I'll be at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers' Colorado Gold conference this weekend, and I hope to see some of you there! I'll be presenting a workshop on Friday at 5 pm in the Big Thompson room called "In the Middle: Pluses and Minuses of Small-Press Publishing."
I decided to talk about this topic because I've noticed that in a lot of writers' conferences and events I've been to, there's a lot of talk about "Big Six" publishing and a lot of talk about self-publishing but not a lot of talk about all the opportunities that lie between these two options. I've had a good amount of success with smaller presses, and I wanted to discuss this sector for those who might be frustrated with the Big Six and not quite comfortable with the self-pub option. There's a big, bright world out there for you to explore.
If you're going to be at Colorado Gold and are interested in attending the workshop, my handouts are available for download at http://www.rmfw.org/conference/handouts/ . (I've been scribbling additional notes on them, though, so you'll miss out on my last-minute brainstorms, numerous asides, dorky goof-ups, and irrelevant stories if you don't attend the workshop.) There'll also be a Twitter hashtag for the session at #rmfwsmallpress so you can follow along whether you're at the conference or not. I hope folks will take advantage of the Twitter option, because I think it's a great idea.
Friday evening starting at 8, I'll be signing books, too, in Ballroom B, so drop by and say hi!
In case anybody's been living under a rock for the last few years, November is NaNoWriMo month. This phenomenon seems to be getting more popular every year. (Yes, you damn kids, get the hell offa my NaNoWriMo lawn!)
I've participated in NNWM several times, and have yet to make the 50,000 word goal. I tend to hit about 30-35K, although I think I might have flirted with 40K last year. Formal participation kind of makes me sad because of this inability to "win," so I've been doing it informally the last couple of years.
I'm going to do the same this year. I have a WIP that's about 2/3 done. I think I have 25-30,000 words left on it, so my goal for this month will be to get to that place where I write "THE END" on the last page. (Actually I don't write THE END on the last page. I usually write some kind of weird squiggly thing. But you get what I mean.)
I'll start today with my initial wordcount graphic. I snarfed this over at Writertopia, and I think it's cool so I'm using it, so there. I'll update it whenever I feel like it and maybe post a short excerpt or two here and there. The book I'll be working on is represented on its own Pinterest board here. I'll probably be adding stuff there, too--I still have a lot of research to do on this book, and God forbid I should do the research before I start writing. That would be too easy.
Anyway, best of luck to everyone else who's NaNo-ing. I hope we all crank out many words, and that some of them are even good!
Just about every day I see a post from someone somewhere lauding the latest app or software or online tool that has revolutionized their writing, their workflow, their love life or all of the above. I usually take a look at them. Most of them I don't try for various reasons. But a few things I've integrated into my work day have really made a huge difference for me. Today's links are about those few tools that I've found Incredibly Useful.
Evernote. I was late on the bandwagon with this one. I swear I tried it a year or so ago and wasn't able to get it to download, or couldn't figure out how it worked, or something. Then, a few months ago, I tried again, and I haven't looked back. It's an excellent tool to organize research notes, random articles that look like they might evolve into story ideas, or just piddly things I need to remember. This article from Open Forum tells more about ways you can utilize it in all its wondermousness.
And another note on Evernote--yesterday I did a "library day," where I headed down the hill to a big library where I can sit in a study carrel and write uninterrupted. I brought my Kindle and my phone. On my Kindle, I had several books I was using for research for the story I was working on. On the phone, I had just installed Evernote as well as an Evernote widget to make access to all my research easy cheesy. Between the Kindle and the phone, I had everything I needed without lugging my MacBook Pro with me. It was convenient and easy and kind of awesome. Except now it's got me thinking an iPad would be EVEN COOLER!! (KK wants ALL THE GADGETS!)
