National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short, is a novel-writing program where the goal is to write 50,000 words (about a 175-page novel) from November 1 to November 30. With the time limitation, writers are forced to simply write. No procrastinating, no editing, just writing.

If writing a novel doesn’t appeal to you, there are still benefits to using the event to fuel your own writing projects. Use the month of energy and excitement about writing to find the motivation to finish (or start) your dissertation, write that short story you have in mind, or polish those pieces you want to submit. Challenge yourself to blog every single day or create your own 30-day writing event. Use the month to try a style of writing that you may not have a chance to do in your professional job.

You can join NaNoWriMo at any time during November, and while it’s nice to ‘win’ by writing 50,000 words, it’s more about participating in a frenzied celebration of writing. Get ready for 30 days and nights of literary abandon!

This year’s theme is ‘Why I Write’. When someone asks you, “Why professional writing?” or “Why do you want to be a writer?”, how do you answer? When you explain what you love about writing, or why you are a writer, what do you say?

By reflecting on why you write and sharing it with others, you show the importance of writing. Tweet your answer with the hashtags #whyiwrite or #dayonwriting. Update your Facebook status with your answer. Use your blog, Tumblr, YouTube. Tell the world why you write and join in the celebration.

Do you have any tips to share with other professional writers, editors, and designers?

“Never, ever, ever take a job for the money. Just when I think I’ve learned this lesson, I fall back in the hole and end up hating myself, the publication, the world. Only pick the jobs and assignments that are going to make you proud.” — Alissa Walker, Freelance writer

“I’m sure you’ve heard this one before — write regularly. Or if you design, design regularly. It’s the only way to keep your skills sharp and your audience engaged. Also, expose yourself to a lot of newness. New news, new people, new places, new ideas. It spurs creativity and gives you interesting content and perspective. Newness can also mean variety. I’ve noticed that some of the best writers and designers I’ve met have built up experience in many sizes, formats, and mediums.” — Tim Gasper, Keepstream co-founder / The Appconomy contributor

“Be a student of your industry. Read/look at as much work from others in your industry as you can to see how the pros are doing it. Start some kind of “inspiration spot” where you save photos or links or samples of things that inspire you so you can reference them later. But probably the most important thing is to just get out there and create something. Write a blog, take photos, redesign ads or publications you like, just practice your craft and set it free for others to see. You’ll learn the most when you have to stand behind content you’re creating.” — Becky Johns, Account Executive, Agency Communications at Cramer-Krasselt / Freelance Photographer

“Be true to yourself, your skills, and your internal motivations. Be confident in yourself in order to take steps to be doing exactly what you want to be doing. If it were easy, everyone would be doing fine art or publishing a magazine. Having faith in yourself, finding the benefit in what you’re doing, and staying optimistic are the most important things.” — Chad Kouri, Maker and Doer

Thank you to all our featured professionals who gave us a glimpse into the work they do, from how they create and communicate in their job to how they define professional writing. For more inspiration, be sure to check out all our interviews with young professionals.

That’s where summer comes in. Whether you’re on break from school, enjoying summer hours at work, or simply lounging around in the sun more, summer is the perfect time to re-dedicate yourself to making time for reading. If you’re not able to join a local reading group, social media is a great way to get involved and stay motivated.

• Check out the #amreading hashtag on Twitter for reading recommendations and discussions, any time.
• Thousands of readers around the world tweet every Friday about what they’re reading—any medium, any genre—with the hashtag #fridayreads. FridayReads is a way to raise reading’s visibility, talk about books, and even have a chance to win reading-related prizes. You can also share on Facebook or through the FridayReads app.
• The Atlantic has launched a Twitter-based book club, 1book140. One book will be chosen each month, and the first book selection is Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin. Discussion starts June 1, but if you’re not on Twitter, you can join in on Facebook or Tumblr.

What are your summer reading goals?

