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Lose Some Win Some…. eHow Wow

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Well, a couple of days ago, I was pouting over the loss of 8 more of my articles. That’s right – 8. If you are a writer who has sent in printed out manuscripts to publishers, you probably know all about rejections notes and the blahs that hit you after you get one or ten. Even though most of my submissions have been accepted, the rejections hit hard.

At first, all you want to do is to stop “wasting” your time writing. Then you re-read the rejection making a mental list of the positives in it – is it a personal note? Is the signature a person’s handwriting or a typed thing, something like, From The Editorial Desk….? Did it mention the article or story by title? Did it use your name at the top? Is it actually dated? Yeses to a personal typed note, handwritten (rare but possible), your title included, your name mentioned with a date and/or a signature – are usually all little yeses of encouragement!

If your returned manuscript has any kind of writing on it, don’t curse the editor for ruining your manuscript copy! You can always print out another copy or go to the library and get a copy there. The editor has given you a very helpful gift if you want to “see” it! Any notes or corrections are little hints on how to make your manuscript better for that specific publication! It may even be a hint that if you do some re-writing, the editor might want to see it again! Or at the very least, it might be ready for another publisher.

Remember, just because an editor can’t use your article or story in their publication does not mean it isn’t right for some other publication or that it’s not a good piece. Sometimes it’s difficult to see past your own slant but each publication gears their content to a certain “audience” of readers. One of the major advantages you can give yourself is to read at least the last year’s worth of the publication if it’s a magazine of some kind or study the publisher’s recent list of publications if it is a book publisher. If it’s youth orientated, you won’t get a porn piece accepted – usually – raised eyebrow.

Also, if you submitted something 10 years ago, filed it away after receiving a rejection and then recently rediscovered it, now re-read it as though it was someone else’s manuscript and you are working for a publisher. Get seriously objective about it – your job is on the line here – accept a good piece or reject a not-so-good piece. If it still seems great to you, find a publication it could work in and do whatever re-write you need to do to make it REALLY fit the publication. Submit it again, hope for the best, and forget it. You might even be able to submit it online and save all those blasted postage and printing costs.

Sooooooooo to the jist of this post…..

eHow named me Featured Member of the Day on September 4, 2009. Talk about a surprise! Also, I have to take that as a big YES concerning my writing skills. After all, this is the second time eHow named me Featured Member. They also highlighted one of my articles at the very start of my time with them in 2008 but I was too – shall we say – new? Unaware? Dopey? – to realize that it was a big YES as well. In fact, I didn’t even know I had a featured article until a couple months later when one of my eHow friends mentioned it to me. I didn’t even take a moment to put a note in the article’s folder and now I don’t remember which one it was. Shrugs – at least it wasn’t the first and only time my work was highlighted.

Back to work now…. I have to identify those 8 articles and figure out what’s amiss.

Filed in Writing Tips, eHow, eHow Articles, eHow Tips | | Comments (6)

Writing For Publication

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

There are still hard copy publishing venues out there that still encourage typing and printing out paper manuscripts for submission. Most magazines and book publishers are basically bending toward internet submissions but it never hurts to know the basic rules for submitting to specific publishers the old fashioned way.

One of the books I request from the library once a year or so is Writer’s Market – to see the latest version that’s out. 2010 is probably out now….. let me check…. yes and I just requested it. I like to see what the new trends are and who’s looking for what kind of stories that might just interest me enough to write it for them. Yes – there’s the secret. Check to see what the publisher wants and write it slanted to the publisher. Don’t write it for Aunt Tilly who likes kumquats on pumpernickel bread with Limburger cheese melted on top……. there just aren’t going to be very many people willing to taste that – or read about it! (Or even want to get close enough to sort of smell it!)

Side note:
I wrote a song for my nephew, Nate, when he was a baby. It has a cutesy tune to go with it, too.

Pumpernickel, hamburger and Limburger….
What can I say?
It’s the meal of the day.
Will you stay?

Raised eyebrow – yes there was more but I’ll get to the point here….

You need to read what you want to write for. I used to read certain parts of the Milwaukee Journal every Sunday. No matter how busy I was or what I had to do, I kept the sections to the side until I could read them. One section had a Tell Me A Story page – usually a sweet little bedtime story and usually written by a Journal staff writer. I hadn’t actually noticed it was done “in house” but I wanted to write a little story that I had been playing around with. The True King Thrushbeard is my version of the fairy tale, King Thrushbeard – a Grimm Brothers’ tale.

