Create Your Author Platform to Hook a Literary Agent Or Publisher and Land a Book Contract

Unpublished and hungry for a book contract? Present yourself to literary agents and book publishers so as to stick in their minds. So that they will tell you, "Send me your manuscript. I want to read it."

1: Create and hone delivery out loud of a 3-minute pitch for your unpublished book project.

Sample fiction pitch (thanks to New York Times Book Review and author's website): "An Afghan-American returns to Kabul to learn how his friend has fared under the Taliban" is my first novel's story. I was an 11-year-old, thin-framed seventh-grader when I left Afghanistan with my family. I returned recently to Kabul after completing my manuscript, traveling as a 38-year-old physician residing in Northern California, a writer, a husband and father of two. My name is Khaled Hosseini. May I send you a synopsis and 50 opening pages for my manuscript titled The Kite Runner? Here is my business card."

Sample nonfiction pitch: "I am in my 80s, an accomplished working painter with studios in Paris and New York, as well as a published writer and poet, and a feminist. From the age of 22 in the 1940s, I lived for a decade with Picasso, left him, and then raised two of his children. I have since been married to the painter Luc Simon and to Dr. Jonas Salk, who developed the polio vaccine. My name is Françoise Gilot. May I send you a book proposal with sample chapters for my memoir? Here is my business card."

For practice, visit online the New York Times Book Review's and other best-seller lists, study the one-sentence blurbs, make up one pitching your own work. Practice your pitch at home in front of a mirror, with fellow writers, with friends and family, with strangers you meet in bookstores. Practice your pitch until your delivery is confident, short, sweet, and perfect.

2: Create a do-it-yourself website and start blogging. Launch an ezine, develop a following, and capture the visitor data. Keep writing your book.

3. Design author business cards and an email signature that include your 3-minute pitch and all your contact information, your blog, your website, your ezine. Keep these cards with tape and thumbtacks on your person, at work, in your car at all times. Hand your card out to everyone everywhere. Post your cards in coffee shops, on library notice boards, online at writers' communities.

4. Develop an author-platform database using information and cards you collect from people that you meet and who visit your website. Reach out personally and get to know the managers and buyers for your local chain and independent booksellers.

5. Contact book review editors across the country, from very local to very national, and start reviewing books for them off- and online using a byline with your "forthcoming" book's title, your URL, ezine, and blog. Add these names to your platform database. Keep writing your book.

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The Lawyers' Guild Meets The Modern Age

It has become a cliche to say that we live in a globalized economy. But that doesn't make it true - at least not for all of us.

For instance, the legal profession still operates in some respects as though we live in the 19th century, when new practitioners hung their shingles after merely "reading the law," and judges and counselors alike served rural America by "riding the circuit."

Granted, we do not have self-taught lawyers anymore - though the Internet may eventually change that. And only one state, Wisconsin, retains the diploma privilege, in which graduates of the state's two accredited law schools are eligible for admission to the bar without first having to pass the much-feared bar examination.

But in most states, the legal profession still operates more like a preindustrial guild than a postindustrial industry. As an example, only lawyers are allowed to own law firms, on the dubious theory that outsiders' capital, and the resulting increase in competition, would compromise the interests of clients. And individual lawyers may ply their trade only in states where they have secured individually state-issued licenses, though there are special provisions in which a court can grant limited permission for an out-of-stater to appear in a particular case.

Historically, each state has tied its licensing to its own individual bar exam. A lawyer wishing to relocate or to practice across state lines had to sit for multiple examinations in order to do so, except in cases where two states granted some form of reciprocity. Taking a new test requires not only a significant investment of time, but also significant additional fees.

That arrangement is slowly beginning to change, however.

Given the large body of federal law that applies in many situations, along with the large and growing body of uniform state laws that are based on a model statute and often adopted by state legislatures with little change, a national law credential would make a lot of sense. Unfortunately, it doesn't exist. Nor is one on the horizon.

But the next best thing is a uniform national bar exam. That does exist, and New York recently announced plans to become the 16th, and so far the largest, state to implement it as of next year.

The test, called the Uniform Bar Examination, includes questions about general principles of law, along with six essay questions and two "skill tasks," such as drafting a client letter or creating a memorandum. In New York, students will also have to pass a shorter multiple-choice exam with questions specific to New York state.

The major advantage of the Uniform Bar Exam for test-takers is that the score can be transferred across jurisdictions. So in the future, a lawyer who passes the bar in New York and who later relocates to Seattle can have her official transcript sent to Washington; if she meets Washington's criteria, she can simply fulfill a few requirements instead of sitting for the entire test again. The more states that adopt the standardized test, the more attractive it will become.

