( 7 reviews )
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Posted: Jan 14 2009
Moira Anderson Allen's book is very easy to read and the instructions are great. I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in writing, and I will be purchasing her other books. She has a very easy style with lots of information. Her insight into this field is valuable. She's a writer and has also been an editor so she's been on both sides of the coin. Great book!
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( 2 of 2 found this review helpful ) Posted: Feb 20 2008
The first third of the book is a review of how to write, how to do research, and what you should have in your office ("a chair," "a desk," "a place to store your writing supplies"), with which I am sure the average person looking to start a freelance writing career already knows. In fact, if you don't know how to write and conduct writing-related research, or have a place to put writing supplies, a career in writing probably never crossed your mind. For this, the book received four stars instead of five. Still, I have to recommend this book to anyone trying to start a career in writing who doesn't know quite where to begin. The second two-thirds of the book are filled with a grand assortment of helpful hints and information that are vital to a successful freelance-writing career. In particular, her advice on figuring out exactly where you should look to publish your work is extremely valuable. An entire chapter is devoted to the submission process, which includes how to deal with editors who don't reply to your submissions and how to deal with rejections. For me, the query letters she presents helped a great deal. She presents real letters-to-the-editor so there is no confusion about exactly what it should look like and what it must include. I didn't know about "hooking" with queries; I just assumed they were written like resume cover letters. Imagine how much failure I might have encountered, otherwise. And, not to be outdated, she even includes a chapter devoted to e-mail queries. Overall, I thought this book was an excellent resource for a budding freelancer. I felt as though it would have been better for her to leave out the first few chapters and get to the point. However, once she got to the point, I was thrilled to pieces that I found this book. I'm sure you will be, too.
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( 9 of 9 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jan 24 2007
Starting Your Career as a Freelance Writer will not teach you how to write. You need to do that yourself, with practice and feedback from people around you. What this book will do is take you step by step through the trials of becoming a paid writer: everything from coming up with ideas to write about to structuring to the finished product, from querying editors for the first time to building a lasting relationship. The "rules" set down apply to multiple forms of writing, and not just for magazines, and references to other work are instructional and welcome. There is also an excellent overview of how to manage your personal business as a freelancer, which for those of us "creative types," is certainly helpful. The greatest part of this book, though, is its ability to lead the reader into types of writing for pay that many of us would never even consider. For instance, there is a chapter (written by a different author, suggesting the book's author knows her limits) on writing copy. Though I would never have thought to write copy, and almost skipped the chapter, following reading it and having been convinced that maybe this was a good way to suppliment income, I made some cold-calls as the book suggested, and a few days later, I already have a copy writing gig. I would highly recommend this book to any competent writer that is looking to make a bit of money doing something that they love. If you can bring the work ethic, this book can bring the game plan.
