Today, Norm Goldman Publisher & Editor of Bookpleasures.com is pleased to have as our guest, C. Hope Clark the publisher of FundsforWriters.com. 

Good day Hope and thanks for participating in our interview.

Norm:

Please tell our readers something about yourself and your site, FundsforWriters.

Hope:

FundsforWriters is an online resource of grants, contests, markets, publishing opportunities and jobs for writers. We are unique in that we post grants as well as scout the contests, markets and publishing opportunities posted, hopefully to avoid scams.

I founded FFW eight years ago, after speaking to a writing group about writing for the Internet. Instead, when they found out I worked with loans and grants in my day job with the federal government, the conversation turned to finding money to write.

The emails became so frequent after that speaking engagement, that I originated a newsletter to lessen the email activity. One letter became two, then three, then four when I found so many opportunities. We’ve been selected as Writer’s Digest’s 101 Best Web Sites for Writers for the last eight years in a row.

Norm:

How did you get interested in the topic of funds for writers?

Hope:

I worked in federal loans and grants for a career. I moved up into management of the agency and managed personnel and budgets. Therefore, I understood money management, finding financial resources, balancing funds. I knew how the government worked and how non-profit grants worked. I’d advised countless families, farmers, and business entities on how to make ends meet. I figured, why not writers? It combined my love of writing with the knowledge I’d groomed for 25 years.

Norm: 

My son Dan is a Toronto musician who has applied for various grants and he has been successful. He mentioned to me that an ex-girlfriend of his taught him how to write a proper grant application.  How important is it to know how to write a proper grant application and how do you go about researching the topic?

Hope: 

Yes, it’s very important to write a proper grant application. It’s as important as writing a proper query letter, manuscript or job application. Why would a grant be any different?

You have to follow the questions to the letter, be accurate in your information, grammatically proper in your presentation, and use the same finesse in presenting your project to a grant judge as you would your story to an editor or agent.

You’re asking for financial support in both situations. Readers can study grant books, but nothing beats contacting the grantor, the group offering the grant, and talk to them about what makes for a good grant application in his or her eyes.

Each grant is different, like each magazine, each publishing house, each agent. Learn the rules, know what they like to fund, learn what they’ve funded in the past. It’s like reading a magazine’s guidelines, studying the flavor, and reading past issues. If you can apply to a magazine, you can apply for a grant.

Norm:

How important is it for writers to attend writing workshops?

Hope:

Depends on the writer. I think workshops can help you, but only if you know what you need to work on. A lot of writers ramble, thinking about writing, thinking about being a writer, and then going to workshops not knowing what direction they are headed. They hope that via osmosis, they will learn to be better. Writing is proactive, not reactive. A writer needs to work hard, then attend workshops that cater to the writer’s needs at that point in their writing efforts.

Networking can be good, too, if that’s what your writing needs. If that’s what you need as a writer who feels claustrophobic about being reclusive. But workshops do not make you a good writer. Your effort makes you a good writer. A critique group can do the same.

Norm:

You are the author of The Shy Writer: An Introvert’s Guide to Writing Success. Could you briefly tell our readers what this book is all about?

Hope:

The Shy Writer: An Introvert’s Guide to Writing Success tells writers how to maneuver in the writing arena without the social weight around their neck. I do not like public venues very much, but know that I have to cope with that to be a successful writer. However, that doesn’t mean I have to be an extrovert. It means I have to find the comfort zone for my personality that lets me cope in my career as a writer. This book helps shy writers cope as writers, without selling their souls and pretending to be something they are not. It’s sold steadily since 2004. It went into a second revision in 2007. 

Norm:

What do you think of the Internet market for writers?

Hope: 

I think it’s very good and very bad. Good in that it opens easier communication to markets and allows writers, publishers, markets and agents to connect sooner and be more productive. It allows writers to find more work. It has opened new writing styles and venues like blogs, online magazines, web sites and newsletters, and allows networking in list groups, chats, and forums. The writing opportunities are endless and easier to find.

The same things that make the Internet good make it bad as well. It’s so easy to access that both the honest and the scammers use it, making it difficult for the naïve or new writer to sift through the scams, the trashy jobs opportunities that mean nothing on his resume or in his portfolio. Also, it means that everyone who has ever thought about writing three paragraphs together try to be published writers.

Editors and agents get frustrated with low quality writing. Individuals easily access information about publishing and think that reading a few how-to articles means one can publish when the serious writer takes years of study and trial-and-error to make a career of this difficult job. In other words, with the Internet came a deluge of writers who would not write if the net hadn’t come along, and a method of communication that allows fraud to flourish.

Norm:

What has been your overall experience as a published author? 

Hope:

I’ve published in Writer’s Digest, The Writer, Byline Magazine, TURF, Landscape Management, Growing Magazine, Next Step Teen Magazine, College Bound Teen Magazine, Voices of Youth Advocates Magazine and more. I’ve published in eight anthologies including one Chicken Soup that came out in February 2008 and another coming out in Fall 2008. I can’t count the articles published online, and I write a monthly column for three online web sites. Of course, I write two to six items weekly for my own newsletters, which reach 13,000 readers to date.

I consider the above experience to be that of a writer. If you are asking about me as an author, I’ve published fourteen ebooks that sell through my web site, The Shy Writer, and an currently writing my second mystery novel set in the agricultural South. I’m in process of seeking an agent.

Norm:

What will you be doing for promotion of your website and your books. How much of it is your doing?

Hope:

I am a one-woman show except for my proofreader in Ohio. I promote through my own web site and newsletters. I also write an ample number of articles for other publications giving myself a bio that always leads people back to the web site. I have an affiliate program for the ebooks, provide interviews like this one, chat as a guest in forums, and speak twice a year at live conferences. It never stops and it takes up a third or more of my time.

Norm:

Are you working on any books/projects that you would like to share with us? (We would love to hear all about them!) 

Hope:

My favorite writing is my mystery novels. I worked 25 years with the US Department of Agriculture. My husband is a 30-year, recently retired, Federal agent. We like to spin what-ifs. We both know the rural community. I’ve created a stable of characters and solve mysteries involving the federal government and the rural community. I’ve come very close to selling the first book, so while I’m editing it for the 10^th time, I’m also writing the second novel, the sequel. I have several others in mind behind those. These are the reason I write.

Norm:

Where can our readers find out more about you and your website?

Hope:

http://www.fundsforwriters.com

Norm:

Is there anything else you wish to add that we have not covered?

Hope:

I believe in writers improving themselves, not luck. I believe writing is diligence, not just raw talent. All writers, even the best ones, write crappy first drafts. Writing is all about the rewriting, and respect given the written word for proper presentation. I believe we write for the long distance goal, not the instant gratification. Don’t be in a hurry to publish.

Thanks once again and good luck with all of your future endeavors.

To Purchase The Shy Writer Click Here