Scrivener. I don't even know how I wrote anything without Scrivener. It's like the Avengers of writing software. Seriously. With Joss Whedon thrown in on the side. I write better, stronger, faster--and I didn't even have to crash a test plane to do it. (Oops, sorry, switched superhero types there...) The combo of Evernote and Scrivener is like Thor's Hammer, Captain America's Shield, Hawkeye's cool bow thingie and Black Widow's general basassedness all in one. But you don't have to take my word for it. Here's an article from The Creative Penn with more.
Kanban. This isn't so much software as a tool for managing workflow. However, I use the online tool mentioned on the site. I've only been using this for a couple of weeks but it's already kicked me into a higher gear as far as getting things done efficiently and increasing my productivity. If you love writing things on sticky notes and moving them around, chances are good you'll like this. The link above explains the process, and the online tool can be found at kanbanflow.com.
And here's a bonus link for those who like their iPhones/iPads--I don't have either, so I haven't tested any of these, but the article looks like it has some neat ideas:
I've addressed worldbuilding before (very briefly--it's in Item 3 on the linked post) over on Notes on Vellum, but here I'd like to talk about some more specific ways to use worldbuilding to build your backlist as well as to add depth to your current projects. The links below offer some hints and suggestions about using the world of your story to build more stories, draw readers in, find your way into series books, and, of course, profit...
David Farland's Daily Kick in the Pants: Your Setting as a Petri Dish. This is a neat article talking about how you can use one setting to kick off a bajillion stories and ideas. I'm in the middle of something like this right now--three separate series ideas (or is it four? I forget) all set in the same universe. It's fun and crazy and kind of overwhelming. I was glad to discover I'm not the only person who comes up with this kind of nuttiness.
Another from Dave Farland: How Real do you want Your World to Be? This is fiction, right? So why does it have to be real? Farland talks about grounding fantasy settings in reality to increase reader engagement and how to balance all your story elements to support your decisions about how far you want to go with the fantasticalness.
Nathan Bransford: Expanding the World of your Novel. This could be seen as a companion piece to the Petri Dish article above. Bransford talks about adding companion pieces to expand the universe, including novellas focused on a single character and book trailers to bring the world to life. This is a bit about marketing and a bit about just having fun with your created world.
Writer's Digest: Writing a Stand-alone Book (With Series Potential). If you're writing genre, Standalone with Series Potential is the magic word. This article gives some practical tips on how to think of your story as a series pilot and lay in numerous elements that can help jumpstart further books in the series. (Do people actually have trouble thinking of forty zillion sequels to a book? Or is my brain just insane? Don't answer that.)
Jane Friedman: It’s OK to Leave Stuff Out. In Fact, It’s Better. Tips on building your world without turning your book into the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Also? Superdog is AWESOME.
Worldbuilding is a complex subject. It's also hard, and hella fun. I'd love to hear any thoughts you might have about your own worldbuilding processes, how you add to your created universe, or different ideas you've had for nourishing that Petri dish. (No pictures of yucky mold, please.)
Today's batch of links is focused on the overall business of writing. Goalsetting, how to ensure quality, seeing yourself as an entrepreneur, etc. This is the hard stuff we have to do instead of sitting around scribbling in notebooks all day. (In a perfect world, I'd be scribbling in notebooks ALL THE TIME. While drinking coffee and watching hockey or ogling band boys. Alas, this is not a perfect world.)
Jody Hedlund--Walls on the Way to Publication: A Necessity or a Nuisance. A little of both? I think her approach to setting up your own walls to determine your readiness for publication are not a bad idea. It's easy to rush stuff out. It's harder to be sure it's really good.
Deanna Knippling--How Much Is Your Writing Worth? Wow, that was depressing. Also--warning--white on black. I suggest using Readability. (Via The Passive Voice.)
Mystery Writing is Murder--Promoting a Pen Name. I have... way too many. *collapses in exhausted heap*
Michael R. Hicks--Adjusting to Being a Full-Time Author. Part 1 and Part 2. Really good, meaty, sensible advice I wish I had known, oh, sometime mid 2011. (Oh, and there's about 5 parts now. Go read them all. They're linked at the bottom.) Again, black on white. Don't have Readability yet? Go fetch it.