Tell us about your educational/professional background.
I graduated from Michigan State University in 2009 with a bachelor’s in Advertising and a specialization in Public Relations. I spent my college career dabbling in different areas of the communications field through classes, jobs, and internships. I’ve always been a writer with a natural knack for communicating and I really found a home in the PR world. During college I worked for a PR agency, a media planning company, and selling advertising for the nation’s largest collegiate newspaper. After graduation I worked in corporate communications for a large insurance company and after that joined C-K in January 2011.

Tell us about your current job.
My role in Agency Communications is to promote the work, the people, and the thinking of the agency. Basically, I help out when we’re announcing new business wins, new client campaigns, publishing guest columns or industry-related articles, placing our staff in speaking gigs at conferences, working with the trade publications for the industry, and about a million other things. Most people know about agency PR work on behalf of clients. I do PR on behalf of the agency.

What does a typical day look like for you?
I cruise the news in the morning and send a daily email to our entire agency staff across all offices with helpful articles and links to any coverage C-K is getting, to keep everyone in the loop of when we’re mentioned in the media. That’s really the only consistent part of my job. There’s always a handful of projects going on whether it’s writing press releases, working with writers covering our campaigns, taking photos at agency events, doing research or prepping PR strategies for different agency happenings.

What kinds of documents do you produce?
Press releases, research summaries, content for our agency website and media room, drafts of articles, and much more. In my free time (if you can even call it free time) I write posts for my own blog, guest posts for others, write a weekly column on networking for young professionals, daily articles for Ragan’s PR Daily and freelance articles here and there for other websites.

What communication skills are needed for your job?
I need to be able to communicate well with my boss. We’re a team of two handling efforts for four offices, so she and I need to speak clearly, take good notes and stay on top of email, to-do lists, and keeping each other filled in. It’s very helpful I’m a good writer since I’m communicating with people both internally and externally every day, mostly via email. Media relations skills are essential, knowing how to get the right information to reporters and be helpful to them when they’re looking for information about C-K’s work or clients. It’s also really important to be a good listener and have the ability to gather information from a lot of different people and think about the big picture.

How did you prepare for your job?
I made a big transition joining the agency world. So, I did my best to research the history of the agency, read up on the agency world, and just generally try to soak up as much information as possible during my first few months here since a lot of my colleagues have so much more experience.

List three of your favorite professional resources/references/tools and tell us why they’re your favorite.

1. I read Ragan’s PR Daily (and not just because I’m a contributing editor) and Spin Sucks everyday because they’re both really solid resources for PR pros and keep me current on industry trends and issues. I also check the New York Times Media page, Ad Age, and Mashable a couple times throughout the day to make sure I know what’s going on in the industry.
2. My Twitter feed delivers me the best news, blog posts, and articles. I don’t follow everyone who follows me, but the people I do follow are constant sources of info-rich links. I’ve spent a lot of time really narrowing it down to the right people. I also have a few private Twitter lists categorized for different types of content: tech stuff, photography stuff, ad industry writers and groups of people in Chicago, Detroit, New York and a few other markets I like to keep tabs on.
3. HARO (Help a Reporter Out). It’s three emails a day with queries from reporters all over the world looking for sources for their stories. I’d say at least four times per week I find a query I can respond to, I can flag for our client account teams or I can forward onto a friend who would be a great source. Anyone who works in PR needs to be signed up.

How do you stay up to date in your field?
Keeping current on the news everyday for our daily staff email, my Google reader, and my Twitter lists and friends.

How would you define professional writing?
If someone pays you to communicate a message through the written word — and you do it effectively — you’re a professional writer.

Do you have any tips to share with other professional writers/editors/designers?
Be a student of your industry. Read/look at as much work from others in your industry as you can to see how the pros are doing it. Start some kind of “inspiration spot” where you save photos or links or samples of things that inspire you so you can reference them later. But probably the most important thing is to just get out there and create something. Write a blog, take photos, redesign ads or publications you like, just practice your craft and set it free for others to see. You’ll learn the most when you have to stand behind content you’re creating.

Tell us about your educational/professional background.
Technology has always been a huge passion of mine, but it took me a while before I really knew which angle I would take to get involved in tech. I went to Case Western Reserve University for Engineering and Physics, but as most college students do, my interests evolved. I ended up graduating with degrees in Economics and Marketing.

