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""Writing is both mask and unveiling."

-- E. B. White

T A B L E  O F  C O N T E N T S

1. [Editor Notes]
2. [Resources]
3. [The Digital Writer]
4. [Career Advice]
5. [At C/Oasis]
6. [My Virtual Space]
7. [Markets]
8. [Community]
9. [Acknowledgments]

E D I T O R  N O T E S

The dog days of Summer. The mind and heart is led to a lazy dream conjured on a river of wild nights. We love to float down the highways of tomorrow with some effortless ability to say, we have seen the significant things.

From the beginning of Sunoasis, we have tried to avoid the obvious or, at least, point in its direction and let the intelligent subscriber do the rest.

Writing is a profession. But, it's also a life.

One thing that distinguishes different writers are their goals. A literary writer wants to reveal a truth and scarcely considers the market. A good freelance writer, on the other hand, will put a per day, per week, and per month target for the amount of money he or she wants to make. That will generate the actions necessary to reach the targeted goal.

If your goal is to make $3,000 a month from writing, then you have to figure on $100 per day. How are you going to make $100 per day? If you tried to write an article a day for $100 that would pose a problem. However, if you found a market that paid $500 for an article and it took you five days to complete it, then you would be reaching the goal. That's why it's necessary to consult the market books and discover who's paying the higher rates. And it also means a deft usage of reprint rights to turn over work already completed to new markets.

One definitive fact: Writers need to specialize. The more you are familiar with one or two subjects, the better able you are to keep up on those specialties, develop a universe of experts to call on, and develop different slants to information for different writing markets.

People want to know the exact facts that are going to make their life or health and financial condition improve. So, study and immersion are important techniques for writers these days. Again, the Net is essential but so is the library. It's also important to be able to call on experts. Here are some more resources for that.

Most of the information needed to have a practical writing life is out there. The essential thing is to get the market books, get a system going so you write and market in the same motion. More importantly, come as close to being a publisher or thinking like a publisher as you can. And all publishers will tell you the key to their success is the ability to sell to different markets and to take core content and make it into many things.

"All men and women who make things
from words are welcome here."

We would like to see the universe of writers brought closer together. Both the literary and the professional writing worlds are very fragmented, hampered by inefficient ways to distribute material, stay in touch, and the rest of it. We like to believe that writers can come to a common center and then go off into the spokes that interest them. Writing is an art and a skill. The writer is the protector of the language, without which a culture withers in its own sardonic laughter.

I was reading a brief article on giving readings and how effective they can be. One point was raised that no matter how few people are in the audience, give them a good show and treat them with respect. Years ago I used to go down to my favorite club in Berkeley and read poetry with a dozen other rather drunken poetry-folk. I was always nervous and never performed very well. The best performance was put on by a tall Jamaican who always wore white pants and carried a pot with a leafy green plant in it. He had the dreadlocks and a languorous way to recite his poems. We all thought he'd make it big but I don't know what happened to him. There was another street poet named Paladin who had, apparently, run around with the Beats and would give quite a show. They may not have made it big but here they are, showing up decades after the fact, in the memory of the Editor as a Young Rat. Oh, that's right, Milosz used to read down there too.

The most effective presentation of poetry I ever saw was on an obscure cable station. The narrator read the poem, the words would appear with the line breaks on the screen, ambient music played in the background, with pictures moving consonant with the emotion of the poem.

There is nothing more powerful. It works completely at that moment, done right.

And since all of that is realizable on the Net we see poetry, at least, being fully enhanced by the new medium. And as we all know, the writing arts, including journalism, emerge from some form of poetry.

The poetry editor gives readings and in fact, ran one of the larger poetry readings around in Austin last April.

I look forward to the day when a poet or story writer will be able to design the words, the ambient music, the background pictures, and the narrative voice in a screen-sized structure.

The literary type has never had these tools in his or her hands before. I look for this emergence to appear sooner than later.

Professional writers who develop expertise will be able to do something similar on the Net.

"The Internet is coming close to answering the question creative people have been asking for years. Can an individual with a talent for writing, drawing, photography or music use the Internet, not to create millions, but to make enough to live comfortably and do what they want to do professionally? What's more, the answer may well turn out to be a hesitant yes," writes Ben Hammersley.

"As ever, the real action on the Internet is at the fringes, where small content producers are finding that the Internet is not only allowing them to make a living doing their thing and selling it directly to the customer, but taking the hard work out of it in the process."

In an interview earlier this year, General Media chairman and Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione lamented that, "The future has definitely migrated to electronic media," admitting that there may no longer be a future for magazines such as Penthouse.

Penthouse's print circulation has shrunk from nearly 5 million to 530,000 during the past decade.

This really is a significant breach. Magazines, newspapers, and books are all still useful and popular. However, the economics is going to dictate the transfer from print to digital in ways we've detailed here in Sunoasis.

Net publishers look to expand offline....

Is writing a business? If you want to make money it is. As we said earlier, writing is a life. And business is one component of life, especially if you want to be a free agent. There is a lot of good, bad, and ugly advice out there. The above link is an example of a good resource because it details the realities of making money writing guidebooks. And some of the advice can be transferred to other types of writing.

