Some Writerly Advice for Writing Success

A while back the New York Times Book Review ran an article on writing by Colson Whitehead, a MacArthur award winning novelist. The piece gives writers some easy rules on "How to Write". I especially like the eleventh one: "There are no rules. If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you do it., too?" -- Yeah, I know I write genre and the NYT emphases literary. My position is good writing is good writing.

Does dialog = a cure for writer's block? Came across this quote on Advice to Writers by Jon Winokur, via  Writing News quoting Dave Mamet: Dialog is easier than plotting. Really struck a note with me, because when I hit a blank spot, I sit my characters down and have them talk about their reactions to the situation they're in, then have something disturb their colloquy. Then, I edit, revise, add setting, descriptions, movements and surprises. Seems to work for me in that I get words down on paper. How good the words are is something else.

Of course, there are as many kinds of winter's block as there are writers. Laura Lee Carter has another take on writer's block. She writes about how she no longer suffers from writer's block at her blog: What's Writer's Block and Why I Don't Have It.  If stress has become one of your writer hangups, you might check out Laura Lee's blog on a regular basis.

I actually block more on promoting my writing than actually writing my stories. Maybe that's why I always look for negative comments about book promotion. So, when does promoting your book become spam? Yasimine Galenorm wrote a blog knocking begging writers, in effect.  Her rather pointed comments made me feel somewhat guilty -- even though I try to interact with my few readers. Check out her blog to read a master writer's take on blogging, Twitter, and Facebook.

Then, when you get tired of promoting your books, Angela Scott, a YA author, gives you *Ten Ways to Promote Your Book and Get Sure-Fire Results*. 

How do I promote my books? How about a mention of my Half-Elven Facebook page:

http://on.fb.me/Ji16iT

I'd appreciate a few more likes on it. 

[I actually have one.]

While tooting my horn, my website is: 

http://www.half-elven.com

It comes complete with links to a couple free fantasy estories. 

 

Writer's Block: When Does It Plague You?

Had a blog mostly written on Word, with some really nice, informative links. But ... it didn't transfer here. So, I'm starting from scratch since I did find a place where I can post a new blog instead of work with my blog drafts. Yeah, I can't find find such simple things as my Blogger dashboard. Mine went AWOL, and I can't find it. Yeah, I'm still fighting with Google+ ... which isn't kind to people with dyslexia. The change totally confuses me.

What have I been doing? I was editing Dark Solstice, sort of Book six in the Half-Elven saga/ An agent wanted to look at sample chapters, but I got a "wasn't right for me" response ... so I'm going back to seeking a small publisher. Now, I'm letting my brain simmer and will see what pops out. Think that means I'm courting writer's block.

Sandra Novak did a nice blog on just that at Girlfriends Book Club. Writer's Block.

I'm linking it here so I can go back to this ... provided I can ever find the blog again at Google+. [Do you get the idea I don't like the forced merger between Blogger and Google+?] 

In the past, I haven't had much problem with writer's block, but then, I came to writing from a newspaper where there were deadlines. You wrote your 1000 words and the editor took out the garbage. [More or less, like a super-charged critique group.] Now, I think I'm going to be dithering on what to do next. Got a lot of manuscripts in the computer -- or play with a partial or  -- go for something totally new? 

I'm going to take a vacation as my first step in facing my writer's block. I've got marketing stuff to do. Hopefully, I'll fixate on what new thing I should work on. -- I won't talk about the new thing I'll be revising since I've got to make a decision there too. Yeah, I'm going to try to break my day into three segments: social networking, revising, and creating. 

Maybe I should have titled this piece: Decisions, Decisions? Whatever, I'm going to try to get back into the blogging groove ... even if the results are different than they were.

Twisting the Reader's Expectations

When Excalibur landed on John Taylor's Nightside table, I expected  A Hard Day's Knight would be the lead-in to a mini-series within a series. The first novel: Excalibur finding where King Arthur might be, then finding King Arthur, and last, the grand battle against some evil or other. Simon R. Green took care of all the options in one book in his usual chuckle-out-loud style.

The book was the perfect book to read while I was too sick to cope with Carol Berg's dense novels and too aware to wadtch TV. Actually, I went from sleeping to watching a few True Blood DVDs to reading Green. Was slower than usual, but I got the book read. 

