Five Years by Michael Ruiz

Photo Credit: Michael Ruiz

It’s time for a new weekly post! Okay, this is my first ‘weekly’ topic. Here goes the kickoff of Friday Five! This Friday, I would like to share with you the 5 Best Writer Resource Websites and tell you a bit about them and why I chose them.

The Creative Penn – The Published and Insightful

Anyone that knows Awesome-Aussie Joanna Penn knows that it is never just book to publish. There is a process and it includes lots of painful fun like building a platform, networking, and everything that comes before a big publishing house, big check and fame. If you have questions of where to start or where you are ending, Joanna Penn has great resources on her site including video and podcasts. Take a look. You won’t be disappointed!

The Publetariat  : The Resource List

This is one of the first sites I stumbled upon as I was venturing into the self-published authorship club. Talk about a mass collection of information! The Publetariat has the longest list of helpful writing articles I have found, yet, on the web. A great resource. A must-read (not all at once, that is a lot of reading) when you have time so bookmark it!

Literary Rambles – The Future of Writing

Hers is a great blog about writing for writers. Casey McCormick is full of humor and life. She has a great take on being a self-published author. I will continue to read her blog and give shout outs to her posts as I find them! I could spend a few hours a day perusing her archived posts.

Wagging Tales – The Creative: The Friend

@CharmaineClancy has been a great friend. Both her blog and her personality are vibrant and command attention. It is very important to know who is rooting for you. Make sure you have a friend-writer in your corner. Encourage, find comfort and throw ideas off one another. It is best to have a support system in place for either failure (which is the definition of pre-success) or celebration (supposedly success DOES happen, though I am skeptical) Either way, she has great tips on writing and plot. A teacher and vastly intelligent, it’s great to have a good conversation with someone other than yourself or dog/cat/(insert pet).

Your Favorite Authors Site – The Goal

That is right. Mine would be Stephen King. (Whose wouldn’t?) But you could put any name you like as your favorite. The point is, you need to know what success is to you in order to find it. How will you know when it is time to celebrate if you don’t know what your goals are? So take a look around your favorite authors site, try to study their success in comparison to yours. Most of all don’t get discouraged. Just book mark the site and wander over when you get the writer-blues. Say to your self ‘I can do this. He is just a man, like anyone else. If he can do it, I CAN too!’

Those are my five picks for Friday! Hurray! Fun stuff! I know, I am too funny, but I hope this has given you a little insight, a little help and maybe a little encouragement. Go for your dreams; find friends that believe in you and the sky is the limit!

Thanks for reading!

Please Comment and ReTweet if you enjoyed this post.

Clorindo Kafka by Celest RC

Photo Credit: Celeste RC

I am a self proclaimed Google Fan Girl. That is pretty awesome. Am I? I consider myself to be, awesome that is. I am a Sony eReader fan as well, because I like to read when I fly and I like having Google Books connected to my computer’s library.

As I was going online to find new titles, I discovered that Sony’s link to Google Books is down. While inconvenient, I just wondered over Google books manually and it got me thinking ‘There are a lot of books on here.’

So as a new tradition, every two weeks I am going to pick one of the public domain books to read with you. That is right, WITH you. I am not saying I am going to call you up and read to you before you go to sleep, as sweet as that would be of me. I will go ahead and post a title with a link and we will take two weeks to read it. Sound good? Then I will post my thoughts and you can comment yours.

I think this will be a great experience. I am a big supporter of reading (I have a vested interest in those that read, I am a writer after all).

Let me know what you think. Is two weeks too infrequent? Is it too often? Any particular titles you would like to start with?

Thanks for reading!

Comment if you like it!

How well I could write if I were not here! by Esther_G

Photo Credit: Esther_G

Time to match something up with a day of the week! I think Wordy Wednesday was a great little title, but I really want a Word-War.

After installing an awesome writers software called Write or Die I have discovered how truly easy it will be for me to make my NaNoWriMo goal this year and to entertain a real word war.

If you don’t know what a word war is, it is a competition between two writers with a set amount of time. The first writer that either reaches the goal or writes more than the other, wins! Easy, right?

Write or Die makes this competition easy. I love that you can actually see the progress bar of your opponent updating next to yours. Okay, so there was a mini review on the software.

