I was on my Goodreads group this morning and I found all kinds of posts asking for help. One post was specific to one sentence the author was trying to revise. She got responses right away and three great ones (okay one was mine but it was great, really).
I guess the point is, look for help everywhere. You never know where you’ll find that gem of advice that takes you to the next level.
Happy writing
Perry
Hi, this is from Ask the Publishing Guru – great advice on writing like a pro.
Happy writing
Perry
Well, experience is always good, sometimes it takes a while to get to that point. When you are going through something difficult, or many things difficult, it can be impossible to remember that you might want to use the experience in a book. That’s what write what you know is all about, isn’t it?.
Right now I’m handling my brother’s estate and it’s not easy. I am running around trying to get information, and taking a half step forward and three steps back most days. I’m sitting here in Starbucks waiting for his apartment to be cleaned – special cleaning required – and trying to keep a positive attitude about this huge task I’ve been handed. Why am I doing it, oldest sister syndrome – it has to be done and no one else will do it.
So rather than grouse about it, I’m thinking about how I’ll use the experience in a new book.
I’m not quite there yet, but I am trying to keep notes on what I’m doing, not only for research, but also for the estate records.
Anyway, the message is everything you do is useful – at some point in your life.
Happy writing,
Perry
For sale and coming soon from PaperBoxBooks.
Since we’re about to launch a short story section here at PaperBox Books, I thought it would be a good time to go mention some important aspects of a short story.
Like novels, a short story needs to have a beginning, a middle and an end.
The beginning has to jump right into the story. You don’t have the word count available to do a gradual set-up.
An advantage to those of us who suffer from sagging middles, the path from Point A to Point B is shorter. You don’t have room to introduce more than a sub-plot or two. Even so you still need to keep the pace moving toward the end of the story.
The end of a short story can be tricky. Especially for anyone who is used to writing novel length pieces. There is always the temptation to leave a few loose ends. Unfortunately, this makes it a chapter not a stand-on-it’s-own short story. Endings should make the reader satisified not leave them wondering.
Short stories force writers to be concise without skimping on details. The reader must have an understanding of the world you’ve created for your characters within a small word count.
You have to make the characters just as real as in a full length novel so your readers will care about them and continue to read to see what happens.
Short stories are awesome. They are quick reads to make you smile (or have chills run up your spine) without a lot of time investment.
With the advent of e-publishing they’re even easier to buy than ever before. You can purchase them as a stand alone product instead of having to buy a magazine or anthology.
Authors love it because they can release stories frequently to always have something new for people to read.
So what are you waiting for?
Check out the rules for our Summer Short Story Contest (deadline July 31st).
If you are more interested in having your short story published, check out our submission guidelines.
Sue
Hi, first, this is not a post for hoarders to use to point out they don’t need help. This is about keeping information that might be useful in your writing.
I generally clean house periodically, and I’m not someone who keeps things, I like clean spaces and lots of room. But, I do tend to keep books. Over the years I have purchased a lot of ‘how to write’ books. Most I’ve glanced through and kept them because they make my bookshelves look writerly. But, today I was clearing out my storage – preparations for moving house – and I found three books that I have used more than once.
Looking through this is inspiring and gave me lots of ideas when I started to work on Closing the Circle.
I have to say there’s nothing like a dip into religions to give you ideas on building your own world.
Any help on building a coherent myth – or borrowing one appropriately, is worth it’s weight in Leprechaun gold.
Do you have any writing books that you keep returning to time after time?
Perry
Hi, I just read this great post on Ask The Publishing Guru
Great tips for creating characters – and shameless plug for my own comment about incidental character development.
Happy writing
Perry
Hi, everyone. At PaperBox Books, we use social media to connect the readers to our books. For a new author the thought of posting, tweeting, blogging, Linkedin posting and every other social media activity can be overwhelming.
Personally, I write 1 blog as a Project Manager and contribute to this blog. I also have two author blogs I need to keep active: Alice Griffiths and PA Wilson. Along with the blogs, come twitter, Facebook and a number of forums I participate in. I was feeling overwhelmed because I was spending 90 min to 2 hours a day just marketing. This wasn’t sustainable because one of the things you can’t do is be on and off with your social medial marketing – consistency is required!
I spent some time trying to get a handle on what I could do in a week but what happened is I just kept cutting out activities without understanding where I needed to put my effort. This week I changed my approach. Rather than try to figure out what I can do within my week I decided to figure out what was really taking the time.
