Rewriting Completed Stories?

Rewriting Completed Stories for a Totally Different Audience
by Elysabeth Eldering

Once a story is written, is changing the story from one genre to another or from one audience to a completely different one a good idea?

When I had a vision of a house one day a few years ago, I wrote two pages of a story that was supposed to be a past lives/metaphysical story for adult readers. I put the two pages aside for a couple of years. When I came back to it, the secret passages and the secret messages kept urging me to write the story. I created secret coded messages and urged my character to follow the paths and find the clues as to why the house was so important to her. I finished the story. I had worked long hours and many nights on the codes and secrets of the house. When I felt it was ready for my editors to give me their feedback (at the time I had two friends who are also writers who were big sources of encouragement as well as being great editors), I sent them the story. The first comments I got back were, "The story is too complicated; I stopped reading about a third of the way through." "I got bored with the details of the codes and all that stuff you had there." The second editor said I needed to turn the story into a children's story, in other words, completely change my thinking on the story and rewrite it. When I got those comments back, I felt like the story wasn't worthy of being told. So, again, the story went on the back burner for a year or so.

During the time the story had been brewing or maybe it was stewing, I started on my state stories. I was at the beginning of my publication route when I decided to pick Kelly back up and think about rewriting her story. I had been participating in NaNoWriMo as a cheerleader and source of encouragement for my friends for several years, not really tackling the task of writing my own novel during that time. (And for those of you not familiar with NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month, it is basically the month of November where the goal is to crank out 50,000 words of a novel or several stories in 30 days. We are almost halfway through the month at the time of this writing and there are some impressive numbers being posted on the NaNoWriMo site. This is a time when writers from all over the world keep their heineys in the chair and just write like the dickens during the month. But don't let that 50,000 word goal throw you off, you can set your own personal goal, which can be less or more, but you will not receive the winner's certificate at the end of the month if you don't write at least 50,000 words during the month. This isn't my reason for participating in NaNo; rather, my thinking is to hobnob with other writers and hope to be inspired to write a novel one of these days.) In November of 2008, after having had my first state mystery published and taking on my big promotion task (this meant traveling to different events trying to get my name out there) and sort of participating with Mr. Hughes' class during the little bit of time I could spend with the class at the beginning of November, I decided to rewrite Kelly's story.

I didn't start rewriting the story until the middle of November and completed it 30 days later, with the awesome cheerleading skills and encouragement of my two editors, topping out at about 56,000 words. Wow! I wrote a novel or 50,000 words in 30 days. That was a major accomplishment for me since all my previous stories for contests and even my state stories had not been longer than 10,000 words, and maybe not even that long (I think my longest story at the time was just over 8,000 words). I was very proud of how the story turned out. Yes, I totally started over so none of those 56,000 words were part of the original story other than the character's name staying the same and the house being full of secrets and enticing Kelly to find out what the secrets were. The theme was there; it was no longer a "past life" story but it did involve a ghost of sorts. And I totally went from a story geared for adult readers to a story geared for the young adult reader.

What, you may ask, did I come up with? A YA paranormal mystery called Finally Home. I took Kelly from being a 30something-year-old going into a house that she had been in before in a previous life to a 14-year-old who is uprooted when her father's company moves them to a podunk town and she is immediately attracted to a house across the street from where they are living. There is something in the house that beckons Kelly and with the help of Emma, the nosey busybody neighbor kid, Kelly finds out all the secrets. The house is more than an eyesore that needs to be torn down and Kelly finds out why. Did I make the right decision in rewriting my story for a totally different audience? I feel I did.

