Feeling Stuck? Try These Writing Prompts!

Sometimes all it takes is a little boost to get your creativity in gear. Next time you're in a writing rut, here are some prompts to try:

• Write down a memory of a time you had a conflict with someone else. This could be with a significant other, child, sibling, parent, friend, or any other conflict that comes to mind. Now, write the same scene again, but this time from the point of view of the other person.

• Pick one ordinary household object. It can be anything: an egg timer, a reading lamp, a vacuum, a blender. Next, imagine a world in which that object is unknown. Create a character that stumbles onto this object and try to describe it in a new way, as they would view it. See where the story takes you.

• Have you ever read a book or seen a movie and wondered what happened to the characters after it was over, or before it started? Now is your chance to find out, because YOU are going to write it yourself!

• Write a song about ... well, about anything you want! Set it to the tune of your favorite song, or make up your own tune.

• What if something out of the ordinary happened on an ordinary day? What if it snowed in Vegas? What if a 2-ton whale washed up on the beach? What if a family with eight children moved in next door?

Dallas Woodburn is the author of two award-winning collections of short stories and editor of the new anthology Dancing With The Pen: a collection of today's best youth writing. Her short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Dzanc Books "Best of the Web" anthology and has appeared in many publications including Monkeybicycle, Arcadia Journal, and Diverse Voices Quarterly. She has also published 70+ articles and essays in outlets including Family Circle, Writer’s Digest, The Writer, The Los Angeles Times, and more than a dozen Chicken Soup for the Soul series books. Dallas is the founder of Write On! For Literacy, a nonprofit organization that empowers kids and teens through reading and writing. She frequently teaches creative writing workshops, mentors young writers and artists, and organizes an annual Holiday Book Drive that has donated more than 12,000 new books to underprivileged and at-risk youth. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Fiction from Purdue University, where she also teaches undergraduate writing courses and serves as Assistant Fiction Editor of Sycamore Review. Her website is www.writeonbooks.org and she frequently posts writing prompts, articles, and interviews with writers at her blog: http://dallaswoodburn.blogspot.com. Follow her on Twitter @DallasWoodburn and @WriteOnBooks.

Guilty Pleasures

What guilty pleasure powers you through your writing?

Mark Twain is known for his cigar, but also loved biscuits and real butter, buckwheat cakes and thick Porterhouse steaks. Hemingway and Poe are associated with heavy drinking and drugs.

I’m sure most of us in this group don’t turn to those mind-altering substances, but how many of you NEED a hit of chocolate to get you through that next paragraph? I like dark chocolate and recently discovered Ghirardelli’s “Sea-Salt Soiree.” Oh my! I’m fast becoming addicted and probably need to contact Chocoholics Anonymous.

Or maybe you like crunching while you’re creating: potato chips, pretzels, popcorn. In an attempt to eat healthier, I’ve also become addicted to dry-roasted almonds (with grapes. Mm-mm good!) And periodically I’ll go through a baby carrot phase.

I know it’s probably a bad idea to get in the habit of eating at my computer, but sometimes I eat lunch while working or trolling through e-mails. My keyboard doesn’t like that so much. Occasionally I find a breadcrumb or a sunflower seed stuck between two keys.

And of course there’s caffeine. Even though I’ve cut back on that guilty pleasure (I was once known at a local restaurant as “the Caffeine Queen”), I’m not much good until I’ve had at least one cup of fully-leaded Joe and a couple cups of decaf.

What is your comfort food or drink to help you with your writing process?

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A native Montanan, Heidi M. Thomas now lives in Northwest Washington. Her first novel, Cowgirl Dreams, is based on her grandmother, and the sequel, Follow the Dream, has recently won the national WILLA Literary Award. Heidi has a degree in journalism, a certificate in fiction writing, and is a member of Northwest Independent Editors Guild. She teaches writing and edits, blogs, and is working on the next books in her “Dare to Dream” series.

What are Your Promotion Goals?

I recently read Carolyn Howard Johnson's The Frugal Book Promotor. I loved the book, but I came away slightly dizzy thinking about all the things I could do to promote my books. Like most of us, I have a limited time for marketing, if I want to eat, sleep, clean house, and most importantly – write, so I can't do them all. Helpfully, Carolyn pointed out that I don't have to try them all, she's already done that for me. That's great, but how do I decide how to focus my energy. The answer, difficult as it is, is that I have to set goals.

Goal setting is constricted by several factors which make it both harder and easier to set goals for yourself.

