I’ve blogged before about my New Year’s Resolution to write a page a day and, so far, I’ve done it. Every. Single. Day. That’s 75 days in a row, for anyone who’s counting.

Some days the words come out easily and I kid myself that it’s always going to be this easy now I’m in the habit of writing every day. But then there are the other days… The days when I’ve had less than two hours sleep the night before and I’m so tired, I’m almost falling asleep on top of the laptop. The days when I’m sick and can barely think straight. The days when I’ve already put in 12 hours in the day job and it’s 8pm before I haul myself to my laptop and try to convince myself that I really do care about writing tonight.

So what am I doing? Why am I forcing myself to sit here and write – something, anything – when some days I really couldn’t care less? On the good days, I tell myself it’s about forming a habit, about being professional, about making progress. On a bad day, it all comes down to stubbornness and that damned New Year’s Resolution. Maybe once we get a little further into the year I won’t care quite so much about achieving my page a day. Maybe I’ll even give myself an occasional night off. But right now, on this night, I will write my page. If stubbornness is the only reason I have today to keep going, I’ll take it.

We all have days like this. As much as I love writing and the thrill of creating a new world or of bringing a character to life, there are days when I wish I’d chosen an easier craft. Something that perhaps doesn’t take everything I have and then a bit more. And it’s on those days that it’s so important to have a reason to push on. Even if tonight that reason is only stubbornness. After all, if I’m stubborn long enough, I might just make it.

Where does your spoonful of stubbornness come from when you need it?

Mignon Fogarty: Social Media Mistakes That Make You Look Like a Newbie

March 14, 2012

fictorians

A guest post by Mignon Fogarty

Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ can be great tools for marketing your book, but you can also look like a tool if you make these common mistakes:

Don’t Jump in Without Exploring

Don’t join a network and immediately start posting. Take a couple of weeks to poke around, watch the experts, and see how things work. Every network has its own quirks.

In general, your goal should be to make friends genuinely. Answer people’s questions. Respond to their posts. Build relationships so people begin to recognize your name. If the first post I see from you is promoting your book, all I will remember when I see your name again is that you only care about promoting yourself.

Don’t Send Direct Messages to People You Don’t Know

Unless you have an exceptionally good reason, don’t send a direct message to someone you don’t know. You don’t need to thank people for following you, you shouldn’t send them an “introduction” link to your site, and for God’s sake, don’t ask them to check out your book or like your fan page.

What does it mean to know someone on social media? If I see your message and feel happy to hear from you, we know each other. If I see your message and wonder who you are, we don’t know each other.

Don’t Promote Your Book Without Giving People a Reason to Care

If you’re asking people on social media to take action (e.g., review your book, like your fan page), give them a reason. There are at least two reasons people will care:

1) Make it worth their while. Have a contest or give away a prize. A prize can have cash value (e.g., an e-reader), be something only you can provide (e.g., a personal thank-you video, a 30-minute critique, naming rights to a character in your book), or simply the glory of winning a contest of skill (e.g., a limerick contest).

2) Let them share your journey. Kickstarter works because contributors feel like they are helping you-joining you-on your journey. You can apply the same techniques to social media promotion.

To bolster people’s participatory feelings, you need to explain your purpose. In the book, Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, the authors explain that if you follow a request with a “because clause”-a reason you are making the request-people are more likely to comply. If you want people to review your book because good reviews increase online purchases, tell them that’s why you want the reviews. If you want people to buy your book this week because it will help you make the bestseller list, tell them that’s why it’s important this week.

It’s also helpful to give updates. Once you’ve made people aware of your goal, tell them how it’s going. Don’t go crazy and update Twitter every ten minutes, but when you’ve reached a significant milestone, announce it.

In the end, it’s simple: nobody likes the new guy who shows up at a party and immediately starts hustling everyone to buy his product; but if an old friend has an exciting new project he’s eager to tell you about, you’re happy to listen and help. Social media is the same. Become the old friend.

Guest Writer Bio:
Mignon Fogarty is the author of the forthcoming book 101 Troublesome WordsYou’ll Masterin No Time. Preorder the book now so bookstores see there is a healthy demand, and stock it when it launches in July.

Revision Show and Tell: What Tricks Do You Live By?

March 12, 2012

Leigh Galbreath

Authorial Trust Craft & Skills First Drafts Ideas & Plotting Leigh Galbreath Reader Investment & Empathy Rewriting 6 Comments

I confess. I don’t like first drafts. Working out the story, initially, is always the hardest part, for me. When it works out, it’s great, but most the time, it’s a slog that requires hard work and persistence that’s sometimes really hard to stomach.

To me, the best part is the rewriting–taking what was meandering and barely readable and turning it into something entertaining that other people might actually want to read.

