J.M. Robison's Blog, page 7

Fun Facts

(O)I conceived the idea for The War Queen In 2008. I'd gone for a midnight walk to the pillars above ISU campus in Pocatello, ID. I'm fairly imaginative and always creating stories and scenarios in my head, so while sitting beneath the pillars by myself, I imagined that some god had fallen on the pillars and that's why they were broken. And thus Fangbor came to be.(Picture of actual pillars above ISU campus)One thing to understand about me as a writer; I am a pantster 100% (which means I write by the seat of my pants instead of having a clear outline before I begin the story.) For me, as long as I have a shady beginning, questionable middle, and blurry ending, I dive in and begin writing. For the War Queen, I had a beginning and a middle, but no ending. This usually isn't a problem for me, since I've never had trouble creating the story as I write it. But so far in the story, I had ideas right up to where Altarn and Kaelin revealed themselves for who they really were, but after that I had no idea, and continuing to write wasn't producing any more ideas for me, so I stopped writing.I sat on The War Queen for 7 years. I mused about it sometimes, but it stayed in a notebook shoved in my bookcase and I really can't say how it survived 4 moves. I wasn't writing it and really didn't care to finish.I was onwriting.comone day, browsing through their contest listings so I could enter one, and I found a short story contest. "Well," I thought, "I've only written 20 pages in The War Queen and have no idea how to continue, so I could turn it into a short story, I guess."I started to work it together in my mind how I wanted this short story to go. In the process of thinking about it, this thought punched me in the throat: "Kaelin kidnaps Altarn." An explosion went off in my head, and idea after idea tumbled into my hands and within 3 hours I had step-by-step process on how my story would end, to include all my side characters, their names, and word-for-word dialogue. I've never had a story come so clear and easy to me before.I never did enter that short story contest.(O)The only reason why I made Herten blind was so I could practice writing scenes using every sensory but sight, because as writers we rely too heavily on sight and not enough of the other senses. Making him blind forced me to exercise those other senses.(O)Ratavia's comment about Jessom "should have been a woman's monthly bleed-rag" I took directly from my aunt. A guy told my aunt that he was God's gift to women, and she replied, "Then you missed your calling in life. You should have been born a tampon."(O)Jessom saying, "he needed to ride the horse before he bought it" comes directly from something a guy said to me. This guy was moaning the fact that he feared his girlfriend might be pregnant, and so I replied with perfectly sensible wisdom, "You should probably not have had sex with her before you married her, then." And his reply, "You have to drive the car before you buy it."(O)I hate romances. I think they are cheesy and predictable. So much to my dismay, then, when 3 beta readers for The War Queen told me, "What a great romance!" Romance? I didn't write a romance. I wrote a fantasy. Wanting to prove them wrong, I googled the elements of a romance... and The War Queen qualified. I was so mad. It took me 3 months to come to terms with this. I'd been rejected for publication 40 times already, and when I started pitching my story as a fantasy romance and not just a fantasy, 2 agents requested to read my whole book and I secured a publishing contract with a publisher.(O)Ruidenthall's tattoo I took from a soldier I knew by the name of Austin Powers (Thank you, SPC Powers!) He had a tribal sleeve tattoo on his arm and I liked how it looked.(O)I didn't know what the belldew flower looked like until the 5th draft.(O)I created the shorns and the musicians to deploy them because I'd written a lot of battle scenes already in other stories of mine, and I felt the whole sword-charge-at-the-front was cliché and boring. I created the shorns and the musicians to bring a fresh take on how battles might be fought, and I like to be as original as possible.(O)While creating the shorn, I wanted a metal that was super lightweight but super strong, could be mined easily and found in abundance and cheap to manufacture, and I wanted it copper-colored because, you know, I can. Nothing in real life matched my needs. And then I thought, "This is a fantasy. I make stuff up all the time." I named my creation lithalium.(O) I was a deputy sheriff at the time I wrote my 1st draft to The War Queen. I worked in the county jail and for a full month it was my job to escort an inmate to court for her trial. Every day for a month I sat in the back of the court room for 8 hours with my only job being to make sure my inmate didn't get out of hand, which she never did. With all this extra time on my hands in the court room, I wrote the 1st draft to The War Queen in a notebook by hand. Weird enough, that's probably why my first chapter has a court scene in it.(O) I've had to learn some skills while writing The War Queen that have no bearing on my real life, namely how to make shoes, dye clothes, and home pigeons.BACK TO GOODIES

Facebook and Twitter for authors, and why you should consider doing both.