1. Where you live – I happen to live in a very rural area. Book signings are great, but we only have one bookstore. With only a few thousand people in my immediate area, I'm not got to get many sales unless I branch out. Therefore, I have to rely primarily on the Internet.
2. How much money you plan to make – The sad fact is that unless you have a blockbuster novel, tantalizing non-fiction, or are a celebrity, you're not going to get rich. On another group, someone quoted the statistic that a really successful writer without a publisher, or with an indie publisher, can expect to make $300.00 a month at the high end. Probably more realistically it's less than a $100.00. Those kind of numbers mean I can't send a lot to advertise my book unless I want to use income from another source to subsidize it. So I need lots of free advertising.
3. What sort of a book have you written – Most of us are, I suspect, writing genre novels: romance, mystery and scifi. Therefore, we have to get to where the readers are. Other writers are one source of sales, but probably not as great as fans of the genre. Therefore, we need to be involved in groups devoted to the type of fiction we want to sell. We may not be able to do crass marketing there, but we can get out names in front of readers. On-line retailers are another source. Amazon does a good job identifying the types of books their customers are buying and making suggestions. Plus there are Amazon lists and other tools for getting your work noticed.

As a result of this analysis, I decided to concentrate on on-line activities: book reviews, yahoo groups, and on-line marketing. Or course, I have a website and blogs, but these are areas I have branched out into.

What are your thoughts about your goals for marketing? I'd love to hear your plans.  

Nancy Famolari

website: http://sites.google.com/site/nancyfamolari/

Blogs: Nancy Famolari's Author Spotlight

          Nancy Famolari's Place

Latest book: Winner's Circle available on Amazon.com

Your Amazon Launch: Learning from Mistakes

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning
Frugal Book Promoter:
How to get nearly free publicity on your own or partnering with your publisher
(updated and expanded to 416 pages!)

As the author of The Frugal Book Promoter (http://budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo) and other award-winning books in the HowToDoItFrugally series of books, I probably shouldn’t have made any mistakes with the online launch of the second edition. And I probably wouldn’t have if I had been taking my own advice.

In the first edition of The Frugal Book Promoter I warned people that it’s never too early to begin promoting a book. That was years ago! Sometimes we need a boot in the pants to remember what we already know.  I shouldn’t have waited so long to begin making lists and checking them twice!

And since that first edition was published I had built a great platform that I thought would be sufficient. And that brings me to my biggest mistake. Hubris. We authors who have been around awhile are often sure that we can rely on what we have done and who we already know. My contact list included Denise Cassino, an online launch specialist (www.mybestsellerlaunch.com), and I knew I could rely on her. I have a huge contact list I had been collecting assiduously. What more did I need?

Well, The Frugal Book Promoter also warns authors to categorize their lists. Which I did. But I didn’t have a specific category for the kinds of writers and people who run writers’ services I could ask for bonuses. Bonuses are those things that we offer people when they buy our book on a certain day to try to raise our sales rank. I pulled together a great bunch of bonuses, but after the fact I kept remembering folks I could have asked so it wasn’t nearly as long as it could have been and these bonus partners help an author get the word out (online) about your book.

Further, I took a vacation just before the launch so I hadn’t given myself much thinking time. Again hubris. I reiterate in my book that getting publicity and doing promotion is a partnership. The people an author or publisher hires to help them can’t do it on their own. They need both ideas and cooperation from the author.

Hubris. I had launches before. One for my novel at the Autry Museum of Western History. One for my book of creative nonfiction at my home. Several at bookstores for chapbooks of poetry. But they were realtime launches. This online launch was different. Launches designed to raise ratings at online bookstores are done online and needed lots of techy expertise. At least I knew that I needed Denise!

Services for online launches are like a bowl of minestrone. They come in different sizes, at different prices. The different ingredients are designed to do different things for the health of your book. The more you know about them before you start, the easier it will be to make choices based on the time you have, the money you have and the needs of your particular book.

I knew that when you hire any publicist, you aren’t just buying services. You’re buying their network, their contacts. Their Rolodex is at least as important as their expertise. I didn’t know how much I could do to support Denise because the word “online” mislead me. It seemed so…well, automated. I was right but I was also wrong. No matter what your expert’s level of expertise, the author is still always a vital ingredient. They bring the personal stuff to the launch buffet.

I also had a grasp of how to promote on online bookstores but I still needed Denise to lead me through lots of little things I didn’t know. Luckily, time wasn’t so short she couldn’t do that. Stuff like getting one’s Kindle edition and paperback edition connected. Things like getting your book into a suitable Amazon category with as little competition as possible. Thinks like running a “like” and “tag” campaign before you even begin the launch. If you don’t know about those things, you need some help, too. Yes you do.

