10 posts tagged “writing”

Writing a book and becoming a published author is a common dream. As Harry Beckwith wrote in The Invisible Touch, “If you want to change your life, write a book.” But writing a book is no easy task. There are few people who can just sit down and crank out a few hundred pages. Most of us have to work hard at becoming a writer and published author, often taking months or years before completing our first book. So what differentiates someone who eventually does become a published author from those who only write for a short time before giving up?

Following are the nine biggest reasons most first-time writers fail to become published authors.

Unrealistic Expectations

Don’t expect to get rich off your book or writing, even if your book or writing is considered a success by publishing standards. The vast majority of books fail to earn out their advance, and the vast majority of writers don’t make tons of money. Instead, develop a personal marketing plan to leverage your career off your book or your writing. Rather then trying to make money on the book or writing itself, use your book and writing to open doors, promote your credibility, and build relationships with readers.

Writing Without A Contract

Never write a book, essay, or article without a signed contract. Instead, prepare a polished proposal and two sample chapters or a query letter. Publishers are increasingly selective about the titles they accept. Often, less than 1 in 20 titles proposed are published. Writing a book or article that isn’t accepted is not a good use of your time.

Read the other seven mistakes commonly made by writers and authors in failing to get published here.

James Cox takes the title of his book from Sherman Alexie, for whom "white noise," the static that remains on a television after broadcasting ends, represents "the oppressive noise of white mass-produced cultures, the loud demand to conform to the invader's cultural belief system or be destroyed" (p. 11). Cox takes "white noise" to signify a broad history of colonial domination and erasure, which Alexie and the other novelists he considers write to resist. The introduction to Cox's book, "A Cup of Water," states his purpose to demonstrate how Euro-western and Euro-American literary and popular narratives, which almost always "culminate in the absence of Indians" (p. 13), support ongoing colonial dominance and produce real-world consequences for living Indians; and to explore the strategies used by some contemporary Native fiction writers to intervene in these colonial narratives of conquest, to render them powerless and suggest that "conquest, as imagined by non-Native authors, did not take place" (p. 18). Cox argues that his study "implements Osage scholar Robert Warrior's proposal ... that, in any scholarship on work by Native authors, the 'critical interpretation of those writings can proceed primarily from Indian sources,'" (p. 4); thus he intends to avoid "academic colonialism" by privileging the voices of Native writers in his own interpretations (pp. 4-5). If reality is constructed by stories, and if, as Greg Sarris observes, "In oral discourse ... no one party has access to the whole of the exchange.... [O]ne party's story is no more the whole story than a cup of water is the river" (quoted, p. 16), Cox wishes his own "cup of water" to resist the narrative flow that justifies domination and to "nourish" new plots for Native people (pp. 16-17).

Read more about Muting White Noise: Native American and European Novel Traditions here.

I’m a big fan of children’s books, especially those that are well illustrated. I’ve reviewed a couple of others (The Little Man in the Map and On the High Seas), but I’m always on the hunt for new ones. Sure, the classics like Dr. Seuss and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day are always good ones, but what do you do when you’ve read those a thousand times? One that recently came to my attention (thanks Cathleen) was You Think It's Easy Being the Tooth Fairy?

I thumbed through it and thought it had a good theme. It’s about the Tooth Fairy and her rules for leaving your teeth under your pillow at night. Flying on her ingenious flying machine, the Tooth Fairy dodges dogs and cats to make it to your pillow at night. Guided by her Tooth-o-Finder, the Tooth Fairy knows where all the teeth are that need collecting – and she knows just how to get them.

All over America, kids are losing their teeth. And who is there to gather them up, leaving coins in their places? The tooth fairy, of course! A self-described “action kind of gal” with plenty of attitude, she reveals her secrets at last! Learn about her amazing Tooth-o-Finder. Marvel at her ingenious flying machine. Watch her in action, dodging dogs and cats and gerbils. The tooth fairy’s nights are long and hard. But she’s up for it. She never misses a tooth. How does she do it? For the first time ever, she reveals everything!

Read more about You Think Its Easy Being the Tooth Fairy here.

I've always been a fan of historical fiction. Not only do they give you a personal, unique perspective on how that period in history might have unfolded, but it also lets you relive that period in time - at least in your mind. The history of England is one of those periods where historical fiction almost does a better job then straight history books. The interpersonal relationships between the royal family, the political jestering of the elite class, and the social dynamics of the era all lend themselves to historical fiction. The recent book by Alison Weir - The Innocent Traitor- is the perfect example.

Alison Weir brings new life and fascinating detail to this tragic and familiar tale of the Tudor Royal History. What if your parents were so bent on furthering the family name that they would bring you into a known danger and ultimately be the cause of loosing your head - literally. Lady Jane Grey was sixteen years of age when she was beheaded after being declared Queen of England for nine days. This is the story of a highly educated girl, who would have been England’s first Protestant Queen.

