Great resource for New Zealand writers by kiwis

The New Zealand Freelance Writers’ Association began over 30 years ago, as an association for freelance journalists, but is now open to writers of all genres. The focus of the association is Freelance, a quarterly magazine about writing for writers. Membership ranges from beginning, unpublished writers to writers who earn their living from their craft, and also to editors who are publishing newsletters and magazines. Membership is open to all ages – anyone with an interest in writing is welcome to join.

Issues contain tips and information about writing, news on markets and competitions, members’ book reviews and other items of interest, including a ‘Write of Reply’ page where members can write in for help.

Writing can be a lonely craft, but members of NZFWA appreciate the friendly ‘family’ feel of Freelance, which offers help and support from both the editor and other members.

NZFWA is a non-profit organisation surviving solely on membership subscriptions, receiving no outside funding.

The cost of membership is $30 per annum (students, beneficiaries, superannuitants: $25)

NOTE : remember this can be deducted from your taxes - the NZ Society of Authors (PEN) has a very good booklet on NZ tax specifically for writers - see NZSA info here

great tips for getting followers on twitter

4 Tips on Getting Followers on Twitter

Date: 21 May 2009 Author: NewspaperGirl

Here are my 4 tips for getting followers on Twitter. Not that I always follow them, but that I’ve noted.

1. Participate in group chats. Tuesday nights are “girls night out” or #GNO. You can go to tweetchat.com and sign in with your Twitter username & password then go to the #GNO room and join in. Participate. This exposes you to new people that you otherwise wouldn’t know. I recently participated inSmallBizTrends group chat about Twitter and it was a lot of fun.
2. Use directories like Twellow or Twitterholic to find people - by keyword or location.
3. Go to search.twitter.com and put in a hash tag relating to what you do. For me it would be #onlinePR or related terms. See who is writing about it. Follow them if you find them useful.
4. Reply to people and retweet about the interesting things you learn. So as not to overwhelm people I have another tab opened in Firefox and I use TweetLater (or you can use SocialToo) to space them out a little. READ THE REST HERE = GO LOIS LANE!

travelblather - read this and see why I love it! Always good stuff:)

April 23, 2009

Blogging for travel writers - Why bother?

I had an interesting evening at the British Guild of Travel Writers monthly get together last night. I was speaking with Alastair McKenzie and Simon Ward Wanderlust's web editor about all things web 2.0.

We were preaching to a quite sceptical audience. And I can see why. There remains little money to be made for pro travel writers in writing for web... and next to nothing from blogging or tweeting.

So why bother?

Well, one thing we all agreed on was that it's getting ever harder to make a proper living writing about travel and the net is very much to blame. Falling ad revenues for print media are directly related to reduced reader numbers - because people are reading stuff on-line for free and not bothering to buy magazines and newspapers in the ways they would have done before the net existed. The future looks pretty bleak for old school freelance travel writers.

Some key points I tried to make about why being part of the on-line world matters (and I hope I succeeded) read the rest here

Thanks Jeremy, you certainly did succeed, and I concur: hence my presence as a bloggerand twitterer!