Smyrna Writes!

Shouldn't somebody be saying something here?

2009-09-25T21:47:00.002-05:00

Not that much is going on lately. I'm in the throes of yet another revision on Smarter Than the Average Werewolf. Nothing major, just adding and refining a prologue, so I'm not sure throes is exactly the right word. And I've whipped out a few poems, but I'm mostly in a fallow period at the moment. Every time I start thinking about writing, one or more of our cars needs attention, or one of the off-spring gets the flu, or something.

I did send in this year's entry to the Wergle Flomp competition. I've accomplished that much. Precious little, but it goes that way sometimes.

2009-06-22T11:07:00.004-05:00

Summer here at Smyrna Libraryland is a little bit...well...insane. Which is great! Summer Reading Program brings in all the people we don't get to see during the school year. But the increase in traffic doesn't leave much extra time for blogging! We're still working, meeting, and critiquing!

In the publishing world, summer is conference/convention season. Cons run the gamut from the mega-huge Romantic Times conference in late spring to our local small-but-mighty Hypericon. They're a lot of fun. You meet people, get free stuff, and have access to a variety of programs and classes. The down side? It's expensive. Especially if you have to travel.

Every July, during the RWA convention, Lynn Viehl hosts the Left Behind and Loving It workshop week on her blog for those of us who can't or don't want to do the con thing. It's free and gives you the same social and educational opportunities as a con! Personally, I think that's pretty awesome. For LBLI 2009, see this post and then this post.

Fun With Word Counts

2009-03-30T16:13:00.003-05:00

So, you've written an urban fantasy. It's 250,000 words long. You've got a problem. David B. Coe tells you why over at Magical Words.

Speaking of word counts, the Knight Agency is having a little contest this month that you might want to check out if you're querying agents. It's the Book in a Nutshell contest. Condense your book into three sentences that total no more than 150 words. Send it to the agency following the directions outlined here. The writers of the best 20 get to send their work in for a critique and possible representation.

Crits from industry professionals are really hard to come by, so if you've got a completed manuscript that fits their guidelines, give it a shot! You have 'till April 20th.

Avoiding Idiocy and Other Fun Writerly Things

2009-03-23T11:44:00.003-05:00

Okay, I know that linking to a post of links in kind of lame. But in this case, it's worth it! Therese Walsh over at Writer Unboxed lists some great resources as An Almost-Published Writer's Guide to Not Being Stupid. I don't know about you guys, but I'm fairly ditzy. Anything that can help me avoid eventual idiocy is a good thing!

Lynn Viehl is one of my favorite writer/bloggers. She contributes to the group blog Genreality as well. She recently posted about how important characters are to your brand. This makes total sense to me. Some of the most popular and powerful series are known, not by their authors but by their characters. Harry Dresden, Anita Blake, Mercy Thompson, Anna Pigeon, Kinsey Millhone, James Bond. Viehl's insights on the subject apply to most of our regular members. It certainly got me thinking about my own imaginary people!

She also gives advice on her own blog about what to do and what not to do when a young'un you're close to shows interest in writing. Good stuff there, too.

I hope to see you all at the next Smyrna Writers meeting - this Saturday at 1:00!

E-books and A Writing Exercise

2009-03-11T11:11:00.002-05:00

I usually don't do writing exercises. (I know, bad writer!) I guess I just have too many new shiny ideas to really want to work on them. I happened across this one at Deadline Dames, and the inspiration picture was so cool, I think I'm going to do it. Check it out! You have 'till March 18th to post yours. (There's even a prize for the best five!)

It's Read an E-book week! I'm decidedly pro-ebook. Being able to read on my smartphone has made my life so much easier. So much so, that at least half of what I read now is electronic. E-books aren't for everyone, but I recommend that you at least try it out once. I like the pleasure of the printed page as much as the next reader, but there are a few benefits to e-reading.