As an author, how do you choose which social media platforms to use for promotion and marketing? All of them?I definitely discourage ALL of them, unless, of course, you have the time, something which I don't. 2, maybe 3, is good. But which 2 or 3 should you use? I'm an author and I'm established on twitter and facebook. So for those two, I will give the pros and cons and let you narrow your search for what you should use from there.TWITTERTHE GOOD:#1:Twitter has a social platform where you can post anything you want, as long as the post does not exceed 180 characters. What does that look like? This:1842 England girl frees wizard imprisoned in 1518. Church threatens wizards life, society threatens girl, love threatens both #PitMad #HR #FThat is exactly 180 characters and also my pitch for a #pitmad contest twitter hosted. What else can you post on twitter beside 180 characters?#2Pictures and links. It makes it great when you just need to throw out a quick"My book is on sale, here's the link"to thousands of people. You can also throw out super short teasers like, "They don't want a princess, they want a war queen. Check the link for more."Something new I've been doing is, since I write every 1st draft by hand, every day I'll take a picture of a page I wrote and throw a short snippet about what happened on that page:"Zadicayn and Jaicom fall into a time warp and end up in 2017 Pocatello Id, #amwritingfantasy"with the picture included. I'll also share links and pictures of things I had to research for the novel I'm currently working on.#3You can list your website with your bio and have a pinned tweet which will direct more traffic to the thing you want engagement with the most. For me, I have my book trailer pinned.#4It's easy to connect with like-minded people like yourself. Do you love helping writers grow and develop their skill? They're all over twitter looking for advice. You can reach out to them to teach them skills while at the same time promoting your book.#5You can reach out to thousands of people depending on the hashtags you use. It's easy to meet and engage with people who might be interested in you, your books, or your writing advice.#6Have a book you're promoting? Cool. You can create your own hashtag for it. #TheWarQueen. Any time you post about The War Queen, you slap that hashtag on it and it funnels all of your War Queen promotions into one tight, easily findable space. THE BAD ABOUT THAT: If you're book title is "Touched", then 100 other books bear the title "Touched." And they're all using the same hashtag.THE BAD:#1Thousands of people are on twitter, so the moment you post something, it's swept downstream by the flood of tweets rushing in behind you. Even the people that follow you because they want to, they are also likely following thousands of people who are also posting, so even though they want to follow you, they may not see everything you post. So you must post frequently (I heard once every 20 minutes or so is effective in getting noticed. Who has time for that? I've got full-time employment and I'm also in the military.)#2Photos you tweet are not saved on twitter, unless you consider an exhaustive list of photos cluttered with the original tweet you had originally posted the picture with to be "saved". If you're on twitter, you know what I mean.#3Your friends, family, and fans you have on facebook but who are not on twitter, will never see your twitter posts.FACEBOOKTHE GOOD:#1With an author facebook page, you can stretch out that 180 character tweet to something much larger. Full documents if you want. Now instead of"1842 England girl frees wizard imprisoned in 1518. Church threatens wizards life, society threatens girl, love threatens both #PitMad #HR #F"I can post:________________________The last wizard is captured by three men who steal his amulet to harvest the magic for themselves. Since the church of 1518 England is on a wizard hunting rampage, the three men imprison Zadicayn to keep him hidden from the church because his amulet won't work if he is dead. Zadicayn's last spell will keep him alive until someone frees him.Brynn isn't fooled when Reuben dies of a heart attack. She's convinced her best friend was murdered, and the map he leaves for her in his will only fires her suspicion. Thinking the map will lead to his murderer, Brynn follows it despite this corset-restricting era of 1842 England which already has her locked into an early marriage. But the map doesn't lead to Reuben's murderer. It