One of the things I liked best in this book was Green's use of portals from one imaginative world to the next.  Not only does Green have London hosting the Nightside, but the whole world of the descendents of the Knights of the Round Table. Nightside is also the gateway to many other worlds, curtesy of the Doormouse. Green also managed to eliminate elves by sending them to a new un-inhabited world where they can fight among themselves in peace -- after Puck kills Queen Mab, that is.

So, writers be warned. Queen Mab is finally dead. I wonder if Jim Butcher's heard?

Do have one bitch about the book. I saw the book in several places but never bought it because the first chapter was familiar. I thought I'd read the book already. Luckily, before I went into the hospital I picked it up to maybe send it too a friend. Ended up reading the book myself, and will keep it if I can find the rest of my Green books on my chaotic bookshelves.

Was going to spend my afternoon, working on a new story. Guess where I am ... fiddling with my blog. Think it's because I'm feeling a little guilty about not writing my review of A Hard Day's Knight  on Sunday or Monday. I'm really toying with the idea of only blogging once a week -- at least until my energy level re-appears. Problem? I notice my readership drops off.

Have you wondered about the readership levels of your blog? Do you wish you had more participants? [If so, you're more gregarious than I am.]  Whatever, if you're looking to increase your blog traffic, you might check out Lisa Dale's blog about Six Ways to Resuscitate a Dying Author Blog.

I have been reading lots of blogs. Perhaps, the one I like best was Jessica Faust's Is Your Promotion Making Sense?  I savored its permission not to social network. [Actually, that's a twist on what she said. I think she was really saying that you need to be sure your efforts are productive.   

How to Start a Novel

Got slapped up the side of the head again; this time while I was reading for the fun-of-it. While my thumbs were recovering from NaNoWriMo, I decided to read through all three books of L. L. Foster's [aka Lori Foster] Servant trilogy: Servant, The Awakening - Servant, The Acceptance - and Servant, The Kindred. Decided I really like the way the Foster developed the main character with a different life-goal in each book. Liked her decision not to turn Gaby into a series, even better. [My surmise from Foster's website]

So, what did I learn? Perhaps a solution for my main writing problem: never starting at the beginning of my story. My critique partners are always saying I don't give enough information for them to have an idea of where my story is going. Result is that I'm always tacking chapters on at the beginning -- after I think I'm in the middle of the book. This time, when I re-read the Servant novels, I think I may have found a solution. I noticed how Foster introduced her characters.

Yeah, she showed her characters in action. She's a modern, professional author, after all. That's the easy part. The hard part is to indicate the "problem" while the action's flowing.

First chapter: Foster took care of that by showing the villain first, without naming him/her. "POV break" Then, she showed Gaby, God's paladin to destroy evil in her city, in the throes of her need to save someone from evil and her ambivalence towards that compulsion along with enough back story to understand a bit of what Gaby is. We also get introduced to a major side-kick in a confrontation that demonstrates Gaby's perpetual bad mood. 

[The bad mood is one of the reasons I like this character so much.]

The next two chapters are much the same except they introduce Luther, the love interest and main support character who also offers a strong conflict situation since he's a cop. As God's paladin, Gaby is a freelancer on the street. The conflict continues for three books, until it's resolved. Foster sells lots of books because she tells a good sotry, so she's well  worth studying.

Money,

something, maybe, too many writers forget.

A quote from Janet Reid, my wish-for agent 
but I don't write  what she represents

[and I probably don't write well enough for her to be interested any way].

"This is a for-profit business and I spend my time doing what I think is going to make me boatloads of money. Shiploads would be better. Helping you figure out why your book doesn't work is not going to make me any money. It makes you feel better. Those are NOT the same things."

[Yeah, there's a similarity in attitude between Janet Reid and Gaby.]

I'll sum up Reid's comment:

Agents are in the business to make money.
If they don't think you can make them money, 
they aren't interested in your story. 

You probably want to make money writing too. That means PROMOTION: 

While procrastinating instead of writing, I discovered a neat list of promotion sites that Mimi Barbour used to promote her book. Doesn't say much about how to use them, but The 13 Steps I took to Promote My Work gives a good check lists of the ones that seem effective. Her list may very well tip the balance of my signing up for a couple of them -- even though I can't keep the ones I'm doing updated regularly.

I'll close with a link to Allison Pang's blog for a sensible approach to Twitter.

