Plotting Without Explosions

by Jemi Fraser

Have you heard any explosions lately? No? You must not live in Northern Ontario. My brain has been exploding randomly and quite loudly recently.

Why?

I'm attempting to plot out a rewrite of a story.

KaBoom!

Problems:

• I'm NOT a plotter
• I need more tension between characters
• the external tension needs some polishing to make it more realistic
• the characters are too sweet

 Solution:

• I came across a post by Rula Sinara over at Kelly Steel's blog the other day talking about the synopsis
• Hmmm. I could write a synopsis BEFORE I start the rewrite
• this worked out pretty well, and helped me add in some tension between the characters, BUT it also pointed out new...

Problems:

• saggy middle
• most of the conflict comes to me as I'm writing. How am I supposed to know the middle before I get there???

Solution:

• google 'visual plot outlines'
• find this post by Chuck Wendig
• celebrate a little because writing the synopsis first is there (proving I'm not completely losing it!)
• find new ideas (writing backwards sounds BRILLIANT!!! I always know my ending before I begin so this might work)
• feel better when I see story bibles (I've done those - maybe I can do this plotting thing after all!)

Problem:

• not sure if any of this will work

Solution:

• give them a whirl! I won't lose anything by trying (plus I LOVE trying out new things)
• if I can't deal with the explosions any more, maybe I'll just Pants out a new version and hope all this thinking helps me make that version stronger!

So how does any of this help you out?

• some new ideas on plotting
• a reminder to keep open to new ideas. You never know when something will send you scurrying in a new direction. For me, the best learning experiences have been when I learned something I'd never even considered before
• another reminder that none of us work the same way -- and that's okay. Writing is a creative exercise and we should approach it that way. There is no one tried and true method that works for everyone. Don't be afraid to be unique! And, conversely, don't be afraid to borrow from others.

How about you? Are you a plotter? What has sent you in a new direction lately? Any other non-linear plotting techniques that might help me out?

Jemi Fraser is an aspiring author of contemporary romance. In between cranial explosions, she blogs  and tweets while searching for those HEAs.

Building Partnerships

By Matt Sinclair

As writers, we tend to write what we know. For most of my life and my entire professional career, I’ve been involved with the nonprofit sector as an active volunteer, a paid employee, and a professional journalist, and – in an unexpected way – as a publisher.

While I’m working to build a successful and profitable publishing company, Elephant’s Bookshelf Press, like many of the writers who have been published through it, has always had a little bit of “nonprofit” feel to it. Although it has been true for the anthologies, the more obvious example is our novel Battery Brothers by Steven Carman, the proceeds of which will go the Sunshine Foundation, which was the first organization to focus solely on providing seriously ill children with their wishes, such as providing a trip to Disney or setting up a visit from a celebrity.

The partnership works for both sides: Sunshine Foundation has helped spread the word about Battery Brothers in its newsletters and on its Website. We can include their logo on the EBP Website and to link to them. The organization will receive the proceeds from sales of the book. We had everything outlined in a contract between us.

But even if you haven’t spent your career in the nonprofit sector, it’s possible for just about any writer to build that type of partnership. As with any new relationship, you need to develop it; it might not happen immediately and it might not happen at all or in the way you initially hoped. Still, the potential for mutual benefit is there and worth pursuing.

How do you do it? Each organization is different, so sometimes the best contact person is in the public affairs or media office, but it could also be someone in the fundraising or development department. In my opinion, a writer’s initial goal should be to ensure that the story maintains believability. Could a person with diabetes run a marathon, for example? It’s possible, but a group like the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation or the American Diabetes Association can help you understand the conditions in which it’s most likely, or possible challenges that might add tension to your story. A call to the organization can open the door to someone who’s willing to talk to you.

It’s best when there’s a clear connection. For example, if you have a significant character who suffers from a specific disease, it’s always a good idea to do your research so the depiction is accurate. There is likely an organization that provides services or funds research that can help you. This type of relationship works best because you both have something to gain: you get accurate information and they have the opportunity to educate people. Be sure to thank the organization in an acknowledgements section of your finished work.

But even if there’s not a clear connection, you might be able to work something out. The key is communicating with the organization. Perhaps a character in your story has been beaten or abandoned. There are numerous human service organizations that help people in those situations, and they might be willing to highlight your book in a newsletter. It might only require a polite request.

As an important caveat: don’t simply use an organization’s name and say that the organization will receive a portion of the proceeds if you don’t have an actual agreement. Most organizations don’t like it when their name is used without permission; some will file suit.

The key is building a relationship, a partnership. There’s no telling where good relationships can take you.

Matt Sinclair, a New York City-based journalist and fiction writer, is also president and chief elephant officer of Elephant's Bookshelf Press, which recently published Battery Brothers, a YA novel by Steven Carman about a pair of brothers playing high school baseball and about overcoming crippling adversity. Matt also blogs at the Elephant's Bookshelf and is on Twitter @elephantguy68.

Book Serendipity

by Charlee Vale

Allow me to tell you a story.

One July evening in 2008, my family is participating in one of our favorite pastimes: hanging out at the bookstore. We are separate, but together. My mother is perusing craft and art magazines in the comfy chairs in the cafe, my father is in the music section with his head buried in a book about classical guitar technique, and I float. I drift from fiction to children's to teen and back again. I swing by science fiction and end up in drama.

Now, this was back when Border's was Border's, and at this local store I knew the sales people, the layout, even the music they would play. Some families had Sunday dinner, we had Sunday bookstore time. And Monday, and Tuesday, and whatever day of the week we felt like going and diving into what seemed like endless stacks of books.