It's green. Few to no trees have to die to produce an e-book title. Especially if it's from an e-book only publisher as they tend to do everything electronically from submissions to the final product.
With the right device, you can read in the dark. This turned out to be a biggie for me.
Font size is adjustable. No more squinting at the tiny print in those mass market originals.
New authors. Some of my favorites only write e-books.
Instant gratification. For paper books, you have to transport yourself to the library or bookstore during business hours. If you order from Amazon, you have to wait for the mailman or the UPS guy. With e-books, you can buy/borrow and download them 24/7.

What makes e-books daunting for most readers is that there are so many different formats and lots of different ways to read. The latter is one of the things that attracted me to e-books in the first place. There are dedicated e-readers, but one can also use laptop or desktop computers, smart phones (like Blackberry, IPhone, or Palm Treo/Centro), and personal organizers.

The format variety isn't as bad as most people think, though. The software, in most cases, is free. Fictionwise, one of the big online e-book stores, has a really great guide to the formats and links to where you can download the software.

If you have access to a computer, you can try e-books without paying anything at all. Tennessee residents have access to R.E.A.D.S, or the Regional E-book and Audiobook Downloading Service, with their library cards. You can check them out just like you do the physical books at the library. Most e-book stores have an area where you can download public domain (and a few un-public domain) books for free. Fictionwise's is right here, but Diesel, and Books on Board have some as well.

This Week on the Web - The Encouragement Edition

2009-03-02T10:17:00.003-06:00

So, you know what happens when one goes on vacation to one's Internetless Mother's house for a week? One comes back to over 2,000 blog posts to slog through. Yeah. I never really caught up. So, I decided to start fresh.

I'm back into the submission cycle again, and I know some of you all are as well. There's very little that makes me feel more vulnerable and unsure about myself than submitting my work to editors, agents, and markets. Really. It's 1) Stranded with car trouble 2) Job interviews and 3) Submitting fiction. And the last two are pretty much the same thing, aren't they?

Over the past week, several people offered up some words to help us find courage, and to stay true to ourselves while carving out a place in the artistic world.

Only Amber Benson could make a writing/boobs comparison work.

Marjorie Liu wrote about the folly of following trends.

And this last bit isn't a link - it's a quote by Teddy Roosevelt that my hubby found and took the time to send to me in a series of text messages during the day. He never tells me what I want to hear, but he always knows what I need to hear. I hope all of you have someone like that in your life.

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

TWoTW - Query Letter Hate and Effective Online Marketing

2009-01-07T11:32:00.005-06:00

Happy New Year Smyrna Writers!

I sure hope you all enjoyed your holidays. Or at least got through them relatively unscathed. :-)

Hate writing queries? Firebrand Literary Agency is having a query holiday. Until January 15th, writers can send in their first chapters and skip that dreaded letter altogether. Just wandering around their site, it looks like a lot of their recent deals have been for children's lit.

Miss Snark's First Victim's next Secret Agent contest is for children's lit writers as well! Be one of the first 50 entrants on the 12th and you'll get the first page of your completed novel in front of an agent who represents the genre. See this page for details and rules.

Bookends Agency Blog, in my opinion, is one of the best agency blogs around. These two posts are why. What is a Book Proposal for Non-fiction Writers and What is a Book Proposal for Fiction Writers.

The king of promotion, J.A. Konrath, posted a great guide to how you can measure the effectiveness of online marketing.

That's all for this week! Hope to see everybody at our first meeting of 2009! It's this Saturday, 1-10 at 1:00 p.m.

Seat to Seat: Working Small, Partnered, and with Consequences

2008-12-16T19:54:00.008-06:00

O.K.

My first post in the group blog.

I thought I'd do something on keeping the words moving. It's one of my biggest issues when it comes to writing and I'm sure others share my pain.

There was a time when I used to be afraid of running out of ideas. I've come to believe that's not going to be a problem. The ideas come. In droves. Usually when I'm least expecting them. Like in the middle of a conference call at work, or when I'm in the shower with no pen or notebook in sight.

