The 7 Best Books for Novelists & Writers

The best books for writers, well we all probably have our own lists and I'd love to hear your favorite books - the ones that have helped you navigate your way through this writing life. These are a few of mine:

Inspiration: 

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott:
This book was mandatory reading for a college course I took called, How to Write a Novel. Anne became a favorite author after that. Her words leaving me feeling hope even at the worst of times with my writing.

and

On Writing by Stephen King:
This book is part autobiography and part helpful lessons about the writing life.

and

The Right to Write by Julia Cameron:
Essays and exercises help me find the joy in writing. I pick this one up when I'm feeling stuck.

Technical: 

The Elements of Style by Strunk and White:

Nothing more needs to be said. You've all heard it before. It's a must for every writer.

and

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King:
I consider this one of my great finds and I've loaned it out a number of times. Find it! Use it! Love it!

and

Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forester:
I had heard a lot about this book, which is a compilation of lectures Forester had delivered. I found the information on character building a wonderful lesson in how to create rounded characters.

and

The Weekend Novelist by Robert J. Ray:
This book was a great find as well. As I look at my copy I see where I've underlined and made numerous notations. This book, while I didn't use it to only write on the weekends, gave me an excellent overview of how to create structure.

The Business:

Literary Law Guide for Authors by Tonya Marie Evans:

On a number of occasions I've found myself looking up information here for myself and my writer friends. Love it!

So what are the books you can't do without?

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D. Jean Quarles is a writer of Women's Fiction and a co-author of a Young Adult Science Fiction Series. Her latest book, House of Glass, Book 2 of The Exodus Series was written with coauthor, Austine Etcheverry.                                                           D. Jean loves to tell stories of personal growth – where success has nothing to do with money or fame, but of living life to the fullest. She is also the author of the novels: Rocky's Mountains, Fire in the Hole, and Perception. The Mermaid, an award winning short story was published in the anthology, Tales from a Sweltering City.                                                                                              She is a wife, mother, grandmother and business coach. In her free time . . . ha! ha! ha! Anyway, you can find more about D. Jean Quarles, her writing and her books at her website at www.djeanquarles.com                                                                         You can also follower her at www.djeanquarles.blogspot.com or on Facebook.

Getting Freelance Writing Credits

by Suzanne Lieurance

If you’re worried that you can’t possibly juggle all the assignments it takes to start earning at least $100 a day as a writer, here’s some writing advice. Try these tips to balance all the various projects you’ll enjoy once you get your writing career going:

1. Try to acquire both long term and short term assignments. You may get bored if you’re only working on long term assignments like book length manuscripts. Also accept shorter assignments with shorter deadlines. This will give you a more constant stream of income, plus you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment each time you finish a shorter project – and that will help keep you motivated to finish those long term assignments.

2. Plan to do something every day to move each of your writing projects/assignments forward. If you keep up with each assignment on a daily basis, you won’t be scrambling to meet the deadline for any of them at the last minute.

3. Use spread sheets or charts to keep track of all your assignments. Whenever you get a new assignment, add it to your spreadsheet. That way you won’t overlook deadlines, or forget about long term assignments, when you get really, really busy working on short term projects.

These tips should help you balance your writing assignments and actually enjoy your writing career more as you continue to increase your weekly, monthly, and yearly income as a freelance writer.

Suzanne Lieurance is an author, freelance writer, certified professional life coach and writing coach, speaker and workshop presenter. She has written over two dozen published books and hundreds of articles for newspapers, magazines, and other publications.

For more short writing tips, get your free subscription to The Morning Nudge at www.morningnudge.com.

April Blogging Prompts

April showers bring May flowers. They also bring lots of blog posts. 

Here are some things you can blog about this month:

April is National Poetry Month: Write a poem, share your favorite poem and why, give your readers an assignment to write a poem, or all of the above. The celebration lasts all month long. However, Great Poetry Reading Day is April 28.

The last week in April is National Karaoke Week! Share your proudest or most embarrassing karaoke moment, or create a new one to share with your readers.

Plus:

April Holidays: April is International Guitar Month (great for songwriters), Lawn and Garden Month (grow your stories, grow your business), and Stress Awareness Month (share ways for your readers to de-stress). April 14 is International Moment of Laughter Day, April 16 is National Librarian Day, April 18 is Newspaper Columnists Day, April 23 is Take a Chance Day, April 27 is Tell a Story Day, and April 30 is National Honesty Day

April Food Holidays: April is National Garlic Month, National Grilled Cheese Month (Greilled Cheese Sandwich Day is April 12), and National Soft Pretzel Month. Perhaps my favorite April food holiday is National Picnic Day on April 23. Come up with literary themed picnics to share with your readers or take yourself on a picnic and then do some writing outside.