leads her to a key which unlocks a 324 year old wizard.Brynn refuses to believe Zadicayn's claims, despite his era-displaced Old English dialect, until Zadicayn's amulet is found in the keep of her soon-to-be father-in-law. Now she's in danger for freeing Zadicayn because her fiancé's father poisoned Reuben for trying to do the same thing, and getting attracted to the wizard isn't helping her delicate mess, either. But this attraction is nearly in vain, because upon Zadicayn's death a creature from an alternate world will infiltrate our own and consume humanity. Employed by the Fae who give magic, Zadicayn pleads for more wizards. So far, they've told him no and he's running out of places to hide from those who want his amulet back and from the church who's on the hunt again to purge the world from the last of the magic.______________________And when I take a snapshot of the handwritten page of my 1st draft I did that day, I can include a more lengthy explanation:"Zadicayn and Jaicom fall into a time warp and end up in 2017 Pocatello, Id when they were in 1843 Rome, Italy. How they react to cars and hospitals has been a hoot to write!"#2Also, facebook will allow you to create photo albums. I have a bunch of pictures I've collected that I associate with my currently published novel, The War Queen. I have character photos, buildings that would fit in my society, and fan art. When I collect pictures for my latest novel, The Last Wizard, I'll create a photo album for that too. More organized and easily accessible for people following your author page.#3You can store movies on your page. I have stored a book trailer. In the future, I plan to store recordings of myself talking about writing.#4There is a store on your author page (depending on how you initially set it up.) You can list all your books there with their buy links. Because I'm awesome, I created merchandise on zazzle.com which features by book, The War Queen. T-shirts and such. I've linked my zazzle.com store to my facebook store.#5You can use hashtags in facebook as well to extend your reach.THE BAD:#1On twitter, you blast the newsfeed because you're competing with thousands of others for attention. You can't do that on facebook. Where twitter is a flood, facebook is a sleepy stream. If you slam facebook with 50 posts a day with book promotions, they will unfollow/block you quick. If they follow you on facebook, it's likely they DO want to follow your progress as an author, but they don't want the only thing they ever see to be "all about your or your book." Nobody else is slamming facebook newsfeeds 50 times a day, because the competition isn't the same as it is on twitter. Facebookers have the option to follow your author page and have any updates you make to it appear as the first thing in their newsfeed. If you update it 50 times a day, they have to scroll down 50 posts to see everything else they are following. I recommend just posting on your author page once a day. Even once a week is great. Remember: sleepy stream.#2Where you'll get a raging following of 50,000+ followers on twitter, don't expect the same on facebook. Again, flood vs. sleepy stream. Because twitter has more reach than facebook, you'll get more views on twitter.#3Your fans/family/friends who only follow you on twitter will not see your facebook posts.I'LL TALK ABOUT BOTH TOGETHERTo help get potential fans interested in my books, I offer myself out as a writing tip expert and beta reader. I load twitter with 90% writing tips and 10% book promotion. People hate constant "buy my book" links because everyone does it. If you offer your audience something more, like writing advice, you help them, and they will be more likely to research your books if they've been helped.Because I have two different audiences (one who wants more of what I write and one who wants more writing advice) I have two separate platforms: facebook and twitter. Twitter I use for book promotions and writing advice because I have a larger audience I can reach with my writing advice. I keep my facebook author page strictly for book updates. That way if I have a hard core fan, they can choose to follow one of those or both. They don't want writing advice but they DO want book updates? Facebook. The more options you have for fans to connect with you, the more fans will connect with you.What are your thoughts on social media for authors? I'd love to hear it.J. M. Robison is the author of The War Queen, published with Tirgearr Publishing. 