I counted words in the Tell Me A Story page. I found the specific editor in charge of that page and wrote my cover letter to him. (Smiling – Thanks again, Alan Borsuk!) I wrote the story, wrote it again, (imagine me typing – I wrote it again – about 20 times….) and then I sent it to Mr. Borsuk at the Milwaukee Journal. Then I forgot all about it. Finally, I received a very nice rejection note from Mr. Borsuk. File closed? No… I liked that dratted story too much. I pouted a day and re-read that note. I used the little clues he gave me in his note, such as “just a bit too long” and “not quite consistent in point of view”. I rewrote it and sent it back. After another nice rejection note with other little clues, I rewrote it again and sent it back. I think this went on about 4 times – shrugs, I’m not sure. Finally he sent an acceptance and said something like he wished other writers were as persistent and willing to listen to advice and re-write. It was my first well paid published story!

Take a chance and remember to read any personal rejection note “between the lines” and re-write if there is something specific you could do to improve it. Take a chance and try submitting a piece even if they have a staff writer doing the page or column. If you can see that piece published even under another writer’s name, you have a chance yourself.

If you read a specific publication you enjoy regularly, use the Writer’s Market to see if they accept submissions from freelancers. (Try even if they don’t? Warning – Publishers frown on this though – some might hate you and possibly throw anything out with your name on it, sight unread. This is probably the worst advise I could give you because rejections are hard even when you do everything right!) The publication might have a site online, as well, that might provide complete writer’s guidelines.

The main thing is to believe in your work. If you can absolutely see it in print in your head and heart – give it a whirl. Yet, once it’s in the mail, forget it like a fading dream that was really great. You never know if you will get to see the dream come true but enjoy pretending it did.

Another note:
I’ve been reading and rating a lot of people’s work on eHow and would like to remind writers to edit, edit, edit and use a spell checker. Sometimes I might write a message to a specific author but when there are oppppsies in almost every article, it gets a bit difficult to draw the line about how many mistakes I am willing to point out. I am not the best writer around, or the best editor, but what bothers me will bother others.

Most people quit reading once they see a certain amount of mistakes. On the other hand, sometimes the mistakes indicate that the article originates in another country and written by someone who’s native language is not English – I personally love those. Whatever the reason, writers will lose readers and/or publishers if the piece is not, at least, spelled correctly. Grammar is also at the top of that criteria but is also another topic about what is “proper” and what is easy to read verses what is just poorly done.

To be completely honest, I started playing the online game named Runescape to hone my dialogue. I was raised in a world full of older adults and dogs and very few kids. I played the game to chat with younger types, believing most were under 30 or so. Ha! Well, I sure got into a wonderful world of interaction across the planet! I’ve met people from almost anywhere that might have a computer with internet access. The oldest person I’ve come across who admits to an age is 97. Granted, truth or fib – no matter! There are moms and dads, grandparents, and kids. What a great place to listen to people!

Just as everyday experiences, you met snots and sweet people. I do think more people are freer with the snottiness there because they know they are not actually seen or “catch-able” though. Heck – as a “listening” writer, it is REALLY all good!

Smiling!

Filed in Writing Tips, eHow, eHow Tips | | Comments (3)

Lost Some Articles on eHow….

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

I lost five of my published articles from eHow. I am not exactly sure why they were deleted from my list but at least my Master List helped me figure out which articles were deleted. Plus, that other routine precaution I’ve grown so fond of…. saving an article in my word processing program as I work on the draft and again, pictures and all, as soon as the article is done. Smiling – such a comfort those saves and the list are!

One got a goodbye wave from me – something I had written to enter in one of the spring contests and I was never that thrilled with it. Another was specifically about using Skype for free long distance telephone calls online – I am not sure why that was deleted except for a specific brand name? It is extremely helpful to have a free phone service over the net when you have relatives and friends on the other side of the world. Primefalcon and I spent a lot of money getting to know each other over the phone while he was still in Australia and I was here in Wisconsin. We seriously wish we had known about Skype then! Prime spent a whole lot more than I did but he also had some unbelievable low priced international calling card system, too, so it wasn’t like using a regular phone card at whatever unearthly amount per minute for him.

