National TV-Turnoff Week, April 23-29

Today is the first day of  National TV-Turn Off Week, April 23-29

I have decided to write a list of 101 things for you to do during this week of no TV, should you decide to take on the challange.

1. Go for a walk on the beach.
2. Read a book.
3. Write a book in 7 days.
4. Volunteer at the local  animal shelter.
5. Do a crossword puzzle.
6. Dress up like a pirate.
7. Buy a camera and use it.
8. Play an hours-long game of Monopoly.
9. Grow a crystal garden.
10. Catalog your book collection useing the Dewey Decimal System.
11. Plan a family budget.
12. Go on a camping trip.
13. Plant a vegetable garden.
14. Watch the stars.
15. Sew, knit, or crochet a blanket for a cause (Snuggles, Linus Foundation, etc.)
16. Raise a family of sea monkeys.
17. Answer all those unread emails.
18. Pay your bills.
19. Start a petition.
20. Take your family out to a fancy resturant.
21. Look for BigFoot.
22. Take in a foster pet.
23. Spend a few hours browsing in your local library.
24. Donate pet food to a local shelter.
25. Take a walk around the block.
26. Have a chat with your mom or dad.
27. Go fishing.
28. Organize your DVD collection.
29. Build a personal website.
30. Write a short story for a fiction magazine.
31. Volunteer at the local  soup kitchen.
32. Go sight-seeing.
33. Put the pictures into the photo albums.
34. Throw a “Just-As-You-Are” party.
35. Attempt to prove aliens are real.
36. Visit a local museum.
37. Take your family to an all you can eat buffet.
38. Invent something new.
39. Start to tackle the list of projects that has been getting longer.
40. Head to an amusment park.
41. Take a cruise.
42. Sew a new dress.
43. Get a family photo taken.
44. Take a child to the zoo.
45. Write a letter to someone you haven’t seen in a while.
46. Attend an art show.
47. Vacuum the car.
48. Refinish an old piece of furniture.
49. Write an article for a non-fiction magazine.
50. Go boating.
51. Start a blog.
52. Attend a book reading.
53. Solve a mystery: play a game of Clue.
54. Visit with someone in a nursing home.
55. Go to the circus.
56. Head to your local swamp to pick fiddleheads.
57. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper.
58. Take a hike in the woods.
59. Visit an art gallery.
60. Open an online store (Zazzle, CafePress, etc.).
61. Take swimming lessons.
62. Quit smoking.
63. Plant a tree.
64. Cook a gourmet dinner.
65. Help your child with his/her homework.
66. Play a game of basketball.
67. Go birdwatching.
68. Wash the windows.
69. Get a makeover.
70. See a play.
71. Repaint your living room.
72. Read a story to a child.
73. Paint a masterpiece.
74. Go on a picnic.
75. Read a comic book.
76. Start a new career.
77. Organize a family reunion.
78. Study up on your family history.
79. Go on a diet.
80. Sing a song.
81. Write a poem.
82. Bake a cake.
83. Go horseback riding.
84. Set up an aquarium.
85. Write a letter to a prisoner.
86. Take up a new hobby, such as stamp collecting.
87. Spend the week looking for UFO’s.
88. Go rock climbing.
89. Dye your hair blue.
90. Wax your car.
91. Redecorate your bedroom.
92. Play video games with your child.
93. Write a business plan for your dream job.
94. Take dance lessons.
95. See a ballet.
96. Buy a box of crayons and draw.
97. Design your dream-house.
98. Make home-made ice-cream.
99. Dress-up and go to the opera.
100. Take you family out to a movie.
101. Visit a haunted house.
102. Write a list of a 101 things you can do.

Quote: “I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” —Groucho Marx 

Why Do You Blog?

 Why do you blog? That is a very good question. I’m glad you asked, cause it makes me stop and evaluate myself. I like doing that. Now I have to stop and think. Why do I blog? Okay, let’s see.

I think it’s a “multi-task” reason. First off, I started blogging because I just wanted to have a place where I could talk about any subject that popped into my head. At the time I had just started building websites, and I found out than how longwinded I could get. No, that’s not true…. I already knew how longwinded I was. I’ve have pen-pals since the 1980’s, more than 70 of them from all over the world. My average letter to each person was 20 pages long and I wrote on both sides for a total of 40 written pages. I wrote a letter a day, on top of my fiction/book writing. I was a teenager in the 1980’s and I was writing to other teenagers. Sadly, one by one, my pen-pals grew up, got married, had kids, and eventually we all stopped writing to each other. I went from writing to 70 people to writing to 2 people. I started feeling very lonely. I transfred from pen snail mail to email in 1997. By 2004 blogging was becoming the “in thing” so I tried it out as well, and it quickly took the place of my pen-pal writing.

So, I guess you could say, blogging was my way of communicating to people worldwide, when pen-paling went out of fashion. Like when I was pen-palling though, I keep my blogging and my book/fiction writing separate. I do not think of them as the same things. One I do because I’m obsessively compelled to write about the characters that are in my head, I have to get them out on paper, otherwise I’d never be able to do anything else; I have never felt that I had control over my books, but that the characters themselves take over.

The other (blogging) I do, because I am driven by the desire to just talk about whatever topic I may want to talk about. As those who have today, meet me face-to face know, my actual ability to speak is rather limited due to the fact I grew up in a family where speaking was almost forbidden, and topics one could talk about were limited to The Bible or the Book of Mormon and pretty much nothing else. The result was I rebelled against them by writing to people outside the confines of our family: pen-pals and later blogging.

Last year when I got my job at Macy’s I was faced with something I had never anticipated: the telephone. This is not a thing that I had used more than a couple of times in my entire life. The first few times it rang, I did not answer and my boss was quite upset with me. I had not realized that I was supposed to answer, she had not told me that use of a phone was to be part of my job, and when I did answer it, I found it very difficult to use, never having used one before. This causde me to be chided by the other girls who I worked with, girls 10 to 15 years younger than me, girls who asked, how can you have never used a phone before? Girls who found reason to force me to speak as a result. My answer was quite simple, I have never needed to use a phone before, I don’t talk, I write. At work they questioned my working and never taking a break to talk with either costumer or worker. My answer again, was the same. I do not talk, I write, I was there to do my job, not talk, I had no reason to talk and saw it as a waste of time that distracted from my work. My job at Macy’s was my first real face-to-face contact with people outside of family or my family’s church, I had not realized how much people talk. Nor had I realized that getting a job would involve the act of talking or phoning. When I want to talk to some one I write them a letter, that is what I have always done. Now with the online world, people no longer answer my letters, they respond only to tell me their phone number or email adress, neither phone nor email I use, and so instead I write a new post on one of my 12 blogs. For me blogging is a form of communication, that takes the place of talking, talking being a thing which I don’t really like to do, simply because I’m not used to doing it. Blogging is, for me, what I suppose you would call “talking”, which is why I do not consider blogers to be writers..

And there in lay the difference I find between blogging and writing. Writing is something that I do to write books, as I have been doing since 1978. Writing is the creation of stories, while blogging is just me talking to you. That’s why I blog, to “talk“ not to write.

My other reason to blog, is to teach people what I know about writing. Writing takes up 90% of my time. I spend about 8 hours a day asleep, 2 or 3 hours a day taking care of the animals, and the rest of those 13 hours I spend writing, either on paper for my books or online for my blogs. I have been doing this for 27 years now. My life evolves around writing, the result of my writing so much, so often, is that I’m often asked for my advice about writing, thus how my blog turned into a blog devoted to helping other to become writers and why most of the posts on my blog are devoted to teaching others how to write.

That is why I blog.

