Archive for August, 2009
Your BFF: A Blog Is an Author’s Best Friend
Blogs are to writers as dogs are to man. What could be a more perfect best friend for a writer than a dynamic public notebook? No matter the status of your career as an author, starting and keeping a blog could be just the thing that will help you advance your career and excel in your unique writing craft. Here are a few reasons why:
Find and develop your voice. A blog can range from extremely formal, to completely personal. But one rule for all blogging applies: let your personality shine. Now, you shouldn’t let just anything fall of out your mouth – eh, mind – online. Just because you can say whatever you want doesn’t mean that you should. Just remember that anyone can read your blog, so think about your grandmother, neighbor and boss reading your work before posting it.
Keep a writing history. A blog captures your work over time and provides a handy catalog of your work for you to flip through whenever you want. Perhaps you touched on a subject that you want to dig into more deeply. You can review your writing and critique it, picking out the parts that you liked and making gagging noises in disgust at the parts you don’t. But don’t be too hard on yourself – by reviewing past work, you can often see how far you’ve come.
Write on a schedule. Blogging requires that you keep a schedule, whether it is daily or weekly. A schedule also means that some of the time you will not be able to wait to post your incredible blog, and other times when you will not want to write, you will not have time and you have nothing to write about. It’s a love/hate relationship, but it will make you a better writer.
Overcome fear of public scrutiny. Putting your work out there in front of others is scary. They will think things … about your work … about you! The more practice that you have putting your work out there, the more natural it will become. Truth is, if you aspire to be an author, you will be judged by others. That’s just part of it.
Receive feedback. One good thing about putting your work on display, is that you can improve your work from feedback that you receive. You should encourage your reader’s direct input. And you should look for indirect cues. For instance, if you get no comments, or minimal views on a particular post, and a lot of activity on another, you can use this indirect feedback to form a pattern of which kinds of posts and writing styles readers prefer. But, no matter what, always remain true to your voice, your heart and your writing goals. Don’t let negative feedback stop you from developing your writing craft and pursuing your dreams.
Develop a reader base. By starting a blog now, and being actively engaged in reading and participating in other blogs, forums and social networks, you are starting to build that all important author platform that will help you market your book in the future.
Escape from ongoing projects. When you are working on a piece that consumes most of your time and concentration, it is helpful to step away for a moment to write something unrelated for a while, in order to come back to your work with a fresh perspective. You’ll avoid burnout and maintain your flexible writing skills (and sanity).
Starting a blog is easy and many are free. The hard part is to stick with it for the long haul and continually churn out smart, engaging content. Are you up for the challenge? Have you already started a blog of your own? Share your successes, challenges, tips and a link to your blog in the comments.
Keep writing.
-Angie Kelly Pheifer
How To Promote Your Book Using Podcasts
When it comes to the marketing of your book, each creative direction should be exposed with the primary focus of building an audience. These days, authors have a number of options within their promotional tool belt. Less spoken of, but equally as important, is the use of a podcast for the marketing of your book. 
A podcast — or audio file — distributed over the Internet allows authors the opportunity to create a successive series of their book, converse about upcoming work and personalize the experience with their readers. A type of audio blog, a podcast’s purpose is to expand your efforts to build a diverse audience and a following of listeners.
Podcasting opens up a whole new dimension of listeners/readers. These audio presentations create a more personal relationship between author and listener. Listeners actively return, supporting your work, and are in turn inclined to purchase your book based off of the content that was heard and the author/reader connection.
Your starting point may vary depending upon your tech interest level as well as the amount of money and time you are willing and able to devote to your podcast. Becoming a podcaster, however, can be quite easy: simply plug a microphone into your computer, record your voice and convert your file to MP3 format.
You may also visit audacity.sourceforge.net, a free program that records and edits sound files. Your recorded audio files can then be uploaded to your own server/Web site. If you don’t have a Web site, you will need to use a podcast hosting service, such as PodHoster.com.
Another avenue for podcasting, which charges a fee and offers the service to those without Web sites, is AudioAcrobat.com. You may record your podcast via microphone or telephone and AudioAcrobat will handle the technicalities of syndication through various directories.
Once created, you should utilize your podcast as you would your blog — with regular updates keeping your listeners tuned in. A podcast can simply be audio, or you may include video within your downloadable segments. Include readings from your book and answer questions that listeners may have e-mailed to you. You want to create a band of listeners — a fellowship of contributors. Serialize your book and allow your listeners to read character lines. Personalize yourself and build an audience for your work.
- Melissa
Writers: Creatures of Habit
As a writer, you have a way of working. You have developed this style over time, and you have found the best ways to work within the means and conditions available to you. Historically, the nature of writing as a craft has allowed writers to develop strange behaviors and unusual work settings in search of that ultimate environment in which their own productivity thrives and creativity grows.
