How to make your creativity pay: market your writing

Are you a "beginning writer"? Some writers remain self-styled beginners for years. They never quite muster up the courage to send their work out to paying markets.

It can be hard to break out of your comfortable beginner's niche. The only way to do it... is to do it. As soon as you've written something that you feel may be publishable, send it out.

Tuck your creative self away, and haul your inner marketer out of the closet. Divorce yourself from your work as much as you can. Grit your teeth, and flail yourself with a whip if necessary, but send your work out. Then forget it. Your first marketing efforts may be torture. That's OK. You don’t have to enjoy marketing, you just have to do it.

The best advice: START SMALL and avoid query-letter hell. (Check out our Write and Sell Shorties — mini essays and articles, product reviews and more on Pro Write.)

Starting small is important for writers, because you can send out a short story or a filler article without writing a query letter. For a new writer, query letters can be dangerous. Here's why: some writers never get beyond a query letter. Ask any editor. These writers write lots of query letters, get good at it, and then one day an editor calls their bluff and sends them a contract. At this, the writer panics. Not only doesn’t she write the article, she gives up writing for several years. Then she starts again. Writing query letters.

The good news is that once you've got into the habit of writing and sending your work out, you can stop worrying. Sooner or later you'll get a check. (Sooner, we hope.)

The big benefit of marketing is that after a while it stops being a trauma. It starts to become fun. Your inner marketer is all grown up. Then the only problem you have is getting organized so that you keep track of what you sent where.

Technorati Tags: marketing, Pro Write