~~EK

Star Log’s Blog Carnival for Writers

I have spent the last couple of hours browsing through Blog Carnivals. I love them.  They are such a great way to find new blogs to read. Well, I submitted several posts from Star Log to some of the carnivals. When browseing the carnival index though, I was disapointed to find that more than half of those aimed at writers have been shut down and are no longer taking new submissions.

In light of that info, I am now starting a new one, to be posted on an ongoing basis here at Star Log. I have decided to hold 12 carnivals a year, one each month. Submissions are open and accepted year ’round.

The overall theme is blog posts of interest to writers. What I am looking for are posts (written by you and posted on your blog), that offer advice to writers of all levels. The prime focus being on fiction stories, though all advice for writers is accepted. Posts on “general” writing topics accepted each month. Additionaly, I’d like to have a sub-theme each month as follows:

January: Writing Mysteries

February: Writing Romance

March: Writing Children’s Fiction

April: Writing Fantasy

May: Writing Science Fiction

June: Writing Pirate Fiction

July: Writing Action/Adventure

August: Writing Gothic

September: Writing High Fantasy

October: Writing Horror

November: Writing Family Memoires

December: Writing Holiday Fiction

Submissions are due by the last day of the previous month. Blog listings will be posted the first week the month. Send your submissions here.

You can copy the following tag to add to your blog so people will have a link back to find your listing with Star Log’s Blog Carnival For Writers:

Conventional Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Patricia A. Duffy says that when it comes to writing,  “Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me”.  After reading her article, I have to say that basicly, she has said pretty much what I would have said, and what I do say, whenever someone asks me.

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

1) Write every day.

This piece of advice is repeated in almost every book on “how to write.” Maybe some people need this sort of discipline, but I would find it counterproductive. Sometimes I write feverishly every day. Sometimes real life intervenes. I have a demanding job and a family. If I believed I had to write every day, even when I absolutely had no time, I’d quickly grow to hate writing and I’d stop doing it. Mostly, I have more ideas than I have time to process, so “forcing myself to write” is not a problem. And during those periods when “real life” heats up and I can’t write, I don’t feel any guilt. Why should I? Writing isn’t a religious penance or a health routine. It’s something I enjoy.

My responce to what she says:

You’ve heard it preached from the pulpit of every sacred book on writing: WRITE EVERY DAY!!!

Now ask yourself this: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A hobby?

If you think of writing as a hobby, than who cares when you write? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if your writing gets sloppy? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if you ever get published? No one. If you write as a hobby, than by all means writer seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, because you know what? If you are writing because writing is a hobby, no one cares. Why? Because hobby writers write for their own pleasure. If they get published, it’s a great big WOO-HOO! for themselves and their family. But very few hobby writers ever get published. Why? Because they are content to post their stories on message boards and web-sites and blogs. They are happy to see their work on the internet. Writing after all is just a hobby to them. They are content with what they do.  So, for writers who write as a hobby, it is not important when they write, because their family is not dependant on the writing. Just search on Google for Fan-Fiction. Millions of stories are posted all over the internet, but because they are written by hobby writers, tthose stories well never be printed in books. They well never be published, but no one cares, not even the writer. So why than does it matter if the hobby writer writes every day?

Let’s look at the other side of this story.

Now ask yourself this once again: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A career?

I ask you: What is your day job? Do you  wait tables? Drive a school  bus? Are you a cashier at the local super market? Maybe you teach high-school geography? Whatever it is that you do for your day job, ask yourself this: How many days do you work each week? A few well say three, some well say four, almost all of you well say five. By law your employer is required to give you at least two days off each week. That’s a law. That law is enforced. If an employer asks you to work more than five days a week, they are required to pay you time and a half. That too is a law. Why? Because even the government knows that you can’t get the job done if you are not given a day or two of rest. If you work seven days a week, you well run down, wear out and get sloppy. Your work well suffer, because you didn’t get a day off.

So, we come back to your answer: Why do you write? Hobby or career? If you said career, than you know that being a writer is just like every other 9 to 5 job. Nine o clock you sit down at your desk and you start writing. Around noon you take an hour break for lunch. After lunch it’s back to your desk to write until five. Five o clock comes around and no matter how compelled you are to keep writing, you put down your pen, turn off the light and don’t go back to your desk again until tomorrow morning when nine o clock rolls around again. Like any other job, you take the weekend off. Why? Because for you writing is more than a hobby. For you writing is what puts food on the table. For you writing is what puts clothes on your children. Writing just paid for your teenager’s PS3. Writing pays the mortage. Writing pays the vet bills caused by the recent pet-food recall. You write because writing is your career, your job, your livelyhood. For you writing is not a hobby. You can’t afford to let you writing get sloppy and you know that, which is why you also know that it is foolish for you or any other writer to think that it is in your best interest to write every day.

And that is  why I do not write every day.

Moving on to myth #2…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

2. Don’t Edit Until the First Draft is Done.

I edit obsessively as I go along. I like rewriting things. I can’t imagine another way to write and would be utterly incapable of completing that first draft if I didn’t do it this way.

My responce to what she says:

This, I think, depends on the writer and what they are writing about at the time. Personaly I do not believe in editing as you write, as a general rule. Why? I find that when I am writing, I  write better if I don’t stop. I have learned to ignore typos and spelling mistakes, to turn a blind eye to bad grammar, and to not listen when my mind says I should go back and re-write what I just wrote. Why? Because if I stop, it creates a speed bump. That speed bump slows me down and causes me to go lose track of what it was I was writing. So I find myself going back to where I had stopped, because I have to re-read what I wrote several times before I can remember where it was I was going with that train of thought. In a sence by stopping to edit while I was writing, I have now derailed my writing train, and put it back on a new track, and it just can’t get back onto that old track, because the old track for some odd reason is no longer there. On a road, a speed bump just jostles your car a bit and make you slow down, but on a train track, that same little speed bump not only jostles the train, but knocks it off track and sends it flying into the oncoming train on the other track. That speed bump is now a mangled mess of crumpled train cars, which ow must be towed away and tossed into  a junk heap. A huge rusted junk heap towering high above your head. The next thing you know you can’t write anything at all because all there is is a pile of mangled wreckage. You have hot a writer’s block.

So, where are we now? Well, for me, stopping to edit while I’m still writing is the deadliest thing that can happen while I’m writing. Usually, but not always. This is just me though, and as I said, all writers are differant.

Moving on…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

3. Use Note cards or Notebooks to Organize Ideas

Even the thought of using index cards to organize fiction ideas is almost enough to make me run screaming into traffic. In my mind, these little cards will forever be associated with undergraduate term papers. I don’t use notebooks because I hate to write longhand. I do all my writing on the word processor — even background notes for novels. Actually, I prefer to do background for novels as short stories, even lame short stories with no chance of selling. I see things better that way.

My responce to what she says:

As most of you know, I never went to school. I can’t identify with term papers because I’ve never had one, let alone seen one, and I’m not realy sure what they are, except that everyone who talks about school talks about term papers too. I’m not sure what an undergraduate is, I’ll look it up next time I’ve got my dictionary at hand. For those who have followed my posts on the net since 1997, you already know that when I joined the internet world, it was my first time typing. I had never used a keyboard before in my life. Likewise, I had also never learned how to spell. I wrote at that time in what I have since been told is a form of a “native lingo of my own invention, cause by lack of previous contact with humans”. In 1997, I first I joined the internet, and became an over night celebrity, not because I posted on every forum and chat room I could find, but because people were fascinated by my complete and total lack of any ability to spell. In the years since that time, my fan following grew to a cult status as people set out to teach me how to spell via online forums.

Than came a revilation to the world, that no one had befor known: My books, the Twighlight Manor seires, several thousand pages, and countless drafts of each, had never seen typewritter, I had written all of them in longhand. The manuscipts where totally written in bright colored notebooks with Lisa Frank art on the covers: thousands of them. Some 40 boxs worth of notebooks, stacked floor to ceiling. Noetbooks that I have been writing in since 1978. Thirty years worth of notebooks.

