Mary Martin, Ph.D.

On Attachment to Your Title

I have had clients who are brilliant at coming up with titles. In fact, they come up with titles for their books first, then create the content around those titles.

I admire the talent of creating titles, however I always warn my clients to detach themselves from the titles if they are pursuing traditional publishing, as the titles they hold so dear can easily be changed by the publisher.

I also have clients who write their book first, then obsess about the title. They refuse to send the proposal or manuscript until they believe they have the perfect title because they're convinced that it will make or break their book. And when it comes to impulse buys, that's true. People really will buy a book because of the title or the cover. But if the content of your book is great, and your writing is fabulous, word will get around and readers will buy it because they heard about how wonderful it is. No one ever got a starred review from Publisher's Weekly because of the title of their book.

If a publisher says the title must be changed, there's probably a good reason for that and it behooves you to listen to it. Sure, you can still campaign for your title. But don't be too attached to it in the even your campaign isn't successful.

On Working With Friends and Relatives

I just added a new category, The Business of Writing, as that's an area I get a lot of questions about and though I don't recommend blindly doing what I do, I do recommend taking it into consideration when making your own policies and decisions.

Here's one of the few tips I do recommend doing, for everyone: Treat friends and relatives like clients when they're clients. If you have written contracts with your clients, don't leave that part out of the process with friends and family.

Be wary of working without pay for friends and family, as resentment can build very quickly, even in the healthiest of relationships. Nothing ruins a relationship faster than a disagreement about money, so be clear at the beginning of the process about what will be involved, what the fee is, and when it is due.

With that said, there's certainly nothing wrong with charging a lower fee for your services for family members and even friends, but the latter can be tricky. After all, who is a friend, and does a friend of a friend qualify as a friend? What if your friend told her friend how little you charge (because you gave her a discount)? Now the friend of the friend expects to get a discount as well. And the friend might expect it as a favor to her because she's giving you business.

Do yourself a favor and develop rules for yourself from the start, so that each new situation doesn't find you charging a completely nonsensical fee because you're trying to make other people happy.

Set boundaries for friends and family, and let them know that you value your time, skills and knowledge, and you'd like them to do so, as well.

On Putting a Dollar Value on Your Hard Work

If you write grants, books, chapters, pamphlets or website material, you have to value your hard work and establish a fair price for it.

I'm a free market kind of person, and I'll charge a combination of what the market will pay and what my expertise is worth. Certain markets pay well as a matter of course, and others don't. Some clients have for-profit businesses and others have non-profit businesses and I factor that into my equation, as well.

In other words, what I charge is by no means uniform from one client to the next, unless of course the clients are similar in important ways.

I've seen intricate formulas for establishing fees based on your overhead, the number of years of experience you have, your earning history, and the fair market value of your services. And at the beginning that's helpful. However, after nearly two decades of writing for other people, I am far less attached to making a huge profit and far more attached to doing work that matters for people I believe in. And if they can't pay me $250 an hour, I don't mind.

Sometimes I work pro bono. For example, if a nonprofit isn't paying the people who run its program a living wage, how can I possible ask them to pay me one?

Though this is by no means a scientific statement, it works for me: Charge a fair price for the work given the context. You can't go wrong with that, and you'll certainly build up some goodwill with people who appreciate the way you do business. And goodwill equals referrals. If you're running your business with integrity, referrals will bring you the bulk of your work and you won't have to advertise as much as most people do. Take it from me: There's nothing better than having people call you because a good friend told them how wonderful you are at what you do and how you do it.

On the Demonstration of Need

When a funder asks you to demonstrate the need your project will be addressing, here's a tip: Be as specific as possible.

And by the way, the same is true for a book proposal.

You must provide clear and convincing information that makes the reader say: Wow, we've gotta do something about this need, and do it now! Or, we've got to publish this book and address this under-addressed topic!