I thought this campaign would be lots less work than a book tour. Let me tell you, after two days focusing on online sales, I was exhausted. On the night of my launch I fell into bed at 8 pm. I know people who have stayed up all night checking ratings. I am inspired by their stamina but not about to emulate it!

So, was my campaign a success? That’s the other thing I learned. Online launch campaigns are just like marketing in general, though they can be measured more accurately. When you hit #1 in Amazon’s sales ratings you’ve made it. But is that really your only goal? I don’t think it is. My book hit a very low (and fantastic!)  rating of 1,422 (the lower the better) in overall books but never made it to #1 in its category. #4 was the best we could do for a book in the competitive category of marketing. Here’s what the campaign did:

1.      It gave me new opportunities to connect. Even a mistake we made with the bonuses gave me a chance to reconnect with people who had already ordered The Frugal Book Promoter.

2.      The new names of opt-in writers I collected were worth their weight in marketing gold.

3.      The new partners who contributed to the bonuses the campaign offered—well, that was more than worth the effort.

4.      Oh, yeah! At least for some time, my book beat Stephen King’s On Writing, a moment even noncompetitive me shall cherish! Mmmm. And a couple Writer’s Digest market books!

Online book launches are like anything else in marketing. They’re about branding. They’re about exposure. They’re about networking. They’re about sharing. Most of all they’re about learning more and having some fun. Marketing in all its aspects is a vital part of publishing. An online book launch is a way to learn to love it.

Carolyn’s online campaign propelled her book to number four in one of its categories and to the top 100 books on Amazon for a time. When she fell into bed at the end of the launch day, that was enough. She writes a free Sharing with Writers newsletter and blogs for the benefit of authors at www.sharingiwthwriters.blogspot.com, www.TheFrugalEditor.blogspot.com , and www.TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com. Learn more about her consulting services and books for writers at www.HowToDoItFrugally.com.

Putting Together a Poetry Collection

On Putting Together a Poetry Anthology

Well, it's finally happened. The Poetic Muselings' anthology, "Lifelines," is going live. It will be available on Amazon.com on Nov. 11, and our website, poetic-muselings.net, is online. It's been a long road, one that has given me a new appreciation for what it takes to put together a collection of poetry, especially an anthology composed of poetry from six very different poets.

When we all started meeting to share our poetry, back in 2008, we didn't do it with anything particular in mind -- certainly not with the idea of putting together an anthology. Still, over the course of the next year or so, we wrote poems and shared them with each other.

Eventually we decided to try to put together an anthology. We decided on a them of the Muses -- yes, the Greek ones, and yes, you're right, that didn't end up being the theme we used. But we started out that way. We wrote our poems, selected 12 each, attributed each of them to a muse, came together to pick six each.

We did it using Google Documents. My contribution to the cause was as chief techie, and I set us up with a shared space on Google Documents where we could all work together. The poems were visible to all of us, and any of us could comment on them. Changes made by one were visible to all. This made putting together our collection possible. If we'd had to rely on exchanging email, well, we'd still be sending poems back and forth.

When the time came to choose the poems for our collection, I made a spread sheet where we could each select our favorites of our own and everyone else's poems. We picked the top six for each of us. This was a surprisingly straightforward, hassle-free process. After we "voted," it was clear which poems we were going to include.

Then we started putting the collection together. We divided it by muse. We produced a draft version.

It didn't work, so we came back together to figure out what to do instead.

Why didn't it work? Good question. It simply didn't have the overlying narrative arc that is the key, in my opinion, to a really good poetry collection, one that leads the reader from poem to poem, much in the way that reading a bookfrom start to finish creates a story in the reader's mind.

So we met again, in our chatroom, to try to figure out what to do. Mary Jensen volunteered to take a look and the poems and see what she could come up with.

All I can say is that Mary was inspired, and wrote our theme poem, the poem we used to divide our anthology into sections, sections that corresponded to stages in our lives. And it worked.

So now the anthology is about to "go live." It's been three years since the day that Lisa Gentile couldn't connect to the internet, leaving moderator Michele Graf to organize a spontaneous chat. A collection of poetry is more than the sum of its parts. It is the cumulative effect of each poem, one after the other, leading the reader from one to the other to create a unified whole. Without the unifying principle we have a stack of paper. With it we have an anthology.

