Tag Archives: writing

Workshop Wednesday: How to self publish an ebook

25 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by in The Publishing Industry, Uncategorized, Workshop Wednesday series

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Welcome to this week’s Workshop Wednesday where indie author Patrick O’Duffy is generously sharing his expertise to help you self publish an ebook.  Self publishing is a fabulous option for established authors who can’t sell a particular project, or who want to self-publish their backlist, as they already have a readership who are likely to buy their ebooks.  It’s also a great option for unpublished authors who don’t want to go the tradition route, or who haven’t been able to find a publisher or an agent (although they would need to do more work in marketing to create a readership for themselves).

Firstly, here’s a little about our guest today: Patrick O’Duffy is tall, Australian and a professional editor, although not always in that order. He has written role-playing games, short fiction, a little journalism and freelance non-fiction, and is currently working on a novel, although frankly not working hard enough. He loves off-kilter fiction, Batman comics and his wife, and finds this whole writing-about-yourself-in-the-third-person thing difficult to take seriously.  And the blurb of his novel The Obituarist (which I’ve read and loved!): Kendall Barber is a social media undertaker with a shady past who’s returned to the equally shady city of Port Virtue. Now a new client brings with her a host of dangers, just as Kendall’s past begins to catch up with him. Can he get to the bottom of things before it’s too late, or will he end up as dead as his usual subjects?

I can highly recommend The Obituarist (and I’m not a crime reader!).  It was sharp and funny and had great twists.  Do buy it.  So without further ado I’ll introduce Patrick and let him fill you in on how you can publish your own ebooks.

Patrick O’Duffy: I’m writing this blog post from Nanuya, a Fijian island four hours north of Nadi. The water is crystal blue, the sky limitless, the beer cold and the sand warm.

I’m not saying this to rub it in that I’m having a good time, but to say that even this far from the rest of the world, and armed only with a tiny laptop and a little internet access, I could still self-publish an ebook and put it up online for sale in less than five minutes.

It’s not difficult. You can practically do it while snorkelling. Or at least just beforehand.

Self-publishing (or ‘indie publishing’) in ebook form is rapidly outpacing traditional print publishing. Success stories like Amanda Hocking and EL James have become bestsellers with their independent ebooks, and tens of thousands of other authors have also put their own work straight onto virtual shelves.

How do you do it – and how do you do a good job of it? It’s a process I’ve tackled several times now with my books Hotel Flamingo, Godheads and now The Obituarist, and I’ve learned a couple of things that I hope others will find useful.

Where to do it

The number one source of indie ebooks on the planet is Amazon, via their Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) operation. KDP allows you to create an ebook and list it alongside titles from major publishers in the world’s largest and best-known online bookstore. The drawback, of course, is that Amazon only creates and sells ebooks for the Kindle, with no provision for other file formats – so readers with Nooks, Kobos and other devices need to look elsewhere.

The other major outlet is Smashwords, a site devoted solely to indie publishing. Not only does it create ebooks in all formats, it also acts as a distributor to other major ebook markets. That alone is enough to recommend it; publishing through them takes away 90% of the work of getting your ebook into online stores. On the downside, Smashwords lacks the market presence of Amazon, and the material they publish isn’t always as polished.

So which should you choose? Well, you shouldn’t – publish through both! It doesn’t take much more effort and time, and using both sites will get your work into every major ebook store.

How to do it

Start with your final, fully edited manuscript. Don’t skimp on the editing – the world is full of badly-written, completely unedited ebooks. Be better than that, and don’t be afraid to pay for a professional editor’s services. It’s worth it.

Next, check the formatting of your Word file to make sure that it fits the guidelines of the website. And it should be a Word file, not another file format; the conversion software will either reject a different format or convert it in strange and horrible ways.

You also need a cover, and it’s worth paying a designer to create one for you rather than make it yourself. It should be a high-resolution JPG in a 6 x 9 format, and it should be readable in both colour and e-reader greyscale.

Once you’ve done all that, just create free accounts on the sites of your choice, upload the file and start the conversion. You should have an ebook minutes later!

What to do next

The first thing is to check the ebook for conversion errors, which are almost inevitable. The conversion software may introduce errors like line breaks, font changes and random italics. Fix these up and upload the corrected version, and be prepared to do this a couple of times until it’s right. These errors won’t stop people from buying your book, but they might stop them from buying your next book.

