Article Weblog

Q and A.

Best choice when subject is very verbal or there are two or more people being
interviewed or taped at the same time. All repetitive statements, umms, ahhs and blatant
incorrect grammar are edited out. Natural patterns of speech, coloquolisms and favorite sayings
are left in.

JHW. When you started your business in 1934, how did you finance it?

BT. Well, remember my uncle Horace? He was my Mother’s brother.

HT. Half brother.

BT.. OK, so half brother, her father remarried after Sybil, my grandmother, died and my mother was a little girl
about nine or ten. His second wife, what was her name?

HT.Alice May Jones, her family had moved west to build the dam.

BT.. So anyway, Horace was killed in a train wreck when he was visiting in California and as he had never married,
the insurance settlement went to his next of kin, which turned out to be my mother. She wanted to invest the money
and came to us and asked our advice. I told her that I had been thinking of opening this repair shop and I thought I
could make a go of it. She thought about it long and hard and came back the next day and said she would rather
invest in us than any old bank.

HT. But we paid her back with interest. We were able to put the business in the black in only three years.

BT. Of course, we worked our butts off, didn’t we?

First person: Best choice when the tapes will need significant editing to make a flowing
narrative. It is written as if the speaker were doing the writing. The interviewer simply ghost
writes the life story.

I loved being a mother. It seemed as if that was the role God had created just for me. Other women would complain
about their children being messy or noisy, and I honestly didn’t even care. I just loved to be there when they came
home from school. About two o’clock I would start to get antsy, just couldn’t wait for them to come in the door,
throw down their jackets and books and sit at the kitchen table and talk. I even loved cleaning up after them when
they were sick. I know that is hard to believe for some people, but I used to say to myself “well, I would rather have
it out here smelling bad than inside of them making them feel bad.”

Third Person: Best choice if the subject is having difficulty remembering or if the interviewer
has to gain the majority of the facts from records, other family members or others who can add
insight and information.
Jennie was a fun loving little girl and definitely the apple of Tom B. Bradshaw, her loving father’s eye as
well as the object of his generosity. But one time, when she was about six years old that generous and loving spirit
was put to a test. Active in the first Methodist church, their entire family enjoyed the Sunday school picnics held
every summer in the park east of town. On this particular day, the family had no sooner arrived and began eating
when a group of little girls came to the table demanding to see the elephant Mr. Bradshaw brought.

Methods of telling the story:

It is best to think of a life as a long strand of pearls with each year or significant event as one
pearl.

An autobiography tells the jest of the whole necklace, usually in a chronological order.
Chapters, special events, decades, houses or any other natural division can separate the
sections.

A memoir takes an important section of the pearls and makes a short necklace. You can
refer to the other beads, but you don’t go into detail describing them but concentrate on the
significant period of time you are describing.

An anthology is a collection of short unrelated stories, essays, anecdotes, incidences etc. that
are gathered together in one book The stories may build upon one another or they may be
able to stand on their own.

A photoscribe is a more in depth scrapbook. The stories revolve around a photo or two.

Each page has a beginning, middle and end.

Including photos, graphics and memorabilia

These additions to the narrative greatly enhance the readability and value of the project.
However, they also greatly enhance the time needed to do layout, scanning, sizing etc. that will
be reflected in the cost of the finished project. One method of saving money is to group all
photos in the center of the book.

If you are interested in taking a tele-class on memoir writing please send us an e-mail at
Judywright@artichokepress.com and we will set one up. It is a fun way to learn and share from
the comfort of your own home.

Keep Writing!!! You are doing an important work.

©Judy H. Wright, Personal and Oral Historian - www.artichokepress.com

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Nothing beats the joy of your first sale. You can plot, plan, market and dream all you want, but until you get that first sale, you’re not sure that you’re a “real” writer. It’s 26 years since I sold my first book to an international publisher. I walked on air for days. To my mind, because real writers wrote books, I was real writer at last.

Your first sale legitimizes what you’re doing to others, and not least to yourself. When you’ve got that sale, you get a lot more than money: you get confidence, feedback, and ideas on how you can make the next sale and the next.

How do you make that first sale? Here’s how:

=> One: Give yourself a deadline

Although I’d made writing sales I didn’t sell a book until I gave myself a deadline. I gave myself a long deadline, ten years. I didn’t need that long, it took a year. However setting a deadline turned selling a book from a dream into a goal. If I hadn’t given myself a deadline, I would have fudged for years: making outlines, doing research, writing a chapter here and there, and convincing myself that I was trying to sell a book, when I wasn’t doing anything of the sort.

Give yourself a deadline to make your first sale. You’ll know how long the deadline should be. Don’t make it ten years unless it’s something where you need to learn a lot of skills first before you can produce a product.