Today, I still write my books in longhand. I still hand write all of my manuscripts in bright colored children’s note books. To date, I have only ever written one outline. I have never used index cards. I do not type my manuscripts until after haveing hand written several drafts. I do not organize my ideas, my ideas flow from my mind at a rapid rate, and I write them as they come. No notes. No note taking. They are not my style.  They do not work for me.

And finally we come to:

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

4. Keep a Story Circulating until it Sells.

This is another piece of almost universal advice that I don’t follow. I tend to select my markets rather carefully. If something is rejected at the market I’ve thought most probable for it, I will normally only try it on one or two other markets before giving up (or in some cases no other markets). Although there are a lot of magazine markets for speculative short fiction, there are actually relatively few professional markets for speculative short fiction of any given type. I guess my economics training makes me weight the possible benefit (payment for a story) by my subjective evaluation of the “odds” of being published in that magazine. If the weighted payoff is less than the postage, I put the story in a drawer and work on another one.

My responce to what she says:

In some cases, this is true, in others it is not.

Some times I write for copyrighted characters not of my own making. For these stories there is only one publisher that I can legally send the stories to. If they reject the story, than that’s it. It can’t be sent to anyone else.

More often I write stories of characters of my own invention, and for these, I can choose any publisher I damn well please. I can also choose who I DO NOT want to publish it. Than again I can also choose to do what I usually do, and that is to self publish my stories. That is how I came to own my own publishing house. It is through owning my publishing house that I came to become an editor. Today I am a writer, a publisher, and an editor, because I reserved the right to choose when, where, and to whom I sent my manuscripts too: no one!

Well, that is my take on what Patricia A. Duffy says that when it comes to writing,  “Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me”. 

~~EK

What Does “Non-Genre” Mean?

Many publications say they only accept “Non-Genre Fiction”. A common question writers ask is: “What is Non-Genre Fiction? Doesn’t all fiction have a genre?” I had just read this post and noticed a debate over what is the meaning of Genre Fiction VS Non-Genre Fiction had begun on it’s comments.  Being an editor, I think I can be of help here. So, here is my answer to that question. I hope that some of you find it helpful when submitting your future stories to publishers.When a publication says, “they’re non-genre focused”, they mean that they only want literary fiction and will automatically refuse all stories that a genre driven. A genre driven story is one that falls under the following:

Romance

Fantasy

Sci-fi

Horror

(and the many other such genres out there)

Genre driven stories are focused largely on promotion of their genre and the story focuses totally on that genre. I.e., a romance focuses on a girl’s romantic infatuation; a fantasy will focus on the life of elves wizards and he-men type characters fighting evil in a epic quest; sci-fi focuses on alien life forms traveling from one planet to the next and other such sci-fi type things; horror focuses on scaring the pants off the reader

When a publisher say “they’re non-genre focused” they want to see a slice-of-life story about the day (or week or year) in the life of so-and-so… this is what is known as non-genre or literary fiction. The story focuses on real-life type characters in real life type situations; stories that real like they could be the life of the guy next door or the girl down the road. Non-genre stories tell a story that is not dependant on a fantasy quest or the eloquent narration describing the alien landscape or the steamy sex-scenes. They simply tell a story about life and thus have no genre.

Well, that’s what I see it to mean. Feel free to comment on your own veiws as to the meaning of “non-genre”.

~~EK

Submission Guidelines for Moonsnails

 

Basic Submissions Guidlines:

This is a quick overview of our basic guidelines. See our fully detailed guidelines for each seperate genre on our Submission Guidelines website.

Status:
Moonsnails is currently accepting submissions

Title:

Moonsnails Magazine

Magazine Format:(projected)

Quarterly: 6″ x 9″, 96 – 132 pages per issue;
60 lb bright white paper, B&W text; 10pt glossy laminated perfect bound full color cover

Circulation:

world-wide though print on demand

Contact Info:

Wendy C. Allen, editor-in-chief, twighlightmanor@yahoo.com

Submission Format:

Send in body of email, 12pt Courier or Times New Roman or Send at attachment .RTF 12pt Courier or Times New Roman.

Payment:

copies only at this time; buys one time rights, (the right to print story in one issue; author retains copyright)

responce time: 2 – 6 months

Needs:

Short stories up to 13,000 words.

Literary Genre fiction. Cross-gen OK.

Rarely uses poetry. Poetry used only if it can be considered a full-fledged story, complete with characters and plot. Never accepts free-verse.

Genres Accepted:

Sci-fi, Fantasy, Gothic Romance, and “mild” Horror

Sub-Genres and Cross-Genres Accepted:

Action, Adventure, Alien Invasion, Alien Realms, Alternative Histories, Amateur Detective, Americana, Ancient Civilizations, Animal Stories, Biographical Fiction, Christmas, Classic Literature, Colonial America, Cryptozology, Dark Fantasy, Dragon Tales, Easter, Ethnic Fiction, Espionage, Faerie Realms, Fairy Tales, Family Sagas, Fantasy, Folklore, Frontier Sagas, Furries, Futuristic, Ghost Stories, Gothic Romance, Halloween, Hard Science Fiction, Haunted Houses, High Fantasy, High Seas Adventure, Historical, Horror, Humor, Inspirational, Kung Fu, Literary, Mad Scientist Sci-Fi, Mermaid Tales, Military, Mystery, Murder Mystery, Paranormal, Pirate Tales, Psychological Thiller/Terror, Regional: Maine, Regional: Quebec, Romance, Science Fiction, Serials, Short-Shorts, Slueths, Space Fantasy, Space Travel, Spiritual, Sword & Sorcery, Supernatural, Suspence, Thiller, Time Travel, Twilight Zone style, UFO stories, Unicorn Tales, Utopian Realms, Victorian, War, Western, Wizard Tales, Young Adult.

Things Rejected:

Rejects all stories that contain:

abortion, animal abuse, child abuse, cutting, death glorification, depression, depressive self-pity, drinking, drugs, elder abuse, erotica, expose`, gore, hatred, hunting, politics, pornography, sex, smoking, swearing, suicide, vulgar verbology, and stories about “how my teenage years were crap”.

Stories must be family friendly and rated PG-13 or less

Poetry Needs:

We focus on short stories, thus rarely use poetry.

Sometimes accepts poetry, at best it’s only 4 poems per year, IF it tells a story and has strong characters. Same as fiction needs, seeks longer “epic length” story poems akin to Robert Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamlin, Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven or Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs & Ham. Prefers long rhyming poems with strong characters and a strong story plot.

Poetry Rejects:

Same as fiction rejects, plus: Does not accept free-verse poetry, haiku, short poems, poems without characters, poems without plots, meaningless ramblings, odes to…, poems without rhythem, or any other type of poem that does not tell a complete story from beginning to end.

Cover Art:

Usually done “in-house”, but well consider submissions of full-color photography or paintings, covering any genre. Always seeks beach and ocean themed photos or paintings. Do not send originals. Email files as atactment. Files must be compatible with MSWorks, MSPaint, or MSPublisher 97, .jpg files prefered. Note that we can not accept .tif files, our email treats them as a virus and deletes them. See fiction for needs & rejects list. Buys one time rights.

Art & Inside Illustration:

Usually uses spot illustrations and copyright-free/public domain illustration, but well consider submissions of B&W, pen & ink, line art only … no pencil, no shading, no grey-scale, no color, our printer well not accept them. All illustrations must be 4″ x 6″ or smaller and camera ready. Do not send originals. Email files as atactment. Files must be compatible with MSWorks, MSPaint, or MSPublisher 97, .jpg files prefered.  Note that we can not accept .tif files, our email treats them as a virus and deletes them. See fiction for needs & rejects list.