More importantly though, the last two years of college I was involved with a startup project. Our first idea was spawned at Startup Weekend, a great event where you go from idea to prototype in a single weekend. The goal is to force you to take the initial step toward becoming a real company — because often that first step is the hardest. The company was called CorkShare at the time, and it was my first experience as an entrepreneur. I was only 19, and I learned more than any class I could have ever taken in college. It taught me to set my own agenda, be accountable to myself, and to do the work that actually impacts your business’s bottom line.

In between college and working on Keepstream and freelance full time, I spent a year working at Hyland Software. They are a business software company for streamlining business processes and helping organizations go paperless by using electronic or scanned documents instead of paper. I was a Software Product Evangelist, becoming an expert on the product and creating a lot of content collateral. A strong focus of the position was on doing presentations, both in person and via online webinars.

Tell us about your current job.
Over the course of three years, CorkShare morphed into Keepstream, where as Co-founder and CMO I do marketing, business development, and community engagement. Keepstream is a social media curation tool that helps organize tweets, Facebook posts, and website bookmarks into shareable, embeddable collection pages. Collections are useful for bloggers, marketers, or just about anyone who wants to curate the chatter from a conference or event, a news headline, or a hashtag chat. Working with startups this long has been hugely rewarding because of how dynamic it is. At any minute I may be working on a different project, whether it’s talking to potential customers, creating marketing collateral, or pitching bloggers and journalists.

I am also a contributor to The Appconomy, where I blog about mobile apps, companies, and trends. The Appconomy’s mission is to serve as your trusted, original source of best practices, profiles, features, and commentary covering the rapid transition to the mobile, app-based economy, aka the appconomy. In addition, I contribute articles to the Austin Examiner on the Austin technology scene and interesting technology trends.

What does a typical day look like for you?
A typical day is usually split about half and half between my freelance activities and my startup work. I like to start early because I’m a coffee addict — my morning joe is my most productive time block and is when most of my heavy duty writing gets done. This represents mostly freelance work. After my morning writing is done, I’ll usually go for a workout.

My co-founders are night owls, so after all this we’re ready to head to the Keepstream office where I’ll wrap up any additional freelance, and then focus on whatever project is most urgent for Keepstream. As of writing this we are preparing to do fundraising, so I’m focusing mostly on drumming up customer interest in preparation for a stronger investor pitch. I usually have a couple meetings with a Keepstream user or potential customer, or coordinating with my freelance employers. Throughout the day I use Boxcar (for notifications) and HootSuite (for conversations and sharing) for social media community engagement.

I usually stay in the office until relatively late. That means not much free time, but the work I do is fun and engaging, which makes the long hours extremely engaging and rewarding.

What kinds of documents do you produce?
I produce a lot of varying work. Examples include blog articles, white papers, web copy, software tutorial videos, fact sheets, presentation slide decks, spreadsheets for tracking initiatives, marketing or business plans, etc.

What communication skills are needed for your job?
First thing that comes to mind is dealing with massive amounts of email, both inbound and outbound. Thank God for Gmail! I have to be quick, to the point, and well organized. I have to work with a lot of different people in a relatively informal way, so I have to clearly communicate expectations, be very transparent about progress, and place a lot of trust into delegation and accountability. In general, I have to be an effective writer and speaker across many mediums and be comfortable regardless of context, whether it’s online, a coffee shop one-on-one, a networking event, or the boardroom.

How did you prepare for your job?
My preparation came mostly from working with other people, both in school and professionally. I did a lot of extracurriculars in school such as the event programming board, marketing club, economics honor society, and others. Writing and communications skills came mostly from school and these extracurriculars. Also, all the jobs I took on during and after school happened to require me to be heavily involved with writing and content creation. You learn by doing.

List three of your favorite professional resources/references/tools and tell us why they’re your favorite.
HootSuite: I love any chance I can get to profess my love for HootSuite. Overall, I think it’s the best free social media dashboard and analytics tool out there.

