“celebrity” ghostwriters earn $250,000+ per book) – more and more freelance writers are discovering that authoring books as a “hidden writer” or collaborator can be a viable and lucrative career.

Here are three secrets to help you create a successful career as a book ghostwriter:

1. Learn How To Capture The Client’s Voice

The ability to capture and convey the client’s voice is an essential component for a successful career as a ghostwriter. Being able to effectively structure content and manage a project are also necessary skills for ghosting, but the ability to mimic the client’s speaking style and make it come alive on paper is the skill that will land you recurring, high-paying projects. Carefully listen to the client during your interviews and conversations (and review any available audio – videos, podcasts, etc. – as well previously published material written by the client) to learn how he or she structures sentences. Listen for specific phrases, word patterns, vocabulary choices, and tone, texture, and energy – and then practice recreating it until your words and the client’s words blend seamlessly.

2. Position Yourself As One Of The Experts In Your Niche

Are you the go-to writer for women’s fitness and health? Do you mostly write narrative essays or opinion pieces? Are you the how-to article guy or the relationship advice guru? Are you a freelance writer with a background in accounting or experience in social media? Ghostwriters who specialize in specific genres (such as memoir, finance and investing, or women’s issues) tend to be more successful than those who generalize. Capitalize on your experience and expertise by focusing your ghostwriting in one to three areas of specialization. Use your portfolio and online presence (website, blog, social media profiles and interactions) to establish and build your platform. Consistently deliver quality content and exceptional customer service to solidify and maintain your status.

3. Connect With Literary Agents

Literary agents are one of the best referral sources for quality ghostwriting projects. Many experts, business leaders, entrepreneurs, politicians, actors, television celebrities, sports figures, chefs, doctors, professors, gurus, and media-darlings-of-the-moment, lack the necessary skills to write a compelling book. Literary agents need to match their clients with professional ghostwriters or collaborators. Connecting with literary agents, and growing and nurturing those relationships over time, is an invaluable element to a successful ghostwriting career. (You can download a free chapter on “Finding and Selecting an Agent” from my book The Complete Guide To Hiring A Literary Agent at GetALiteraryAgent.com)

Laura Cross is an author, screenwriter, ghostwriter, freelance book editor, and writing coach specializing in nonfiction books and script adaptation (book-to-film projects). She writes two popular blogs, NonfictionInk.com and AboutAScreenplay.com, and teaches online writing workshops.

Laura’s latest book is The Complete Guide To Hiring A Literary Agent: Everything You Need To Know To Become Successfully Published. You can download a free chapter, view the book trailer, read the full table of contents, and purchase the Book in electronic format at GetALiteraryAgent.com.

Have you every considered ghost writing? Are you in the process of finding a literary agent? Laura joins us today on her blog tour. You’re invited to ask questions in the comments. What would you like to know?