I've also noticed that I can write for hours in my head. (I've probably written a dozen mental novels by now.)

But when it comes to getting words on screen (or paper), I find a million and one things to keep me from it.

From physical exhaustion to something good on television [I'm watching House as I type this] to the (momentarily annoying due to my own word frustrations) presence of a lover...

I'm good at bullshitting myself out of writing. (It's a feature that comes with the English degree.)

But I've discovered there are some things that will spur me to get words out. (Even if it's like driving nails into my fingertips with every key I hit.)

Working Small and Working with a Partner

Recently, an artist friend of mine proposed a project. We would both work small in our respective fields. She, influenced by the artist trading card movement, would create 6 art pieces on 3X5 canvases and I would create 6 flash fictions of 500 words or less.

Then we'd swap and create pieces based on each other's work.

I find one of the truisms in writing is that there is freedom in constraint.

When I'm working to fit a story into so many words, I have to have a different approach than I would coming to a full length short story, novella, or novel.

I'm a lover of description and narration. When I read, I like to be transported to a place via the five senses and when I write I can go for hours describing a character's world, her surroundings, and her thoughts and fail to get anything that can be identified as a story out of it. This ultimately results in a lot of editing and rewriting.

Writing small forces me to get straight to the marrow. I can still use description, but it has to be description that centralizes and moves the plot along, none of this side trip business that you can use in longer pieces, just: Beginning. Middle. End.

Introduction. Climax. Resolution.

It works!

I allow myself the freedom of mind to write over my word limit, if need be to get the story on paper, and then tighten up after it's done. Rarely, however, do I write more than 50 words over. Knowing that I must fit my words into a space the size of a 3x5 index card kicks my brain in the appropriate gear and I find I can tell a story.

It may be only a tiny event in one character's life, but it's a story nonetheless.

Secondly, collaborating with a partner is an excellent motivator.

You've got someone who can give you a swift kick in the butt if you get behind, someone to complain to about your finicky muses, and someone to hold you accountable.

The idea of leaving my collaborator to twiddle her fingers (mouse, pencil, whatever) while I continue rewriting the same sentence is enough to send my Inner Critic packing.

I don't like being the dead weight in a group.

And speaking of dead weight...

A few weeks ago (not long after the completion of my first set of short-short fiction) I came across this little gem on one of my Livejournal forays:

Dr. Wicked's Writing Lab: Write or Die.

Accountability, as I mentioned, is one way to keep your words moving.

Consequences are another.

With Write or Die, you get your choice of three modes with different consequences. In Gentle Mode a simple text box pops up, encouraging you to "Keep Writing!" In Normal Mode, the musical stylings of Hanson or squalling infants assault your ears. And in Kamikaze Mode (my favorite), your hard work will unwrite itself word-by-word if you don't keep your fingers to the keys.

Procrastinating perfectionist that I am, even I draw a line at my words unwriting themselves.

(Of course, you have to be willing to pull up a browser and the Web app for these consequences to be of much use. But for an Internet junkie like myself there's something soothing about working inside a browser window... And that does sound quite sick, doesn't it? The cohabiter just mentioned the possibility of creating something similar for me that won't require a Web browser. Maybe I can hold him to it?)

At any rate, I plan to put the kamikaze mode to work in the next few days and see how much progress I can get out of it. I'll give a report later on.

I've got a planned vacation coming up. I'm going to try and use it wisely.

The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.
~ Mary Heaton Vorse

This Week on the Web: working with muses and other people

2008-12-11T12:43:00.002-06:00

Okay, maybe this is more like This Month on the Web. This is a crazy time of year!

Lilith Saintcrow (who always gets an A+ from me on her Friday writing posts) did a great post about the division of labor between you and your muse.

