Use in opt-in publications, or on Web sites, but please include resource box.

Please send me a copy, if possible. Many thanks.

**

Summary: If you're a professional writer, you need to get an attitude about your work.

Category: Writing

Words: 800

Get an attitude about your writing

Copyright (c) 2002 by Angela Booth

(This excerpt is taken from my new writing workshop Writing To Sell In Internet Age.)

Writer John Clausen, in his excellent book about freelance writing: Too Lazy To Work, Too Nervous To Steal, recommends that you get an attitude about your work. And he's right.

Many writers are submissive. This attitude brings out worst in others. It leads to people in a position to pay you for your work taking massive advantage of you, because they figure that you're not going to do anything about it.

Heck, it leads to business people --- editors, publishers and anyone who hires writers --- taking advantage of writers in general. So, while you're standing up for yourself, tell yourself that you're standing up for writers everywhere. Because you are.

Getting an attitude doesn't mean that you are rude or aggressive. You should be completely polite and professional at all times. However, you do need to be assertive. And to believe in yourself.

As Clausen rightly points out, whenever someone hires you to write something, or buys from you, they want to believe that they're hiring and buying best they can afford. Who will believe that you're good if you don't?

If you're overly grateful for each job you get, too thrilled with idea that potential buyer is being so nice to consider your work, you'll get ripped off with every job that you do.

It took me a long time to learn this.

This doesn't mean that you should get a massively inflated ego. You should have enough perspective to see where your work needs improvement. If you're prepared to learn, and to practise, your work will improve each year.

Let's get down to basics. If I don't mean be aggressive about your work, what do I mean by "get an attitude"?

What I mean is this: know what kind of writing you're doing is worth, and what you're worth. And then don't write for less. This means that you're willing to do some research and thinking before you accept a writing job.

Copyright (c) 2002 by Angela Booth

** This article is adapted from my new email workshop, Writing To Sell In The Internet Age. If you want to get a taste of workshop, you can sign up for free mini-course based on Writing To Sell In The Internet Age, on Web site --- http://www.digital-e.biz/

Want to become a better writer? Easy. Just write an article a day.

When you write each and every day, you develop skill. Writing is a skill that demands easy interaction of various parts of your brain. This interaction isn't developed without practice, nor does interaction seem to remain viable unless you consistently practice --- unless you write every day.

I imagine writing skills as being like developing communication pathways between different areas in brain. If you don't practice your writing daily, those pathways disappear, just like untraversed paths through a forest.

===> Please write an article a day for seven days

No instruction I give you about getting ideas for articles, doing research, or how to structure an article will do as much for you as actually writing things. Consistently. Day after day. For at least seven days.

I promise you, at end of seven days you will be a better writer. You've been reading articles in newspapers, magazines and online for years. You know how it's done. Doing it will bring out that hidden knowledge you have and make it consciously usable.

Writing articles is a skill you learn by doing, just as you learned to tie your shoelaces and to walk.

I'd like you to write an article a day, of at least three hundred words. That's just over one page.

Use BEST formula below to get your articles written.

The BEST formula is an easy way to remember basic article structure. I discovered it in June Duncan Owen's book How To Write And Sell Articles (Penguin Books 1992, ISBN 014 0146 253).

===> The BEST formula for writing articles

BEST is an acronym for ---

B --- Bait

E --- Explanation

S --- Step

T --- Termination

===> The BAIT

The BAIT is also known as hook. It's an intriguing beginning for your article.

As well as being beginning of your article, it's also most important part. It tells reader why she should care, why she should stop and read article. It's important because if your reader doesn't like bait, she's not going to read rest of article.

Pick up six different magazines, ones you have at home, or ones you go and buy. Look at baits, first couple of paragraphs, in each article in those six magazines. All baits in articles will be different.