After getting my father to but me a chai tea latte from Border's Cafe (which, to this day, is still the best chai I've ever had), I found myself perusing the stage plays. I had just completed my freshman year as a theatre major and wanted to consume as much theatrical literature as possible. I suddenly stop in my tracks as I see the cover of a play. A black and white photo of a woman. Just a woman, staring out at the camera with immeasurable sadness. I picked it up and turned it over and read these words:

     "This happened on December 30, 2003. 
           That may seem a while ago but it won't when it happens to you..."

Chills ran over my entire body.

I immediately took the play back over to the cafe and began reading. I read a good 30 pages before we left that night. I purchased it, and finished it that night, dumbstruck. That play was the one woman show The Year of Magical Thinking, adapted from Joan Didion's memoir of the same name.

Three years later, I performed that show as my capstone. My Senior Theatre Project. I went on an amazing journey with this play, and it's still something I am so proud of. But what would have happened if I hadn't been at Border's that one night in July?

Looking around, many people get their book recommendations from the internet, social media, friends, as they should. But my life has been so affected by books that I just stumbled upon, possibly more than the books I sought out, that I can't help but try to get other people to try it.

I discovered my all time favorite book--The Scent of Magic by Andre Norton--by running my fingers across the spines in a library. I tripped over Watermark by Joseph Brodsky in that same Border's, and he is now one of my favorite writers.

This will sound cheesy, but books have power. The ones that are meant to change your life will find you if you let them. So why not give it a try? Go to a bookstore, turn off your phone, and just look. Go to a section you normally don't visit. Maybe it will be something in the cover, maybe the first sentence will make you gasp, maybe there's nothing but a feeling, but it's worth a try.

So that's my story. I believe in book serendipity. Do you?

Charlee Vale is a Young Adult writer, bookseller, photographer, and tea lover living in New York City. You can also find her at her website, and on Twitter, and randomly picking up books of of shelves. 

The Difference Between a Hook and an Elevator Pitch

By RS Mellette

The trend these days seems to be writers working on hooks for their queries, which is fine.  Query letters definitely need a hook.  Personally, I like to think that every sentence in a query letter needs to hook the reader enough to want to read the next one – and the last sentence needs to make the reader want to hit REPLY, but that’s just me.

As I read through a bunch of hooks in Agent Query Connect, it occurred to me that there is a big difference between a hook (written) and an elevator pitch (spoken).  I’m not sure new writers appreciate the difference, so I thought I’d talk about it here for a bit.

You might have the best query letter ever conceived, but if you’re heading to a writer's convention, that’s not going to help you answer, “So, what’s your book about?”

For that, you need to have a single sentence so well memorized that you don’t have to think about the answer.  That’s an old acting trick.  They’ll speed through a scene saying the words as fast as their mouths can move.  By hyper-memorizing something, when it comes time to do the scene for real, they can say their lines without having to remember them.  They just come out naturally.

But to do that, your elevator pitch – that single sentence – has to sound like natural dialogue.

Think about it as the hook is your formal version, and the pitch is casual.

For example:  Here are the first two lines of my query letter for Billy Bobble Makes A Magic Wand.

"E = mc2 is no longer the most powerful force in the universe. Your wand is."

Twelve-year-old Billy and his best friend Suzy Quinofski didn't mean to change the universe.

Of course, I’d never say that out loud if someone asked me, “What’s your book about?”  For that, I go with.

“It’s about a kid who is into quantum physics and his best friend – she’s into micro biology – and together they make a real, working, magic wand.”

That sounds very causal, but in fact it has been carefully calculated. 

“A kid” = Young Adult or Middle Grade.
“Quantum Physics & Biology” = The Science of Science Fiction
“She’s into” = His friend is a girl, so we have that demographic covered.
“Magic Wand” = the fiction.

After a brief pause to make sure what I just said has sunk in, I’ll follow up with, “Of course, they don’t know how to use it.”

Always remember that a pitch is a conversation, not a monologue.  Memorize where you are going to stop and listen (with all five senses) as well as what you’re going to say.

And finally, an elevator pitch can also be a defensive maneuver at a convention.  When you’re trapped by a person you don’t want to talk to who asks “What’s your book about?” you add “excuse me for a second” to the end of your elevator pitch, and step away without being rude.

I probably shouldn’t have given that last trick away in public, huh?

R.S. Mellette is an experienced screenwriter, actor, director, and novelist. You can find him at the Dances With Films festival blog, and on Twitter, or read him in the Spring Fevers, The Fall: Tales of the Apocalypse, and Summer's Edge anthologies.  Look for his new book, Billy Bobble Makes a Magic Wand in December from Elephant's Bookshelf Press.

Writer's Vertigo

by Cat Woods

Vertigo has been kicking my butt lately. If you've never had it, sacrifice to your god or goddess of choice so that you may never know what the perpetual bed-spins feel like. Seriously, a bout of vertigo is reminiscent of a bad college party, complete with praying to the porcelain god. This last time, it literally flattened me. I spent four, immovable days on my right side and another four feeling tipsy.

Vertigo is an imbalance in the ear that creates a state of dizziness. Usually it is momentary, lasting only about a minute or so, but sometimes it can knock you down for a day. Rarely, it may take a week to regain your footing.

You won't be surprised to know that writing has its own version of vertigo.

