12 Rules of Writing from Famous Authors and 6 Writing Links

May25

The following respected and popular authors used these ‘rules’ to craft their own best-selling careers. The quotes showcase the authors’ voices and put a new spin on an enduring writing lesson.

Mark Twain

Mark Twain

1.  Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”. Your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.  Mark Twain – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

2. Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.  Anton Chekhov – The Three Sisters

3. The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof shit detector.  This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it.  Ernest Hemingway – The Sun Also Rises

4. Write in the third person unless a ­really distinctive first-person voice ­offers itself irresistibly. Jonathan Franzen – The Corrections

5. Description must work for its place. It can’t be simply ornamental. It ­usually works best if it has a human element; it is more effective if it comes from an implied viewpoint, rather than from the eye of God. If description is coloured by the viewpoint of the character who is doing the noticing, it becomes, in effect, part of character definition and part of the action. Hilary Mantel – A Place of Greater Safety

6. Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page. Margaret Atwood – The Year of The Flood

7. Carrot and stick – have protagonists pursued (by an obsession or a villain) and pursuing (idea, object, person, mystery). Michael Moorcock – The Coming of the Terraphiles

8. Pace is crucial. Fine writing isn’t enough. Writing students can be great at producing a single page of well-crafted prose; what they sometimes lack is the ability to take the reader on a journey, with all the changes of terrain, speed and mood that a long journey involves. Again, I find that looking at films can help. Most novels will want to move close, linger, move back, move on, in pretty cinematic ways. Sarah Waters – Tipping the Velvet

9. Respect the way characters may change once they’ve got 50 pages of life in them. Revisit your plan at this stage and see whether certain things have to be altered to take account of these changes. Rose Tremain - The Road Home

10. Learn from cinema. Be economic with descriptions. Sort out the telling detail from the lifeless one. Write dialogue that people would actually speak. Rose Tremain

11. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. George Orwell – Animal Farm

12. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. Keep your exclamation points ­under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. Elmore Leonard – Raylan

links

6 Juicy Links

On Writing:

From Writer Unboxed, Going Deeper: A Process Rather Than a Technique  and Flip the Scrip: What to Do With Your Darlings.

From Mystery Writing is Murder, Constructing and Weaving in Subplots.

On Publishing:

From The Creative Penn, Traditional and Self-Publishing Are Not Mutually Exclusive.

From The Book Designer, Publishing Strategies  for the Savvy Self-Publisher.

On Marketing:

From The Book Designer, Finding People to Read, Review and Recommend Your Book.

From The Creative Penn, Secrets of Amazon MetaData From #1 Amazon Best Seller Mark Edwards.

I hope you found something helpful among the quotes and links. If so, please fill me in on your thoughts!

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I’m Not Old. Are You?

May23

No one likes the idea of aging however, the alternative is not pleasant, either. 

We all would like to live very long and exceptionally healthy lives. More than ever, people are paying attention to their health and doing what’s necessary to remain fit and illness free.

We know exercise, fresh foods, and dietary supplements contribute to the reduction of doctor visits. A positive attitude, a life companion, the company of pets add to our enjoyment of life which keeps us healthy. We seek out new things to learn to keep our brains healthy. Stress is harmful so we do what we can to avoid or, at least, relieve it when it’s thrust upon us. We do countless other good-for-you things to keep our bodies and minds young.

No matter how hard we work at ‘growing younger’, the world insists on telling us how old we really are.

More and more restaurants cater to the elderly with a ‘senior menu’. That’s really nice but, there was a time when they considered a senior to be 65. They keep lowering that age…in most places it’s 55 now. I’ve seen it as low as 52!

If you decide to have an early dinner in a restaurant, you may be asked if you’re interested in the ‘Early Bird’ menu selections. One glance around the dining room will tell you why – it’s filled with gray-haired folks.

The grocery store cashier is packing your bags lighter each time she sees you. You end up with 10 weightless bags instead of your usual 5 ‘normal’ bags. She thinks you’re old.

Your hair stylist suggests a style you’d never considered yourself old enough to wear. She says it’s to camouflage your thinning locks!