Advice:

Best advise: buy a copy of Brian Froud’s Faeries. Use it as though it were our Submissions Guidelines. Treat it as your Writer’s Bible. Use it to create believable fantasy characters. Never go anywhere without it. If you want to write for us than consider Brian Froud your new best friend, read everything he ever wrote. Study every painting he ever did. Watch every film he ever created. Watch the 2 movies written by Brian Froud: Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.

Read the Retief series by Keith Laumer and The Hitchhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. We like that kind of sci-fi best.

Watch Star Trek (the original series), Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, X-Files, and Tales From the Dark Side. Let them inspire you. If your story would make for a good episode on one of them, than we want to see it!

We like to see strong characters. Character driven stories. Well written plots. We like fantasy realms, dreamscapes, and alien planets. Creativity is always welcomed. Pirates are always good, we need more pirates. Always seeking stories about Mermaids, Sirens, Dragons, Unicorns, or other creatures of the Realm of Fay. We like to see characters that Brian Froud would have created.

Let your imagination run wild.

Twighlight Manor Press Home Page

Twighlight Manor Press Home Page

LuLu Has a New Blog here on WordPress…

Well, my goodness! LuLu, every writer’s favorite printer, has got a blog here on WordPress!

For anyone not familiar with LuLu, you can read this post  from their blog:

So, what’s Lulu?

Posted by henryhutton under Lulu , publishing
1 Comment 

Good question. Let’s start here:

Our founder is Bob Young of Linux fame. He founded Red Hat in order to bring Linux into the world as a viable product that could compete against Microsoft, and harnessed the power of a world-wide developer community. And, as you know, Linux is open source, so users have much more control over how they use it, and therefore aren’t at the mercy of someone else to improve it. They, the user of the product, hold the keys to the castle. If you want to have a feature added to Microsoft Word you can request it, and you might get it in a few years if enough people complain. If you want a feature or functionality added to Linux that can happen much easier, and generally in a level playing field.

In many ways Lulu was the same idea, but taken one step further…
CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THIS POST

testing tags

having a problem getting posts to show up… testing to see if tags are working yet

Attack of the POD People! They are not evil.

Are you a self publisher? Maybe you have a manuscript you want published, but you are not sure if self-publishing is right for you? I’m a self publisher myself and I’m always looking for ways to improve, so as you can expect I spend a lot of my “blog reading time” looking for blogs that help writers in general and self-publishers esp. Well, today I came across a new blog I hadn’t found before. My search lead me to this post:

POD is not Vanity is not Self Publish

April 1st, 2007 · No Comments

POD is a technology. It’s a way to print books. It’s quite useful for printing small quantities, particularly if there is intermittent demand. LOTS of publishers who are not vanity houses or scam mills use POD technology. University presses spring to mind, as do very small limited runs of very tightly focused books. POD is not evil.

Vanity presses can use POD technology OR they can use webfeed technology. Vanity presses are essentially printers with some support staff. They’ll help you print up nice editions of whatever you want. You pay for this. It’s called vanity because they don’t acquire the book. Acquire means there is an editorial staff choosing particular books to publish. Vanity houses do not maintain lists, issue catalogs or sell books in bookstores. Vanity presses are not evil

Self publishers can use POD technology or webfeed technology. Self publishers are not vanity presses in the everyday sense of the word. They are “vanity” in the sense that there isn’t an acquisition but the two phrases are used to mean different things in publishing. Lots of people self publish for a lot of reasons. Self publishing is not evil.

POD/scam mills are companies set up to persuade you, the author, that printing your book with their company is the equivalent to having it acquired by a publisher. They charge you money. Unlike a respectable vanity press, they don’t copy edit or produce high quality products. They are out to make money on volume. They prey on author’s insecurities and lack of knowledge. POD/scam mills are the scum of the earth.

Whether a company is the scum of the earth depends on how they run their business, not how they print their books.

There are several POD companies that do not try to persuade you that you have but to print up books with them to be on your way to fame and glory. Lulu and CafePress come to mind. There are others I’m sure.

– Miss Snark, the literary agent

[via To Publish a Book]

→ No CommentsTags: Self-Publishing · Articles · Books

to the authour of this post, I say:

bravo!

*insert clapping smilie here*

every one with a manuscript should read this post, if you know someone with a manuscript pass this on to them.

~~EK

Why Do Editors Reject MSs?

I just read this:

Treat your editors like the coach from any sports team because the editor knows their audience and only rejects writing with a good reason–even if you never learn the specifics.

Seemed like good advice, though I know nothing of sports or coaches. I do know, however, that editors have no choice but to reject 90% of what they recieve. Why? Well, for every book they have the physical ability to publish each year they receive 1,000 or more manuscripts. Many publishing houses only print 12 new books a year, one each month, and yet they receive ten times that many manuscripts in a single day. What does that mean for you the writer? That means that your manuscript had better be damn good if you want it to punch out the compatition and make it onto the editor’s desk. Once on the editor’s desk it had better glow if it wants to get picked for publication.

Why do editors reject manuscripts? Well as the editor in chief of Moonsnails Magazine and The Twighlight Manor Press, I think I might know the answer.

Here are copies of a few of the rejection forms we use:

Rejection Notice: No Space At This Time; MS Put on File:

After careful consideration of your ms entitled [ms title goes here] we must regretfully inform you that we are unable to accept it at this time. The decision to deny acceptance was based on the following:At the current time we do not have space for your story in our publication. The reason for this is that all of the space slots have already been appointed for all of our upcoming issues, meaning that it may be a year or more before we well be able to use your story. However, we did like your story, and may use it in the future. Therefore I have put it on file for possible future publication. This does not mean that we can guarantee we well accept it in the future.
Because it may be a year or more before we would be able to accept your story, you are welcomed to submit this same ms to other publishers. If it is accepted by one of them, please inform us of such. If it does get published in an other magazine, we well move it to a file for possible reprint in our magazine.
If at some point in the future we do decide to use your ms, you well be notified and payment well be sent at the than current payment rate.So, you are now staring at this letter, wondering what to do next. Should you polish your ms and resubmit it? Should you submit it elsewhere instead? Should you give up writing like great aunt so-so told you to do?
Answers: maybe, yes, and no.
Yes, go ahead and polish your ms. Correct any spelling and grammar mistakes. Re-read it, possibly re-write it. When you’ve honed it to a fine point, send it out on it’s rounds again. Who knows maybe we’d like the second version of it even better, maybe not, depends on the changes made. Do not let this rejection stop you from writing though. Write more stories, get lots of practice, keep sending them to magazines, keep polishing each draft. Never listen to great aunts who tell you to give up.While your story was not accepted for publication in our magazine at this time, you do have potential and I wish you the best of luck on your writing career. Though I can not promise that we well accept your work, you are welcomed to submit other mss for our consideration in the future.Sincerely,

Rejection Notice: Inappropriate Content:

After careful consideration of your ms entitled [ms title goes here] we must regretfully inform you that we are unable to accept it at this time. The decision to deny acceptance was based on one or more of the following:

explicit sex or sexual references
graphic violence for violence sake
mention of or reference to suicide
animal, child, or elder abuse
excessive use of vulgar verbology
mention of or reference to drug use — this includes one or more of the following:

smoking
drinking
illegal drug use

At this point if you are like most writers, you are sending me a long letter of complaint, protesting that your ms was misrepresented and misjudged, followed by a list of reasons why sex, drugs and gore are essential to your story, ending with a threat of some sort at the bottom. Now, before you write back to me demanding that I force an editor to re-read your ms, let’s review the problem that got it rejected in the first place.