Bonus: April is also National Humor Month. This leads to a variety of possibilities for both fiction and non-fiction writers. Write funny, even if you think you're not. Or, if you are a humorous writer, write in another genre ... just for fun! You never know where words might lead. You just have to play with them!

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Debra Eckerling is the author of Purple Pencil Adventures: Writing Prompts for Kids of All Ages. She's a writer, editor and project manager/goal coach, as well as founder of Guided Goals and Write On Online, a live and online writers’ support group. She is an editor at Social Media Examiner. Debra is also a speaker/moderator on the subjects of writing, networking, goal-setting and social media.

3 Apps to Help Writers

Gravatar

What: 

Gravatar, a WordPress Platform feature, is a globally recognized Avatar.  Just upload your image and create your profile. When a blog user leaves a comment, his/her Gravatar is exhibited with the comment. (The blog's software scans for the gravatar that matches the e-mail the blogger has entered.)

Benefits:
Your online presence will be facilitated by your  unique Gravatar. Don't waste time typing your name and contact info every time you comment on a blog. Just use your professional Gravatar with your blog comments.

Timenye

What:
An ideal time-tracking App for freelancers who need to monitor the time spent on client projects and bill accordingly.

Benefits: 
You can monitor your daily, weekly and monthly writing tasks in real time using the pie chart. You can also retrieve your daily activities. Timeneye learns your habits and tracks time for you.

Note: Timenye helped me to identify the extra time I spent to satisfy a client's growing expectations for a blog. This made it easy for me to estimate additional fees and to streamline tasks.

EVERNOTE

What:
EVERNOTE is a cloud-based App that lets you store and organize your research notes, urls, images, etc,

Benefits:
This app is a fantastic catch all for all your writing tasks:
- Take screen shots to capture ideas for inspiration, and add tags and notes.
- Find your notes, photos, etc., with the handy indexed, searchable, tagging feature.
- Use your phone to take screen shots of off-line research, receipts, etc., and upload to EVERNOTE.

Note: I have created notebooks for each of my writing projects, related marketing tasks, and monthly income reports. Before EVERNOTE, I wasted a lot of time bookmarking sites and creating files with urls and research notes in google docs. It was hard to keep track of all my research. EVERNOTE has made this process efficient and viable for me. But there is a lot more to EVERNOTE. I am looking forward to learning how to use it to its full potential.

More resources to help writers maximize their output

5 Steps to Preventing Scope Creep (and Still Keeping Your Clients Happy):
Advice for freelancers: What to do when client projects become bigger than what was agreed upon.

How to create an accurate estimate for your projects: Tools and strategies to reduce stress and efficiently manage your workload.

How to manage your time: Apply time management skills for a successful writing career.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Deb Toor is a nonfiction writer and freelance blogger. She is the author of Survival Secrets of Turkey Vultures, a suspense-adventure story for grades 4 to 6 that is based on peer-reviewed science. She is also a ghostwriter for a health blog.

Debra Toor Author, Eco-Literacy Connections, Free Lesson Plans p:905-510-9804 | e:debtoor@gmail.com | w:www.ecostoriesbydebtoor.com

The Frugal Book Promoter Shares Back-of-Book Partnership Idea

I just couldn't resist sharing this--my fave new idea--for working with fellow authors to cross-promote!   

Publishing/Marketing Partnership Tip

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How can you sell more books—any book, fiction or nonfiction—without doing all the heavy lifting yourself? Partner with an author who writes in your genre or on your topic. Here’s how: Include the first one to three chapters of their book in the back of your book and they do the same for you. You’ve automatically reached your target audience, gotten what amounts to an endorsement from a fellow author. After you’ve done the original planning (finding a reliable partner and adding one another’s material to your self-published book), the rewards keep coming in effortlessly!

Here are suggestions for making this cross-promotion work well:

 

1. Choose an author who writes in your genre or on a similar nonfiction topic, though the topic could be broad like politics.

 

2. Choose an author whose work you admire and who admires your work as well.

 

3. Plan well ahead and agree on the parameters of the agreement. Will you include an introduction (a kind of recommendation) before the chapters? How will you do it? With just a title like “Recommended Reading for Those Who Love Horror,” or with a personal introduction about your partner and why you like his or her work. How many words or pages of your partner’s work will you include in your book? (Be careful not to let the number of your author’s pages push you into another level where your book will cost more to print!)

