Great Stuff on the Writers’ Blogs, February 16-18, 2013

Quite a variety of Great Stuff today: it’s been a productive weekend on the blogosphere.

One mini-announcement before I turn you loose, I’ll be “attending” the IndieReCon online writers’ conference Tuesday through Thursday, so Wednesday’s and Friday’s posts may be a bit thin.

CRAFT

KM Weiland’s (@KMWeiland) penultimate entry in her series on scenes and sequels has to do with Variations on the Sequel. These variations can happen in the reaction (it’s ongoing, delayed, or shown in a flashback), in the dilemma or decision (such as if the decision turns out to be a dead end), or in the entire sequel (how quickly or slowly it happens, whether its elements are in order or not, or are disproportionate in length or strength, or if the sequel is interrupted by a new scene). Of course, this summary doesn’t do the post justice, so click that link and get the whole story, as it were.

BUSINESS

I have no idea what prompted Suw Charman-Anderson to write Piracy, Saviour of the Book Industry for Forbes magazine, but her message to the publishing industry is somewhat similar to what Cory Doctorow has been saying to writers for over a decade: not only is piracy of written works a minor problem at best (Charman-Anderson calls it a boulder in the road), it’s (@Doctorow says) an opportunity to reach more readers, many of whom will eventually pay for their free copy or buy another one and, again from Charman-Anderson, opens up the possibility of a secondhand ebook market. I wonder who will listen.

Meanwhile, Joe Konrath’s (@JAKonrath) now ebooks are selling like hotcakes, maybe better (does $15,000 of income in a week sound good?), in part because he’s been giving them away via the KDP Select program. In Hungry Dogs, he explains how readers are like those hungry dogs—in good ways!—and offers six keys to Konrath-like sales numbers. Note (once again) that he, like Doctorow, is NOT worried about giving away copies.

SOCIAL MEDIA

We haven’t visited the hilarious Catherine Ryan Howard (@cathryanhoward) of Catherine, Caffeinated in a while, but today we get to with her Social Media for Authors: [Groan] Do I HAVE To? Here’s her answer from near the end of a very funny post: “You’ll only make money by selling books, and the first step in selling a book is to inform a potential reader than it exists. For a self-published author, social media is the only gateway to a global audience that doesn’t charge a toll. So yes, I think you have to.”

TECHNOLOGY

If you’re self-published and want to track your sales (of course you do), Carol Wyer (@carolewyer) has posted a Tutorial: NovelRank that introduces you to NovelRank and shows you how to use it. Well, sort-of shows you. Wyer posted lots of screenshots, which was a great idea, but they’re so small it’s very hard to see what she’s filled in, highlighted, circled, or got arrows pointing to. Now, there is a video on the NovelRank site that shows you how to do it, too, but it flashes through so much in 60 seconds that for a new visitor it’s hard to absorb what’s being done and there’s no narration or explanatory text, only background music. So, the idea of the post and video are both good, and the service may well be useful, but you’re going to need to spend some time with the post and site to make it work.

Well, this should be interesting. By his own (indirect) admission, Joel Friedlander (@JFBookman) was a bit of a software snob, favoring high-powered (and high-priced) programs like Adobe InDesign over the relatively cheaper and more pedestrian Microsoft Word. And yet… people still insisted on using Word to format their ebooks! Badly, too often, which made Joel and others like him cringe. So he railed against using Word. But now he’s seen the light and announces today in Book Designer Confesses: The Truth About Word Processors that it’s time to help Word users do book design well, or as well as possible within the capabilities and limitations of programs like Word. And so a series is about to start. Stay tuned!

THE WRITING LIFE

Full-time high school math teacher and epic fantasy writer Patrick Carr posted How to Write While Managing a Full-Time Job: 5 Ways to Maximize Your Time on the Guide to Literary Agents over the weekend. If you, like so many of us, are in this situation, you’ll find these hints helpful. Personally, I would have put #5, “Make writing a priority,” at the top of the list, because if you don’t do this, none of the other four will matter—or happen—but that’s just me. The suggestions are all still good.

There are some people (I’m not naming any names) who are absolutely dead-set against writers’ groups, whatever they might be called. It’s too bad their minds are so closed. For the rest of us, Gabriela Pereira’s (@DIYMFA) Writing Workshop: How to Tell When You Need That Boost is a clear summary of what a group can do for a writer. If you think a group might be for you, check out Gabriela’s four ways to tell and three important factors to consider about yourself and the group(s) you might be considering.

