You've heard me talk about one of my favorite books for writers, Writer Mama: How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids by Christina Katz. Well, I was lucky enough to chat with Christina online for a bit the other day, and she gave me a few pointers. I really enjoyed catching up with her. Writer Mama has been such an inspiring book for me; I'd like to take some time to review it and point out some of the features you all may be interested in.
As the name implies, this book is geared toward moms who want to start a career in writing. Specifically, it's aimed at moms of small children and provides loads of ideas on how to be productive with kids underfoot. Christina encourages her reader to carve out pieces of time throughout the day in order to get down to the business of writing. She also reminds us that we don't have to strive for the heavy, research driven feature stories. As moms with few precious windows of time in our day to dedicate to anything beyond childcare and household duties, it may be a better fit to focus our energy on shorter pieces like fillers and tips. I love this approach, as it's an avenue I hadn't considered to getting published in the big name magazines.
Writer Mama is broken down into four sections:
Preparation - This section covers topics such as accumulating ideas, identifying your audience, targeting markets, understanding writer's guidelines, and dealing with the ever-present dilemma of what to do if you have no clips. She breaks information down into charts and sidebars, just the way all the popular magazines do, to help make things easy to manage. I found her charts on analyzing market research to be quite helpful; figuring out which sections to shoot for and which are covered by freelancers can be a daunting task.
Practice - You'll find lots of good advice on writing specific types of pieces such as tips, lists, fillers, how-to, and personal essay. Who knew there were so many ways to break into print? Christina maps them out and shows you just how to approach each one. She gives concrete examples and doles out advice on what to do with your piece to increase the chances your submission will be accepted.
Professionalism - In this section, you'll learn how to prewrite your feature, draft and plan your query, conduct interviews, negotiate contracts, and what to do once you've gotten the assignment. All of this information is so important to becoming a successful jouranlist. Christina outlines all the details involved in planning, negotiating, preparing for, and writing great features. She makes sure to cover all the bases in easy to manage chunks we moms really appreciate.
Poise - The section on poise covers everything you'll need to know about handling the balancing act between writer and mama. You'll learn about the various hats worn by freelance writers, how to find your niche and set yourself apart as an expert, ways to get your name out there, all about professional development, and this section even delves into the next logical step - pitching a non-fiction book concept. This portion of the book goes over the often neglected details such as maintaining your business as well as your skills, and Christina tackles it all with her signature style, making an overwhelming amount of information easily digestible.
If you want to write for magazines, the web or other print publications, this book is just what you need, even if you're not a mama! What writer couldn't use a productivity tool kit at her disposal? This book is not geared toward commercial copy writers, though, and would be best utilized for those interested in writing in a journalistic style. With helpful exercises throughout and great tips and quotes from established freelancers, this book has it all for the newbie writer with little time on their hands.
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