Our editors read the mss and than accept or reject them based on our writer’s guidelines, our current needs, and most importantly the author’s ability to capture the reader’s attention. You the author, are our client. We are your customer. It is the client’s job to keep the customer happy. Remember, the customer is always right. Why? Because it is the customer who knows what they want. The customer is the one with the money. Likewise, it is the customer who pays you for your work or rejects it and pays someone else whose work was better. You do a good job, the customer pays you to do your job. What is your job?
Your job is to write a story that we well want to buy. What can you do to make me want to buy your story? Ah-uh, now we come to the most important part of writing a story: the customer…that one whose always right…our customers. Who are our customers? The people who buy our magazine. The people who read our magazine. Those are our customers. Our job is to keep our customers happy, by buying stories they well want to read. To determine how to keep our customers happy, we first must know who are customers are.
Who are our customers? Let’s examine our magazine.
Our magazine is family friendly: i.e. read by families. Families include all ages. In other words it would not be unusual for the oldest grandmother to be seen reading a story from our magazine to her youngest grandchildren. Keeping that in mind, we do not accept stories that contain any of the above mentioned things.
We are also a small press, sold locally at a tourist resort town on the frigid North Atlantic coast of Maine. Most people who buy our magazine are often tourists looking for something to read on the beach. Others who buy us are local teachers and parents who trust us to publish stories that provide a safe, clean, enjoyable read for students.
What do our readers want? They want a story that they can enjoy reading again and again. They want action, adventure, fun, and entertainment. They want to read about heroes off on grand adventures, pirates seeking lost treasure, super heroes vanquishing dastardly villains, wars in outer space, knights in shining armor, spooky old haunted houses, the type of stuff that was popular in the 1950’s comic books is what our readers enjoy.
What our readers do not want is pointlessness. What is pointlessness? Pointlessness is ho-hum, I think I’ll ad a sex scene in here because I can’t think of anything else to write right now. Pointlessness is , yawn, the dialogue got to short, so I’ll stick in a few swear words. Pointlessness is, geeze this sure is going slow I’ll add a serial killing vampire and have him splatter entrails all over the pages. Pointlessness is, I can’t think of anything else to write, so I’ll have a teenager overdose herself than slice her wrists while jumping off a bridge, because my life is so dull that that’s what I might do tomorrow. Pointlessness is anything that adds nothing to the story plot, it is simply there to fill up empty space. That is pointlessness. Our readers look at sex, swearing, bloody violence, and suicide and say, “Ho-hum. Looks like yet another depressed teenager wrote that piece of crap. Booooring! When are they going to get some real writers to write some real stories. I’m going to cancel my subscription.”
As you can see, if we print those things we lose our readers. If we lose our readers, we lose our customers. If we lose our customers, we lose money. If we lose money we go bankrupt. If we go bankrupt we have to close down the magazine. If we close down the magazine, we end up homeless and starving. So, the author’s ability to capture the reader’s attention is a big factor in considering a ms for acceptance. Think about it this way. When you buy a magazine to read, would you pay to read something like this:

It was a dark and stormy night, the night I wrote this story. I remember it was dark and stormy because I was watching the drug dealer outside my window that night. But my story isn’t about him, no, it’s about me and my life as a teenager. This is the coolest story in the world! OMG!!!!! It is sooooooo greetarific! It is all about how my teen years were nothing but heaping loads o’ crapola. You’ll just love to reading about how my step-dad was hell and how he raped me and beat up my dog, and how my mom was on drugs (that‘s how I knew the guy outside my window was a drug dealer), and how I run away and everything! It doesn’t have a plot, but that’s okay cause I’m the main character anyways, and I’m so great the story don’t need no plot. YAH! But than I got to thinking it’d be great if it was a horror, so I turned my step dad into a blood sucking vampire and I stuck in loads + loads of blood and gore to shock your readers with too!!!! Isn’t that jus the coolest thing??? I’ll bet no body ever thought of doing that yet. Yeah I know, it’s great, don’t thank me, I’ll settle for you kissing my ass and being my eternal slave, I’m so great you know. Oh yeah and sex too, I added a sex scene on EVERY SINGLE PAGE!!!!!! Who cares about story and plot? You don’t need a story line or a plot, not when you’ve got me! Me and blood and gore and lots of sex and great in your face kiss ass @#$&(+!#@%7 swear words to fill up the space right? Am I right or what???!! Oh yeah! I’m right baby! Can ya dig it?!

Okay, so your ms wasn’t THAT bad, but I’m hoping that by writing that example in that way, it’ll open your eyes to the fact that it is very hard for editors to WANT read a ms that is submitted without the author at least stopping to think about what our readers do and do not want. Other magazines do not publish misspelled, grammatically incorrect stories that focus on me, myself and I surrounding by naked girls and serial killers on drugs and nor do we. Okay, maybe there are a few magazines that publish that sort of thing, so, send it to them, they want it, we don’t.
As I said before, the customer is always right, and we have to think of our customers first. Our customers do not want to read misspelled and grammatically incorrect stories, nor do they want to read pointless ramblings. How long do you think a reader will stay interested in your story if you haven’t actually got a story to tell? You would not read it and you know that, and editors know it even better than you do. You’d never pay money to read something like that, so how can you expect other people to buy it? That said, why should we bother to accept it?

So, you are now staring at this letter, wondering what to do next. Should you polish your ms, delete the sex, blood, and drugs and resubmit it? Should you submit it elsewhere instead? Should you give up writing like great aunt so-so told you to do?
Answers: maybe, yes, and no.
Yes, go ahead and polish your ms. Correct the spelling and grammar mistakes. Re-read it, possibly re-write it. Remove the vulgarity from it. When you’ve honed it to a fine point, send it out on it’s rounds again. Who knows maybe we’d like the second version of it maybe not, depends on the changes made. Do not let this rejection stop you from writing though. Write more stories, get lots of practice, keep sending them to magazines, keep polishing each draft. Never listen to great aunts who tell you to give up.

My suggestions:
Never submit a first draft. Polish your ms until it’s perfect. Write it, than re-write it.
Be sure that your story has a plot which readers want to read about with characters readers well want to read about. Who did it? What did they do? Why did they do it? Where did they do it? What was the result of what they did?
Every story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning tells us what the goal of the story is. The middle tells us what the character did to reach that goal. The ending tells us what happened when the character reaches the goal.
Be sure that your main character is someone that you readers well have a reason to love.
Third person stories (he said she did) get accepted more than 80% times more often than first person stories (I said I did), and second person rarely gets accepted by anyone (you said you did). 99.8% of all best sellers are written in 3rd person.
Always spell-check
I always recommend writers use Windows XP and MSWorks Word Processor. They are simple, easy to use, beginner friendly, writer friendly, and readily available to anyone with a PC.
If you use MSWorks Word Processor, set it to spell-check, tell it to include grammar checking as well, with writing style as formal. That’ll ensure that most grammar mistakes, including passive voice, are pointed out to you so that you can correct them.
Before submitting always ask for a copy of the magazine’s writer’s guidelines.
Always read at least 2 sample issues before submitting, so that you know what type of stories the magazine is looking for. Better yet, take out a year subscription and carefully examine how the magazine changes from one issue to the next.
Know thy enemy. Read the competition. Know which writers are being published in which magazines. Ask yourself, why did they get published and not me? Examine the stories that are published. How are they different from yours? How can yours become better than theirs. Think of the world of fiction as a great war. Some writers are your allies, they well help you reach the top. Some writers are your rivals, they well climb over you to get to the top first.
Be persistent and never give up.

While your story was not appropriate for publication in our magazine, you do have potential and I wish you the best of luck on your writing career. Though I can not promise that we well accept your work, you are welcomed to submit other mss for our consideration in the future.