What I am going to do every Wednesday is challenge the world to a Word War. First person to return my invitation gets the war. I will tweet my unique word war id number every Wednesdays at 1pm (Arizona time -7:00) and post the results.

I think this is a great way to encourage writing, maybe help some NaNoWriMo buddies keep their word goals and get to compete with fellow writers. I hope that Word-War Wednesdays become a tradition!

And I will keep you posted! As always, thanks for reading!

Comment if you liked it!

What are your tools for keeping on goal with your writing this NaNoWriMo?

Day 79 - focus by Margo C

Photo Credit: Margo C

Some ask about my writing process. (Who am I kidding, no one asked me anything about my writing process. But I need a topic and this sounds like a good, fun one. So let’s figure this out.) Here I will talk about my writing process, why my writing process is the way it is and how I have fared in using my writing process.

My Writing Process is very simple.

Step One: Have an epiphany

Step Two: Think about epiphany for a few months.

Step Three: Consider writing epiphany down.

Step Four: Hesitate.

Step Five: Write epiphany.

Step Six: Realize it is crap.

Step Seven: Go with a watered down idea I had during breakfast.

Step Eight: Sell watered down idea as bestseller.

(I haven’t really gotten to step Eight yet, it’s a work-in-progress)

In all seriousness, my process is lots of little pieces. Mostly I walk around with a little notebook everywhere. Anytime I see something interesting or unusually normal, I write it down and either document it pristinely or comment how it could be made more interesting. Not all comments make it in to a plot idea, not all characters get each trait, but watching people interact is the best way to learn how people interact.

When I write, I usually listen to music. I will write at my desktop computer for several hours. When I get tired, I will curl up in bed with a book or with my laptop and continue to write.

If I can’t sleep or if I am tired of writing for the night, I will read blog entries from bed on my phone and update twitter about how tired I am due to my inability to fall asleep. Generally, this is my writing process.

The only part about my process that is structured is Editing Versus Writing. I never do both. If I am writing, I am not spell checking, second guessing commas or thinking about run-ons. I am just writing. When I schedule time to sit down and edit, I do just that. I sit down and the only thing I do is systematically go through my writing and check off an editing to-do list.

So my writing process would be something like:

1)      Study people interacting

2)      Pull character traits and plot set-ups from authentic interactions

3)      Establish the one main task of the book and the two sub-tasks for the story

4)      Write the three main events (One main, two sub-plot/tasks)

5)      Fill in the gaps between the events

6)      Sit down and edit

7)      Throw it away or send it to my mom and start all over again

As anyone can see, writing is an inner struggle and ongoing torture. The only thing consistent is that I write everyday, without fail. I write. I am a writer and that is what I was meant to do. Does that mean I am a good writer? No. But I am a writer. So I write.

Thanks for reading! I hope this gave you a little insight into my life and methods of madness when it comes to writing!
Comments and ReTweets are appreciated!

Go ahead and tell me about your writing process. Would love to hear it!

BACON N EGG by snowriderguy

Photo Credit: snowriderguy

What do I do with Writers block?

I eat it for breakfast. Every. Day. I do. I eat it and it is bitter and I hate the taste of it. When I get writers block, which seems to happen to everyone, eventually, it is just a cue to me. This is my cue that I don’t like where my story is going, don’t like some element and need to step back and take a look at the big plot picture.

I usually surf the internet when I get writers block. You will find me on Google Wave, Twitter, YouTube (the bestest) and playing Facebook apps until the wee hours of the morning. Why do I do this? Distraction. I usually set aside time where I sit at my computer and stare at a blank, blinking cursor but really…how long can you do that? And what will you produce? I tend to produce crap when I am unhappy.

If I am on a deadline, it is different. Why? Because the adrenaline of needing to have something together brings the genius out in me and I love it. “Crunch Time” just thrills me. Can I do that constantly? I am sure I could for a while but not for more than a few months at a time. Everyone crashes and burns eventually if on 24-7 ‘ALERT!’ mode.

So that is what I do with Writers block. Everyday I wake up and I look it right in the eyes and say ‘Make me toast, or I will EAT you WHOLE!’ But mostly I wander the web, watch silly videos like the NumaNuma guy that always makes me giggle and puts me in a better mood. If ever you need a smile, NumaNuma is good for it.