 

4. If the number of pages is problematic, do it only in the e-book version of your book.

 

5. As an alternative, partner on a promotional e-book that you promote and give away free. You could use many more than two authors for this idea and agree on how many e-books and how much marketing each author must contribute to be included. Call it a “Free Sampler for Future Reading on the State of American Politics” or something else that matches your needs. I did something like this years ago. It was a cookbook and that cookbook was not only a smashing success, but the authors continued to use it for holidays years after we published it. I did give readers of The Frugal Book Promoter a case study of the entire project--MBA style.   

If you choose to do this, let me know about it. Send me an e-copy at HoJoNews@aol.com. I’ll use your note and links to the free book in the Letters-to-the-Editor section of my SharingwithWriters newsletter. (You can subscribe to the newsletter at http://HowToDoItFrugally.com).

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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. The second edition e-book was honored by Next Generation Indie Awards in the e-book category.

 

How to Avoid Exposition in Dialogue

Good dialogue can stick the reader right in the middle of the action.  It can reveal a lot about the characters and help pacing.  But writing dialogue can be tricky.

Today's pitfall is what I call "exposition in dialogue" or "dialogue for the benefit of the reader."  This is when two characters tell each other things they both already know and have no reason to talk about, just to give the reader important information.  It's unnatural and awkward and should generally be avoided.

Example of Exposition in Dialogue:

I'm going to exaggerate a little here to illustrate the point.

Scene:  Lila and Tom are brother and sister, both young adults.  They're together when Tom gets a phone call.  He hardly says anything, and when he hangs up, he turns to Lila.

"John Abernathy's dead."

"No," Lila said, sinking into a chair.  "John Abernathy is our grandfather.  He owned two canneries in Alaska, and I remember how bad they smelled.  Our mother fell out with him and we haven't seen him for ten years, but still, I can't believe it.  We didn't even know he was sick."  

Okay, so most of the examples in our writing aren't this bad, but I see less glaring cases all the time, and it's something we need to watch for.  These two people already know this information.  There's no reason they'd say it like this.

Solutions:

1)  Narrate.

"Grandpa John is dead."

"No," Lila said, sinking into a chair.  John Abernathy was their grandfather, but they hadn't seen him in years, not since he and their mother had fallen out.  They'd visited him once in Alaska, where he owned two canneries.  Lila could still smell the fish if she closed her eyes.  How could he be dead?  She hadn't even known he was sick.

2)  Argue.  Twist the conversation into an argument to give them a reason to discuss it.  Maybe your characters remember things differently.  Maybe they have different ideas about the consequences or the importance or the truth of the background information.

"Grandpa John is dead."

"No," Lila said, sinking into a chair.  "Mom's gonna be sorry now."

"It wasn't her fault they argued.  Grandpa--"

"That's just her side of the story.  We don't know what happened.  And she didn't have to cut him out of our lives completely.  Now we've lost all these years, and we'll never get them back."

"It wasn't exactly as if he was the best grandpa before, hiding himself away in Alaska.  He cared more about his canneries than he ever cared about us."

3)  Reminisce.  Have the characters take a walk down memory lane.  Be careful with this, however, as it can sound forced.

"Grandpa John is dead."

"No," said Lila, sinking into a chair.  "Dead?  He was strong as a bull."

"Ten years ago he was.  But things change."

"Remember the tour he gave us of his canneries in Alaska?"

"He let me chop the heads off the fish.  I thought it was the coolest thing."

"It was disgusting.  And the smell...but he was so proud of everything. I wish he and Mom hadn't fought.  Now it's too late.."

4)  Tell a character who doesn't know.  Bring a third character into the conversation, one who really doesn't know the information.  Use this sparingly, as it can also come across as too convenient and lazy on the author's part.

"John Abernathy's dead."

"No," Lila said, sinking into a chair.

"Who's John Abernathy?" Tom's girlfriend asked. 

"Our grandpa.  Mom's dad."

"I didn't know he was still around.  You never talk about him."

"We haven't seen him for years," Tom said.  "He does fish canning up in Alaska.  Mom had an argument with him a long time ago and wouldn't let us have anything to do with him."

"I'm so sorry."

More examples:

"Captain, if we get a whole in the hull, we'll sink!"

Uh...he's a pretty bad captain if he doesn't know this.

Solution:  be more specific:  "Captain, a whole that big will sink us in less than fifteen minutes." 


"As you know, Jake got married six months ago.  Now I can't talk to him without his wife hanging on his arm."

Solution:  rephrase to build on what the listener knows:  "Ever since Jake got married, I can't talk to him without his wife hanging on his arm."

Final Test:

When you think your dialogue is good, read it aloud.  That's often the best way to hear if something sounds unnatural.