Music Links to Songs I Used in the Making of The War Queen

Since The War Queen has an ebook version, I REALLY wanted to attach links into the book itself during certain scenes, like at my battle so readers could listen to certain sounds/music that dealt with the scene. My publisher liked this idea, but because of the file size and copyright issues, it was a sad "No." So I'm going to drop this link right here:A nervous violin player fidgeted close to Altarn’s horse, pacing in smallmovements about his area, clenching his instrument and bow in his gloved hands asif he might use them as a weapon.“Eldic.” Altarn’s voice slashed through the cold dark.The violinist looked up.“Play.”The lad nodded as if on instinct instead of willingness. Altarn could almost hearhis bones scream in protest as he set the instrument under his chin and the bowagainst the strings (the music link below follows this passage):I use the below song to describe Kaelin and Altarn's relationship:BACK TO GOODIES

Save a Life. Write a Book.

I’m a happy person. My father also passed away too soon, my car was repossessed, I was fired from a job some years ago, deployed twice with the military (11 months away from family each time), and I live paycheck to pay check. But I’m happy. I deal with these stressors easily, and continue on with life as if nothing has happened.I’ve also written 7 booksIn these books characters die – sometimes horribly. Yes, I do that on purpose sometimes – characters are put through impossible situations that they somehow work out, face challenges, make mistakes, rise above, fall, and conquer.There is great therapy in writing about those thingsHumans are a destructive force: It should come as no surprise to any of us that we have, and have seen others, snap into aggression in an instant. You are the goddess of sunshine and flowers, and then the store you were trying to reach before they closed had closed 30 minutes early (8-5 actually meant 8-430, apparently). No longer the goddess of sunshine and flowers, you pound on the door, scream that you hate Elko, NV, and you begin to call their phone number so you can leave a nasty gram for them to listen to Monday morning when they open to hear how upset you were about their false advertising about their times.Humans build up stress: We build upon and we build upon until the straw that broke the camel’s back, and we explode. Ever watch Anger Management? There’s an analogy about a cashier who listens to complaining customers day after day, year after year and does nothing. Until one day they snap and shoot up the whole store.Humans need an outlet: It’s impossible to go through life and NOT get stressed out, but stress is like a 10 pound weight, sometimes heavier, and once you pick it up, you’ve got to put it down eventually, and sometimes you put it down on someone’s face, or throw it across the room and put a hole in the wall.What kind of an outlet do humans need? There are many outlets, but consider MY outlet. I’ve written 7 books. And I’m happy, remember? Because when I’m really upset, I create a fictional character fashioned after the person I’m angry with, and then kill them (the character, not the real person). I can write out all the details of how it is done and I can laugh manically while I do it.But nobody got hurt. And I feel remarkably betterWhen I’m upset and I sit down to write, I stop being upset because it is impossible to write while concentrating on how upset I am. It is one or the other. So I write, and stop being upset, and I feel better when I'm done.So save a life. Write a book. And consider this, ever heard of a serial killer author? Me neither.BACK TO JM'S BLOG

