http://www.action-ink.com Sun, 27 Jun 2010 08:39:31 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en You may think that your career in journalism is the key to free speech. Finally, you have the platform to be able to report on and talk about whatever you like. Right? Wrong. Because increasingly, journalists have to pander to the requirements of the sales and advertising departments and whether ... http://www.action-ink.com/the-battle-with-the-sales-and-advertising-department-52 One of the keys to magazine writing is being able to target to different readers. As any good journalist knows, you must always keep your target reader in mind whenever you are writing a piece for a magazine as this will help to produce a piece that the readers will ... http://www.action-ink.com/know-the-target-reader-50 A good way of knowing whether you are a talented writer is thinking about whether it comes naturally to you. If you can sit down and write something within a reasonable amount of time and without struggling and the resultant piece of work is of a good standard, then it’s safe ... http://www.action-ink.com/can-you-make-a-living-from-writing-48 A lot of people seem to think that magazine writing is an easy profession. But in order to write features that engage the reader and encourage them to read the entire piece, you need talent, skill and knowledge of this type of writing. The main thing is to know the ... http://www.action-ink.com/magazine-writing-46 Writing is one of those professions that people seem to leap on. If someone asks what you do for a living and you reply by saying you’re a writer, you will find that the majority of the time, they will say something along the lines of: ‘oh right, yeah, I’m ... http://www.action-ink.com/are-you-a-writer-too-44 As most writers know, finding time to sit and write as you have a great idea is unlikely. Keep a pen and notebook with you AT ALL TIMES and you can jot down any particular inspiration or sentence/line that you have thought of. You can then refer back to your ... http://www.action-ink.com/the-writers-journal-42 A great writing lecturer once told me that, in order to write your best work and effectively edit and take criticism, you have to be fully prepared to kill your babies. What he meant (rather than brutal child murder), is that your favourite line in a poem, or paragraph in a ... http://www.action-ink.com/kill-your-babies-41 If you were a high quality editor, who got sent hundreds of manuscripts a month, or even a week, which ones do you think you’d reject without even reading? None – do I hear you say? Rubbish! Why waste the time of reading event the front page of someone’s work, ... http://www.action-ink.com/how-long-do-you-spend-making-sure-your-manuscript-is-presentable-39 Most full time authors (think J K Rowling, Margaret Atwood, Bernard Cornwell etc) will tell you that they have to treat writing as you might any other occupation: you need to have work time, and home time. Obviously if your writing doesn’t pay the bills (and, given you’re reading ... http://www.action-ink.com/workin%e2%80%99-9-to-5-37 It may be a cliché, but it is still valid advice. You need to give your readers some credit, and let them do the work: imply and suggest without blatantly spelling everything out. Your readers won’t enjoy reading your work if it seems as though it is written for people ... http://www.action-ink.com/show-don%e2%80%99t-tell-35