This week, we’re excited to announce an extended deadline for our poetry awards, nine new online writing courses, an upcoming short short story competition deadline, and more.

There’s always so much happening in the Writer’s Digest universe that even staff members have trouble keeping up. As a result, we decided to start collecting what’s on the horizon to make it easier for everyone to know what’s happening and when.

This week, we’re excited to announce an extended deadline for our poetry awards, nine new online writing courses, an upcoming short short story competition deadline, and more!

Poetry Awards Deadline Extended to November 16!

Calling all poets! We’re on the lookout for poems of all styles–rhyming, free verse, haiku, and more–for the 15th Annual Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards! This is the only Writer’s Digest competition exclusively for poets. Enter any poem 32 lines or less for your chance to win $1,000 in cash.

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Short Short Story Competition

We’re looking for short fiction stories! Think you can write a winning story in 1,500 words or less? Enter the 21st Annual Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition for your chance to win $3,000 in cash, get published in Writer’s Digest magazine, and a paid trip to our ever-popular Writer’s Digest Conference!

EARLY BIRD DEADLINE: NOVEMBER 16, 2020

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Check out the digital November/December issue of Writer’s Digest!

Writer’s Digest officially turns 100! In this special double issue, WD celebrates 100 years of helping writers improve their craft and getting published with advice from some of the biggest industry professionals and authors publishing today. We’ll look back on how writing has changed over time, the founding of WD, and much more.

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Nine Online Writing Courses Start This Week

Nine new online writing courses start this week, including getting started in writing, pitching an article, publishing a children’s book, and more. Click here to check out the Writer’s Digest University calendar.

Publishing Your Children’s Book: How to Write and Pitch Young Adult, Middle Grade, and Picture Book Manuscripts

Editor’s note: This boot camp starts November 17, but since it starts at the beginning of next week, we wanted you to know about it!

In this Writer’s Digest Boot Camp, the agents of P.S. Literary Agency will show you how to make your submission stand out. How do you write a children’s book with commercial appeal? How do you decide what category and genre your book belongs in? How do you find agents and publishers to submit your manuscript to? How can you attract both child and adult readers (and buyers)? The agent instructors will answer these questions—and more! They will also critique your work and answer any questions you have about writing and selling books for children.

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Advanced Novel Writing

Push yourself beyond your comfort zone and take your writing to new heights with this novel writing workshop, designed specifically for novelists who are looking for detailed feedback on their work. When you take this online workshop, you won’t have weekly reading assignments or lectures. Instead, you’ll get to focus solely on completing your novel.

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Getting Started in Writing

When you take this online writing workshop, you’ll discover your voice, learn the basics of grammar and examine the different types of writing. No matter what type of writing you’re planning on crafting—nonfiction or fiction—you’ll need guidance along the way.

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12 Weeks to a First Draft

Dive into the world of writing and learn all 12 steps needed to complete a first draft. In this writing workshop you will tackle the steps to writing a book, learn effective writing techniques along the way, and of course, begin writing your first draft.

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Business Writing

If you aspire to be a professional writer, you must know the basics of communication. When you take this business writing workshop, you’ll develop the skills necessary to survive in the business world as a writer. You will study Wilma Davidson’s Business Writing: What Works, What Won’t and discover practical advice for writing memos, business letters, reports, and other kinds of business documents. Enroll in Essentials of Business Writing today and get business writing tips that will help you succeed.

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Advanced Blogging

It’s easy to start and maintain a blog, but most bloggers barely scratch the surface of what’s possible. This course will take you out of your blogging comfort zone and encourage you to experiment and think bigger. It goes beyond the basics to explore such topics as how to fine-tune your blog’s theme, how to improve your blog’s visibility in searches and across the social web, how to turn your blog followers into a community, and how to start monetizing your blog.

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Pitch an Article: Write for Today’s Marketplace

This intensive two-week course will teach you how to craft a good pitch letter and do it well. Be ready to mine your life for ideas. Start thinking about a great spin on a topic or an unusual personal experience that you’d like to write about in class.