To Agent or Not to Agent? by Kathy Stemke

To agent or not to agent that is the question. Writers can certainly get their feet wet by publishing without an agent. However, to get to many of the bigger publishing houses you still need an agent. Although I have successfully published over a hundred articles, activities with Gryphon House Publishing, and three children’s books, for my first novel I’m on the hunt for an agent. I’d like to share some of things I’ve found in my research so far.

Dishonest agents prey on writers by charging fees, promoting their own paid services, engaging in kickback schemes, and misrepresenting their knowledge and expertise. These agents don’t earn their income by selling manuscripts to publishers, but by extracting money from their clients.

Some examples of dishonest agenting practice, drawn from Writer Beware’s files:

• Requiring a reading fee with a submission.

• Requiring a “marketing” or “submission” or other fee on contract signing.

• Requiring writers to buy a critique or manuscript assessment.

• Referrals to an editing service owned by the agency, without disclosing the connection.

• Requiring that clients use the agent’s own paid editing services. Running a contest that’s a scheme for funneling writers into a paid editing service or vanity publisher.

• Pressuring clients to buy “adjunct” services–website design, catalog space, book cover mockups. Etc.

·         Placing clients with fee-charging publishers.

There are no licensing requirements or competency standards for literary agents. Anyone who feels like it can set themselves up as an agent, whether or not they’re qualified to do so. The result is a large number of amateur, incompetent, and marginal agents.

If an agent is established, s/he should have a verifiable track record of commercial book sales, and be willing to disclose it.

A robust history of selling books to commercial (advance-paying) publishers is the single best indication of an agent’s effectiveness and expertise. You want an agent who is selling regularly to a variety of commercial publishers (a reasonable minimum standard is the AAR’s’ requirement for new members–at least 10 sales within the past 18 months), and who has experience selling books in your subject or genre.

For book agents, commissions should not be more than 10-15% for domestic sales and 20-30% for co-agented or foreign sales.

Be wary of an agent who claims to specialize in new writers.

Be wary of an agent who is looking for poets.

Be wary of an agent who claims to want to sell your book idea to Hollywood.

Be wary of an agent who advertises.

Be wary of an agent who solicits you.

Be wary of an agent who provides extravagant praise or inflated promises, and of her opposite, an agent who paints a dismal picture of your chances of success.

There are a number of helpful, vetted, up-to-date agent directories online, such as AgentQuery.com, QueryTracker.com, and AuthorAdvance.

Soooo, what do you think? Should you find an agent?

Agents on twitter:

jwchilton Jamie Weiss Chilton

Agent, Andrea Brown Literary Agency, shameless caffeine addict, farmer for Marbles, my gray and white rescue bunny.

jenrofe Jen Rofe

Children's lit agent with Andrea Brown who dreams about being a bakery-owning cowgirl. Nevermind that I don't bake much or have a horse.

stevenmalk Steven Malk

Literary agent with Writers House musing on publishing, music, and sports--not necessarily in that order.

McVeighAgency The McVeigh Agency(Mark McVeigh)

A boutique literary agency representing authors, illustrators, graphic novelists and photographers.

DonMaass Donald Maass

President of Donald Maass Literary Agency in New York, author of Writing the Breakout Novel, The Fire in Fiction and other craft books for fiction writers.

SlushPileHell SlushPile Hell

Literary agent. Supervillain.

KOrtizzle Kathleen Ortiz

Associate Agent & Foreign Rights Manager; Books + Chai + Tech. = Life

joemts Joe Monti

Children's & YA, F&SF, Literary Agent & Hero Myth Cycle believer.

JoSVolpe Joanna Volpe

NYC lit agent and lover of pizza.

WolfsonLiterary Michelle Wolfson

I'm a literary agent. Check out my site and if you think we're a fit, let me know. Otherwise just support my authors and buy their books!

KnightAgency The Knight Agency

kate_mckean Kate McKean

Literary Agent, www.morhaimliterary.com Image (c) William G. Wadman

DeidreKnight DeidreKnight

Literary Agent and New York Times bestselling author of romance/women's fiction who loves to travel to far away places, mentally and geographically.

Kid_Lit Mary Kole

Kidlit enthusiast and associate agent at Andrea Brown Literary Agency!

TracyMarchini TracyMarchini

Editorial Consultant, former Literary Agent Assistant, freelance copywriter.

sztownsend81 Suzie Townsend

book lover, former HS teacher, literary agent, sci-fi/fantasy nerd, and owner of an unused $6000 wedding dress. love my life.

michellelit Michelle Andelman

Dark Lady of Letters

UpstartCrowLit Upstart Crow

We're a brusquely friendly literary agency.