Weir fleshes out Lady Jane’s childhood with its cold, harsh environment where she recedes into solitude and study as defense. She is intelligent and private and goes not want public office forced upon her, but her parents and Lord Dudley (father to future Queen Elizabeth’s long time love Lord Robert Dudley) care only about possible her claim to the throne.

Read more about The Innocent Traitor: A Tudor English Historical Fiction here.

Promoting your books or writing online is an important way of marketing yourself and becoming a successful independent writer. Whether you are writing articles, posts to your blog, or conversing on writing forums and author social networks, you need visitors. Within the World Wide Web this is known as getting traffic. With all of the pages on the internet, traffic is something you have to seek out; it doesn’t just come to you. Many people understand this concept, but have no idea how to properly promote their writing or books online. Some just skip it all together, while others spam all over the net hoping for favorable views and lots of traffic. Neither of these approaches are good for business and long-term success as an indie author. But that doesn’t mean you have to be in the dark.

Write Quality Pieces With Solid Content

The best place to start promoting your writing is in your books, blog posts, or forum comments. If your articles lack content, organization, usefulness, and or interest then there will be no reason for people to read them. On the other hand, if you have quality writing that is well edited, people will want to read them and even help in promoting them (see Word of Mouth Marketing for Books). This can give you natural exposure and help to give your writing authority – all of which brings traffic. Often times people will link to your blog post, share your book, and some will even bookmark your web pages. All of these things are key to being a successful independent writer.

*A note about SEO. SEO has become all the rage. Known as search engine optimization, it is a technique used to help get your writing picked up by search engines. If you optimize your blog posts or writing too much, it becomes difficult for real people to read (which is a bad thing). If you are into working with SEO then you can learn a lot from a wide range of sites online. Just don’t forget that a quality blog post or article is about more then just search engine optimization; its about engaging real human readers.

Choose Your Writing Location

Where you write online is going to have a huge amount to do with the amount of traffic you get. If you write on a site that has little traffic and a poor way of drawing their visitors to your materials you will find that you get little traffic from the site and to your own writing. On the other hand, if you write for a site that has a large amount of traffic and makes it easy for readers to find your materials you will see that you get a lot of traffic. Your blog or website works in a similar way. To be successful online as an indie writer you need to be in it for the long haul. Its possible to make a living as a writer online, but it takes time, persistence, and commitment. Therefore, I recommend that you get your own domain (URL) and host your own website. Once you are sure that you want to go the route of an independent author, you have to get traffic (i.e., readers).

Read more about how to Market Your Books and Promote Your Writing Online: The Successful Independent Writer here.

The Billionaire Who Wasn’t

Conor O’Clery

Building a fortune is one thing, but seeing it put to good use while you are alive is even more satisfying.

In 1988, Forbes magazine’s annual list of America’s most wealthy listed Charles F Feeney as the 23rd richest American alive, with a personal worth of $1.3 billion but in fact, four years earlier Feeney had secretly given away almost his entire fortune to a philanthropic trust.

He had retained enough to live on for the rest of his life, but no longer even owned a house or a car. He was, as Irish journalist Conor O’Clery phrases it in this powerful biography, ‘the billionaire who wasn’t’.

The Billionaire Who Wasn’tis two books in one: the remarkable story of duty-free retailing and its leading company, DFS, whose extraordinary growth and profits paralleled the rise of jet travel; and that of Feeney himself, businessman, linguist, and traveller, who took the needs of the world on his shoulders and became a model philanthropist. Read more about the Billionaire Who Wasn't and Other Exciting Books here.

Today I'm pleased to have a guest post from Paul Kiritsis. He has just released a very interesting book called Hermetica: Myths, Legends, and Poems, and his website contains a bunch of fascinating stuff concerning his astrology work. I asked him to share some thoughts on his writing process, and especially on how astrology plays a role in his work.

Hi there, thanks for having me! Yes I am a true Cancerian – emotional, loving, intuitive, imaginative, shrewd, cautious, protective and sympathetic. All the good stuff really! I guess being ruled by the moon is sometimes a terrible thing for those that live around us, but in the end it’s truly worth all the pain. If you like taking a step forward, one back, two to the side and then coming back to the same point at which you started and doing it all over again then I’m your man! I’m the sort of person who likes to make plans and then scrap them, make new ones, scrap those and then go back to the original plan. All within a few minutes!