How to write a winning query letter

Have you completed and polished your book and want to start trying your hand at traditional publishing?Below is my own query letter which won me a publishing contract. It’s been checked by 3 literary agents where one said she would receive this letter well and perhaps ask to read more material, the 2nd agent said it was fantastic, and the 3rd agent requested to see my whole manuscript. Here’s the letter:__________________________________Dear (agent’s name),THE WAR QUEEN for my completed new adult fantasy romance novel at 108,000 words, is a misleading title, because the people dethroned the last king and queen three hundred years ago. To avoid another tyranny, the people instead nominate a State Head every three years and Altarn is the first female to hold the position. She’s used to tolerating the biases of men but Kaelin, the State Head of his territory, has declared her incompetent and has even, according to Altarn, threatened to steal her land – she believes he wants to make himself king. Believing she must “dethrone” Kaelin, Altarn rides to her last ally to ask for aid in the war against Kaelin she knows is coming. But in her absence an army launches an attack… and it’s not Kaelin’s.Taking advantage of the startling situation, Kaelin kidnaps Altarn so he can take her land without her in the way. Soon realizing he needs her help to fight this army instead, he releases her and, since Altarn’s army is too small to win the war alone, she is forced to accept his help, but payment for his help will be her land. No one believes Kaelin is secretly trying to make himself king, so after the battle is won, alone in her knowledge and lacking allies, Altarn must become the War Queen of legend to dethrone another king… though she unexpectedly dethrones his heart instead.THE WAR QUEEN centers on the minority class of females in positions of great responsibility. I compare Altarn’s position to our current day President where Americans are facing the reality that females can and are running for President. Female heroes are also rising in comic books and Disney has recently revamped some old favorites with independent females. With the 2016 elections approaching and females voicing their intent to run, I believe THE WAR QUEEN would impress some well-timed interest upon the market. I am female with the rank of Staff Sergeant in the United States Army so I have a very personal view of what it means to be treated with biases due to my gender in a position of great responsibility. However, having conquered those perceived biases, I have emerged as a better leader with gained respect from my male peers, just like Altarn has done.I am an emerging author with one young adult and five adult fantasy novels to carry my 16 years writing experience. My full manuscript is attached to this email. This is a multiple submission. Thank you in advance for considering my manuscript and I look forward to your response.________________________________Now, let’s dissect this top to bottom so I can show you what the agents loved about it:-GENRE AND WORD COUNT: I started off with the book’s genre and word count because agents love this. Agents only represent certain genres and if you pitch to them a horror when they only represent fantasy, you’ve just wasted their time with your horror query letter. Agents like to be warned at the start what book they are getting into and how long it is, because word count matters. Why does word count matter? Read this POST.-THE HOOK: I was able to squeeze my hook in at the same time as my genre and word count, for my hook is “The War Queen... is a misleading title because...” and that motivates the agent to read on because they want to know why in the heck the title is misleading. The hook MUST be at the very beginning of your letter, to hook the agent to read the rest of the letter. No matter how you word your hook, you’ve got to have one. Just like you’ve got to have a hook in your first chapter to motivate people to read the next one.-THE BODY: hint hint, every query letter goes into a “slush pile” because agents get 500 query letters a month (approx.) If your query doesn’t “stand out” in some way, agents will toss it. Agents don’t have time to read a 3 page query. They barely have time to read a 3 paragraph query. Someone who worked sorting out the “slush pile” for an agent told me that the best queries are always 2 paragraphs. They are short and the agents like things that are short but brilliant.-HOW CAN MY BOOK BE MARKETED? WHAT EXPERIENCE DO I HAVE TO WRITE THIS BOOK?Now, you notice that my query is longer than 2 paragraphs. I tell the STORY in 2 paragraphs. The 3rd paragraph I snuck in there because agents also want help in knowing how to market your book (where might it fit in? Why are you the person to write this book? What experiences do you have that have helped you write this book?) So this paragraph is optional, but my experience says it has helped me. Agents are only human. They don’t know everything about the world, so a little nudge to them saying, “Hey, 2016 elections are coming up and females are running for president and that closely associates what my book is about so now would be a really really good time to publish my book,” helps you and the agents like to have an easy break since they didn’t have to figure that out for themselves.-PERSONAL BIO:Agents want to know if you are self-published. If you are, list it. If you’ve won any writing contests, list it. Do you have experience writing for newspaper, magazine? List it. If, however, you're like me and grew up under a rock and you’re only claim to fame is you have 2 likes on your poem you wrote last year, then you word it like this: I am an emerging author with one young adult and five adult fantasy novels to carry my 16 years writing experience. Hint, there are literary agents who WANT people like me, who have no claim to writing fame. EMERGING AUTHOR is your key word and list how many books you’ve written and how many years you’ve been at it. Because though you don’t have claim to fame, you have experience, and that still counts._________________________________Here is my published book of which the query letter speaks:THE WAR QUEENDon't like my query? Try this link where you can read HUNDREDS of successful query letters (You'll have to copy and past the link into your browser. I couldn't make it "clickable". Sorry):https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

Novel lengths matter

Agents love it when a debut author pitches them a 250,000 word novel.No. They don't.Because paper costs money. Ink costs money. And the more words you have to print the more money it’s going to cost the publishers, and right now as a debut author they can’t trust all of those words are worth the cost. Agents have been in their career long enough to see hundreds of books and to know that sometimes that heavy word count is unneccessary garbage and needs to be cut out of the book. So when your 250,000 word Lost Gods series slides across their desk in a query letter, you get a rejection letter that looks like this:I'm sorry, but I am probably not the right agent for this work. I would suggest you take a look at these two posts on novel lengths:http://kidlit.com/2009/11/13/manuscript-length/. I wish you the best of luck with the project.This email changed my life. I had no idea word count was even a thing. I was still going by page numbers (page numbers change depending on your font, font size, margins, spacing, etc. Which is why they go by WORD count, Jane.) So I took a good hard look at my book and edited out 63,000 unneccessary word garbage and cut the book in half.But Jane, the book titled “bla bla bla” is WAY over the recomended word count and IT got published. So there are exceptions?There are 2 exceptions to this novel length rule.1}This big book is NOT your debut book. Once you are published and your publisher sees how much money you are making because people freaking love your writing, you can write pretty much whatever you want after that. Statistics say readers will buy your second book, no matter the size.2}But then, there HAVE been published debut books that are over the recomended word count, like The Historian. And that happens sometimes because you have a MASSIVELY AWESOME CRAZY GOOD idea and you have made every word in that book count. Every #$%& word.But Jane, I HAVE made every word count!According to you, and you are the worst judge when it comes to your book. Don’t believe me? Send it off to literary agents and spend the rest of your life getting rejected. Word count matters. If you want to be the exception, you won't be the exception. Not for your debut book, anyway. Us newbies have to follow the rules before we can break them.Still don’t believe me? Try this link:http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/word-count-for-novels-and-childrens-books-the-definitive-postJM Robison is the author ofThe War Queen, published by Tirgearr Publishing.