Sincerely,

Rejection Notice: Lack of Spelling and Grammar:

After careful consideration of your ms entitled [ms title goes here]we must regretfully advise you that we are unable to accept it at this time. The decision to deny acceptance is based on:

Lack of correct spelling and an abundance of basic grammar mistakes.

Due to the volume of mss we receive each week, we are unable to read mss which require us to first stop and make spelling and/or grammar corrections in order to be able to read it. In the 1800’s when most authors were unable to spell due to lack of education, yes, editors did correct spelling. This is not the 1800’s, it is 200 years later. In today’s world, you would be hard pressed to find an editor that would correct a writer’s spelling and grammar mistakes. Today authors didn’t grow up in log cabins 1,000 miles from civilization, and even if they do live in the Artic Circle, they type the story up on a computer, and guess what? Computers spell check, and most grammar check too.
Before your ms gets to one of our editors, it must first survive the shush pile. The slush pile is a mountain of stories, which threatens to smother our editors in a paper avalanche. Once in a while is found one or two authors who have sent their 4th or 5th draft, a well polished draft with mistakes corrected, and the ms printed neatly and formatted correctly…and editors can actually read it. Those one or two that we can read because they are clean and neat with no mistakes… those are the ones we read, because those survive the slush pile and make it on to an editor’s desk.
Which mss drown in the slush pile? If the paper is dirty, crumpled, and torn, it drowns. If the font is big and flowery, it gets tossed. If the font is smaller than 12pt, it seeps into the unknown. If the paper is scented and has confetti flying out of each page, it gets fumigated. If the paper is pink, red, yellow, blue, or any other color not white, it gets tossed before it gets a chance to blind the editor. If it reads like a dry collage text book, it gets recycled quickly…we don‘t want our editors sleeping on the job. If there are 10 or more grammar and/or spelling mistakes on the first page, it gets tossed. Of every 100 mss we receive, more than three thirds are tossed in the trash as unreadable. Sadly, your ms has fallen into the unreadable category. As a result, your ms did not survive the slush pile and went unread by our editors.
Now, before you write back to me demanding that I force an editor to read your ms, let’s review the problem that got it rejected in the first place.
Our editors read the ms and accept or reject them based on our writer’s guidelines, our current needs, and most importantly the author’s ability to capture the reader’s attention. You the author, are our client. We are your customer. It is the client’s job to keep the customer happy. Remember, the customer is always right. Why? Because it is the customer who knows what they want. The customer is the one with the money. The customer is the one who pays you for your work or rejects it and pays someone else whose work was better. What is your job? Your job is to write a story that we well want to buy. Now than, what can you do to make me want to buy your story? Ah-uh, now we come to the most important part of writing a story: the customer…that one whose always right…our customers. Who are our customers? The people who buy our magazine. The people who read our magazine. Those are our customers. Our job is to keep our customers happy, by buying stories they well want to read.
The author’s ability to capture the reader’s attention is a big factor in considering a ms for acceptance. Think about it this way. When you buy a magazine to read, would you pay to read something like this:

dis is da coolest storee i’s even did wrote!!!! OMG!!!!! It is sooooooo greetarific! it is all about how my teen years were noting but heaping loads o’ crapola, you’ll just lov at read about how my step-dad was hell, and i run away and everting! it doesn’t have a plot, but that’s okay cause I’m the main character anyways, and I’m so great the storee don’t need no plot. I stuck in loads + loads of blood and gore to shock the readers wid too!!!! Is’nt tat jus the coolest thing??? Ya I knoe, it’s great,,, oh yeah and sex too, I added a sex sence on EVERY SINGLE PAGE!!!!!! Who cares about story and plot? you don’t neeed a story line or a plot, not when you’ve got me and blood and gore and lots of sex and great@#$&(+!#@%7 swear words to fill up the space right? Am I right or what???!! can ya dig it?! howe loong do ya tink a weeder will stae intrested in yor storee ifing dey kan’t weed wat U al wote? and you hav‘nt actualy got a story to tell ? “YIKES!!!!!!!!!!!“ U wood knot weed it and yos no that, & us editers no dat even betta tan U doo, so why wood we bodder to weed it? even if it had been a goode storee, we wood not have nonw for all the mistakes… !!!! it jus 2 bad that mor wriders did knot spell an grammer checke afor dey submit

Okay, so your ms wasn’t THAT bad, but I’m hoping that by writing that example in that way, it’ll open your eyes to the fact that it is very hard for editors to read a ms that is submitted without the author first spell-checking it at least. A typo here and there is understandable and overlooked, but how often do you see a magazine publish a story in a complete lack of grammar? Other magazines do not publish misspelled, grammatically incorrect stories and nor do we. As I said before, the customer is always right, and we have to think of our customers first. Our customers do not want to read misspelled and grammatically incorrect stories.

So, you are now staring at this letter, wondering what to do next. Should you polish your ms and resubmit it? Should you submit it elsewhere. Should you give up writing like great aunt so-so told you to do?

Answers: maybe, yes, and no.
Yes, go ahead and polish your ms. Correct the spelling and grammar mistakes. Re-read it, possibly re-write it. When you’ve honed it to a fine point, send it out on it’s rounds again. Write more stories, get lots of practice, keep sending them to magazines, keep polishing each draft. Never listen to great aunts who tell you to give up.

My suggestions:
Never submit a first draft. Polish your ms until it’s perfect.
Be sure that your story has a plot which readers want to read about characters readers well want to read about.
Always spell-check
I always recommend writers use Windows XP and MSWorks Word Processor. They are simple, easy to use, beginner friendly, writer friendly, and readily available to anyone with a PC.
If you use MSWorks Word Processor, set it to spell-check, tell it to include grammar checking as well, with writing style as formal. That’ll ensure that most grammar mistakes, including passive voice, are pointed out to you so that you can correct them.
Before submitting always ask for a copy of the magazine’s writer’s guidelines.
Always read at least 2 sample issues before submitting, so that you know what type of stories the magazine is looking for. Better yet, take out a year subscription and carefully examine how the magazine changes from one issue to the next.

Know thy enemy. Read the competition. Know which writers are being published in which magazines. Ask yourself, why did they get published and not me? Examine the stories that are published. How are they different from yours? How can your become better than theirs. Think of the world of fiction as a great war. Some writers are your allies, they well help you reach the top. Some writers are your rivals, they well climb over you to get to the top first.
Be persistent and never give up.

You have potential and I wish you the best of luck on your writing career. Though I can not promise that we well ever accept your work, you are welcomed to submit other mss in the future.

Sincerely,

As I said these are premade forms. Why do we have premade forms? Because we do not accept certain things, and no matter how many time we tell people that we do not accept certain things, they still send them out anyways, thinking “well, they well make an eception for me”… no, not even if you were Stephen King, would we make an exception.

Baiscly, write the best you can, edit it yourself as best you can, always read submission guidelines carefully, and send your ms out to the places that WANT the type of work you write. Editors are desperatly seeking good writers, they want to accept your work, you just have to find the right editor for what you wrote.

~~EK

New From The Twighlight Manor Press: 2008 Calendar

Twighlight Manor Press on LuLu
Twighlight Manor Art by Wendy C. Allen 2008 12 month calendar
All art, drawings, and paintings by Wendy C. Allen, featureing the characters from the Twighlight Manor series, including EelKat, Sir Roderic, Etiole, Xavier, and more.
Price: $19.79

LuLu has come a long way

LuLu seems to be on many writers minds lately. It seems like everywhere I go, someone is talking about how they have published a book on LuLu. I look at these people and I say: “LuLu! You have got to be kidding! Who in their right mind would get a book published by LuLu!” I guess you can tell it’s been a very long time since I had any dealings with LuLu. I remember the old LuLu. Quite differant from the LuLu of today.