You should also determine a price for your ebook. Most indie ebooks cost between 99 cents and $4.99; look at what books of similar length and genre sell for as a guideline. You don’t want to overcharge for your book, but you also don’t want to undercharge; readers often assume that very cheap books are that price because they’re not worth anything.

Finally comes the hardest part – finding your audience and promoting your ebook to them. There are tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of indie ebooks on the market, and you need to let readers know that yours exists and is worth reading. Most authors do this through social media sites such as Facebook, Goodreads and Twitter, all of which are essential tools, as are word-of-mouth, personal blogs and good reviews from satisfied readers. Self-promotion is a never-ending job for an indie author, but the important thing is to avoid boring or annoying readers with repetition or constant calls for attention.

And then it’s time to write another book. And another. Keep improving your craft, keep developing your skills, stay focused on writing the best books you can and putting them out for your audience. Because if you write well, if you try hard and you genuinely engage with your readers, they’ll keep reading your ebooks – ebooks that you’ll find are easy to produce for them.

Go on. Give it a try. Give it your absolute best shot. And see what happens.

Louise: Thanks so much for that Patrick! Invaluable advice.  If anyone has questions for Patrick, or comments on your own experiences as an indie publisher, please post that as a comment below.  We’d love to hear from you.

Other Workshop Wednesday topics: Deep Point of View and Writers working with the Media

Workshop Wednesday: Deep Point of View

11 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by in Uncategorized, Workshop Wednesday series

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Welcome to Workshop Wednesday where I invite other writers to share their areas of expertise with you.  My first guest is Australian erotic author Kylie Scott whose debut novel Flesh will be released by Momentum/PanMacmillan in October.  Here’s a little about Kylie:  I write erotic romances set in gritty worlds. Sometimes with Zombies, sometimes without. First book (with Zombies) is due out late 2012 with Momentum. I live in Queensland with my two kids and wonderful, long-suffering husband who wishes I’d turn off the computer and put down the iPhone more often. I read lots and eat white chocolate. Coffee is my drug of choice.

And here’s a teaser about her upcoming release Flesh:

Ali has been hiding in an attic since civilisation collapsed eight weeks ago.  When the plague hit, her neighbours turned into mindless, hungry, homicidal maniacs.  Daniel has been a loner his entire life. Then the world empties and he realises that being alone isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  Finn is a former cop who is desperate for companionship, and willing to do anything it takes to protect the survivors around him.  When the three cross paths they band together; sparks fly, romance blooms in the wasteland and Ali, Daniel and Finn bend to their very human needs in the ruins of civilisation.  Lust, love and trust all come under fire in Flesh as the three band together to survive, hunted through the suburban wastelands.

I can’t wait to read it!  So welcome Kylie, and tell us about Deep Point of View because I know that’s a strong feature of the novel you’ve just sold:

Kylie Scott: To me, Deep Point of View is writing from within the character’s head. Sound a little freaky? Don’t be afraid. No brain-transplanting required, and yet—that’s kind of our aim. We want to give your reader an experience they won’t forget. To hook them and drag them deep into your wonderful story.  To submerge them within your character’s minds. It’s about more than making them privy to your heroine’s thoughts and feelings though; it’s allowing them to experience the story with your heroine as the conduit.

First up, let’s look at what it’s not…

Rebecca sat in the Doctor’s office. She was a bundle of nerves. These places always made her feel awkward and uncomfortable. She thought they were always so cold and clinical. She watched the receptionist like a hawk and waited desperately for her turn.

Now, let’s try giving that sterling piece of narrative a Deeper Point of View…

Rebecca perched on the edge of the sofa and resisted the urge to wrap her arms around herself. Or better yet, to grab her handbag and flee. Her fingers fussed with the hem of her skirt and twirled her wedding band around and around. They wouldn’t sit still. Her mother would have been appalled.

She was rife with goose flesh. The air-conditioning in the Doctor’s office was freezing and every wall was painted arctic white. Not a single picture in sight to brighten the place up. Not a splash of colour. It didn’t help the state of her nerves and nor did the lingering scent of bleach.

How much longer? It had been an hour already. She had to be next. The slick receptionist avoided her eyes with practiced ease and continued to tap away at her keyboard.

Okay, so I still don’t think it’s some of my best work but we’ve added more detail. Note how we’ve threaded in some of the five senses. We’ve layered the piece to give it depth. What is she thinking? What is she feeling? Are there any smells, sensations, memories etc that we can weave in to the writing to really make our reader experience the moment through Rebecca.

