Thursday, May 03, 2012

Weekend Reading: The Writing Edition

This week, I've got some links for you about writing- blogging and otherwise.

First, Nicoleandmaggie explain why they blog. (I wrote my answer to this last year. It is still largely accurate.)

Some people blog for money. I think that by and large, they are disappointed, and this post from Anandi explains why- blogging doesn't pay well. Anyway, my experience with earning money from my blog has been similar to Anandi's. But then, I haven't really tried to make much money from this blog. To the extent that I've played around with monetization, it has been to see how the options play out, as research for another website idea I have (and may someday act upon, if I ever figure out how to either make enough money to make it worthwhile or stop caring about making enough money to make it worthwhile.)

Although I don't have any plans to try to turn this blog into a money-making machine, I have been thinking about trying to make some money from writing. I've even taken some steps towards making that happen, which I'll definitely talk more about when it is appropriate to do so. So when Nicoleandmaggie wrote a post about freelancing and referenced a book on writing by John Scalzi, whose Whatever blog I really enjoy, my interest was piqued. I did some Googling and turned up a couple of good, old posts of his on the topic of writing: John Scalzi's Utterly Useless Writing Advice and Unasked-for Advice to New Writers about Money. I particularly liked this quote from the second one: "Writing part-time does not lessen the work; the work is its own thing." It dovetails nicely with some thoughts I've been having lately about how to solve my recent motivational slump. I'll no doubt have more to say on that topic soon, too, but my thoughts aren't quite ready for sharing yet.

But I got tired of Googling, so I've shelled out the $5 and will be reading You're Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop on my Kindle, instead. I'll try to remember to let you know what I think when I finish reading it.

Along those same lines, Laura Vanderkam posted some advice for new freelance writers. I am not a freelance writer, and I am not aiming to be one- but I could still stand to take some of her advice. Particularly this: "Write tight. Omit needless words! Buy Strunk & White’s Elements of Style."

Because, as most of you have probably noticed, brevity isn't my strong point. But I do own Elements of Style!

Anyone have any other good posts about writing, for pay or otherwise? Leave them in the comments.

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:11 AM

    Off topic-- Morning edition did a story on how the gaming industry is using data analysis of large datasets and this is something new for them. http://www.npr.org/2012/05/04/152001799/game-giant-forced-to-play-catch-up I thought of you!

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  2. Anonymous6:50 AM

    As always, I love the links you, well, link to! Thanks :)

    And I must say, brevity is also not my particular strong suit, but I do love me some Strunk & White!

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  3. I think blogging pays...when you blog for somebody else. And they pay you to write for them.

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  4. Thanks for the shout out! Good luck with the writing endeavors (whatever you decide to do with them!).

    Brevity is something I struggle with too :)

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  5. If you haven't seen this before, I enjoyed this post on how science writers got their start.
    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/07/29/on-the-origin-of-science-writers

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  6. I would read Language Log before taking too much of Strunk&White:
    http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1318

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  7. This blog never fails to impress me because of its straightforward facts and the topics are always up to date.

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