Authonomy – Time Sucker or Community? September 30, 2008

I signed up for Authonomy.com today. I’d heard about it awhile ago and even thought I might put a short up there if it gets rejected.

 

But now, as I wade in, I see a huge potential for a lot of time spent there NOT writing.

 

The other hand of that situation is, if you get involved and bump up your ranking and post your novel — will it really get read? Could it make it into a HarperCollin’s editors meeting? Do agents actually browse the best of sections? Will you meet peers who may shape your writing life from here on out?

 

Before I get sucked in to far,  what are YOUR thoughts? Have you played around in the site? Do you think it’s a great idea or just another publishing stunt?

 

THOUGHTS?

Publishing Blog Weekly Round-Up September 26, 2008

This week flew by! I’m still sending out queries one by one and I’m still preparing for Fast Draft and I’m still measuring my week by when my Friday post goes up. I’m still plugging away with at least one query letter a day. Thanks to all the people who clicked through to check out my query letter this Monday. I really was surprised how many hits it got!

 

And here it is!

 

A few weeks ago I referenced Jessica Faust’s blog on escaping a bad agent. She had tons of questions and did a follow up this week HERE. She also addresses a question that I’m currently pondering – the series and writing the rest of the books with nothing to go on besides that.

 

Richard Curtis has another great opportunity on his E-Reads site: the first chapter of How To Be Your Own Literary Agent. More than worth checking out! He also links to Google Search where you can read the whole darn thing!

 

Kristen Nelson did a great blog Wednesday on agent search no-no’s, but when I got there today to grab it, I saw yesterday’s “Agent Stages.” This one is vital to we newbie authors to understand. It reinforces the idea that taking just any agent is NOT what’s best for you and your work. Not every agent is in the best place to rep you.

 

Imogen Howson does a great blog on Mary Sues and if it’s fair to call author, not fanfic, created characters Mary Sues. Its just after her what/why she bought stuff from Amazon list

 

OK, it seemed stupid and short-sighted to link to Lucienne Diver’s blog last week until her Fantasy week was over. But all the visiting writers were SO GOOD… I cheated. I linked HERE to the round up post, definitely look at all the guest posts before it!

 

This post is from last Monday – and, I forgot to put it in. I know, shame on me. But AuthorMBA does great blog on Disaster Proofing Your Industry Brand. You really do need to know this.

 

So there it is, anything I missed I shouldn’t have, pop it in the comments! Have a great weekend.

Edit Cards – Part 2 September 26, 2008

OK, I love this blog and I love my readers and I love the fact that most of you email/IM/PM/forum note me instead of responding here. It honestly makes me laugh!

 

So I had several people ask how I became “aware enough” to make my own edit cards.

 

Well, the cards come from a lot of different sources. I learned my editing primarily from a Laurie Brown workshop I received from an RWA Conference. You can buy them on the site.

 

That was the foundation for me of learning to edit.

 

The next stuff – and i know you’re sick of hearing it – Read Read Read Write Write Write.

 

This time, part of the cycle is your own stuff. Read something you adore, something that you truly wish you’d written. You know, the kind of book that you can’t believe it’s over when you get to the end. Now, go read your ms. What’s standing out? Where do you see the influences? Did it work? What can you do better? What in the book you loved made you love it? Are you doing that?

 

Make some cards that feed into those desires (the good and the bad!)

 

Next, what sentence structure do you lean toward? I was starting so many of my sentences with ‘-ing’ words that it was a mess. Not to mention an Amateur’s mistake. It felt active when I was writing my first book in Fast Draft. Now I can see the way it slows and pulls the reader out when there are too many, so that gets a card.

 

And it goes on like that.

 

For the person that asked me how I knew which words I over use, I rely on my own gut, lists of words I see other writers bemoan and scan my ms for those, and my bff, HEALaDOC- If you’re playing along at home, you know I love HEALaDOC and am constantly pushing you toward it. I’m doing it again. One of the things it does is scan your ms and put your words in order of use, starting at the highest. It actually puts the number next to it, so when you see you’ve used “only” 1,111 times – yes, its time to cut! 

 

So I posted a comment like an hour ago and I’ve already been emailed saying “Yes, please do an Edit Card Give Away Contest.” And so I will – but not now *smirk* But soon!

 

Check out Edit Cards Part 1 HERE

Edit Cards September 25, 2008

People are always asking “how do you do your edits?”

 

My answer: EDIT CARDS!

 

Edit cards are your standard To Do list for everything you write. They include, everything from over-used words and phrases to sentence structures you need to trim, to judging chapters/scenes/paragraphs/sentences/words worthy of staying in your manuscript.

 

The cards are great for three reasons. They:

1. keep me organized
2. force me to do the little things I might forget (or the big things!!!)
3. help me feel like I’m getting somewhere

Sometimes you write and write and write and then edit and edit and edit until you get to the point where you say to yourself, “Self, you’ve been working on this ms for six months and you still only have one ms!”