Like anything you see here? Please share it with your writing friends!

Great Stuff on the Writers’ Blogs, February 14 & 15, 2013

The weekend is upon us—a 3-dayer here in the U.S., for “Presidents’ Day” on Monday—so you’ll have plenty of time for today’s posts. Enjoy!

PRE-ANNOUNCEMENT

Changes are coming to Great Stuff on the Writers’ Blogs and Critique Technique, starting Friday, March 1^st. Watch for more news as we get closer to the big day.

CRAFT

Lisa Cron’s (@lisacron) 5 Reasons Why Readers Love Your Story is pretty dense, especially for a blog post. Not dense as in “stupid”—I wouldn’t be mentioning it here if that was the case—but dense as in giving you a lot to think about. Four of her five reasons get into the psychology of readers and reading—well, the fifth one, “you give readers hours of just plain flat-out fun,” is psychological too—so it’s all pretty deep insight. Not a light or quick read, by any means, but worth the time for a slow, thoughtful one. One other thing, though: don’t let it pressure you into thinking your every word has to be intensely personal and perceptive and meaningful and powerful. Remember that reason #5.

Amy Wilentz’s (@amywilentz) terrific How to Bring Subjects to Life in Your Nonfiction Writing is absolutely NOT just for nonfiction writers! Her discussion of how details about each character —and which details— not only tells but shows the power and value of the technique. If you, like me, have trouble building character descriptions in fiction (or nonfiction), this piece is for you. And while we’re on the topic of nonfiction, Alice Crider (@AliceCrider) offers a dozen or so questions to keep in mind (all reader-oriented) to help you with Powerful Non-Fiction Writing. Note that here too the questions can be reframed and applied to a fiction protagonist.

Okay, time to get your grammar geek on! Today we welcome Mignon Fogarty (a.k.a. the @GrammarGirl) to Great Stuff. Her post addresses parts of the question, Where Do I Use Commas? Part 1: The “Oxford comma” (the one before “and” at the end of a list). “It’s a style choice.” In other words, be consistent about how you use it. Part 2: NOT between a subject and its verb. Ever. Part 3: Pauses DO NOT equal pauses. (Harvey Stanbrough has discussed the relationships between punctuation marks in general and pauses in greater detail here.) Part 4: whether to use commas around appositives, those words or phrases (like this one) that name or rename the noun they follow. (Space doesn’t permit me to even summarize the answer here.)

BUSINESS

Michael Swanwick hasn’t weighed in much on business but this time he does, at length, with How Does a Writer Make a Living Today? His approach and view is much more measured, especially with regard to self-publishing, than say Joe Konrath, primarily because Swanwick still publishes primarily in print. But he ends with this point: every time someone has predicted that some change will mean that writers will no longer be able to make a living writing, we find a way.

TECHNOLOGY

Wow, where do I put this post? It could fit in Craft, or Business, maybe even Social Media. I’ve decided to put Harry Guinness’s (@harryguinness) Creative Penn guest post Why And How To Use MultiMedia To Enhance Your Ebooks here, because it’s about using technology to add additional dimensions, specifically photos and videos, to ebook storytelling. To be sure, this isn’t a new idea, but as Guinness notes, it’s becoming easier, cheaper, and more easily available every year. Will this technology change storytelling? Of course. How much? That’s very much still to be determined. For better or worse? That’ll be a matter of individual opinion. But check out what’s possible.

FUN

Haven’t had the chance to point to anything by Writer’s Digest editor Zachary Petit in a while but Bug-Out Bags for Writers is just too fun to pass up. The good news: none of the bags are very big. The bad news: well, you had to bug-out, after all. That’s bad enough. 😉 What would go in your bag?

Great Stuff on the Writers’ Blogs, January 2, 2013

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope that whichever December holidays you celebrated, if any, brought you peace, joy, and maybe even some new stuff. And if you didn’t celebrate any holiday formally, I hope you at least absorbed the (non-commercial) spirit of the time without the religious content. It’s possible!

While I haven’t been blogging during this time, I have been reading lots of blog posts. There’s LOTS of stuff here, more than I’m sure you can absorb in one reading. Scan it, pick out what interests you and come back to the rest later—or not. That’s okay too.

One last thing before we get to all the Great Stuff below: I’d hoped to be making a Big Announcement today but alas, due to technical matters beyond my control, that announcement will be delayed by about a month. In the meantime, you’ll still find Great Stuff right here.

