Category: Lessons Learned About Writing

Weekend Workshop: Critique

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 1 Comment

I touched briefly on this last weekend but critiquing someone else’s work is such a huge part of the self publishing milieu these days. If you aren’t willing to critique someone else, chances are they aren’t going to help you. And we all need the help when we’re wearing 47 different hats in the pursuit of independent publishing.

When S and I were kicking around ideas for Nano to Publish we had a lot of thoughts on critique and in our infinite wisdom we decided to go to write in and ask other writers what they thought. The resulting list was born.

What is good, useful critique?

The primary goal of your editing critique should be to help the writer create the best version of their novel. By keeping this in mind, you can avoid many of the negatives that are sometimes associated with feedback, critique, dare we say criticism.

DO:

Ask if your partner has any specific concerns in mind that you could be looking for.
Be specific.
Talk about the work not the author.
Talk about things that will help them improve their work.
Note what works as well as what doesn’t.
Point out the repeated grammar or punctuation mistakes (once or twice) so the writer can learn not to do them.
Always explain why.

DO NOT:

Critique their voice until they change their voice to be your voice.
Rewrite things in exact words.
Line edit for them, unless asked to do so.

Questions to think about as you read for critique:

Are the characters relatable? Are they as likeable/detestable as they should be?
Are there any characters that don’t serve a purpose or are one dimensional?
Too much back story or not enough back story?
Are you confused at any point?
How is the pacing?
Where does the story really start?
At what point are you completely sucked in?
Are there any scenes that don’t make sense, that are out of place? Do they all drive the story forward?
Did you like the ending?
Did you feel the ending was appropriate to the story?
Would you have abandoned this book? Where and why?

When I went through this at the January Nano to Publish workshop a lot of groans happened at that last line. “That’s so harsh.” It could be. But think about this. If everyone who reads your novel prior to publication tells you only how wonderful it is, you won’t know until you publish if it’s actually any good. Imagine getting your first honest critique on Amazon in a review. That scares me more than zombies.

So tell me, did we forget anything on our list? What would you add? What do you like to see from your first pass, beta, and ARC readers?

Friday Special Surprise

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 5 Comments

Since I had Fiendish Friday on Tuesday this week I thought I would give a little bonus post. A bonus post with a bonus. Does that make this a double bonus? Bonus, Bonus.

I got the brilliant idea from a fellow author blogger to do a free give away with a twist. So here’s the deal, if you review Scripting the Truth and send me the link to your review (contact page is just fine) I will give you a free e copy of my next book (coming Fall 2016). And I’ll do it in perpetuity. Review my next book, a murder mystery, and gain a free copy of my spy novel when I publish that next year (2017). But this will only be open to those of you who start with Scripting the Truth and I think the time will be limited.

So what are you waiting for, more than 300 of you have it already.

As a side bar, Wednesday’s writer cafe was my 250th blog post. Congratulations to me.

Craft Workshop

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 3 Comments

Last Saturday was the first in a  year long series of workshops I am presenting at the North Bend library called Nanowrimo to Publish. I was so excited about the turn out. Even more excited about how far some folks drove just to attend, an hour plus in some cases. And about 75% of the participants signed on for the year.

The class/workshop/seminar, I really need to figure out what the bleep to call it, is really an effort to take people from point A, a lump of a novel that is a total mess after Nano, to a beautifully edited and honed work that increases the reputation of self publishing. And to do it in nine months. But I don’t aim high or anything. LOL

If you don’t live in the PacNW you’re missing out so I’ll give a bit of a run down here the following Saturday after each workshop class.

Yesterday we talked about the schedule, it’s pretty tight. By next month’s meeting they need to return their first pass critique of their partners work, which I assigned yesterday based on what people like to read and what they wrote and who was ready to send it by Sunday and who needed a week or two. It was actually easier to work out than it sounds. They have March and April to fix it all up and get it ready for Beta, integrating that first pass information. We’ll be helping with that and be talking about how to find betas, how to keep your family from revolting, things to do while your book is out to beta, etc. May and June beta integration. July, Create Space and Kindle. August Cover design. September final clean up based on ARC feedback. Not to mention we’ll cover blogging, marketing, and launch parties over the year as well.

That’s not too bad right? The truth is I publishing Scripting the Truth in eight months last year and while I don’t have a wide readership, I have an average of 4.8 stars so it must be at least decent. But I missed a lot of the critical marketing points and I now know better.

We also talked about critique. How to give good critique. It’s so important I’ll spend a whole blog post on that one alone.

