There are a lot of things that can drain your creativity as a writer, but one of the worst is trying to edit while you are writing.
One of the important things to learn in writing quickly as well as writing effectively is not stopping and second guessing yourself about choices of words, sentence structure, spelling or grammar. Those are all things that can be fixed after the fact.
When you are writing your first draft, let yourself run free. Put down what comes out of your brain immediately. It’s always possible to go back and fix whatever it is that you think is wrong.
If you stop yourself from running free, you may miss creating something really different and interesting.
I will often write vital scenes without stopping (or stopping only a little). I want to get that rush of fresh thoughts down on the paper, especially when it comes to dialogue. Having the right pacing and words in dialogue often come easier when you just let it flow. It’s easy to go back and fill in what may be missing if you’ve got a good rhythm to your dialogue.
So – shut down your internal editor for that first draft. Let yourself explore new things and pour your heart out onto the paper. There will be time enough to fix things once you’ve finished the scene.
Journals are a wonderful way to keep track of so many things. Whether it’s a diet journal where you keep track of the foods you eat, a workout journal to record progress, a personal journal for important thoughts or a travel journal to remind you of where you have been, journals rock!
So what’s the best way to keep a journal?
Like everything else, different things work best for different people. I’m a computer person, so for a lot of my things – like my travels for research – I jot down notes on my computer and upload the photos I take. But I also hang onto the tickets and pamphlets from the various places we go. My daughter and I will then often sit down and create a scrapbook for our trip to retain the memories for the future.
My daughter is very hands-on, so she keeps a paper journal with her where she writes down her thoughts and stories and adds pictures and other keepsakes.
Many writers keep journals of their personal thoughts or of ideas for new books. Some do it on paper, others on computers. Some even do it online via their blogs or websites. You can use blog sites to keep online journals, just make sure of two things:
If you want to keep it personal, make sure there is a way to set the blog as being private and not public.
Make sure there is a way to download or copy that journal to your hard drive or move it to another blog platform.
How often should you keep journal entries?
Again there is no right or wrong to it, except maybe one wrong – Not doing it.
Find the best time for you to collect your thoughts or the information you want to record. It may be private time or it may be out in public. At the gym I see a number of people with note pads to track their workout progress. They record the weight and repetitions that they do in order to have an effective exercise routine.
What do I get out of journaling?
As a writer, you build your writing chops with each writing exercise that you do.
Plus, it’s a way to keep track of important events or memories that might be lost if they are not recorded in any way. Many years ago I wrote down the history of how my family had come here for my nephew and it was amazing how much there was that he didn’t know and how much I had never really discussed with anyone. I thought it would only be a few pages when I got started and it ended up being more like 20. And that was just general information about the short two year stretch around when we left Cuba!
If you have a family elder that is still alive, it may be a good time to see about making a video journal of them with some of the stories of when they were younger. There are so many differences from then to now and in the future, all those stories and memories might be lost if don’t record them or if you don’t repeat those stories to the next generation.
I’m really lucky to have with me today my friend and fellow author Mary Kennedy. Mary is a national best-selling author, and a clinical psychologist in private practice on the east coast. She has sold forty novels, all to major New York publishers, and has made the Waldenbooks, BookScan and Publishers Weekly best-seller lists. Her early novels included middle grade fiction and young adult fiction for Scholastic and Penguin.
Mary is currently writing an adult mystery series, The Talk Radio Mysteries, which is set in a fictional town in south Florida. The first title, DEAD AIR, will be released in January, 2010, and the second, REEL MURDER, in June, 2010. The Talk Radio Mysteries was pitched and sold as “Frasier Meets Murder She Wrote.” The heroine is Maggie Walsh, a psychologist who closes up her Manhattan practice and heads to sunny Florida to take a job as a radio talk show host. And, yes, she solves a murder in every book!
Please join me in welcoming Mary and I hope you enjoy this very inspirational blog about resiliency!