CRAFT

The holiday season is no obstacle for KM Weiland (@KMWeiland) to continue her series on scenes with Pt. 3: Options for Goals in a Scene. We already know that a story’s protagonist and antagonist need to have story-level goals and that the protagonist in each scene needs much more immediate and small-scale goals, a point Weiland reemphasizes. The important point she adds in this post is that sometimes a scene goal is actually part of a larger one that will take multiple scenes to reach or fail to reach. Thus partial (single-scene) goals build together into that overarching (multi-scene) goal.

She continues with Pt. 4: Options for Conflict in a Scene. Story is conflict. We all know that, or should, and there needs to be some kind of conflict in each and every scene. In this post, Katie discusses two key elements of scene conflict: options for the kinds of conflict the scene can have and whether the conflict is integral to the scene and the story. Terrific stuff. One subtle point worth noting: scene conflict doesn’t have to be huge but it has to be. Some of her examples illustrate just that.

With the year seemingly rushing to its end as I write this, it’s appropriate for Katie to also write about not rushing a story along in Should You Slam Your Story’s Brakes? on her WORDplay blog. While it is important to keep a story moving, there is such a thing as going too fast too, she writes, and that’s a good time to use other techniques besides speed to build a story’s tension.

Donald Maass (@DonMaass) is always good for thought-provoking columns on Writer Unboxed and The Paradox is no exception. He actually discusses two: that your story matters “more than anything, and… not at all” and that characters should both embody their conflicts and yet not be in a hurry to resolve them. The first paradox allows you to take the time you need to flesh out your story, and the second allows your characters to become rich and full. Great Stuff!

Maybe it’s not surprising but agent Paula Munier (@PaulaSMunier) of Talcott Notch Literary Services also disagrees with Dean Wesley Smith (below) on the value of writers’ groups in her Literary Agent Interview on the Guide to Literary Agents. She’s got other important advice, too, that can’t be repeated often enough. The interview’s brief so I won’t try to reprise it here.

If you’re interested in cover design and the thinking that goes into it, check out Joel Friedlander’s (@jfbookman) A Book Cover’s Evolutions—Embrace of the Daimon. This cover went through four iterations, starting in the late 1990s, one published, one soon to be, with some pretty significant changes along the way.

BUSINESS

Mark Coker (@MarkCoker), founder and CEO of Smashwords, writes a very, very long (multiples-of-Kris-Rusch long) 2013 Book Publishing Industry Predictions – Indie Ebook Authors Take Charge on the Smashwords blog. This is by far and away the longest blog post I’ve read or written about here, but since Smashwords has become such an important player in the indie-pub world, Coker’s thoughts carry weight, even as he freely acknowledges that each and every one of his 21 projections could be wrong. Still, if you’re interested in the indie-publishing world, especially if you’re already in it or planning to/considering getting into it, this post is worth the time (plan on an hour) to study. Thanks to Joel Friedlander for pointing it out.

Joel also highlighted Free Book Promotions by James Moushon (@jimhbs) on Self-Publishing Review. Moushon offers a set of 10 planning steps authors should take before engaging in a giveaway program, plus steps to take during and after. He also includes comments from writers who have done giveaways—and not all are positive about the experience! I hope that was intentional: an expectations-management exercise. Moushon also seems to focus on using Amazon’s KDP Select distribution channel for this effort, which some (Coker among them) caution against because of Amazon’s 90-day exclusive distribution demand for participation in KDP Select. Good information here, but also some ideas to approach with caution.

I generally don’t include Porter Anderson’s (@PorterAnderson) Writing on the Ether posts on Jane Friedman’s blog because they’re so long but I’ll make an exception this time because he includes an extended set of excerpts from a discussion that begins with a Steven Levy comment in an interview in Wired magazine, in which he says, in part, “I don’t really give a shit if literary novels go away. They’re an elitist pursuit.” Besides extended excerpts from this piece, there are also extended excerpts from a November Charlie Rose Show featuring Tim O’Reilly, Ken Auletta, the other Jane Friedman (the former HarperCollins CEO) on this whole topic of elitism in publishing and the rise of e-publishing and crowdsourcing for books. I found it interesting; maybe you will, too.