Let’s just look at my activity on blog comments and Linkedin discussion contributions.
First, I find inspiration for my blogs in other people’s blogs and comments. Then I find opportunities to comment on blogs and Linkedin suggestions from what I follow on my gmail accounts.
I would browse postings and discussions until I found something I could comment on, sometimes this took most of the hour. It never took more than a minute to comment, or join the discussion.
Now let’s look at today – my first day on my new approach.
I set my iTouch stopwatch to find out what the time suck really was. I opened Gmail and started looking for blogs and discussions. Epiphany #1. I didn’t need to read beyond the ones I commented on – reading was a separate activity. I quickly scanned the headlines and found two Linkedin discussions, commented and move on to my googlereader account.
Using the same concept, I scanned headlines found 2 I had comments to contribute and stopped looking. Total time for this set of activities – 15 minutes. So, not really 90 min to 2 hours 
I went back and read the remaining discussions and blog posts, but because I had completed my social media tasks, I didn’t feel like I was marketing for the whole time.
So, the tip is to focus on the real activity, not on all the time you spend around the activity, and you will be less overwhelmed.
Happy writing.
Perry
One of the things that a writer needs to do is develop their craft.
Simply writing more stories and stretching yourself to write new genres or working on the part of writing you find hardest will improve your skills. But, like most things in life, you can make bigger leaps if you work with others.
A conference is an organized series of talks or workshops. Some conferences incorporate writing time, but for the most part, you are there to learn skills, techniques, or career lessons from the pros. Shaw Guides is a great place to find writing workshops. It slices and dices the listing so you can easily find a workshop/conference when, where and for what skills you need.
Writing retreats are different, you will find some on Shaw Guides. but you can create your own. You can find a resort, or a B&B in some location – maybe where you’ve set your book – and go alone, or get some writer friends together, and set up specific writing tasks.
If you are trying to get started on a book, have a two day retreat on outlining or character building, or world building. If you are trying to get the first, second, five thousandth or last revision done, take a long weekend, get away from distractions. Then do it.
The benefit of taking a writing friend – not just friends who will want to golf or shop or whatever – is that you have someone to eat meals with who will understand if you are in the groove and don’t want to stop.
One conference I’ll shamelessly plug is the Canadian Authors’ Association CanWrite! 2010. June 2010 in Beautiful Victoria BC.
Happy Writing
Perry
When we got our first horror submission I was worried. I didn’t read horror and didn’t have any idea what to say. Also, I don’t read it for a reason – nightmares, baby.
We often get work submitted that doesn’t fall into what either Sue or I read. In addition, both Sue and I belong to critique groups. So I spend a lot of time reviewing and giving advice to people about books I would never read. Before I started doing it, I didn’t think it was possible.
I have found that I can give and accept critiques across genres. Here’s how I take on a review like that.
I start by looking at the premise, is it credibly set up. For horror, is it frightening? Is the ‘evil’ thing bad enough but still believable within the archetype – let’s not talk about sparkly vampires.
If that’s there, then I just start looking for the same things I normally do. Does the story start at the beginning of the action? Is the dialogue and description engaging? Does the author have a strong voice?
As I read, I look for grammar and punctuation issues. Not that I’m an editor in that sense but sometimes it jumps out. And then I try to decide if I would read the book. I have to say a few books I’ve read outside my normal taste have intrigued me enough to dip my toe into the genre.
On the flip side, I listen very carefully to critiques from people who don’t read/write in my genre. I have to know the conventions of my own genre to write a good story, but my critiquer doesn’t. So, I have to sort through the suggestions to find ones I can work with and discard the ones that I can’t because of the rules. One of my critique groups keep telling me ‘I would like to know more about the background of this person’ or ‘why didn’t you tell me about this aspect’. I thank them because I needed the reader to be wondering at that point – it’s a mystery.
I guess the suggestion here is that you don’t need to find someone who writes or reads the same books as you. Feedback is valuable. If you don’t have a critique group, go find one.
Happy writing
Perry
Hi, one of the responses to our Twitter offer to give a free look at 2500 words, jumped out at me as soon as I got three sentences in. The writer had great voice! Then in my google reader I found this post at Murderati and thought I would share it with you. They say it much better than I could.
Happy writing
Perry