Ask good questions. Have your ideas ready. Write a draft first. Don't force your writer friend to motivate you. Be a goddamn adult and drive this thing. The Problem: There is an entire imaginary internet comprised of web sites that exist only in the minds of people with good intentions. Many, many writers get this request very frequently. How To Ask Nicely: Don't ask until you know what your site is going to look like, in detail. And keep the writer in the loop. Tell them exactly when their work will show up.
Tell them how you're going to spread the word about it. Show them that it's worth their time to do this. I was shocked at one time to see how many publishers and agents specify "Please do not send us the only copy of your manuscript. Don't give someone your only copy. And honestly, if you can ask about their preferred format, all the better.
If they prefer print, you really should go to the trouble of getting it printed. If they prefer digital, it's nice to send the digital file in an editable format. Give the writer some time. Don't hound your writer when they've had your work for a day. And don't pass something off to an editor when you need it tomorrow. If you think your writer friend might be of help to someone, do your writer friend a favor, tell THEM about it first, give them the chance to turn it down, and THEN tell the original asker, "Hey, I was thinking about what you said the other day, and I might know someone who can help.
Offer it up front. Say you'd like to pay, and say how much you can manage. I know I hammered this one over and over, and I'll boil it down simply: Either you need this writer's help, in which case their help is valuable enough to pay for.
Or you don't need their help, in which case you can skip the help entirely and skip paying for it. Sometimes, someone will tell you No. Don't make them defend this.
Don't haggle. Even if you offer payment, the writer has every right to turn you down. Asking someone to help you with a writing project, consider it like asking someone on a date. If you ask once, nicely, and the person says No, then that's it. You don't have to know why, they don't owe you a reason. The answer is No, and asking someone to justify that answer isn't going to change anything. Peter Derk lives, writes, and works in Colorado.
Buy him a drink and he'll talk books all day. Buy him two and he'll be happy to tell you about the horrors of being responsible for a public restroom. To leave a comment Login with Facebook or create a free account. I've been asked to do all of the above at some point or other. What you say holds true. Someone offering to pay would have been nice.
I edited a novel for someone as a favour. You'll find this creature floating through art galleries and referring to "writing as performance. She spends a lot of time getting dressed in the morning and owns an Etsy print that says "Create or Die. There's nothing elegant about this dude's prose, but it doesn't matter, because he literally has 4 million Twitter followers.
That's what happens when you write the screenplay for Transformers 5: Autobot Rising — you get rich. While drinking at dive bars, you find occasional catharsis in complaining about his "stilted dialogue" to your other non-successful friends, but at the end of the day it kills you that he's hobnobbing with Spielberg and you still haven't left your day job even though you were clearly better than him in that one MFA workshop you took together.
She asked you for feedback on her manuscript, and you — like an idiot — actually gave her feedback. As soon as you told her that her ending wasn't "earned," the room grew silent and you could actually hear her blood beginning to boil.
Sure, she smiled and nodded and thanked you for your fantastic advice, but you could see her fingers flying rapidly over her phone, texting her favorite hit-man a precise description of your outfit. Look who earned her ending now. She ignored you for years until you had that one piece in Salon and now she's all up in your Facebook messages, asking you what's new. How does this brave soul do it?
As you huddle in the corner at AWP , terrified of approaching the Indiana Review editors, this dude strides past you with his bag of writer swag and his broad, white smile — and picks up a handful of prime freelance assignments, an agent, and 25 business cards in the time it takes you to remember that one cute editor's name.
His first novel was ripped apart, he can't get a shred of publicity for his second, and he is taking out his anger in the comment section of your latest think piece.
You have every reason to suspect that his latest Facebook rant — "Makes me sick seeing all these hacks who've never read DeLillo getting paid for their glorified blog posts" — is directed at you, too. Somehow, this dude has someone decided that YOUR not-very-impressive career was supposed to be HIS, and he won't stop until he makes you feel as terrible as he does. If you're a gracious person, you'll read his second novel and send him a email telling him how much you respect his careful prose.
If you're a bad person, you'll really put the nail in his typewriter by writing the script for Transformers 6: Machines 'R' Us and becoming a millionaire.
To figure out whether to use a possessive pronoun or a contraction, expand the contraction to its full form. Then, ask yourself if the sentence still makes sense. You are going to be late. The sentence is logical. You are car is running. However, there is one more word that is often confused with these two homophones— there. There can be used in a lot of different ways, but it might help to remember that there is the opposite of here.
You can substitute here for there and see if your sentence still makes sense. It is difficult to remember when to use a comma. Some writers add them haphazardly and others avoid them like the plague. What rules govern comma usage? A reader may lose interest or become confused if sentences or paragraphs are excessively long.
While proofreading, eliminate unnecessary words. Ask yourself if all the sentences in a paragraph support its main idea. Some people think the longest word they know is always the best one to use. However, there are dangers in using unnecessarily long or obscure words. You might seem pretentious. You might use the word incorrectly. The best way to avoid this habit is to write with your audience in mind and to double-check the meaning of any unusual words.
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