Writers On The Move

Showing posts with label VBT - Writers on the Move. Show all posts

The Path to Publication

When I began writing my first novel in 1996, I really did not think I would ever be published. But it was a cathartic experience, and it was something I needed to do to prove to myself that I could write a novel.

I started researching my second book in 1999. After about ten years of rewriting, polishing and collecting rejections, Cowgirl Dreams was published. I’m not telling you this to discourage you, but to encourage you.

That first attempt has yet to be published, and I am so glad it was not then. I did the best I could, but in going back and doing the rewrites (it will be the fourth in my series), I find I’ve learned so much about the craft of writing.

I met both of my publishers at writing conferences hosted by Women Writing the West. Since Cowgirl Dreams was based on my rodeo-riding grandmother, I thought that might be the best place to look, and it was. The first two books in my series were published.

At another WWW conference, where attendees can set up appointments with agents, editors and publishers, I pitched the idea of writing a series of magazine articles about the old-time rodeo cowgirls of Montana. As I was leaving, one of the other editors in the room jumped up from her table and caught me at the door. “I couldn’t help overhearing your pitch,” she said. “Make an appointment with me.”

I did, and Globe-Pequot Press offered me a contract to write a non-fiction book. When my first publisher closed down, I asked if GPP was interested in my third novel. They were and also picked up the first two books to be republished with new covers and new editing.

Dare to Dream was launched this week, the newest novel in the “Dreams” trilogy. The non-fiction book, Cowgirl Up! will come out in September.

My message to aspiring authors is this: do not be in a hurry to get that first book published. Have patience, study and practice the craft of writing, get feedback from critique groups or partners, and get it professionally edited (especially if you are self-publishing). You do not want a book out that is riddled with errors and flaws.

------------------

A native Montanan, Heidi M. Thomas now lives in North-central Arizona where she blogs, teaches writing, and edits. Herfirst novel, Cowgirl Dreams , is based on her grandmother, and the sequel, Follow the Dream, won the national WILLA Award. The next book in the series, Dare to Dream, has just been released. Heidi has a degree in journalism and a certificate in fiction writing.

Helpful Critiques

I don’t know what I would have done without my critique groups over the years. They keep me accountable, give me a deadline to meet, and each person has had a strength that helped me improve my writing. Without feedback, I get too close to the writing and can no longer be objective or see the mistakes.

Here are some hints for critiquing:

As Critiquer: This is important! Always start out your critique with the positive—what you liked about the scene, what worked well, what evoked emotion, memory, nice descriptive phrases, etc. When you talk about something that didn’t work, say “I bumped on . . .” Try not to “fix” the problem or tell her what to do—let the author do that.

As Critiquee: When you are being critiqued, remember the motto “JUST NOD AND SMILE.” It is best not to try to explain too much and especially not to get defensive about your work (it’s a natural reaction, but not constructive).Just take in what the critiquer is saying and use it or not as you see fit. It may be something you might not agree with at the moment, but after thinking about it, maybe it starts to make sense. Or, it’s a question that you know you’ve answered in a previous or upcoming scene. When the critiquer asks a question, you are not required to answer it—it’s just food for thought.

Things to look for in doing a critique:

Point of View (POV)—not switching from one to another within scenes. Trying to avoid the omniscient.

Character Development—emotions and feelings. Does the character stay “in character?” Growth/change as the story progresses. What does the character learn from his/her experience?

Setting and Grounding—Descriptions, using the five senses (Sight, Sound, Smell, Touch, Taste). Keeping the reader “grounded”—reminding him/her where the characters are and what they’re doing during dialogue.

Dialogue—realistic, concise, not overly didactic (giving info to the reader through dialogue where the character would obviously know it and not have to state it). Watch for overdoing dialect. Watch overuse of “taglines” (he said/she whispered). Whenever possible, substitute with an action or a reaction by the character. This helps with grounding and helps you develop each character’s individual voice.

Show vs Tell—Hint: Any time you write “He/she felt something” or “He/she was something” you are TELLING. You want the reader to identify with your character, to be inside his/her head. Do you identify with the first or the second example?

“Sally felt so sad and depressed after John died that she cried all day.” Do you feel her sadness or depression?

Or-- “Suddenly she realized the sound in the room was her own sobbing. Tears burned hot on her cheeks. She raised a hand and it trembled before her eyes. She could end it all right now.

Orchestration/continuity. At the beginning of the scene she was wearing a blue dress, by the end she had on brown pants. Or how did he get from sitting in the living room to suddenly standing in the kitchen? Are all the arms, legs etc. in the right place, doing things that are physically possible (in a love scene or a fight scene etc.)?

