50 Mistakes Writers Make: Mistakes Writers Make, #3

By Alex Gazzola

The third book in the Mistakes Writers Make series takes the reader to the next level on the non-fiction writing journey, building on your early successes by equipping you with the skills, approach and attitude you need to make a living freelance writing for the internet, magazines and newspapers.

It covers article ideas, negotiating with editors, interviewing skills, financial issues, words and punctuation, even psychological wellbeing — and much more.

All of the advice is given through the prism of error, on the basis that mistakes are inevitable, good, educational — and yet can be overcome.

This helpful, friendly, and sometimes amusing guide should equip you with everything you need to sell your work regularly and turn freelance writing into a realistic career.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alex Gazzola
• Release date: Dec 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393240495

Book preview

50 Mistakes Writers Make

by Alex Gazzola

Text copyright © 2019 Alex Gazzola

All Rights Reserved

Table of Contents

Introduction

Mistake #1: The comfort of strangers

Mistake #2: There’s a best way ...

Mistake #3: Look, Mum, I’m a writer!

Mistake #4: I’m going to do nothing but write!

Mistake #5: Limited rights to write

Mistake #6: I am out of ideas!

Mistake #7: Scratching around in the attic

Mistake #8: Idea complacency

Mistake #9: No hook up

Mistake #10: No buddying up

Mistake #11: Too big for old markets

Mistake #12: Specs appeal

Mistake #13: No specs please, we’re writers

Mistake #14: Binning the boring and bad

Mistake #15: Blogging’s a dead horse

Mistake #16: No No

Mistake #17: Writing magazines? Pah!

Mistake #18: Pitching a column too soon

Mistake #19: No package deal

Mistake #20: Editors are rude

Mistake #21: Editors have the time, really

Mistake #22: Editor, **** off!

Mistake #23: Rejection isn’t personal

Mistake #24: Nogotiating

Mistake #25: Interview

Mistake #26: Focusing on the questions

Mistake #27: Interviewee difficulties

Mistake #28: Worrying about the expert

Mistake #29: Brief counter

Mistake #30: Nice, nice and more nice

Mistake #31: One word or two

Mistake #32: Not alot

Mistake #33: Random abuse

Mistake #34: Sat, sitting; stood, standing

Mistake #35: Finding the right word

Mistake #36: Colonic irritation

Mistake #37: The em dash, the en dash, the hyphen

Mistake #38: Is it definitely going in?

Mistake #39: Failing to chase your dues

Mistake #40: Too little! Too much! Too little again!

Mistake #41: Desperation

Mistake #42: Revealing all your clients

Mistake #43: No competition

Mistake #44: Experimentlessness

Mistake #45: I can never give up!

Mistake #46: Forgetting your point

Mistake #47: Becoming a Writer

Mistake #48: No thank-you

Mistake #49: Forgetting your first time

Mistake #50: Holding on

Introduction

This book is for the freelance writer who has enjoyed a few nibbles of success in the publishing business and now wants to dine out regularly on the full buffet of its opportunities.

It’s for the non-newbie, then, who has perhaps read and had some luck with the first two books in the Mistakes Writers Make series — all 100 beginner mistakes of them — and is now keen to learn a bit more, earn a bit more, and err a bit more too.

Why err a bit more?

Well ...

OK. First, remember that mistakes are inevitable — in life, and in play, and in business, and certainly in the business of writing. There’s no avoiding error. We will all be making professional mistakes until we retire, and personal mistakes until we die.

Few of them will matter. Maybe only a tiny minority, actually.

However, if among that minority are errors which are holding back your ambitions, then these are mistakes you surely would like to overcome.

Before you can succeed, I think it first helps to lose any lingering sense of embarrassment about your mistakes, or possible fear you have of making more.

Obviously, if this trepidation or nervousness is deep within you, you can’t simply will yourself to that stage of emotional freedom, because we’re talking about feelings here and feelings don’t always play ball with your commands (let alone will they with mine).

Is there a solution? There’s certainly indirect action you can take.

Stop denying error. Go further than that. Admit to it. Share it. Shout about it, even. Don’t try to hide it, at the very least. Laugh about it. Others will laugh with you, not at you.

Practise admitting to errors. Keep doing it. It’ll soon become second nature.

It doesn’t matter what they are. Start with the trivial, then build up. The dinner you burned. The lines you fluffed. The career move that bombed. The lover you wronged. The regrettable opinion you once held. The mistaken vote cast.

The writing mistakes you have made.

Keep going. You’ll soon be far less afraid of making mistakes. As you will realise, they can sometimes be fun — perhaps not at the time, but afterwards certainly, once your toes have curled and your loved ones have chuckled, and you’ve had a chance to smile, reflect, and learn.

And if they’re not fun, they can be liberating — burdens perhaps you hadn’t realised you were carrying with you.

And of course they can be educational, as you know.

So that’s why, upstream, I mentioned that you might want to err a bit more.

I hope if you didn’t then, that you now do.

Because if you are keen to err a bit more, you recognise that this can only be a good thing, that you are keen to do a bit more — even a lot more — and keen to learn more, keen to improve, keen to eventually get things right, keen to really go for it, pursue it, and even keen to perhaps become one of the best at what you do.

What a person to be!

Error blinkers

All that might sound quite can-do, will-do, go-getting and gung-ho.

Good! It’s exciting when you adopt this fearlessly ambitious attitude!

But in my argument above I’ve presupposed that you can identify the writing errors you make once you’ve made them.

Some you can. But some you can’t.

With regard to those you can’t, you may need a little help to be shown them.

That is where these books — and the blog that started this journey into writing error took off — will come in.

Back in the day when I was conceiving the site and these guides, I wanted the spirit of my writing mistake concept to be not overly instructional. I was motivated by the prospect of offering something different in the world of writing advice, which for the most part sets out very clearly what you should do. This prescriptive method can be a little dull, doesn’t work smoothly for all, and may fail a few.

Instead, my planned approach was to tell you what a wrong thing was, sometimes even show you clearly what it looked like, and then show you what a right thing might look like, without being too forceful in pushing you towards it. And I say a right thing not the right thing because there are often more than one right things available and bright individuals are fully capable of identifying them or even inventing their own, as well as accepting (or rejecting) those proposed to them.

That was the essence of it.

That was always the intention.

Reader, I’m not sure I have fully succeeded. Reflecting on the previous two books ahead of writing