THE WRITING LIFE

Jane Friedman (@JaneFriedman) reissues an article she originally posted in the July/August 2011 issue of Writer’s Digest, with some edits, titled How Long Should You Keep Trying to Get Published? In this long-for-a-blog piece, she examines four things writers do that sabotage their efforts to get published; how to evaluate where you are on the path to publication, including signs you’re getting close; three signs that it’s time to change course, perhaps even away from writing; and three ways to revise your publishing plan. All good stuff, if hard truths. With one exception: one thing Jane didn’t change from the original article, I don’t think, is that she treats independent publishing as the last refuge of the incompetent and (from the perspective of traditional publishing) unpublishable. This, I think, is tremendously unfortunate and fails to reflect how the whole publishing industry is changing. Much of what she writes DOES apply to writers who want to publish independently, rather than through a traditional house, large or small, though, and this disrespect for that decision doesn’t take away from the value of her other observations.

New Year’s is a time for all those wink-and-a-nod resolutions that are forgotten by the end of the second week. But Jordyn Redwood (@JordynRedwood) on WordServe Water Cooler and Michael Hyatt (@MichaelHyatt) on his own blog take similar cuts at goal setting. Hyatt’s Do You Have a Personal Platform Plan for 2013 and Redwood’s Goals?!? are focused on slightly different things but it’s interesting how much they parallel each other. Read both for the details and the reinforcement. Hyatt also links back to a two-year-old post on setting goals using the acronym SMART: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-bound.

Dean Wesley Smith (@DeanWesleySmith) continues his New World of Publishing series with a powerful and highly challenging fourth installment: How to Keep Production Going All Year. Naturally, this post builds on the previous three (which you can find here, here, and here). “Production” means writing “new” (that is, publication-ready) words and Smith offers four different ideas for how to set long- and short-term goals for the year and , importantly, how to deal with the inevitable failures to meet those goals that life is going to impose on us. Smith’s goal here isn’t to just help you be more effective, it’s to separate the pros from the wannabes and his methods will certainly do that.

There’s one piece of advice I strongly disagree with, though: not showing others your work in progress. As I noted in my comment to the post, that’s fine if you’re an experienced author, but if you’re new, you need feedback on what you’re doing wrong—and you will do lots wrong. Specific, constructive, actionable feedback is vital to the new writer who wants to get better quickly. (I should note that Dean and a group of commenters responded negatively to this opinion, particularly as it related to getting feedback from writers’ groups. That’s fine: everyone’s welcome to their opinions. But I will not be convinced that all writers’ groups are wrong for all writers. Each of us has to make our own decisions based on our own personalities and needs and what local groups can do for or to us.)

 

Here’s wishing you LOTS of Great Stuff in 2013.

Great Stuff on the Writers’ Blogs, October 28 and 29, 2012

Today’s round-up features a lot of business-related articles again, with a special focus on e-publishing. Important information here. But we’ll start with one piece on

CRAFT

Literary fiction in particular loves the ending that leaves the reader hanging. Other genres will accept it, too, but less often and less well. KM Weiland (@KMWeiland) lists 10 Stories with (Brilliant) Loose Ends on her WORDplay blog, and her summaries of each are worth studying. But more important, I think, are her two summary points on what’s needed to make such endings work: “create a sense of realism and verisimilitude,” and “engage the readers’ imaginations in filling in ‘the rest of the story.’” Good advice. Not easy to do!

OK, on to

BUSINESS

Chuck Sambuchino (@ChuckSambuchino) provides a self-described “definitive post” on Word Count for Novels and Children’s Books on the Guide to Literary Agents blog. Clear, concise, and simple.

Since we’re on the topic of numbers, Clare Langley-Hawthorne starts a conversation on The Kill Zone about what sales numbers an independently published author needs to hit in order to have a reasonable shot at attracting the attention of a traditional publisher in Low Down on the Numbers. She begins by citing a post by agent Janet Reid that 20,000 for one book is the magic number. What’s “right?” Good question.

Dean Wesley Smith (@DeanWesleySmith) discusses e-book sales—where they are and where they might be going—in The New World of Publishing: eBooks at 25% but his more important point may be about how the way royalties are calculated in e-publishing contracts from traditional publishers has changed and why the change is bad for writers.

James Scott Bell (@jamesscottbell) continues the discussion with a long Field Report from the E-Book Revolution #2 on The Kill Zone, which is long because it covers a lot of topics, ranging from the business cycle to “happiness” as the new currency.