The three states with larger populations than New York - California, Texas and Florida - do not offer the Uniform Bar Examination so far. Nor does Delaware, a state whose legal influence is outsize relative to its population because the state is home to many corporations. (Delaware lawyers do very well by this fact.) But many hope that New York's adoption of the test may push other big states in that direction.

New York's move has very little to do with serving the interests of the broader public. It has a lot to do with serving the interests of the state's law schools, who - like everybody else these days - struggle to fill their classes. Jonathan Lippman, the chief judge of New York State, made this clear when discussing his decision to adopt the Uniform Bar Exam. "Law school enrollment for first-year students has declined 30 percent in the past four years," he said, "and is at the lowest level since 1973." (1) New York's law schools would love to attract candidates who ultimately hope to practice elsewhere, where prospects for economic growth are better.

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Writing Effective (and Requisite) Essay Openers

When we write for college courses, we write for an audience other than ourselves. And it's an audience of more than one--the professor who assigned the piece. A good way to think of (and never forget) audience is to imagine we are writing the assignment for a popular magazine that sits in multiple copies on the shelves of an equally popular bookstore. For each magazine sold, pretend, we get a percentage.

Our goal, then, is to have as large and widespread a readership as possible--to hook as many browsers as we can--with an effective opener (also known as an introduction). We therefore must engage, first, before we entertain, educate, or inform.

First the Caveats and Comments on Ineffective (Bad) Openers

NO to SNORE openers - Forget burdening or alienating your readers with comments of how many people in many countries have many different ideas about life and society and all those other blah, blah, blah hard-to-wrap-the-brain-around opening commentaries...which really just send the reader off to find a more intriguing read.

NO to OBVIOUS - Similar to the snore generalizations, the obvious comments in an opener will have eyes (if not heads) rolling as readers take in the TV is mental masturbation or ads are used to manipulate us statements you can avoid--by using an old Marshall McCluhan quote or Cleo awards description, for example, instead.

NO to HYPERBOLE - Putting myself through school as a waitress, I had a number of regular customers who were writers, too, they said. They would talk at me all through my shift, reciting their best work. One insisted on reiterating his description of the verdant rolling hills that kissed the edges of the glistening waters at the feet of the majestic span of the Golden Gate Bridge...until I would get so mental I would fantasize about bringing the heft of the glistening glass coffee pot screaming down onto his head. In other words, do not exaggerate. Do not bring in heavy drama and description that will overwhelm and, again, alienate your readers. Stick with the truth. Stick with the openers that work.

We Use Modes for Engaging Openers...and I'm going to Use One Here, Out of Necessity...and Spite

I once read a how-to article on web content writing, on making a site that brings traffic (the attention of many). I had already begrudgingly given in to the understanding that web content writing is very different than academic writing--it has different goals, different audiences, and different elements that lend themselves to an 'A' piece of writing. In fact, it is so different that to write for the web we have to unravel all we have worked to weave, have to unlearn all we have learned as college English writers.

Don't Confuse Web Content/Writing and Academic Writing

So the writer of this article says to start web copy you skip the opener and go directly to the main point (what we in academia know as the thesis). Okay. This made sense, I thought, as web readers read differently: they read fast, they skim, they scan, they skip...to draw the most usable info in the shortest amount of time. (Probably the way you are reading now, hoping I get on with the point).

-I was with Mr. Web when he explained these facts.

-I was with him as he noted the research findings that back up the rationale for sacrificing good academic exposition for web text.

-And I was there with his tips and tricks, which were great...until he went too far, editorializing about writers who actually use openers:

He claimed that writers who rely on openers don't have "the courage" to just get to the point. So he lost me.

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Framing Your Term Paper Successfully

A college term paper will have several prerequisites and require very thorough research. Apart from the freedom of college, there are also loads of tasks one has to finish and these assignments are not like your usual school assignments. All the factors together can create hurdles while writing a term paper.

Now what exactly is the purpose of assigning a term paper? Primarily, it is a way through which the teachers try to gauge the depth of a student's knowledge, what they have learnt in the entire term. The entire process of attending lectures, note making and studying of a subject requires assessment from the subject teacher. The end of the term thus comes as a time to prove a student's quality as an efficient learner. It is important that one starts the process of writing the assignment at the earliest.

Whatever be your assignment, it is very important that a student has indulged in proper planning for the successful completion of the assignment. Many a times students while writing their projects can get sidetracked and lose a few points or lose track of how they should progress further. To make sure this does not happen, write down all the ideas you get beforehand. After you are done writing, you can keep the most useful ones and eliminate the rest of the points. This will be a sort of rough draft for your final piece of writing. It is near impossible to start writing without a planning. Providing the desired quality in your term paper assignment writing is very essential for a decent result in your college graduation.