What we are taking out is also important. My watch words are these: Rebecca…

Thought, felt, watched, smelt, tasted, remembered, gazed, imagined, touched, etc.

Got a feel for it? Because every time we write ‘Rebecca saw the gerbil escape its cage…’ as opposed to ‘the gerbil scurried from its cage…’ we are putting a barrier between our reader and Rebecca. We are getting in the way. Because while we as the writer need to think deeply about what Rebecca thought, felt, tasted, touched, imagined, remembered etc, what we don’t want to do is spoon feed the reader these facts. We want to give the reader the experience of them. In other words…

If you’re inside Rebecca’s head, the one thing Rebecca is not thinking is ‘Rebecca thought of the gerbil’. She’s just thinking it, period.

Thanks for that, Kylie.  I love seeing examples in a tutorial because they help relate the topic to your own writing.  For a masterclass, read Kylie’s novel Flesh when it comes out in October – available where all good ebooks are sold.  It’s a fabulous example of Deep Point of View.  Do you have a favourite novel whose Point of View sucked you in so completely you felt as if you were the viewpoint character?  I’d love you to drop a comment below and let us know so we can read it too.  And don’t forget to tune in to next week’s Workshop Wednesday where journalist and Young Adult writer Cheryse Durrant discusses Writers Working with the Media.  You can subscribe to this blog using the links on the top left.  Cheers!

Getting Published Part 2: Doing the Work

01 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in Getting Published series, Uncategorized, Writer's Self Sabotage

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As a writing tutor, mentor and manuscript assessor, I meet a lot of writers who want to be published.  Unfortunately a proportion of them spend far too much of their creative time putting the product (book) before the process (writing) by researching publishers and asking questions about how to submit a manuscript or how to publicise it through social networking and blogs, before they’ve even finished their first draft!  This behaviour might sound grandiose, but in fact it’s a procrastination technique that’s very often caused by a lack of confidence.

The bottom line is that unless you’ve written several novels and are assured of your ability to complete the book and edit it into something publishable, my advice is to delay talking to publishers or agents until you have a finished product to talk about.  I’m a big advocate of thinking about what you want (and not what you don’t want), but you have to be practical.  You have to do the work.  The bald truth is:

Writers write.

It sounds impossibly simplistic to say that, but it’s the most important thing I can teach writers.  Write.  Make notes about your characters, your settings, your plot, write character diaries, and when you have enough momentum, write scenes and chapters and push the story forward relentlessly until you get to The End, resisting all procrastination urges and any unhelpful perfectionism that’s telling you to go back and edit for grammar and flow, or stop to research that insignificant minor detail that will probably end up being edited out of the finished manuscript anyway.  Keep the flow going.  If you’re stuck on a plot point then leave a hole and leap forward because there’s a good chance that what you write next will help you discover the missing piece.  If that doesn’t help, stop writing draft and go back to character diaries and backstory.

But stick with your characters and keep writing about them in whatever form you have to until you can get back to your draft.  Rack up word count.  Flex those writing muscles until you can’t stop thinking about your characters and they invade your mind while you’re hanging out washing or driving kids to school.  Allow your first draft to come out imperfectly, so long as you capture its essence.  As Anne Lamott says in her beautiful book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life: “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft.” and “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.”

Unfortunately most writers have the perfectionism gene, and from what I’ve seen it’s the #1 reason that we procrastinate.  Subconsciously we get a dialogue happening that says, If I can’t do it perfectly on the first attempt, I mustn’t be a real writer.  I’ve even had clients who’ve been so paralysed by perfectionism that they can’t write a thing, and all because they’re comparing their first draft to a book they bought and read the week before.  As if there’s no such thing as editing!  The reality is that a first draft is edited several times by the author before the manuscript is submitted, then several more times by the publishers.  It’s like comparing a pile of self raising flour to a gourmet mudcake from a boutique bakery.  Crazy.  Yet writers do this to themselves.  Completely unrealistic.

Concert pianists, in comparison, are well aware that they must practise the scales for years, getting their fingers nimble and laying down those pathways in the brain that say This finger placed there produces that sound.  Writers are no different.  We need to write so we can lay down pathways that say This word combination represents the experience I want to convey.  Our job is to take our vision of the story and to translate that into words on a page which a reader’s imagination will then recreate into a similar vision in their own mind.  It takes years of practice to get the right word combinations to create the right experience for the reader, and this is what’s called developing the craft of writing (completely different to natural talent).  There’s no getting around it, you have to write a lot to develop your craft.  And you have to stop beating yourself up if you don’t get it ‘right’ on the first draft.  Remember: The art of writing is rewriting.

