More number goodness.

Even if your main interest is in writing novels and/or short stories, you should still consider writing some non-fiction pieces.

Why?

If you’re a beginning writer, getting a non-fiction piece professionally published is usually a lot easier than getting paid for fiction.  Essays and articles are also a great way to draw attention to your novel.  Let’s say you’ve just had a vampire novel published.  If you had an article published about the differences between vampires from different cultures, you could include in your bio information that you’d written a vampire novel.

So how do you work out what to write about?

One way to start is to work out what your favorite magazines and web sites are.  What kind of articles could you write for them?

You can also work out what broad areas you’re interested in.  For example I’m interested in: science fiction, books, movies, travel, photography and computer games.

That gives you a broad area to work in, but you need to give your article a specific focus or slant.  What I Think About Movies isn’t the kind of article you’re going to sell (unless you’re already famous).  It needs to be more specific.  Why China’s Reclaiming of Hong Kong Led to a Decline in the Hong Kong Film Industry.

This is particulary true for travel writing.  Some editors will tell you that a destination is not an idea.  Travel magazines have already published articles on just about any place you could care to think of.  Instead of My Trip to Paris, you could try selling The Ten Best Museums to Visit in Paris. Many editors are particularly partial to Top Ten kind of articles.  (The Ten Hottest Clubs to Meet Vampires?)  Not everyone likes top ten articles though.  Clarkesworld’s non-fiction guidelines explicity state their dislike of “articles that purport to provide 10 rules for success/failure in a particular endeavor.”

Does your job give you any special qualifications that you could write about?  A friend of mine is a psychologist and counsels adolescents.  I used to work for the computer games industry.  We co-wrote an article providing an overview of some of the studies that had been conducted examining the effects on children of playing violent computer games.  We sold it to an Australian parenting magazine and got paid 50c a word.  That’s 10 times the rate I’ve been paid for fiction sales.

Maybe you can’t think of any areas that you feel qualified to write about.  What personal experiences have you had that others might be interested in?  I attended Clarion South (a science fiction writing workshop) earlier this year.  I sold an article about my experience as a student to The Internet Review of Science Fiction.

Even if you don’t think you’re an expert on a topic, the Internet makes doing research so much easier than what it was 15 or 20 years ago.

So what are some ways of generating ideas for articles?

Reading articles can give you ideas for your own articles.  You read an article about how vampires represent the lust women have for gay men and think that’s nonsense.  You write an article about how vampires really represent our fear of dentists.

What topics are popular right now? This can include the bleeding obvious (e.g. vampires).   The trick is to give a different perspective or compare it with something else.  How are Asian vampires different from Western vampires? (Chinese vampires like to hop!)

Another easy way is repackaging a topic for another market.  I read an interview with an Australian potter in an Australian local newspaper. I don’t know anything about pottery, but it mentioned that the potter’s tea bowls had been graded by Japanese tea masters. I interviewed him by email and sold anarticle to a Japanese magazine that was interested in what foreigners thought of Japanese culture.

You can also write about different works (movies, books, etc) that have a similar broad theme.  I sold an article to Salon.com a few years ago that looked at books that had been linked to controversial murder cases. I got the idea when I read a book about the Aum Supreme Truth cult in Japan and how they had been influenced by ideas from Asimov’s Foundation series.

Another way is to look at upcoming events.  The World Expo will be in Shanghai next year so people are going to interested in articles about Shanghai.  Upcoming anniversaries are another source of ideas.  It was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall recently and there a lot of articles about the Berlin Wall in the media.  It would be a good chance to try and interest editors in your exclusive scoop of how vampires secretly brought about the fall of Communism.

Writing Reviews

Most of the more prestigious publications already have their own reviewers.  But writing reviews for smaller web sites can be a good way to get your first publication.  Maybe you won’t get paid, but sometimes you’ll be able to get some free books out of the deal.  Just remember that writing a summary of the plot doesn’t equate to writing an interesting review.

Science Fiction Markets

A number of online sf magazines  are interested in non-fiction submissions.

Clarkesworld

Fantasy Magazine

Strange Horizons

Non-Paying SF Markets

Specusphere

Revolution SF

SF Crows Nest

My week 3 Clarion story has just been published at Fantasy Magazine.

http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/2009/11/reading-by-numbers/

My first SFWA-level fiction sale. Very happy.

Mussolini’s ‘brain and blood for sale on internet’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8371171.stm

Darwin photo competition winners
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8364761.stm

Heavy Metal Monk Quits Rocks
http://media.smh.com.au/world/world-news/the-metal-monk-quits-rock-860243.html

The Metal Monk at the height of his powers

Sounds like an urban legend, but the BBC thinks it’s true.
‘Fat for cosmetics’ murder suspects arrested in Peru
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8369674.stm

The Best Science Fiction Titles
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/nov/19/best-science-fiction-titles

After Moldova, I took the bus to Suceava in the north of Romania.

The northeast of Romania is known as Moldavia and is still a rural area where you can see lots of horses and buggies on the road.  The area is also home to painted monasteries that have beautiful frescos.

Then I travelled to Transylvania, a region in central Romania.  I stayed in the town of Brasov and visited some of the towns and sights around the area.

Bram Stoker based the character of Dracula on a historical figure, Vlad Tepes, a Wallachian noble who fought against the Turks.  Vlad was born in Transylvania and was called Vlad the Impaler because of his habit of impaling his enemies on stakes.  He father belonged to the Order of the Dragon (Dracul) and Vlad became known as Dracula (son of the dragon).

Brasov has one of the narrowest streets in Europe.  Nowhere to hide if the vampires come after you.

I visited Peles Castle, the summer residence of the Romanian royal family.  I had never heard of it before, but it is one of the most impressive palaces I’ve ever been to.  A lot of the European palaces (Versailles, the Hermitage, Vienna’s Schonbrunn, Madrid’s Royal Palace) have rooms covered in gold leaf, which initially seems impressive but starts to look a bit gaudy after you’ve seen a few.  Peles Castle is decorated in wood and seems like somewhere you’d rather live than the other palaces.  There are elaborate carvings, displays of weapons and armour and a library with a secret passage.
Unfortunately it was very expensive to get a photo permit (about 5 times the cost of an entrance ticket), so I didn’t take any photos inside.

Bran Castle is called the Dracula castle, but in reality has little to do with him.  (He might have visited there, but he didn’t live there).  Someone decided to cash in on the popularity of the Dracula story.

Sighisoara is the city where Dracula was born.  It’s a really nice city with an old citadel.  I visited the house where Dracula was born.

The house has been turned into a tourist restaurant.  I had a meal with a hollowed out loaf of bread filled with soup.

The main course was a steak and schnitzel skewered on a little wooden stake and covered in tomato sauce.

After Transylvania, I visited Bucharest, the Romanian capital.  A lot of people don’t like Bucharest, but I had a fun stay there and visited some nice restaurants.

Vampires aren’t the most dangerous things in Romania these days.  Dogs are popular in Romania and can be found everywhere – even in mountainside castles.  Bucharest has a bad problem with stray dogs and a couple of years ago, a Japanese man died after being bitten by a stray dog.  Fortunately I avoided any conflicts with vampire dogs.