For a grant, this involves statistics and their sources. If you're talking about the homeless population in your area and how it is on the rise, that's not clear and convincing. What would be clear and convincing would be presenting the statistics on homelessness for the past 5-10 years, noting the credible source of the stats.

If you claim there is a gap in books on baby-boomers, provide the names of the recent bestsellers and a brief description of each and show the reader there's a gap by laying out the landscape. Demonstrate that you've done your research and you know what you're talking about.

I've recently reviewed a dozen grants for the federal government and the most significant weakness I saw was an inability of grantwriters to make their case when it came to need. And if I don't find your statement of need compelling, it's going to be difficult for me to buy into your proposal.

As always, when it comes to a book proposal (or a grant), you need to develop an ironclad case for the project you're proposing. You want your reader to want to fund you or advocate for you because you've left them no choice--they simply must stand behind you and help you.

Though need alone won't get you funded and it won't get your book published, if you haven't made your case, you can be guaranteed to not get support.

On Writing, Illness and Stress

In "Writing 'eases the stress of cancer'" we learn that expressive writing (as in, not just the facts) can change the thoughts those with cancer have about their conditions as well as their quality of life.

It's no surprise, as articulating your feelings about any stressful situation helps ease the stress. And doing so in writing, like in a journal (yes, there's such a thing as "journal therapy," and it even has its own organization), is a long-recommended strategy for improving outlook as well as health (check out how it improved the conditions of those with asthma and rheumatoid arthritis here).

You don't have to be ill to start your own therapy journal. I write each day, even if it's just a few paragraphs, about my own stress and frustrations with the process of getting my writing published. As a result, I complain a lot less, I act a lot more, and the difficulties I have are kept in perspective and context. And my emotions don't get out of hand because I'm not bottled up.

Journal for a couple of weeks about whatever is bothering you or painful to you in your life, and track the intensity of your feelings and the ratio of positive to negative feelings and thoughts. My experience is that by expressing anything negative, that acknowledges it and makes it real, but also makes it history--written history--and then I can move on.

Journaling helps validate the past, and also helps keep it there.

On Supporting Your Writing Habit

I've been fortunate to have made a great living writing. Though I make far less money than I did a decade ago, I also work for money far less as most of my work right now is pro bono.

If your writing doesn't generate income, but you don't want to give it up because you simply must write and you firmly believe that someday it will pay off financially (and even if you don't firmly believe that), here are your three options regarding employment.

1. A junk job. This is the job that requires very few brain cells or skills for you to adequately perform. It also pays very little. The upside is that you don't take the work home, and you probably can write on your lunch hour because working for that extra hour would be out of the question. You're not looking for advancement here; you're just looking to pay the bills.
2. A job job. This is the job that pays reasonably well, requires some education, critical thinking and skill, and might even offer advancement. The only problem is that what you really want to do is write. You might have to spend your lunch hour actually doing your job, but if you get good at setting boundaries, there's no reason to do that. It's not as if you're genuinely interested in making a job job into a career.
3. A real job. The problem with the real job is that it often goes home with you. And you get well paid, so that shouldn't be a problem. And you're using the education, skills and experience that took you years to acquire. And the work is stimulating. But what you really want to do is write, and the real job often ends up being an actual career, and you become a slave to working because you buy a big house and lots of stuff and soon you can't stop working at this level to take more time to write. You've accomplished and earned your way into a position that most people would envy you for, but it becomes a stifling prison because . . . all you want to do is write.

Today's tip: Most of us need to make money somehow. If writing isn't making you money, think long and hard about the amount of attention your writing will get when you're looking for a job.

On Revision

No matter what you're writing, revision will be an important part of your process. I always recommend getting as much information down on the page as soon as possible. I've heard this referred to as "dumping," "mind-dumping" and "downloading." Whatever you call it, the principle is: Don't obsess over each sentence or word or comma until you have written the basic idea, with details you don't want to forget.