SIXTY SECOND VERTIGO: This comes out of nowhere. Walking down the stairs, driving a car, carrying your baby or frying burger for dinner. It is instantaneous--a black hole of time and space that sucker punches you. These are the rejections on the projects we were so certain were perfect. The email response by an agent or editor passing on our work. They throw us off balance and make us stumble in our confidence and passion.

With this kind of vertigo, a pause is all we need to recover. Stop walking. Stop driving. Put down the baby and step away from the stove. As much as these rejections sting, they are a mere blip on the continuum of your writing journey. A pebble in your path, if you will.

DIZZY FOR A DAY: This type of vertigo usually comes with vomiting. Lovely image, I know, but you writers will appreciate the injustice of it. The last time I had day-long vertigo was a snowy winter day. Dear Hubby was gone, school was cancelled and six inches of snow blanketed our three stall driveway. My plans for the day did not include hours on the tile floor in the hallway where I happened to land after smashing into a doorway I didn't see in my black fog. My poor daughter spent her "day off" of school exchanging ice cream pails every time I opened my eyes or turned my head.

I equate this vertigo to the feeling of queasiness we get when those near and dear to us don't quite climb on board with our recent writing projects. These are the rejections on a revise and resend. They are the scathing lukewarm comments by our critique partners/best friends/family. Or worse yet, their indifference. They are the first pass notes from our editors/agents asking us to change the MC, the plot and the setting. In short, they are debilitating to our egos and leave us breathless, wondering where to go from here. They are the detours set before us. They slow us down and ask that we expend more time and energy than we initially wanted to.

WEEK-LONG WEAKNESS: Not being able to stand, sit, turn your head, eat or open your eyes for days on end is psychologically debilitating. "When," you cry--literally--"will this end? Will the world ever stop spinning?"

It does, eventually. But re-entering the land of the living is a tentative endeavor at best. Every move you make is slow and filled with trepidation. You wonder when you will fall, which movement will send you crashing back to the earth, losing your faith and your breakfast simultaneously.

Yes, writers, we will endure hardships. We will face washed out bridges, mudslides and dead ends. We will enter tunnels of darkness that disorient us and make us question whether the pain is worth the unknown destination. We will face the decision to keep walking or to turn back. If the former, we will knowingly enter a partnership with more vertigo. If the latter, we will forever spiral into the blackness of self-reproach each time we see a new book on the shelves.

There is no cure for vertigo and the only treatment I'm aware of amounts to deliberately throwing yourself backward and beating your head against the mattress to dislodge the tiny crystals in your ear that have become trapped, thereby making your world severely imbalanced. The treatment is nearly as sickening as the vertigo itself, and it still takes time to recover. Time and persistence.

Heck, yes. Writing is just like vertigo.

Sadly, writer's vertigo is overwhelming enough to send many writers packing away their keyboards for good. How about you? Is your writing life spinning out of control? If so, what are you doing about it? What treatments do you rely on to regain your writing balance? How have you endured the spiral into darkness?

Curious minds want to know.

Cat Woods is a recovering vertigo patient--both in writing and in real life. In fact, she is still fighting the woozy aftermath of her latest bout. However, during her days of bed rest, a new idea came to her, proof that silver linings abound even during the blackest hours. Her advice: "Don't give up, don't give in and hold onto your passions no matter where the journey takes you." For more tips, click on over to her blog, Words from the Woods. Her short stories of hardships and the heroes who triumph over them can be found in every anthology of the Seasons Series by Elephant's Bookshelf Press.

Title Here

By RS Mellette

First of all, hi again everyone.  I've been away working on Dances With Films.  Also, if you haven't heard, our own Matt Sinclair's Elephant's Bookshelf Press is putting out my novel Billy Bobble Makes a Magic Wand in December – so that's kept me busy, too.  But I think about this place a lot.  I feel like all of the contributors here are my friends, even though I haven't met most of them.

Enough of that.  To the point of this article.  Titles.

I've been seeing in Agent Query Connect a lot of writers posting queries for manuscripts with the same title as other famous books, or movies, or songs.  Sure, there's nothing illegal about that.  No one can copyright a title.  In some cases (especially with movies) the owners may have trademarked their titled.  Should your book show up on their radar, you might get a cease and desist letter.  Then you could either fight it out in court or change the title voluntarily.

But all of that is a moot point compared to how it makes you look in the eyes of the agent you're querying. 

Consider what it's like to read thousands of query letters from strangers.  You know nothing about these people.  As time goes on, you realize that a majority of the letters come from writers who couldn't buy a clue at a Mystery Writers of America convention.  Your trust for a submitter's ability to craft a professional story is whittled down to nothing, and all you're left with is the hope that you're wrong.  Then along comes a book with a title like Dynasty, or All In The Family.  Your first impression of the writer, which started out as low, now becomes, what?  Do you trust them with your time?

I understand that if you're 25-years-old, you might not get my point.  So take the time to do a little research.  If you, as a writer, are querying an agent over 40-or-so-years-old, and your book is called Dynasty, then the agent is going to spend the first 50 pages getting the image of big hair and big shoulder pads out of their minds.  They'll be reading the book waiting for the crazy diva fight.  If it's All In The Family, then every character is going to sound like Edith or Archie Bunker.

Do yourself a favor.  Research the title you're considering.  Just because your characters are named Mario, and they are brothers doesn't mean you have to go there. 

