Posts about writing and publishing.
It’s what we writers want, right? To have bright readers, well, flock around us? For today’s episode of Writer Unleashed, I’m going to let you in on a handy dandy resource to help you gather fans. It’s a book called 55 Ways to Promote & Sell Your Book on the Internet by Bob Baker. I came across an excerpt of this book as a free download promotion from BookBaby and liked it so well I bought the company. Actually no,…
R.I.P Challenge As writers we always hear, “Connect with others who share your interests.” Everyone tells you to do it, but no one tells you how to do it. In my case, I find it hard to connect with folks in the ghost fiction genre because, well, there is no ghost fiction genre. Some ghost fiction comes to us from top-drawer masters like Henry James and Toni Morrison and are shelved in Literature. I’ve found some ghost novels in the…
Many fiction writers and memoirists seek inspiration from reading poetry. I’m not a regular poetry reader, but I never tire of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and I enjoy Frost, Cummings, Crane, Rich, Dickinson. I’m going to let you in on a cool writing exercise (great for both writers and teachers) courtesy of nonpareil writer/academician Sara McAulay, founder of the popular ezine Tattoo Highway. Sara’s assignment is simple: pull out a poem you like, study it, and let…
No doubt you’ve heard that quote attributed to activist writer Mary Heaton Vorse: “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” Okay, it’s a cliche, and writers are trained to give cliches a wide berth, avoid them like the plague and otherwise handle them with kid gloves. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. But in the case of the seat-of-the-pants axiom, it’s true that much of writing depends upon…
Putting Your Manuscript on a Diet I’ve got the…I’ve got the…I’ve got the word count blues. Had ‘em for a while. I remember the day I walked up into the sky for twenty minutes. (The cable cars were in the barn; the Powell Street line in the throes of renovation.) It was Presidents’ Day weekend 2011 at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, and I was a starry-eyed, breathless (from my uphill hike, admittedly) attendee at the San Francisco Writers Conference. By…
I was trying to figure out if there is such a thing as a writer’s nature, and the Aesop fable of the scorpion and the frog came to mind. Interestingly, the writer Aesop himself is under question. Was Aesop Greek, was he a slave, or was he Greek but ethnically African? And did he, in fact, write Aesop’s fables? Hmmm…sounds like the Shakespeare controversy. But I digress. The gist of the story for all two of you who haven’t heard…
(image via Dreamstime) I’m vacuuming mad, thanks to V. S. Naipaul. You know, that kind of mad that impels you to vacuum at 11 pm? Nothing will do but the vigorous thrusting with the handle and the vicious roar of the machine even though you should have been in bed already? That kind of mad. Have been ever since I read The Guardian article about the esteemed author V. S. Naipaul in which aforementioned esteemed author bashes women writers. Oh,…
Or Are Women and Men the Same? Amanda Bonner (Katherine Hepburn) declares in the movie Adam’s Rib, “There’s no difference between the sexes. Men, women, the same.” As for me, I didn’t know that men and women were different until 1991. I conceived my daughters, born 1982 and 1986, via autogamy. Okay. Perhaps I exaggerate. Chalk it up to my upbringing—Erickson-Piaget-Transactional-Analysis-I’m-Okay-You’re-Okay-Nurture-Trumps-Nature discussions at the table of two socially progressive parents. Added to that, my firstborn, Hillary, had only one request…
The Letter You’ve been wronged. You’re a writer. What do you do? You write The Letter. Writing letters is good—as cathartic as crooning a Taylor Swift ballad in a crowded noriebang. (Noriebang = Korean singing room.) Sending such letters is bad. You (generally) observe a time-tested rule: Write the letter. Don’t send it. So you write it, select your words, hone the craft. This you can do. Alliterative phrases come trippingly off the tongue, phrases such as “cowardly cad”. Ah,…
Attention Writers: FREE! Guide to Literary Agents Contest for Women’s Fiction I don’t subscribe to many online media sources, but I am a faithful reader of Guide to Literary Agents. For writers aspiring to be published, I particularly recommend two of their ongoing series: Agent Interviews and How I Got My Agent. The former is informative and the latter is inspirational. Recently, Guide to Literary Agents has begun sponsoring free writing contests based on genre. I was disconsolate when I…
I like challenges, don’t you? Well, that kind, too. But what I meant was imposed challenges. For instance, among my hidden talents, I am a quiltmaker. A quiltmaking challenge might include a hideously ugly fabric everyone in the group is required to incorporate into a project. Often, the challenge pieces are displayed in a show. The results are fascinating, even stunning. Writing challenges can take different forms. When I attended the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Conference, one of the…
Bringing Home an Author I’ve mentioned Laurie’s book group before. We are a mixed group of mature (interpret this word as you wish!) and urbane women who meet monthly to chaw over books as diverse as The Invisible Man (Ellison’s, not Wells’) and Persuasion (Austen’s not Lakhani’s). Plus women’s fiction and exposés and mysteries and story collections. For our last meeting we read Breaking Out of Bedlam by Leslie Larson. As a special treat, the author Herself graced our gathering….
Hi Everyone, As promised, I am posting the prologue to my novel Moonlight Dancer. You can decide if I violate any of agent Kristin Nelson’s prologue injunctions that I discussed in my previous post. I would love to hear what you think. Well, sort of. I’m also scared to hear what you think! Therein lies the writer’s dilemma. But–GULP–here goes. (I included page one of chapter one to give you some reference.) * * * * * Jindo, Korea PROLOGUE…