When you are researching for your paper, make sure you note down all sources for the content you are using or else you might get accused of plagiarism. One mistake can be quite a big one in terms of your scores so make no mistake. Any paper is assigned to you based on your capabilities and so you need to effectively research for your papers.

Help is at hand with many effective internet sources and e-libraries available for students as well as public and college libraries are also easily there for students to undertake research. It would depend upon the student based on his/her schedule and priorities. But if you are taking help from the internet, make sure you have authenticated the source of information. And after you have accumulated all the desired material for your paper, sit down and start writing. Get your format and outline correctly, so that there are less chances of re-writing.

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Insight Essays for Therapy CBT

Abstract:

This paper was written to show the technique of self-reflection exercises in therapy. The client should write out their major life events as they see them, but in a reflective style to analyse their self image, as part of how they see their life. The therapist in turn can use this type of self-reflecting essay to understand the clients thought processes and perhaps an insight into faulty thinking and behavioural adaptations to life events. The following essay is a true story and in the clients own words. As a therapist or someone interested in psychological thought process and analysis the reader should stay emotionally removed in the first reading. By this I mean read as if you are trying to understand the life-story of the client. In a second reading you should look for the significance in the writer's comments and thought processes. Therapists, counsellors and psychologists may then try to answer the question of how they would treat this client if he came to them for help in understanding his behaviour over the years and how he could seek a more stable life-style. The names of the real people have been removed and substitutes inserted with some re-writing for clarity by the author.

Self Reflections of Love and Suffering

Two thoughts have crossed my mind in the last few days that I feel I should commit to paper before they scatter from my mind like leaves in an autumn wind. The first is my language - it came to me that when I was younger I had two fears about language the first being I could not spell very well and tended to be forced to write a short word that I was confident with, rather than a long word that expressed my meaning better but was fearful that I misunderstood its true meaning or that I could not pronounce or write it correctly. The second was in my speech, I knew I wanted to express myself in extended words but again used restricted language to talk. I knew the words but were afraid to speak them in case I appeared foolish or beyond my station. I think the timidity of language came about because I always felt I was special in someway over those people that I associated with. I think therefore I talked my language down in order to fit in with those who seemed to be my acquaintances. As time has gone by and my education has expanded by University and life experience, I now use longer words and more expressive ones than in my youth. However as a teacher I have always had the knack of talking to students at their level just as I did when young to my friends and associates of the time. I learned journalism when in my early twenties and it taught me to write short sentences with no adjectives or flourish of language, but to tell the story straight forwardly and clear. Later when I become a teacher this helped me to write better papers that expressed my meaning without opinion of fancy. I start this paper with this insight as an example of quiet suffering in life. What follows then is the suffering at the hands of love and relationships.

The second thoughts were about suffering. I have known two women in my life for a long period of time. Millicent my first wife and Joslin my long term partner, both I loved in my fashion but in these relationships I now think maybe I suffered for a long time without being able to articulate exactly why to myself. I as married to Millicent when we were both 20 years old, (for 10 years) in which time she bore me two daughters. Her family were low working class and she herself was very traditional of that society. Her siblings thought of me as pretentious as I wore a tie and sometimes talked about ambition, to which they connected to an inflated ego and talking beyond my station in life. (That is a peculiar way of saying this today but that is exactly how it felt to me at the time). I too come from a working class family but of a higher status in that my parents read, were home owners, had travelled around the world, my father was a veteran of WW11 and my mother an accomplished writer in her day.

Although by the time I had grown to realise my parent's characters, all this was unknown to me and as a youth I had little interest in my parents as do most boys. So why do I say suffering - maybe because I stayed and put up with the place in life that Millicent and her family deemed was suitable for me. The working in retail or sales, the home owner with the mortgage, the two little girls we brought into the world ( my one great delight as they are now grown women and have turned out so well - despite me abandoning them so young.) Later when I went into business for myself with the help of my eldest brother, Jake, I started to break away from the family (my own family) in that I became dissatisfied with my life. Dissatisfied with my future, I felt trapped by my marriage and obligation. I asked my wife for a divorce not with a long thinking process, but almost on a whim, of a time of thoughtlessness and partly to be free. Free to do what exactly I was not sure. Later while going through the divorce I met Joslin. She was from a small village and an insular family with little education or accomplishments. She was seven years younger than me and apart from one liaison with a cousin had no real life experience. However she was far more intelligent than Millicent and far more challenging to me.

