Jami Gold's Blog: Jami Gold, Paranormal Author, page 49

Self Publishing? What’s Your Plan to Keep Readers? — Part Two

It’s time once again for my monthly guest post over at Janice Hardy’s Fiction University. We’ve been exploring the choices for what path we want to follow in our indie publishing career, and today, we’re digging more into how to walk our chosen path.

My series about Indie Publishing Paths at Fiction University has highlighted some of the choices we have to make and given us a few guidelines for figuring out how to make the best decisions for us.

We started off talkingabout knowing our goals....

Does Missing a Deadline Make Us Unprofessional?

As writers, we face deadlines and commitments every time we turn around. Even before we’re published, we might commit to beta reading or critiquing another writer’s work by a certain date. Or we might have a deadline for a contest entry, etc.

After we’re published, we have even more deadlines. We owe our finished manuscript to our editor to start the publishing process on time. We need tomake the necessary editing changes and turn our work around by the next deadline.

Even as a self-publishe...

Copyediting: When Little Changes Matter — Guest: Misti Wolanski

I’ve spoken before about the different types of editors. Each type of editor and/or editing pass helps us strengthen a different aspect of our work: the storytelling, the writing itself, and the grammar of our sentences.

As a developmental editor, I focus a lot on the storytelling aspect of writing craft in my posts here: character arcs, plots and subplots, stakes and motivations, etc. But anypeek at Amazon reviews reveals that the common “needs editing” complaint usually refers to copyediti...

Writing Truth: We’re Making It Up as We Go

Last Friday, the Romance Writers of America announced the finalists for the biggest romance awards, the RITA for published books and the Golden Heart for unpublished stories. These awards are the Academy Awards of the romance genre, complete with fancy dresses at the award ceremony. *smile*

So I’m beyond thrilled that my beta buddy, conference roomie, and all-around writing bestie Angela Quarles had her book Must Love Chainmail named as a finalist in the published paranormal romance category...

What Does Your Genre’s Theme Promise to Readers?

Theme is one of those concepts that can be hard to understand. We probably all learned in school that theme is a story’s “message”—the ideas that readers are supposed to take away from the story—but even that definition doesn’t clarify the answer enough.

We often repeat themes in our stories. Why? We want to come up with unique characters and plots, so why are themes different?If we understand why we repeat themes, we might gain a better understanding of what themes really are.

Our uncertain...

Egos in Publishing: The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly

Everyone has an ego, a sense of how they fit into the world. Given that definition, egos aren’t automatically bad. Yes, some people have overly developed egos, but others suffer from crippling self-doubt because their egos insist on a negative sense of self.

Obviously, since everyone has an ego, that means everyone in publishing has an ego as well. From the greenest newbie writer to the multi-published NYT bestseller, from the agent and editor of traditional publishing to the freelance cover...

Four Tips for Beta Reading Outside Our Genre

Last time, I mentioned that I was going in for minor surgery. I’m mostly recovered from that experience (no thanks to the medication, which made me sick). But the doctor wasn’t able to finish all the steps necessary to rebuild my jaw and infected tooth in one go, so I get to go through it all again in about a month. Joy.

Anyway, thank you all for the good wishes and for understanding me falling behind on blog comment replies and email. I’m still behind because my body can’t handle the pain m...

Publishing Lessons: We Cannot Do It All

If you’re reading this post on the day I publish it, chances are that I’m currently unconscious or in spaced-out recuperation mode while I have minor surgery done. (I’m taking care of an infected tooth. Hopefully it’s not a big deal, but it does require general anesthesia.) Wish me luck. *smile*

Yes, that’s right. I was serious in my post about self-care for writers that I needed to take some me-time for non-fun stuff.

Other non-fun-but-important things I’ve accomplished the last week includ...

How to Weave Story Elements and Avoid Info Dumps

Our stories consist of many elements: dialogue, action, setting, description, internal thought, emotion, visceral reaction, worldbuilding, backstory, etc. Each of those contributes to our story, and none of them are “evil.”

Not even backstory. *smile*

Our stories are stronger for including all of the elements. Yet given my mention of backstory, it’s probably obvious that we can overdo those elements as well.

Information dumps can happen with anyaspect of our story. Backstory has a bad reputa...

Self-Care for Writers

Writing can be an odd career. We can go from leisurely writing as we feel like it to stressed under an impossible deadline. We might be in waiting mode after we query or submit, or we might be trying to do All. The. Things. before a release date.

Those variations mean that we can struggle to get into non-writing habits and routines. When we suffer from writer’s block, our home might be spotless, as we use cleaning to procrastinate. Other times, we might run out of food and clean dishes, as c...