David Farland--Marketing Before You Write. Writing for a specific audience. Interesting thoughts. Pretty sure this approach would work best if you make sure you're still writing what you love.
And that's it for today. Hope you found something useful, and have a great weekend!
Ghostwriter Dad--10 Grammar Rules you Can (and Should!) Ignore. I could add like five more to that list. And by five I mean nine zillion. (I have a love/hate relationship with Proper Grammar.)
HuffPo--Why Some Authors Fail. Some interesting analysis of the industry. I still maintain that most authors who "fail" fail because they quit. Being stupidly stubborn is an underrated quality in the artistic soul.
Penny C. Wrede--Keeping Track. Craft. How to keep track of all your plots and subplots and sub-sub-plots and still remember what color eyes Annoying Guy to the Right of the Hero in Scene Twelve has.
Grammar Girl--May vs. Might. This came up while I was editing, and I realized I differentiate solely by gut instinct. Actually I parse most grammar by gut instinct. Which might explain my love/hate relationship with Proper Grammar.
So there you have it. Hope something was helpful, and have a great weekend!
So, now that the taxes are turned in and all I'm stressed over is nine million deadlines, back to Friday linkage!
Roni Loren: Fiction Groupie--Authors Interacting with Readers Online. Possible drawbacks to interacting with your readers online. Probably not what you think...
Publishing Perspectives--Guest post by Jane Friedman--Experimenting with Serials for Fun and Profit. Some ideas about publishing series and serial fiction as well as pros and cons of this approach.
Etexts from University of Virginia Library: Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses, by Mark Twain. I started to read The Last of the Mohicans, and I have to say my opinion of the writing was much like Twain's. I recommend watching the movie instead. It has a better plot and 100% more Daniel Day Lewis in buckskins.
I don't normally group links by themes, but this time around things just fell together that way. So today's links focus on the craft and practice of writing.
Mediactive: Author's To-Don't List. I would add--don't make a big honkin' using the wrong word error in a Author's To-Don't List, but that's because I haven't had my coffee or my Zoloft yet this morning. Still, good advice. (Extra points if you spot the error and post it in the comments.)
One of the first questions people tend to ask when you
revealed the terrible secret that you’re a writer is, Where do you get your
ideas. (After, What do you write, at which point you have to decide whether to
say you’re working on the great American novel or books about vampires.) it’s
an interesting question, and one I’m never sure how to answer.
I get ideas everywhere. I carry little notebooks in my purse
so I can jot ideas down when they drop by. I have notebooks, folders, filing
cabinets, binders full of ideas. I wake up in the middle of the night with
ideas. My best friend feeds me ideas, usually as part of a nefarious plan to
get me hooked on hockey.
I think most writers suffer not from a lack of ideas, but
from idea overload. When I’m starting a new project, sometimes I look at the pile
of ideas and have no idea where to start. Which one is the most marketable?
Which one can I sell right away? Which one is most likely to land me an agent?
It’s enough to paralyze the creative mind.
Capturing ideas can be tricky, too. Thus the notebooks. But
how do you jot down an idea that comes as an image, or a feeling? Sometimes you
can’t. Then you have to let the idea move where it will, in and out of
consciousness, until it appears in a form you can easily add to your idea pool.
Or what about that idea that just gets away from you? The
one that came to you at 2 a.m and you couldn’t wake up enough to write it down?
If you’d written it down, it definitely would have been a bestseller, right?
Maybe, maybe not. My theory is that if it really was a good
idea, and one I was meant to have, then it’ll come back. It’s like that old
saying: If you love something, set it free. Some people aren’t comfortable with that
idea. It used to bug me, too. Now I’m on medication.
Ideas come from everywhere, but the best ones can be
elusive, or hard-won. These are the ideas that come back again and again,
demanding to be written, each time with a few more layers, a bit more guidance
about how the story should take shape. These are the ideas that are worth gold.
