Pinar Tarhan, Author at Addicted to Writing

When Inspiration Is Chasing You, Get Caught!

Posted on May 6, 2012 Written by Pinar Tarhan

rsz_2bullitt-movie-car-chase-scene — Image via classic-car-history.com

I have a deadline for 2 travel posts. I have a more pressing deadline for a writing contest whose early bird deadline I ignored because I wanted the manuscript to be flawless (not that “flawless” really exists for a writer or an editor.) Of course there is the novel I have been trying to finish for months (which was originally intended to finish in line with Writer’s Digest’s 90 Days to Your Novel), and two contests that I found about much too late, but I’m dying to enter (or at least brainstorm a good idea for later use) anyway.

And guess what I’m inspired to write instead? Blog posts for my own blogs. Yes, I love my blogs and writing for them. It is always great to present good new content to your audience, and it definitely helps your blogs’ ranking and traffic if you publish new and interesting content more often. But whenever I make a schedule for my blog posts, I am inspired to write anything but.

When I want to concentrate on my novel, I find myself writing blog posts or working on a story that was written before but will be reformatted.

So I decided to run with the flow.

But if you have to write one thing before the other, and that pressure (of the deadlines) is making you not write at all, it is better to write what you are inspired to than write nothing at all.

I’m a big fan of chasing inspiration, but sometimes inspiration has other ideas, and it wants to reach you for different ideas and stories than the one you need to work on. Don’t let it go. Write it down, and even if you don’t have the time to write all of it, write the most crucial part so that you can make it work when you come back to it.

If you ignore inspiration because you are waiting for another kind, there is a chance it will ignore you for a longer time-even when you are trying to chase it.

So I’m off to writing that TV series post now. What do you feel like writing at this very moment?

6 Reasons Why You Should Write About What You Love

Posted on April 24, 2012 Written by Pinar Tarhan

6 Reasons Why You Should Write About What You Love &

(Why I Don’t Work as a Copywriter)

happy writer, content writer — I look this happy and relaxed when I write about what I love. Image via livinggreenmag.com.

Starting and managing a successful freelance writing career while writing about things that interest you, things that you love, is the central theme of this blog. Yes, it features articles about writing and blogging (writing better, finding writing jobs, productivity, marketing your writing, reviews of writing/blogging-related books and products….etc.)

But it doesn’t include any articles about how to become a better copywriter/commercial. There are great blogs on the subject and if you are interested, I strongly recommend you check out the following writers’ blogs (I go to their blogs when I need information on how to write better copy- I have blogs and the pages and my product reviews need good copy after all. I just don’t take copywriting jobs.)

Some of My Favorite Copywriting Resources

– Carol Tice – Make a Living Writing

– Peter Bowerman – The Well-Fed Writer

– Ruth Zive- Ruth Zive Copywriting

So having left that broad topic (copywriting/commercial writing) to the experts, let me tell you why I don’t do it: I just don’t enjoy it!!

Yes, it is a lucrative field, especially if you can educate yourself well – including learning how to get clients that pay well (and you can establish a good, professional relationship with).

But don’t think that I’m a stranger to the field or that I made up my mind without trying. I took the class at university (I double-majored in Business and Advertising so copywriting was a part of the curriculum), I constantly read the tips of the blogs mentioned above along some others) and I applied to copywriting jobs (back when I thought the only way to find writing gigs was to reply to job ads, and I was trying to get clips.)

I didn’t enjoy it one bit. Not the class, not the jobs. I’m not motivated or inspired.

Being a copywriter – freelance or otherwise- would feel like any other corporate job to me. And I hate cubicles, fixed working hours and supervisors. I’d be miserable doing it, even though it is writing. So I don’t.

I’m guessing you too chose to be a writer, because you love writing. You probably couldn’t stop even if you tried. It doesn’t matter if you write fiction, non-fiction or both. And this post is still relevant if you do like copy. Because the question remains: Which would you rather do: Write copy for a website whose topic bores you to death, or a website that you (would) enjoy reading?

So whether you like writing copy or not, below are 5 reasons you should write about what you like:

1) Researching becomes fun. After all, you are writing about something you love finding about- whether it is to find a good query idea or not.

2) Researching is easier. It is much easier to dig deep into your target publications archives because a) there is a chance you are one of the subscribers (so you won’t have to add that to your expenses) or if it is a free publication, or solely an online publication, you probably read a lot of it anyway.

I don’t know about you, but if something has given me a good time and/or extremely useful information, I instinctively internalize it. This is a lot more convenient than getting lost in the research about something that puts you to sleep or frustrates you to no end.

3) You can put yourself in the readers’ shoes more easily. This is closely related to the first two reasons. The right slant is all about knowing the magazine and its audience.

4) Coming up with ideas is easier. You know the audience, you know the magazine, you know the subject. Now you have everything you need to start brainstorming. Ideas will come naturally. And after you’ve got your ideas, you’ll adjust them with the right slants.

There are some publications that cover topics I’m interested in, and even though I studied them quite a bit, I haven’t been able to get my queries through yet. Why? I had good ideas, but not the right slants. And even though I did some thorough researching, those weren’t publications I read regularly, so it was harder to get to know the target audience as well as I needed to.