Hope this helped someone, though I doubt it. If you are stalking me and just wanted to know one more little tidbit, hope this was what you were looking for. Generally, I am the boring, nerdy, book worm type. But if you are stalking me, I know kung-fu and have an attack monkey! Don’t make me sick the monkey on you! Seriously…don’t stalk. There are more important people in the world to stalk. Like the NumaNuma guy.

As always, Thanks for reading!

Comments and Retweets always appreciated! Always loving to hear from everyone!

Here is your question: What do YOU do with writers block?

Seriously, what do you do? Because there is only so many times I can watch Chris Crocker walk around Walmart drunk on YouTube.

failure by Beat Kung

Photo Credit: Beat Kung

I think this is a great article by Stephen King, published some time ago, on book banning and censorship. Having read this and the comments below the article, I have to agree with the person that mentioned “1984” being taken from customers Kindles.

Incase you didn’t get the info on the ‘snatched’ book from hundreds of Kindles in the middle of the night, the book was an unauthorized version and Amazon was forced to delete it by the publisher.

That being said, I don’t want to focus on the copyright issue. I want to take notice of the simplicity of deleting a book from a users Kindle at any moment without any repercussion except perhaps an account credit. It’s stories like these that make me glad I have a Sony eReader.

Why am I glad I have a Sony eReader? Because there is no Wi-Fi (at least not my model). There is no magic beam straight from my book to a corporation that can hit the ‘delete’ key whenever they feel like it. Don’t like that book? In the government pocket? Too controversial? We’ll just issue a mass credit and delete the entire thing like it never even existed.

That is enough to give you some shivers down your spine, isn’t it?

So my eReader is safe for the airplane AND keeps my books locked tight where I put them. One extra step requiring a cord keeps me a little more safe from corporate powers’ reach.

What do you think?

Is the ability to have your entire library deleted at the whim of a huge corporation like Amazon enough to change your digital reading device preference?

Sure, if you already bought a Kindle, you will probably go on using it, but would you have changed your mind if you knew then what you know now?

Thanks for reading! As always, say no to censorship and book banning! Comments and ReTweets appreciated!

imagine~ by Cornelia Kopp

Photo Credit: Cornelia Kopp

Status update: Trying to summarize my novel. It is not as easy as it sounds. My original summary was 80 pages…so, that is not exactly book jacket reading.

I am trying to summarize a story about a girl that travels into the future, on accident, finds the world destroyed with dragons roaming the earth and she is their last hope.

I guess that is a pretty good summary. I hate leaving out awesome details, like bad versus evil fights, the amazing romance on the side that has no chance of surviving and the tragic death of beloved characters, sidekicks and mentors. Or unraveling the heartfelt stories behind each character, place, setting or overall reason the world is a big mess.

What do you think? How do you summarize a complex story?

If I was to give advice, and I am not saying listen to ME by any means, but if I were giving advice I would do something like this:

Break it down into tidbits and small details that make up the whole picture. My writing process went smoother this way; Write one sentence about the beginning. Write one sentence about the main characters dilemma. Write one sentence about a side plot that complicates things. Write one sentence that is your ‘cliffhanger’ as in ‘You HAVE to read this to find out what happens!”

Sounds easy, right? I wrote the below summary in about five minutes. No, I am not joking.

Now, if I was taking my own advice my summary would look something like this:

A fleeting heart always finds trouble in the most ordinary of places. When Oplura finds herself in the future, she doesn’t find an oasis but the mess the world will become. Now she must fight the evil lords that torture the last people of the world while denying the love of the one man that has fought to keep her alive. To choose between the love of the man who would risk everything for her or the chance to go back in time and save the world, she will battle more than demons and dragons. Now she must decide what is more important, the fate of the world, or the fate of her heart?

Now, personally, I find that to be a pretty good summary. What do you think?

To go over the ‘template’ type steps:

1)      Write one sentence about the beginning of your story.

2)      Write one sentence about the main character’s dilemma.

3)      Write one sentence about a side plot that complicates things.

