Freelance Market News

Just a very brief post this week as I'm about to take a much needed few days off (it's hard work setting up a portfolio career!) but there is just time to tell you about Freelance Market News. In case you don't already subscribe, this is a very useful magazine edited by Angela Cox and linked to The Association of Freelance Writers. In fact, if you subscribe, you automatically get a membership card for the Association which is quite useful if you are ever in a situation where you need to prove that you are a writer. (Yes, OK. You could prove it by actually writing something but you know what I mean.)

Freelance Market News (http://www.freelancemarketnews.com) is published 11 times a year and each issue contains detailed market information for a wide range of magazines and newspapers (including overseas ones), competition news, details of editorial changes, filler markets, a book of the month, a letters page, a "How To" article and a writing competition for subscribers with a £50 prize.

I happen to have a spare copy of this month's issue so if anyone would like to see Freelance Market News for themselves, just email me your address via my website (http://www.melissalawrence.co.uk) and I'll be happy to send it to you on a 'first come first served basis'.

Comments

Shortlisted in the Writer's Toolkit Flash Fiction Competition

Hi everyone. A good writing week this week, despite the distractions of the cricket and the tennis, possibly because my portfolio career has been suspended, pending further enquiries (don't tell my patrons!) and I've been at my desk every night. Long may it continue! I said in my last post that I was recently shortlisted (top ten) in the Writer's Toolkit flash fiction competition. The competition brief was to write a short story of 150 words or less on the theme of 'Secrets'. My story actually came out at exactly 150 words because at the last minute, after I'd sealed the envelope, I suddenly panicked and decided that the wording of the rules could mean that the story had to be exactly 150 words. Mine was 149 if I remember correctly and it was surprisingly difficult to add that extra word! Apparently the competition attracted 182 entries (which I must admit was quite a surprise) and entries came from several European countries as well as the UK. I was particu...

The Mail on Sunday Feature

Hi everyone. Well, it's not every day that The Mail on Sunday runs a double-page spread about the book you are writing. This is what happened to me last Sunday, and I'm still recovering from the shock. It was about three weeks ago that I received an email, completely out of the blue, from the paper's chief reporter. Apparently, he had been researching the issue of copyright on unpublished letters for something he was working on and had come across a blog post that I had written about this very subject. https://melissalawrencewriter.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/publish-and-be-damned.html The post in question was about my own copyright issues concerning the large collection of letters and postcards I have inherited from my grandmother. These are not just any old letters and postcards. They were written to my grandmother by her close friend, Ethel North, who was lady's maid and companion to Lady Winifred Burghclere, elder sister of the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, between ...

Portfolio Career

I have been telling everyone recently that I now have a "portfolio career". Most people don't know what I mean by this (someone even said they'd have to "Google" it!) but it's really just a fancy way of saying that you have fingers in several different pies. I have been a "professional" writer since 1995 although I have always been a writer of some sort, ever since I was at school. During this time, I have stuck pretty religiously to writing and only occasionally had flights of fancy about getting a "proper" job. (And I still do. Only this time last week, I found myself offering to manage a jazz band!!) However, for various reasons, I've recently been seriously exploring other freelancing options that I can do alongside writing and have now decided to "rebrand" myself as a writer, a crafter and a musician. I also plan to carry on working on community newsletters and do something in the spiritual healing/growth area a...

Melissa Lawrence

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