I finally finished the revisions on Finally Home (see last month's posting on this blog about revising) and submitted to my illustrator/graphic designer for her magic and received my first proof copy two days ago. I have gone through the proof copy and made some requested changes, sent them back to Heather and she has done her magic fixes. The ms is now back at the printers (I use createspace to self-publish my stories now) for review (usually within a few hours or a day or so, I get a notification that the book meets their specifications or not and then have Heather fix, if necessary, or go ahead and order a proof copy). I am now waiting for the review to be completed so that I can order the second proof copy, and barring no errors that I can detect on the read through (I will find them after I release the book I'm sure, so if you order a copy and find any errors, it's okay to let me know - lol), Finally Home will be released to the public, just in time for the gift giving season. I am taking preorders now so that as soon the book is released I can just place the order and have copies in your hands before you plan to give to someone as a gift. Orders may be made on my website. Copies are just $15 and that includes shipping.

See you all in the postings - E :)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ms. Eldering is the award-winning author of the Junior Geography Detective Squad (JGDS), 50-state, mystery, trivia series. Her stories "Train of Clues," "The Proposal", "Tulip Kiss", and "Butterfly Halves" all placed first, second, or runner up in various contests to include two for Armchair Interviews and two for Echelon Press (Fast and ... themed type contests). Her story "Bride-and-Seek" was selected for the South Carolina Writers' Workshop (SCWW) anthology, the Petigru Review. Ms. Eldering makes her home in upper state South Carolina and loves to travel, read cross-stitch and crochet. When she's not busy with teenaged children still at home, she can be found at various homeschool or book events promoting her state series and her YA paranormal mystery, Finally Home.

Elysabeth's everything blog
Elysabeth's other writings website
JGDS Series blog
JGDS Series website

Optimising Social Networking for Authors

I know that all of you are social media mavens. I know that you've all got Facebook, LinkedIn, a range of Ning accounts, use Shelfari, Library Thing and Goodreads, and are Twittering regularly. But is it enough? Are you maximising the value of these tools in order to draw in more readers and create a permanent network of fans, colleagues and associates who will be part of your 'clan' for the long run? If you're like most people you probably worry about it, so here are a few tips for optimising your social networking.

• Quality outweighs quantity. I know there are people out there, like Ashton Kutcher, who not only disagree with me, but have proven me wrong. But we don't all have the Kutcher's genes or the luxury of a full time publicist. For the rest of us mortals, we need to draw in friends who can help us grow, who can draw us into wider and relevant networks - link with the socially adept, the successful, and seek them out in your networks. That doesn't mean you have to be choosy or refuse friend requests, but you can at least focus your targeting efforts on those who you want to emulate and whose networks fit your messages, your books, your focus.

• Don't spread yourself too thinly. Yes, I'm guilty of this and you probably are too. It's better to pick a few highly visible networks and post on them regularly networking strongly there than do tiny, sporatic bits and pieces all over the place. There are so many networks, and new ones are springing up all the time - touting to be the new facebook for writers, asking you to post regularly, to blog there, to participate. If you try and keep up with it all you won't get any writing done. So pick a few and give them a little extra love. I tend to focus my energy these days on Facebook (especially my author page - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Magdalena-Ball-Author/154205247984373), Twitter (http://twitter.com/magdalenaball), LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/in/magdalenaball, and Good Reads http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/700078.Magdalena_Ball.  That's plenty for me!

• Give at least as much as you get. Answer other people's questions. Congratulate other people's successes. Support your fellow writers by retweeting their information, commenting on their blogs, and sharing their links. it isn't all about sales - it's also about creating global community and when the time comes for you to gather in the support you'll find that what you've given out comes back to you in spades.

When social networking works well, it's a global village where we all work together for the sake of meaning making. In the words of Sarah Blasko, the burden's not just your own. If you're authentic and really, truly connect, then you'll find that your promotional, and indeed even your writing task, is made easier. You'll be stimulated and supported by people who have become more than just tenuously linked strangers.

About the author: Magdalena Ball is the author of Sleep Before Evening, Repulsion Thrust, Quark Soup, and a number of collaborations and anthologies. Find out more about Magdalena and grab a free copy of her book The Literary Lunch at www.magdalenaball.com.

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.