-----------------

A native Montanan, Heidi M. Thomas now lives in North-central Arizona where she blogs, teaches writing, and edits. Her first novel, Cowgirl Dreams , is based on her grandmother, and the sequel, Follow the Dream, won the national WILLA Award. The next book in the series, Dare to Dream, will be published in May 2014. Heidi has a degree in journalism and a certificate in fiction writing.

Write Tight: Self-Editing Tips

Every writer should present the most-polished, best version of what you have written, whether to an agent, a publisher, or especially if you are self-publishing. I recommend everyone have your work proofread and professionally edited.

Here are some things to look for when you are ready to polish your work.

1. Ask this question: Does this scene (paragraph, dialogue, sentence) move the story forward? If I take it out, will the story still make sense? Or, can it be condensed, streamlined, simplified to do so?

2. Watch for weak passive language: the “ly” words, “to be” verbs, especially when used with “ing” words. Use strong, active verbs to “show” rather than “tell.”

3. “Show” versus “tell.” If you write “She was sad,” I, as reader, want to know how sad feels? I want to experience it with the character. Every action elicits a re-action. Someone you thought was a friend ignores you at a function. How do you feel?

Use the five senses whenever possible to show feelings, indicate mood and develop the character. (Sight, Sound, Smell, Taste and Touch)

4. Look for extraneous words: That, Just, Very, Really, Some, Stand up = stand, Sit down = sit, Turned around = turned, He thought to himself = He thought, She shrugged her shoulders = she shrugged, She whispered softly = she whispered, He nodded his head = he nodded .

5. Taglines: Do you try to find 101 ways to say “said”? Not necessary. If you use a tagline, it’s best to stick with the simple. But, whenever possible, use an action or a reaction instead. This helps to build the character by showing what he is thinking, how he is reacting, and it provides action in a what could otherwise be a static “talking heads” situation. And if you commonly write “Dialogue, blah, blah, blah,” she said, AS she did some action—delete the “said” and go with the action.

These are just a few (but important) things that can help you polish your manuscript. Do you have any other tips to add?

-----------------

she A native Montanan, Heidi M. Thomas now lives in North-central Arizona where she blogs, teaches writing, and edits. Her first novel, Cowgirl Dreams , is based on her grandmother, and the sequel, Follow the Dream, won the national WILLA Award. The next book in the series, Dare to Dream, will be published in May 2014. Heidi has a degree in journalism and a certificate in fiction writing.

Special WOTM Post: An Updated Award-Winner Is Help for Anyone Who Writes

Writers on the Move subscribers, visitors, and fellow participants have been an important part of my network for a long time now. You can read "network" as "friends," if you like for that is networking should be.

Naturally, our trusted leader Karen Cioffi-Ventrice offered me a special spot to let our Writers on the Move principals and audience know about my new book because we're both convinced that reading is one of the best ways to further our professional careers. It's friends like you that qualify me to give others advice on editing. So here goes!

The Frugal Editor: Do-it-yourself editing secrets for

authors:From your query letter to final manuscript to the marketing of your new bestseller is a New! Updated! Expanded! Second Edition of the multi award-winning first edition. It has a new subtitle, a new cover by Chaz DeSimone with a new 3D sensibility by Gene Cartwright.

I am including “Seven Editing Myths” in this post. I hope it will highlight the idea that most writers can use a little updating on our editing skills. And it never hurts to brush up on some great new editing tips like formatting your ellipses the quick and professional way, or letting Word rid your copy of those pesky two spaces between sentences. Or leaning why I believe great editing is also great marketing.

Have a wonderful 2014 including great editing and great marketing!

Carolyn Howard-Johnson

http://howtodoitfrugally.com
Blog: http://SharingwithWriters.blogspot.com
Editing Blog: http://TheFrugalEditor.blogspot.com

Seven Editing Myths Waiting To Trip Up
Your Campaign To Sell Your Work

Your submission to contest judges, agents, publishers, producers, and editors may never get read if your query or cover letter violates professional expectations. Here are seven editing misconceptions that can lead you astray:

Agents are a cantankerous lot. (Nope! In The Frugal Editor twenty of the nation's best agents tell you their pet peeves and they do it in the best of spirits.)

2. If your English teacher told you something is OK, it is. (No! Language rules have changed since you were a sophomore.)

3. If a manuscript or query is grammar-perfect, you'll be fine. (No! Lots of things that are grammatically correct will annoy publishers, agents, and editors.)

4. Always use your Spell and Grammar Check. (No! Some suggest you don't use it at all but The Frugal Editor will help you make this tool your partner instead of your enemy.)

5. It's easy to avoid agent and editor scams. Just ask around. (The Frugal Editor tells you how to avoid being taken.)

6. Your publisher will assign a top-flight editor. (Maybe, but don't count on it. Besides, you can be a better partner for an editor if you know about the process.)