When the Going Gets Tough
“When the going gets tough, the tough keep going.” This is the Cliff Notes version of a concept known as “resiliency,” the ability to bounce back fast from adversity. As a practicing psychologist, I try to build resiliency in my clients, helping them to withstand the stresses and disappointments of daily life. All of us possess resiliency, but how much? A lot depends on genetics, learned behavior patterns, personality traits and life experience. I’ve seen patients make a remarkable recovery from traumatic events; the death of a spouse, chronic illness of a child, even financial ruin. And I’ve seen other patients in tears over a bad haircut or a thoughtless remark by a relative.
Why is resiliency so important for writers? Because rejection is part of the game. Like all artists, writers put themselves on the line every time they send out a manuscript, leaving themselves open to judgment from editors and agents. So much of our identity is wrapped up in “being a writer,” that rejections are brutal, and go to the heart of who we are.
How can you build resiliency? I’d recommend four simple steps. Let’s take the example of an editor rejecting your manuscript.
First, take a cold hard look at the situation and determine if your first impression is accurate. Artists tend to “catastrophize,” meaning they put the worst possible spin on a situation. Does the editor really dislike the manuscript as a whole, or can you tweak it a little and resubmit it? Re-read her comments when you’re feeling calm and reflective. Panic can lead to cloudy thinking.
Second, ask a close friend for feedback. It’s always good to at least consider a situation through another set of eyes. Since your friend is less emotionally invested in the outcome, she may have a totally different–and more realistic–impression than you do.
Third, try to reframe the situation. Yes, the editor may not like this particular manuscript, for whatever reason. It may have nothing to do with your talent, or the quality of your work. It may be she’s just bought a book with the same theme or that the market is flooded with similar books. Let’s try reframing the situation in a more positive light. She’s not interested in acquiring this particular manuscript at this time. But is it realistic to say she never wants to see anything else from you? Ever? This is known as “depressive” thinking, or looking at something in a negative light. Reframe the situation and you realize that you can submit other projects to her, down the road.
Finally, immediately take action to seek a solution. Ruminating and drowning in negative thoughts will not help. Taking action will. List three things you can do–today–to get back on track. You can polish up another proposal, start something new or spend two hours in a bookstore, checking out the new releases. All these are positive steps you can take. Action leads to power, and a sense of control, which makes for a happier outlook. You will find that you are more resilient than you thought!
Mary Kennedy
For more information on Mary, please visit www.marykennedy.net
DEAD AIR (Penguin, January 5, 2010)
The first of the Talk Radio Mysteries.
“Frasier meets Murder She Wrote” in this entertaining new series by a real-life psychologist.”
There has been a lot discussion during the last week about the new Harlequin Horizons venture. For more on this venture and the response to it, you can click below on these links for comments:
In many of the above discussions, there has oftentimes been a use of the terms e-publishing, self-publishing and vanity/subsidy publishing interchangeably, but there are vast differences between those three types of publishing. In light of this, it seems as good a time as any on this Tuesday Tip blog to distinguish between e-publishing, self-publishing and vanity/subsidy publishing.
E-publishing
With e-publishing there is no monetary outlay of funds by the author. The e-publisher will do editing, create the cover and arrange for distribution of the book through their various channels. The author does not typically get an advance as is done with traditional print publishing, but will receive a royalty based on sales, usually in the neighborhood 25%-35% of either the cover or net price. The e-publishing model shares the reward between the author and the publisher, but the risk is borne by the publisher.
Oftentimes e-publishing will allow for books that don’t fit a niche to find a home and it has proved financially sound and rewarding for some publishers and houses.
Self-publishing
With self-publishing, the author will pay for the printing of the book and any related design services (such as the artwork on the cover). The author will own the ISBN, copyright and be responsible for marketing, distribution and sales. The author usually keeps 100% of the sales made, so all risk and reward is with the author. Self-publishing is a riskier move. Many bookstores will not stock self-published books. While there have been some success stories (such as The Shack and The Celestine Prophecy), for every one of those success stories, I suspect there are thousands of tales about books sitting in garages or the trunks of cars. According Bowker, although more ISBNS were handed out for self-published books than for traditionally published books in 2008, the average self-published book sells less than 100 copies.