But if e-publishing is still the way you want to go, Harvey Stanbrough (@h_stanbrough) offers Ten Tips for Emarketing because, after all, all of the job of marketing is likely to fall on your shoulders if you go this route, even if you hire someone to develop your marketing plan. It’s nice to have all of these techniques listed in one easy-to-reference place.

That’s all for today. Have you read something great—or at least interesting? Share it in the Comments below.

Great Stuff on the Writers’ Blogs Business Bonus Issue

As promised, here’s the Great Stuff on the business side of writing that appeared over the weekend.

Let’s start with something that might seem a bit controversial: Rachelle Gardner’s (@RachelleGardner) Should All Authors Blog? It might seem counterintuitive, or at least contrary to all the talk today about platform platform platform, but her answer is “no.” Her reasons are common sense: if it’s work, if you don’t know what you’re going to blog about, if you’re doing it only because you think you have to, etc., then maybe your time is better spent on other things. She also lists a half-dozen-plus reasons why blogging could be right for you. Well worth a look.

Chuck Sambuchino (@ChuckSambuchino) provides A Great Example of What a Pitch Should Not Look Like on the Guide to Literary Agents. What’s funny (and sad), he reveals, is that with a couple of minor tweaks to disguise the pitch’s original use, what he’s showing you was the plot summary for a big-time action movie and it’s chock-full of generalities and clichés. Goes to show you, I guess, what an established franchise can get away with versus what a new writer cannot.

So, OK, what’s the right way to pitch, then? Gabriela Pereira (@DIYMFA) provides some answers on the new-look DIY MFA when Agents Share Conference Tips. These tips come from agents Gabriela spoke with who will be at the Backspace Agent-Author Seminar in New York next month. The points I found most helpful had to do with the difference between the written and spoken pitch. It should be obvious that these are two different things, and yet what should be obvious isn’t always so, is it? Here’s a quick test: got a pitch paragraph handy? Read it out loud. Yikes, huh? Too long, doesn’t sound natural, I’ll bet. Can’t be said in one breath (not that it should be, necessarily). That’s a great hint.

That’s all for today. Tomorrow we’ll be back to our regular format.

Meanwhile, I’m always interested in what Great Stuff you’ve found out there. Share it with all of us in the comments.

Great Stuff on the Writers’ Blogs, October 11 and 12, 2012

Some really excellent stuff out there today on craft and business, so without further ado…

CRAFT

Let’s start with big-picture stuff and work our way down to details.

November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, which means that we’re going to see lots of articles thereon for the next six weeks. Lisa Cron (@LisaCron) starts the parade with NaNoWriMo—The Pitfalls and How to Deftly Avoid Them on Writer Unboxed. Her keys:

• PLAN your work before November 1^st. A month of flailing is not a productive month.
• It’s only a first draft. This is the start of something, not the end.
• It’s all about writing that first draft, not the rewriting that’s going to follow.

Keep those things in mind and you can have a sane and productive month. If you’re going to do it: good luck! Have fun.

Speaking of revising, once you’re working with an editor on a getting-ready-to-be-published work, Dara Beevas (@darairene and @Wiseink) guest posts on KM Weiland’s WORDplay blog on Revising Your Book: Do’s and Don’ts. Eleven do’s and 8 don’ts might seem like a lot but every one is practical, sensible, and easy—at least in theory. 😉

Cutting is a big part of revision, isn’t it? And it can be a painful part. YA writer Sechin Tower (@SechinTower) describes what he’s learned as a teacher of both gifted and at-risk kids in Is Cutting More Important than Adding? on The Kill Zone. One group writes too much, the other too little. Sounds familiar. Check out what he’s learned about finding the right words.

Eileen Cook (@EileenWriter) guest posts on the Guide to Literary Agents blog on 5 Ways to Increase Conflict. She’s got an interesting take, contrasting how the things we try to avoid in real life are the very kinds of things we need to bring into our fiction.

Finally for this section, advertising copywriter Elizabeth Miller Wood (@ElizMillerWood) offers 7 Lessons from Advertising on Rachelle Gardner’s blog about how to make your writing stand up and sing (that’s lesson #2, actually). When every word matters (lesson #3) because each one is pulling your reader forward to an anticipated reward (lesson #5), you’re on track to better writing.