Galaxy Express has had some great stuff lately. They did an in-depth article on Angela James and Samhain Publishing. Samhain's a huge player in the e-book market - very reputable, very stable. (They've published a lot of my favorite e-book originals.) If you write romance or genre fiction with romantic elements, you should definitely give them a look. Check them out here and here.

G.E. also posted a link to a new for-the-love venue for speculative fiction, Crossed Genres. Their first online issue went up just this month. They're looking to grow into a paying market.

Redlines and Deadlines is the Ellora's Cave editorial blog and they recently posted an article about the co-author relationship. There's some good stuff there! Part 1 & Part 2.

This Week on the Web

2008-11-14T12:28:00.003-06:00

Several of us Smyrna Writers have reached the stage where we've finished and polished and are now starting to query agents. (Although some of us are beyond that, or have chosen a different route to publication.)

There is an enormous amount of information out there on the standard/preferred way to construct a query letter. Some of it is contradictory, depending on the agent or editor in question, but there's enough overlap there to help the burgeoning writer. On the one hand, this is GREAT! The more information the better. On the other hand, there's a smaller margin of error for submitters who either don't do their research or ignore it and make stupid mistakes. Like sending a paper query to someone who only wants e-queries. Or misspelling an agent's name. *hangs head* Yes. I did that last one. But she was very gracious!

Yesterday, Colleen of The Swivet posted a list of common mistakes she titled "Why I May Have Rejected Your Query Letter This Week." And over at Murderati, Louise Ure wrote a great guide to query letters with the mystery writer in mind. Although she's been retired from blogging for over a year, Miss Snark's Snarkives hold some of the best agent advice I've come across online.

NaNo or not, we writers are always looking for motivation. Over at Wet Noodle Posse, my ATIV bud Trish posted some mini-challenges that help break our big goals up into "small, manageable chunks."

And have you ever wondered about what happens behind the doors of a publishing company? Leigh Hultenschmidt from Dorchester Publishing provides an insider's look at a pub meeting. Fascinating stuff!

This Week on the Web

2008-11-06T13:09:00.003-06:00

Hey, groupies! Don't forget about the meeting this Saturday at the usual bat time and bat channel.

I really enjoy Lilith Saintcrow's Friday writing posts. They're of the "get off of your butt and quit whining" variety, which, really, is what budding commercial writers need to hear. Even if we don't want to hear it. The woman is full of common sense, motivation, and great insight. Her post from the 31st (I know, it's technically not from this week. But I didn't see it 'till Monday, so it still counts!) is about truth as it relates to fiction.

And what would be a week without a link to Paperback Writer? Earlier this week, she wrote about first lines. What makes an effective first sentence for your book or short story. Some of her "don't" examples had me howling! Or as much as I could howl at the front desk of a library.

""I know this guy who knows this girl who's married to this dude who works for this other guy who dates this woman who has a cousin with a son who knows this lawyer whose client is looking for someone who can date his daughter's adopted son's best friend -- which would be me -- and I thought that might interest you.""

Title Magic hosted Giselle Green, author of Pandora's Box who wrote a brilliant post for us on using astrology for charactarization that I found very helpful!

Write On!

2008-10-31T07:00:00.002-05:00

It's that time of year again. The season where perfectly respectable people turn into zombies, wild-haired hags, rabid monsters, and shades of their former selves. You guessed it! It's NaNoWriMo!

Exposition time!

I wrote a little bit about NaNo in an earlier post, but for those of you not in the know, National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo is a month-long writing marathon in which participants strive to finish a 50,000 word (minimum) novel in November. The goal is sheer output. You turn that inner editor off and just write no matter how bad you think it is and by the end of the month, you should have a workable rough draft ready for editing.