Want to publish but don't know where to start? This is your first step.

So you've completed a fiction book, polished it up, and blessed it ready for publication. Now what?Now you decide HOW you want it published. Do you want to:{1} PUBLISH THROUGH A PUBLISHING HOUSE:This means you find a publishing house online or elsewhere and follow their submission guidelines for them to consider you for publication. (NOTE: Some publishing houses do not take submissions straight from the author. If this is the case, the publisher will say, "We do not accepted unsolicited manuscripts," meaning they only accept submissions pitched to them by a literary agent who is representing an author's book) If the publisher decides to publish you, they will hire an editor and cover designer for you, free of charge. You do not have to find an editor before hand. Just make sure your work is good and polished. You sign a contract saying they own the rights to your book for so many years which means you can’t publish that book anywhere else until the contract is up. (NOTE: The contract I have is just specific to The War Queen. It does not bind any other books I have. I can publish my other books elsewhere if I choose.){2} PUBLISH THROUGH A LITERARY AGENT:An agent acts as the middle man between you and the publisher (remember that "unsolicited" thing I mentioned above?) You submit your story for consideration to the agent, and if they like your story, they will choose to represent you and the agent will track down an editor, cover designer, and publisher for you, free of charge. Your agent will then take a portion of your royalties you make to pay them back for their work. They work with you on a personal level. Having an agent is likely the best option. It’s also the hardest one to get since agents are picky about what they want to represent. I was rejected by 47 agents before a publisher picked me up.{3} SELF PUBLISH:This is where you find a vendor online which will help you publish your own book. If you go this route, you will be responsible for paying for your own editor (about $700 or more or less dependent on your word count) and your own book designer. You also have less protection on any copyright infringement. Whereas a publishing house or literary agent will pursue the copywriters for you and take them to court, if you self publish you do that on your own. Self publish you can make your book available as an e-book. You also have the option to have it in print, where the company who prints your self-published book will only print as many copies as you ask for. And you have to pay for those copies yourself. But then you can turn around and sell those copies, thus making a profit.Now pick one of those options{1}If you chose to be published through aPUBLISHING HOUSE, you will need to write what is called a query letter. A query letter is a 2-3 paragraph blurb about what your book is about. Go HERE to learn how to write a good query letter. And read the query letter I wrote that nailed me my current publishing contracthere.You will also need something called a synopsis. A synopsis goes hand in hand with a query letter. Where a query letter is essentially the back blurb on a book to give you a general overview with an exciting hook that makes you want to read the rest of the book, a synopsis is longer (1-2) pages and you give away all the plot twists and the ending. Sometimes you will need both a query letter and synopsis, sometimes just one, but you will need both on hand because different publishing houses have different wants. Some houses just want you to submit your entire novel and that is it. Follow their guidelines. Learn how to write a synopsishere.Now that you have a really good query letter drawn up and a really good synopsis, you are ready to finally find that publishing house to submit to. You can find hundreds of publishing houses and literary agents atquerytracker(this is where I found my current publisher,Tirgearr Publishing)The only rule you have to follow is make sure you find the agent/publishing house that represents your genre. This is important because if you wrote a horror and the agent/publisher only represents fantasy, they will - under no exception - publishing you, so don't waste your time. If you wrote a horror, make sure the agent/publisher specifies they represent horror.{2}if you chose to be published through aLITERARY AGENT, you will follow the exact same guidelines I gave you for PUBLISHING HOUSE. In the query letter, you will address the actual agent's name (Dear Sara Brownlow,).{3}if you chose toSELF PUBLISH, you can get your start at these links. There are others out there, however, these two I have brief, personal experience with. They are both reputable:CREATESPACESMASHWORDSFINAL NOTE:If you seek traditional publication, be prepared to be rejected MANY times. How many? It took me 47 rejections before I secured my publishing contract. I've spoken to other authors who say they've been rejected over 200 times. But, really, if you've sent your writing to beta readers and it is has been honestly polished, it shouldn't take you more than 100 rejections. Create for yourself a "100 rejection" folder on your desktop and instead of fearing each rejection, collect them. It changes your attitude and makes it easier to deal with.And please... PLEASE don't self-publish just because you are upset you can't get traditional publication. You will seriously hurt yourself if you self-publish on a whim. I promise. I've seen it.JM Robison is the author ofThe War Queen, published by Tirgearr Publishing.