You watch your favorite television programs and realize all the commercials are geared toward older adults for sanitary diapers, cholesterol and ED meds, supplemental insurance coverage for those on medicare, and reverse mortgages.

You’re Getting Older When…

- You wake up, looking like your driver’s license picture.

- When you don’t care where your spouse goes, just as long as you don’t have to go along.

- Your idea of a night out is sitting on the patio.old man napping

- Happy hour is a nap.

- It takes twice as long to look half as good.

- You get two invitations to go out on the same night, and you pick the one that gets you home the earliest.

- You give up all your bad habits and you still don’t feel good.

- You have more patience; but actually, it’s just that you don’t care any more.

- You confuse having a clear conscience with having a bad memory.

- Your secrets are safe with your friends because they can’t remember them either.

- Adult diapers are actually kind of convenient.

- There’s nothing left to learn the hard way.

- You realize that a stamp today costs more than a picture show did when you were growing up.

- Your childhood toys are now in a museum.

- The clothes you’ve hung onto until they come back in style-come back in style.

I will continue to wage war against old age!

  • no helmet-head hairstylesold ladies with helmet hair
  • no blue hair rinse
  • no early bird dinners or senior menu orders
  • no pant suits
  • no embroidered sweatshirts with snowmen or kittens
  • no velcro sneakers
  • no afternoon naps
  • no park bench sitting
  • no magazines with the word senior in the title

This is a world domination plot begun by our children. 

Who will fight the image of “OLD” with me? I’d love to hear your ideas for changing the world’s image of us.

Before you go I want to remind you that today on the Life List Club Blog,  the adorable and funny Jess Witkins is posting! Please go visit her and see what she’s been up to! (It might have something to do with her attendance at a certain major writer’s conference!)

Then make sure you get back over there for Sherry Isaac‘s LLC post on Friday. (I’ve already peeked at it and I can only tell you it’s tongue-in-cheek fun and inspiring!)

Tips to Make Great Writing like Great Sex

May18

I’ll try to put this delicately. Some days sex is like vanilla ice cream, some days it’s like mint-chocolate chip with a little chocolate syrup drizzled over the top.

And then there are those days when it’s a giant banana split with five scoops all different flavors, chocolate syrup, strawberries, pineapple and cherries, whipped cream and nuts!

It’s pretty much the same in writing. We have days when we struggle to keep our butts in the chair. We have days when it’s easier but still have trouble getting a respectable number of words on a page.

And then there are those days when you feel like a superhero-nothing can stop you, it’s effortless! The words flow like water over a dam, the descriptions are as beautiful as a Monet painting. Your brain is bursting with ideas. Your fingers fly over the keyboard.

Well, we would all love to have THOSE days as often as possible, right?

I came a cross an excellent post on Write To Done by Barrie Davenport of Live Bold and Bloom that offers tips to help you in that quest.  I’m offering you an excerpt here:

How Writing Can Be Like Great Sex: 17 Hot Tips

Great writing is like great sex

Don’t you wish you could bottle whatever it is that stimulates the mind to open so beautifully and spontaneously? A mental door has been flung wide, and amazing ideas and words come spilling out, just begging to be arranged into a story or poem or article.

Neurons are ablaze, firing left and right. You can write and write, pouring forth words in great gushes, only to finish feeling completely spent. My, oh my.

“One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper patterns at the right moment.” ~Hart Crane

And just as spontaneously, that door will slam shut again, and your brain snaps closed like a mental chastity belt. Every sentence is a struggle. Ideas and words evade you like a coy mistress.

Have you ever spent hours with your fingers poised on your keypad, staring at the screen like it might tell you what to write? It is so frustrating. You might as well be under water or in a slow-motion movie. Where did all of those darling words and ideas run off to?

