Lisa Lang Blakeney's Blog, page 21

Writing Tips From Fiction Writer Holly Lisle

Fiction writer Holly Lisle spends a lot of her time teaching new writers how to write novels. She has written well over 30 novels herself and has also written several courses for fiction writers which are quite popular. In this video that I am sharing below, Holly conducted a question and answer Google+ chat, and it was really good! There were definitely some good tips I picked up from it as well as an impromptu writing exercise she’ll walk you through which was awesome!

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Distraction Free Writing In Your Home Office

I have been working from home since about 2002 and have always had a home office. I make a living at helping writers with their nonfiction writing: books, blogs, newsletters. So I’ve always been writing in some capacity from home. Yet one thing I haven’t quite mastered is the art of designing a distraction free writing space. Kids, dogs, husband, life…all of these things can and do get in the way of my writing.

Let’s start with the kids… I have 3 children. Three girls to be exact and they are like stair steps. The first two are 20 months apart and the second and third are 16 months apart. As many of you parents “get” all three of my children are very, very different and needed very different things from me as a mother. My oldest is considered “gifted” and needed a lot of academic engagement to keep her busy. My middle daughter is on the autism spectrum and needed a lot of attention to keep her focused and on task, and my third daughter (well she was the mischievous one:). She’s my musical one. Always into something like my pots and pans, the piano, the drums. Always making noise.

The girls are older now and don’t need me in the same way as they did when I started my business, but there are still always distractions. Homework help. Activities galore! Someone is always calling from school because they forgot homework or they forgot their lunch money. My tip for cutting down on “kid” distractions is this:

1. If you’re children are young and are at home with you, it is worth the investment to hire a babysitter for 2 hours, close the door to your office, and write without distraction. Make sure to give the sitter instructions on possible “situations” that may come up so that he/she doesn’t have to run to you every time there is a fire to put out.

2. If you’re children are older (school aged), then it’s time that they learn that your writing is a job and that you need to concentrate in order to do a good job. By explaining to my kids that they can ask their father to slice an apple for them instead of me all the time, I cut down on a lot of writing distractions from inside my home. The tip here is to defer tasks for a couple of hours to older children or to another parent in the home. The house will still be there when you open the door 2 hours later:)

Okay the dogs. That’s why I have that picture up top on this post. I’ve just recently purchased this dog silencer and I’m praying that it’s going to work because if my dogs (2 Aussie Labradoodles) are not quietly laying by me in my office, they are barking downstairs in the porch or outside. Now while I don’t mind that the dogs hang out with me, I can’t have this the entire working day. They have to pee. They have to eat. They have to play. They need to walk and run outside. All of these little “breaks” are distractions for me. It’s easier for me if they stay a portion of the day in our enclosed porch where their food is, beds, and a doggie door for going outside. If only they wouldn’t bark.

So my tip around this is to keep trying. Try different things so that both you and your dogs are comfortable and happy. I haven’t received this device yet, so I can’t tell you if it’s going to work, but I’m not giving up until I get the distraction free writing area I need!

Finally – the husband. You may be writing your first book and your spouse doesn’t totally get it. Or maybe you’re like me and your husband also is an entrepreneur and you both work from home. Most writers I know get in a “zone” at some point during the writing process, and nothing destroys the zone like someone calling upstairs “Hey what are we having for dinner?” (That’s my husband talking by the way:)

I let this go on for a very long time until I finally decided to create a boundary around working at home. I told him simply that when the door to the office is closed that means that I am working and should not be disturbed. When it’s open feel free to chat with me about whatever. That worked like a charm! So my tip for this issue is to set boundaries and stick to them!

Additional Distraction Free Writing Tips:

1. Turn ringer off of your home phone

2. Put your cell phone in another room on vibrate

3. Close shades on windows that face busy streets or busy neighbors homes

4. Put pets in another area in the home while you are in your office

5. Don’t start cooking a major meal you have to check on when you’re about to write

6. Use writing apps that strongly encourage you to get your writing done

7. Write at the same time with a virtual accountability buddy. Check in when finished for the day. (You can easily find a buddy in a Facebook or Goodreads writing group)

8. When all else fails go to Starbucks or the library to write:) Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do!

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Character Research

I got some great tips from authors from the #NaNoWriMo writing challenge on what they do to research their characters. Here’s a few quick tips that they shared:

1. Run your characters through a personality test like the Myers-Brigg or Jung. This was actually a lot of fun!

2. Check your character’s horoscope. Honestly, I hadn’t given my main character a birthday so this was a great exercise for me.