Gobbledygook Grader: Great tool by HubSpot for making sure your writing isn’t full of useless jargon. It also tells you what education level your article targets so you can either smarten it up or dumb it down depending on your audience. David Meerman Scott, who wrote the awesome book The New Rules of Marketing and PR, helped create the tool. He uses the word “gobbledygook” to describe what the rest of us call buzzwords or fluff.

AP Styleguide: It’s the go-to guide for writing style and etiquette for me, especially regarding journalistic formats.

I won’t consider it one of my three, but my company Keepstream gets an honorable mention. It’s a great way to incorporate tweets or other social content into your blog posts and websites. Plus we’ll be moving into a lot of analytics soon that will be super useful to Social Media Managers, PR agencies, and writers… so stay tuned.

How do you stay up to date in your field?
RSS and blogs are still the best way to stay up to date in my opinion. I use Twitter for conversations and running into information serendipitously, but I use Google Reader to bring in a consistent flow of good blog articles around Marketing, Technology, and Social Media Measurement. A couple blogs I really like include:

• Tech / Startups: A Smart Bear by Jason Cohen, A VC by Fred Wilson, and Chris Dixon’s Blog
• Marketing / Social Media: Flowtown, Kissmetrics, and BrandBuilder

How would you define professional writing?
Good question. I don’t think I’m the best person to answer this question, but I think you can look at it in two ways. One, is writing your primary activity? And two, do you make money from writing? I think the first question gets a little closer to the matter, because I’m sure there are many professional writers with an engaged audience out for more than just making cash. The more you write, the better you are at it, and the cooler your job title, I suppose the more serious people will take you when you say you are a professional writer.

Do you have any tips to share with other professional writers/editors/designers?
I’m sure you’ve heard this one before — write regularly. Or if you design, design regularly. It’s the only way to keep your skills sharp and your audience engaged. Also, expose yourself to a lot of newness. New news, new people, new places, new ideas. It spurs creativity and gives you interesting content and perspective. Newness can also mean variety. I’ve noticed that some of the best writers and designers I’ve met have built up experience in many sizes, formats, and mediums.

Photo by Cicilia Teng

Tell us about your educational/professional background.
My whole life I actually wanted to be in advertising. It’s kind of sick, but I was obsessed with television ads, even though I didn’t watch a lot of TV (maybe that’s why). So I set a very direct course to an advertising degree, which meant I went through the journalism school at the University of Colorado, followed by the advertising program at The Portfolio Center in Atlanta. I was dead set on being either a copywriter or an art director. But something changed once I finished school, I realized I had really fallen in love with writing, and maybe not the ad-making part so much. When I got out of school I tried to get those choice advertising jobs but in 2000 they just didn’t exist anymore due to the dot-com bubble bursting. I took a few freelancing gigs and hated it. So I took a day job at a production studio and tried to write. Well that never works, so three years later I found myself on a trip to Europe all by myself (and eating a lot of gelato), and realizing that if I wanted to write, I had to get serious about it. So I started my totally-serious, writing-only freelance career. Soon after that I got a job as an editor of the design blog UnBeige and my career just took off. That was seven years ago and I’ve never looked back. I love being a writer, I love telling stories, and I love being freelance.

Tell us about your current job.
Right now I’m a freelance writer for several publications. I contribute regularly to GOOD; Fast Company’s new design site, Co.Design; the public radio show DnA: Design and Architecture; and write occasionally for a few others like Dwell, AFAR, and Sunset. I have been writing a blog about design, cities, walking, Los Angeles, and gelato since 2006 named Gelatobaby. I produce and program a lot of events and conferences, including events and parties here in LA for GOOD, as well as the monthly design event design east of La Brea. I’ll be speaking and moderating several panels at the upcoming Dwell on Design conference in June, and I’m also putting together an emerging designer mini-conference for AIGA’s national design conference in Phoenix in the fall. I’m also working on a book of essays about Los Angeles.