Vanity/Subsidy Publishing
With vanity/subsidy, the author pays for “publication” of the book as contrasted to the printing and design of the book. For the fee, the vanity/subsidy publisher will provide X number of copies of the book as well as suggest marketing, editing and other services in order to achieve “publication” and make sales. In addition, the publisher may also retain a portion of the sales for offering the book through their distribution channels. For example, you may pay $600 for the basic vanity publishing package, but you may also need to pony up 50% of the either the cover or net price of each sale to the publisher. Therefore, you will only receive 50% of the cover/net price as a royalty. Please remember that the net price could be substantially less than the cover price, drastically reducing your “royalty.” For example, Amazon takes approximately 35% of the cover price as its share for listing the book, so as an author, you would only receive 50% of the 65% left from the cover price. In the vanity/subsidy publishing model, 100% of the risk is borne by the author but not 100% of the reward.
So what is an aspiring author to do? There is a difference between being published and being in print that is being blurred by today’s print on demand technology and the advent of the Internet. For starters, remember the first rule: Money should flow from the publisher to the author. Then, remember the second rule: If anyone asks you to outlay money to publish your book, seriously reconsider that “publication.” There is a reason why AAR and other organizations have a code of ethics that prohibits literary agencies from charging fees to aspiring writers. As a writer, you should consider applying that rule to any publishers that you are about to consider.
My friend Rayna Vause and I headed to Georgia at the beginning of the month on a new adventure – the Moonlight & Magnolias Conference!
It was a fabulous conference run by the Georgia Romance Writers and many thanks to all the wonderful organizers there for a great event.
You must wonder what that has to do with Tuesday and Tips of any kind and here it is – You’ve heard me say it before and I’ll say it again – Networking!
One of the most important things you can do both before and after getting published is to get out and about and expand your horizons. Meet new people. Make new friends. Gain more knowledge that will help you not only write better, but also learn about the publishing business.
Some people go to the same conference every year. Sometimes that’s good if it’s a solid conference that brings in new blood and new possibilities. But it’s also important to allow room (and funds) for different conferences and adventures.
I’m glad I took my little adventure to Moonlight & Magnolias! It was a great group of people and there were some wonderful workshops and events. Thank you Georgia Romance Writers!
Here are a few photos for you from the conference. If anyone out there has more (I know I posed for bunch of photos), please send them to cpsromance at att dot net.
I have with me a very special guest today. Please welcome Gary Morgenstein, the author of JESSE’S GIRL who is going to offer up some tips on writing!
Without further ado, here is Gary’s WRITE UNTIL IT HURTS!
Writing is a muscle like any other requiring exercise. Relentless, agonizing, sweat-drenched, every single day. No time to rest sore muscles. Sorry but, as Vito Corleone said, that’s the life we choose for ourselves.
Beyond the pain, a writer must, as Faulkner said, be able to devour its young. As I learned in my thriller Jesse’s Girl, sometimes you have to let go. You know, Luke Skywalker closing his eyes and feeling the light saber?
Jesse’s Girl is about a widowed father’s search for his adopted teenage son, who has run away from a drug wilderness treatment program to find his biological sister. Now when I started the book, I had all these ideas. A small story, small canvas, almost a two-hander of a father and a son overcoming their troubled relationship.
So much for that. I wrote the opening scene where Teddy, the father, gets the call from the wilderness program that Jesse, his son, was missing, and after that, all bets were off. Characters I had thought of changed or vanished. New ones beamed down into me. Storylines emerged. Suddenly it was a thriller. I had to discard all my pre-conceived notions. From the excellent reviews Jesse’s Girl has been getting, I’m glad I did.
Admitting you made a mistake is essential in writing. Never be afraid to say you’re on the wrong path. Just because it sounded good in your head or in an outline doesn’t mean it will necessarily work as a story. How many times have you played out a scene in your head and then wrote it down and said, Ew!
Philip Roth said that there were times he wrote 100 pages only to realize that inside that was the one paragraph that contained his story. The rest of the 99 plus pages was simply the path to get him there.
As life is the constant journey for a writer, so is writing the constant road to your art. You might get ambushed, but that is the process. To paraphrase FDR, the only thing we have to fear is not writing.
