Late last night I heard from a student who said coming to class made her feel better, that she sometimes felt so downtrodden because of the need for money–she’s not yet making any money from her writing–and being among writers gave her hope.

Sometimes it seems all you have is hope. Hope can be the rope that stops you from falling.

In Pen on Fire I talk about working as a temp and how much I hated it. It was so time for me to make a living writing, yet it wasn’t happening yet. I didn’t want a career in the corporate world because that’s just not what I wanted for my life. So I kept writing fiction, took classes in nonfiction, learned how to write scripts and other types of writing that could someday bring in cold hard cash, and I maintained hope–hope that it would happen someday.

Crossing over to freelancing took more energy and focus than I ever though I was capable of, but I had to break out of the 9-5 work mode…I just had to. I met a cable TV producer at the Irvine Fine Arts Center darkroom where I developed and printed black and white photos, and he gave me a job writing a documentary on the Orange County homeless situation. It paid peanuts. I took it.

I continued to temp during the day and at night worked on the documentary, sometimes staying up all night. With the eventual tape, I got freelance jobs writing corporate scrips. Then I learned about writing press releases and doing PR and got a few freelance gigs doing that.

It took a while for the income to pick up, but eventually it did. I didn’t have connections. What I did have was perseverance. And hope. My students who begin to publish have those qualities, too. Without them, you might as well forget it.

If you’re desperate to write for publication, articles are the way—esp. business and technical articles. Don’t forget trade magazines. They pay well and need freelancers. They may not be as impressive as mainstream magazines, but they’re a great way to start getting a freelancing income going and the editors are, for the more part, delightful to work with. They appreciate you.

Getting into public relations, too, as a freelancer, where you write press releases, can be your bread and butter for a while. For a long time before I started focusing on writing for magazines, I did PR, and found it quite lucrative. After a while, the PR writing itself–not the people I worked with–became boring. But it was great money while it lasted.

Yes, talent counts, but without hope and perseverance, talent means nothing. Don’t dwell on how hard it is. Instead, write hard, learn hard, and make perseverance your middle name.

I walked to Starbucks while my son Travis and his friend Eric accompanied me on bikes. Bought a venti chai latte, nonfat. Last week when Brian and I walked to Starbucks and I ordered my chai and he ordered black coffee, he said, “Whatever happened to large or small?”

I bought the New York Times, which I love especially on Sundays, though today I went online and ordered it to be delivered seven days a week, took my chai latte and Travis, Eric and I headed for the cliff over the beach. Eric wanted to look across the harbor at the Wedge, see if anyone was surfing there.

I looked out over the water for a few minutes, then sat and glanced at the Book Review for a minute. Then Travis wanted to go. The boys biked, I walked and thought, yes, it’s a beautiful Southern California day, but I miss the snow. Maybe we’ll have to go to New Zealand this summer to get a bit more of winter. I’m an East Coast goil, what can I say?

Then to another park where the boys rode over hills and through dirt as I read the column “Modern Love,” which made me all teary eyed, about a women meeting her son 21 years after giving him up for adoption when she was 16.

The writing inspired me. Good writing always does. We came home, the boys went out back to the garage studio for their band rehearsal and I sat in front of my iBook, opened up my draft of Starletta’s Kitchen and started futzing with what I’d written yesterday. Knitted a few inches of a sweater I’m making, then futzed some more with my draft and wrote a couple of new lines.

And I thought: It has been way too long since I’ve made an entry in my blog.

So there you have it, a late Sunday afternoon, with the front door open, music–“Dream on” by Aerosmith, sounds like–coming from out back and my work pulling me to it.

How was your Sunday? Get any writing done?

It’s so interesting, responses by men to my book. I spoke a little about it in my last post. But it continues and as it continues, it continues to baffle.

I heard from another male reader who bought Pen on Fire and book one for a friend. He didn’t mention the subtitle at all.

And I’ve been hearing from women from all over–one email just came in from the UK–who say they love the book. Some of their husbands pick it up and end up reading and using it, too.

My husband thought it was a mistake to use that subtitle. I told him to call my publisher and discuss it with them.

Titles are so very important. It’s a given. I write about titles in the book. But when I wrote that chapter on titles, I didn’t talk about subtitles. Sequel! Sequel!

But men, my book is for you, too.

In Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Ben Yagoda published an essay called “The Subtitle That Changed America.” In the piece, he bemoans the fact that subtitles have become so important to the marketing of a nonfiction book—in publishers’ eyes, anyway.

He says, “Elongated voguish subtitles are harmless enough, but I miss the time, not so long ago, when it was possible for a book to go out into the world with only a strong title followed by a few hundred pages of outstanding writing.”

I thought of my book and its subtitle and how all of the complaints I’ve heard about my book so far have centered around the subtitle: A Busy Woman’s Guide to Igniting the Writer Within.

Pen on Fire was the book’s title long before it sold to Harcourt. But the subtitle has gone through changes. I forget what it was when it sold—something about getting writing done in 15 minutes portions. But the marketing department worked on the subtitle for quite a while, hoping that it would help to draw certain readers, namely women.

I agreed to a great extent with Yagoda who says, “Nobody really notices subtitles. They are a sort of lottery ticket in the economics of nonfiction book marketing.”

Yet, when I began to hear the complaints—mostly from women who felt they couldn’t recommend the book to men because of the subtitle, I started to fret. I don’t want men to avoid the book because they think it’s a book for women.

I talked about this with Chris Baty, author of No Plot? No Problem! He said he was recommending my book all over the place, to men and women because the subtitle to him meant I was the busy woman and it was my guide. I love his take on it.

And so I’m curious: Do you pay attention to subtitles? How important are they? Did my subtitle put off–or attract–anyone, male or female?

In the introduction to a small but fat block-shaped book called, fittingly, The Writer’s Block by Jason Rakulak, the authors talks about all the contradictory advice he offers in the book, and I quite like that, and agree.

It’s so easy to get stuck in the rules or the way that it is. And it’s comforting to know that there’s pretty much not just one way to write or to be a writer.

He says, “Frederick Forsyth says, ‘Write about what you know,’ and Ken Kesey says, ‘Write about what you don’t know.’ Isak Dinesen let her characters run wild and ‘take over’ the story. Vladimir Nabokov refers to his characters as ‘galley slaves.’ Ernest Hemingway says talent is a necessity; Gordeon Lish says talent is irrelevant. The contradictions go on and on and on and on.”

Don’t they, though?

Some writers get up and write first thing, others grab minutes here and there during the day, and yet others write at night.

Some of us do first drafts on computers, others are addicted to–ahem–Moleskines and longhand.

And some need a room of their own while others can write amidst distraction and mayhem.

For all of you starting out, or straying along the way, feel comforted to know there are so many different routes to the same destination.

The main thing–and I must have said this already a zillion times in my lifetime–is to do it. Get the words down.

My friend Jo-Ann Mapson did a Q&A with me, too. (Do y’all even like Q&A’s??)

Click here to be delivered to Jo-Ann Mapson’s site.