Getting Noticed, the Bug-a-Boo of Promotion

Okay, I'm still hitting my head against the big marketing wall and have the bruises to prove it. Little traffic and sales.

Yeah, "I'm promoting". An example. Just noticed that I've done over a 1,000 Tweets and over 200 followers [most of them pertinent to writing]. The first few months I visited there, my tweets and followers were in the single digits.

Surprising, how promoting your stuff adds up. I'm mentioning all three of my pubs on Twitter. I include the Independent Authors Network' hash-tag and url. They even retweet me ... for what that's worth.

Does Twitter work for book promotion? I think maybe. I know that I get more traffic when I mention my books on Smashwords. Whether or not, someone buys depends on your blurb and other marketing skills. I think writers can chalk one up for the traditional publishers here. At least, I have this dream that they have a set of guidelines to help their writers do the promotion bit.

Back to the bug-a-boo of promotion: getting people to notice your book. A book by the IBC  [the Indie Book Collective] people does just that according to Jeff Bennington at The Writing Time Bomb. Why, oh why, do I keep finding such stuff when I don't have the time to absorb it. How to Sell More Ebooks gives some great ideas on getting noticed on Amazon where probably more USA books are sold than any where else. 

I'm thinking the book may be a buy ... but how to you study on Kindle? Can you underline and write notes to yourself as you read?

Yet again the ladies at Duolit have come up with some great suggestions for getting your NaNoWriMo project getting noticed by other writers: 5 Ways to Build Hype Before NaNoWriMo.  The good thing? Many of the ideas will apply to promoting all your writing.

So, happy writing ... and happier promoting if you sell something. If you are on Facebook, Twitter, etc you can promote even your short story sales. I'm sure editors appreciate all positive mentions of their publications ... just like authors do.

Random Thoughts On Writing

Color my face green for Halloween. Read Maria Zanini's blog on promoting her new book, Chain of Souls. She's running a nice little contest [+], all people have to do is mention it on Facebook and Twitter so it's easy, [+], mentions her first book [+], and feeds her dog at the same time. Seriously, you should take some time to read her past blogs. I like her energetic promotion of her books. 

[I'm the contrast for what not to do. All talk, and very little do.]

Ever wonder why so many "mainstream" writers are e-publishing their backlist? The Passive Guy ran a piece where Nina Bruhns, a romance writer [who I haven't read], discusses why she e-published. Seems her traditionally published print book delivered $42.50 in royalties. Over the same period of time, the same number of e-books sold = $1500. Don't need to think much about why there's an indie revolution.

Writing paranormal? If you can put an interesting twist o the cliches, I think you have a strong market. Picked up a paperback at the grocery store featuring five short stories by J. C. Robb and a bunch of other writers I had never heard of before, including Ruth Ryan Langan. In touch with the season, all had a touch of the paranormal.

My favorite story of the bunch was Langan's "The Unforgiven", a ghost story about a highland lord who wasn't too thrilled about have his castle turned into a bed and breakfast by a impoverished woman, who had just inherited said castle. The story was quite a bit more complicated than that but that's a good enough log line for writing of the fly. [Robb's monster was pretty neat, too, but I can't remember the other stories.]

Then, there's NaNoWriMo. The madness is almost here, and the Duolit team gives writers a strategy for successfully pounding out 50,000 words.  Look at their other suggestions on their blog: 5 Tips For NaNoWriMo Success. My comment: If I have to do an outline, I'm doomed.

Squeezing the Most out of Your Twitter Time

I'm always amazed at how Twitter helps me learn about using the world wide web. Some how, this computer klutz grasps many of the details without thinking. More important I find lots of useful information amidst the chatter -- even if I don't study it as I should.

Christine Rose, in her blog, On Marketing, Mochas, and Mayhem, talks about more than the Top Ten Twitter Resources.  My favorite was the top one in 11 Ways to Use Twitter to Held Your Site Go Viral :  be able to tweet about your website (ie: describe it in 140 characters). Here's my draft example for my Far Ilse Half-Elven website:

Visit the Far Isle Half-Elven for a different take on elves: http://www.half-elven.com You'll also find a free story set in that world. #fantasy

Now, I have the revise the home page before I do anything with it. [I'm also think of switching to Book Baby's website hosting ... if I can even get out from under the revising, drafting, and the messy desk.] 