Your deadline must be serious. The ten years I gave myself was the absolute cut-off date. If I hadn’t sold a book by then, I intended giving up writing book-length material forever.

=> Two: Ask for the sale!

Once I’d set the ten-year deadline, I knew I had to ask for the sale. This meant submitting partials to publishers. A partial is a fiction proposal. It consists of a synopsis, a chapter outline, and the first chapters: around 50 to 100 pages of the novel. I wrote a partial every two months, and sent them out.

How will you ask for the sale? If you’re selling your writing, then send out novel and non-fiction proposals, or proposals for magazine articles.

Keep in mind that “Ask for the sale” means ask the person who can buy your product to buy it. I approached editors at publishing houses who could buy my work. I didn’t approach agents. As handy as literary agents are, an agent can’t buy.

No matter what product you’re selling, from apricots to zebras, you must ask the person and/ or company with the cash to buy your product.

It’s worth mentioning here that you don’t need to follow any particular rules when you’re asking for the sale. For example, most writing books will tell you that to sell a novel you must write the complete novel, then write the partial, then get an agent and then wait while the agent sells the book. You can follow someone else’s rules if you want to. Or you can choose your own route. Do what you intuitively feel is right for you.

=> Three: If it’s not working, get feedback from others

You’ve set your deadline, you’ve asked for the sale repeatedly, but no one’s buying.

At this point, I need to tell you that everyone who’s ever followed this process for selling their writing has sold their writing before the deadline. So from long experience I know that this process works. If this process hasn’t worked for you it means that somewhere you’ve bumped into a wall, but don’t see that is a wall.

You need feedback. Find someone’s who’s doing what you want to do, and ask them for help. You may need to pay for it, but it will be money well spent, because they’ll be able to put you on the right track. Don’t ask for help from people who have never done what you want to do. If they haven’t done it, they may think they know how it’s done, but they don’t.

After you get your feedback, set yourself another deadline, and then ask for the sale until you make the sale. Try this simple process: it works.

Author of many books, including Making the Internet Work for Your Business,
copywriter and journalist Angela Booth also writes copy for businesses large and
small, and consults on search engine marketing. Angela has written copy for
companies in many industries, ranging from technology and real estate to the
jewellery trade. Her clients include major corporations like hp (Hewlett Packard),
WestPac Bank, and Acer Computer. For copywriting services and marketing
advice contact Angela at angelabooth.com.

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Have you fallen for the article marketing trap? Sending out second rate articles, worrying too much about word count and ignoring all the things that would make your effort more successful?

Article marketing has swept through the internet like an avalanche. Virtually everyone knows about the technique but very few are doing it well. Many people are actually ruining their reputation by ignoring article marketing best practices.

As an article newsgroup moderator and article marketing expert I am in the trenches everyday. Increasingly, I reject more articles than I accept. More and more often I hear complaints from publishers that the articles submitted to them are pure crap. Many of these publishers complain that article submission software is to blame. I have to disagree. Here is what I think is causing the majority of problems:

* People who want to use the technique without learning how.

* Private label articles flooding the market.

* Plaigarism and copyright violations.

* Lousy articles with no redeeming values.

* Off topic articles driving publishers crazy.

* Articles that are too short or too long.

* Writers who won’t divulge their identity and only use their by-line for advertising a website.

Can you connect the dots to find out where the article marketing problems lie? With the article marketer. The article marketer, like myself, loves the technique but is often strapped for time. Instead of writing unique articles or hiring a ghostwriter to write for them they get lazy. Stupidity and carelessness is also a factor but I bet being lazy causes most of the problems.

I believe that laziness is the root of all evil in the article marketing world. Any type of marketing with not work unless effort is expended and techniques are repeated regularly and reliably. Please do me a favor. If you can’t make the effort then don’t use the technique.

Article marketing done badly is far more damaging then not using the technique at all. It only works when you create quality work and follow submission rules. Don’t blame the publishers for your shoddy articles and don’t spend hours on forums complaining that the technique doesn’t work. It does work. It has worked for me and for many others but it won’t work for you if you insist on being lazy and irresponsible.

Make a commitment today to write well, submit only on topic unique articles and to hire help if you need it. Your best efforts will be the catalyst to better results and will support the growth of the article marketing community. Let’s use the technique wisely so that it remains a viable part of internet marketing.

© 2006, Davis Virtual Assistance. Reprint rights granted to all venues so long as the article and by-line are reprinted intact and all links are made live.

Bonnie Jo Davis is an article marketing expert who takes great pride in helping work at home parents, entrepreneurs, small business owners and enthusiastic hobbyists exploit the power of the written word. To learn how to grow your business with article marketing or to join her affiliate program visit http://www.WriteYourWayToProfit.com today!

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