THE WRITER’S LIFE

Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s (@kriswrites) second of three pieces on Why Writers Disappear serves as a transition to the business pieces to follow. In this (long as usual) piece, she looks at writers who get discouraged, can’t handle the solitude, or can’t handle the financial problems that are natural in a writing career. The reason I’ve included this piece is it serves as an opportunity for each writer to ask themselves, “could I handle these things?”

BUSINESS

OK, let’s get on to happier stuff. Like promoting your work! What’s that? That’s not a happy topic? This next post might help.

Carol Costello (@carolcostello46) offers 5 Keys to Pain-Free Book Promotion on The Book Designer. Perhaps the most important of the 5 (actually 8, there are 3 “bonus tips”) suggestions is not to think of promotion as selling but as a conversation between like-minded people. That should help you relax and have fun with the process, rather than turning it into an exercise in agony.

Last piece for the day is a development that really isn’t a surprise in the world of e-books but something that’s needed some time to gestate, and in fact still is gestating: serials. Jane Friedman (@JaneFriedman) interviews Yael Goldstein Love (@ygoldlove) about the digital publishing effort she co-founded as a Kickstarter project (now more than fully funded) called Plympton, that is partnering with the Kindle Serials program to serialize fiction for digital readers (not just Kindles). It’s an interesting idea and another way for new and established authors to connect with readers and as Carol suggested above. Very cool.

What great stuff have you found? Share it in the comments below.

Great Stuff on the Writers’ Blogs, October 4 and 5, 2012

Quite a variety of great stuff today, so let’s jump right in.

CRAFT

Let’s begin with beginnings. Robert Bruce (@robertbruce76) is currently reviewing Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man on 101 Books. One of the things he does with each book he reviews is discuss the opening line or paragraph. Ellison’s first line is, “I am an invisible man.” As Robert writes, “A good first line pulls you in right away” and Ellison’s certainly does. Check out the post to find out more.

Some authors like to create their first line, and in fact their whole book, as part of a team. Frank Viola (@FrankViola) guest posts on Rachelle Gardner’s blog on Co-Authoring: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Co-writing isn’t something I’m personally interested in doing, but if you are, or think you might be, this is a good look at what’s involved.

Finally for this section, freelance copy editor Linda Jay Geldens (@LindaJayGeldens) makes the case for professional editing in A Professional Editor Takes on Self-Editing on The Book Designer. Full Disclosure: As someone who’s WIP is currently being edited by a freelance professional editor, I admit to being sympathetic to her arguments.

PLATFORM AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Decided to give these topics their own section because there were so many good posts on them.

If you’re a Gmail user, check out Nathan Bransford’s (@NathanBransford) brief post, with a link to more info on CNet, on a Two-step E-mail Verification process. If you have ANY web presence at all, including e-mail, which of course you do because you’re reading this post, web security is something you should be not just thinking about but learning how to do. There are a lot of things that are SIMPLE to do if you just know how.

Speaking of simple to do (really!), ProBlogger will be providing a two-post quickie course on HTML, one of the major programming languages of the internet. Darren Rowse (@problogger) announces the plan today on Weekend Project: Get a Handle on HTML. I’ll post the links to these articles on Monday.

As if you haven’t heard enough about Why You Need an Author Platform—and How to Get One, Ali Luke (@aliventures) provides yet more reasons and methods today on Write to Done. Her key point: start small and grow. There’s also a link to special access to some of her Writers’ Huddle paid material (a webinar audio recording, transcript, and worksheet).

Finally here, something you’re familiar and comfortable with: reading blogs! We’re back to Robert Bruce with his 9 Must-Read Blogs for Book Geeks. OK, maybe you don’t consider yourself a book geek, or don’t want to be called one. I’m with you. But who knows, maybe there’s something in one of the 9—actually 10, there’s one more in the comments—blogs you might enjoy.

THE WRITER’S LIFE

When Sarah Callender (@sarahrcallender) writes on Writer Unboxed that You Can Get (Almost) Anything on EBay, including suits of armor, she notes that there’s one thing (the almost) that you can’t: a suit of armor for your heart when you’re rejected to criticized, especially anonymously and/or unfairly. But there are still ways to keep going. Hers include her tribe, her goal, and her faith.

For some writers, though, those things aren’t enough, or aren’t the right things, so in this week’s long Business Rusch column, Kristine Kathryn Rusch (@kriswrites) discusses Why Writers Disappear. Kris’ dozen reasons are too many to list here but they range from “they achieved their goals” (that’s good) to “they became toxic” (that’s really bad and something you want to avoid). Despite the length, this is a post worth checking out.