No one should be submitting a first draft of anything to an agent or publisher or editor, so don't pressure yourself to craft perfect sentences the first time you write something.

Or even the first time you revise something.

Revision is when the real writing takes place. It's when you ponder whether a short sentence is needed in a particular spot. It's when you decide whether you're going to use a semicolon or a period. It's when you use a thesaurus.

Part of the concept of revision is mental, as there are people who have been conditioned to believe that they should be able to write a flawless first draft. They have a little voice in their head that tells them: If you were a real writer, you'd be able to do this right the first time.

But that's bunkum, and it's unnecessary to put yourself in that position.

Today's tip: Give yourself a break, and become friends with the process of revision.

On the Following of Instructions

Today's tip is: Follow the instructions, and applies both in the nonprofit world with grants, and in the nonprofit world with anything you have to submit to anyone.

I'm reviewing grants for the federal government this week and I am shocked, as I am each time I'm on a review panel, to find so many worthy, needy organizations that are incapable of following instructions.

When thousands of individuals or organizations are vying for the same bowl of funds, the funder must create a way to standardize its application process to make it easier to compare proposals and decide where to allocate funds.

The tragic problem that no one can do anything about in such situations is that often the neediest organizations don't get funded because their proposals are so inadequate because they don't have the money to hire a grantwriter. Though not being in a position to hire a professional can surely be an obstacle, it is one that can be overcome to a large extent with today's simple tip: follow the instructions.

Every RFP (Request for Proposal) tells the prospective grantee what it wants. It says something like:

1. Define the magnitude and severity of the need (10 points).

And guess what you do?

1. Define the magnitude and severity of the need.
Describe, using numbers and percentages and narrative, why the situation is so terrible for the population you plan to serve. You're making a case for support here, so make it good and make it thorough and include any relevant studies and statistics.

Each organization has a way of presenting itself and its cause to prospective donors and the general public. Be that as it may, the grant proposal is not the time to say what you want to say, how and when you want to say it. It's time to surrender to the process of filling out an application. That's all the proposal is--an application for funds. If it were a one-pager with yes/no questions, wouldn't you follow the format? Of course you would. And it's the same with grant proposals.

This includes double-spacing, paginating your application, and being mindful of page limits if there are any. And if they want certain answers in number or percentage form, that's how you present your answers (rather than in a narrative).

It seems dreadfully uncreative when you're creating a proposal, but that's not the time for creativity. Save that for your website and your marketing materials.

Once again, whether you're writing a book proposal or a grant proposal: follow the instructions.

On Quantifying and Reaching Your Market

Whether you're self-publishing or going the traditional route, you need to know who your market is. And I'm not just talking about naming the market; I'm talking about putting a number to them.

If they have some sort of national organization/association, great! Get the membership numbers. If they have a magazine, fabulous! Get the circulation numbers. Is the population studied by the Census or some other broad study? Is there a foundation that studies or serves the population?

Where exactly can you find your audience, and how do you know its size?

Once you know where to find your audience, you should also know how to market to them. Is there an e-mail list you can purchase (if that's a good idea for your population)? Are there websites or blogs your audience frequents that are popular enough to warrant paying to advertise on them? Is there a type of store they tend to hang out in that allows talks or advertising? Are there local groups or national groups that cater to your audience and might promote your work (if there are, it would behoove you to already be a member)?

You should be appearing any and everywhere your audience does and getting to know them better as soon as you have articulated who they are. You want to be promoting your work as a member of the group, not as an outsider. Insider status will help you with marketing and promoting in addition to confirming your credibility and your genuine interest in the population/issue.

All of your research regarding your target market should be summarized in your proposal. You should also be able to describe your market and how to reach it thoroughly yet succinctly.

Today's tip: Know thy audience! (And read more about knowing your audience here.)

The Next Best Thing to Reading Steven Pinker

You have GOT to read Steven Pinker if you're interested in thought and language. This particular talk is like the Reader's Digest version of The Stuff of Thought.