Of course, when that’s done, the story is down, all the plot and character issues are worked out, and the book is revised, and re-revised, it’s time for some polish. As Kylie mentioned in her post on Editing, just re-reading the manuscript isn’t enough. To really polish our works of art, we often need help. Everyone’s got their little tricks for everything from pacing problems and varying sentence structure to catching typos. Clancy told us about using “The Writing Code,” and that got me to thinking. What other tricks are helpful for catching those little things that keep our stories from really shining?

I’ve collected some over the years. Here are a few of my favorites.

Reading the story aloud

Probably the best way to catch problems with rhythm and flow. If you stumble over anything, it probably needs to be revised.

Using Word’s Find/Replace feature

This is helpful to locate those words I use too often, fixing spacing problems, finding to-be verbs so I can change them to active voice, or any other problem I know normally crops into my stories without my noticing.

Reading the manuscript in different mediums

It’s amazing the things you find when you turn a Word document into a PDF or print it out.

Reading the manuscript backwards

This is a handy trick to find typos because you can’t get lost in the story.

Creating a scene cheat sheet

You can use a simple note card, an Excel list, the keyword feature in Scrivener, or whatever works for you. This is basically just a list of what plots are being serviced in each scene, so you can tell which scenes are pulling their weight are which aren’t.

So, it’s Show and Tell time. What tricks work best for you?

Superstars Week, Day 5: Q&A with the Superstars, Part 2

March 9, 2012

Colette Black

Colette Black Craft & Skills Guest Posts Publishing Superstars Writing Seminars The Writing Life No Comments

Welcome to Day 2 of Q&A with David Farland and Kevin J. Anderson. You can access the authors’ websites at http://www.wordfire.com/ and http://www.davidfarland.net/ respectively. Kevin J. Anderson has a post on his blogsite devoted to the seminar and those presenting in 2012, http://kjablog.com/On to the interviews:

* * *

Q: What do you have to go through to prepare for the seminar?

David Farland: I simply meditate on the topic that I’m going to teach, normally. Much of this is information that I’ve gleaned over the past thirty years, and so I might need to write down notes, codify what I know. Normally, we’re talking about topics that you can’t get much information about in books.

Kevin J. Anderson: The talks and panels themselves are not so difficult, because we have all lived this material and we know it very well. For me and Rebecca, it’s all the complicated logistics of setting everything up with the venue, and then doing the publicity, waiting for signups, hoping that we get enough attendees to pay our expenses, and then managing all the little details.

Q: What is your favorite panel and why?

Kevin: I enjoy giving the “Popcorn Theory” talk, because it’s fun to show people how all these projects don’t happen in a vacuum-if you do good work, one thing leads to another and another.

Dave: I think that I’m most interested in the panels on self-marketing, particularly ones that involve social media, quite simply because we have people like Brandon and Kevin who are the best writers I know on the topic. I actually learn things in these panels that I can take home and implement myself!

Q: What part of the Authors Dinner do you like best?

Kevin: Hmm, the potatoes, maybe. Or the dessert. But probably having a chance to sit down and talk with some of the students, face to face in a relaxed setting for a few hours. We end up asking them as many questions as they know us. Many of the attendees of past Superstars will realize that we really do consider you to be friends and colleagues, and we hope to watch your careers skyrocket.

Dave: For me, it’s just getting to know the authors, try to find out where they are in their careers, what they need, and in a short time see if I can offer some advice that might be of help.

Q: The publishing industry is changing fast. Now going on your third year, has the content of the Superstars seminar had to change to reflect the ever-evolving industry? If so, in what ways?

Dave: Yes, we are going through some dramatic changes, with the rise of the whole self-publishing movement. It really has become a viable way for an author to get into business, but it has its own pratfalls and its own huge potential. To me, it suggests that we need to expand our curriculum a bit, to cover the new media. It’s a very exciting time that we live in!

Kevin: A lot of the lectures are still relevant–the professionalism, productivity, networking, etc. We are going to have a lot more focus on eBooks, indy publishing, hardcopy as well as electronic — maybe even half a day to the topic. Dean Wesley Smith is giving a full hour on copyright law and Kris is doing a talk (which I can’t wait to hear myself) on tough negotiating, getting better deals and how to change contract terms that aren’t in your favor. I think we might also do a lecture on income streams (instant money, long-term trickles, etc.) We have always had more material than we could possibly cover. We do want to change it up so it’s not just a rerun every year. We’re still developing the curriculum, but it should have all the good stuff from before and some new and relevant stuff too.

* * *

Kevin and Dave are enthusiastic about sharing knowledge, always glad to help serious writers improve their abilities and prepare for the difficult process of getting published. All of us fictorians want to thank them for their encouragement, eager participation in our blog, and for bringing us together through the Superstars Seminar.

I’m confident I’ll enjoy another information-packed seminar in April, and I’m looking forward to making more writing friends. If you’ll be going for the first time in 2012, or if you have questions for us attendees, please drop us a note in the comment box below.

Starting Monday, we’ll be back to our regular MWF blog schedule with a guest post by Mignon Fogarty: the Grammar Girl (one of our more famous Superstars alumni).