I had an actor friend whose real name was something long, Nordic and unpronounceable.  He changed it to the short first name his friends called him and an abbreviated version of his last name.  I asked him if it bothered him to have changed his name.  He said, "Are you kidding?  The first time I used my stage name in an audition and they didn't ask me to repeat it three times, or spend the entire time looking at it on my resume as I was acting, all I thought was, 'Why didn't I do this sooner?'"

So, if you tell people the title of your book, and people keep saying, "Oh, you mean like…?" or anything other than "that sounds interesting," why wait?  Change it now.

R.S. Mellette is an experienced screenwriter, actor, director, and novelist. You can find him at the Dances With Films festival blog, and on Twitter, or read him in the Spring Fevers, The Fall: Tales of the Apocalypse, and Summer's Edge anthologies.  Look for his new book, Billy Bobble Makes a Magic Wand in December from Elephant's Bookshelf Press.

5 People Watching Tips

by Jemi Fraser

Summertime is here (at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere) and many people will be heading out on vacation sometime in the next few months. As a writer, one of my favourite things to do on vacation is people watch.

1. Spot the Tourist

Or business person or teacher or musician or pilot or artist or... Switch it up to find different kinds of people during different parts of the day. Look beyond the obvious clothing and check out some of the less obvious clues: head up/down, eye movement, fluid/jerky body movements, facial expressions, accessories, hair, jewelry, hand gestures... Think about the vocations of your characters and find someone who does the same job. How do you know?

2. Eavesdrop

So much fun! Love hearing bits and pieces of conversations and wondering about what happened before to create that particular snippet and what will happen afterward. You can capture great hints for dialogue: length of sentences, tone, pauses, interesting speech patterns and so much more.

When you're eavesdropping, listen to the flow of the various languages and dialects as well. Can you identify the speakers' home regions? What makes their speech patterns special? Listening to people speak different languages to each other is especially fascinating - I love the blend of the languages and the brain's ability to think in both at once.

3. Big Crowds

If you have the chance to be in a big crowd at a sporting event, a concert, charity event or any other big venue, look for what stands out. Who's been dragged to the event and is bored beyond belief? Figure out why that person is there (obligation, business, love...). If it's a sporting event, spot the people who are cheering against the home team and watch how they handle it.

Look at the range of outfits in the crowd. Listen for the uncomfortable voice or the one that drips with sarcasm or the person on the edge of tears or temper. Find the most passionate fan. Watch the body language change as the event moves along. Find the couple most in love, the one about to break up.

4. Public Transit Footwear

When I'm on public transit (everything from subways to buses to boats) I like to check out footwear first. Then I build an image in my head of what else the person might be wearing. After I've got the image set, I check out the reality. It's often WAY different from my expectations. (You can do this anywhere, but for some reason, I like public transit for this  one!)

5. Clothing Fiascoes

(Disclaimer: I am one of the least well-dressed people I know!) As you're moving through your vacation, look for those folks with the wildly inappropriate outfits, then assess their emotional states and figure out how they ended up wearing the exact wrong thing. Are they over-confident? Oblivious? Obnoxious? Rude? Desperately uncomfortable? Superior? Again, body language, tone and eye movements are your friends and will tell you so much more than the person would expect.

So while I think vacations are the perfect time to leave your laptop at home and recharge your energy, there's no need to let your observational skills get rusty!

What's your favourite people watching venue?

Jemi Fraser is an aspiring author of contemporary romance. She blogs  and tweets while searching for those HEAs.

Lessons From an Anomaly

by +J. Lea Lopez 

One author's success doesn't diminish the possibility of our own. Because there's not a finite pool of sparkling, shiny success that slowly empties with each new book published. We all know that, right? But there are still book deals that make even the most level-headed of us go Umm... what? I'm still slogging away in the [midlist/query trenches/self-pub maze] while they're showered with stardom for THAT? For some it was Fifty Shades. For others it might be the latest reality star's memoir. For many, recently, it's the six-figure deal for a One Direction fanfic picked up from Wattpad.

I don't particularly care if someone wants to read fanfic about a boy band. If that's their thing, more power to them. I'm not disparaging that. Usually I ignore such out-of-nowhere rise to fame stories, because it's sort of like that one person who wins a multi-million-dollar lottery jackpot: the odds of it happening to you or me are astronomical, but it does happen to some people. This time, however, I got to thinking. Even if Anna Todd's 1D fanfic book deal is that one in a million jackpot that none of us are likely to experience for ourselves, maybe there were still things we could learn and apply to our own journey. Turns out, there are.

Pace and productivity

According to the article linked above Todd's fiction was posted in 300 daily installments and garnered several hundred million views. Not hundreds. Not thousands. Hundreds of millions. I think there's something to be learned from the pacing and serialization aspect of her success. It's sort of like blogging, where one of the biggest pieces of advice people have to give is to have a consistent schedule, and generally the more often, the better. If you're on Wattpad browsing stories and someone else is on there posting a story (or part of one) every day for almost a year, chances are good you'll stumble across something they've written even if you aren't searching for them specifically. Fans of the story will want to read more of the series or even more from that author regardless of the story world. If they're pushing out something new very quickly, there's less chance of fans getting bored, wandering away, and forgetting to come back to look again.

What does that mean for you or me? Self-publishers may have a bit of an advantage here because they have more control over their publishing schedule, but those publishing traditionally can pay attention to their pacing as well. It might mean waiting until you have the first two books ready to go and another nearing completion before self-publishing the first one so you're able to set a quick pace with your releases. If you aren't writing a series, that doesn't mean you can't try the same technique with unrelated books.  High productivity helps to create visibility and increase discovery. Setting a quicker pace ensures that people who enjoy your writing never have to wait too long for something new.

