Amanda Linehan's Blog, page 8
April 23, 2019
Getting It Done (Video)
But the thing about perfect or very high quality is that it takes a lot of time and energy. Maybe more than I actually have. So I’ve learned to focus on getting things done with a level of quality that is at least adequate, but usually more than adequate, even though its not perfect.
This is not my natural way of wanting to do things, but its been an adjustment that I’ve needed to make if I want to advance in certain areas of my life. Not to mention that it’s a lot less stressful than trying to make things perfect.
For example, I was working on this graphic the other day that displays at the bottom of posts to draw attention to the fact that I have free short stories available to be downloaded.
Imperfect, but finished, graphic. 
April 17, 2019
Lakeside On Sale Through Friday
Check out Lakeside, my coming of age YA novel with a touch of the supernatural. Get the ebook version of Lakeside for $2.99 (reg. price $4.99) through this Friday, April 19.
Lakeside is also available at Amazon in paperback for $12.99. Here’s what readers are saying:
I’m a sucker for coming of age YA novels and Lakeside definitely delivers. – Joni T.
A light hearted read with a supernatural twist. – Angel C.
Buy Now
Amanda Linehan is the author of North, about a young woman on the run from her past, the law and an old adversary out to get her. Her newest release is Bored To Death: A Vampire Thriller, about a 300-year-old vampire trying to restore the balance between life and death. She has published five novels. Get a free short story every month when you sign up for her newsletter.
April 11, 2019
Why To Use Writing Prompts and Where To Find Them (Video)
Most of the stories I’ve written recently have started from a prompt, not from an idea I’ve been carrying around in my head. That includes my current WIP and my novel, Lakeside.
Lakeside was the first novel I wrote from a prompt and it was a surprise. I had used prompts many times for short stories but figured that for a novel it would be too much to try and start one strictly from a prompt.
But several years ago at a writing group meeting, we were doing creative writing exercises and I did one that was a “first line” prompt. I had to use the following first line to write/start writing a story: “She went to the toilet and on her way back, opened the wrong door…” And thus began Lakeside.
Lakeside is the story of Jemi, who needs to do a service project in order to graduate high school so she decides to clean up the town lake and it’s surrounding park. Of course, things don’t go as planned. And then there are evil spirits, there are spiders and there’s a badminton team. Lakeside is a contemporary YA novel with supernatural elements. It’s fun, humorous and lighthearted and perfect reading for the warm weather months when you’re hanging on your deck or on vacation somewhere.
But anyways, it all started from a prompt. What I liked about doing things this way is the detachment factor. Sometimes I can get really close to the story I’m writing, especially if it’s from an idea that I have. But with a prompt you’re given some random starting point and then you have to find a story there. I think this allows you to get out of your own way, if you know what I mean. You have to have a sense of curiosity and experimentation with a prompt and you might find something awesome that you didn’t know was there.
I keep a collection of writing prompt resources so I can go back to them again and again. Here’s a few I really like:
Twitter Prompts – There are a number of twitter accounts that just spit out writing prompts all day. I’ve collected some ones I like into a list. You can take a look at that here.
50 Flash Fiction Prompts – Just what the title says.
April 4, 2019
When You Just Feel Like Writing…(April 2019)
I wrote a post called When You Just Feel Like Writing… back in September 2018 on a day when I wanted to write a blog post but didn’t really know what to write about. So I decided to bring that back today because, well, I feel like writing a blog post but don’t really know what to write about.
March 27, 2019
March 20, 2019
The Sommer House
The Sommer House is a YA horror story about five teens who go to explore an old, abandoned house and uncover some disturbing secrets inside. It’s about 5,000 words or a 25 minute read. I could tell you a little more but it’s so short I might spoil something!
I wrote The Sommer House during NaNoWriMo 2014 when I decided to do my own thing and do a month of short stories. I think my goal was a piece of flash fiction everyday, which wouldn’t get me to 50,000 words, but would get me 30 short stories.
In the end, I rebelled against my own rebellion and didn’t hit the 30 stories. I also didn’t only write flash. I wrote some regular length short stories as well–The Sommer House being one of them.
As a side note, one of the things I love about NaNoWriMo is just that it gets me writing more than I typically would. Whether or not I hit 50,000 words or 30 pieces of flash fiction is really beside the point. It’s fun and it’s motivating and it’s cool to do something with a lot of other writers.
Again, I don’t want to say too much, but my inspiration for this story was to write about a haunted house, but not in the typical sense. I kept having an image come to mind about a house that doesn’t want its inhabitants to leave. So check out the story and see if our teenage friends do, in fact, make it out.
Amanda Linehan is the author of North , about a young woman on the run from her past, the law and an old adversary out to get her. Her newest release is Bored To Death: A Vampire Thriller , about a 300-year-old vampire trying to restore the balance between life and death. She has published five novels . Get a free short story every month when you sign up for her newsletter .