3. If your novel became a movie, what actors/actresses would be cast to play the parts of your characters. What do they look like? How to they act? What are the positive and negative traits?

Remember that too much research can just be another way to avoid doing the writing or could possibly confuse you. Get a basic character sketch of your main characters which I like to flesh out in the character template in Scrivener and then move on. I’m learning a lot about myself during this process:)

If you have any tricks or tips to character building and research, please share them with me in the comment section. Cheers!

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Get Free Romance Book From Amazon

Even Amazon recognizes the importance of building an email list of subscribers which is why they are running a promotion of giving a high quality Kindle romance book (promotional credit) when you subscribe to their free newsletter “Kindle Delivers Romance”.

This promotion is only for new subscribers and ends in a couple of days. If you typically shop for Romance you’ll probably see the promotion on the home page, but if not, you might be able to click on the “Romance” section of Kindle books.

http://Amazon.com

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My Struggle With Fiction Writing

I am a writer and a pretty good one. Heck, I’ve been writing all of my life and I have a good track record of success. BUT that’s with my history of journalism, column writing, and other non-fiction writing endeavors. Not fiction. Fiction writing is a whole different animal.

With non-fiction writing I can lean back all the way to high school days and probably even further than that. I was taught how to write and edit my work by some of the best teachers on the planet in my Philadelphia schools as well as in undergraduate school (Howard University). Could I be better at what I do? Of course. I am always working on my craft. For instance, I am a horrible speller (thank God for spell check!) That’s why I occasionally write about my grammar blunders on my writing tips blog and frequently seek the help of sites like Grammar Girl.

So when I ran across this excerpt of a podcast with Creative Penn’s Joanna Penn and writer James Scott Bell, I was like “YES!” Somebody finally put my specific struggle into words. This was Mr. Bell’s comment:

One common mistake that new writers make is a tendency to start off slowly and not get into a scene where something happens. Characters alone and thinking, starting their day is not a good opening. The story begins not when you lay out the kindling, but when you strike the match. The opening disturbance is critical to engage the reader in the story.

I definitely do this ALL the time because I am a linear thinker. I have to start with scene 1, chapter 1 and I’m pretty sure it is the main reason why I have been struggling with getting my first book finished. When I’ve experimented with starting my writing where the “action” or “emotion” begins in my story I have written 3x as much and I’m so happy:)

My New Writing Goal

So with all this new self awareness (ha-ha!), I’d like to set my new novel writing goal to 5000 words a week. This schedule pretty much allows me the weekend off or some leeway if I miss a day of writing. At this rate, I should be able to complete a 120,000 word book in 24 weeks. Of course that’s the latest I’d like to be finished. In reality I’d like to be done a lot sooner, hoping that some days I get in “the zone” and write a few thousand words in a sitting. We’ll see:)

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I’m An Official Goodreads Author!

It took a little wrangling, but I finally was accepted into the Goodreads author program and my profile page along with my friends have now been converted into an author profile. I certainly feel official! Now I just have to go in and tweak my profile.

I was going to add my working book cover, but have been thinking about doing a “cover reveal” during my book promotion. So I changed my mind about that. My working cover looks pretty good and it may be the final cover.

How To Become A Goodreads Author

If you’re thinking about becoming a Goodreads author yourself, you MUST have a book to claim in order to be accepted. That means that you’ve already published a book or if you are planning on publishing soon, that you need to manually submit your book.

When you manually submit, you need to have a title, future publishing date, publisher’s name (optional), and any other details you may have such as a cover, ISBN, etc. Also make sure that your author name and your Goodreads profile name match up exactly. That’s where I ran into a little trouble and had to ask someone in support to help. Which they did in about 48 hours.

If you write books under several pen names, I’m not 100% how things work but when I did a little digging it seems that you need to create a profile/author page for each name that you write under.

For example erotica writer R.K. Lilley has an author profile page under that name and as well as her name Rebecca Lilley which she uses to write urban fantasy.

I also write my non-fiction under my real name (Lisa Angelettie) and use my pen name for my fiction (Lisa Lang Blakeney) and have two separate profiles for those names.

 

Blogger Vs. WordPress: What Platform Is Best For Authors?

I make my living as a coach, writer and publisher of how-to information on non-fiction writing and marketing for the web, Amazon, etc. In that space, the go to platform for blog writing is a self-hosted WordPress blog. That means that you spend a few dollars purchasing a domain name and domain hosting from a company like my favorite Hostgator and then build your own blog using WordPress as the platform.

