Author Jean Davis

Monday, April 16, 2018

A to Z - All Things Writing: NaNoWriMo

Welcome to the Blogging A to Z Challenge, where, this month, I'll be focusing on all things writing. This may be a random jumping around of topics within my theme, but hopefully something somewhere will be useful to someone. (V is for vague - see that last sentence.) Check out all the participants here . Now, lets get on with today's letter.

N is for National Novel Writing Month

Or NaNoWriMo for short, because it's easier to say (or not, depending on who is trying to pronounce it). This is a worldwide challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days, specifically in November. Sound intriguing? You can sign up here. While this challenge is totally free, the month-long event is put on by a non-profit organization that shares the love of writing with classrooms all around the world, so donations are encouraged.

If you've been around my blog before, you've probably heard me wax on about the wonders of NaNoWriMo. Fair warning, I'm going to do it again.

Things that are awesome about writing 50,000 words in 30 days:

You can join a region. A region is comprised of writers all around you who are also participating in this challenge. If you're looking to connect with other writers in your area for marking / accountability / support / learning how to write / guidance / advice / to find beta readers / a writers group / and pretty much anything else, this is an excellent place to start. Within your region, events will be held throughout November. These are put on by a local volunteer (aka an ML - of which I am one). Most often, these events will be in in person, but are sometimes online in a chat room. Don't scare yourself out of going to events. Are you an introverted socially awkward person who would rather stay home and not talk to new people? You'll fit right in. Go. Meet your people. Seriously. Go.

Setting goals for yourself is one thing, but being part of a group writing with the same goal, makes accountability even easier. You get nifty graphs, a progress bar, and virtual badges for meeting word goals. There are even pep talks from famous authors if you need further encouragement.

There are forums to meet more people and share ideas. I highly recommend checking these out before November strikes. Find the threads that you'll find the most helpful and/or encouraging and stick with those. The forums are like the interwebs: giant and time sucking. You should be writing first and socializing second. The forums stay up long after NaNo is over so you can hang out with people after the writing is over too.

You will find time to write. 1,667 words is your daily goal. That may sound like a crazy amount of words, but it's really not. You'd be amazed how many words you can pump out in a 10 minute word war (aka word sprint). Who knew writing could be a competitive sport? It can be, even hanging out in the chat room isn't your thing and you're only competing with yourself. Yes, there is now a word sprint tool to use when you're writing alone. This is the perfect way to spend a month finding when works best for you to write and establishing a writing habit.

You will find that you can actually write the rough draft of a novel in 30 days. It won't be easy, but it's not impossible either. I've done it 11 out of 12 times. I was building a house the one year, so I was happy that I found time to write at all.

If you've never finished a piece of long-form writing before, you'll get that elation of a goal met. It's an awesome feeling, and even more so, because you get to share it with other writers who are writing right along side you, facing the same challenges of sick kids, errands, keeping up the house, needy pets and still finding time to spend with their significant others.

Things that are also awesome, but to keep in mind:

50,000 words is not a full novel in most cases, but it's a good start.

This is a very rough draft and because you're cranking it out in 30 days it will contain a lot of suck, but also a lot of word treasures.

Everyone writes at a different pace. One person's 10 minute word sprint of 700 words is another person's 200 word major accomplishment. You might be at 40,000 words on day 28 while someone else pounded out 50K back on day 2. Don't compare yourself to everyone else. We write a different speeds. Some people fix every typo along the way, others turn their text color off or use an unreadable font and are blissfully uncaring until December. Others take vacation or are home for thanksgiving break and have entire days to write while you are cramming in six 10 minutes sprints between running kids to sports, making meals, keeping up your house, working full time, and potty training your new puppy who doesn't sleep through the night. Your goal. Your challenge. Being competitive and motivated is good, but don't stress about how everyone else is doing.

Too busy in November? Check out Camp NaNo - a smaller scale event with your own word goal that happens twice a year. Oh look, there's one happening right now!

Have you done NaNoWriMo before?

Would you like a free e-book? This April, I'm giving away free copies of my new anthology, Destiny Pills & Space Wizards. Claim your copy here: https://claims.instafreebie.com/free/vhJFWpLL Enter code atozpromo

Prefer paperback? The print book goes live on April 20. Reviews are always appreciated.

Saturday, April 14, 2018

A to Z - All Things Writing: Marketing

M is for Marketing

You might be one of those rare outgoing writers who loves marketing, but most of us would rather bang out words in the quiet comfort of our writing caves. We're not always super fond of talking to people in, you know...person. Not to mention having to put ourselves out there online, where we can pretend to be social from the comfort of our computers. Some days it feels like the only way to get your book seen is by spamming every soul you know with posts about your book. No one likes to spam people.