Sure, you need information (how-to books and workshops) so you know how to write, and you need feedback (manuscript assessment and critique partners) so you can hone your skills, but the vast majority of a writer’s time, no matter where they are in their career, should be spent doing the work: writing.

So my advice this week is to write.  If you really do want to be a published author, you must set aside time to practise.  And if perfectionism is a problem for you, watch this video and see if it inspires you to let it go, at least while you’re writing first draft!

 
 
 
 
Have you ever been plagued with self doubt?  Thought your writing was utter rubbish (when it wasn’t)?  I’d love to hear how you overcame it.
 
 (Link to Getting Published Part 1: Making the Commitment)

Shiny new book covers

14 Saturday Jan 2012

Posted by in Ramble, Writers out in Public

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Is there anything more exciting for an author than seeing their book covers for the first time?  How about seeing those same books get a second lease on life with brand new covers?

I’m in author-blissland gentle readers because my Shadow Through Time trilogy is about to be re-released as eBooks with shiny new covers which I just adore!  Momentum Books have done a sterling job of capturing the heart of the books: romantic fantasy that’s a cross between Alice in Wonderland for grownups and Excalibur.  Can’t wait for the launch next month!

   

Happy New 201Two

31 Saturday Dec 2011

Posted by in Ramble

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Last day of the year.  It’s traditionally a time for people to create resolutions for the coming year, but I’d like to suggest something that comes first:

Gratitude

Whether 2011 was a great year or a crappy year for you, I’d like you to take five minutes out to be grateful for what’s going well in your life right now: for what’s beautiful, what’s honest and what’s good.  A rowdy child’s laughter.  The purr of a cat.  The soft colours of sunset.  A beautifully sculpted sentence – yours or someone else’s.  The scent of cut grass.  A hug.  Look at where you are right now, and feel how lucky you are, especially compared to people in other parts of the world.  Food.  A roof over your head.  And so much more.  Don’t sweat the small stuff because the big picture is awesome!

Life is too precious to be wasted on regrets, lost dreams or failed hopes.  Make new dreams!  Take chances, and live.  But never forget to be grateful, for therein lies the road to happiness.

Writers: protect the work

05 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by in Understanding Ourselves as Writers, Writer's Self Sabotage

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Even writing mentors have their own mentor and I saw mine on the weekend.  She cares about me and she also completely understands the fact that marketing books has changed enormously in the fifteen years I’ve been published, but the one piece of advice she gave me was the same thing she’s been saying to me for twenty years, “Louise, protect the work.”

What she means by this is do the book first, then everything else second.  I’m an intelligent woman so you’d think I’d be able to do that.  I’ve run my own business and also run businesses for other people.  I’ve had a variety of jobs before I came to writing and time management has been easy.  So I’m not sure whether it’s procrastination that sees me Tweeting when I could be writing, or simply the fact that there are some days when I can’t stick to my “No Internet until 2pm” rule because I’m expecting an email from someone.  So at 7am I’m on the Internet downloading emails and invariably one will link to a website and before I know it I’m tweeting or blogging or linking to other people’s blogs or Retweeting.  An hour or two can pass before I realise what’s happening.  An hour or two when I could have been writing or editing.  My friend Lisa at Twine Marketing has told me I need a timer beside my computer, set to 20 minutes.  I think she’s right.

At the Romance Writers of Australia conference in August there were a variety of panels and workshops on how to promote your writing, and some authors said the only way they could be productive was to severely limit their Internet time.  I remember US paranormal author Kelley Armstrong saying she didn’t blog.  It was 600 words she could use in a story.  She Tweeted instead and had Forums on her website where her readers could interact.

Successful authors need to find a way to “protect the work” by prioritising it.  Because if there’s one thing everyone agrees on, it’s that the best form of promotion is to write a good book.  And the next best form of promotion is to write another good book.  Everyone from agents to publishers to publicists will tell us that the work itself has to be what sells us, and that all the bells and whistles in the world won’t help you have a long and successful career if you can’t write well.  So I know the book is paramount, but I also know that I can’t hide in a cave.  So it’s easy to get distracted by people’s recommendations to Hootsuite or Tweetdeck or Paper.it because these things might eventually lessen the amount of time needed to manage social networking.  But the trouble is that it takes time to check them out, time to set them up, and time to manage them.  Then before you know it, something even better comes along (as well as more social networking media) and you’re off and running again.