****
In addition to Jesse’s Girl, Gary Morgenstein’s most recent novels, both available exclusively on Amazon.com, are the political baseball thriller Take Me Out to the Ballgame and the romantic triangle Loving Rabbi Thalia Kleinman. His chillingly prophetic play Ponzi Man played to sell-out crowds at a recent New York Fringe Festival. A PR consultant for Syfy Channel, he lives in Brooklyn, New York, with lots of books and rock and roll CDs. You can visit him at www.facebook.com/people/Gary-Morgenstein/1011217889 or at http://redroom.com/member/garymorg.
My friend Rayna Vause and I were recently at the Moonlight & Magnolias conference in Atlanta to give a workshop on publicity and promotion in cyberspace. One of the topics we discussed was Social Media and how to use it to help build your brand online.
One of the major concerns expressed by many was the time demands of being in so many places online. It’s a truly valid concern. With so many authors still holding down jobs and/or the needs of family, spending time on the web and social media sites can be a major time suck, especially when you’re also trying to write a book.
But it is possible to use technology to alleviate some of the demands of Social Media promotion. If you’ve got a blog, Facebook, Twitter and Myspace, it’s possible to automate many of these applications so that you’re content will be available on all of them with minimal work. How do you do that?
Feed your blog to your Twitter, Facebook and/or Myspace pages:
Both Twitter and Facebook allow you to feed content automatically from your blog. In Facebook, find your NOTES section and you will see a spot where you can add your blog feed to bring it into your Facebook profile. With Twitter, you can use Twitterfeed to automatically post your blog content as a tweet.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a similar application for Myspace, but it is possible to create a widget for your blog feed that you can embed on your Myspace page or in other applications that accept Widgets. I’ve used Spring Widgets and find their RSS feed widget very handy.
Feed your Twitter, Facebook and/or Myspace to each other:
It’s possible to feed your various tweets, status changes, etc. from one Social Media site to another.
There are a number of applications that will allow you to view and take action on your various sites at once. Two of the more popular and useful applications are TWEETDECK and HOOTSUITE.
Tweetdeck is a desktop application that will allow you to see tweets, respond, retweet as well as view your Facebook and Myspace content. Hootsuite is a web-based application that also does much of the same, but also allows you to schedule tweets. A great ability to have if you must get information out but know in advance that you will not have access to the web.
I hope you found today’s Tuesday Tip helpful and that it will help you avoid the possible time suck of Social Media. If you have any good applications that you can recommend, please let us know by posting them to the comments section.
The article contains some useful examples for you on how to increase your visibility on the Internet and improve search engine rankings.
We’ve discussed some of them before, like leaving comments on blogs (and finding those blogs by using news alerts). Sending out books for review and having those reviews posted online is another great way to get your name noticed.
Likewise, we’ve talked about doing article submissions to create buzz and drive traffic to your site.
What else can you do?
Having links from key sites back to yours is another way to improve visibility. How do you do this? If you’re book has something that would be of interest to a particular industry (i.e., knitting, crafts, civil war), find sites for that industry and see if you can’t be listed there. Make connections to stores, vendors and magazines in that industry.
If you’re book is in a particular genre, like vampires, search out sites for that genre and ask to be placed on their list of links. Oftentimes sites may require that you link back to them which seems like a fair exchange.
Search engines will see those incoming links and if the site on which your listed is a high ranking site, that will improve your page ranking.
Finally, don’t forget press releases, especially close to the date of your novel’s launch. Reach out to local papers and use those free press release sites to get the word out!
This Thoughtful Thursday is about a question I am frequently asked? What do you in-between books? The answer is that you hope you’ve got something else contracted!
But seriously, what I do is start research on the next book and work on other proposals to be sent out by my agent. I’m always working on a new idea because for every book I am lucky enough to sell, there are at least one or two that end up gathering dust at my desk. Sometimes even though I think it’s a rocking book (like UNDEAD UPRISING!).
So the first answer to the question is: Always be preparing another project for consideration. Even if you’re in the middle of working on books that are contracted, keep your creative mind going, even if it’s to just to jot down some story ideas that you can flesh out later.
The second answer is: Get to work on the next book you need to write.