BUSINESS

Today’s last post comes from the Guide to Literary Agents blog. In it, Michael Larsen, one of the principals of Larsen Pomada Literary Agents, offers some thoughts on The Bookselling Revolution: How to Connect Commerce and Community. Are his ideas utopian or workable? Is competing with Amazon realistic? What about 4,000 square foot, community-based, non-profit local bookstores stocked with Espresso book machines? I don’t know but Larsen’s thinking is at least creative and gets beyond us-vs.-them.

That’s all for today. Have a great weekend.

Find something great about writing or publishing out there on the web? Share your discovery in the comments.

Great Stuff on the Writers’ Blogs, August 21 & 22, 2012

Welcome to the first multi-day edition of Great Stuff. There’s lots to share, so off we go…

Let’s start with some posts on craft, shall we?

• Joe Moore’s (@JoeMoore_writer) post Fried Catfish and Grits isn’t about food; it’s about setting written so well (in Ace Atkins’ The Lost Ones) that it gave Joe a hankerin’ for those southern staples. He then goes on to discuss ways to make your setting details contribute to the story.

• Kim Weiland’s (@KMWeiland) video on How to Use Foreshadowing to Jazz Up Slow Scenes tells the tale of how fantasy writer Patrick Rothfuss uses foreshadowing to keep his readers engaged through what Kim calls “[a] couple hundred leisurely pages of everything going pretty much the protagonist’s way.” A COUPLE HUNDRED PAGES!!! That’s some serious foreshadowing!

• Next, David R. Gillham (@drgillham) provides 5 Tips for Writing Historical Fiction on the Guide to Literary Agents blog. While the title says “historical” and Gillham does indeed focus on that genre, what he suggests applies to just about any genre: “Fiction = friction,” “Using language or accents” to name just two.

OK, enough for craft, how about the business side of things? Sure!

• We’ll start with Alan Petersen (@AlanPetersen) discussing 3 Really Good Self-Publishing Ideas and 5 Hilariously Bad Ones on The Book Designer. I don’t know if the the 5 bad ones are hilarious, really, but they definitely are bad. And the good ones? I’ll summarize them this way: if you want to make money (from your books), you’ll need to spend money (on getting them ready) first. Just do it wisely.

• Speaking of bad ideas, M. J. Rose (@MJRose) discusses how not to commit Social Media Suicide on Writer Unboxed. Of course, don’t write stupid things is part of her prescription. So is not going crazy on social media. Seems being smart about how to use social media isn’t so easy, at least for some folks.

• So how do you market yourself effectively on social media (and elsewhere)? Harvey Stanbrough (@h_stanbrough) offers a set of Resources to help you figure that out. While he includes himself, he does also list Steven Pressfield of The War of Art and Dean Wesley Smith’s web site, which includes the tab “Think Like a Publisher.” Hmmm. Have to check that out myself.

• Finally for this section, Nathan Bransford (@NathanBransford) wonders, Does the Publishing Industry Care Too Much About Writing Quality? This is a continuation of the discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) of indie-published writing. Seems to me the answer is clear: the publishing industry cares (as it should) about making a profit. The books that sell lots of copies but aren’t “quality” writing in the eyes of self-appointed experts are the very books that allow publishers to sell the “quality-writing” books that don’t make money. This shouldn’t be an either/or question. The answer is both/and. IMHO.

So much for the business side, let’s close with a couple of personal life posts.

• Rachelle Gardner (@RachelleGardner) writes about Dealing with Impatience: what might cause it, why it can be a problem, and what you can do about it if it’s a problem for you.

• Karen Jordan (@KarenJordan) offers some tips on Taking Time Out on WordServeWater Cooler when something–maybe it’s that impatience–gives you a “flat tire” on the journey of life.

Great Stuff on the Writers’ Blogs, August 15, 2012

Too bad today’s not Tuesday. Why? Because if it was I could have called today’s post How-to Tuesday, or even better, How-Tue Tuesday. How-to Wednesday just doesn’t have the same ring. But since I’m stuck with that lemon, it’s time to make lemonade. We’ve got how-to’s on craft, marketing, social media, and self-publishing, plus one non-how-to on the Author’s Guild. Lot’s to cover, so let’s get right to it.

Let’s start with craft:

• Joanne Brothwell (@JoanneBrothwell) lists the 7 Things [She’s] Learned So Far on The Guide to Literary Agents blog. Nothing really new here for experienced writers but a terrific summary for new writers, like many members of my own writers’ group.