It works very much like a free WordPress account except you don’t have to follow their rules around what content you can publish. With your own site you can publish whatever you want. This is important if you plan to SELL anything from your site directly or indirectly as an affiliate.

Now I have to say that I LOVE the self hosted WordPress platform. It provides great visibility for your blog because search engines like Google love WordPress blogs and it is a relatively easy platform to learn – but the world of writing fiction is very different. It seems that fiction writers gravitate more towards to the Blogger.com platform which I also have a bit of experience with but don’t like as much.

This is driving me absolutely CRAZY! Why?

1. I can spot a Blogger blog a mile away. Even with all the templates that are out there for it, most users do not have the skill to tweak them so most still end up looking amateurish. Now don’t be offended if that’s you. I’ve seen millionaire authors with bad looking Blogger blogs. I won’t name names to protect the innocent:)

2. I absolutely HATE that if you want to leave a comment on a Blogger blog that you are limited in doing so. Most people that leave comments own their own Blogger blogs or have their own Google/Gmail accounts (but you have to be logged in). I totally understand why Google would do this, but I guarantee you that if it was easier for the average reader to leave a comment then there would be more comments on these blogs which is better for YOU.

I tried to leave a comment for an author today and I was forced to login to my Google account then go back and leave my comment when on WordPress I just leave my comment, add my name & email and press submit.

What I think is happening is this…

1. When most writers start out they don’t have a lot of income or they don’t want to expend a lot of income on their first go into writing, BUT they know that having a blog is an essential cog in the author’s marketing machine. So why not start one spending zero cash? Solution: Blogger, Weebly, Tumblr etc.

2. Many new writers tend to follow the lead of other successful authors and some of the more popular author blogs and writing blogs out there are on the Blogger platform. Monkey see, monkey do. If authors moved to another platform, so would the newbies.

3. Most writers know zero about marketing and don’t realize when they start out the advantages of building a self hosted WordPress blog versus a free blog. Once they figure it out, most find it too late to move to another platform when they’ve just got the hang of their free one. So they just stay.

Which will I go with?

Right now I have two blogs. This one and a Blogger one. I’m still torn. I want to be “in” with the cool kids who are all on Blogger but I know better. I know that in the long run there will be no room for growth. I did a Google search on my name and noticed that my WordPress blog is #1 and my Blogger one fell off of page one. I haven’t updated either blog really well so far. I’ve been too busy writing my book:) So I’m 99% sure that I’m going to go with my WordPress blog. The biggest challenge doing so may be connecting with other authors who are on the Blogger format. We’ll see!

How To Support Your Favorite Author

 

Thanks to author Rachel A Olson For this graphic:)

Committing To The Draft

I’m not really sure what kind of Google search I did to stumble up YA author Veronica Roth’s website, but BOY am I glad I did. Veronica is the author of my oldest daughter’s favorite books: Divergent (Book 1) and Insurgent (Divergent, Book 2) and she has lots of little book writing and publishing gems on her site.

Not a lot of preachy articles or tutorials that you may find on some author’s sites, but just nuggets of gold as she wrote and published her books. Something that I hope to achieve with this site as I write my first novel and subsequent books (*wink*).

The nugget I read that really resonated with me today was all about the level of my commitment I need to make when writing the draft of my book.

At this point I have written about 30,000 words but I have been stuck there for at least two weeks because I continue to go back and “fix” things that are wrong with the story. Changing names, eliminating or adding characters, among other things. Here’s what she wrote about committing to the draft.

COMMIT. That means not even doubling back to check something. I mean it. If you forget a character’s name, who cares? Make up a new one and fix it later. (In fact, that’s REALLY easy to fix. Find/replace, anyone?) If you double back, even if it’s just for a few minutes, you will mess up your momentum. (Probably.)

Here’s the link to the full post: http://veronicarothbooks.blogspot.com...

So starting tonight…ok tomorrow, I am going to keep pushing through. No going back and reading/editing the first 30,000 words over and over. Because if I don’t get over this hump, it will take me ten years to write this book!

Mean Girl

There’s a mean girl in my head telling me that my story is boring. Telling me that my characters are flat. Asking me who the hell do I think I am trying to write a book that readers will love much less like.

She’s a real bitch and I’m sick of her. For the first time in a long time, I’m going to ignore her and push on although I wish I could push her down some steps!