I am studying the other deleted articles to figure out why they were taken off – and deciding what to do about them. Bukisa or Gather might be the spot for them. I am not too terribly concerned about them though. eHow has their reasons and I am glad they are tightening up on their content requirements. Just wish they would add a tiny critique to point me in a specific direction to help me improve! At least I am not working for a newspaper and had many many more articles rejected! (The way newspapers are going, at least I am not working for a newspaper!)

Most people used to think eHow was just a bunch of thrown together word junk. Heck, even I did, considering what I was reading from them a year or so before I became a member. I’ve seen some really lousy articles with little or no detail to them except citing a commercial or a web page, probably with the goal of dressing up an affiliate link of their own or a review of a product that they would have gotten paid for. Let’s not even discuss that spam stuff I often clicked on when I was doing a search, that was in the guise of a How To – whatever, and then finding my time was totally wasted. It got to a point that as soon as I saw a hit from a search starting with How To – whatever, I skipped over it to the next listing. I was even reluctant to sign up on eHow. In fact, I signed up under my own first name – Marlaine – and looked around for a while, was really disillusioned by the articles I was reading, closed the page one day, and then forgot I even signed up. When I tried to sign in again, months later, I couldn’t remember my pass so I started MarlaineMarie. Since I never signed up as a member on Marlaine, it really didn’t matter to me. Shrugs – too bad I can’t use both accounts for different focuses. As the rules state, only one account per person will count towards earning income on eHow. So there it is.

eHow is giving people a great opportunity to help others and letting those people earn the recognition and income from writing about solutions to life’s problems. I just never thought I knew enough to help anyone else since I – as most of us – have tons of problems I face and even more I try to ignore.

Every so often, eHow has referral programs that count toward a bonus payment for an author who encourages others to write articles about what they know. Believe me, if you sign up because I sent you to eHow, I would not earn anything. For the record and in writing ….. join eHow’s writer’s program if you have any serious desire to write for a living. The pay is not great at first but it builds. What is really encouraging is seeing your words published and earning some money because of it! It can also be used as a writing credit when you submit hard copy work to magazine and/or book publishers. (If you are submitting manuscripts to publishers, be SURE to triple check spelling and grammar in your all your articles and profile if you intend on using them as a writing credit! Don’t forget to take your time with comments as well – those little tidbits show up every where.)

It isn’t just writing and publishing – boom – you’re done – though. You have to get the word out. You have to keep promoting your work just as many authors with publishing houses behind them have to do. Keep talking about your work and adding links to emails, blogs and web sites. Drop little ads here and there. Have some business cards made with your links on it to any of your blogs or sites. Put up a notice in any free ad spot in your neighborhood. Talk to your check out person at the store. (I sometimes hand write links on bookmarks and push them into the library books I return. Of course I tell the librarians all about my articles – yes indeedy!)

Be enthusiastic about your writing! You should be proud – especially after you get your first payment. Some writer’s never see a pay check. It is your proof that you are a legitimate writer. You earned it! I send you a salute and a Congrats!!!!! If you haven’t earned anything yet – just be patient and keep writing! Even my brother, Cyclecyco, has earned some money on eHow with every few articles!

Smiling big!

I have some work to do on Marlaine’s Musings next. Love that Runescape!

Filed in eHow, eHow Tips | | Comments (14)

Links Coming Right Up!!!

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Well – after some odd glitches on eHow until 3am yesterday, I finally got the article How To Organize Your eHow Articles To Make More Money published! I could not save and preview without getting an error page. The first time that it happened, I quickly looked over my Word doc to reassure myself that everything was saved except for the tweaks I added while copy/pasting it into the writing wizard.

Now, I’m building pages for more article categories so there will be more pages appearing when there are actually enough to make it worth while viewing. If I don’t have much for a category page, the title will just stay in the Master. I may set up a Miscellanea page since Marlaine’s Miscellanea is based on all sorts of various subjects and has been my business name for some time now. Once I have pages set up, I will be able to copy and paste any of the lists to any of our other blogs or website pages. Just like the Recipe page on StoreHows.com is also a page on Duelin’ Deals. All that I need to do is add an article to one list and then copy and paste the entry or the whole page to whichever site it might fit into! These links open fast and smooth, too.

