Founder/Editor-in-Chief of editor of Writing-World.com and freelance writer since 1979, Moira Allen is the author of several hundred published articles, and three books on writing published by Allworth Press: Writing.com, The Writer’s Guide to Queries, Pitches, and Proposals, and Starting Your Career as a Freelance Writer (now in its 3rd edition). Allen has also served as the editor of the national magazine Dog Fancy, as well as the editor of several online/electronic publications. I first came across Moira Allen’s writing articles in Working Writer and her practical suggestions helped my writing and the often confusing submission process.

When did you begin your author website guide and how did it come about?

Writing-World.com actually began in several stages.  My first website was “Tips for Writers,” and included only my own articles.  In 1996, I began to write for Inkspot, which was at the time the largest and most popular site for writers on this “new” Internet thing.  Eventually, I became an editor there.  After Inkspot was purchased by Xlibris in (I think) 1999, I knew I wasn’t going to remain an employee of the site for much longer, so I decided to set up the “second best” site for writers online. 

I had just completed Writing-World.com when Xlibris pulled the plug on Inkspot and shut it down forever.  As it closed, its editor redirected would-be visitors to my site.  In addition, many of the writers who had contributed to Inkspot over the years were happy to shift their articles over to Writing-World.com (which helps answer your next question).  So I ended up with a flood of visitors who spread the word about Writing-World.com as more or less the next great thing for writers.  That was in 2000.  Later in the year, I launched our e-mail newsletter, which continued for the next 15 years.

My goal in the site was to bring information to writers from both sides of the table.  Having been both a freelancer and an editor, I knew a lot about the business from both sides, and I wanted to be able to help writers understand not only how to do their best work but how to deal with editors and the marketplace.  It’s important as a writer to understand what editors are looking for and how your efforts are “seen” by the people who are choosing what to publish and what to reject. 

Your web covers so many topics that I was first overwhelmed how to begin. How were you able to bring such a feast of knowledge to writers?

Again, the biggest boost was when Inkspot shut down, and the majority of its contributors agreed to transfer their material to Writing-World.com.  But because I had a great deal of experience as an editor, it was then possible to continue attracting excellent contributors and adding material to the site.  The site was profitable from the very beginning, which made it possible for me to purchase quality articles from skilled writers. 

One of my goals was to be a “general” site for writers.  I didn’t want to be just for fiction or nonfiction, or just for beginners, or just for experts.  I wanted to be THE site for writers to come for help, regardless of their level of experience.  I also wanted to have a global feel to the site, as this was a time when the Internet was making it possible for writers to start selling from, and to, the world rather than just within their own countries.

Another goal was to make sure I only used articles by writers who KNEW what they were talking about and could back it up with publishing and sales – and writers of that caliber expect to be paid a decent wage for their work.  Most of the other writing sites at the time were paying nothing, or a very small pittance (e.g., $10 or less).  At certain points during the history of Writing-World.com, I think I was buying four or five articles and one or two columns every month.  So the site grew like the proverbial weed. 

Tell us about Starting Your Career as a Freelance Writer, now in its 3^rd edition.

Starting Your Career as a Freelance Writer actually began as my effort to put the knowledge gathered online in Writing-World.com into book form.  I had originally pitched this concept to Allworth, but they weren’t interested.  So a few years later, I decided to try self-publishing a collection of my articles on writing.  As I was starting to gather the articles together and trying to make some sense of an outline, Allworth came back and said, “Hey, do you have any interest in doing a book on becoming a freelance writer?”  I said, “Hey, funny you should ask…” 

The goal of this particular book is to walk a would-be writer through all the steps necessary to launch a successful freelancing career, from the very beginning (“what kind of equipment or skills do you need?”) through the steps of coming up with article ideas, refining those ideas, doing the research, querying editors, drafting an article, etc.  It also addresses  issues of business writing and copy-editing, photography, writing and selling columns, and writing and marketing a nonfiction book. 

This is, as you’ve said, its 3^rd edition.  Each time I’ve undertaken a revision, I’ve thought, “Oh, this will be easy, tweak a few chapters here and there and you’re done.”  And each time, I’ve found that things have changed so much, especially in the online world for writers, that I’ve practically had to rewrite the book from scratch.  So having just done so again, I can confidently say it’s a very helpful and up-to-date reference for anyone considering freelancing either as a career or as a source of secondary income.

What areas in writing do you find writers have the most trouble and just give up?

I think the issue that is most difficult for any writer is simply getting published.  This is getting harder rather than easier.  Now, with so many online “opportunities” that pay pennies for a writer’s hard labor, writers find that they are in competition with thousands of wannabes who are willing to practically give their work away just to get “published.”  Since this is just FINE with companies that don’t really want to have to pay real money for writing, it means it’s getting harder to find decent paying markets.

As for the “decent pay” bit, a growing problem for writers is that pay rates have not risen over the years.  Magazines that paid $200 for a 2000-word article ten years ago may pay the same today.  Some have raised their rates; others have lowered them.  Short fiction remains an incredibly low-paying market.  For example, Isaac Asimov used to reminisce about getting 2-3 cents a word for his short stories back in the 1930’s.  Today, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine pays 8-10 cents a word.  Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this hardly reflects inflation over the last 80-90 years!  In Asimov’s early days, it might have cost you five cents to mail a letter – or, effectively, pay for two words.  Today a stamp costs 50 cents, so you now have to sell five or six words to mail that same letter. 

What changes in the writing field have you noticed since 2000, when you started your website?

The Internet has encouraged more and more would-be writers to plunge in and try to “succeed.”  At the same time, it has spread the myth that the industry is a nasty, closed marketplace that isn’t at all interested in “quality” writing – and if you “can’t get published” it’s just because those bad guys are against you, NOT because, perhaps, you need to polish your craft a bit more.  And so instead of embracing rejection as a means of pushing us to do better and work harder, we turn increasingly to the “do it yourself” marketplace, self-publishing books through POD companies or Kindle, and wondering why we aren’t turning into the next J.K. Rowling. 

I suppose part of it is our culture today.  There seems to be a tide of feeling that “no one has the right to tell me I’m not good enough.”  All that matters is that I WANT to be good enough – so again, rather than accept rejection as an indication that perhaps I need to work harder or learn some element of my craft that I’m not so good at, I’ll just take it as a nasty slap from those evil bad “good old boys” in the publishing network and assume they just don’t know brilliance when they see it.  I have seen some of the most appalling writing on Kindle – writers who have no grasp of grammar, spelling, or punctuation, let alone plot or character development.  But today, you can’t tell someone “you need work.”  The answer is “you just don’t understand me.” 

Writers who don’t fall into this trap will still find a way to get published.  The problem is, Kindle is really a fantastic platform – but when it is flooded with, literally, millions of appallingly bad books every year (that’s not an exaggeration), it makes it very difficult for the good writers to stand out when they DO decide to go their own way.  So writers have to spend more and more time marketing themselves as well as actually writing. 

A final area that I see as being difficult for writers is the constant demand to be “available” to your readers on social media.  I happen to believe that it is, in fact, only a very small segment of a writer’s audience who wants to “interact” on social media.  In the old days, you wrote a book, people read it, they liked it, they bought the next one.  They didn’t expect to engage in constant dialogue with you about your writing, your characters, and what you had for breakfast.  Personally, if you are the author of a book I love, I’d rather you get on with writing the next one so that I can read it and enjoy it.  Connecting is nice but it shouldn’t be regarded as an “obligation.”

Thank you Moira, for being there to help so many of us; you are one to admire especially since you are a fellow cat person.

Thanks for the interest!

– Carol Smallwood