Revision & Self Editing–Book Review

James Scott Bell is my hero. An electrifying speaker. I picked up his book at the Writer’s Digest Conference a few months ago. He takes a page-turning, straight-forward approach to revision and self-editing in his book, Revision & Self-Editing.

You forget you’re reading a book because you’d swear he was right there breaking everything down for you. His conversational tone totally won me over.

An accomplished writer, he’s living the dream. In this book, he shares his knowledge on revision. He’s not kidding about providing techniques that transform your first draft into a finished novel.

After each chapter, I felt my brain smoothing out with new insight. By the time I finished his book, I understood what was wrong with my first manuscript.

I applied what I learned to the book I have slaved over for 2 years. A book I knew was complete. A book I’d queried and gotten full requests on.

In four days, I cut 6,000 words.

Mr. Bell gave me the tools I needed to see what wasn’t working in my manuscript. I’m eternally grateful to him.

This is a reference tool that is chock full of useful techniques, concepts, and real life examples to guide me throughout my writing career.

One of my favorites?

The Neil Simon note saying, I can fix it. Which reminds me ANYTHING CAN BE FIXED.

Isn’t that a phenomenal concept? All the bad parts of my novel can be worked out. Once I know they aren’t working. How empowering.

Revision & Self-Editing are tackled separately. The Self-Editing subsections covers such major points in the novel as: Character, POV, Plot & Conflict, Scenes, Dialogue, Show vs. Tell, Setting and Description. The Revision section covers similar points and provides a Revision Checklist.

This book is a must buy for first time and accomplished authors.

If you are going to pick up one book on revision and self editing. THIS IS THE BOOK.

WD Conference–Successfully Promoting Your Book

On Sunday at the Writer’s Digest Conference, I attended an informative panel on how to promote your book. Kevin Smokler, Brent Sampson, Kate Travers, and Kate Rados helped the audience navigate the maze of possibilities.

Promotional  Tools

It is never too early to start promoting. Build your author brand, know your reader, and get beyond the computer. Readers buy things they are familiar with.

There are a variety of Amazon tools available. Check out the Amazon Author Central and create your profile there even if you are unpublished. Link your blog to this profile. Upload videos. The key is to put the tools in place so when you switch from active promoting to passive promoting, the tools still work for you.

Author Central has real time book sales via Book Scan.

You can populate your book tour information on Author Central page.

Events

For public events, figure out who your groups/friends are. You need to be able to bring in book buyers and provide sweets and drinks. Try to do book tours/events where you can crash on a friend’s couch.
Think outside the box. Author events can be anywhere–church, YMCA, friend’s house, etc.

Once you’ve scheduled an event, figure out a way to make it an evening out for attendees. Provide a performance if relevant to book. Engage the reader. If it’s a historical work, bring in a local professor to talk with you.

If possible use visuals such as Powerpoint. Talk about what book is about. Don’t just read an excerpt. Make it fun.

People want compelling, live entertainment.

Social Media

When it comes to social media, don’t engage because you have to, but because you are drawn to the subject matter. Don’t be blatant about self-promotion.

The author platform: can be a blog, website, Facebook, and/or Twitter.

Create a foundation by focusing on one thing at a time and add on as you get better at it.

You have to attract readers to you as a person. Be interested in them and be a supporter of them. Provide something they want/need.

Building a mailing list and exchanging business cards is a start.

Engage a community and support them. Usually they will support you back.

Be aware that when you sound boring to people, you need to stop promoting.

Be good company online–entertaining/polite/gracious. Don’t be another disgruntled author.

Virtual blog tours can be a great and cheap way to market. Even when the event is over, it’s there online forever archived on the internet.

Bookbloggers are all the rage–very passionate about books. Read their blogs. See their tone and genres. Check out how they want to be pitched before you pitch them.

 

Publicist Hiring

Hiring a publicist depends on what your publishing and when. Figure out what they can do that you cannot.  Research their client list.

 

Bottom Line: There are lots of ways to promote your book and you should get started before publication. A blog or a website is a good way to begin. Expand from there. Facebook and Twitter have a learning curve so pick one and start sticking your foot in the pool.

Writer’s Digest Conference–Pitch Slam

This week I finished proofreading all my Margie Lawson workshop revisions to my manuscript. It’s a lean 82K.

I’ve been working on my pitch for the upcoming Writer’s Digest Conference January 21-23. Pitch Slam is a two-hour pitching free-for-all, where you are in a room with 50+ agents for 2 hours.

You get in each agent’s line and wait to make your 90 second pitch. They then have 90 seconds to ask questions and hopefully request the partial or the full.