What does a typical day look like for you?
I get up around 6:00am and start to sift through the emails which have accumulated in the night. Then I usually start on my toughest or most important writing assignment first thing in the morning when my brain is sharpest. A few days a week I head into the office at GOOD (here in LA) for meetings, but otherwise I’m here at my desk pretty much all day. I also do a lot of field reporting for local stories so I’m often out and about a few days a week, riding my bike or public transportation to various places around Los Angeles. I stop and make a really great lunch with my boyfriend, the graphic designer Keith Scharwath, who also works from our house. I usually work on the weekends, too.

What kinds of documents do you produce?
I would say a vast majority of the pieces I write are blog posts. This is a dramatic shift from only a few years ago when I was producing maybe 75% print pieces and 25% blog. Now the print pieces are definitely the exception. But I actually really prefer writing online pieces: the immediacy is so great, and the ability to share and comment make the story better.

What communication skills are needed for your job?
Freelancers in general need to be very clear about their availability and be able to manage expectations, things I’d say I’m not so talented at. I often take on far more than I can feasibly do and then work far more than is humanly possible. Although I’m not sure it’s a requirement, I am very vigilant about answering emails right away. Again, not sure if that’s necessarily a good thing but it’s something I feel strongly about.

How did you prepare for your job?
I think I took a very roundabout path to my current career (and I say current because it could all change soon!) so I’ve ended up drawing upon many skills that I’ve used throughout my lifetime. One thing that sticks out is my experiences performing in theater and show choirs when I was younger. Public speaking has become a big part of my job and I don’t think I would have been able to do it if I hadn’t been onstage so much as a teenager.

List three of your favorite professional resources/references/tools and tell us why they’re your favorite.
The first and foremost is UPOD, a writers’ group started by my friend David Hochman. Here journalists from around the world share information and advice with each other. It’s awesome. And I have to say Twitter is #2: It’s where I get most of my story ideas, and where I’m able to share what I write with an enthusiastic audience. #3 would be my Leica D-LUX 4 camera. I love taking photos and writing about the way I experience Los Angeles on my blog.

How do you stay up to date in your field?
As I mentioned, Twitter is a pretty great tool, as is just reading the blogs of my friends, who are all geniuses in their fields.

How would you define professional writing?
Professional writing is the ability to take an important story and turn it into an unforgettable experience that your enthusiastic readers can’t help but share with their friends.

Do you have any tips to share with other professional writers/editors/designers?
Never, ever, ever take a job for the money. Just when I think I’ve learned this lesson, I fall back in the hole and end up hating myself, the publication, the world. Only pick the jobs and assignments that are going to make you proud.

Our featured professionals will give us a glimpse into the work they do, from how they create and communicate in their job to how they define professional writing.

The Spring series will kick off tomorrow, April 27. Until then, get inspired by browsing our past features of young professionals.

You can join the project by writing about the significant women in your life—describing their lives, sharing photos, and writing stories in their memory. All women who are named will be added to the Internet Archive to ensure that they will be remembered in the future. For more information, visit the project’s site.

When Monica Gaudio found out that a blog post of hers was published without her permission in Cooks Source Magazine, she contacted editor Judith Griggs to request apologies on Facebook and in the magazine, along with reasonable compensation in the form of a $130 donation to the Columbia School of Journalism. Not only did Griggs defend her use of Gaudio’s work, but she also suggested Gaudio pay for the editing done on the now portfolio-ready piece.

[…] the web is considered “public domain” and you should be happy we just didn’t “lift” your whole article and put someone else’s name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence [sic] and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! Source

This has, as expected, enraged writers, editors, and readers across the internet who have been tweeting and posting to Cooks Source‘s Facebook page. Unfortunately, Gaudio’s story is not unique. The scandal has caused closer scrutiny of other content in the magazine, and has already found several more instances of plagiarism. In this digital age, copy+paste makes it easier than ever to plagiarize content, strip bylines or sources, and label it ethical publishing. But it also means that tracking down offenders and increasing awareness can be done through a series of clicks. Educate yourself about copyright and the internet and protect your content.