 

The edit cards are great for people who need to see a tangible step forward. Writing is often, for those people, less energy-draining than editing because they can see the wordcount or pages grow. Editing can too often be about “feel” – and that is NOT a safe way to judge your work. With edit cards, your pile of “done” cards grows showing you your progress beyond just ‘the story’s getting better.’

 

Now, everyone’s edit cards would be different and yet very much the same as well

 

I’ve created mine over the past year, and love them. I thought I’d share my over-used words list. Some of these aren’t words that are used a lot, but still need to be chopped in the editing process.

 

Like “DOWN”

 

I know when I’m fast drafting my characters (for example) ’sit down.’ I know this is a wasted word, but focusing the writing part of my brain on NOT writing something that is easy to find and destroy later would slow me down (tee hee). So, even though there were probably only 3 ’sit down’s in the manuscript, ‘down’ has a card that allows me to remain focused on writing and not doing a checks and balances of O.U. words as I go.

 

So, here’s my list of Single Words To Search – each has its own card. I’d love to see yours. 

 AS

 BEGAN

 CROSS

 DOWN

 GENTLY

 GRIN

 LAUGH

 LITTLE

 MOVED TO

 NOD

 PERHAPS

 SMALL

 SMILE

 SMIRK

 START

 THEN

 TURN

 UP

 WHEN

 WISH

 WORDLESSLY

Punctuation Day September 24, 2008

OK, file this under: Even I was surprised and I love punctuation.

 

Today is Punctuation Day – How are you going to celebrate?

 

Personally, I bought a can of spray paint and have been correcting the signs all over town that are punctuated incorrectly. They’ve been driving me mad for months, but no longer! Now, thanks to National Punctuation Day, I’ve worked out my issues and made the town a Properly Punctuated Haven.

 

Go celebrate at the National Punctuation Day website.

Query Letter: Traditional Fantasy in a YA Voice September 22, 2008

For the ever curious:

ETA: This was the rough draft, not the final letter that got sent. There’s a different draft floating around. But, yup, this isn’t the clean, done version. I should have been more clear about that

 

Markbearer, a 100,000 word Traditional Fantasy in a YA voice, is the tale of adventure and mythology is interwoven with romance and intrigue.

 

In Markbearer a world is torn apart by opposing beliefs, two young royals – one driven by logic, the other by emotion – find themselves connected by the Goddess-given marks they bear­. Princess Faela of Elia and Prince Brennid of Seria each believe they have been born without a Markbearer until they accidentally find one another during peace talks.

 

Headstrong Princess Faela of Elia buries her unelian emotions beneath the cool logic of her people. She could ignore that failing, if only her awkward height, gawky looks and missing Markbearer didn’t make her stand out in their staid world. The freedom to make her own choices means everything to her until the man bearing her mark arrives. Now she’ll do anything, even if it means denying the laws of her people and the Temple to find her own path.

 

Passionate and driven, Prince Brennid of Seria envisions a future where the two isles regain the peace of their founders. The last thing he expects to find during the talks is the one thing that will allow him to claim his throne: his Markbearer. When she refuses him, he does what any arrogant, self-righteous prince would do – he kidnaps her in order to fulfill his Goddess predetermined role as the Serian leader.

 

With a BA in English and a Creative Writing minor, and after stints as a teacher, teen mentor, youth leader, nanny, migrant blueberry picker, and paying the bills in HR, I’ve returned to my first love, writing. I am the Vice President of the New England chapter of RWA as well as their Workshop Chair for the 2008 Conference.

 

Markbearer, is complete and available and while Markbearer can stand alone, I’ve envisioned it as the first book in a series and have begun the process of outlining and writing the next manuscripts.

 

Thank you for your time and looking at my work. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Publishing Blogs Weekly Round-Up September 19, 2008

It’s been an amazingly productive week and I’m ready to finally get online and see what happened in the publishing world while my head was in final edits!

 

 Looking for information on the state of publishing against the economy or history or ebooks or just about anything? Check out the New York Magazine article HERE — a MUST read

 

NineteenTeen is celebrating its one year blogiversary!  It’s an amazing blog about the 19th century from a historical and YA point of view — Always a good read – AS ARE THEIR BOOKS!

 

Jessica Faust covers the new agent dilemma and what working with a new agent can mean.

 

Sometimes we all need an emotional pick-me-up in this whole writing world thing. Check out Deb Kristina blog on receiving “The Call.”

 

Continuing on my ‘it’s been a rough week’ thing – sometimes you just need something that makes you say, Seriously?

 

And so, that’s the abbreviated week. I’m amazingly excited to have the rewrites done and the final edit/polish finished — like, Finish-finished (until someone calls and says we want your book if you….)