When you find those, you’ll know. Capture them and let them grow.
Jane Friedman: 10 Phrases to Purge from Your Speech and Writing. I mildly disagree to a couple of these, but others are high on my list of pet peeves. And seriously, how could anybody not care about ice hockey? I mean really.
Glimmer Train: Territory. Discussion of thinking about the "territory" of your work--common themes you keep coming back to. I tend to keep writing about bitter divorcees. What is that about?
Findability: Twitter Automation Tools. Honestly, I debated including this link because it looks to me like THIS is the person who doesn't "get" Twitter. I mean, why the heck can't I tweet about what I had for dinner? (Last night it was Sonic. Again.) And OMG, don't use automatic DMs when people follow you. That's just annoying. But there are some tidbits here that I think I'm going to poke around with and see what falls out, so I'm passing the link along. Your mileage may vary.
CIA Tracks Revolt by Tweet, Facebook. Fascinating read. Makes me wonder if you could write an entire international espionage novel that was nothing but Tweets and Facebook posts...
Writer Unboxed: On Rejection. Guest post about one writer's struggle after her first publication.
Drunk Writer Talk: Building a Platform. Should you? Shouldn't you? When should you? Why should you? Why am I not drunk right now?
ABOVE: Duncan Keith, hot hockey dude who works out a lot.
Athletes train. Well, duh, you say. Of course athletes train. Everybody knows that.
I knew that, too. But until my Evil Best Friend dragged me into the dubious clutches of hockey fandom, I didn't realize how extensive, pervasive and consuming that training was.
I don't know what I thought, really. Maybe that they worked out an hour or so per day on off-season, maybe a little harder during the regular season, made sure they didn't gain too much weight, etc., etc. Honestly, I hadn't thought about it that much.
Then, between the end of last season and the beginning of Blackhawks training camp, I watched some video that was released into the wild documenting the regimens of several hockey players during the off-season. Heavy, carefully targeted workouts to help recover from injuries or surgeries. Skating while attached to bungee cords. Balance exercises. Yoga. Pilates. Shoving an entire weight rack across a parking lot (with the weights still on it, I might add). Eating 7 to 8,000 calories a day, mostly chicken and protein shakes, to deliberately build 20 pounds of muscle. Weightlifting—while wearing skates in the gym.
Seriously. These dudes are hard-core. Duncan Keith spent the summer working out with a trainer, and when he showed up for medical testing before training camp, he broke the bike. (That part isn't a metaphor. There was a bike. He broke it.)
The workout and training portion is every bit as important as the part where they go out on the ice and fight over the puck. Maybe more so. Because without that extra muscle, without the heavy conditioning and the balance and coordination and stick-handling drills, they can't perform when the puck is dropped.
My question, then, is why don't writers pursue the same kind of practice? Musicians do—they spend hours and hours at the practice space working through every detail of a song before they take it on stage. Painters spend years learning basic shapes and forms and emulating the work of established classical artists. But all too often, writers just scribble a story down and send it out, without considering the elements that make it work, or the basic skills they give a story strength and staying power.
I think many of us should reconsider this. Where are your weaknesses in your writing? Where could you focus to refine your abilities?
There are a lot of ways you could develop this training program. Take a workshop, online or in person. Read a book about craft. Read someone else's book and analyze their techniques. Figure out what works for you in other people's writing and incorporate it into your own. Pick a successful author and emulate his or her style for a short piece to see how it “feels.”
I think too often we get wrapped up in producing work to sell, and don't think about writing as a practice. Try it for a while—intersperse some craft building activities into your regular writing schedule and see what happens. Do it in the gym, on skates. Break that damn bike. And if you figure out how to work in that eating 7000 calories a day thing, let me know
A no-nonsense starship captain and a billionaire financier, Fairfax and Cavendish are the ultimate odd couple. Until an insidious government conspiracy leaves them with nothing—except each other.
