By Gila Green
The secret of getting ahead is getting started—Mark Twain
Three deadlines coming up, dinner's not made, and you haven't even hit the grocery store yet? The short answer might be fast food or begging a colleague to take one of your assignments, but the long-term answer is to improve your efficiency.
Here are eight tips to help you save time article writing starting today whether you're a freelance writer or you write your own blog posts and newsletters for your small business. You'll earn more money in less time and you'll be more relaxed while you're doing it.
You can do it with Fiction
For 10 years I had an unpublished short story hanging around. When I reviewed my short story collection recently, I realized it wasn't on the same level as the other short stories and I cut it out, but I didn't delete it, though it had been rejected many times.
Recently I saw a call for submissions for Flash noir pieces that had to represent a specific city i.e., a story that could not happen in any other city in the world. I realized that old, many times rejected story took place in Jerusalem and could only happen in Jerusalem. I cut it down to a Flash piece, beefed up the Jerusalem angle and sent it in. Within six days it was accepted for publication.
You can do it with Nonfiction
That's fiction, what about articles? I published an in-depth article on Non-Verbal Learning Disorder in a magazine aimed at a religious market. It was such a hit the magazine requested a follow-up article. That was easy. I had saved all the interviews I never had room for.
I realized afterwards that I could rewrite the story for a secular market, plus the follow-up article and get paid again for essentially the same article, just by changing the wording (and letting the publication know a different version was once published somewhere else). That was essentially one article sold four times!
Here's how you do it:
Choose your one main argument
Delete the rest (but save any great ideas or lines for future articles)
Choose your quotation and/or your example before you get going, so that you're sure they all fit your theme or main argument before you start writing.
Ditto for finding an image for your post.
Remember: Too many writers spend more time finding an image for their articles, than writing the articles. Find a post first. This will also improve the focus of the piece.
Know Yourself
Depending on what type of person you are, using one of these or similar applications can sometimes make you less productive. All of these tips won't work for everyone and won't work for every type of article and this is not an exhaustive list, but admitting you're not working at maximum efficiency is step one. Step two is experimenting with new working methods and finding out what works for you.
By accepting you will be accessing a service provided by a third-party external to https://gilagreenwrites.com/
White Zion is a novel in stories forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press (April 2019). The novel takes readers into the worlds of 19th century Yemen, pre-State Israel, modern Israel and modern Canada...
Read More Buy Now
Miriam Gil knows little about Israel. Her father won’t talk about his life there or the brother he left behind when he came to Canada. Hurt and angry when he tells her to move out to make room for his new girlfriend, she enrolls in an Israeli university. She falls in love with Guy...
Read More Buy Now
Eve and Manny are engaged in post-civil war Israel, but Manny has a secret: he’s falling in love with his religious roots and turning his back on moral relativism. As their wedding date approaches...
Read More Buy Now
Comments