If you have to produce something today, and your creativity has rebuffed you, here are some ideas to get the mental juices flowing:

  1. Set the stage. You know where you like to write. Clear all of the mess off the desk or table. Put it out of your sight. Be sure you aren’t hungry or thirsty, in pain, or otherwise distracted. If you can write to music, play music that sets the mood for your topic.
  2. Walk outside for a few minutes. Get a change of scenery and some fresh air to distract you from your mental sluggishness.
  3. Re-frame your thinking. When you aren’t in the mood to write, you begin to think you are a bad writer. Don’t focus on the end product or your lack of inspiration. Just have fun in the process. Write without constraints and clean up the messy parts later.
  4. Relax and detach for a few minutes. Close your eyes, breathe deeply and try to empty your mind. Meditate for ten or fifteen minutes if you have the time.
  5. Send your subconscious a message. While your eyes are closed, ask for inspiration. Invite the ideas to come forth and the words to flow.
  6. Visualize your reader. Think about the people who will be reading your words. What can you say that will inform, uplift, inspire, confound, or humor them? If inspiration doesn’t produce the words, use your intellect and refine later.
  7. Do a warm-up. Get your fingers and mind ready for writing by writing mindlessly. Answer some emails. Revise a previous article. Type favorite quotes or paragraphs from other writers. Ease your brain and muscles into readiness.

That’s just a teaser. To get 10 more hot tips and more of Barrie’s advice, you just have to read the whole post: How Writing Can Be Like Great Sex: 17 Hot Tips

Barrie also suggests:

“If you’d like to read more about how the spoken word can impact your writing and your life, read this article.”

This link will take you to Barrie Davenport’s website and you can follow her on Twitter @CoachBarrie.

Davenport’s a life coach writing  inspirational and motivational posts on diverse topics with a theme of personal development.

It will be time well spent to check her out and you might like this article, too: Your Hidden Abilities and Why You Need To Find Them.

Of course, we all know how amazing Write To Done is and here are links to some of my favorite posts by their writers:

201 Ways to Arouse Your Creativity

How an Editor Hammered Me and My Guest Post into Shape

Hiring a Freelance Editor: A Step-by-Step Guide

Thanks for joining me today! Let me know if any of these links and posts turn out to be helpful!

Before you go I want to remind you that Lara Schiffbauer is posting today at the Life List Club Blog today! Please go visit her and offer up some blog luv. Thanks!

One Life Alteration – Positive or Negative Effect?

May16

How many times have you heard the question, “If you could go back in time and change one thing related to your life, what would it be?”

A gazillion, right? That question is old and stale. We’d all change something we didn’t like about ourselves, something we did that was wrong, or something someone else did to us.

I have a twist on that question:

If you went back to any moment in your lifetime, and HAD to change one positive thing — one thing you have absolutely no regrets about — what would it be and how would making that change alter your future life experiences? 

Keep in mind, you can change this one positive thing to something different, but positive. Or, you can take this one thing out of your past and not replace it with any other occurrence. Let’s also go back in time more than 5 years.

life change

If you’re like me, the first moments that come to mind are full of regret. Did they have more impact on life than the pleasant, positive times?

In trying this myself, I’ve come up with many positive moments, events, and choices with no regrets about any of them. This is only one I believe would have a major impact on my life were it replaced with something else or deleted.

My moment to change: 1971-1975 I rode with a motorcycle club for four fun and enlightening years.

Impact of that moment in time: During those 4 1/2 years, I learned more about myself than any other time in my life. I had escaped my father’s controlling nature and was allowed to make my own decisions. I met people from all walks of life. I learned to decipher between daring and dangerous. I discovered the pleasure and responsibilities of freedom. I found my strengths and weaknesses.

I could go on, but you get the picture.

What a change or a deletion would mean to my life: If I were to change the activity to sailing, for example, I might have learned the same lessons though likely with  different group of personalities than bikers. Would that have changed who I was?

If I were to delete this episode of my life, I believe my growth and discovery of myself would have taken much longer. I can imagine I would have continued in college as a shy and insecure young woman. I may have stayed on course to become a social worker, been hired to a county office and, maybe, stayed until retirement.

A county retirement would have been nice, but it wouldn’t make up for all that I gained otherwise.

I am currently writing a fiction series about a young woman riding with a motorcycle club and incorporating much of what I learned in those stories.

Try changing or deleting a period in your past and share in the comments what that would mean for you. Could experimenting with this idea help your creativity as a writer? Could it give you some insight to your life today?

You know I love hearing from you!

Before you go, don’t forget…David Walker is posting today on the Life List Club Blog! Please go visit him when you’re done here.