4)      Write one sentence that is your ‘Cliffhanger’ as in “You HAVE to read to find out what happens!’

Four steps for writing a book jacket summary. Why didn’t I think of that?! Oh, I just did! And it was pretty easy and stress free (relatively). I hope this helps you like it has helped me!

Thanks for reading!

Another Resource: Post Your Resources below!

http://www.professional-book-editors.com/wordpress/how-to-write-a-book-jacket-cover/

The one thing I don’t like so far about writing in Google Wave is the formatting. If you are trying to copy-paste your writing into a wave…good luck! I attempted this and was disappointed. (changes are made everyday, I will update if this becomes easier/fixed) It seemed every other word was crammed together. Here is an example:

“…There wasa strangeodor coming from thekitchen. It wasn’t your normalfood smells, but something anynose would identifyimmediately as out of place. I wasted notime in reaching thekitchen door, sure ofwhat I would find. When mybrain caught upwith my eyes asto what Iwas seeing I was still dealingwith the shock. Spilled outin the middle of the kitchenfloor, lay the entirecontents of therefrigerator in amassive pile witha smalltrail of oddsand endsleading tothe window. Theworst part was therotting remains of agopher at the topof the pile. Thatmust have beenthe non-food smell thathad sent merunning. Nothing like the scent of death toget your blood pumping inthe morning, I thoughtas I stepped overthe pile andclosed the window…”

(If any are wondering, this is not the passage I put into the Wave to test editing, but I did just write this for the example.)

Now, as you will have noticed, there is a multitude of words that are smashed together. That gets pretty irritating. It takes time to add in all the spaces that were lost, and you also have to format the paragraphs and this is all before you begin the editing process. It takes less time to adjust it for Wave than it would to retype it directly in the wave, but it sure makes me misty-eyed thinking of how I have taken for granted the copy-paste function.

Just thought I would share this tidbit. Let me know if you are having the same issue, or maybe somehow I am ‘doing it wrong’ with the copy-paste. Hey, I have been known to over-think and screw up less complicated things in life. I am not perfect.

What do you think? Would this little technical flaw hold you back from putting your writing in a Google wave? Why?

Thanks for reading! Hope you found this a little insightful, incase you are preparing to get in the Google Wave trend (if the steady invites continue, fingers*crossed* for more people). As always, Wave responsibly and I welcome all comments, suggestions and questions!

Well? by Christine

Photo Credit: Christine

I don’t think at 80 keystrokes per minute (kspm). Frankly, I don’t think anyone does. But there is this common misconception that when a writer goes into their secret lair, they can put out a world-class novel in the time it takes to lay an egg. ‘Maybe a golden egg’ would be my retort.

I don’t think writing is complex, but it is a process. You don’t always get the first one right, but you do try.  So what is the writing process? You will hear time and again that it is different for everyone, and it is, but it really comes down to putting thought on paper. There are many misconceptions about writing and the writing process.

I used to feel guilty for procrastinating on my writing, or for sitting in front of a blank, blinking word processing cursor for twenty minutes. I don’t know about the rest of the writing community, but I am not a fan of feeling guilty or feeling bad. So I set out to deconstruct why I felt bad, what it was based on and how I could change my perception.

The main guilt-inducing topics for me are procrastination, direction and validating my actual resources for creative fiction writing. I think I have deconstructed them fairly well, starting with procrastination.

Procrastination is bad. Procrastination should be the four-letter word of the world. If you procrastinate, then you are a bad person and you are unproductive/lazy/without direction. How does it really apply to writers, though? I know I live in my head. I know I have to day dream a story to have anything to put on paper. It wouldn’t be the same if I was a space engineer or an athlete. For a writer, day dreaming is essential.

The new way to look at it is ‘Procrastination is a writer’s form of preparation.’ Doctors get to prepare before surgery, artists and actors rehearse before plays and productions, so why is it so unthinkable that writers prepare as well? This takes me back to my statement about thinking 80 kspm.

Can I type 80 kspm? No, heck no, I wish. But I type like I am the next Charles Dickens when I know exactly what my plot is doing next. I am no different than any other writer. I sit down, I think, I act. Some days, I sit down, I think, I think, and I surf the internet. I am not procrastinating though, I am looking for information. I look for inspiration; I look for instructions, tutorials, photos and video of human interaction.