Finally we talked about time management and productivity. There’s no better tool to evaluate your time management, in my humble opinion, than Chris Baty’s simple suggestion that you track your activities for one week in 15 minute increments and look at what you could cut. I’ve suggested an hour a day is enough to get you to published this year. I shared this productivity link, which is heavy, I know, but something on here will speak to you and that will help you make the most of your time.

Feel free to follow along at home and let me know how it is going.

Wednesday Writer’s Cafe – 1/20

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 4 Comments

Good evening from North Bend. It’s cold , wet, and raining – in other words situation completely normal. I love it here. I really do.

Oh mi god, so tonight we were talking about Powells and how heinous their parking garage is and my friend S tell this story about the time she put a ding in her car. She was not at Powells but in Vancouver in a super tight parking garage and she accidentally bumped a pillar. Somehow it manage to put a little dent right where the door close sensor was so her car started dinging that her door was ajar. She put a “ding” in her car. ROFL. We were all dying laughing.

They were all trying to convince me to start the Downton Abbey train. I’ve been resisting. Mainly because everyone thinks I should watch it. I am so mulish that way. LOL

I’ve decided to report on my stated 2016 goals each Wednesday at cafe for a little prod of accountability.

– Research marketing locations for the next free giveaway for Scripting the Truth. Figure out the Reddit problem. Fine tune my categorization on amazon.

√ Still reading every marketing bit I can get my hands on. I have a long list of things to try when I get to ten reviews on Amazon, most things make that threshold. I am considering strongly running a little promo to help with that. Stay tuned.

– Write 2500 plus words per week on my 2015 Nano novel til completion. (Only another 5-6 weeks to go on that, I think.)

√ This is done more or less. I am well into my first pass of editing.

– Participate in one flash fiction challenge per month.

√ January is done. February still to come.

– Prepare and teach “Nano to Publish”.

√ Taught the first workshop and it went so much better than expected. Tune in Saturday for a recap.

– Edit my 2015 Nano Novel for 2016 publication.

√ It’s on like Donkey Kong. I edited I edited 15 chapters this week. I’m finding some funny parts. I’m liking it better and better. I have my first first pass critique partner assigned and we’ll see what he has to say in the upcoming weeks.

– Any time I am not actively working on my 2015 Nano Novel, write 2500 words per week on my spy novel until it is done. (After four years, it’s time to put this mess to bed.)

-Non Applicable at this time.

Non writing goals

– Prepare and teach two classes at the coop for the 2016-2017 school year.

√ Both done and working on it at the same time. LOL. My proposal is in. I won’t know if they want the class until later this year. But I am still picking and choosing youth appropriate literature for the class anyway.

– Take better care of my body, ie. stop compulsively painting, crocheting, and writing until my back or shoulder is so tore I can barely use either. Which leads me to …

√ Excellent week for listening to my body.

– yoga daily.

√ Every other day. Sigh. I need to really look at my schedule closer and see what I can do to rearrange things. On the plus side I’ve been getting so into my writing I run out of time to yoga some days. So that’s good-ish. LOL

Craft Workshop

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 2 Comments

One of the choices I made for 2016 was to post four times a week on the blog: Monday Book Reviews, Wednesday Writer’s Cafe and goals, Fiendish Friday (a catch all where I make fun of myself on some level), and the other. In the other category is Flash Fiction or Craft Workshops.

Craft Workshops will contain either a distillation of an entire “craft” book, a segment of a craft book, or notes from my workshop series at the North Bend library. Clearly if I am boiling an entire book down into one post, I found it less useful.

Your First Bestseller, How to Self-Publish a Successul Book on Amazon, by Mike Fishbein is the first whack at this new series.

It was a free book. Broken into three sections, section one advises you with a lot of words to write a book readers want to read and edit it carefully. Wow. Totally out of the box ideas.

Section Three on marketing…basically do a free giveaway right away to get a lot of downloads and get Amazon’s attention by utilizing your mailing list, friends, and family to get the word out there. Guest blog to increase your presence. Run ads on Amazon.

Section Two is where the money is. Step by Step Guide leading you through creating your book on Create Space and on Kindle. He also includes information on ACX – audio book creation. The step by step guides are handy. It’s not a difficult process but it could be complicated if you’ve never done it before.

All in all a fast read, not terribly long, not terribly content heavy with the exception of the how to in Part 2.