• In a similar vein, Mary Jaksch (@Mary_Jaksch), chief editor of Write to Done, offers 7 Instant Fixes for better writing. Much like Joanne’s post, these fixes are post-first-draft techniques and are especially good for new writers, but hers are more specific and focused than Joanne’s.

• Finally for this section, Kim Weiland (@KMWeiland) asks, Can You Define Your Character in One Word? Of course, she acknowledges, doing so leaves out so much of a character’s personality, but like a log-line does for a story, it gets to the core of that character. Challenging! Can you do it?

OK, on to marketing, promotion, and social media.

• Jane Friedman (@JaneFriedman) offers a set of very practical tips to Build a Better Author Bio on Twitter. You’ve only got 160 characters plus room for a photo, your name, your Twitter handle, and ONE link. Using that limited space well is not just a real-world exercise in tight writing, it’s a matter of focusing on achieving your purpose: effectively communication who you are as a writer.

• Rachelle Gardner (@RachelleGardner) stretches beyond Twitter to provide 8 Tips for Promoting Your Book Online. Some of her suggestions are outside my personal comfort zone, but that’s just me. I’m sure she’d say, “pick the ones that work for you and ignore the rest.”

• Dealing with how to get outside your comfort zone, if that’s necessary, is also the theme behind Gabriela Pereira’s (@DIYMFA) Networking for Authors: 5 Survival Tips on DIY MFA. This time, though, the topic is doing that networking in person rather than from the comfort of your own keyboard. These tips range from business card etiquette to having a wing-man along at writers’ conferences.

• Abhishek Raj’s (@buddinggeek) post on @ProBlogger, Protect Your Content from Being Copied in 3 Steps really jumped out at me. I’ve wondered for a long time if there was a way to keep someone from simply copying blog or web site text straight off the screen. It turns out there is and the author provides links to the JavaScript code for Blogger and the plugin for WordPress. He also describes how to watermark images and manage RSS feeds. If all that sounds like gobbledegook, well, if you’re a blogger or have a web site, it’s time to learn the language. I’ve flagged this post as a “favorite.”

Next up is a how-to, or how-not-to, regarding self-publishing.

• Joel Friedlander (@JFbookman) was a judge recently for the Bay Area Independent Book Publishers Book Awards competition. In Why Self-Published Books Look Self-Published, he describes the kinds of mistakes self-published authors make too often that leave their work looking amateurish (beyond poor writing).

And last of all, the one non-how-to piece:

• Nathan Bransford (@NathanBransford) continues a conversation that’s been bubbling for a while in some corners (e.g. some of Joe Konrath’s and David Gaughran’s posts) when he asks, Does The Authors Guild Serve the Interest of Writers? It’s a provocative question, but one that’s been coming up more frequently given the AG’s position on the Justice Department’s suit against the Big 6 publishers. Nathan’s post is more measured and less emotional that those you might come across elsewhere.

 

Great Stuff on the Writers’ Blogs, August 12, 2012

It’s all about the craft, today. Two crafts, actually. The craft of writing and the craft of designing covers.

• We’ll start off with Kim Weiland (@KMWeiland) discussing 6 Ways to Pull Off Dual Timelines in Your Novel on WORDplay. Having two separate but related timelines running at the same time in a story–as Kim says, essentially having two separate stories running along in parallel within the same novel–isn’t easy to do, so her tips should be useful to anyone thinking of trying it.

• London-based author and martial-arts instructor J. C. Martin (@JCMartin_author) lists the 5 Things Bruce Lee Taught Me About the Art of Writing on the Guide to Literary Agents blog. While none of the points are really new, they’re all worth repeating.

• James Scott Bell (@jamesscottbell) provides a quick but excellent tutorial on How to Write a Novella on The Kill Zone. If you’ve ever tried to write a novella, want to, or are considering doing so, this is a keeper.

• Finally, today’s the day for Joel Friedlander’s (@JFbookman) monthly e-Book Cover Design Awards post. Joel did something a little different this time, giving the judging honors to Tamara Weaver and her colleagues. WARNING: over 130 fiction and non-fiction covers were submitted and all are presented in this post, some with comments, so it’ll take some time if you want to go through the whole thing. Still, I find it interesting to see what people are doing with covers; especially since I’ll be facing the need to have a cover designed “soon.”