Melinda Brasher currently teaches English as a second language in the beautiful Czech Republic.  She loves the sound of glaciers calving and the smell of old books.  Her travel articles and short fiction appear in Go Nomad, International Living, Electric Spec, Intergalactic Medicine Show, and others.  For an e-book collection of some of her favorite pieces, check out Leaving Home.  Visit her online at http://www.melindabrasher.com.

Researching Historical Fiction, From Beginning to End

By Karen Mann

Researching to write historical fiction is interesting and even exciting. The first thing to consider is going to the location of the novel and walking the streets your characters walked. Interview people. Go to the library there. Take time to find out how that place sounds, feels, tastes, looks, and smells.

However, when writing my novel The Woman of La Mancha, I was unable to go to Spain or even more specifically, I was unable to go to sixteenth-century Spain, yet my readers tell me I have made that time period vividly alive. How was I able to do that? Through extensive library and online research.

To begin, get a general overview of the time period. I started by reading one book about the time period. From that beginning, I understood the kinds of things I needed to research. My next stop was a weekend at university library. I made a lot of copies (2 bankers’ boxes full). Then went home and read and read.

Today, online research may be the first thing to do. Organize your bookmarks so you can easily find the pages where you find information. Be discerning about your online research to be sure you feel it’s accurate. Often you can find books or chapters of books online. Through libraries, you can access databases which may have even more accurate and detailed information than webpages. Remember the stacks at the library when you went to college? Nearly all those books and magazine are available online now. Consult your local library to find out how to access them.

Organize your notes by category: costumes, food, religion, government, farming, education, healing, illnesses, family life, architecture, household furnishings, hunting, music, art, literature, and more. Don’t leave any stone unturned; you need to have the entire picture of that society so you can write specifically about it.

You don’t have to write down everything you read. You are going to begin to get an overall picture of what that time period was like. You’ll be able to imagine yourself there and you’ll be able to imagine your characters there.

But there are details you will want to keep handy for reference. To keep that information handy, find a system that works for you to find the information you need when you need it. It might be something as simple as a spreadsheet. Type or paste information in worksheets with appropriate titles so you can find what you are looking for. Or your system might be a more elaborate software program or actual pieces of paper in a file cabinet. 
The more you research, the more you’ll have an idea of what you know (you know how they dressed in the eighteenth century) and what you don’t know (you don’t know how they prepared their food), so you can focus research on those topics to fill in the blanks.

Over time I assimilated everything. Nothing went to waste. It was as if I were sitting there while I wrote.

What is the key to incorporating the information in your writing? Find the most interesting tidbits. Don’t repeat facts by rote; adapt what you’ve read to your writing. Sometimes it’s only a word from that period, or the name of a particular cloth, a particular kind of chair or weapon. Maybe it’s how you make a porridge or ale or how you bake bread. Maybe it’s the flowers that bloom in the spring or how a harpsichord sounds. Bring each tidbit alive through evoking the senses or recreating specific and vivid scenes. Research informs your writing. Use it wisely and bring your writing to life.

Karen Mann is the author of The Woman of La Mancha and The Saved Man. She is the co-founder and Administrative Director of the low-residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program at Spalding University and managing editor of The Louisville Review, a national literary magazine since 1976. Having lived in Indiana most of her life, she now lives in San Jose, California. See more about her books at www.karenmannwrites.com.

About The Woman of La Mancha:

The Woman of La Mancha, a companion book to Don Quixote, tells the woman’s story of Don Quixote by recounting the story of the girl he called Dulcinea, the woman he loved from afar.

It’s 1583. An eleven-year-old girl wakes in the back of a cart. She has lost her memory and is taken in by a kindly farm family in La Mancha. She adopts the name Aldonza. She doesn’t speak for quite some time. Once she speaks, there is a family member who is jealous of her and causes a good deal of trouble, even causing her to be forced to leave La Mancha in tragic circumstances. Having to create a new life in a new location and still unaware of her birth family, she adopts the name Dulcinea and moves in the circles of nobility. While seeking her identity, she becomes the consort of wealthy men, finds reason to disguise herself as a man, and learns herbal healing to help others.

There is a parallel story of a young man, Don Christopher, a knight of King Philip and the betrothed of the girl, who sets off on with a young squire, Sancho, to find the girl. Christopher’s adventures take them across Spain and force him to grow up. Does he continue the quest to find his betrothed or marry another and break the contract with the king?

Both young people have many experiences and grow up before the readers’ eyes. Floating in and out of each other’s paths as they travel around Spain, will they eventually find each other and be together?

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MORE ON WRITING

Tips on Writing Suspense Stories for Children
Tips and Tools to Make Your Writing Life Easier
Essentials for Managing Your Writing Career

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