Why an online presence is important for writers

Back in the English year 1518, if you wanted a copy of a book, you had to go to the only copy in existence and copy it by hand. We don’t have that problem in the English year 2016. We have twitter, facebook, instagram, blog posts, websites, carrier pigeons, and on and on and we can use these resources to advertise our published books so people can BUY a copy.So now that we have this awesome resource, literary agents and publishers expect you to use it to market your book. You don’t have to have a million followers on twitter and facebook, but you need to be established. In fact, literary agents and publishers WILL search you on the internet when you query them to see what kind of presence you have already established for yourself.Don’t believe me when I say social media is huge for an author? Here is my personal experience:The other day I was noticed during the #pitmad game on twitter by a publication agency who wanted to see both books I was pitching. They told me to follow their submission guidelines and this is a portion of that submission guideline:"If you have a novel that you would like to submit that meets our criteria, please email a one-page query letter (including links to your social media pages and blog/website) and the complete manuscript to submissions@redempresspublishing.com."Thank goodness I was already established on facebook, twitter, and writing.com.Get established now on at least 2 social media sites. You are welcome for the heads up.JM Robison is the author ofThe War Queen, published by Tirgearr Publishing.

Remove "was, had, were, that" for better writing style

This review a beta reader gave me changed my writing life forever:“I am not a major fan of the words "had' and "that" and eliminate them when possible."He was reading my novel, The War Queen (before publication, still in its editing stage) and offered that suggestion. And then as he continued to review my book, he continued to prove to me exactly why I should remove as many "had, that, were, was" words as possible. The below sentences were pulled straight out of my novel, followed by the beta reader's suggestion:A sweet faced girl was holding a tray of food.“A sweet faced girl held a tray of food.”She was hoping he had left without her.She hoped he left without her.I was stunned at the simple transformation. I then started on a path of, “I need to do this for my whole book!” And CTL-F on Microsoft Word became my godsend. I typed in the word “was” to find all 6,000 of them and then methodically analyzed each one to see if I HAD to have that word in the sentence (sometimes you do. Most times you don’t) and if I didn’t need the word, I figured out how to re-work the sentence without it. I did that for “was”, “had”, “were,” and “that.” And this is what happened:ORIGINAL: The tattoo was their trademark.RE-MADE: Their trademark tattoo smoked ribbons up his arm.ORIGINAL: Her eyes were sympatheticRE-MADE: Her eyes offered bandages.ORIGINAL: His threats were promisesRE-MADE: His threats paralleled promises4 reasons why you want to take as many “was, had, were, that” out of your writing:1)Every word should matter in your story. So take out all the words that don’t matter. Most times, “was, were, had, that” don’t matter and they eat up valuable word count if you are trying to keep your novel slim - like me - because I tend to write 173,000 words on my 1st drafts.2)Taking out those words force your writing into “active” voice, which is what publishers, agents, and readers want today.3)It makes your sentences smoother and crisper to read.4)It makes your sentences unique to YOUR writing style. In another blog I read somewhere (I read it in passing so I couldn’t tell you who wrote it otherwise I would link you to it), they said that someone got rejected by a literary agent, and the agent’s reply in that rejection said,“You have a good story, but what is unique about your sentences?”DISCLAIMER:If you’ve ever read The maze runner, you will see that the author used “was, were, had, that” as his go-to words. And because he did, his writing style drove me nuts. Which is why I hate the book. But, he DID get published and they DID make a movie out of it. But as for me and myself, I have set a writing standard and that is to make my sentences as clean, crisp, and unique as possible.JM Robison is the author ofThe War Queen, published by Tirgearr Publishing.

