Cindi Myers: The Working Writer

Though I have written or contracted to write over 40 novels I began my career writing nonfiction. I started as a newspaper reporter, then moved into writing magazine articles full time. Writing nonfiction allowed me to earn money writing – enough that I was able to quite my day job managing a medical clinic. But even more important in the long run, writing nonfiction taught me many things that have helped me have a successful fiction career, things like:

Marketing Myself: Browse any newsstand or check a copy of the latest Writer’s Market and you’ll find plenty of places that are hungry for nonfiction writers. Add to that the growing number of websites that need content. But none of those places will come looking for you. You have to approach them, usually with an idea for an article. Those years of hustling for freelance work taught me how to write a good query letter and how to focus on my strengths. I gained self-confidence in my abilities along the way. (Let me add that I’m really a shy person. The idea of cold calling someone and asking for an interview made me queasy. But I did it anyway. You can do it, too.) When it came time for me to query editors and agents about my books, or to promote my published books by sending out press releases or setting up booksignings, this early training in self-promotion came in handy.

How to be a prolific writer: Magazine articles individually do not pay a lot of money. To make a living, a nonfiction writer must write a lot of articles. When I was freelancing full time, I had a goal of getting five new queries or articles or short stories out the door every week. I set this goal when I was laid off from my manager’s job. I gave myself six months (the length of time I could collect unemployment) to meet or exceed the income I’d made working for the medical clinic. By writing a lot and constantly sending things out, I was able to earn more from my writing that first year than I’d earned as a manager. Now I produce four and five books a year for several category romance lines. Work habits I learned as a struggling freelancer are paying off now.

How to handle rejection: No writer sells everything she writes. At least none of the writers I know. The down side to producing so many queries and articles was that a lot of them did get rejected. A typical week might look something like this: five queries submitted, four rejections of queries sent earlier and two sales – and maybe a couple of checks from earlier sales. I didn’t have time to stew over the rejections. I learned to draft a new query to a new market and move on. Though I don’t have as many projects going on at once now, I’ve learned that if one project doesn’t sell, something else will. Past experience gives me the confidence to keep trying new things.

How to be flexible: While it helps to specialize in a couple of areas of nonfiction (my specialities were medical business and Texas history and travel) the best way to make a living as a freelancer is to be able to write about a wide variety of subjects. When an editor approached me to write an article that was outside of my area of expertise, I never said no. I saw the new assignment as an opportunity to learn something new. While some authors earn very nice livings writing as few as a book a year, one category romance a year is not enough to pay the bills. I’m also a person who enjoys variety. Writing for different lines not only enables me to increase my income, but I think it helps keep my work from growing stale. And when an editor asks me to write something new, such as a continuity of a novella project, I’m happy to have the opportunity to stretch as a writer.

Quality counts: Though I was writing a lot of nonfiction, any particular editor only had one query or article of mine on his desk at a time. I had to produce my best work in order to make a good impression and get the assignment or score a sale. Currently, in addition to writing novels, I edit Nink, the newsletter of Novelists, Inc. The members of Novelists, Inc, as the name implies, are all published novelists. Occasionally one of these writers will send an article for the newsletter, and it’s clear they merely dashed it off. I have to put on my editor hat and reject the work. Some fiction writers think that, because you’re not having to make things up out of whole cloth, nonfiction must be inherently easier than fiction. They are wrong. Wordsmithing is every bit as important for nonfiction as fiction.

I would encourage all aspiring novelists to try their hand at nonfiction as well. The gratification of seeing your name in print and earning money for your writing is immeasurable. In my case, freelancing allowed me to stay home and write while still paying the bills. And I’m convinced my years of freelancing made me both a better writer and a better businessperson.

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Cindi Myers became one of the most popular people in eighth grade when she and her best friend wrote a torrid historical romance and circulated it among their peers. Fame was short-lived, however; the English teacher confiscated the manuscript and advised her to concentrate on learning to properly diagram a sentence. From this humbling beginning, she has gone on to write nonfiction for national and regional publications ranging from Ladies' Home Journal to Popular Mechanics, but she never got rid of the fiction bug. Her first novel was published in 1999. Her books have been Waldenbooks bestsellers and have been praised for their emotion, humor and sensuality. She writes stories about relationships that matter, whether the subject is female friendship, families, or the love between a man and a woman. A Man to Rely On is her 35th published novel.

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