Writing

[Colin McGregor]

Earlier this week I was helping out at the Society of
Internet Profesionals booth down at the Career Door
job fair (long, and ugly story there ... don't ask).
Anyway of the hundreds of people I talked to down
there was one lady who noted that her husband wanted
to get into writing and I offered to sum up my $0.02
worth (done!). Now, I thought my experiences might be
of general interest to those on this mailing list...
Taken from that e-mail, here are my thoughts on
writing:

In 2003 I set-up and ran a temporary Internet cafe for
a convention, all on very little money, using a
version of Knoppix Linux that I customized for the
event. This I thought was a neat trick about which I
wanted to boast a bit. So, in my case I went looking
around asking which Linux publication seemed to be the
most prestigious, and the best paying, which brought
me to Linux Journal (after all if Linux Journal
rejected me I could lower my sights :-) ). What I
didn't considered at the time was how long it took
between submitting an article and the article being
published (in the case of Linux Journal it can be a
while). I wrote the editor at Linux Journal, noting
what I had done, and outlining what I thought would
make a great article. A few e-mails back and forth,
then I got busy writing. 

Several months later I was talking to the local
Greater Toronto Area Linux user group about what I had
done, and the idea of doing a presentation about my
article came up. In reviewing what I had written with
the latest version of Knoppix Linux I discovered that
some of the material in my original article had become
dated, which lead to my 2nd article. From there things
have spluttered along.

So, my suggestions,

- Come up with a neat/clever idea.
- Make a list of what publication(s) would be
  interested in said idea.
- Contact the editor of the magazine with the idea 
  and an article outline.
- Be ready to do some back and forth tweaking/changes.
- Write.
- Submit article
- Repeat above steps.

Writing has varied, some articles I have sweated blood
on, others have been fairly mindless bits of banging
on the keyboard. Still, once you get a few articles
under your belt the ideas in a way become easier. The
Quake 3 game article came because the editor of Tux
wanted to do an all video game issue and asked me if
there were any games I wanted to write about. Then
came the idea of a follow-up article on Quake 4...

Now, sad but true, I don't yet know how to make a real
living at writing. Depending on the publication I have
seen payments that ranged from a bunch of free
magazines (the little 200 word item I did for Linux
Format magazine), to $600 (U.S.) from Linux Journal
which is nice but not a living. Still, it has allowed
me to play with some neat toys/software (for example
my review of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (which has not
yet been released to the general public) coming up in
the April 2007 issue of Linux Magazine :-) ). I also
get to increase the number of "interesting" keywords
in my resume.

Hope this helps.

Colin McGregor

Publication List:
In Print: 
- "A Temporary Internet Lounge", Linux Journal,
February 2005, pages 42-45 
- "Overseas LUG of the Month", Linux Format, April
2006, page 103 
- "Debian GNU/Linux", Tux Magazine, April 2006, pages
19-22 
- "KDE Kontact", Tux Magazine, July 2006, pages 37-42 
- "KDETV", Tux Magazine, August 2006, pages 21-24
- “Quake 3 and Doom 3 or Nightmares Spoken Here” Tux
Magazine, September 2006
- “Freespire 1.0.2” Tux Magazine, September 2006,
pages 56-58
- “Quake 4” Tux Magazine, November 2006, pages 51 –
53.
- “Tux People: Pamela Jones”, Tux Magazine, December
2006, pages 18 – 20.
- “Controlling Spam with SpamAssassin” Linux Journal,
January 2007, pages 94 – 95.
On the Web: 
- "A Temporary Internet Lounge Revisited", Linux
Journal Website,
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8081 
- "A Motherboard Upgrade HOWTO", Linux Journal
Website, http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8219 
- "A Look at the Linux World Canada Show", Linux
Journal Website,
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8262 
- "A Video Card Upgrade HOWTO", Linux Journal Website,
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8511 
- "A Beginning Look At MythTV", Linux Journal Website,
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8658 
- "An Evening With Jeff Waugh", Linux Journal Website,
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8752 
- "The Linux Infrared Remote Control (LIRC) Project",
Linux Journal Website,
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8811 
- "The 2006 LinuxWorld Canada Show", Linux Journal
Website, http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9028 

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