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Grammar and Mechanics

Do you remember the difference between the 8 parts of speech and how to use them? Are you comfortable with punctuation and mechanics?

No matter what type of writing you do, mastering the fundamentals of grammar and mechanics is an important first step to having a successful writing career.

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Writing Online Content

This course pays special attention to the most notable form of online article writing: the blog posting. Publications of all types have enlisted the aid of bloggers to help disseminate information. Blogs incorporate characteristics from other article types—news, feature articles, and opinion pieces. Learning to write blog postings is a marketable skill, and the writer of online content should have a strong understanding of blogs. Finally, every writer should have her own blog whether associated with a publication or not; blogs are an integral facet of any viable platform.

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13th Annual November Poem-A-Day Chapbook Challenge!

Every November, Robert Lee Brewer shares a poetry prompt (and an example poem) each morning to help inspire poets to write daily poems in November. Then, he challenges poets to collect those poems into chapbook manuscripts of 10 to 20 pages of poetry during the month of December. It’s a fun and free poetry challenge that has led to publication and new poetry for many poets over the years.

Click here to learn more.

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Polish your writing to find success!

2nd Draft provides a high-level review of your writing, pointing out reasons your work may be getting rejected, or may not meet the standards of traditional publication.

After an evaluation of your submission, one of the professional 2nd Draft critiquers will provide feedback and advice. You’ll not only learn what’s working in your writing, but what’s not, and—most important—how to fix it.

Send your work to Writer’s Digest 2nd Draft Critique Service!

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Whether you found yourself choosing the freelance life or getting forced into it, you probably had big visions. Being your own boss! Creating your own schedule! Earning money doing what you love!

Only… a few months into it, freelancers sometimes find reality looks nothing like that picture. In reality, it can be hard to find clients, especially good ones. And earning enough money to live comfortably can be a big stressor when you’re getting started.

If this sounds familiar, listen up: we’re about to let you in on a solid way to get yourself off the feast-or-famine freelance treadmill.

It’s called recurring revenue.

In other words, clients who hire you to work for them on a regular basis: say, one project every day, week or month, which means getting paid by that same client again and again.

Why recurring revenue is a lifeline for freelance writers

This business strategy is so important for earning more — and stressing less — as a freelancer. Here’s what monthly recurring revenue can do for you:

Makes your earnings more predictable

Not knowing where your money is coming from or even how much you’ll earn each month is neither fun nor sustainable. Recurring revenue allows you to predict your monthly income, which makes it easier to assess how much more work you need to meet your goals.

Even if that recurring client represents only 20 or 30 percent of your total monthly revenue, it’s nice to know you can expect that regular paycheck.

Decreases stress levels

Financial stress is often the number one problem for freelancers, especially when you’re just starting out and maybe accustomed to receiving a steady paycheck each month.

Having recurring work and knowing you can pay your bills on time removes a huge amount of stress from your shoulders, which means you can actually enjoy the flexible lifestyle you’ve created.

Allows you to focus on working, instead of pitching

One of the biggest benefits of recurring revenue is you don’t have to spend all your free time searching for more work. More time doing the work, rather than trying to win it, means more money in the bank.

Most freelancers also tend to enjoy working more than pitching, so this approach could make you happier in that regard, too.

Land higher-paying gigs

When you have a steady income, the time you do spend trying to win work can be focused on higher-paying writing gigs.

Since you won’t be forced to take on projects just because you need the cash, you’ll gradually cultivate a stable of well-paying clients, leading to a lot more money as the years go by.

Foster meaningful relationships

When you’re working with the same clients month after month, you’ll inevitably foster deeper relationships. As a result, you’ll better understand what each client wants and how to help them, so you’ll serve them better. You’ll also learn, over time, how to complete your projects more efficiently, which is hugely beneficial if you can move from hourly work to value-based pricing (or getting paid for deliverables, rather than time spent).