7. Formatters and editors will take care of the hyphens, ellipses, and all the other grungy little punctuation marks that English teachers avoided teaching because they didn't know how to use them. (Chances are, you'll catch even great formatters and editors in an error or two if you know your stuff!)

-------

Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s brings her experience as a publicist, journalist, marketer, and retailer to the advice she gives in her HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers and the classes she has taught for UCLA Extension’s world-renown Writers’ Program.

The first edition of The Frugal Book Promoter was named USA Book News’ “Best Professional Book” and won the coveted Irwin Award. Now in its second edition, it’s also a USA Book News award winner and received a nod from Dan Poynter’s Global Ebook Awards. Her The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success was also honored by USA Book News and won Readers’ Views Literary Award. Her marketing campaign for that book won the marketing award from New Generation Indie Book Awards.

Howard-Johnson is the recipient of the California Legislature’s Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award, and her community’s Character and Ethics award for her work promoting tolerance with her writing. She was also named to Pasadena Weekly’s list of 14 women of “San Gabriel Valley women who make life happen” and was given her community’s Diamond Award for Achievement in the Arts.

Goal Setting for the New Year

I long ago stopped making “New Year’s Resolutions,” because as we all know they only last about a week, right? Go on a diet, exercise more, write more, be happier, etc.

I wonder, why does that happen? Perhaps it’s because these resolutions are just too broad, too sweeping—“write more”—what does that mean? It could mean writing one page more than you wrote last year. Or perhaps you set goals that you can't possibly give yourself, that aren't within your control. Goals like, “I’m going to become a published author this year,” or “I’m going to win a writing contest this year.” These goals are beyond your control and you are setting yourself up for failure.

Be specific. There’s a difference between your dreams (being published, winning awards) and your achievable goals. For example, as a goal, you may write down “I will write for ten minutes a day” or “I will write 500 words a day.” Those are specific and they are attainable. (Not: write for 12 hours a day or write 10,000 words a day. Unrealistic.)

A goal that can help you on your path to publication may be “I will submit one short story (or article) per month (or every 3 months, or whatever achievable time frame you set).” Or “I will make a list of ten agents (or publishers)” and “I will submit one query per month (or whatever time frame).”

A goal to put you closer to winning a contest may be similar: “I will submit an entry to one contest every month (or other time frame).”

Others might be: “I will join a critique group.”

“I will take a class in memoir (fiction, creative non-fiction).”

“I will finish the first draft of my book by July 1.”

“I will complete the second rewrite of my book by December 1.”

Divide your larger goals into mini goals you can work on each day.

“I'll write three pages before I go to bed today.”

“I'll finish that outline today.”

“I'll research that information I need today.”

My immediate goal is to put the final polish on a non-fiction book by my deadline of January 31. My next goal is to begin the rewrite on what will become the fourth novel in my series. Perhaps I want to give myself a deadline to finish that novel and submit it to my publisher by November 1. To help me along with that, I plan to revive the critique group I got started last fall. If I want to refine that, I could say that I will have five (or ten) pages per week ready for my critique partners.

How do you set goals and what are some of yours?

-----------------------------

A native Montanan, Heidi M. Thomas now lives in North-central Arizona. Her first novel, Cowgirl Dreams, is based on her grandmother, and the sequel, Follow the Dream, won the national WILLA Award. Heidi has a degree in journalism, a certificate in fiction writing, and is a member of the Independent Editors Guild. She teaches writing and edits, blogs, and her next book Dare to Dream Will be published next May.

Dialogue Important in Memoirs Too

The use of dialogue is important in memoirs as well as in fiction.

Many of us assume that because we can’t recall conversations word for word, we can’t write dialogue. Memoirs are your “memories,” so you can take a little creative license with them. Actually, no one recalls conversations in detail. If you do remember a significant line or exchange, by all means quote it. But more often you will simply remember that a conversation took place. You will have to imagine the conversation as a novelist would, without all the uhs and ers, tangents and digressions that people use when they talk.

Here’s what dialogue is:
• Talk is an ACTION. An ideal, compact way to advance your story by having one character tell the other what’s happening—to reveal, admit, incite, accuse, lie, etc.
• A way to define a character. The way someone speaks—accent, vocabulary, idiom, inflection—tells as much about what he is like as his actions do. And let’s us see him better than just using description.
• One way to show emotion. Characters reveal themselves when under stress or angry. Dialogue is used to create an emotional effect in the reader.
• Another way to show point of view POV. (in whose head the reader should be.) This is not quite as critical in Memoirs as in fiction, because it may be all from your POV. Depends how you write it—if you’re writing someone else’s story, you may want to write it in story form, from “within your character’s head” or third person—Suzy did, she said, etc.
• Often used to get across what is NOT said. Example, if you want to show that someone wants to avoid an unpleasant encounter, you can show this by having them talk around the subject uppermost in their mind, but never quite touch it. In this way, you’re asking the reader to read between the lines. It’s tricky, but think about how you talk to someone yourself when you’re angry at them but don’t want to tell them exactly why—by being sarcastic, arch, nitpicky, over solicitous, etc.