This spring and summer was blessedly busy for me. I had to finish two more book in THE CALLING vampire novels – ARDOR CALLS and VENGEANCE CALLS. Also had to do copy edits and galley proofs for SINS OF THE FLESH. And in the midst of all that, I was busy writing the next book in the SINS series – STRONGER THAN SIN – as well as researching that book.
Third answer: Spend some time researching your next novel.
For me, researching STRONGER THAN SIN meant long walks through some of the shore towns where I planned to set the novel. Snapping photos of places where I might be putting the hero and heroine so that I could get a real feel for the places. I’ve always thought that it’s important to really let you get a sense of the place and am always delighted to hear from someone who visits one of those towns that they felt like they knew it because of something I put in a novel.
So far in STRONGER THAN SIN, my ability to move them around has been limited, but I’m working up to allowing more and more scenes where the hero and heroine will be walking along the same streets that I visited and sharing their views of some of New Jersey’s delightful shore towns.
In STRONGER THAN SIN, most of the action will be taking place in Bradley Beach, Asbury Park, Ocean Grove and Spring Lake. For today, I’m sharing with you some pictures of Ocean Grove and Asbury Park. I’ve got to head down the shore again this weekend and work on adding some shots of Spring Lake and also, the wonderful tent city area close to the Ocean Grove auditorium.
As you can see, we’ve got a whole new look to the site and a big thanks to the designer – MJ from Sizzle Designs. I absolutely love what she’s done and I hope you do as well. It’s clean, but its mood definitely reflects my romantic suspense and paranormals.
So there are a few little tweaks on things I didn’t think about immediately (sorry MJ!) and then there’s the reconstruction of the pages from the old website.
Why reconstruction? Well, I’ve learned a few things and also didn’t realize just how long it had been since I updated some of the pages. So little by little, I’ll be working on those, especially since I’ve got the second SINS book – STRONGER THAN SIN – due to be delivered later in the year.
Here’s what I’ve learned and will share with you in the hopes it will help you with your own website design.
Keep It Simple Stupid: Yep, I let my natural desire to bling just put way too much stuff on certain parts of the site. So to keep it looking clean and professional, I’m trying to unclutter.
Let the program do it for you: There’s a number of places where it would be way easier just to let programming bring in content. For example, on my Cook’s Treat page I’ve figured out how to feed in all the blog posts that had recipes. Much better than my remembering to code and add those blog posts every time. Now I’ve got to work on putting them in alphabetical order, but at least there’s no more recoding to do!
Forget about links to third party news articles: I’ve discovered that online newspapers, etc. don’t keep their articles up for long periods of time and the URLs no longer work. So, rather than having a lot of dead links (as I had on my Press Page), I’m going to just stick to mentioning the articles without a link. But if anyone knows of a good link checker, it would be greatly appreciated.
Don’t mention dates without a year!: I didn’t realize how many times I said, “this October” or similar and forgot to go back and update it later. So “this October” was actually like three Octobers ago! Be specific with dates or maybe better yet – if the date isn’t important, leave it out.
Using Categories Correctly: Remember that comment about letting the program do it. Well to do that you have to be consistent. Wordpress and many other programs let you create “categories” for your links and blog posts. Be consistent when you use those so that you can pull up just the content you want rather than a mish-mosh of unrelated posts. Also, create categories that will actually assist you in gathering data for your website visitors.
Thanks for dropping by! I hope this Tuesday Tip was helpful!
Also, please be sure to drop by tomorrow to share some time with a wonderful friend and fellow author – Amanda McIntyre. Amanda will be sharing some of her recent exploits with us and anyone who leaves a comment on tomorrow’s blog by midnight EST will be eligible to win a SINS OF THE FLESH t-shirt!
There are a lot of things that can drain your creativity as a writer, but one of the worst is trying to edit while you are writing.
Journals are a wonderful way to keep track of so many things. Whether it’s a diet journal where you keep track of the foods you eat, a workout journal to record progress, a personal journal for important thoughts or a travel journal to remind you of where you have been, journals rock!
I’m really lucky to have with me today my friend and 
I have with me a very special guest today. Please welcome Gary Morgenstein, the author of JESSE’S GIRL who is going to offer up some tips on writing!