I will also be able to update the Category Pages I have on Duelin’ Deals once I’ve gone through the entire Master List. While finding all the critter related articles, I discovered I had missed an entire page of the eHow articles! When I put this process up as an article, some of my eHow friends are going to have a much harder time doing this with their higher number of articles! So, just a head’s up – they start looking the same after a while and you do get fatigued. It will be a lot easier to add new articles from here on out though.

Smiling…. I love the way the links look on Duelin’ Deals – blue is truly my fav. Marlaine’s Musings is that burnt orange/earth tones color scheme. Herazade’s Haven plays with the background for hair/earrings and my pencil sketch of soul-diving eyes, plus the ads and story list act like a veil for an entirely different style to showcase a few stories – fiction and non-fiction. StoreHows.com is pure black and white news print with no pics except for the ads.

I see that more Critter Care articles would be useful, considering my lifetime of love for all creatures. I’ll work on those as soon as I can. Just happen to have a multitude of other things on my list (of things to do) at the moment – phew!

The thing that really gave me this idea of building pages for specific category lists did come from Marlaine’s Musings – the blog that basically follows the character Marlaine on Runescape. I started to do real basic quest guides for our Runescape Registry forums. Those guides got more detailed and I started going out of my way to find little tips and tidbits to help my friends through the quests. There is a Quest Guides page that uses the links from posts when I put up each guide. Guess the idea to build links in pages was always there. For some reason, it just suddenly hit me over the noggin that I could use the same technique for eHow articles.

Filed in eHow | | Comments (12)

Writing Like A Maniac!

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

I’ve been working on multiple projects lately, especially my high traffic blog, Marlaine’s Musings. Inserting this link is part of an idea I had when I wanted to get all my recipes together for Duelin’ Deals Blog. Duelin’ Deals is devoted to helping people save money and time, sometimes in some very creative ways.

On Duelin’ Deals, I’ve been setting up shop pages for inexpensive herbs, of course, advocating growing your own whenever possible. The herbs I added to the store are the ones that most of us can get – and not at $2k an ounce. Snickering….. I cook as cheap as I can, yet creatively. Often, the dollar store has bigger bottles of herbs that are also often fresher. Since I’ve grown and dried almost every common cooking herb and tried those higher priced bottled ones, I have tasted them all with the tongue test. More expensive does not make them better tasting.

(I highly recommend growing your own chives and parsley. Chop and freeze them in spice bottles to use as desired. You will NEVER EVER want to use dried again! Never mind the money you will save from the over abundance just one crop will give you!) {Chives return every year. Parsley is a bi-annual.}

That inspired another thought – our problem on eHow is that the more our library of articles grow, the harder it is to find anything in our own profiles. How could I make it easier? We, as members, can’t do much on our own profile except to promote our fav articles to whoever we can bother. Sooooo – there is another problem with that. How to NOT become a pain in the rear to all our friends and readers.

Since I had a few of my recipes and Makins & Mixes set up on Duelin’ Deals, I thought – what if I just copy those lists on to this blog as a page, too? Then it just hit me…. just set up a page on this blog for each category that I write articles for and add all pertaining articles to it.

I am also contemplating putting up an additional page on Musings for only the online game articles I write about. A lot of those readers know enough about Runescape not to want pics on their guides and would be happy with the shorter versions I write for eHow. I started writing guides that I do use constantly because they are simple and to the point, then realized other people might like them, too. The XP Chart is an example of a chart I made for myself and realized other people might want to use it. It’s a very, very high traffic page. It’s something to fiddle with anyway. The more I think that over, the less I like it. I have lots of guides on Musings that all have a specific style. I only added a link to my eHow articles to add a bit of traffic from Musings. Whenever I do an article that might appeal to some of my Runescape friends, I talk about it directly in the day’s post.

When I started writing articles for eHow, I just didn’t think I was going to settle into non-fiction writing! I’d been advised by many English teachers that I should go into journalism. The thought of working on the school paper – poo – all that silly gossip or reporting on Homecoming was not for me. Real life was pretty hard for me at the time and I escaped into fiction as often as I could. I still enjoy writing quiet paranormal with a twist or outright ghost stories.

For now, The Master List is coming along nicely! In fact, it’s up and I am working on an article to explain how it’s done. Plus, I’m using it to build more category pages!

Hopefully this will help all of the eHow writers make their articles more findable and searchable. After all, an extra link to your articles can never hurt!

