10 Ideas for Networking

10 Ideas for Networking 10 Ideas for Networking 10 Ideas for Networking By Mark Nichol Whether you’re a staff employee at your workplace, or you’re a home-based freelancer, you’ll benefit from a proactive effort to make yourself a part of a professional or interest-based community. Try one or more of these networking options: 1. Join an online writers’ community or social-networking site. (They abound on the Web; I chose this one as an example because of the clever play on the name of the professional-networking site Linked In.) 2. Become a member of a writers’ union like the Writers Guild of America West or its East Coast counterpart. 3. Sign up with a genre-specific writers’ association, such as the Mystery Writers of America. 4. Form or join a writing group. 5. Look up a site for writers of fan fiction, such as FanFiction.net. 6. Take a writing or literature class or workshop, and keep in touch with the students (and the instructor). 7. Attend writers’ conferences or enroll in an MFA program. 8. Attend (or organize) author events, poetry readings, open mics, and other literary gatherings. 9. Cultivate relationships with editors and with other writers. A rejection letter can be a beginning as well as an ending, and freelance writers (and editors) can pass leads on or hand surplus projects off to each other. 10. Develop your networking skills outside the writing realm by joining a civic or professional organization, volunteering with a nonprofit organization, or getting involved with a club or a hobby group. Networking Tips When attending events or other assemblages, exchange business cards or email addresses with fellow participants, but don’t treat the gatherings like speed-dating nights. Focus on meeting and engaging with no more than several people. It’s all about quality, not quantity, and especially when it comes to recurring events, you’ll always have another opportunity to meet someone you missed before. Writers are stereotyped as being wallflowers. That’s not always true, of course, but stereotypes come from somewhere. If you’re shy, try these strategies: Ask a more outgoing partner or friend to go with you and let them lead you into introductions. Find the most uncomfortable-looking person at the event, note that they’re probably feeling more nervous than you are, and go up to them and smile and say, â€Å"Me, too.† Reassure yourself that you don’t have to say a thing about yourself; let the other person do all the talking (unless they turn the tables on you or become tiresome). Come up with a stock question: â€Å"What’s your favorite novel?† â€Å"What are you reading?† â€Å"How’s your book coming?† Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Freelance Writing category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:5 Uses of InfinitivesTelling a Good Poem from a Bad OneThe 7 Types of Possessive Case

Quotes to Mark International Womens Day

Quotes to Mark International Womens Day The United Nations instituted International Womens Day, celebrated every year on March 8, to commemorate the contribution of women in the socio-political sphere as well as in global peace and security.​ International Womens Day can be traced back to the womens suffrage movement  starting in the 19th century. Over many decades, women achieved tremendous progress in many areas of life. Womens emancipation from​ traditional roles took on new meaning when they traveled into space and fought alongside men in combat. Insightful Quotes About Womenhood Mahatma Gandhi Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacity. Farrah Fawcett God gave women intuition and femininity. Used properly, the combination easily jumbles the brain of any man Ive ever met. Harriet Beecher Stowe Women are the real architects of society. Charles Malik The fastest way to change society is to mobilize the women of the world. Barbara Bush Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the Presidents spouse. I wish him well! Virginia Woolf Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size. Timothy Leary Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition. Ville Valo Women are always beautiful.. Loretta Young A charming woman doesn’t follow the crowd. She is herself. Philip Moeller Women are seldom silent. Their beauty is forever speaking for them. Nancy Pelosi Women are leaders everywhere you look from the CEO who runs a Fortune 500 company to the housewife who raises her children and heads her household. Our country was built by strong women and we will continue to break down walls and defy stereotypes. Melinda Gates A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult. Eleanor Roosevelt Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission. Robert Elliott Gonzales, Poems and Paragraphs All the worlds a stage, and its a dead easy guess which sex has all the speaking parts. Louise Otto The history of all times, and of today especially, teaches that women will be forgotten if they forget to think about themselves. Margaret Sanger A free race cannot be born of slave mothers. Ellen DeGeneres I really dont think I need buns of steel. Id be happy with buns of cinnamon. Joseph Conrad Being a woman is a terribly difficult task  since it consists principally in dealing with men. Margaret Thatcher If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman. Christabel Pankhurst Remember the dignity of your womanhood. Do not appeal, do not beg, do not grovel. Take courage, join hands, stand beside us, fight with us. Roseanne Barr The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. Erma Bombeck It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else. David Bower ï » ¿Dream the dreams that have never been dreamt.