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What’s a writer’s biggest challenge?

 

Sometimes it seems like the answer is “a blank page” (or screen, depending on your preferred composition method).

 

But you know what I think it really is?

 

Making your writing profitable.

 

If you’re writing just for your own pleasure, that’s fine.  But most writers write to be read by an audience of more than one.  And, frankly, most writers write to earn a living.  Let's face it:  the electric company doesn't accept unpublished novels as payment, no matter how brilliant your writing.

 

How can you get your writing in front of the largest possible audience and make the most money from it at the same time?

 

Many writers complain, “I don’t want to think about business.  I just want to write.”

 

But face the facts.  If you’re writing for publication and for pay, you are in the business of writing.

 

You might as well strive for the same level of excellence in your business as you do in your writing.  Hey, the more money each article or book brings in, the more time that frees up to do what you love best, right?

 

I’m not interested in profits simply for the sake of riches.  I’m interested in profits for buying freedom. 

 

Freedom to spend more time with my four boys, who are growing up fast.

 

Freedom to say “yes” more often than I say “no” when my 5-year-old wants to curl up in my lap with a book.  That kind of freedom.

 

The more profitable my writing and editing business is, the more time I have to spend with my boys.  It’s a pretty simple equation.

 

Another of my motives for making money is to increase my ability to bless others financially.  As a single mom for the past four years, I have been blessed by the generosity of so many people.  I’m doing what I can to bless others, including volunteering with the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, but I’d love to give on a larger scale.

 

There was an interesting illustration of the utility of wealth for ministry and service at Armand Morin’s Big Seminar in Atlanta last spring.  One speaker offered everyone in the audience (400 people) a sample of his audio postcard system for $1.00 per person, then announced that he would give all the money he collected to Orrin Hudson, a former state trooper who has a foundation to help disadvantaged kids learn life skills through chess (neat guy).  So one person in the audience stood up and said, "Well, in that case, I'll give you $5.00 instead of $1.00."  Then Armand Morin announced that he would match the total collected, and so would his business partner. They ended up with $9,000 to give to Orrin's work.

 

That wouldn't have happened if Armand wasn't sure where next week's grocery money was coming from.  I know God uses the widow's mite, but I don't cotton to folks who think it's somehow holier not to know where next week's grocery money is coming from.  We need to be good stewards of the resources God gives us.

 

Many of the best strategies I’ve learned for increasing my profitability as a writer and editor have come from the Big Seminar.  Read the story of my experience at the Big Seminar here:

 

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/Entrepreneurs/29778/

 

The link above also details the bonuses I’m offering to folks who register for the upcoming Big Seminar through my link (over $1,200 in value).

 

But if you want to cut to the chase and go straight to the Big Seminar page (you can come back and read my story and bonus offerings later), click here:

 

http://bigseminar.com/cmd.php?Clk=1032247

 

I want to see you at the Big Seminar in November.  Let’s have lunch, OK?

 

Mary Jo Tate

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I jumped right in with Fitzgerald quotes without beginning at the beginning.  So here's a quick history of my interest in F. Scott Fitzgerald.

When I was accepted to graduate school in 1989 and assigned an editorial assistantship with Matthew J. Bruccoli, the world's leading Fitzgerald scholar, my first reaction, I must confess, was a bit of dismay.  I didn’t like Fitzgerald . . . or so I thought.  (A few years later I realized I must have had him mixed up with Hemingway in my memory.  I have learned to appreciate Hemingway’s literary genius . . . but I still don’t particularly care for his material and not at all for the man himself.)

Over the summer before my first year in grad school, I read all of Fitzgerald's novels and a collection of his stories. I'm not sure at what point it dawned on me that I did like Fitzgerald. But it didn't take long to recognize the sheer brilliance of his writing.

Here are a few of the things that attract me most about Fitzgerald’s work:

— his expertise as a social historian—his ability to make you understand exactly what it was like in a particular time and place

— the warmth of his authorial voice (Despite his usual classification as a modernist, Fitzgerald was at heart an old-fashioned storyteller.)

—most of all, the beauty of his style, the rhythm of his sentences (In his later years, when he hit a writing roadblock, he would have his secretary read the King James Bible aloud to him for cadence.)

Yes, Fitzgerald's personal life was problematic. Let's just get that out of the way right now. Some of his characters are unpleasant and downright immoral. But he was a very moralistic author, constantly judging himself and his characters. Great material for thoughtful discussion with your older students or for your own literary education and enjoyment.

If you write fiction, or even if you are concerned about style and voice in your nonfiction, you would do well to study how Fitzgerald did what he did.

Mary Jo

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"Later in the afternoon the sun went down with a riotous swirl of gold and varying blues and scarlets, and left the dry, rustling night of Western summer.  Dexter watched from the veranda of the Golf Club, watched the even overlap of the waters in the little wind, silver molasses under the harvest-moon. Then the moon held a finger to her lips and the lake became a clear pool, pale and quiet." (The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, p. 223).

 

"The moon held a finger to her lips"!  I don't know of anyone other than Fitzgerald who writes like that.

 

Mary Jo

 

 

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I'm working hard on revising and expanding my 1998 book, F. Scott Fitzgerald A to Z, for Facts on File's new series of Critical Companions.

 

This afternoon I'm writing about one of Fitzgerald's early stories, "The Offshore Pirate," and I came across a wonderful line that I just had to share:

 

Five o'clock rolled down from the sun and plumped soundlessly into the sea.

 

Beautiful!

 

Fitzgerald had originally ended the story with the explanation that it had all been a dream, but he, or possibly someone at The Saturday Evening Post, realized that was rather lame, and he replaced it with one of the best magazine-story endings ever written: 

 

...reaching up on her tiptoes she kissed him softly in the illustration.

 

It wasn't a dream...it was all an invention of Fitzgerald's fertile imagination. "Look at what I can do!" he proclaims in the ebullience of his early success.

 

If you want to read this or Fitzgerald's other stories, the best collection is The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli.

 

Mary Jo

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A playful peek at the pastoral proclivity to perpetuate predominant phrases preceded by parallel pronunciations:

 

http://www.nouthetic.org/jay_adams/grist/G-Alliterat.asp

 

Praise to Crystal Paine at http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/BiblicalWomanhood

for pointing out this particular post.

 

Mary Jo

 

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Read here about a reluctant young writer journaling in Phoenician:

 

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/crewchief/11988/

 

You never know what will light a writer's fire!

 

Mary Jo

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A writer's problem does not change. He himself changes and the world he lives in changes, but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and, having found out what is true, to project it in such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it.

 

~ Ernest Hemingway

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Instead of marvelling with Johnson, how anything but profit should incite men to literary labour, I am rather surprised that mere emolument should induce them to labour so well.

 

~ Thomas Green

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Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.

 

~ A. A. Milne

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Sir, no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

 

~ Samuel Johnson

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There are three rules for writing the novel.  Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

 

~ Somerset Maugham

 

from The Writer's Quotation Book

 

(Note: This is a great little book of quotes, but some of the writers quoted use vocabulary you may not want your children to read.)

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Read over your compositions and, when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

 

~ Samuel Johnson

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