Where the fans are

Todd could have posted her writing on her own blog, or on another writing web site that didn't have a specific fanfiction category. But she didn't. Wattpad has a category dedicated to fanfic, and people go there to read it, if the number of views on many of the top rated stories are any indication. It sounds simplistic, but being where your audience hangs out is important. That's why it's important for aspiring authors on social media to understand that tweeting or blogging only about writing techniques, while great, means the audience you attract is going to consist almost exclusively of other writers. Yes, writers are readers, too, but there's also a huge potential audience of non-writers out there.

I'm not saying we should all post our writing for free on web sites that have a lot of readers interested in our genre. But if you love to knit so much that the main character in your cozy mystery is a sweater-knitting sleuth, I really hope you're hanging out in knitting circles or online forums, or that you're tweeting your favorite knitting patterns in addition to writing advice. Does your book feature a talented tenor who must decide between his dream opera role and the love of his life? Then talk about opera and singing! Seek out places online or in real life to engage with other singers and other fans of opera. Most importantly, though, engage with people this way as a fellow fangirl first and an author second.

Passion

Fanfiction is, by nature, written by fans of something. They have a passion for the subject already. In reading her interview responses, it's easy to see how much Todd loves One Direction and how that passion bleeds over into the stories she's written. It may seem simplistic, but never lose sight of the joy and passion you have for your stories. If you aren't in love with the plot and characters you're writing, it's going to be difficult to get anyone else excited about reading it. Unbridled passion is contagious, so go ahead and let that cat out of the bag.

How do you usually respond to the latest big thing? What other lessons can we learn from these literary lottery winners?

J. Lea López is an author who strives to make you laugh at, fall in love with, cry over, and lust after the characters she writes. She welcomes online stalkers as long as they're witty and/or adulatory. Kidding. Maybe. Check for yourself: Twitter, Facebook, Blog.

It’s Just Business (No, Seriously)

by Sophie Perinot

It takes a long time for the fact that writing is a business to sink in.

Let’s face it, when you get that offer from an agent (or two, or ten) it feels like the Hogwarts letter—magic baby, pure magic.  You are the few, the chosen, the 2%.  Then you take the next step, a book contract.  Now you are a lottery winner (since only roughly 50% of represented debut authors get this far). And you are being told you are brilliant and you might even think you are an “A”rtist.  But what you are, plain and simple, is a craftsperson under contract and beyond this a business entrepreneur with a small personal brand.

The sooner you recognize this the better.  Not just because it will allow you to make rational decisions about contracts, deadlines and promotions either.

The main reason to remember that writing is a business is so that when the bumps come—and they will my darlings, they will—you do not take them personally.  I have now been a published author for two years and from my not-so-lofty perch I’ve observed lots of other published author friends.  Every bit of feedback you get, every rejection (and rejection never really stops—whether you have a later project turned down or just get a really nasty review questioning whether English is even your first language) is NOT a judgment on you as a person nor even, really, your competence at your craft.

If you make everything personal you will spend a lot of time curled up in a fetal position over stuff that does not warrant that level of emotional angst.   

Example One: you turn in a manuscript to your agent or editor.  You a) think “well, it’s my best work product, I’ll have to see what they think and meanwhile I will work on X, or b) worry yourself sick that they won’t like it and that in rejecting it they will be rejecting you as a person.  FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PEOPLE THE ANSWER HAD BETTER BE A!  If it is not try substituting an evaluation at any other job into the scenario and see how silly it sounds to be second guessing your worth as a human being based upon that assessment.

Example Two: you pitch some ideas to your agent for your next project.  She/he doesn’t like one of your ideas (if you are lucky you haven’t written 200 pages of it already).  If you drank the cool aid you begin to feel both aggrieved and invincible—you will just write the book after all YOU love it and you are the “A”rtist.  And that is perfectly defensible—perfectly—if you are willing to take the chance that agent-dude won’t be able to sell the completed work you've now dumped two years of your life into and if you are not relying on writing to pay any bills.  BUT If you can view this as a business in which you produce a consumer product then chances are you will take the input, swallow hard and write something else.  After all, you hired your agent for his/her expertise and market savvy.  And the best book (or technology for that matter) doesn't always win in the market (says the women whose family owned a Beta Max growing up).

There are dozens of additional examples I could list.  But the point remains the same—almost everything that occurs after publication can be viewed either as personal or business and in nearly every case the latter view will lead to preserved sanity in a way the former will not.

Ultimately the MOST important reason to view writing as a business is so that you can rationally assess whether it suits your professional needs, and for how long you wish to continue in it.  If you worked at a widget factory and started to dread going to work every morning you would probably ask yourself some very pointed questions – 1) do I need this job to keep roof overhead and bread on the table? 2) Do I have the resume (qualifications and experience) to do something else that will achieve roof/bread while making me less crazy? 3) If roof/bread are my primary goals here might I be able to better afford them doing something else?  4) If I don’t need to work for roof/bread am I getting satisfaction out of my business that warrants sticking with it?  5) Is there a way to change my personal business strategy so that my job is more satisfying, provides greater remuneration or both?

Folks, those widget-maker questions work just as well for writing.  The number of writers I've met lately who seem tired of what they are doing (or actually crushed by it) is astounding and time and time again I find myself thinking “if the business of writing is killing you why are you still doing it?”  Of course the obvious answer is that for some people it is what pays the bills and there is no nice alternative.  I am not discounting that possibility for an instant.  I am saying, just make sure, as you would with any other business, that you are evaluating what you do under the right rubric.  This is not a “survival test” and leaving this business is no more a sign of personal failure than is leaving one employer for another.