March 8, 2019
A Prickle Of Fear vs. Terror
That’s pretty standard for all of us interested in personal growth and development. You’re not going to get anywhere new staying right where you are.
But throughout the years, I’ve noticed something about stepping out of my comfort zone and the level of fear that I’m feeling.
If you think of your comfort zone as a circle around where you are right now, outside of that are a number of concentric circles that represent activities that get farther and farther away from your zone of comfort. Each circle has a level of fear associated with it.
So activities that are in the next circle outward give you a little prickle of fear–nothing crazy, but enough to cause mild discomfort. Activities in the circle after that legitimately scare you–thinking about them causes your heart rate to rise a little and your breathing to get shallow.
The circles go on until the very last one labelled “terror.” I also like to think that somewhere close to terror is a circle labelled “so scared you pee your pants”. But that’s just me.
I have found over the years that when I want to grow beyond my comfort zone a gentle approach often works best for me. Picking activities in one of the first two circles lets me leave my zone, but not experience too much fear, which will often hinder my growth process.
I like gradual approaches, so when wanting to grow I look for both scary and doable. If something is so outside my current comfort zone that it’s terror-inducing, that’s a sign I’m probably not ready for it yet, even if it’s ultimately where I want to go.
And that’s the other great thing about the gradual approach. The more activities I do in the first two circles, the more that changes what’s in the other circles. So something that would have been in “pee your pants scary” has now moved into “prickle of fear.”
The thing about doing something that produces too much fear is that it becomes counterproductive to my growth. If I’m scared to the point of being completely overwhelmed, then I’m not going to grow, I’m going to simply feel paralyzed. So looking out for those things that produce a little fear but not too much is the way to go for me.
I’d love to hear if anyone actually prefers the terror approach to the prickle of fear approach. We all grow and learn in different ways.
March 1, 2019
Video
About a year ago I began to get interested in doing some videos that would accompany this blog. I thought I would actually get started on it sometime in 2018, but 2018 passed and I had not recorded one video.
February 15, 2019
What I’m Reading, Watching and Listening To: February 2019
I had mentioned Lethal White by Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling) last month and now I’m more than halfway through. It’s a good one. This is the fourth book in the Cormoran Strike series and I’ve been really into it since the first book, The Cuckoo’s Calling.
It’s a long one, 647 pages, which doesn’t quite make it Order of the Phoenix length (my favorite Potter book, by the way) but its getting up there. I’m moving through it quickly though, which I have with all the books in the series. There’s something about the characters that makes everything really interesting, no matter what kind of scene it is. I’m not the fastest of readers so for me to be this far along in a book this big is saying something.
Watching
A couple of things here. I’ve been watching a number of animated shows on Netflix recently, and I’m not generally a big animation watcher. But She-Ra and The Princesses of Power, Carmen Sandiego and Disenchantment have all caught my attention and have been thoroughly enjoyable. As a plus, they are all half hour (or thereabouts) shows. As much as I love a good, complex hour long drama, sometimes I just want something shorter and lighter.
Also, I’ve started the second season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon Prime), which I very much enjoyed the first season of. I’ve got to say that the first episode of season two didn’t totally grab me, but I am definitely in for the duration of season 2. I’m thinking things will pick up.
Listening
After browsing through some audiobooks in my library app, I borrowed The Stranger In The Woods by Michael Finkel. The subtitle is “The Extraordinary Story Of The Last True Hermit”, which pretty much sums up the book. I’m a third of the way in and it’s a great, and interesting story. I particularly like audiobooks for nonfiction and I’m finding myself going through this one pretty fast.
Being someone who likes solitude herself, I was attracted to this story of a man who lived in the Maine woods for 27 years (I think). Although that’s way too much solitude for me, its fascinating to think of someone who lived completely by himself, totally off the grid. There’s a fantasy there, although very few of us would actually want to bring that fantasy to life.
Amanda Linehan is the author of North , about a young woman on the run from her past, the law and an old adversary out to get her. Her newest release is Bored To Death: A Vampire Thriller , about a 300-year-old vampire trying to restore the balance between life and death. She has published five novels . Get a free short story every month when you sign up for her newsletter .
February 7, 2019
The Lazy Writer’s Guide To Marketing
Probably because marketing is something that needs to be done consistently, so activities that take less time and energy are preferable. But also just because I’m kinda lazy.
I’m always on the lookout for things that will get my books in front of readers with a few clicks and a few minutes, things that will run on their own, things that I can set and forget.
So here’s my list:
Free–Free is the lazy marketers best friend because readers will download your book and a certain percentage of them will actually read it. Paradoxically, the hope with free is actually that you will receive something in return–a review, a sale of another book, a newsletter sign up, word of mouth. Free gets you readers and you need readers.