It feels like that.  Running.  As if you have to catch something.  When what I’d really prefer is to write an awesome book and have it act like a magnet, drawing people to me.  So this is an ongoing dilemma for me.  Not something I can readily solve.  But I hear my mentor, and I try.  Would love to hear other writers comments on how they work, what they do and what they don’t do to protect their work.  I know I’m not alone.

Writers Online: Authenticity vs Spin

13 Sunday Nov 2011

Posted by in The Publishing Industry, Understanding Ourselves as Writers, Writers out in Public

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I was chatting to a girlfriend this morning about authenticity, and we were discussing the challenge of sifting through recommendations on the internet when you’re looking to buy a product.  Some are obviously written by genuine customers giving their honest opinion, but some look so effusive you have to wonder if the person or company who’s selling the product has snuck in and posted it themselves, then maybe gone to their opposition’s product and posted a bad review!  But wait, it gets worse than that.  My girlfriend told me there are people called Reputation Specialists who are paid to go around the internet posting good reviews and comments about their clients.

I mean, really?

For politicians, sure.  They need all the spin they can buy.  But do businesses and celebrities need to pay someone to blow wind up our (collective) skirts?  Whatever happened to earning respect and letting your actions speak for themselves?  Colour me naive, but authenticity means something to me.  And I have to admit that as a new author I imagined all I needed to do to sell billions of books was write good ones.

Then a little over twelve months ago it became apparent that I also needed to rack up quality time on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Google+ and blogging, because authors are encouraged by their publishers to be ‘visible’ across social networking platforms.  And it’s actually beneficial on a couple of levels.  Writing is a solitary profession, so social networking helps me feel like part of the online community, plus it keeps my writing muscles toned in short bursts.  But after the discussion with my girlfriend this morning, I had to wonder if all my comments and conversations online were also creating ‘spin’?

While I’m blogging and tweeting, am I the authentic ‘Louise’ online that my family and friends know and love, or am I projecting an image – Louise The Author?  And if so, is that okay?  Is it fine to censor out the occasionally grumpy Louise, the silly Louise, and the overtired-and-might-say-something-she’d-regret Louise?  Or should I let those parts of me have just as much social networking time as the rest?

Is self-censorship really just spin-by-omission?

Or are the things we post on our Facebook pages a product in themselves that we tailor to fit the readership, hoping they’ll attract people to our writing?  And if so, is that a bad thing?  Is it possible to be authentic and offer only part of yourself to the public?

If your answer to that is “Yes,” then I’d like to ask you why we bother to be authentic at all?  Why not just create a persona and project that?

I have no answers to these questions.  On a good day I try to be just me, like I am today, some insights, some confusion, lots of hope.  On other days I don’t think the ‘me’ I’m feeling is good enough to be out in public, so I censor.  It’s an imperfect method, but perhaps within that framework I really am being authentic.

Or maybe I’m deluding myself.  Would love to hear others comments on this.

Book launches with benefits

23 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by in Understanding Ourselves as Writers, Writers out in Public

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What makes a book launch memorable?  Well I’ve been to more than I can readily remember, but the ones that stand out in my memory were the ones where the writer included their family and friends in their celebration (because a book launch is as much about WooHoo! as it is about selling books).  I went to a great one last Friday night at Dymocks in Bundaberg.  We were helping launch Sandy Curtis‘s new thriller “Fatal Flaw”, and here’s a pic of romance author Helen Lacey and I holding our copies with Sandy – tiny dynamo she is.

While I was lining up to get my copy signed I had the chance to chat to Sandy’s grandson Alex, who was thrilled to be at the signing table, and Sandy’s own mum (great grandma) was seated nearby enjoying the glow of her daughter’s success.  It reminded me of my very first book launch a decade ago.  My mother is a seamstress and she created a gorgeous black velvet cocktail dress for me because the venue was going to be a recently renovated heritage building in Brisbane city – quite glam.  In the lead-up, while I was stressing about invitations and copies arriving on time, she was nervous about what to wear, never having attended a launch before.  After checking her dress would be suitable and, it being night-time, whether she’d need gloves, I remember her saying in a tentative voice, “So, a hat?”  I’m ashamed to admit that I couldn’t help laughing, or saying, “It’s not mother-of-the-bride, ma!” But she’d never been to a launch before.  How would she know?  To her it was the glamorous culmination of a decade of my hard solitary labour.  For all she knew, there might be paparazzi!  Clearly, she knows better now.