Techniques. One of the most common reasons for flat, voiceless dialogue is formality. Dialogue sounds artificial when it is totally coherent and logical. You want thoughts that are loose, words that tumble out.

• Use more contractions—“I would not (wouldn’t) do that if I were you.” UNLESS you want to portray your character as being stiff or pompous or that English is not his first language. “Is it not wonderful?” has a Continental flair.
• Use sentence fragments. Example: Instead of:
“Is she sick?”
“It does not matter if she is or is not. She is not going to go to the party.”
Write:
“Is she sick?” “Doesn’t matter, she’s not going.”

Taglines. Whenever possible, try to use an action instead of a tagline (he said, she said). One of the reasons for not using a lot of taglines is to develop each person’s distinct voice, so that all your characters don’t sound the same. Hint: If you do use taglines, it’s better to stick with the word “said”, rather than trying to come up with substitutes such as cry, interject, interrupt, mused, state, counter, conclude, mumble, intone, roar, exclaim, fume, explode. These are “telling” words. Let the words in the dialogue show the emotion. And you can NEVER smile words, or squint them, or laugh them.

DIALOGUE DO’S AND DON’T’S

DO:
• Establish the point of view (POV) of each character, i.e. his or her values and attitudes
• Recreate the impression of natural speech.
• Use dramatic structure to shape the sequence of what is said.
DON’T:
• Let characters make long speeches
• Put in “dead” dialog that doesn’t further the story line, e.g., “Hello, how are you?” “Fine, how are you.”
• Use too many odd spellings, for dialect
• Use too many taglines or substitute different words for “said.”

------------------

A native Montanan, Heidi M. Thomas now lives in North-central Arizona. Her first novel, Cowgirl
Dreams, is based on her grandmother, and the sequel, Follow the Dream, won the national WILLA Award. Heidi has a degree in journalism, a certificate in fiction writing, and is a member of the Independent Editors Guild. She teaches writing and edits, blogs, and her next book Dare to Dream Will be published next May.

Finding the Story that Surrounds the Pivotal Event

Whether you are writing a memoir or developing character background, this is an exercise that can help you find the “story.”

First make a list of pivotal events from your (or character’s) life: for example, first day of school, a move to a new home, a first kiss, first loss of a family member, etc.

Choose an event from your list. Free-write for 10 minutes what comes to mind in response to these questions:

• What did you (or your character) desire in your life before this pivotal event?
• When and how did this desire begin or intensify significantly? Could this be the beginning of your story?
• Did you have a struggle in trying to fulfill this desire?
• Did you learn anything from the struggle?
• How did you change after the final pivotal event? • What did you do that indicated this change?
• What did you realize when this stage in your life came to an end?
• What do you perceive now as you remember it? When you read over your answers, you may begin to sense a story: a desire, a struggle and a conclusion.

---------------------

A native Montanan, Heidi M. Thomas now lives in North-central Arizona. Her first novel, Cowgirl Dreams , is based on her grandmother, and the sequel, Follow the Dream, won the national WILLA 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.

Why Write a Memoir?

If you’re like me, you’ve probably have said to yourself, over and over, “I’d really like to write, but…” OR “Someday, I’m going to write…”

I think that writing down your family history is one of the most important things you could ever do. We all know friends or even family members who have always told such fascinating stories, but nobody ever wrote them down, so when they pass on, the stories are gone forever. Sometimes it’s just because, when you’re young, you think “Oh, there goes Grandpa, telling that old story again…” And you fail to realize the importance of it.

Many times I looked at the old photo albums my dad had that my grandmother had put together, but never thought about how important that era was, or how important it might be to me, and how I turned out as a human being. But one little tidbit did stick in my mind all those years—and that was the fact that back in the 1920s in Montana, my tiny grandma—about 5’2 and maybe all of 102 pounds—had ridden steers in rodeos. I couldn’t get it out of my head. That certainly was not something I ever aspired to do—even as big as I am!

So, I started to delve into her life story. And I have found it utterly fascinating. I chose to write it as a novel, but there is so much fact in it, so much from my grandparents’ and my dad’s life. This has resulted in three novels and a non-fiction book about old-time cowgirls in Montana. And in the process, my dad started writing down some of his memories of growing up.

You must have some of those stories floating around. Whether you write them down—just notes or a timeline or a regular story—or if you tell them to another person or into a recorder, I encourage you to do it. Don’t let your family history be lost.

Definitions:
A memoir puts a frame onto life by limiting what is included. It may be a particular period in your life, for example, your childhood, your adolescence, or your fabulous fifties.

An autobiography covers an entire life from birth to the present.

------------------