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Compare And Contrast Essay Writing Secrets

But once you have started, you will realize that an essay writes itself. Just fill in your ideas, whether you are narrating a topic closest to your heart or arguing a point of view.

Let your thought flow naturally in a logical, flowing fashion. If you decide to do this type of paper, here are some useful tips you can follow:

Preparation

When writing a compare contrast essay, the first step is to choose a topic such as two events you have recently attended. You can focus on two people dearest to your heart who you can write about with ease because of your familiarity with them; two interesting things that you see everyday or two places you have just been to, with many similarities and differences.

Once you have identified the two subjects, decide which similarity and difference to focus on. This way you can effectively put across ideas on a particular topic, making a connection with your reader. Organize your essay in alternating or divided pattern.

Alternate the details from one side of the comparison or oppose the other, each time giving specific details to support both subjects of your comparison.

Go beyond description of the subjects you are comparing and what is important about them. Describe the features of the first subject, and then the other, making a careful transition to show that you are comparing the second subject to the first.

Consider the relation between the topics you have chosen, and organize your essay around the similarities and their differences.

Writing the argument

The order of similarity should be the same all throughout the paragraph to avoid confusing the reader. This will also give coherence to a comparison paragraph. Use conjunctions such as: similarly, in the same manner, likewise, the same as, also, too or both. Example: 1) Boracay Islands and El Nido in Palawan are both favorite tourist destinations in the Philippines. 2) Boracay Island beach resorts attracts foreign tourists as much as El Nido.

After presenting the similarities, in your contrast paragraph discuss the differences between the two subjects you have chosen using contrastive expressions or conjunctions such as: another difference, whereas, but, however, while, different in many ways. Example: Boracay Island beach resorts and El Nido in Palawan are backpackers' paradise. However, Boracay has become too crowded for comfort. Foreign tourists make El Nido their option for a more relaxing holiday and a bit of privacy, too.

After citing similarities and differences in your chosen subjects, reinstate your arguments towards the conclusion to make your essay

effective to influence your reader to act on your recommendation.

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Adult Continuing Education is Healthy for You

Adult continuing education is very practical. Seniors have several advantages over children.

* Better memory (truly!)

* Experience

* Fewer distractions

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Better memory

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Doctors thought that you couldn't grow new brain cells, so as old cells died you became more stupid. They now know that the more adult continuing education, the more new brain cells you get. You can even delay Alzheimer's disease by keeping your brain active.

But old people keep forgetting things! That's true, because what you remember best are startling, new, shocking things. To an old person it's a case of "been there, done that". Nothing is new or shocking.

However, you often have to learn boring things, and there you have an advantage. Seniors trounced the kids in a test of memorizing meaningless words. My book about exams will show you how to make your adult continuing education more exciting, which cuts kid's advantage over your memory.

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Experience

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You learn from the known to the unknown. So it's logical that the more experience you have, the more you can think "yes... that's right... it's just like..." I am 65 years old now and I can say that my adult continuing education keeps getting easier because there are always relevant things in my experience.

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Distractions

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You may have distractions at work still, but let's face it, are they really as obsessive as your teenage interests? You aren't going to have to choose between going out on a date and doing some study. You might have to choose between having a nap and study, but my book about exams shows a way round that problem. I'm using it right now!

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Exams

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Just as your three advantages apply to study, they apply to exams. Were you sick with nerves in your school exams? Your life-career depended on your performance. Now it would be nice to pass, but your experience tells you that you will survive failure, and land on your feet again...so less nerves.

Unless children have wealthy or helpful parents they can't afford resources that you can afford. For instance, they can afford my free report on writing essays, but not my eBook about passing exams. If you live in a country with timed local phone calls, kids may not be able to do much research on the internet because it costs too much.

There are ways to become a lightning calculator and ways to develop a super memory, and you can afford them all. If you want to learn a language you can probably even afford to get a "superlearning" course that teaches you the language in only fifteen hours.

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Why Adult Continuing Education

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All right, you have advantages, but why should you bother with adult continuing education?

* Prevents brain deterioration

* Retraining for a new job

* Self employment

I've already covered the effect of study on the brain. You get new brain cells.

In modern times you can only expect to keep one job for a short time. You are going to need to retrain for your next job.

Self-employment. You can't be sacked if you are self-employed, but you can go broke. It is best to develop your home business part-time until it is earning you twice as much as your job. Then if you are retrenched from your job you won't care.

Then you won't need to worry about adult continuing education any more will you? Oops... you will need to keep learning even more when you have your own business. For instance, you are going to have to learn book-keeping unless you can afford an accountant to do the work. If you have to employ people, you will need to learn the laws that apply.

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