So how do you get your book out into the world where it might actually sell? Again, I wish I had all the answers here, but I'm struggling through it all just like most of us are.

There's book boast, instafreebie, reading deals, freebooksy, and countless other sites out there. Some will cost you, others are free.

Those Facebook groups are a good go to for marketing as well. Find some group giveaways or sale groups for your genre. Most are free and only require you to send the sale out to your mailing list.

Get a mailing list. Easier said than done, but yes, work at it.

Establish a web presence somewhere that you're comfortable and will actually use. You don't have to be everywhere, but do be somewhere that people can find you, be that a Facebook page, website, blog, twitter, or whatever else. Post there now and then so people know you're alive and will be more inclined to click when you have something to promote.

Connect with other authors in your area, be that your city or region or state. This is another place that those Facebook groups come in handy. Network with those authors, and see what they're doing that is successful. Do events with them and watch them in action. Discover what works best for you.

Get out there and sell your book. Attend author events. You can set up your own signing, and that's a great thing for a book launch, but also attend events with other authors. If you have twenty authors of various genres all bringing in book lovers to shop, you are greatly widening your prospective audience. Don't have one in your area? Organize one. Work with a local bookstore or venue that already has foot traffic coming in. I've done events in a retail store, library, theatre, farmers market, workshops, and at cons. If there are people who read going to be there, it's a good place to set up shop.

Find a few blogs and Facebook book loving people who will feature your book.

Find local bookstores who will take your book to sell.

There are radio, newspapers and tv for the more outgoing and ambitious.

Know what your book is about in a quick sentence or two. Be able to speak about your book without tripping over your own tongue. It does get easier the more you do it.

What marketing strategies have worked for you?

Prefer paperback? The print book goes live on April 20. Reviews are always appreciated.

Friday, April 13, 2018

A to Z - All Things Writing: Line Edit

L is for Line Edit

We covered the Developmental Edit last week. What we're talking about today is the step between the Dev edit and Proofreading / Copy Edit. The Line edit will focus on tone, language, sentences and paragraphs and word choices among other things. It will not focus on typos.

Things a line edit will focus on:

Word usage:

overused words - just / suddenly / like / and many other common offenders

clarity - Is the meaning of the sentence clear? Is it clear who is speaking?

repeated words - using the same words in nearby sentences

Sentence and Paragraph structure:

avoiding repeated structures - which can make reading very boring

openings - making sure the lines don't all start with the same word or phrasing

length - avoiding run-ons or too many short sentences which can create a staccato effect.

Dialogue:

does it feel natural?

is it in character?

Tone of the story:

is it consistent throughout?

Action:

is it clear and easy to follow?

Pacing:

do areas move too fast or too slow?

Tightening:

are there wasted words?

can adverbs be switched out for better verbs?

can anything be removed that doesn't impact the story?

are there any areas where information is repeated or rephrased that can be removed?

A good line edit will put the final polish on a story and then all that's left is to hunt down those pesky typos and check punctuation.

Prefer paperback? The print book goes live on April 20. Reviews are always appreciated.

Thursday, April 12, 2018

A to Z - All Things Writing: Killing off Characters

K is for Killing Characters

Some writers never kill anyone. That's fine too. The death of a character should have meaning and add depth to the remaining characters' arcs and impact the plot. If we went around hilly nilly killing everyone for giggles, that wouldn't make for a very engaging story. Maybe it would for some people, there seem to be readers of just about everything. However, let's just say for the sake of this post, that it's not an ideal goal.

People die in books. Sometimes its off the page, such as to launch a murder mystery or in backstory - your main character's mother died when they were six and that impacted who they are today. Those both have impact on the character and plot. But when is it a good idea to kill off a main or secondary character? Only if it is necessary to advance the plot or drive a remaining character into change/action. As a writer you want to get your readers attached to your characters, to care about them. Killing them off could anger your readers, so it better be for a darn good reason. If you've read any of George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series, you know what I'm talking about.

Writing the death of a cherished character is also hard for the author. They created this character. They brought them into this world, and now they're taking them out of it. As many times as your mother may have thrown out that threat, she didn't act on it. Writers do and it isn't easy. It's draining and makes us sad.

Have you ever killed off any main characters?

Prefer paperback? The print book goes live on April 20. Reviews are always appreciated.

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

A to Z - All About Writing: Juggling Projects

J is for Juggling Projects

When the ideas come to fast to finished one thing before jumping to the next, how does one handle that?

I'd like to say that I only ever work on one story at a time because it would make me sound all organized, but that really just isn't the case. I do have one main project I try to stick with at a time, but there are usually a couple secondary things bouncing around in my head. And hey! Look! A Sparkly chicken! Darn ideas, are always popping up.