The Power of Free

by Matt Sinclair

I've been a journalist a long time now, but I can still be surprised. (Ok, in fairness, I'm a trade journalist, so there's still lots of things that can shock me in industries outside what I usually spend my energies on.)

Still, I was shocked to see what power can be had by giving away books for free. If I might wax semi-poetic about a book I've published in my role as the President and Chief Elephant Officer of Elephant's Bookshelf Press, we have just announced our first "free days" via KDP Select of Battery Brothers, the YA debut of author Steven Carman. If I may say so myself, I think it's a great story about two boys who love baseball, and a captivating story about overcoming adversity for Andy Lembo, the protagonist of the tale.

I'd been working on ways to get the story out in front of more people, and Steve and I agreed to use today, Thursday, and Friday as the first of our "free" days. We also partnered to promote the book through other sites that let readers know when books are free.

Too soon to tell whether there's been success? Yes and no.

Yes, because we still have most of the three days during which the book is free.

No, because when I checked how we were doing, I was shocked to see that we'd already topped four hundred "purchases" of the free book. In fact, between the time I started writing this post and now, we went from three hundred to four hundred.

As a small, independent publisher, EBP doesn't usually hit a hundred purchases of a book in a day, not even for our incredibly durable first anthology, Spring Fevers, which still "sells" 35-60 copies a month; it's been free for two years.

Yes, it's still too soon because the goal of free days is to get more people to buy the actual book when it isn't free. The proceeds of Battery Brothers are going to a nonprofit organization, the Sunshine Foundation, which is the original wish-granting organization. Obviously, we need to have proceeds in order to give them to the foundation.

No, it's not too soon, because this experience is already proving -- to me, at least -- the power of free. Getting the word out about this book, and all books, ultimately, is a partnership between the publisher and the author. It's in our mutual interests to share news of these books we love with readers who don't already know about them.

Free can help make that happen and let those characters imbue the lives of readers everywhere. They deserve it. If nothing else, Battery Brothers has been seen by literally hundreds more people than had seen it yesterday. Sharing it with readers for free has made that happen. Let's see how much farther the book can spread the power of the words within it.

Matt Sinclair, a New York City-based journalist and fiction writer, is also president and chief elephant officer of Elephant's Bookshelf Press, which recently published Battery Brothers, a YA novel by Steven Carman about a pair of brothers playing high school baseball and about overcoming crippling adversity. Matt also blogs at the Elephant's Bookshelf and is on Twitter @elephantguy68.

Resiliency

by Jemi Fraser

Life is going to throw a lot of curve balls our way. That's part of life. It's how we handle those curve balls that defines us.

When that curve ball is heading our way, we've got some choices on how to handle it:

• duck
• close our eyes and swing
• keep our eye on the ball and swing
• jump out of the batter's box
• step into the pitch
• watch it go right on by

A writer's journey to publication is chock full of curve balls. 

• finding the right idea
• writing the first page
• finishing the draft
• finding a crit buddy
• sharing
• revising
• editing
• writing a query
• and synopsis
• sending out that query
• rejection
• more rejection
• marketing
• reviews
• contracts
• sales
• pressure of the next book
• ...

Resiliency is the key to survival in the industry. So how do we deal with those curve balls? A few suggestions:

• conversations and commiserations with writing buddies (this online writing community is incredible!!)
• always having the next idea ready to go - keep an idea bank
• critique the work of others - a great way to improve yourself & help out someone else!
• study your favourite stories to see what works in them to pull you in
• tears (but not for long!)
• time outs/times off (again, not for long!)
• chocolate (maybe that's just me)
• learn something new (this is my personal favourite. Not only is it productive, but it builds your skill set and your confidence)

There's nothing wrong with jumping out of the batter's box - as long as you're ready to learn something new and then jump right back in. 

How do you build your resiliency?

Jemi Fraser is an aspiring author of contemporary romance. She blogs  and tweets while searching for those HEAs.

Speaking Engagements for the Shy

by MarcyKate Connolly 

One of the things you may not think much about when you’re writing that first book or just dipping your toe into the query trenches is that if you do get that book published, you may have to talk to a lot of people.

As in, in front of them. Standing up. Trying desperately to keep your lunch down and not flail so hard you actually take flight.

If you’re shy like I am, this might be a bit of challenge for you.

I recently had the opportunity to speak to a couple of groups (one as a guest speaker at a local reading council and another as a presenter on Scrivener), and while I’m definitely still learning, I thought I’d share what helped me stay calm and keep on.

Namely, passion.

I was terrified for that first event. They wanted me to talk about me and my publishing journey, a topic I suspect would make many shy writers feel squeamish. (They want to hear about me? But I’m boring!) It was a challenge to find a way to make it engaging, and fortunately I was able to also read an excerpt from my book (which is infinitely more interesting than me!).

Practicing my speech beforehand helped considerably for that first event, but the second was easier (even though I had to talk for 2 hours instead of only 30 minutes!) because it was a topic I was passionate about: Scrivener. The fact that it was a familiar atmosphere (NESCBWI, my favorite conference), also made me feel more at ease.

This is not to say it went entirely smooth—we had some technical difficulties with the microphone, and with getting a room full of people at various levels of usage all on the same page with Scrivener. But it was a topic I loved, knew inside out, and could easily wax poetic about for hours. So, I did.