At Killer Nashville, I did the 10-minute pitch. At Crimebake, the five-minute pitch. But this is a bit of a challenge. Because each word has to matter. There’s no room for error.

Yup, that’s me putting pressure on myself.

But it’s still a week away. I already spent a week honing the pitch. Trying it out on friends, family, and some trusted writing buddies.

And it’s getting there. The thing is, I want it finalized by Sunday so I have a week to practice it before I am in front of the agents.

Thank goodness that new smart phone has a timer function. At least I know I’m at 80 seconds. That leaves me time for a cough, a nervous throat clearing, or maybe a miniscule loss of my train of thought.

Have you had to pitch to agents? How do you prepare? Any advice on the short and attention-grabbing 90-second pitch?

Taking an Online Course

This week, my six-week online Essentials of Mystery Writing class came to an end.  I really enjoyed it. I think I learned a lot as well. The readings, class assignments, and online interaction took up roughly 3 hours a week.   It was a Writer’s Digest course and I highly recommend it.

Here are some of the pros of taking an online course:

• feedback from other writers
• feedback from your teacher, who is usually a published writer
• a better understanding of the requirements of genre fiction
• time to develop all the moving parts in your story: characters, plot, setting
• deadlines to keep you motivated on your work
• assigned readings that teach you about your craft
• focuses you on the key elements of your story
• learning how to craft a synopsis
• practice accepting constructive criticism from your peers as well as your teacher who has industry experience
• flexibility in when you do your work

Here are the cons of taking an online course:

• you do have actual deadlines
• you have to fix stuff in your story
• you only get as much out of it as you put into it

I’m thinking about taking another online course for romance writing because my newest novel is a romance, but I’m still drafting that one. Hopefully, I’ll have that done by the fall. Then I’ll look into taking a course either from Writers Digest or  Gotham Writers’ Workshop.

Have any of you taken online courses? Are there any you would recommend for romance writing?

Online Writing Class–Learning by Doing

I’m starting my third week in Essentials to Mystery Writing (Writer’s Digest University class) and am enjoying it immensely. Normally, I can read a book or a manual and learn how to do things, but with writing, the feedback is really a key component.

Plus,  you immediately apply what you learned in your readings when you do your homework assignment. More to the point, the structure of the course gives useful feedback from the teacher and your classmates. The best use of a couple hundred dollars in a long time.

The pace is just right for me. I have from Wed-Sunday to get my homework done and handed in and then from Sunday-Tuesday I can participate in critique sessions with my classmates. The readings are usually 20-30 pages at most (from the textbook) and a few pages on online lecture notes to read. Very manageable with a full-time day job and a couple of novels being worked on.

My classmates are from all over the U.S. too so it’s cool to meet people from different places and connect online.

All in all a great use of my time and money.

Writer’s Digest: Pitch Critique Webinar

Last Thursday, I participated in the Writer’s Digest Webinar–Critique Series: Novel Queries & Pitches with Chuck Sambuchino.

It was absolutely worth it. Chuck is a great speaker giving you  helpful tips and a good overview and then delving right into the critiques. We went through 21 pitches in the 1.5 hours webinar. He packed a lot into that time.

He gave a great overview of the three main parts of a query: Intro, Pitch, and Bio and what each paragraph needs to do, keeping in mind the purpose of the query letter is to get the agent to request more. The Intro should include: word count, title, genre, and why you picked this agent. The Pitch should include: what makes this story unique (focusing on the hook and the conflict) WITHOUT giving the ending away. The Bio: any previous publications, platform and a thank you for considering you work.

With the critiques, it was super helpful to have someone walk through the issues in each critique and hear what each of us was doing right and wrong.

Some of the running issues across queries were:

• Speaking in generalities and themes instead of showing what made your story unique
• Not focusing on the protagonist and making her unique
• Not explaining what the problem/conflict is
• Not having voice
• Flat undefined characters
• Too many names in the query; simple is better

I came away with new insight into my query and I’m revising it again before the Backspace conference at the end of May.
The cool thing about the webinar is that all presentation materials will be accessible online for a full year. So if you missed something you get to go over it again. Takes the pressure off about getting everything on the first go through. Plus you can ask questions throughout, which gives you the interactiveness that no book/website has.

Chuck’s recommended reading for query writing included:

• A bookazine available on Writer’s Digest website called Get an Agent
• Formatting and Submitting Your Manuscript
• The Successful Queries section of his blog, Guide to Literary Agents

I have Formatting and Submitting Your Manuscript and I found it very useful in terms of what agents and editors expect to see. I’m ordering the bookazine.