5) You will have fun and you’ll be paid to do so. Below are the lines from a scene from the movie Catch and Release. The guy, Fritz, works in advertising and his hobby is photography.

Fritz: I used to take pictures all the time.

Grey: What happened?

Fritz: Started getting paid for it. Took all the fun out of it.

But unlike our friend Fritz above, getting paid had the opposite effect on me. That effect is reason number 6.

6) Writing has just become more exciting, challenging and fun for me after it became a paying profession.

For instance, I wrote for Freelance Switch three times (my 4^th article will be published in May). And when I pitched to guest post for Carol Tice, I had read more posts than I could count. So at first it wasn’t about studying it as a publication, but to learn everything I could about making a living writing.

But before I got the pitch, I dug deeper. I analyzed the tone, word count, headlines, philosophy, other guest post articles…

I got the gig, and the best part was that %75 of my work had been done before I started writing. It was published, and it also appealed to another freelance writer I admire: Ed Gandia, co-writer of The Wealthy Freelancer. He wanted to use my article in his e-book Land Work Now (whose review I’ll publish here pretty soon, and my article is there, unchanged.)

No matter what you are writing and who you are writing for, you need well-targeted and marketable ideas. These Ideas have to appeal to the publication’s readers. The process of finding your ideas and slants, and ultimately querying, gets easier if you at least have a little bit of passion/enthusiasm about it.

I thought writing advertising copy would be exciting when I was taking introduction classes where we analyzed the good, the bad and the ugly of ad copy. Some of the good were just amazing, and they did wonders. Two of my favorites are below.

volkswagen think small — Image via ideawriters.com

avis we are only number 2 — Image via marketingbeyondadvertising.com.

I don’t think these ideas would have come if the people behind it hated their jobs. I’m just saying.

What about you?

Do you love what you are writing? Do write about what you love?

Freelance Writing Tasks You Can Do Without the Internet

Posted on April 11, 2012 Written by Pinar Tarhan

Image via illustrationconcentration.files.wordpress.com

There is no doubt about the fact that 21^st century made a writer’s job a lot easier. Maybe the markets became more competitive, but at least now it is so much easier to contact editors, submit queries without waiting for the post office to do its job or wait for a conference to be able to get the editors to notice you (although this is still a great method for this purpose. It is just that you can’t always attend all the conferences you want to due to time, money or place constraints.)

And there is so much that we need to do on the internet – from billing to sending e-mails, from researching the web to updating our blogs…It is so easy to get worked up when our internet connection fails us. Usually this glitch is temporary, and it doesn’t cause that much of a disaster-given that we’ve saved all our work, and we haven’t left anything to the last minute.

But whether the problem lasts for a minute or a day, and whether you experience it in your office or at your favorite coffee shop/co-working space, there is no need to lose your temper or patience. There’s so much you can do in the name of productivity and creativity while you are offline. From organizing your files to taking a break, from making a list of your goals to brainstorming, you can turn the glitch into a productivity fest.

The original version of this article was published on Freelance Switch and is called Freelance Tasks To Do Without the Internet.

Enjoy your list, and save it somewhere offline for a rainy an offline day. : )

You can leave your comment here or on Freelance Switch.

Entering a Writing Contest for the First Time Ever

Posted on March 31, 2012 Written by Pinar Tarhan

Confession: I am a writing contest virgin. In fact, just a couple of days ago I was going to publish a list post about why I didn’t like writing contests. But then I read about a writing contest that eliminated the most annoying thing(s) on the list, so I decided to give this contest my best shot.

First let me tell you about what I don’t like about writing contests, and then tell you about the one I liked enough to enter.

1) There are fees. Yes, I know this is very typical, and in a way, reasonable but I don’t write short fiction or poetry. There aren’t that many contests about novels and screenplays. Some fees are reasonable, but some are just ridiculous.

2) There are limitations to who can enter. Many writing contests are open to residents of a certain city, country or at best- a continent. So even if there are a lot of contests taking place for all kinds of writing, not everyone can enter all of them.

3) They don’t accept entries online by e-mail- which in this day and age is one of my biggest pet peeves. Online entry forms or e-mail submissions aren’t just easy for the writers, it is practical for the judges (and the environment) as well.

4) The deadlines aren’t reasonable (for me.) If I’m 40 pages into a novel and they only want completed manuscripts, I won’t be able to make it.

I’ve read about many competitions and their rules, including the ones organized by Writer’s Digest, whose website, magazine and store are among my favorite writing resources. But when it came to the competitions, I just couldn’t see the ones that appealed to me – until a short while ago.

The Writer’s Digest Contest – Deadline: May 1, 2012

The contest has many categories including spiritual writing, personal essay, magazine writing and movie/TV script writing. You pay $25 for your first entry- and if you make your multiple entries during the same transaction, you pay $15 for the others.

I might submit more than once piece for one category, depending on I can finish everything before the deadline. But fingers crossed for my first time. I’m looking forward to it.

What were your first times like?