 

Have a great weekend!

What Should I Read Free For All September 17, 2008

OK, so – what should I read?

 

I’m taking the next week two weeks STARTING SUNDAY to send out submissions/partials/queries/resubmits *yikes that’s a lot* and NOT write.

 

Why am I not writing: Recovery and Fast Draft preparation.

 

So, what should I read? If I read it and like it, I’ll tell you about it or start a discussion section for books you love.

 

Open up those comments and throw out suggestions – something you LOVED or maybe something you WROTE!

The Final Read Thru September 16, 2008

So, as a final read thru of the re-writes and changes, I’m here with my writing bff taking turns reading our manuscripts aloud.

 

Wow! 

  

So much gets caught when you sit back and read/listen to someone read your stuff to you. I mean, I’m beyond the “change this word” phase and looking at the continuity.

 

Things I’ve found:

1. I conveniently assumed no one would wonder where one of my main secondary characters went for two chapters
2. Reading it through without the edit starts and stops allowed me to see a beat a dead horse in a couple of places
3. My secondary character who will follow the arc of the series took over in a few places — I had feared this and had already picked which scene I would cut if I had to — My lovely CP said, “why don’t you trim those and take out her ‘presence’ in small scenes she’s part of so she’s almost just scenery” — doing this I found that she felt like she was in it a lot less and those trims allowed me to not cut the scenes I didn’t want to
4. But not all of them were bad! I found that doing the rewrite and bringing everything from book 2 BACK to book 1 grew the book in intensity and scope beyond what I thought
5. I made my CP cry – twice! – and not from misplaced commas
6. Obviously she’s read the whole thing in pieces as we went along for months – She hasn’t seen it in almost 5 months and reading the whole thing at once, she saw all the symbolism, foreshadowing and mysticism as they grew – and loved them
7. I still love this book

 

So, my excitement continues to grow as I get read to send out my requests this weekend (hopefully & finally) – I cannot tell you how glad I am to have put it aside and come back to it.

 

One of the biggest things I’ve learned is that   – for me -  the manuscript has to sit in the drawer for 8 to 12 months before I can do my last read throughs (yes, throughS, as in 2) – You know, you hear this advice and think, “well, that one isn’t for me” and sometimes you’re write….. and sometimes you’re wrong. I was wrong and I wasted 2 months submitting thinking I was done, then coming back to it completely fresh – WOW.

 

Just wow.

 

So, I’d love to hear what writing/life thing you learned this week!

Publishing Blogs Weekly Round-Up September 12, 2008

Welcome to this week’s Round-Up

 

We’re going to have a short week this week, since I have an out of town guest!

 

There are certain blogs I read every day (or read the entire weeks worth) —  I’m sure those playing along at home know that Jessica Faust is one of them.  This week she did an AMAZING AMAZING (as compared to her typical “amazing”) post called The Perfect Book about what’s perfect to us as the writer and what the editor is looking for and what that all means.

 

We all have them: books we’re embarrassed to have not read (mine: A Tale of Two Cities) — Nathan Bransford threw open his comment section and its a fun read — See who’s embarrassed to have not read what HERE

 

It’s fun to see the other side of publishing – that not-the-writer side. Kristen Nelson printed an anonymous story from an Editor HERE. A horror story from her early days.

 

One day I’ll get to be super excitedly announcing my cover on this blog. Check out Erin Downing’s  first Simon Pulse cover and congratulate her. Seriously. Simon Pulse. Love them!

 

I’m not a big TV person. Or radio. Or newspaper…. I kind of live a life secluded in the media I purposefully choose. Check out this post: Find Your Creativity – Go on an Entertainment Fast.  I couldn’t agree more.

Winner Pre-Contest Contest – Best First Kiss September 10, 2008

I’m so darn excited, but every day I seem to blog about something instead.

 

I won the P-CC (as we’re calling them) Best First Kiss.

 

If you’re playing along at home, you know that I’m fairly active on the RD board. A month ago several of us were batting around the idea of having contests to prep for contests – kind of a pre-contest.

 

And so it was.

 

Blogs were set up. RD polling systems were created. Kisses were posted. Votes were tallied.

 

And I won the best non-steamy first kiss! I was amazingly excited. I’ve already taken some of the comments and rewritten parts of the kiss.

 

Check out my winning kiss HERE.

All the non-steamy kisses will be posted HERE until the next contest.

Dialogue and Punctuation September 9, 2008

I wrote this originally for a different blog that’s ended, but it got so many hits and thank you emails as well as several schools linking to it, that I thought I’d repost it.

For me, dialogue is my default setting as a writer. My Fast Draft has tons of unpunctuated dialogue scenes that read almost like a blind script and need all the details put in later. But still, if you don’t know the mechanics, you should. With how hard writing can be, it’s the simple stuff you should have down cold.