I’m certain you’ve seen the locals in your area typing in cafes or texting on a cell phone. There are pensive young people with the well-worn notebooks that (they are convinced) best characterize them and their individuality. There are people with pencils and pens and people with handheld voice recorders capturing their ideas all over the place.
Famous writers and professional writers have long been topics of whispers and rumors of their idiosyncratic approach to the physical craft of writing: Kerouac, Faulkner, Wolfe, and Twain, standing-sitting-scribbling-ranting-obsessing.
There is no shame in feeding the creature inside you that allows you to succeed creatively. In interviews with novelists there tends to be a heavy focus on questions about how they write. What time do they start? How many words a day do they write? What is their approach to editing? What is their office like? These questions are good barometers for the public to attempt to discern what it is about the artist that makes them so different and so much more successful than others. Many writers have written books about how they write their fiction and how they would answer these questions.
I would say that one could potentially try to develop strange habits just in anticipation of making that big-time interview more interesting when it happens.
Dan Brown wakes up at 4 a.m. every day to write and turns to gravity boots when considering plot development.
What do you do?
Writing Tips: Creating Rich Characters
Creating interesting characters that people can relate to is difficult. When we think of the deep reservoir of a person’s experiences and how that makes them who they are today, it is hard to imagine writing a character with that same amount of depth. There are several tools great authors use to accomplish the rich characterization found in their books. I would like to outline two of them.
The first option is to spend long hours outlining your characters; when were they born, what were their parents like, who were their childhood friends, and so on. Although this sounds tedious to do for every one of your characters, some authors find it is the only real way to get characters that feel real to the reader, and for some authors, this is their favorite part of writing.
The benefit of creating character backgrounds and personality before writing is that, while you write, you will find your characters acting out their own lives. This takes some of the strain off you as the writer because you don’t always have to pre-plan everything in your book. For instance, if you introduce a random event in the story, let’s say an apartment fire, how would your characters react? Would all the fire alarms fail because the landlord had not kept up with their maintenance? Would the rotund fire chief muster enough energy to make it out of the fire house in time to save the apartment building?
If you are not up for the vast amount of preparation needed to create characters from scratch, you are not alone. Many great authors follow a very simple rule, write what you know. Why create a character from scratch when there are so many great characters to choose from right in your area. Often times, the protagonist of a novel has quite a bit in common with the writer.
Both these options are very effective ways of creating complex characters, so when it comes down to your writing, choose the one that works best for you. Some writers stick to only one style throughout while others mix and match. Don’t feel that you are limited by what other people have done in the past though.
-Michael F.
New York Times Reports Sony Plans to Adopt Common Format for E-Books
This is an excerpt from the New York Times article by Brad Stone-originally published 8/12/2009 Read the full article>>
“Paper books may be low tech, but no one will tell you how and where you can read them.
For many people, the problem with electronic books is that they come loaded with just those kinds of restrictions. Digital books bought today from Amazon.com, for example, can be read only on Amazon’s Kindle device or its iPhone software.
Some restrictions on the use of e-books are likely to remain a fact of life. But some publishers and consumer electronics makers are aiming to give e-book buyers more flexibility by rallying around a single technology standard for the books. That would also help them counter Amazon, which has taken an early lead in the nascent market.
On Thursday, Sony Electronics, which sells e-book devices under the Reader brand, plans to announce that by the end of the year it will sell digital books only in the ePub format, an open standard created by a group including publishers like Random House and HarperCollins.
Sony will also scrap its proprietary anticopying software in favor of technology from the software maker Adobe that restricts how often e-books can be shared or copied.
After the change, books bought from Sony’s online store will be readable not just on its own device but on the growing constellation of other readers that support ePub. Those include the Plastic Logic eReader, a thin device that has been in development for nearly a decade and is expected to go on sale early next year.”
This is an excerpt from the New York Times article by Brad Stone-originally published 8/12/2009
See full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/technology/internet/13reader.html
Take the Active Road: Leave Your Passive Voice Behind
Passive voice is to writers what kryptonite is to Superman. Nothing takes 
away a writer’s power faster or more completely than passive voice. Editors despise it, and readers are confused by it. So what is passive voice, and why do so many writers continue to make the mistake in using it?
Passive voice occurs when the person or thing doing something — the actor — is replaced as the subject of a sentence by an object.
Passive Example: Bait is being used by the fisherman.
Active Example: The fisherman is using bait.
Passive voice is not illegal; editors simply frown upon its abundance. The problem with passive voice is it makes a writer seem unsure, or at best, maybe … sort of … sure. It weakens the clarity of writing. Overuse of your passive voice may cause your writing to seem flat and uninteresting and may lead to a disconnect from the readers to the characters or book.
You might have trouble avoiding the passive voice at first, but if you want to keep your readers and editors interested, now’s the time to learn how to identify the red flags of passive voice.