I didn’t recognise it at the time, but my family had been endlessly supportive without ever really having a clue about what I was doing, or how all that coffee consumption in a room with the door shut could possibly end up as a real book in a real bookstore tucked between real writers like Michael Crichton and Clive Cussler.  For them, the launch was their only window into my career, their only chance to show publicly that despite being astonished, they were proud of me.  I’m glad now that I wasn’t so overwhelmed by excitement that I left them out of it.  They were all there on the night, acting as hosts, mingling, making people feel relaxed, sharing embarrassing stories about me.  But then my family and friends have always been the rock that my stability is based on.  When you spend a third of your life inside a world that doesn’t exist, you need to be anchored when you step away from the computer.

Seeing the anchors around Sandy on Friday night reminded me that my own family and friends are still the most important thing in my life, a fact eloquently shared by an Internationally successful author friend who, at the birth of her first child said, “If something happened and I could never write again I’d find solace in my family.  But if something happened to my child, I’d find no comfort in my writing.”  I can only echo those thoughts, and feel unutterably grateful that I have it all: family, friends and career.  But to put that in perspective, when my daughter gave me a scrapbook for Mothers Day the year she moved out (a poignant year for me) I knew I was holding in my hands the most significant and meaningful story I’d ever created.  In the ‘brag’ section of my bookcase where my own published novels sit, it holds pride of place.

Society holds some writers up as being ‘special’, imagining their contribution to literature is more important than the children they’ve raised, the parents they’ve lost or the friend’s they’ve loved.  But as a writer myself, I know for a fact, the people I love will always be more important than the books I create.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Having said, that, book launches are one of the few opportunities in our lives where we can celebrate both.  And that’s what makes them so memorable.

Camp Twitter vs Camp Facebook

18 Tuesday Oct 2011

Posted by in Ramble, Writers out in Public

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No need to read to the end.  I’ll tell you straight up.  I’ve fallen hard for Twitter.

In the brave new world of social networking it’s a bit of a love triangle, with those of us who want to engage with our readers picking our platforms.  And I’ll freely admit I stuck with Facebook far longer than I should have.  We could have parted company while we were still on civil terms.  But I was too “I don’t get Twitter,” to even try it, so I hung around at Facebook with my personal profile and my author page, trying to engage with the tsunami of information (often duplicated) being uploaded by my peeps.  I’d sigh when the feed rolled out, daunted by the distinction between ‘top stories’ and the others, which were clearly ‘not top stories’ although I couldn’t work out why.  I liked these people.  That’s why I’d . . . liked them, so why wasn’t I getting all their stories?  Why was my feed top heavy with “popular” people.  And who decided who was “popular” anyway?

It was like being back at high school!

Anyway, in the end I just needed some time apart.  You know.  Not breaking up.  Just a break.  I had to open a Twitter account sooner or later because all the authors were expected to, but I had no clue that within a fortnight I’d be spellbound.  I mean, it’s so quick!  There’s no picture-heavy feed to wade through, and every single post is short.  Of course, everyone knows that.  140 characters, right?  But it’s not until you start interacting inside the format that you realise how awesomely fabulous that brevity is.  Refreshing doesn’t begin to describe.  I just felt . . . at home.  Really.  I just relaxed right in.  People found me.  I found people.  It was like being at a convention or a conference where you know “your people” are around somewhere, so you just settle at the bar with a scotch and chat to whoever’s there.  They’re sharing pics of their new puppy (and btw, having a new window open for every link is gold), so you can say, “Aw, check those floppy ears,” or if you’re feeling particularly clever you can say “got a bit of a Yoda thing happening there,” or when you want to slap your connections card down you can say “Oh yeah, Tara’s got a puppy like that.  You know, Tara Moss.  We share the same agent.”