If you’re fairly shy too, and the thought of public speaking makes you twitch, here’s my suggestion: start small, and start with what you love. If you can, arrange something in a place that is familiar like an event at your local library or a presentation or panel at a local conference you’ve been to in the past. Even better if you can choose something you love to speak about – maybe it’s revision, or story structure, or fairy tales, etc. If you’re passionate about the subject matter, and the location is familiar, an event like that can be a great way to ease into it before you have to stand up in front of a group of strangers.

Since I’m still learning too, I’d love to hear your thoughts on ways to feel more comfortable and be successful at public speaking!

MarcyKate Connolly writes middle grade and young adult fiction and becomes a superhero when sufficiently caffeinated. When earthbound, she blogs at her website and spends far too much time babbling on Twitter. Her debut upper MG fantasy novel, MONSTROUS, will be out from HarperCollins Children's Books in Winter 2015.

We Need Diverse Books

by Mindy McGinnis

Diversity in children's literature has become a prominent topic lately. The We Need Diverse Books campaign - spearheaded by authors such as Ellen Oh, Aisha Saeed and Chelsea Pitcher - has roared into the public eye this week, with prominent authors and publishers tweeting under the tag #WeNeedDiverseBooks.

So here's my two cents.

As a lifelong reader, I always inserted myself into the stories I read. I was the main character. I was the saucy sidekick. I was the cool cat. The romantic interest was the guy I liked and the MC’s best friend was my best friend. I created a new physical reality for the book, and if an overly descriptive passage didn’t match my imaginings it would be jarring, and oftentimes kicked me right out of the story.

As a librarian I’ve encouraged reluctant readers to use this tactic, to cast the book with themselves and their friends (or enemies!) in order to make it more real, more enjoyable, a more palpable experience of an alternate reality that they can truly participate in. I see it working more often than not.

Every now and then I see reviews of NOT A DROP TO DRINK where people say they wish I would describe my characters more so that they could visualize them. The truth is that I purposely resist in-depth physical descriptions because I want the reader to have perfect freedom to visualize the characters in any way they choose.

This includes skin color.

In short, we need diverse books because everyone assumes Lynn is white.
___________________________________________________________
Mindy McGinnis is a YA author and librarian. Her debut, NOT A DROP TO DRINK, is a post-apocalyptic survival tale set in a world where freshwater is almost non-existent. The companion novel IN A HANDFUL OF DUST releases September 23, 2014. She blogs at Writer, Writer Pants on Fire and has a serious social media problem. You can find her on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Writing Without a Safety Net

by Matt Sinclair

In our busy lives, it's often hard to maintain a routine. I'm a creature of routine, yet I am often guilty of letting even important tasks fall through a crack.

For me, a simple approach is often best: a list of tasks to do for a day and perhaps another for the week ahead and just the weekend. Bullet points riddle my life:

• Edit 10 pages of manuscript
• Finish article
• Write 500 words on new manuscript

Those types of things sound like work. Not only am I not necessarily getting paid for all of them, they are in addition to what my day-to-day job entails.

A single minor catastrophe -- a sick child, an unscheduled meeting, a flat tire -- can quickly put the kibosh on writing time.

Are you a creature of routine? How do you rejigger your schedule when the real world interrupts your fictional ones?

Matt Sinclair, a New York City-based journalist and fiction writer, is also president and chief elephant officer of Elephant's Bookshelf Press, which is hours away from publishing Battery Brothers, a YA novel by Steven Carman about a pair of brothers playing high school baseball and about overcoming crippling adversity. Matt also blogs at the Elephant's Bookshelf and is on Twitter @elephantguy68.

Why You Should Read Your Genre: A Correction

by S. L. Duncan

I know what you want to know. You come here, browsing our various posts, searching for that elusive answer to the question we all asked ourselves (and whomever else would throw us an answer) when first starting out.

What, above all else, can I do to improve my odds of getting published?

There are a lot of answers to this question. A lot of books have been written that offer pages and pages of tricks of the trade and career advice. I've paid for one or two myself. Some of them may work for you, most will not.

But I want to offer you something more simplistic: buy a book in the genre in which you wish to write, and read it.

Revolutionary, right? Okay. Maybe not. You've probably heard it before. If not from me, then from any number of other authors. I’ve been giving that answer every time I’ve sat on a literary panel because, let’s face it, that’s usually the first question you ask. But I’ve come to realize, you’ve been taking my meaning all wrong.

And that’s my fault for not being clear. When I tell you to read a book in your chosen genre, I don’t mean do it so you can learn how those authors did it.

No, no, no. 

First, I’m not even sure by reading a book, you can figure out how that author writes. I could be wrong, here, but if you read my stuff you’re not seeing the process that got me there. The crap sentences. The cut pages. The endless redlining. Don't even look at my trunk. Not to be too cliche, but the journey is everything.  It's the hours learning your craft, the dedication and sacrifice. It's the party you missed and the nights of trial and error. The wadding of paper and the full waste basket. 

Let’s suspend belief, though. Let’s say, somehow, in reading an Andrew Smith novel you figure out how to retro-engineer his writing and learn how to write just like him. His nuance. His voice and word usage and sentence structure. That’s fantastic! Congratulations. The problem is, there’s already an Andrew Smith out there, and he’s doing just fine.