I remember LuLu when it first started, not sure when that was, but I remember searching Google for self-publishing and finding this little site that boasted to haveing printed “over 100 books”. The site was a total mess, very unprofessional, hard to navigate, and really had no info about what they did. Basicly the whole thing looked like someone had dropped a bomb on Hell. It was terrible. So terrible in fact, that I never went back.

The whole web site was based on a chat-room, and didn’t really have a home page. I remember laughing at it and saying that no one in their right mind would let such a crappy looking web site publish their book.

That was a few years ago, and their site was online, maybe a month at that point, and had a notation that it was “under construction”. I blew it off as someone’s little pipe dream and never gave it a second thought.

Well, last week I was chatting with some fellow writers and one of them was telling me how she was doing her next book with LuLu. I thought “You have got to be kidding! Is that crappy site still going!” She tells me, that yep they were and boy had they changed. So I went and checked it out, and WOW! Did they ever change! It don’t even look like the same site. I’m amazed that they have come so far in just a few short years.

Well, now I’m intreeged. This “new” LuLu has gathered my interest, and I think I’ll test it out. I’ve got a short story, I wrote a while back, but never published anywhere, yet, and I think I’ll test LuLu out with it, see what happens.

While searching for info about LuLu, I also came across this blog. I recomend it to anyone who is thinking of starting a project with LuLu, as the author has written a wounderfully detail step by step instruction of the LuLu publishing process.

I’m interested in hearing of others’ experiances with LuLu. So if you’ve ever published anything with LuLu, feel free to comment and share your thoughts, both the good and the bad. I’d like to know more about LuLu as told by the authors who’ve been published by them

~~EK

Writing Tip of the Day: March 27, 2007

Write with wisdom and careful thought, because in publishing, haste often makes waste. Have you ever stopped to think on this? You must remember that before your book gets to it’s readers, it first has to get past the agents and editors. The slush pile is as wide as it is deep,  and the only manuscripts that survive are those that were well thought out and carefully edited. Don’t be tempted to send off your first draft, fresh off the printer. Let it collect some dust for a few days. Edit it up clean and neat, and make sure that it’s the best it can possibly be, before sending it out. Remember, write with wisdom and careful thought, because in publishing, haste often makes waste, and you can’t afford to waste time or words.

~~EK

Writing Tip: Reaching 50,000 useing the 13 Step method…

I wrote this for NaNoWriMo, but it works for all your writing.

My secret to reaching 50,000

I use the 13 step method… actually it’s the 10 step method, but I like 13, so I changed it.. The 10 Step Method it’s quite a popular method used by many professional best selling writers, not sure who invented it…

anyways it helps me to write a lot of words, real fast, so I thought I’d tell you guys about it, in hopes that it’ll help someone else reach the 50,000 goal too

but here is my 13 Step version of it

Write down

Scene 1
Scene 2

etc, all the way to 13… these are your chapters, plan on having 13 of them

Think about your plot, in terms of 13 tiny stories, than write a title for each… now you have your 13 Chapter Titles

Your list should now read:

Chapter 1: “title here”
Chapter 2: “title here”

etc, all the way to Chapter 13

Now, go back to your list and add the actual scenes:

Chapter 1: The Title Here

scene 1
scene 2
scene 3
scene 4

etc, all the way to 13 scences.

do this for each chapter.

Now go back and write one scentance to describe each scene of each chapter.

Once you have completed this, you well have a complete and detailed outline to take you step by step through your story… print it up and keep it on hand when you are writing, so that you can keep your story running smoothly from one scene to the next (though you can change anything in you outline that needs changes once you start writing… it’s not a hard and fast law that you stick to the outline… the outline, just helps you to write faster, by keeping your original story idea where you can see it)

once you get going the actual writing, you plan on say, write 5 scenes a day… and you’ll find that by useing the writing a scene at a time, rather than going for word count or page count, you well write more and write faster…

I average 3,000 to 10,000 a day useing this method. yet, when I try for word count, I usually get stuck after about 500

try it and see, you’ll be amazed at how well this method works

why does it work? because you are focused on your plot, not the word count, and when you stop thinking about the words, they just start flowing out of you with out you even realizing it

thinking in chapters has helped me so much… I used to just slog along trying to write 1o pages a day… that was the goal I gave myself, 10 pages… it was murder, I kept looking down at the bottom where it said page 1 of 1, etc, and I’d stop and think:

man… I typed all that and I’m still on page 1!

than I tried for word count… and after every sentance I’d stop and check to see how many words I’d done…

“What only 7 words in that sentace! /i’ll never get done at that rate”

than one day, I’m complaining about this to my editor, and he says “get this book”… so I go and I get the book, and it’s pretty good, than I get all the books by this author (writer’s how to books) and all the books she recomended as well… ended up with like 50 books on the art of writing

and in one of them I found this 10-Step method… well me writing horror I changed it to the 13 Step method, cause I try to alway have 13 chapters… and I tried it and wow… I write so fast now! I can’t believe it!

13 works for me, cause I write horror, and I design my stories to be in 13 chapters, with 13 scenes each, cause that’s te way I’ve designed my stories to come out…

you can change it to whatever you need… say you only need 8 chapters with 5 scenes each… than that’s what would work for you…

of course, you don’t need to have the same anount of scenes per chapter either… 5 scens in chapter 1, 2 scenes in chapter 2, 12 scences in chapter 3… whatever you need to carry your story across, is what you should use

that’s what’s so great about this method, you can change it to whatever works for you and your story… there are no hard rules

it helps keep me focused on my story too…

for me, I have a BIIIIG problem, with rambling… I’ll go waaaay off topic inside the thoughts of a minor character… which in itself is not bad, but it goes off the story. Good thing about it is it gives me ideas for a spin-off story, which I write a lot of.

The outline thingy, helps me to stay on my story, I keep looking back at it, and I know where I should be, and I can stay on track easier

bad thing, is, all my spin-off need outlines, and each of them reasult in more spin offs, and I end up with too many outlines and not enough stories LOL! 

I hope this helps!

Blogs for Writers: Fourth Round of Blog Additions

Here is the next round of blogs I plan to add to the Z-List for Writers:

The Working Writers Coach

Sylvia’s Insight
Writer in the Making
Ink In My Coffee
Grow Your Writing Business
DESiGN YOUR WRiTiNG LiFE
KCWrite4u
Wealth of Words
Content Done Better
Writers in the Sky
Musings from a Writer
JM Writing and Editing Services
Renegade Writer
Mrs. Write Right, Word Therapist (aka Writer-Editor)
Practicing Writing
WritingThoughts
Engaging Pages For Working Writers
A writer’s life and times
Six Figure Writers
Write For Life
Writers and Authors
Muse Writers Peer Awards
Will Write 4 Food
National Association of Writers’ Groups
My Words, My Way
Writing for Reason
Funds for Writers
Beginner’s Guide to Freelance Writing
The Rural Writer
Paperback Writer
Creatively Self-Employed
Ye Old Inkwell
Writers in the Sky
Bleeding Ink
Editing for Everyone
Newbie’s Guide to Publishing
Irene Goodman
academia
Pub Rants
EVIL EDITOR
iUniverse
Budding Authors
NaNoWriMo
World of Words
Miss Snark
Absolute Write
101 Sites
Agent Query

Weirdly Wednesday: THEY’RE MADE OUT OF MEAT

Well, it’s Wednesday once again, and you know what that means. That means it’s time for me to post the Star Log’s latest addition to Weirdly Wednesday. If you are new to The Star Log or to Weirdly Wednesday than here is what Weirdly Wednesday is all about:

Weirdly Wednesday

 

You can find “Weirdly Wednesday” posts at these sites:

1) http://atlindas.wordpress.com
2) http://fracas.wordpress.com 
3) http://eelkat.wordpress.com
4)… add your site here…

---

Want to join us in Weirdly Wednesdays? Here’s how it works.
On Wednesdays, post a “Weirdly Wednesday” post… a weird site, the weirdest search term in your stats, something from Hollyweird. Whatever.    Link to www.atlindas.wordpress.com  — Let me know and I’ll link back to you.