Actually, I have no idea what sort of pet Tara has, but I’m just tossing it in there.  Then before you know it someone else comes along, someone you know and then you’re exchanging info on upcoming book launches or who’s had a new cover arrive, or a book deal, and it’s just so relaxed.  So cool.  So understated.  There’s no try-hard thing happening.  Well, not after the first fortnight.  You’re allowed a few “well I thought it was funny” posts as you settle in.  And it’s easy.  The set up is intuitive.  The posts are quick.  The conversations funny.  You get to meet people.  Really meet them, who they are, what they’re interested in.  Not their ‘author’ persona.  Just them.  Eating raw cookie dough.  First swims of summer.  Kids birthday parties.  Crazy hangovers.  Sleepy goodnights.  Boring stuff.  Funny stuff.  Interesting stuff.  Insightful stuff.

Real stuff.

I don’t know all the techno details about Twitter.  Can recommend Alan Baxter’s blog So you don’t understand Twitter? Read it before you get started.  But do.  Get started.  It’s fun.  You’ll love it.  And if you follow me (I’m @Louise_Cusack)and sit at the bar I’ll shout you a drink.

Promise!

P.S.  Just because Twitter gets the girl, doesn’t mean that Facebook is out in the cold.  I’m hanging in there.  I know there are readers who love it.  But don’t forget Goodreads.  It’s AWESOME too.

The hidden value of critiquing

11 Tuesday Oct 2011

Posted by in Understanding Ourselves as Writers

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What can you do if your manuscript has a problem you can’t pin down?  Simple.  Critique someone else’s.

The benefit might not seem obvious, especially when you’re busy and it feels like you’re wasting time helping someone else, but trust me, you’re helping yourself.  Writers are notorious for not being able to edit their own work successfully (let’s face it, that’s why publishing houses pay editors to work on our stories).  But what you might not know is that the easiest way to find your own hidden problems is through uncovering the flaws in someone else’s story.  I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been doing a manuscript assessment for a client and have been typing on their report something along the lines of “There isn’t enough tension in this scene.  The main character should have overheard that conversation so they could be stressing about the danger coming up.  Then they might make mistakes because of their fear and that would make things even worse for them.”

Remember, Rule Number One for plotting is “Make things worse for your characters.”

So at the point that I’m typing something into a report, I’ve often have a light bulb moment and realised that whatever I’m typing is exactly what’s wrong with a section of my own manuscript that doesn’t feel right.  Maybe I’ve got a character who doesn’t realise the danger that’s coming up, and things would be worse for them if they did.   Alongside this revelation I might even get a flash of insight into how I could fix that, but before you start worrying, its never a ‘copy what I’ve just suggested to the client’ fix.  My subconscious has far too many ideas of its own for that to ever happen, and the fix has to be organic to my own story and believable for the characters who inhabit it.  So a copy fix would never work.  But finding the source of the problem.  That’s gold.

‘Mirroring’ is a concept as old as the Vedic scriptures and as new as modern psychology, where you have an emotional reaction to the trait in others that you can’t see in yourself.  It works with editing as well.  I used to think my light bulb moments were the result of The Universe looking after me, attracting manuscripts that had the same problems I needed to address in my own.  But now I think it’s the work of my subconscious mind.  I find lots of ‘areas for improvement’ in manuscripts I assess, and only occasionally have light-bulb moments, so that tells me that my subconscious is filtering, looking for ways to help me, and I like that!  A lot of bad things are said about the subconscious mind, and many people fear their unconscious beliefs and attitudes are influencing their behaviour.

Maybe that’s true, but there’s also a positive side.  For a writer the subconscious is the seat of creativity.  It’s the magical, thrilling swirl of everything you’ve ever seen or heard or smelt or touched or tasted, every crazy fantasy, every naughty impulse, every skin-bursting moment of bliss.  It’s the left hand of the damned and the kiss of a fairy princess.  It’s the pure adoration of a mother who holds her baby for the first time, and the gut-wrenching grief of loved one’s death.  Every moment of your life is witnessed by this amazing storehouse, and for those of us who create story it’s the pantry where we select the ingredients for our banquet, either with a recipe as plotters do, or using intuition if you’re a seat-of-the-pants writer.

Critiquing is another way you can access the intuition/subconscious realm and hone in on your hidden weaknesses.  It works every time for me.  Give it a try.  At the very least you’ve helped someone else.  And remember when critiquing that the rule is to point out two great things for every one ‘area of improvement’, and don’t put on your bossy boots.  It’s just your opinion, after all.  But do remember to have a notebook beside you for jotting down insights about your own work.

You’ll be surprised.

I promise.