/exposition

I find it interesting that a bit of controversy has risen up over NaNo over the years. Any Google search will give you arguments for and against. Personally, I believe NaNo is a valuable experience for any creative person. Especially those of us who are writing to eventually publish. And MOST especially if you write genre fiction. Here's why:

Deadlines are a reality in the publishing world. When you sell a book, there's a manuscript deadline, a revisions deadline, a copy edit deadline. If you sell in a multi-book deal, there are even more deadlines. Learning to write to a deadline as a pre-published writer will put you ahead of the curve.

You learn a lot about your creative process. During my first NaNo, I developed good habits that I still use. Keeping to a daily word count, for example. Making time to work each day, no matter how busy I was. I also developed bad habits including a caffeine addiction that plagues me to this day! :-D But it all jumbles together to make me a more productive writer.

It's easy to write a few pages, or a couple of chapters and endlessly pick at them, thereby guaranteeing you will never write the last chapter. What's hard is to just finish the darn thing already. I challenge any writer, published or not, to produce a perfect piece of fiction right out of the gate. NaNo teaches writers to just get the words down, however imperfect they are. Editing can come later. Editing SHOULD come later. When you actually have something on paper to edit.

Finishing is scary. It's also exhilarating, exciting, and invigorating. Along with the satisfaction of a job done, you get an icon and certificate when you finish NaNo. It's something you can look at to remind yourself that yes, you absolutely can do this. Writing takes a lot of faith in yourself. And sometimes having tangible proof helps you reinforce it

I highly recommend all beginning authors try NaNo at least once. It'll either affirm your desire to write, or cure you of the affliction forever. Are you ready for the challenge?

J.T. Ellison says it better than I at Murderati. And she's offering at 25 page critique to a lucky winner. The catch? You have to get your NaNo 50,000 words in to enter the drawing. If that's not incentive what is?

There's lots of helpful advice around to get you started, and get through, the NaNoWriMo writing marathon. Some of the best of this year's advice so far comes from one of the most helpful writers on the web, Lynn Viehl in her posts Pro-to-NaNo: Twenty Bits of Advice From a Pro to a New NaNo'er and Speed the Outline. Don't skip the comments either! Her readers add some good stuff, too!

This Week on the Web

2008-10-24T15:49:00.002-05:00

I discovered a new small press fantasy publisher via Fantasy Debut this week! Bell Bridge Books is an imprint of Belle Books, based in Georgia. A lot of us Smyrna Writers write fantasy, urban fantasy, noir mystery, horror, etc. From the looks of it, it seems like BBB would be a good potential market for us. The parent company has been publishing since 1999, so they're stable. Like Samhain, they publish e-books with POD paperback versions. And from the reviews and snippets I've found, it looks like their books are high quality fiction.

I've been considering entering Voice of the Bard in the Golden Hearts, RWA's unpublished fiction contest. The ladies at Wet Noodle Posse almost have me convinced. All the "Noodlers" are Golden Heart finalists and have spent the past couple of weeks talking about the contest, answering questions, and providing tips and strategies to prospective entrants. Check out their blog!

This Week on the Web

2008-10-17T13:30:00.002-05:00

I'd intended to make a non-link salad post this week as well, but I've been preoccupied with my rough draft marathon and let the whole darn week slip away from me. But I'm getting words! Lots of them! If I don't have a complete draft by Halloween, it won't be too much longer after that. Which means I'll have a lot of editing to do come Christmas.

Victoria Strauss posted this great guide to literary agency directories just today. She includes tips on how to interpret the directories as well as some of the hidden dangers and things to look out for. If you're searching for an agent, or about to start that process, make sure to give it a look.

Earlier this week, agent Jessica Faust blogged about pinning down a genre for your book. This is also great info for those of us starting the querying process!

Via Urban Fantasy Land, Concept Draw's Mindmap is available for a free trial for a limited time.

I'm saving this post from Love is An Exploding Cigar. I have a feeling I'm going to need it when I start the aforementioned editing. Samantha Hunter wrote a lovely blog about accepting the potential for undiscovered mistakes or flaws as part of the creative process. My favorite part? "I've come to think of flaws like a little sign that someone real made this thing." Combine that with Agent Faust's The Futzing Stops Here, and you have some real psychological limits to help avoid the cycle of endless polishing and never submitting.