If I am going to tell the story of people interacting, I need a very real grasp on how people interact. And no two people are the same which leaves plenty of room for much needed research.

From this line of thinking, it is reasonable to conclude that procrastination in a constructive way is not ‘procrastination’ at all but preparation.

Stop doing whatever it is you’re doing. Sometimes, the mind works better when your brain stops stewing and the body starts moving. After all, the definition of insanity is repeating the same action expecting different results. If you sit and stare at your computer monitor for two hours, and still can’t think of a way to get your character from point ‘a’ to point ‘b’, perhaps you should go garden, do some yoga or clean something. So long as your body is doing something else, something different, your brain just might relax long enough to give you that ‘ah ha!’ moment you were looking for.

Decide what your goal is. – If you sit down to write, write. If you sit down to edit, just edit. No matter which is your goal, the best advice I could give you is not to mix the two. Do not sit down and edit as you write. You will kill your creativity and your train of thought. Your mind can only do one thing at a time. So set a timer and write for an hour. When the timer goes off you can ‘reset’ your thinking to ‘edit’ for the following hour.

Don’t feel guilty for leaving ‘h-t-e’ for ‘the’ when you are typing up a whirlwind. Use your time to edit to actually edit and use your time set aside for writing to actually write. You are not going to get to the bottom of the page and hit ‘publish’ so stop listening to the ‘little man’ on your shoulder telling you ‘*tsk* that is an extra comma, you don’t, need, that, comma there.’ Give ‘little man’ a trip to the ‘shut-up-spa’ and focus on just writing, typos and all.

Know your Resources – Who says you have to have been to the Bahamas to know what the beaches look like or the types of birds that fly around? Wikipedia, YouTube, travel sites and a never ending list of websites can give you enough information. Using different visual representations, you can make your readers believe that through your words they can touch, taste and feel the elements of the Bahamas from the comfort of home. That is the art of writing.

My favorite resources remain Wikipedia and YouTube. I can see photos and descriptions, habits, habitats, locations and behavior information on Wikipedia. I can search for a bird on YouTube and watch how it interacts with people, looks when it moves and the list goes on. YouTube is the next best thing to actually flying to the Bahamas and feeling the sand yourself.

Overall, I am saying to stop what you are doing, surf through YouTube and tell people you are doing something essential and productive in preparation for your current/next bestseller. Say it with me, ‘I’m Not Procrastinating! I’m Preparing!’

Remember that procrastination means preparation. Have a goal when you sit down in front of your writing. Know what your resources are and have fun, because if you are not enthralled with what you are writing how will anyone be enthralled with reading it?

A majority of waves use straight-line comments to collaborate and interact in Wave. While it is understandable that most will not know all the features of Wave in the first two weeks, it is about time we take a look at a great way to keep wave’s clean and the conversation flowing.

This is also a great way to do ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ collaborations in Google Wave. Explaining the dynamics of in-text comments can be difficult, especially if you have not used Wave, please bare with me.

To attempt an in-text comment, go to a wave and pick a blip to comment on. Do you see the blip you want to comment? Good. Do not select the blip or try to ‘edit’ it from the side drop-down menu. Instead, find the area of the blip you want to comment on and highlight it with your cursor. With the text highlighted, go ahead and hit the ‘enter’ key.

If you selected text in the middle of a paragraph, your in-text comment will split the original paragraph and land right in the middle of the other persons comment. You should see a small conversation bubble in the other person’s text. If you select that bubble, your comment should collapse.

It may take several tries at getting this right but you can see from first hand experience how useful this could be, especially if you are collaborating on a piece and have only an observation and not a correction. The actual document can have comment through out but by collapsing all the comments; you will see the entire document without any comments.

In theory, this is a great tool and one I play to use often. This will make waves more organized and give participants to have side conversations without feeling guilty for ‘hijacking’ a wave.

WOW! We have covered a lot in the way of basics! I will post more in the coming weeks on the different ways to adapt newsletter like functions, polls and create ‘Author Profiles’ on Wave!

Thanks for reading! Thoughts? Suggestions? Questions?

Comment and I will see what I can uncover for you! Thanks again!