Melissa Lawrence

I have been feeling "under the weather" again this week so it was good to get a bit of a boost today with the arrival of the November issue of Freelance Market News ( http://www.freelancemarketnews.com ) as a letter I sent in recently was published as the star letter. I wrote the letter in response to a reader who had asked about the problem of commissioning editors wanting to see a "portfolio of work" and how you are supposed to achieve this if you can't get a commission without a portfolio of work. (Catch-22 and all that.) My reply was to point them in the direction of an excellent book by experienced freelance writer Catherine Quinn ( http://www.catherinequinn.com ) called 'No Contacts? No Problem! How to Pitch and Sell a Freelance Feature' (Methuen Drama). I read this book a while back and reviewed it for The New Writer ( http://www.thenewwriter.com ) and it is well worth getting hold of. Not only will it help if you are trying to land your first

When I opened my copy of the Autumn issue of The New Writer earlier today ( http://www.thenewwriter.com/ ) I was rather surprised to see how many times my name appeared. It was nine times if anyone other than me is interested, even beating the great Simon Whaley (Hi Simon!) who was only mentioned seven times, although I'm happy to accept a re-count if he insists on one. On a more serious note, the reason for this unusual proliferation was because a while back, I had a piece published in the open "rant" slot of TNW explaining why, in my opinion, professional writers shouldn't belong to writers' groups. I admit I had my Polly Toynbee hat on at the time and was trying to be a bit controversial but nevertheless, I stand by everything I said in that piece. Much to my surprise, someone agreed with me. Someone also strongly disagreed with me, saying I had been"extremely patronising" and expressing great relief that I wasn't a member of their writers'

This may seem like an odd title for this week's post as I could barely walk last week, let alone run, due to my close encounters of the hall floor kind. However, even though I wasn't well enough to do much writing, I still managed to look at a few writing websites as I'm never too ill to do that. During my "research", I came across a really interesting American website called Writing on the Run at http://writingontherun.com/  which has some great advice, articles, tips and encouragement for writers as well as fun things like a Writer's Pet Quiz! (You select the pet you would be most likely to have and it tells you what sort of writer you are. Apparently I'm methodical, like to use longhand and would benefit from more disciplined time and space to meet my deadlines (very true!) because I would choose a hamster or a rabbit. On a more serious note, the article I found most helpful had "coincidentally" recently been posted and is called '101

Sorry that there is no new post this week. I am a "no show" due to the wheels coming off my trolley on Tuesday when I tried some glandular therapy treatment for my ongoing hypoadrenalism and ended up passed out on the hall floor. At the moment, my brain feels like it is full of cotton-wool and writing anything deep and meaningful (or even anything shallow and nonsensical) seems quite difficult. Hopefully normal service will be resumed as soon as possible so please do not adjust your settings.