Find Your Writing Niche
Find Your Writing Niche: When you travel, even to Mom’s, there’s a story along the way
May 20, 2014You don’t have to visit Rome or Tokyo to write a travel piece. The towns and byways between where Mom and other relatives and friends live hold a wealth of stories. 1) Dog parks. About 37 per ...
Find Your Writing Niche: Look around at your surroundings for ideas
May 13, 2014Ideas for stories are all around us. People continue to achieve outstanding feats, survive overwhelming odds and make life happier for others. Think in terms of events and holidays. 1) Memori ...
Find Your Writing Niche: Learn from friends and colleagues
May 6, 2014Writers know to read and study “How to” books to improve their writing and to study the masters, e.g., Hemi ...
Find your Writing Niche: Cindy does hair. I don’t!
April 28, 2014At the beauty salon my hair stylist, Cindy, told me how she and her daughter, also a hair stylist, attended a workshop and learned more ways to use foils. An image of a piece of aluminum foil sh ...
Find Your Writing Niche: Punctuation
April 15, 2014I am pleased to welcome guest blogger Nikolas Baron to Finding Your Writing Niche. He is a member of Grammarly’s mark ...
Find Your Writing Niche: Titles Matter
April 8, 2014Parents spend hours, days even months choosing the very best names for their children, names that have meaning, are distinctive and fit the child perfectly. A family name often is the first choi ...
Interviewing: What questions to ask, Part II
April 1, 2014Once you have the basic questions answered (See Interviewing: What questions to ask, Part I, posted March 25, 2014 at www.jamathews.com/blog, Findi ...
Interviewing: What questions to Ask, Part I
March 25, 2014With few exceptions, interviewing people is part of every story a journalist, magazine writer or freelancer writes. There isn’t a story if the writer doesn’t have input from people “in the ...
Write the core of the story
March 18, 2014I’ve had countless assignments to write about the anniversary of an organization, a fundraising event or the focus of a group. Basically, these topics are like press releases. They simpl ...
Turn Horror into Humor
March 13, 2014I put an unusual spin on my first published story that earned a paycheck. It happened that our car was stolen—the third time this "horror" had happened to us over the years. Three differe ...