Flash Fiction Challenge

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 2 Comments

I know a double post on a Friday is not usual for me however I couldn’t get it together to finish this up yesterday and if I wait and post it tomorrow, I’ll miss the deadline. LOL

Dan Alattore , fellow writer and fountain of writing advice (seriously people I bookmark at least half his posts for future reference), puts out a weekly Flash Fiction Challenge. Two weeks ago I said I would participate in a 1000 word random number generator/random plot generator chosen bit of flash. I got Adventure and writing an obituary. Sadly that was the week my hubby was on call and I just never got it done. Eh, being honest, I never even got it started. But my goal for this year it to do a flash a month and January is only going to get crazier so it was on for this week.

This time the word limit was 500. A character generator gave a description,  I got : a courageous 39 year-old woman, who comes from a wealthy background, lives in a fisherman’s cottage and tends to be a bit forgetful. And a number generator gave an emotion (more or less, let’s not get technical). I got guilt.

So in my infinite wisdom I said I would merge the two challenges into an adventure tale with a courageous 39 year-old woman, who comes from a wealthy background, lives in a fisherman’s cottage and tends to be a bit forgetful, who feels guilty, in the adventure genre, and is writing an obituary.

Slaps own head. I wasn’t thinking. I’m not sure it worked at all but this is what happened…

 

“Causing death and destruction at every turn of her life, death has lately come to the 39 year old daughter of Roland Grantham, the billionaire bio-tech entrepreneur. If ever one deserved to die penniless and alone in a smelly fisherman’s cottage, this woman does.”

Damn, I couldn’t use present tense in an obituary, even if I was writing my own. I crossed the room to box of random garbage I brought with me when I came, god knows why I thought I would use anything in here. I suppose I had been right in just this one instance as I dug for a liquid correction pen. I gave the pen a quick shake and in one smooth swipe I erased the word does and replaced it with did.

But the error broke the flow, and I had to take a moment to regroup and think about what should really be said. I removed my hand from where it had subconsciously traveled to cover my mouth so I could take a long sip of tea with honey. There was little comfort to be had these days, but tea with honey warmed my bones. Why I was bothering to warm them when they would soon be eternally cold I didn’t know.

Time was growing short, how much I had I was uncertain but I needed to finish this obit. It took effort to force myself to stop delaying, but I put pen back to paper.

“At the end of the world on the Cornwall coast, Sonia Grantham faced the horror of what she had done at the behest of her father and in the chase of the almighty Euro. It was her research, her medical trials, her dangerous and deadly work that has brought the world to the brink of destruction.”

I was such a liar, even on the precipice of death. Brink of destruction my ass. The world was beyond destruction. It was a hopeless case or I would never have abandoned my search for a cure. And we needed a cure. I was just not as bright as I thought.

“Sonia Grantham deserves to die the gruesome painful death she has caused others but as a coward she takes the easy way out.”

Damn, I’d used present tense again. My eyes flitted to the correction pen. Instead I chose tea. I couldn’t really be bothered. What was the chance that whatever found it would read the Queens English anyway? I drained my cup, rinsed it and placed it on the drying rack next to the sink. Using a large decorative safety pin that used to hold my wool pashmina closed back in the days of Bergdorfs, I attached the letter to the front of my shirt.
I picked up the 38 special my father had bought me when things began to go pear shaped and loaded one single bullet into the chamber round. I gave it a little spin into alignment and placed the barrel under my chin.

Fiendish Friday – That Girl

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 2 Comments

I wasn’t always as accepting as I am now. There have definitely been some years in my life where I was way more judgemental. The problem with judging others though, is one day you might wake up and discover you have become them. I will provide examples for your amusement.

One in late February or maybe early March back when I lived in CA, I met a friend at a park for our kids to play. She showed up in jeans, uggs, a sweater, and one of those down vests.

In  my head I thought “Yep, the skinny girl’s winter uniform.”

So the other day I go run some errands and then over to a friend’s house for our kids to have a play date.(different friend) And as I unzip my down vest and kick off my uggs, I realize I’m wearing jeans and a sweater. Yep, skinny girl’s winter uniform. How the bleep did that happen?

I am also the cliché who asks for and gets fitness gear for Christmas.

I am also the cliché who knows which salad dressing has the least carbs. It’s blue cheese by the way.

I am the cliché who bakes and sends Christmas cookies to friends and family but keeps none for herself.

I am also the cliché who makes a list of goals at the year end but refuses to call them New Year’s Resolutions. LOL

I am also the cliché who makes fun of herself for the enjoyment of her reading public.

What cliché have you woken up to discover you have become?

 

2016 Goals

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 7 Comments

With the new year in front of me and my first free giveaway just behind me, it seemed like a good time to consider where I want my writing to go next year.