Filed in Saving Money, eHow | | Comments (0)

Big Additions Coming!

Monday, June 8, 2009

I’ve been working on my Master List of articles and am nearly done! Talk about a long process. There have been some interesting details I seemed to have missed before and looking at each of my articles individually has been surprising. There are articles in the list that I had “forgotten” since it’s been so long since I had written them. There are also articles that seem to be set on eHow’s specific category pages that I wasn’t aware of.

Once I have my Master List done, I will start doing category pages. Using the list will make that process a whole lot faster – I can “see” that already! When I tested my list, the articles load lightning fast and the back space takes me back to the list quick. It sure will make browsing articles easy and fast for everyone!

There will also be an article about how to set up all the basics so anyone interested will be able to do the same for their articles.

For the time being, here is a basic tip – check each of your articles for keywords, categories, working links, spelling/grammar, and completeness of information. Start with the oldest and farthest from your interaction with it – then read it as though you are editing it for a friend.

If an article is out of date, change it around a bit and give people a reason to read it again anyway! Views help even if they aren’t counted as ratings! Re-editing and additional views, along with a new comment or even a reply by the author, helps get the article noticed again by search engines.

If there are no pics, try to find at least one that pertains to the article – not one that just gives you credit for having a pic. When the concept for this blog and, eventually, a full website came to me, I thought of it as a warehouse to store articles in. Then the concept shifted a bit and became a newspaper of sorts. I decided to let the ads we set up be our pics. In the future, I might set up a pic page – shrugs… Basically StoreHows.com will stay plain and allow the variety of the articles give it pizazz.

Just a heads up ~ even if eHow allowed the length when you published the article, their standards changed in November 2008. Now they insist on a minimum length and will not let you re-publish it once you have edited it unless you have at least the minimum amount of words. Usually I am a bit – shall we say… long winded? – but a couple of my original articles were too short because I felt brevity would show how easy a specific recipe was to make or some solution would be easy to accomplish. Shrugs shoulders…. Feels odd to someone who sometimes writes 10 full page letters to family and friends to be told they didn’t say enough…… hehehehe!

Filed in eHow, eHow Articles, eHow Tips | | Comments (4)

Getting Things Set Up For eHow Articles

Friday, May 15, 2009

StoreHows will store different articles under different categories. (I will be adding a few more categories than the ones listed on eHow.) Hopefully I will find a way to artfully blend my articles and my eHow friend’s articles, either here or on the StoreHows Forums. While there are some non-serious writers on eHow, most of the people who write articles there are very good at it! I’ve found answers to some of my most vexing problems reading various articles, and enjoy reading different eHow friends writing styles very much! (I am a fiction writer, in truth – always looking for new ways to say things.)

eHow recently changed their editing criteria to ferret out the lower quality writing and deleted many articles from many writer’s libraries of articles. I’ve found a lot of posts griping about lost articles but also noticed a lot less of those low quality “filler” articles while checking out new articles and/or new writers on eHow.

Primefalcon (… my adorable husband) and I have been working on a forums for StoreHows.com. After a recent problem with our Runescape Registry forums, we are postponing the release until we are sure it is secure!

Yet, if we had the forums up already I could post a general question – “Does any one want to be a moderator on StoreHows forums?” Smiling…… I have never been much on forums myself. Primefalcon is the one that cruises all kinds of forums for info! I am hoping that our eHow group will be able to have questions about something specific and that we, as a group, can help each other out with answers. Of course, any answers could and should also be written up as an article for eHow.

Filed in eHow, eHow Articles | | Comments (7)

Hello To A World Getting Better and Better!

Monday, October 20, 2008

This blog is dedicated to finding out how to do things better, easier and cheaper in an effort to help the world in little bitty ways. A glass used to start a plant cutting instead of landing in a garbage dump is just a tiny example of things that can help in big ways. While we can’t go back to open air bazaars, where food sits uncovered by anything but insects and germs – do we really have to have packaging big enough to hold a phone to house a disposable razor? Do we really have to have disposable razors at all?

Please feel free to ask any questions or leave any comments while we are in the process of setting up StoreHows.com.

Visit MarlaineMarie at eHow for a sample of things yet to come.

Have a great rest of the day and an incredible life!

Filed in Caring, Environment | | Comments (2)