To find ideas you can also draw on the experiences of friends and family members for articles and stories to write. Look around your church for interesting people and unique ministries. Check out your local newspaper, your community, and current world events for even more ideas.

Friends and Family

We can draw upon the experiences of our family and friends by interviewing them, and of course, we can draw upon our experiences with them for more ideas. Two people involved in an incident opens the door for dialogue, and nothing moves a story along better than a conversation.

Does your grandmother have a familiar saying that has shaped your life? If so, pass her words of wisdom onto others. Has she led an interesting life that you can capture on paper so her loved ones will have it long after she is gone. What a special legacy to pass on. I regret that my grandmother died before I had a chance to get her story down on paper. She escaped from Mexico during a revolution, and if I only had more information I could write a fascinating true story in her memory.

You may have a friend with a totally different viewpoint than your own on a subject. Write a heated debate in dialogue, showing both sides of the situation and voicing both opinions.

Often events that happen in the workplace or while you are doing volunteer work provide excellent fodder for stories. One student of mine wrote about her work at a local rescue mission. Another worked at a preschool, and another volunteered her time at a home for unwed mothers. All of these experiences provided excellent material for stories.

Also, be sure to keep a journal when you travel. You never know what interesting situation you might encounter. Readers love to go on adventures to cities and countries where they will never travel. They can live vicariously through your exciting adventures, benefiting from the lessons you learned along the way if you make your story realistic.

Some of the incidents in your life will make excellent personal experience stories. Others might give you ideas for fictional stories. Fiction comes to life when it is based on a true story.

As was mentioned in the previous post, one of the best places to find ideas is yourself. Do you have any interesting hobbies that others can learn about. Often people’s busy schedules or their budgets won’t allow them to attend classes. You can be their classroom teacher and show them how to do or make something through a how-to article.

If you keep a journal, some of your entries may provide interesting slices of daily life. If you can write about the mundane in an exciting, humorous way, you will entertain your audience well. Be aware, however, that many of the things in your journal are meant for your eyes only, and others will not benefit in any way from reading about them. Learn to discern what will interest others and what will not.

Sometimes our childhood memories provide interesting anecdotes. Again, be careful that what you experienced is relevant to today’s audience.

You can draw on your own experiences or those of friends and family members for articles and stories to write. Look around your church for interesting people and unique ministries. Check out your local newspaper, your community, and current world events for even more ideas. This is Part 1 of a series.

Yourself

The best place to find ideas for articles, stories, and devotionals to write is to look at yourself. What have you experienced that will interest others?

You can draw upon past and present events or lessons you have learned. You can state your opinions in something like an op-ed piece or a letter to the editor in your local newspaper or a national magazine.

Have you learned a lesson in coping with a problem or difficult circumstances? Perhaps others can benefit from the road you have walked. A word of caution though: Make sure you are healed before you begin writing, or your anger and unresolved feelings will come out. If you bleed all over the page, no one will benefit. Consider your hopes and dreams. Share them to encourage others in your personal experience articles.

The copyright registration is effective on the date of the receipt in the Copyright Office. For the material written after January 1, 1978, your copyright lasts for 70 years after your death. For manuscripts you wrote before that date, your copyright is for 28 years plus a renewal for 47 more for a total of 75 years.

Once a copyright expires, the work goes into public domain. The public may use it at no cost at that point as long as the copyright isn’t picked up and re-registered by your heirs.
Also, public domain only applies to the original work. If material is revised or updated, it may not be in public domain. So be sure to check your sources.

If you need information or guidance on legal matters, such as disputes over the ownership of a copyright, suits against possible infringers, the procedure for getting a work published, or the method of obtaining royalty payments, it may be necessary to consult an attorney.

This ends the series on copyright law.

If you sell “All Rights” to your manuscript, then the publisher owns your work, and you cannot print it elsewhere without getting written permission from them. Try not to sell all rights if possible unless you are signing a work-for-hire contract. You normally receive a flat fee for these, the publisher retains all rights, and the copyright is in the name of the publishing house. Sometimes your financial state may dictate that it would be worthwhile to do some pay-for-hire work. Once you turn in the completed work, you are normally paid in full within 30 days.

“Book Rights,” however, are different from other rights. When you sign a contract to write a book, the document is normally 12-14 pages, and the publisher holds your rights on that book as long as it stays in print. This is not to be confused with the copyright, which should be held in your name. My next blogs will deal with copyright law.

You may only use the amount of material that falls under “Fair Use” when quoting material from your own books. If you want to excerpt articles or stories though from one of your books in print, normally the legal department of your publishing house will give you permission. After all, the publicity is good for the publishing house. As I previously mentioned, if you are selling an article or story to be included in someone else’s book, I’d recommend selling one-time rights.

This concludes my three-part series on rights.

If your article or story has not been published, I recommend you sell “first rights,” rather than “simultaneous rights.” Many editors will not show interest if you are shot-gunning your material to a number of publications at once when the piece has never been published. Plus, you will usually be paid more for “first rights.”

However, once your article is published for the first time, by all means feel free to sell “reprint rights” on it. You will probably earn a third to a half as much for “reprint rights.” Nevertheless “reprint rights” are an excellent way to earn extra money by selling your manuscripts over and over.

“One-time rights” give a publisher the opportunity to print your material one time. Use this terminology when selling a piece for a book compilation since books take a long time to come out in print. In the meantime, you can resell “reprint rights” on the piece. Also, “one-time rights” may be confusing to the editor, who may wonder whether or not your material has been published before. As a result you may be paid a lower amount than “first rights” would be given. Also, you can offer “one-time rights” to publications in other countries, particularly in the Third World, on material for which you own the copyright.

Rights are different than copyright. Be careful not to confuse them. When you sell “First Rights” to a publication, you are offering one-time rights to publish your material before you send it to another publication. Sometimes these are called First North American Rights, which includes the U.S. and Canada, or First North American Serial Rights if it is a serial publication.

Once your manuscript is printed by the publication to which you sold first rights, you may then sell “Reprint Rights,” often called second rights. When you sell reprint rights, your duplicate manuscripts can be sent out simultaneously to many different publications. Try to avoid selling to two publications with overlapping audiences, however, such as two periodicals or take-home papers published by the same company or denomination.

When you sell first rights or reprint rights, you still own the rights to that work. After it is printed, the rights revert back to you. Selling reprint rights doesn’t affect your rights in any way. Someday you may want to put that material in a book.