ChrisRichman Chris Richman

Kid's book agent, music snob, Philadelphia sports fanatic.

MichaelBourret Michael Bourret

Literary Agent, bran muffin enthusiast and nerdy cat person

NathanBransford Nathan Bransford

Author of JACOB WONDERBAR AND THE COSMIC SPACE KAPOW (coming in May)

ColleenLindsay Colleen Lindsay

Publishing browncoat. Cat herder. Queer human. Professional nerd. TARDIS fan. Athlete's foot survivor. Part of Penguin Group (USA) Business Development team.

BookEndsJessica Jessica Faust

literary agent, blogger, business owner, book lover and foodie

BookEndsKim Kim Lionetti

Literary Agent representing women's fiction, romance, mystery, true crime, pop culture and pop science.

Ginger_Clark Ginger Clark

I am a literary agent. I work at Curtis Brown. I respond only to queries I'm interested in. This twitter account will be boring.

hroot holly root

literary agent, theater wife, cat person, iphone addict.

BostonBookGirl Lauren E. MacLeod

A literary agent @strothmanagency with an emphasis in YA and MG fiction and nonfiction. Opinions are my own.

literaticat jennifer laughran

literary agent at andrea brown lit, children's bookseller, reader, raconteur, eccentric multi-millionaire and patron of the arts... and some of those are lies

JillCorcoran Jill Corcoran

Literary Agent with Herman Agency representing primarily MG and YA authors.

RachelleGardner Rachelle Gardner

Literary agent, firefighter's wife, mom of two awesome girls, Starbucks freak.

ElanaRoth Elana Roth
Brooklynite, children's book agent, Squarespace support specialist, semi-pro Jew, bourbon drinker. I work for lots of people. None of these tweets are theirs.

Author/Educator, Kathy Stemke, has a B.S. from Southern Connecticut State University and Covenant Life Seminary, and graduate coursework from Columbia University. As a freelance writer Kathy has published several articles and is a former contributing editor for The National Writing for Children's Center. she is on the team at DKV Writing for you, a writing services company. Sign up for her free monthly newsletter, Movement and Rhythm, on her blog.  http://educationtipster.blogspot.com  

Moving Through All Seven Days, her first e-book, is now available on lulu http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/moving-through-all-seven-days/7386965#.  

Trouble on Earth Day and Sh, Sh, Sh Let the Baby Sleep Were released in May 2011.

Book Marketing Strategy: Joint Ventures

There is a song, The Power of One, which conveys what one individual can accomplish and/or change. But, how much more effective is the power of two, or five, or ten, or a hundred, or more?

In a technical light, a joint venture (JV) is a partnership between two or more entities for a specific project and for a specified amount of time.

Quoting from Entrepreneurs.about.com, “According to the Commonwealth Alliance Program (CAP), businesses anticipate strategic alliances accounted for 25% of all revenues in 2005, a total of 40 trillion dollars.” So, it’s easy to see this strategy packs a wallop.

This is the concept behind joint ventures for book promotion, and they are very effective.

The idea is to hook up with other authors/writers and participate in JVs. What this means is an author has a new book coming out and wants to reach more than her individual mailing list and social networks, she joins forces with writer friends or acquaintances to promote the book for a ONE DAY Promotional Power-packed Special.

Suppose it’s your new book; you contact one to several authors who might be willing to put your prewritten promo on their sites and social networks, and (THIS IS THE VERY IMPORTANT PART) are willing to provide a freebie or a significant discount on a product or service to any one who purchases your book on that day.

According to book marketing specialists, Brain Judd and Daniel Hall, this has the potential to put your book on Amazon’s TOP HUNDRED list in one or more categories – just for one day’s promo.

Even participating in JVs has promotional benefits. I recently participated in a JV initiated by an author for her new book. For my participation I offered a FREE bonus gift, How to Create an Ebook and What You Can Do With It.

I posted her promo content, along with my own, because I like to show my readers the marketing value in particular posts such as these. I then promoted the post to my social networks.

For a little effort and time, you can increase your visibility and possibly your subscriber list.

To have your participation be more effective, be sure to provide your links and offer your own products within your free offering.  And, to create added value, you can allow the freebie to be shared, or portions of it reprinted with your tag/bio.

Another scenario for book promotion JVs, in fact a more popular one, is to be approached by publicists. This has happened to me several times and I usually participate for the visibility factor. The publicist will put out a wide reaching call for participants for his client. Obviously, the more on board the greater the promotional reach and punch. But, even on a small scale, this marketing strategy is a gem.

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