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5 Inexpensive Book Marketing Tips and Great Links

May11

I’m getting closer to finishing my debut book and am beginning to compile information on self-publishing and marketing. I came across a post on The Savvy Book Marketer, written by guest Susan Daffron, a book and software publisher.

Some people spend a fortune on promoting a new book, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Daffron’s list has some interesting ideas that cost next-to-nothing. This is a full repost from Dana Lynn Smith’s blog. I hope it helps you get the word out about your book.

Five Inexpensive Ways to Market Your Book

1. Outsource the “little stuff.”

Many book-marketing tasks require collateral material like banners or simple graphics. If you’re not an artist and don’t have good design tools, doing little blog badges or even working with your book cover graphics can take way longer than it should. For small tasks, check out Fiverr.com. Amazingly enough, everything costs just $5.

2. Create simple videos.

Many people avoid video and YouTube because they’re worried about the technology or they don’t like what they look like. However, it’s easy to create a video that doesn’t require fancy technology or your face. For example, I experimented with a Book Publishing Dog Walk Q &A video. The video is me walking my dog, Fiona, through the forest (it’s fun to watch her little tail bob along). You don’t see me and I didn’t have to worry about sounding out of breath as I toddled through the forest because I did the voice over separately. A video I did for my Vegan Success cookbook didn’t even involve a video camera. I used still photos and transitions with a voice over. It’s not as hard as you might think.make podcasts for marketing books

3. Do audio recordings.

Like video, audio isn’t as difficult as you might expect. I do a podcast/radio show for the PetLifeRadio.com network. I have a little device called a QuickTap from JKAudio that plugs into my phone, so I can record interviews with people at animal shelters and rescues about the pets they have available for adoption. Alternatively, you can get a radio show on BlogTalk radio. You can do one 30-minute show per week for free.

4. Communicate via email.

Periodically you hear that email is dead. Except it’s not. You still send and receive email don’t you? Email newsletters are a great way to communicate with people on a particular topic. On your website either give away a freebie like an eCourse or PDF or just let people subscribe to your blog posts. One way or another, you’ll develop a mailing list of people you can communicate with when something happens related to your book. Remember to post links to those posts or newsletters in social media.

5. Advertise on your own websites.

This idea is so obvious, I’m not sure why more people don’t do it. If you have a blog, put an advertisement for your book on the blog. Or at the end of your articles, include a little teaser text ad for your book. Sure banner ads don’t get many click-throughs, but even if you only got one book sale per month from your ad, that’s 12 books you wouldn’t have sold. And it costs you exactly nothing.

The most expensive idea on this list costs all of $5; the rest are $0. When it comes to book marketing, every little bit helps. All these activities work together to increase awareness about you and your book. And in the end, that means more book sales.

About the Author

Susan Daffron, aka The Book Consultant owns a book and software publishing company. She spends most of her time writing, laying out books in InDesign, or taking her five dogs out for romps in the forest. She also teaches people how to write and publish profitable client-attracting books and puts on the Self-Publishers Online conference every May.

A big thank you goes out to Dana Lynn Smith-The Savvy Book Marketer, and Susan Daffron-The Book Consultant!

Book promotion, marketing, selling

Did you find anything helpful there? Many of you are already using a couple of these ideas but, here are more links to try:

Podcast: Book Marketing and Promotion, Your Questions Answered, by Joanna Penn.

Content marketing for Authors and Writers, by Joanna Penn

89 Book Marketing Ideas That Will Change Your Life, by Author Media

And a whole page of article links, Learn How To Market Your Book and Yourself, by The Savvy Book Marketer

One behind-the-scenes area that a lot of authors pay little attention to is their author biography. Some authors have trouble writing about themselves in a creative way. Mine needs a complete overhaul which gave me the idea to include a couple of links to help myself and others with that task. Did you realize the ‘About’ page rivals your posts for page views?

Is Your Author ‘About Me’ Page Boring Your Readers To Death?, by Author Media

Crafting An Effective “About me” Page, by Kelsey Browning at Author E.M.S.

 

Before you go, just a reminder…please visit The Life List Club today. Gary Gauthier will be posting and you’re guaranteed to be inspired!

Thanks for joining me today!