For instance, “To be or not to be,” is the passive voice, usually. Look for “to be,” “will be,” “have been” and “were.” These passive constructions, and others like them, are good indicators of the passive voice. However, this is not always the case. “I have to be at work,” is not passive. Do you see how this statement shows action? “I” is the subject and “be at work” is the action, therefore the statement is not passive.
Past particles — usually words ending in “–ed” — in a sentence with a passive indicator almost always lead to passive voice.
Passive Example: The car has been washed by a boy.
Active Example: A boy washed the car.
Do you see how much clearer the active voice is? See how the active voice clearly states who the actor is?
Passive voice also occurs when no subject is mentioned at all.
Passive Example: Trees were being cut.
Active Example: Loggers were cutting trees.
If you want to stay on the good side of your editor, and believe me, you do, stay away from the passive voice. Your writing will benefit from action.
- Melissa
For more writing tips, visit Wordclay’s Author Resource Center.
Richard Russo’s New Novel: That Old Cape Magic
Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Empire Falls, Straight Man and a number of other very well-received novels, has written a new book. That Old Cape Magic, like his other works, manages to convey several generations of a family and their conflicts and triumphs. Russo has a strong ability to show parallels between father and son, young and old, past, present and future.
That Old Cape Magic focuses on a married couple, most specifically the husband. Jack Griffin is successful against his own best wishes with regrets regarding the path he chose in life and the other options which he feels may have been more fulfilling. He drives around with his father’s ashes in the trunk of his car. His mother calls his cell phone obsessively and continually from her nursing home. Psychologically, he has spent much of his adult life running away from the dramatic upheaval of his parents’ earlier lives-unfulfilled and unfaithful.
Jack and his wife are heading to a wedding in Cape Cod where he spent his summers as a child. This brings memories of who he believed he would become-a successful screenwriter-and doubt about the validity of his life and relationships as they now stand. He chose to become a Professor and has achieved academic success but Jack Griffin is not reluctant to admit to himself that he would still like to give it all up and pursue his creative dreams, even though he is in his later 50’s and well-established.
Russo sets a good example for any writer who is trying to maintain the delicate balance of enough information and overall satisfaction with a story. It can be difficult to write and edit a story that fully engages a reader and still covers new literary ground in otherwise familiar settings and constructs. Each of us would be lucky to possess half of his ability.
I recommend reading That Old Cape Magic and Russo’s earlier works as a study of story development, character development, passage of time and style.
-1000 Chimps
Writing Tips: Tools for Writing Descriptive Fiction
Most novel writers will agree with me that the most difficult part of writing fiction is giving adequate description to make a reader feel like part of a story. There are a couple things to keep in mind when dealing with fiction: make sure that the reader has a good grasp of the setting that the characters find themselves in and never use emotions alone to describe how a character is feeling.
Painting a picture for the reader:
Writers sometimes forget that the only place characters truly live is within the pages of a book. Between the first and last page, you define the world that a character lives in. Don’t make it an empty world.
There are several ways to practice descriptive writing with setting. One of my personal favorites is to think of your book as a movie. When you are watching a movie you see everything, so it doesn’t need to be described to you. What if it did? When making a movie, there are whole teams of people that work to create sets. Every object has a place, and each object works together to create a scene. Try pausing a movie and writing down what you see. When describing the scene keep in mind what is the first object that gets your attention, is there anything unique about this room, what does the room sound and smell like. You can then apply that same type of visualization to your book.
Another way to practice is to try this same method with paintings. Photographs also work, but less time goes into creating a photograph than a painting. This is not to say photography isn’t a wonderful art form, but a painter painstakingly works on the placement of objects within a composition. And when it comes down to it, you are painting a scene for your readers.
Showing rather than telling:
Writing what a character is feeling can be very difficult. Emotions are vague by nature. So, rather than telling a reader what a characters emotional state is, write down the outward signs of that emotion. If an author writes that a character is mad, the description fails to capture what that character is truly feeling. A writer should show the reader a character is mad rather than telling them.
Here is an example of how an author could tell the reader a character is experiencing an emotion. Sally walked into the room. She was stomping mad and everyone knew it. The reader now knows that Sally is mad. But how did everyone in the room know she was mad?
Here is the same example, but this time I will show you she is mad. Everyone could hear the fast paced pounding of Sally’s determined steps as she came down the hall. As she came closer to the room, the sound became all anyone could focus on. There was a growing storm coming, and the thundering sound of her shoes told us it would envelope us soon. Before anyone could think to take shelter, she was in the doorway. We all knew it was too late to hide now. The darkness we all felt was contrasted only by the fire that blazed in her eyes. She razed her shaking hand and pointed at me. There was only one word that escaped through her clenched teeth, “You!”
The point:
A reader’s experience is shaped by the text on each page. You are creating a glimpse into another world. If that world is rich in detail, a reader will want to read more about it. Make the world and characters come alive.
-Michael F.