A quick recap of the free giveaway. On one hand, 282 people downloaded Scripting the Truth while it was free and I already got a new review, here’s hoping for 281 more, LOL. But in the grand scheme of things I am bummed. Reddit never allowed my posts, which means my advertising was minimal, only word of mouth and Facebook friends. Which means my positional gains on the best seller list were minimal. But I can do another free run in three months, which leads me to item number one on my goals list.

  1. Research marketing locations for the next free giveaway for Scripting the Truth. Figure out the Reddit problem. Fine tune my categorization on amazon.
  2. Write 2500 plus words per week on my 2015 Nano novel til completion. (Only another 5-6 weeks to go on that, I think.)
  3. Participate in one flash fiction challenge per month.
  4. Prepare and teach “Nano to Publish”.
  5. Edit my 2015 Nano Novel for 2016 publication.
  6. Any time I am not actively working on my 2015 Nano Novel, write 2500 words per week on my spy novel until it is done. (After four years, it’s time to put this mess to bed.)

Other non writing goals?

  1. Prepare and teach two classes at the coop for the 2016-2017 school year.
  2. Take better care of my body, ie. stop compulsively painting, crocheting, and writing until my back or shoulder is so tore I can barely use either. Which leads me to …
  3. yoga daily.

I’ve made it a point to keep my goals things that are within my control, more or less. I would love to make have 10,000 followers my goal or sell 5000 copies as a goal but those are dependent on other people. And with my mind control abilities on the fritz these days, shrug, gotta focus on what I can directly do. Which brings me to my last … thought? I hesitate to say goal.  I need to reconsider my twitter ban. I just don’t know if I can go there. sigh.

So tell what are your goals for the 2016 year? Or even one goal? or even what you think of my goals? What do you think of Twitter?

 

Fiendish Friday – 5AM

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 2 Comments

So a couple of weeks ago I started getting up at FIVE AM.

I am not a morning person, in fact I rarely come alive until after dinner, so what prompted this insanity?

I realized I am not unhappy with my life. In fact, my life is pretty much fabulous. Hate me if you like. LOL. But I did realize I was the only person in my house not getting their needs met.

My dog is pretty simple: 2 meals a day, belly rubs, ball throwing, an hour walk, and once a week massive hike. √

The hamster: clean it’s cage weekly. feed it about weekly.√

My hubby: good food, clean clothes to wear to work, a happy wife, and a healthy amount of mumble mumble (move along folks, nothing to see here). √

My kiddo: home school, good food, coop, specialty classes, play dates, cuddles with Mommy, and Legos. (Never underestimate a six year old boy’s need for Legos.) √

Me: yoga, writing time, reading time, crafty/TV watching time.

Yeah – I guess I ask lot given I am a stay at home mom. LOL. For those of you not in the know, stay at home mom means no time alone.

So I started getting up at five, oh god, I’ll say it again, five. So I could write, yoga, then walk the dog and start my day. I am still not a morning person. But what it comes down to is this, I can be either “not a morning person writer” or I can sleep in. Because you have to actually write to call yourself a writer and not much of that was happening post Nano, pre five AM.

So now I am writing. 500-1000 words each day on my nano novel. It’s progressing really well. I think it helps I ended Nano with my novel at the all down hill from here point. But still, words are accumulating. Some days, when I don’t have anything planned for the morning, I actually take two whole hours to write and then yoga after I walk the dog. (kiddo likes his morning TV, don’t judge.) It’s kind of nice to have the time to be flexible and to prioritize my writing. I used to just shoehorn it in where ever I could fit it. Now it has it’s own space.

How do you give your writing (or substitute other passion) it’s own space? Do you go to extreme lengths? Or lengths that feel extreme to you anyway? LOL

And Merry Christmas to those who celebrate. Happy Friday to those who don’t. My book, Scripting the Truth, is still available for free download until the 27th.

Wednesday Writer’s Cafe

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Good evening my friends. First off I have to say thank you for all your support yesterday. It’s nice to hear I am just a standard insecure writer basket case as opposed to a special blend of crazy.

And what a difference a day can make. I wrote more than 2000 words today on my Nano Novel. At that rate I’ll finish this puppy by Christmas. Because we all know it works just like that. LOL. Snort. LOL.

On the way to write in tonight I saw a motorcycle with a fully lit Christmas tree in the side car. How freaking awesome.

Speaking of awesome things, if you’ve been waiting, the time is neigh. The kindle version of my novel, Scripting the Truth, will be a free download from December 23rd to December 27th. I’ll post a link when it’s available. But save the date now.

In the mean time, I think I need to go home to bed. My explanation of why I need to stop writing for the night was so convoluted someone wrote it down to add to their work in progress.  Um, glad to know I can be so amusing when I make no sense.