So, let me clarify and restate my answer. If you want to better your chances at getting published, go read a book in the genre in which you wish to be published. Read two. No, in fact, read a shelf worth. Now, in truth, you should be reading them already. And if you have been...well, you've had the answer all along.

And here, dear friends, is why:

You should be reading books in the genre in which you wish to be published because you should love those books; be dedicated to them. Starved to read the next one from your favorite author - if you can even pick a favorite author from the stellar line up of talent sitting in your bookstore's window. Because, here's the deal: if you’re unable to find joy in the books you read, there’s no way you’ll be able to instill that sense of joy in the books you write. That’s what distinguishes good from great.  This is a business of knife-edge margins. Publishers aren’t looking for good. They want the genuine article. They want great.

It boils down to being passionate about your work and passionate about the work your peers are doing. It’s the difference in the Sunday fried chicken dinner your grandmother made and the KFC value box number two.

Put your pen down, pick up a book, and turn a few pages. Find your joy in the words on them. Then take that joy and let it inspire your own words.

If it’s natural and real and honest, you’ll know it. As will everyone else that reads your work.

S. L. Duncan writes young adult fiction, including his debut, The Revelation of Gabriel Adam, releasing August 12th, 2014 from Medallion Press. You can find him blogging on INKROCK.com and on Twitter.

Avoiding the Voiceless Query

by Jemi Fraser

One of the biggest challenges in writing a query seems to be maintaining Voice yet this is probably the biggest key to grabbing the attention of an agent.

• What makes a query stand out from the rest?
• What gives the agent the best feel for your story?
• What is your best marketing tool (after all, your query is your first attempt at marketing your story)?

It's your Voice that makes your story special. And it's that Voice that needs to translate to your query. So how do you do that?

It works differently for everyone. Here are a few tips that might help:

• use the same kind of sentence structure you use in the novel - echo your tone and style.
• focus on the Show not Tell - Tell sucks the Voice out of queries.
• forget the details! Think big picture. What's your character up against? What's his/her biggest fear? What's in the way? What are the stakes?
• practice saying out loud what your story is about. Don't worry about making it sound like a query at first, just find out what sounds good, what sounds draggy or convoluted. Keep it short, sweet and interesting. 
• time yourself. Start with a one minute time limit. Then cut it back to 45 seconds. Then 30. 20. 15. This works well with pitches too.
• find the emotion. If your query doesn't evoke some kind of emotion in the reader then it's not doing its job. I think Voice elicits an emotional reaction in the reader and that's what you want here. A laundry list of plot points isn't going to attract anyone's attention. Punch them with some emotion instead!

Any other tips that you've used? How do you get your Voice into the query?

Jemi Fraser is an aspiring author of contemporary romance. She blogs  and tweets while searching for those HEAs.

Slow Writing Memes

by J. Lea López

Uh oh... Guess what day it is?

Okay, I won't go there. (But I bet you just said it in your head, didn't you?) Today's post is just a little something fun to get you over those mid-week blahs. Who doesn't like a good meme, right?

My writing process is a little different than some other people. Aside from writing by hand, I'm a slow writer. Quick and dirty drafts don't fly from these fingers. It simply doesn't happen. But there's so many tips, tricks, snippets of advice, etc. encouraging exactly that. I bet you can name a few.

It doesn't have to be right, it just has to be done.

Don't think, don't edit, just write.

Pretty much anything you'll read on a NaNoWriMo message board.

Don't get me wrong, this is a great approach for plenty of people. But it's also a dreadful approach for others. I think it's high time we slow writers have a few sayings or memes of our own to give other slow writers a bit of support.

A lot of effort goes into every word. And I'm okay with that.

We all have to find what works for us with writing. We judiciously apply the writing "rules" because we come to realize they're guidelines more than anything; we find ways to strike a balance between things like genre expectations and the story waiting to be told; we experiment and learn which word processing software works best for us based on what we want it to do. The same goes for pacing ourselves with our drafts.

I've been working with a friend as she works on her current WIP. She's used to the hard and fast word vomit sort method of drafting and can churn out 100,000 words or more in an insanely short amount of time. But she's had trouble editing that down later into something cohesive. With her new story, she expressed some frustration to me about taking longer than usual to get the first draft written. However, she felt more confident about what she had written so far and felt more confident that she was going to avoid the massive wordiness that had plagued her previously. She'd never really considered the possibility that slower could actually be better.

When it comes time to give advice about first drafts, we've all apparently forgotten Aesop's famous moral: Slow and steady wins the race.

I would rather think a little longer and get it mostly right the first time than spit out a bunch of words I'll end up cutting later. Sure, it takes me twice as long, maybe even three times as long, to pen a first draft than some other writers. But I tend to write very clean first drafts. I don't say that to brag. I say it to make the point that it's ultimately the end result--the book--that matters. How you get there is a journey all your own. My pace might not work for you. Yours might not work for me, or for someone else. There's nothing wrong with that. If you're a slow writer, don't feel pressured into adopting a fast draft style if it's going to drive you nuts (which it would for me). I felt awful the first time I attempted NaNo because I couldn't achieve the high word counts the way some other people did. The next year I stopped beating myself up over it because that will never be my process and trying to force myself to do work that way is counterproductive. And guess what? I wrote twice as much that year.

Are you a slow writer? If you are (or even if you're not) hop on over to a meme generator and make some funny, encouraging, or silly writing memes and share them with us! Tweet them to us or share them on our Facebook page.

J. Lea López is a published author of character-driven stories that focus on relationships, from the platonic to the romantic, and never shy away from the bedroom. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook.