Category Archives: About Writing

Documenting my trials and tribulations as an author, songwriter and ranconteur.

Feb 1 2012

Government Social Media Guidebook Update

Last year, my writing partner Ines Mergel and I signed a contract with Jossey-Bass/Wiley to author a government guide to social media. The product of our collaboration is a handy little tome called: Social Media in the Public Sector Field Guide: A practical approach to designing and implementing government social media strategies. Yes, I know it isn’t the most creative title, but it does get the point across!

The book is a guide for the social media novice – the government employee who is tasked (either by assignment or design) to develop and support the agency’s social media efforts. The book covers the origins and value proposition of social media in government. It explores the most successful tools and how to use them.  We also cover the strategies, policies and tactics to ensure a successful launch and long-term value. The guide includes dozens of real-world examples and several case studies and testimonials from government 2.0 rock stars to help make the content practical and accessible.

The peer reviews starting rolling in about a month ago and I am happy to report that we’ve just submitted our edited manuscript back to the publisher for review. Please join me in a collective woot on reaching such a great milestone!  If you think this book might be helpful, please stay tuned for more updates as we get closer to a release date.

Jan 29 2012

A Review of the 2012 Roanoke Regional Writers Conference

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending my first writer’s conference – the fifth-annual Roanoke Regional Writers Conference, held at Hollins University in Roanoke Virginia. The conference did not disappoint.  As noted on the conference page: “two dozen classes, taught by over 25 professionals, a round-table discussion, a Friday evening reception with two speakers and Saturday lunch are all included in the $60 tuition. The conference will feature a number of successful authors, journalists, designers, marketers and academics, as well as an accountant and a lawyer to help students with the practical end of their profession.”

I was both inspired and intimidated by the level of expertise at the front of the classrooms and in the chairs around me. This is a conference for people who are passionate about prose. The sessions busted myths and brought reality to our brains. We heard about theory and idea development mixed with practical pointers from those who have proven themselves as writers and experts in the field of publishing. I pulled a couple of overarching themes from the sessions.  The speakers and topics brought to life the advice you can find across the blogosphere:

  • If you want to do this, you’ve got to really want it badly.  There are no half-ass attempts.  Do it or don’t. It can be done, but you are really going to have to bust your butt.
  • The writing itself is probably the easiest part of the process.
  • There is a lot of debate between self-publishing and traditional publishing. And although conference organizer Dan Smith admittedly was a proponent of the traditional route, the conference did a good job of balancing both approaches.
  • Regardless of how good you [think you] are, invest in an editor. If you can’t afford an editor, get yourself into a critique group.  This is especially critical for self-publishing writers.

Due to some familial engagements, I missed the opening sessions on Friday night, but I got there early on Saturday.  The first session I attended was Mike Allen‘s The Last Redoubt: Writing Short Stories for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Markets. To date, my works have been non-fiction and a full-length novel. But since all of my outlines for future fiction works seem to consistently wind up in the spec-fic areas, I wanted to hear what he had to say.

Mike’s passion for the genre and the craft was very obvious from the moment he started. He provided us with a practical approach on how to get your short spec-fic work published. He toured us through some of the most well-known online publication references like Duotrope and Ralan. Mike’s approach was very casual – he engaged us in a conversation instead of lecturing at us. He answered several questions about the genres and the technical approach to the craft and how to get your short stories, flash fiction and novellas in print in the spec-fic publications. I’ve never tried flash fiction before, but last night, after this session, I jotted down my first.  Who knows…maybe it’ll show up in Weird Tales or Mike’s own Mythic Delirium collection someday!

Following Mike’s session, I stuck around in the same room for a double-shot of Spec-Fic advice with Rod Belcher’s session called: Selling the Sense of Wonder: Writing, Marketing and Surviving Science Fiction/Fantasy and Horror. Rod recently sold his first novel to Tor books. Rod pursued his passion with a traditional publishing route, “pouncing” on an editor at Tor during a writer’s conference. Rod’s session was a great reality check for those of us who have a low tolerance for waiting. His was a multi-year journey of persistence, agonizing re-writes and lengthy hurry-up-and-wait exercises.

The last morning session I attended was Marketing Your Self-Published Book. Conference organizer Dan Smith introduced the topic but quickly relinquished control to Rachael Garrity, a local editor, and Janeson Keely, an internet guru. This session was a non-stop stream of technical advice for perfecting your self-published work (USE AN EDITOR, NOT YOUR MOM!) and promoting it online through tools like a blog, facebook, twitter and LinkedIn. The content was good, but honestly, I didn’t write much down in this session because I am already doing all the things they suggested.  Yay me! : )  The speakers strongly recommended one book: John Locke’s How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!, so that one is now on my to-do list.

After a great lunch in the Hollins University cafeteria, my first afternoon session was author Brooke McGlothlin‘s: Self-Publishing: The Whys and Hows. Brooke is a very successful self-published author of several non-fiction works for women and mothers. She is strictly e-books, no print, no POD (at least for the foreseeable future). Brooke attributes her continued success to social media and hard work. She established a community of interest early on and continues to advance by keeping the conversation going.  She uses social media to draw her audience in as friends and not customers. She recommended that you establish your platform BEFORE you start promoting your work.  In addition to social media, Brooke also recommended using an online newsletter platform, like aweber.com, to keep in touch with your audience. Brooke uses extensive giveaways to coincide with her book releases and each time, she more than recoups any investment. For social media novices, she recommended Amy Porterfield’s Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies. Brooke prefers to focus on the craft of writing.  She relies on a network of other talented people to design her covers and format her works for e-book publishing. She created an awesome list of  resources on her on website for others to use.

After Brooke’s great case in favor of self-publishing, I headed over to Babcock Auditorium to hear from Gina Holmes, the very successful traditionally-published author of Crossing Oceans and Dry as Rain. Gina wrote five novels before finally landing a publishing deal with Tyndale House. Persistence, both in the writing itself and the self-marketing and writers’ conferences and the like were what paid off for her. She recommends setting yourself up with a writing goal (1000 WPD is reasonable). And she, like the others before her, stressed the invaluable insight of a real editor, regardless of your genre or your publishing route. Be ready for painful rewrites and remember that you do not always have to say “yes” to recommended changes. And make sure your first work is absolutely top-notch. The average length of most début novel submissions are 80-90K words.  Anything more than that is just an easy opportunity for them to say “no”. Gina recommended several resources to improve your fiction-writing skills:

After Gina’s session, I headed over to Amy Gerber-Stroh’s Getting Your Story in Motion: Film and Screenplay Writing. I love movies and who doesn’t picture their written work turned into a cinematic feast someday? Amy, an assistant professor of film at Hollins University, provided a brief but interesting history lesson on film adaptations. The biggest tidbit I got from this session was how vastly different screenplays are from novels. Screenplays are on average 90-120 pages total.  (1 page = 1 minute)  Yikes…that’s some serious cutting for those of us in the novel-writing arena! The easiest way to do this is to cut introspection to a minimum.  Replace it with good acting to help convey background, tone, emotion, etc.  Personally, I am going to shelve the movie idea until I can get a couple of novels off the ground first. : )

Overall, this conference was excellent.  Not only did I glean much salient information, I got to do it in an atmosphere of camaraderie. As far as I could tell, egos were checked at the door and there was a tone of encouragement throughout. If you are in southwest Virginia and you are a writer (published or not!), check it out next year.  I’ll see you there! If you attended this year, please let me know what you thought.  How were the sessions that I missed? Did you catch the same stuff I did from the sessions above?  Let me know if you post your own review – I’d love to hear from other attendees!

Apr 6 2011

The Balancing Act

 

Photo Courtesy creativecow.net

I’ve wrapped up the umpteenth draft of my first novel.  I put it down for a couple of months, picked it back up, and chopped it some more. I’ve preened it more than a nervous parakeet does before a first date. Its got to be done by now.  My characters are so ingrained in my head that they’re kinda getting on my nerves. Benjamin Franklin said “Fish and visitors smell in three days.” My characters are not fish (although I did recently write a bit about fishiness).  They’re more than visitors.  They’re family, but seriously, it is time to move on people. Don’t get me wrong, I love and them and all that, but I need to push them out of the nest and let the story fly or fall.

 

Although I have been seriously exploring the merits of self-publishing, I am not ready to give up on the traditional format just yet.  So here’s my dilemma.  I am crazy busy these days with things outside of my fiction writing. I’ve got a daytime job, a side business, a non-fiction co-authored work underway, a family and a life. So when I am supposed to be sleeping and instead I am working on all things bookish, I need to structure my time.  I’ve talked to several succesful authors lately and they all tell me that the business is about self-promotion, even with an agent and big publishing houses under their belts.  They tell me I’ve got to knock on door after door until somebody lets me in. Okay, I can do that.

But then in the next breath, many I’ve spoken to (or read from) tell me that once you finish the first book, get started on the next one and the next one.  Okay, I could do that.  I’ve got several ideas buzzing around my grey matter.

However, doing both simultaneously is fine and dandy for those who can put food on the table with just their words on the page.  But for the rest of us, in that limbo on a journey to literary accolades, how do we do it?  How do YOU do it?  How do you balance precious spare minutes between promoting/marketing/querying with your completed work versus getting started on the next idea?  I’d love to hear your methods, your madness or your suggestions.  I will accept all suggestions…even variations on what I think is the bottom line, which goes something like “Do you want some cheese to go with your whine?  Quit complaining and just do it, crybaby…”

Mar 23 2011

Yikes – I’m an Addict!

Lately, I’ve gone through some extensive editing down of my fiction manuscript.  I received some excellent peer-review advice and I’ve also been reading some great books on the topic of editing, notably Stephen King’s On Writing. First, I squashed out what little remaining pesky passive voice I had. Then I went through and eliminated nearly all the adverbs, particularly those in the dialog attributes – i.e. “What did you say?” she shouted loudly or “I am not ready for this,” he whispered quietly. No, these are not real examples from my work.  Mine weren’t that bad, but you get the point!

Now I am in a phase of simple cutting. I realized that I have a tendency to repeat myself or say the same thing if different ways, as if that makes my point stronger.  It doesn’t.  It slows the flow and it sorta insults the reader at the same time. So, I cut, cut, cut the duplication.

I’ve also noticed that I am apparently an addict.  I am addicted to Absolutely Worthless Words (AWW). Worthless clarifiers like truly, nearly and the ever-boring just have bloated my manuscript. Lame.  Snooze-O-Rama. Check please!

image by swordsswords.com

While I am sure there is a 12-step program to cure me of my addiction, I am not a patient person.  I am more the type who prefers to rip the band-aid off all at once, along with skin, hair and anything else that gets in the way.  I have tossed out the pruning shears and now I am hacking away with a battle-axe, trying to remove all the lameness that AWW has brought to my manuscript.  I know that these clarifiers, like many other things that lead to addiction, can be healthy in moderation.  So I’ve left a couple of them in, here and there, to paint the landscape, if they really, truly are needed.  (See what I mean?)

Below are the AWW words that I’ve plucked from my prose.  How about you?  Any common standouts that pop up in your work after a wild night of binge writing?

  • completely
  • actually
  • just
  • really
  • finally
  • truly
  • ultimately
  • directly
  • nearly
  • only
  • certainly
  • simply
  • merely
  • extremely
Mar 15 2011

Guess Who Signed His First Publishing Contract This Week?

Yep, that’d be me. But, here’s the real irony.  If you are a regular blog-reader, you know I’ve been peddling my fiction manuscript for a couple of months now – my completed manuscript that is.  But this week I signed a contract with publisher Jossey-Bass to co-author a new, non-fiction guidebook with my MuniGov pal Dr. Ines Mergel, professor of public administration and information studies at Syracuse University. Woot! Woot!

We’re collaborating on a guidebook targeted at those in the public sector tasked with establishing social media in a government organization.  This is not about setting up a Twitter account or gathering followers on Facebook (okay, well, we might cover those tentpoles briefly).  This will be a practical guide to building an organizational policy  and integration the potential value of social media into an overall business strategy.  I hope the book will occupy a space somewhere between a textbook and an Idiot’s Guide, with lots of examples and voices of leadership in government social media use.

If you are one of those voices – someone who has something to share in the realm of government social media – please speak up!  We want to hear from you and possibly feature your story, your suggestions and your experience in the book.  Drop me a line.

For me, for now, it’s back to work on the writing! I’ll post some updates from time and time and I’ve promised myself that I will not give up on the fiction writing and publishing either. After all, sleep is so overrated!

Jan 21 2011

Sweet, Cool or Sick? Keeping it Real in the Fictional Realm

A couple of weeks ago, I was doing some male bonding with my son and father-in-law.  We were up at the family cabin, trying out the composite bow my son had received for Christmas.  We were all feeling quite manly as we took turns thocking  plastic-shafted arrows into a ferocious styrofoam target at fifteen paces.  On my son’s third round, he took a shot and hit the target on the very outside edge, causing it to spin and topple.

“That was cool!” my father in law exclaimed.

“Sweet!” I echoed.

“That’s sick!” shouted my son.

Cool - “Neither warm nor very cold; moderately cold”

Sweet - “Having the taste of sugar or a substance containing or resembling sugar, as honey or saccharin.”

Sick - “Suffering from or affected with a physical illness; ailing.”

So which was it, really? Was it cool, was it sweet or was it sick? Technically, it was none of the above.  But realistically, it was all the above. And technical does not and should not live in dialogue.  I’ve learned that as I slog through countless re-writes of my novel.  Technical is boring.  Save that for the training manuals.  You need to craft dialogue from the little bits. Fill it with idiosyncracies, improper grammar, accents, euphemisms, colloquialisms, etc.

I know my son.  He’s real.  He’d never say something like “awesome” or “that was rad!” when that arrow hit.  And if my Dad was from London, perhaps he would have said “That was a splendid shot, wasn’t it?”  But he isn’t, so he didn’t.  He said what came to his mind based on his context.  I said what came to my mind because of who I am, as did my son.  Three different generations, three different, overlapping contexts and three different reactions. Yet each of us meant the same thing by it.

The tricky part for writers is keeping it real with those characters that spring from our heads and onto the page.  Dialogue is about getting somewhere, but not always on the direct path.  Characters need to arrive in their own mode of communication and usually they don’t take the direct route (unless that is simply a trait of your character). We’ve got to make them believable. We need to hear their voice in our head when they “speak”. I try to read all my dialogue aloud many times over to make sure it has realistic cadence and punch. We need to make those people so real that you could drop them into any scenario and know how they’d react.

Here’s a quick test. I could tell you immediately how each of my main characters would’ve responded if they had seen that arrow hit…could you? ; )

I’ve read a couple of much more detailed posts lately on dialogue.  If you want some more from others on the writing path, I highly recommend:

Got any other suggested resources?  Post them here!

Dec 8 2010

Calculating the Cost of an eBook Using Search Engine Principles?

In a recent great post by author Derek Haines, he postulated the concern about the appropriate way to determine the cost of eBooks. As he points out, publishers price traditional books generally according to size (length) and format (i.e. hardback versus an “airport express” novella). With the big tome, you get more for your money, right?  More words, more solid investment for your hard-earned greenbacks.  But not so with eBooks – turns out that eBooks can basically be priced consistently, regardless of their word counts, because in the end, they are all just ones and zeros pushed around in different order, right?

Now, I will admit that I am still really new to the publishing world.  I am still looking for that blessed agent willing to take a chance on a first time author. But in my “real life” I am techie.  And I do know how the web works.  So if we are talking eBooks (e standing for Electronic and therefore extrapolated to Online), why not find a way to establish a floating price process in which the cost of the book was directly tied, in real-time, to the quantity of its sales?  For example, a new book starts out at the one dollar level.  As soon as x number of copies are sold within y time frame, the book moves up to the two dollar bracket.  It continually increases,  eventually decreases and ultimately levels off at a level of relative worth that is completely controlled by the buying public.

Two primary factors impact the rank of a site in most search engines – quality/accuracy of content matched to keywords, and relative linking and traffic to a given site by the surfing public.  Seems to me like we could do the same with eBook pricing.  Let the relative market demand for the title and its number of earlier purchases control the purchase price at any given time.  Each time a consumer clicks or doesn’t click Buy has a direct impact on the future cost of the book.

Seems to me like this would work.  I would think the publishers would go for it because they don’t need to re-coup publishing costs and they could tailor their marketing budgets on a graduated scale that moves up and down with the value of the book.  For those of you who have published eBooks – what do you think?  Would you be willing to take this on as a gamble?  And publishers…am I missing the hidden costs of publishing that we must  factor into a base price?  And consumers – would it appeal to you to pay a lower cost for being an “early adopter” versus knowing the set price of the book?  Let me know!

Nov 29 2010

Poetry Vs. Prose (Two Formats Enter, One Format Leaves?)

I am gonna try an experiment. I’ve had this idea running around in my head for a couple of weeks about what I thought would evolve into a short story. But then I heard a song on the radio, which led me to form a single opening line of the story. It sounded more like a line of poetry than a line of prose. In fact, it was so good, IMHO, that I had to google it to make sure I hadn’t heard it somewhere else before. Once I learned that it was my very own unique nugget of sweetness, I did a brain dump onto the computer before I lost the freshness of it.

Last week I jotted down about 20 stanzas of this poem. This in and of itself is weird cause I haven’t written any poetry for public viewing since my songwriting days over a decade ago. But as I was writing these rhyming couplets, my mind raced ahead to details of it in story form. And I knew that while these details were good, they wouldn’t work in the lyrical flow I was concocting. Hmmm…what to do…what to do…

And then like a poorly-tossed fish at Pike’s Place Fish Market, it hit me. I’ll do both! Both versions have  my creative juices greasing up my keyboard, so I am gonna try to spit them both out and see what happens. I am enjoying the driving flow of the poem and the first-person point of view I’ve chosen for the prose version. I hope to finish both of them and post them both here and let you decide which is better. Maybe I’ll even do a cage-match type contest ala Thunderdome and see which one will rise to the top.

For you writers out there, has this ever happened to you? Ever have two competing formats that divided your focus or your creativity. Was it exciting or frustrating or both? What was the eventual outcome for you? Any advice for my current dilemma or should I consider it a boon? (Two points to me for using “boon” in a blog post that isn’t about pirates or Shakespeare).