Thanks to Christine, I'll be able to promote Taking Vengeance and and Cavern Between Worlds more effectively, I hope. What's more, I discovered the log line for Taking Vengeance on my website is better than the one on Amazon and Smashwords.  Now, to find the time to change it ...

Almost rolled on the floor laughing: Julie Issac claimed that promoting your book can be fun. Some great ideas there too, but I don't think she more comfortable in her corner, growling, than promoting.  Some people just have a marketing gene. I'm one of the ones who doesn't.

If I was a good little writer, I'd post this ... clear off a place on my "desk" [aka card table] ... and study the above two blogs. But, I won't. My stomach says it's lunch time.

Procrastinators Anonymous, anyone?

 

Does Writing Openings Paralyze You?

My Book Review [aka Comments]:

Okay, I know about the importance of a book's opening sentence, paragraph and chapters.  They perform the important hooking function of luring the reader deeper into the book, but oh, is it sweatful.  That and the cover and book blurb are major selling points when you look at a book on the rack.  Yeah, Nora Roberts' The Search hooked me with the first chapter and the  blurb about rescue dogs.  I picked it up because rescue dogs interest me even though I'm a cat person. In short, Roberts lured me out of my reading zone.

Then, reality set in.  The book's almost 500 words long, long enough to be a pain in the butt if you try to read it in less than a week.  But, that wasn't the reason I found myself skimming the book half-way through.  I felt the thriller [suspense novel ?] got bogged down in the detail.  

Still, there's a lot to like, especially if you're a romance reader. [I'm not.]  Still, I liked Roberts lip-lock scenes in this book.  They weren't all sugary and weak-kneed but kept a fair amount of heat between two interesting adults.  If you want to read a book about a survivor,  The Search will give you a good read ... provided you are trying to kill lots of free time.  I'll even grant that you might like to read romances.

Bonus Review:

Sins Out of School  [a Dorothy Martin mystery] by Jeanne M. Dams ... starts with the premise: what can go wrong when a teacher takes on a substitute assignment. [We'll pause while teachers shudder.]  In this case, it's a murder. The book is a nice, if somewhat predictable, cozy mystery about an sleuth who's an American living in Britain.  Again, I guess my definition of fantasy stretches to this book since I can't quite accept that such places ever existed except in never-never Britain.

Lessons in My Reading:

Slow but sure does it.  Still haven't done much on the book review front, but I did discover a blog about the Five Best Ebook Stores at Lifehacker. In short, the places where your ebook should be.  They list these ebook stores: Google ebooks, Project Gutenberg, Kobo, B&N Nook, and Amazon Kindle.  WolfSinger Press took care of the Kobo, B&N, and Amazon for Taking Vengeance. 

Ugh.  I have more research to do for Cavern Between Worlds since I self-published it.  It's up on Smashwords which includes Kobo.  The rest will have to wait until I start charging for the book in August.  [Just like that, there's another item added to my to-do list.] --  One bit of information for self-publishers:  you can set your book up for Pub It [B&N] and Kindle [Amazon] on Smashwords.

Yeah, the book review requests keep going to the back burner, mostly because I'm really concentrating on writing new stuff so I can publish something else, maybe.  I'm trying write more pointed scenes in the draft rather have my characters drift around in an interesting situation. Found Kathryn Craft's blog about Critique Speak at the Blood Red Pencil quite pertinent.  The goal is to present sharp, crisp scenes that intrigue my critiquers the first time around.

There's another reason for the slowness in the review process -- time.  Finding places to submit your review means you have to read several possibilities to make sure they review your genre.  Then, there's no guarantee you'll get reviewed once you get added to their queue.  Still, I image much of my not-so-free time on the web will be spent going through my lists.  The two best lists I've found stress indie books:  Simon Royke's the Indie Book Reviewer and the Reviewer List.  I'm hoping for two reviews from 100 cold calls.

Trivia:

Okay, in spite of complaining about how busy I am, we're going to see the last Harry Potter.  I expect a grand spectacle after a nice lunch.  No, I'm not all sad that Harry Potter's ending.  I enjoyed reading the books, but often the movies did a better job telling a story.  

My recommendation:  all writers should read to marvel at the world J. K. Rowling created.  Her writing would make an anthropologist proud.