The thing that bugs me is that if a freelance writer, to take one example, can not find out for him or herself "how to make money," then they are in the wrong business. In fact, the first assignment they should take on is precisely how to make money. Learn the habits to make money and it will come.

There are many models for a writing business. I was astounded when I read that Shakespeare never made money from his plays because they were the property of the theater group. However, he did have ownership in the theater so he had incentive to try and bring the people over the Thames to the Globe. More audience, higher profits, more return on his share of the theater group. That is actually a very modern, entrepreneur model that could be used today better than at any time. It's a crude publishing model but it does work. If Shakespeare had to sell his poems and plays to a publisher he may not have had the luck he did when he used his plays to entice the people to the theater. And the people must have had a grand old time under open skies, collected together in one place so they could catch a glimpse of the community they lived in.

Shakespeare was free to write anything as long as the crowds came in. He did not have to please some prissy 27 year-old assistant editor at a stuffy publishing house, filled with pc-ism and salesmen.

Whether you are trying to publish a novel or a freelance article, you leave out the business side at the risk of harming your career. It's not like the old days where there were networks of literate people who culled out talent, encouraged it, brought it to the attention of powerful people. It is now thoroughly market-driven. And so the writer can decide whether to use a career model, entrepreneur model, or a patronage model (spouse, academic support, etc). The experienced writer will, no doubt, use all three at one time or the other.

Newspapers, blogging, and more blogging.

For some reason Portuguese is the second most popular language in the world of blogging. Is it hot in Brazil?

T e c h n i c a l  R e s o u r c e s 

Get your new RSS feeds at NewsIsFree.

Do you have an RSS reader yet? You don't? Have you considered AmphetaDesk?

Lockergnome information.

More on aggregators

The feedback we've gotten is superb. We're proud of the quality of people who have subscribed to Sunoasis 2003. So, please continue!

R E S O U R C E S

C r a f t :
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Sample email query.
A new blog for my pals, the copy editors.
The CIA has announced the release of the 2003 World Factbook
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O r g a n i z a t i o n s :
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The Academy of American Poets
The Dramatists Guild of America
The Public Relations Society of America
The Association for Women in Communications
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e p u b l i s h i n g :
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Can blogs be commercialized? There's an interesting point about whether blogs are truly writing or pure vanity. They are, at this point, slap dash conversations in the geek world that usually tire very quickly. They are the geek equivalent of slam poetry.
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M e d i a:
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Here's an interesting idea: To attract younger readers, the U.K.'s Sunday Times will insert a monthly CD-ROM, offering 25,000 words of text, movie and music clips, filmed interviews and listings.
More about participatory journalism
The Global Media Journal is an electronic publication devoted to the exploration of the fascinating, evolving, and ever-expanding field of world communication.
Experts blame magazines' falling circulation on competition from the Internet, more print titles and price increases for copies purchased at newsstands.
Consumers are moving toward media that has little or no advertising and away from broadcast TV and print media, says a new report from Veronis Suhler.

T H E  D I G I T A L  W R I T E R

There is a kind of collectivism that has come into the Net. I suspect it comes from the technological bias which has smart, brilliant types fixated in adolescent fantasies about saving humanity.

There are too many wonderful forms of individuality and diversity running around to have a collective fetish.

Click for full column!

C A R E E R  A D V I C E

Jobs are found two primary ways. Either from a personal network by the one hiring, or, by the contact of the job seeker directly. And it's important to note that a person can contact a company, a publication, or a book publisher if no job has opened yet. If you can talk to someone, informally, about the company and what you are looking for so much the better. Job ads account for only 15% of the job hires and only 5% of the "good" jobs are in job listings. Slim pickings are at private and state employment agencies, labor unions, schools, and other places you might find job openings.

Let us suppose there are 1,000 writing or editorial jobs listed in classified ads on and off-line. That means there are over 5,000 openings not listed by ads. It's something to think about.

In an economy like this you need to be aggressive and target companies you really want to work for. Prepare for the interview and don't be intimidated. The interviewer is going to check you for two basic things. Can you make decisions? Will you add value to the organization? Most of the questions in an interview are sophisticated ways to filter you out of the whole process. Gear the meat of your answers to those two qualities and you'll have a better shot at the job.

Another truism in human resources is that people hire other people to help solve specific problems. Before you talk to anyone at a publication, understand what specific problems the publication is trying to solve and prepare yourself to address that at an interview. For instance, a local newspaper may be expanding its staff to cover a new city government. If you are aware of that then you can go to the interview and talk about city government and the problems that a new city government faces.

The survey shows that newspaper online editors earn an average of $55,754 in base pay and $57,506 in total direct compensation. The salaries reported for online editors ranged from $21,424 to $156,104.

We have a new career development page at Sunoasis Jobs.

I keep reminding people that Sunoasis Jobs is filled with a great deal more resource than it first appears. On every regional page there is a link to an association or group that hosts free writing, journalism ads.

Take advantage of the fact!

Ask a question about your career!