Even better, these types of relationships often lead to more work from those clients or from other people in their networks once they refer you.

Tips for generating monthly recurring revenue

Finding recurring work is similar to landing one-off freelance gigs, but it takes a little bit of extra effort.

The first step is to develop a system for pitching and landing prospective clients. We’ve written a lot about how to find freelance clients, including how to use a spreadsheet to track freelance pitches and where to look for freelance writing jobs. Here are more tips about how to convince someone to hire you for a freelance position.

Every time you get a new gig, look at it as an opportunity to win a recurring client. Make sure your work is excellent, submit it before the deadline, and if you can, find a way to add an extra 10 percent of effort to really make it shine. Give that client reason to want to hire you again!

If it’s a reported story, interview a first-person source rather than just quoting an article you find online. If you’re writing a blog post, format it to match other posts on the blog, so the editor doesn’t have to do that himself after you turn it in. Whatever the project is, go above and beyond the basic requirements to stand out in a sea of other freelancers.

Now here’s the crucial step: Once you’ve proven your skill and reliability on a few one-off projects, let your client know you’d like to be considered for ongoing work.

Monthly recurring revenue can come in different forms. The client might commit, for example, to paying you for two blog posts each month. Or they might want to lock in five hours of your time each month.

Why would they do this? Because just like you don’t want to look for a new client every month, they don’t want to spend time looking for a new writer. If they can rely on you for a certain amount of work each month, it makes their life easier and helps projects progress faster.

If they can’t hire you right then, don’t fret. Stay in touch with the client via social media and email, and hopefully they’ll think of you the next time a recurring opportunity pops up.

On all of your projects, do your best to demonstrate your value, and you’ll soon be on your way to monthly recurring revenue — and a successful freelance business.

Do you have any recurring clients? How’d you find them?

The original version of this story was written by Alexis Grant. We updated the post so it’s more useful for our readers.

Photo via Rawpixel.com / Shutterstock 

The post Why Recurring Revenue is the Key to a Stable Freelance Writing Career appeared first on The Write Life.

You did it! 

2020 is (almost) OVER. Here comes the big question: Whose words helped you sprint across the finish line? 

In January, we’re continuing our tradition and publishing a seventh edition of the 100 Best Websites for Writers in 2021 — but we can’t do it without your worthy feedback. 

Whether you visit them to learn about freelance writing, self-publishing or writing tools, we want you to nominate the websites for writers that have earned space on your bookmarks bar.

Which sites do you turn to religiously for guidance about craftsmanship or freelancing? Whose blog do you trust the most when it comes to brand building or editing?

Because we’re dedicated to giving our readers the best tools and resources to empower you as writers, we only choose websites that educate and inspire writers across all genres.

Tell us: What website should every writer know about? Share your favorites with us in the comments! 

We’re excited to see who you nominate. 

Stay tuned for the final list in January! 

The post Nominate the Best Websites for Writers for 2021 appeared first on The Write Life.

Who cares about the Oxford comma?

The answer historically has been grammar nerds, Strunk & White and those who follow the infamous Chicago vs. AP writing style guide debate.

After this lawsuit a few years ago, we added dairy driver to the list.

That’s because an appellate court ruled in favor of Maine dairy drivers in a labor dispute that hinged on the oft-debated piece of punctuation.

For anyone who’s ever wondered what all the fuss is about over Oxford commas, the circuit judge’s 2017 opinion says it all: “For want of a comma, we have this case.”

What is the Oxford comma or the serial comma?

For those in need of a grammar rules refresh, here’s a quick overview of the Oxford comma.

Sometimes called the serial comma, the Oxford comma is a comma placed between the last two items in a series of three or more.

For example, the Oxford comma falls after “hat” in this sentence:

“She wore a jacket, hat, and mittens.”

While some writing style guides do not use the Oxford comma, supporters say it’s necessary to avoid potential ambiguity. And if there’s one thing writers can agree on, it’s the importance of clarity. In some cases, an extra comma matters.