And so, here it is, Dialogue and Punctuation – otherwise known at college as the blah blah blah post:

 

I have to tell you the dialogue pet peeves are stacking up.

I’m CPing for someone who cannot grasp the punctuation of dialogue, so I thought I would make the world a better place and run through the basics here.

Making a statement:

If the tag is first, a comma should be placed after the tag, before the quotation mark,  and the period inside the quote. If the tag appears after the statement, there is a comma before the second quotation mark.

 

She said, “blah blah blah.”

“Blah blah blah,” she said.

 

Middle of the statement tags:

If your tag is in the middle of the sentence, same rules basically apply.

 

“Blah blah,” she said, “blah blah blah.”

OR

“Blah blah,” she said. “Blah blah blah.”

 

Asking a question or exclaiming:

When you ask a question or exclaim with tags/beats, the entire thing is written as one sentence. The question mark stays within the quotations and the tag is still part of the sentence just like with a statement:

 

“Blah blah blah?” she asked.    OR   “Blah!” she shouted.

She asked, “Blah blah blah?”    OR   She shouted, “Blah!”

 

These are the basics of MECHANICS. If anything here surprised you or you want some more in-depth examples, check out The Writer’s Writing Guide. Rachel Simon has a great page on punctuating dialogue. Also, if you EVER have a chance to attend one of Julia Quinn’s talks on dialogue, RUN, don’t walk, and get in line – it’s fabu!

Who Are You People? September 8, 2008

OK, I’m not sure of the how or why, but in 2 months, this blog has been growing and most days getting a number of hits I can’t explain.  I’ve already surpassed the daily and weekly average for the group blog I started out on.

 

And so that leads me to the question: WHO ARE YOU ALL?

 

If you don’t want to share your name, fine – but let me know: writers? readers? adults? teens? adeens (my new word for adults who think their teens )publishing phenoms who are dying to get your hands on my YA Fantasy (at briaquinlan@aol.com *grin* )

 

If you post a link back to yours, I’ll let it stand in the comments unless the content is hot— this is a YA focused blog after all *wink*

Reading and Reviewing — Pitfalls September 7, 2008

So, I thought this fall I’d pick a day and do a more recent book review each week — Maybe try to review some books the week the come out type of deal.

 

So, I went to the library and grabbed three books by well-known authors I’ve yet to read.  It didn’t go well. But, since I’ve decided this is a positive review zone, I’m left a little high and dry.

 

Here’s what I came up with:

 

One book that was cute and comes out in November in paperback. I’m saving my review for then.

One book that (for once) would make a great movie, but I had to struggle to finish.

One book that I didn’t bother to finish. This was the most shocking for me because it was one of the Simon Pulse romantic comedy ones.  By chapter four we were still in set-up mode and I was dying. I mean, these books are short (65K words) and four chapters, no hero, no setting – seriously!  I typically love the SP rom coms.

 

So, for this week, I got nada for you — just the warning that its coming.  Maybe having read so many AMAZING books this year, my standard is higher.

 

Or maybe not.

Publishing Blogs Weekly Round-Up September 5, 2008

Welcome to this weeks Round-Up!

 

The SFGate did an article on the Romance genre….Hmmmmmm I wonder if that has anything to do with the week-long take over of the city by RWA (Romance Writers of America) — and while I don’t write sex scenes, how could I skip an article that quotes Toni McGee Causey as saying, “A sex scene is an action scene.”

 

Which brings us to our weekly “NB Fav” — This week Nathan Bransford wrote a blog EVERY WRITE NO MATTER THEIR GENRE should read: What I don’t need to know in a query. Read it now. Print it out. Read it again.

 

Jessica Faust did an interesting blog bringing up the fact that many people outside the NYC area feel that publishing professionals are out of touch with readers and the feel of the rest of the country.  Read the comments, they’re just as intersting as her blog.

 

Joanna Bourne changed her blog and has added a progress bar for her latest WIP.  Why am I mentioning this? I thought is was so darn cool that an established author would do that — would let her readers follow the progress and how quickly she works.  I see a lot of them in writers forums where readers don’t typically venture. Very cool Ms. Bourne.

 

I love numbers. The American Association of Publishers has released the June publishing stats and article HERE.

 

And finally, Don Lafontaine passed away this week… You might know Don as Movie Voice Guy — all his fans, not to mention the writers who use his voice in their head to write their query letters, he’ll be missed. No one can make a movie sound the way he did.

 

And a postscript:  Thanks to everyone who mistakenly came here looking for the pre-contest contest for the Best First Kiss — the Steamy Kiss winner was Kim Knox with her Contemporary kiss staring Ben & Isabella.  The Non-Steamy Kiss winner was ME!  YAY! with my YA Fantasy kiss staring Brennid & Faela.  -  Voting is closed, but critiques are welcome for another week.