Pay homage to your first draft

I was beta reading for someone, and I asked them, “Is this your first draft? If not, what draft number are you on?” And his reply, “I don’t keep my first drafts. This is probably around the 3rd or so.”WHAT! You don’t keep your first draft? WHY?...............Well, why would you?*Sigh* Let me start at the beginning, and the beginning is how a first draft is written.{1} GET AN IDEA:First, you get an idea to write a story. For me, I got mine December 2000. I was in the backyard. It had snowed a lot, so it was very deep. Kind of bored, I mindlessly began kicking at the snow. At the other end of the backyard was a pile of broken up cement slabs I wanted to get to, so I decided I was kicking at the snow to create a path to the cement pile. As I continued kicking, I started to imagine that I was a dragon (Of course this is a totally logical thing for one to imagine while kicking snow) and I could not fly for some reason, which is why my dragon-self was kicking snow… to get to the village by the cement pile. I wanted to get to the village because they had pissed me off super bad, and I was going to start them on fire. Well, unbeknownst to my dragon-self, there were 3 guys perched on a cliff high above me, watching me. They were from the village I was going to destroy, and so they left the cliff and raced back to the village to warn them of my coming.“Wow!” I thought to myself. “That would make a great story!” So I race inside the house (but only after I made it to the cement pile and destroyed the village THE END) and acquired a notebook and pen and began to write.{2} CHOOSE A WRITING MEDIUM:I picked writing with a notebook and pen because that is all I had. We had one computer in the house and my mom used it for various works she had to do, and with 5 other siblings on it when she wasn’t… well, if I wanted to write, I had to do it some other way. But I lucked out, because there are great benefits to writing by hand and they are:{a}An editor at the literary conference I went to said that writing the first draft by hand is the single BEST way to edit your book, because when you type it onto the computer, you are re-typing every word and you will find things to fix that you otherwise would not have found in just reading it over.{b}You can take a notebook and pen to more places than you can a laptop. With notebook and pen, you can write on the plane, you can write at work, you can write during court (maybe I’m the only who wrote during court), and you can write in the car.{c}You can always prove the book is yours. If there is ever a dispute over copyright issues, you can pull up your 1st draft by hand and shove it in their face, because who in their right mind would copy word for your novel by hand? Even if they did, there is a remarkable difference (or should be) between 1st draft and published version, so if they copied down by hand word for word the published version, then something is definitely fishy.{d}But if you can’t write your first draft by hand because it’s year 2065 and paper no longer exists, then I HIGHLY recommend typing your first draft twice. Type it up, print it off, re-type. You’ll get a similar result (I say similar because writing on 2 different mediums works different areas of the brain.){3} START WRITING, AND BE FEARLESS:Your first draft is just an outline. Did you already write out an outline? WRONG! It was just a sketch. Your outline is a sketch, your first draft is the outline, and draft 2 and beyond only start to have echoes of a book. The purpose of the 1st draft is just to GET THE STORY DOWN so don’t stress. And don’t worry about your writing being crappy. It’s your first draft (and for me, my first book as well) so give yourself a break. It’s SUPPOSED to be crappy. If it’s not then you are doing it wrong. No one is going to see your first draft unless you let them, so don’t let them. Need further convincing to write fearlessly? Here is the very first page to my very first draft to my very first book I ever wrote, errors and all (hold on… I’ve got to shove all the loose papers back inside the notebook… okay, got it):Swish! Flap! Soar! Dive! (Have you figured out yet how old I was when I wrote this?) Pelting through the sky, Kishmaliky, a young, female dragon, soared. Wind rushed down her back and around each scale like smooth, cold water. Kishmalikey loved herself. From the tip of her tail to the point of her teeth. She loved the way her wings were just the right size for her body. Well, actually her wings were just a little to big for her body. But she liked that because she had seen to many dragons with wings no bigger than their feet, which of coarse, are too small to lift their bodies off the ground. So she praised her overlarge wings. But one thing she prized most of all, was her heart.(And this continues on for 98 more pages where I make a reference to “gunfire”, “wambulance” and “Medic 40” and somehow thought this was all fitting for my fantasy story.)So now that you have your first draft written, why should you keep it forever? So you can look back at it and see how far you’ve come, so you can see how much you’ve improved from when you started writing at 15 years old. So if you are ever invited to a literary conference to teach on the subject of writing a first draft, you can show the enraptured crowed your notebook while the pages fall out of it and scatter across the floor. And then the people start stealing them because your first draft is now worth billions of dollars and… If for no other reason, just keep your first draft to pay homage to it and you.JM Robison is the author ofThe War Queen, published by Tirgearr Publishing.