Does AP style use the Oxford comma?

The short answer: No.

Many writers, including journalists, live by the Associated Press stylebook. AP style does not use Oxford commas.

However, Chicago style does require Oxford commas. That’s the Chicago Manual of Style, which is commonly used by book publishers, academics and trade publications.

So the decision about whether to use an Oxford comma relies on what type of writing you’re doing, and which style guide applies to that project.

If you’re writing for a news site, you probably want to follow AP style and avoid the Oxford comma. If you’re writing a novel you plan to submit to publishers, you probably want to follow Chicago style, which does use the Oxford comma.

An Oxford comma example

Let’s review how the Oxford comma works.

Here’s an example of a sentence with the Oxford comma: “I admire my parents, Gandhi, and Mother Teresa.”

It’s clear in this example that I admire my parents, as well as Gandhi and Mother Teresa.

But remove that serial comma, and the sentence reads, “I admire my parents, Gandhi and Mother Teresa.” One could argue that, written this way, the sentence implies that Gandhi and Mother Teresa are my parents. While the average person would know this isn’t likely to be the case, it illustrates how easily a missing comma can change the meaning of a sentence.

(Dictionary.com offers more funny examples.)

It was precisely this type of ambiguity that led to the Maine case with the dairy farmers — the oxford comma lawsuit.

The Oxford comma debate, and a $10 million comma

In this class action lawsuit, drivers for Oakhurst Dairy sued the company over its failure to grant them overtime pay.

Workers in Maine are entitled to 1.5 times their normal pay for hours worked over 40 per week, according to state law. However, there are exemptions to this rule. Specifically, the law states, companies don’t have to pay overtime for the following activities:

The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of:

1. Agricultural produce;
2. Meat and fish product; and
3. Perishable foods

Note the end of the opening line, where there is no comma before the “or.”

Oakhurst Dairy argued its drivers did not qualify for overtime because they engage in distribution, and the spirit of the law intended to list “packing for shipment” and “distribution” as two separate exempt activities.

However, the drivers argued the letter of the law said no such thing. Without that telltale Oxford comma, the law could be read to exclude only packing — whether it was packing for shipment or packing for distribution. Distribution by itself, in this case, would not be exempt.

Without that comma, as the judge maintained, this distinction was not clear-cut:

If that exemption used a serial comma to mark off the last of the activities that it lists, then the exemption would clearly encompass an activity that the drivers perform. And, in that event, the drivers would plainly fall within the exemption and thus outside the overtime law’s protection. But, as it happens, there is no serial comma to be found in the exemption’s list of activities, thus leading to this dispute over whether the drivers fall within the exemption from the overtime law or not.

As a result, the court found in favor of the drivers, costing the dairy an estimated $10 million.

Comma rules: To comma, or not to comma?

As a diehard Oxford comma loyalist, this ruling made my day.

While many of the sites I write for as a freelance blogger follow AP style (including this one), which is sans-serial comma, I still sneak one in when it seems needed to avoid confusion. This case backs up that habit as more than just an old-school tic I haven’t yet let go.

While the debate may still rage on over whether Oxford commas are necessary all the time, this ruling upholds the practice of using them when they’re essential to ward off ambiguity.

So, who care about the Oxford comma? The answer, according to the courts, is officially: anyone who’s interested in clarity.

Take that, AP style!

This is an updated version of a story that was previously published. We update our posts as often as possible to ensure they’re useful for our readers.

Photo via Lamai Prasitsuwan/ Shutterstock 

The post A Win for the Oxford Comma: This Lawsuit Shows Why It’s So Important appeared first on The Write Life.

Scotland, with its mountains and hills, its banks and braes, has inspired poets – whether Scottish or otherwise – over the centuries. Here are ten of the very greatest poems about the country of Scotland. Of course, ten poems can never hope to tell the whole story, so let us […]