I do possess a keen interest in astrology and let me tell you, much of what I write is dependent on astrological cycles and in particular, the cycle of the moon. When the moon is full, my thoughts are thawed out and clearer, enabling me to write for hours on end without a temporary glitch in my neuronal synaptic transmission. The moon speaks to me with its craters and eerie glow; each blemish, each contour has its own tale to tell. The Aussie winter and particularly the month of July is the most productive and creative part of the year for me. November and March are also months associated with creative streaks as well, perhaps because they’re inextricably linked with my two sister water signs; Scorpio and Pisces. When the sun rises in the constellation of Cancer, I find that there is a clearer understanding between the pen and the mind. I actually finished writing an entire book in only a month this year; incidentally July! Go figure. The least productive times of the year often occur during the festive seasons; Christmas (in December) and Easter (in April). Last year I didn’t do one bit of writing in December. I couldn’t even bare to look at a book.

Read more how author Paul Kiritsis uses astrology to influence his writing and books here.

Vietnam Air Rescues

EAVESDROP, as a father recounts to his adult children his exploits as an Air Force "Jolly Green" combat rescue helicopter pilot in Vietnam.

BE THERE to see what it was really like.

RIDE ALONG and determine what you would have done when another man's life was literally hanging in the balance.

FEEL what it meant to save a life, and what it meant to lose one.

EXPERIENCE heart pounding action in Vietnam Air Rescues.

The book begins with the authors’ ‘Unauthorized History of the Vietnam War’; then continues to describe his life as a “Jolly Green” rescue pilot, picking up aircrew shot down in North Vietnam and Laos. Details of his 7 rescues of 9 men are included, as well as over 30 anecdotes relating to his experiences.

The book is profusely illustrated with more than 100 photos, maps and drawings.

A Few Reminiscences on the Origin of Vietnam Air Rescues

If it were not for my second son, Craig, VNAR, as I like to refer to it would have never come about. I was an Air Force combat helicopter rescue pilot, a ‘Jolly Green’, during the Vietnam War in 1967-1968 and managed to rescue several people.

After my return, as the years went by, I related my war stories to my children. After he grew up and had children of his own, Craig began bugging me to write my experiences down.

For my part, I was decidedly unenthusiastic. It sounded like a lot of work and I could not imagine that anyone would want to read about what happened to me.

Read more about Dave Richardson and his Vietnam Air Rescues Book here.

I began writing what would eventually become my first novel, Suffering Madness, in 1995. My design goals at the time were fairly small - I was targeting the short story market in magazines to try to develop a name. After enough rejections to wallpaper my office, I realized my writing was pretty bad.

Fortunately, my desire to write and tell stories overshadowed any detail like the mechanics of writing, and I was dumb enough to press past the rejections telling me I was clueless. I joined three critique groups at the same time, each requiring writing assignments and critiques, and each holding their own strength in writing. One focused on character development, another on the mechanics of writing (The Elements of Styleby Shrunk and White was their foundation), and the last centered on how to tell a really good story. All three were brutal to some extent, however one was absolutely bloodthirsty in devouring any mistake in grammar, spelling, or weak plots. Some writers jumped ship in their first or second week; but as I already stated, I was too dumb to know any better. I suffered through the critiques bleeding all over my precious creations, cutting up my babies, and splattering blood ink on my stories. I learned to develop thick skin and separate constructive criticism from personal opinion.

In hindsight, I spent roughly twenty to thirty hours a week working all three critique groups over the course of about two years, and I have the bruises and scars to prove it. Yet each provided their own school of instruction and helped get my writing published in magazines, anthology books, and excerpts in newspapers.

Read more about Glenn Sasscer and his development of the book genre Christian horror here.

Alisa Valdes-Rodriquez

Dirty Girls on Top

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez jump-started the Latina chick-lit movement when she published the best-selling Dirty Girls Social Club five years ago.

Now she's back with a sequel, Dirty Girls on Top,which follows Lauren, Usnavys, Rebecca, Amber, Sara and Elizabeth as they navigate through marriage, kids, careers and boyfriends during their mid-30s.

It's easy to want to call the breezy, sexy book a Latina version of Sex and the City. But Ms. Valdes-Rodriguez says she doesn't like that comparison.

"It's good; it's just very different from what I do," she said recently. "With the first Dirty Girls, I was the Latina Terry McMillan. And with the second one, I'm the Latina Candace Bushnell. Hopefully by the third Dirty Girls book, I can just be me."

Here's more from the 39-year-old author, who'll sign copies of the new book tonight at Borders.

Lesley Téllez

The first Dirty Girls book seemed to end on a pretty final note. Why did you want to write a sequel?

I did leave some story lines open, actually, by design in that book. I didn't feel like I was finished with those characters. I felt like I could just keep writing. I immediately wanted to do the sequel but was advised by my publisher to do a few books in between. Which in retrospect, I'm not sure was the best choice. Read more about Alisa and Dirty Girls on Top here.

Read more about Alisa and Other Authors on the Great New Books site.