This Week Around the Web

2008-10-09T06:00:00.003-05:00

The Southern Festival of Books is on this weekend in Nashville! If you're downtown Friday afternoon, make sure to stop by Room 29 for the panel Keep it Short: Writing and Publishing Mystery Short Stories. Our Sir Otter'll be sitting on that panel from 2-3:30.

The heavy-hitting agent, Donald Maas, has made his book The Career Novelist: A Literary Agent Offers Strategies for Success available as a free download on his agency's website! (From Writer Unboxed).

Ever wanted to know more about working with a publicist? Romance Bandits hosted Sourcebooks publicist Danielle Jackson over at their blog.

Reaching the End

2008-10-07T06:00:00.001-05:00

Those of you with a drawer (or box or computer file) filled with abandoned three-chapter novels, raise your hands. Yeah, I thought so. Me too. It seems like we all go through this stage at the beginning. We see a bright, shiny idea, we eagerly start to write, and then something happens. We get stuck. We have doubts. Maybe we fiddle with the opening a bit, rework the plot in our heads, scrap the whole thing and start over only to hit a brick wall. Until the next bright, shiny idea comes along.

Getting to "The End" is hard. Some of us never make it. The rest of us keep at it until we find something to get us to that finish line. For me, that something was the writing marathon.

I joined in my first NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November of 2002, and had a complete blast. If you're unfamiliar with NaNo, the goal is to write a 50,000 word novel, or at least the first 50,000 words of a longer novel in 30 days. For a newbie writer, this was a daunting task! I finished, though. And along the way I learned more about my own process than I ever had during the Shiny Idea phase.

I found that I do better with lots of tiny goals instead of one big one. For example, "Write 1600 words tonight" instead of "Write a book." I also work better with deadlines and tend to be more successful if I'm accountable to someone else. You have to prove to the organizers that you wrote those words. And there's a whole community of folks in the NaNo forums that you can go to for support and motivation.

I brought all of these things into my writing routine for the rest of the year, and for the most part it's worked pretty well. Now I know when something really isn't working as opposed to me falling prey to plot bunnies or the new Shiny Idea. I stick to a words-per-day schedule, I work toward a deadline, and I tell my writers' group to expect me to complete those goals.

There's one more thing, perhaps more important than all of the above, that I learned how to do during NaNoWriMo: I learned how to beat that infernal internal editor into submission during my drafting process and to accept that my first drafts aren't going to be perfect. In fact, they're going to be crap. There will be plotholes. There will be continuity errors, spelling and grammar problems, and I tend to have compound word issues. But I can't fix any of this stuff if it doesn't exist in the first place. The writing marathon forces me to create.

This year I'm going to try something new. Instead of NaNoWriMo, I'll be taking a class over at RWA Online - Fast Draft in 14 Days and their Kia Writing Marathon. This is a new challenge. I can do a first draft in a month. Can I chop that in half? Wish me luck!

x-posted at Title Magic

Launch Day

2008-09-15T00:01:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Smyrna Writes! Our contributors all belong to Smyrna Writers, a writers' group based in Middle Tennessee.

We started this blog to talk with you and each other about writing, publishing, reading, and living the creative life. We also intend to share and keep track of our writing resources, to write about our work, and celebrate our successes right here.

We're mostly fiction writers with enough essayists, poets, and children's lit writers to keep the rest of us honest. We critique each others' work, we network, we brainstorm, research, nitpick, and encourage. The latter is, perhaps, the most important thing we do.

We invite you to join us as we grow. Visit us often, and don't forget to say hi once in a while!

Howdy There!

2008-09-05T10:49:00.001-05:00

Check back September 15th for our launch day post. Thanks for visiting!