A T    C/ O A S I S

The Editor of C/Oasis has started another list called My Virtual Space. The newsletter has two purposes. One is to update interested subscribers on his own columns. The other is to comment on the current scene and what sort of times we live in. He doesn't know for sure but has a few opinions about it. If you're interested in checking it out click here.

The editors are raking through manuscripts again. I notice a lot of submissions are gruesome or so sexually explicit to be nonsensical. And it suddenly occurred to me that writers, especially young ones, are getting their cultural feed from mass culture. Advice to young writers: Don't compete with mass culture. Develop counter-intuition to mass culture. If it's a big, blazing dark sun falling down into hell, don't follow it for gods sake. If the language is tortured by mass culture it's just a prelude to very dark times, don't help usher them in. Go counter to the trends. That's what literature and the Net are about; their valuable service in these times.

We don't really mind any type of content to run on C/Oasis as long as it is written with respect to the art. Poetry is not going to change policy. It will not make one poor man richer. It will not convince one representative to change his or her mind. Literature is the act, the supreme civilized act, of building something out of what exists in a raw state. Without this principle uppermost, the content is superfluous.

We present a pleasant reprise from the Classical Archives: The Poetry Editor reflects on her time at the Austin International Poetry Festival

Meanwhile, explore the three new words at Wordbirth.
Scrimshaw; Seance; and February

There's always an assortment of surprises so look around and enjoy yourself.

M Y   V I R T U A L   S P A C E 

The hypothetical citizen spent one sunny day reading through an old college text when he stumbled over a piece of literature he had read many years before. It was the Funeral Speech by Pericles, given at the outset of the Peloponnesian War in 431 B.C., some 2400 years before his own birth, a span of time that he had become familiar with in a variety of libraries and bookstores. Read on

M A R K E T S  A N D  L E A D S
Communications Specialist 
*Salary Information $46,309-$55,571     
*Department: Communications/Marketing 
*Location: Flint, MI
Description of Position: 
Manages the internal communication vehicles, assigns 
articles to staff members, determines appropriate means of 
available publications- memos, weekly newsletter, Intranet 
site, e-mail or interoffice mail to ensure accurate, timely, 
educational communications to all staff.
For full ad click here!

* * * * * * * *
IPRO, New York State's leading healthcare quality improvement 
organization, seeks an individual to write, edit, proofread 
and copy edit documents for healthcare providers/consumers. 
Plans/prepares stories for internal/external publications.  
Produce & track print projects i.e. brochures, reports, 
newsletters, etc. Interact w/external vendors i.e. designers, 
printers, mail houses, photographers, etc. 

Bachelor’s Degree in English, Journalism, Communications or 
related field w/min five years experience in health care.  
Superior writing, editing and verbal communication skills.  
Microsoft Word applications required. 
Please submit resume to:

IPRO, Attn: Human Resources
1979 Marcus Avenue
Lake Success, NY 11042
Phone: 800-852-3685 x425
Fax: 516-328-1551
Email: mmalone@ipro.org
www.ipro.org    EOE M/F/D/V
* * * * * * * *

Job Links for new leads!

New Magazine Launches:

BANG
SHOW PEOPLE: THE THEATER LIFESTYLE
VON Magazine
AMERICAN MAGAZINE

If you have any suggestions about markets you want guidelines for, just drop a line

C O M M U N I T Y

Society of Professional Journalists
West Coast Multicultural Writer-Editor Conference
"Freelancing strategies workshops"
Sept. 6, 2003

Seven Hills Conference Center, San Francisco State University Registration: 8:30 a.m.

To reserve a space, please RSVP to spjworkshop@earthlink.net and provide:
Your name:
Address:
Phone number:
More information is available on our website or call Sally Lehrman at 650-728-8211.

Shaw Guide for Writing Conferences in September.

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

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F Y I

Put an ad in Sunoasis 2003 and reach its 4,400 subscribers. Just $25 a month! Contact mailto:eide491@earthlink.net

If you need someone for Layout & Design work, then contact Jack Landry at www.jacklandry.com I also write Resumes, and other material related to resumes.

Team of experienced professionals, which includes a Pulitzer Prize nominee and several published authors, will edit your fiction or non-fiction manuscript for today's tough market. Reputable firm. References. First-time writers our specialty. See us at http://www.a1editing.com

Master speech writer and trainer: Make your speeches inspire and motivate your audience. With years of training and experience in speech writing and delivery, I can help you develop the perfect speech for any occasion. Coaching for delivery is also available. call 306-546-5717 or email jhillyer@devry.com

Sunoasis--You're amazing! A mere five hours after I sent in the text for my classified ad I got a call for a writing project, and within two days, the project was mine. Thanks so much for your invaluable services! Debbie Lerman, freelance writer
http://www.sunoasis.com/classif.html

E T C/ E T C/ E T C

Editor/Publisher: David Eide
C/Oasis
Sunoasis Jobs
E-mail
My Virtual Space

Sunoasis 2003 is fully protected by copyright. Sunoasis 2003 can be distributed in any way deemed intelligent by the reader as long as it is distributed in full for non-commercial uses. Reprint rights belong to the authors. Contact them if you wish to use their material. Unauthorized use of any material is strictly forbidden.

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Let's all meet again in September 2003!

David

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