The best way I've found to manage them is to jot those ideas down, either in a computer file - which I do attempt to be organized and have an ideas folder on my hard drive - or in a notebook. The notebook is what a lot of people tell me they use. I have a lot of notebooks. While that sounds like I should be all good then, I'm not. I have a lot of notebooks and I have no idea what is in most of them. Rather than spend an aggravating couple days flipping through (Because I have done that and I'm not a pleasant person when I can't find something), those notebooks for the idea/ending/outline/note to self/ character idea / that one cool name I don't want to forget / etc, I'm sooooo much better off just creating a file for it and naming whatever it is and then hitting save. I know where those things are and can just search on my computer for them if it comes down to that.

Back to the juggling. I usually have a project in progress, one I've just finished that I'm contemplating edits for, and a new one or unfinished one that I'm pondering and gathering ideas for. And still, one of those sparkly chickens will hit me now and then. If it's a short story and I'm in the middle of a novel, I'm not opposed to taking a couple days off to get that story down - assuming I have it mostly formed in my head. If it's going to take days to drag out the first half and require a good deal of research, it goes into the ideas file for later.

Working on multiple things at once isn't a terrible thing, but do try to focus on finishing one of those things before diving headfirst into the next big thing. You'll feel a lot more accomplished.

How many projects do you prefer to work on at once?

Prefer paperback? The print book goes live on April 20. Reviews are always appreciated.

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

A to Z - All About Writing: Ideas

I is for Ideas

Where do writers get ideas for their stories?

Everywhere. Ideas are all around you.

Contemplate an everyday situation, what's the worst thing that could happen to change it? Write about that.

Speculate about someone you see in a store or park. What are they doing? Who are they?

Read articles and watch the news. Ask yourself what if questions and answer those with a story.

Look at an object near you. Wonder where it came from. Who made it. What did it go through before it came to you?

Google an interesting place and do a little research. Think about what kind of story would happen there and run with it.

Writers are almost always thinking. It probably looks like their just gazing off into space and ignoring you, but they just might be plotting their next story.

Where do you get your ideas?

Monday, April 9, 2018

A to Z - All About Writing :Having A Hard Time Writing

H is for Having A Hard Time Writing

You want to write a book. Great! But where do you start? At the beginning. It might not end up being the start of your story, but you've got to start somewhere and words on a page are much easier to rewrite and edit than words bumbling about in your head. So write.

Now that you've started, how do you continue? Try to end each writing session on the edge of the next scene. That way you can ponder that next scene in your head between sessions so when you sit down next, you have the words ready to go, or at least some inking of what happens next.

But now I'm stuck on a difficult scene. We all have scenes we struggle with. Give emotional scenes some time and don't be afraid to move more slowly than you usually write. Pouring out all that internal depth takes a lot of out of a writer. A scene that might normally take you twenty minutes, might take a few days. Act out action scenes to get a good visual of how they would look and flow so you can use the right descriptive language and timing. Are your characters traveling from point A to B with a whole lot of nothing happening? Opt for either a scene break and skip right to what happens next or make something happen. Set someone or something on fire, perhaps not literally, but give the scene a reason to exist if we need to see the characters actually traveling. Is the dialogue heavy scene dragging? What's the worst thing one of the characters could say? Put that gem on the page and see where that goes. It's sure to stir things up.

But I just don't have time to write. Sure you do, you just have to find it. It might be getting up an hour early or staying up an hour late, or writing on your lunch break. While a full day of nothing but time for writing sounds like the most awesome thing ever, it's not. It's a mythical thing that, even when attained, makes few happy and productive. If you can find a full hour, awesome. If that doesn't work, grab a few twenty minute sessions throughout the day. True story, you probably do most of your best writing when you're not actually sitting down to write. It's going on in the back of your head or while you shower or fold the laundry. Maximize you keyboard time for spewing out the words you've pondered rather than sitting here for four hours with a blinking cursor, fighting the urge to re-organize your office supplies.

Do I have to write in order? No. Some of us do. I generally do. But I've talked to many writers that don't. I will say, that going non-linear can be freeing - the ability to skip to the next scene that excites you rather than slog through what happens between this scene and that one. However, I would advise at least writing a few notes to yourself along the way about the scenes you're skipping. That way, when you come back to sew the whole mass-o-chaos together, you've left yourself a map to do so.

Everything I write sucks. Welcome to your first draft, where sucking is just fine. Remember, the goal is to get the all words on the page. Once you write "The End", you can mine for the gems and get spackle and sandpaper out. You might be surprised, what seems like an endless stream of suck today, might not be half bad once you've had some time away from the finished project.

What part of writing do you find the hardest?