This weeks addition from EK’s Star Log:

Star Log started out in life as a place for writer’s, or at least that’s what I had intended it to be. That’s why you well find so many posts such as Writing Exercises, and info about writing fiction. Well, so far my posts for Weirdly Wednesday, have had nothing to do with writing. Today that changes, after I found this bit of short sci-fi: THEY’RE MADE OUT OF MEAT.
LOL!

ROTFLMAS!

hhhhhhmmmm…. humans…. yummy

Blogs for Writers: Third Round of Blog Additions

Here once again are more blogs for/by writers, which are to be included in the Writer’s Z-List…

Self-Publishing
ZDocs Blog
The Golden Pencil
DarkMoon Press
Home of the Children’s Writers Coaching Club
SmallPress Blog
Tumbled Words
yoga gumbo
The Writing Show
Stories Rule!
Murderous Ink
Advice on Novel Writing by Crawford Kilian
Right Writing
Fiction Writing Site
Fiction Factor

this last addition is not really a writer’s blog nor a blog by a writer, but I thought it would be of great interest to writers, and so I am adding it to this list as well:
Pretty Good on Paper
How many words do you actually use?
Which words do you own?–Neil Gaiman

Writing Exercise: What is your favorite type of weather?

A sure fire cure for writer’s block. Try it and see, this little trick works wonders for getting you thinking about the atmosphere of a story, thus setting the scene for everything eles.

You know how they say when you can’t think of anything else to say, than just talk about the weather? Well, now, that got me to thinking: Why not? Well, one thought lead to another, and here I am asking you, What is your favorite type of weather? So, I ask you, who says you can’t write a story or get an idea for a story, from writing about the weather? And thus I bring you to this week’s writing exercise. Undertake it with care, for in the wrong hands the weather can be a dangerouse thing.

To help you get started, I’ll first figure out which is mine.

This one was a hard toss up with me… took me a while of sitting here staring at the choices before I could finally decide… here’s how I came to my conclusion and how I voted:at first I was gonna pic Sunny, because it’s my fave type of weather to be out in… the warm sun on my face, the warm earth benearth my toes, birds singings in the trees, a cool breeze with soft fluffy clouds… a sunny day is pure heaven…BUT…I live in the very cold north were a sunny day is a rare a precious thing, we don’t see them often, we’ve had snow in all 12 months of the year, and right in the middle of August it’s only in the 50′s F. Here we get alot of snow… 2 years ago we had 102″ (yeah that’s 9 feet)… I like the snow, it’s a peaceful quite thing, soft and fluffy, yet cold and dealy… like a viper, laying beatiful on the ground but well kill you if it had the chance… I almost voted for Snow

…hhhmm…

than I saw Thunder Storms… brillant blazing flashes of purple lights and blue streaks that dazzle across the sky like fireworks, thrundous crackles and booms that shake the ground, wind that rips giant pines off their root stalks and throws then through your house (this happened to us dueing Hurrican Bob)… terrifing and exhilerating, I love a good thunder storm, but I didn’t vote for them either…

ahhhhh…

here we are… Twilight Zone music plays in the background… Alfred Hitchcock slowly come walking in and tells us how birds are such sweet little things… Vincent Price cackles with wicked glee as the pendulum comes swinging closer and coser threatening to rip you in half… and all the while a thick dense fog is rolling in from off the marsh… the lighthouse warns of it’s impending doom, while the Ripper stalks the streets of London under its silvery cloak… and Poe sermonizes on the fears of death and ravens… FOG… it’s the thing nightmares are made of, it send thrills and chills tingling down your spine, it gives you atmoshere and opens your eyes to fears you never knew existed…

and than there’s OOB, my home town, Fog is the weather we see each night, as the tide rolls in, bringing with it the salty mist of the night, filling the air with the smell of lobsters and seaweed… I live in a fishing village in Maine… I love the smell of the salty foggy air that floods our yard each morning…

as much as I enjoy sunny days, snowy winters, and stormy nights… it’s the fog that reaches in and touches my very soul… I voted for FOG

Second Round of Blog Additions

Here is the second round of blogs I plan to add to the Z-List for Writers:

Writing Fiction
Crime Fiction Dossier
Kathryn Cramer
WritersWrite.com
Writer’s Beware
The Fiction Writing Blog: Articles, Writing Exercises, Prompts and More….
sfsignal.com
Bowing to the Future
David Louis Edelman
Louise Marley
Among Amid While
Authors Blogs
The Writer’s Life

First Round of Blog Additions

Here is the first round of blogs I plan to add to the Z-List for Writers:

Writing White Paper
Fiction Scribe
How To Write and Blog Better
Write Now!
So You Want To Write
Rosebud
Lighthouses
Storyteller
INKSLINGER
Book Blog
Alicia’s Writing Forum
A Writers Words an Editors Eye
Suspence Thriller
The Conjurers
A Writers Eye With Jacob Malewitz
Bearing Life
52 Novels
Write and Publish Fiction
Custom Book Publishing
Library Girl
CopyBlogger
Freelance Writing Jobs
These Words
Finding the Right Words
Reading For Writers
Successful Blog(gers)
Copy Writer Underground
Angela Booth’s Writing Blog
Ink Thinker
Ask Allison
Content Done Better
The Golden Pencil
Blogs In Space
The Human Race
The Black Blog(Italian)
OLIN e-Book e-Publishing
How to Promote Your Self-Published eBook (or Print!)
Corner of Writers Block
Scribe Life
O Making Many Books
Dragons of the Pyramid Book Reviews
WriteLines
Fantasy SF Horror

Is your blog on this list? If not let me know so I can add it.

Blogs for Writers

 

I’m planning on doing an update for my Z-List for writers. I’ll be posting the new edition in the next week or so. For now I am searching the net for blogs geared for writers, blogs by writers, blogs about the writing life, blogs that give writing lessons, and other such blogs that would be of interest to novelists everywhere. While most of the blogs I have added thus far are blogs that I read, I am looking for suggestions. What I mean is: If you are a writer and you have a blog for other writers, feel free to leave a comment on this post with a link to your blog so I can check it out. If it fits the type of blog I’m looking for, I’ll add it to the next edition of The Z-List for Writers. I look forward to reading your blogs.

For those of you who don’t know what The Z-List is, here is an explaination:

Like the chain letter, the Z-List contains addresses, but it differant in that it never asks you to buy anything. You don’t even have to buy a stamp. The Z-List is the chain mail for bloggers. It gets a blog pingbacks and inbound links, and helps to send more traffic to the blog, hopefully traffic that well stay on to become regular readers.

Anyone can start a Z-List. It’s easy. Just take a list of Blogs which you enjoy reading, and put them in a post on your own blog. Some say not to add your Blog to the list, while others say to go ahead and put your Blog right on the top of the list. Well, it’s your Blog and your list so you can put links to any Blog you please in it.

With the list you leave a message, asking that the next person to read this post, copies it and pastes it into the next post they make on their own Blog. They are free to add as many Blog links to the list as they like, and they are welcome to remove any links that are already in the list, if they feel that theose Blogs are inappropiate to be linked back to their own Blog.

Most Z-Lists start out with five or ten links, but after being passed on to just ten more bloggers, that Z-List can quickly have 100 or more links in it. The advantage of this is, that for each post, that each Blog in each link, well recieve a ping-back for that post. In other words, their Blog becomes linked to your Blog and your Blog to thiers, making it a win-win situation for both your Blog and their Blog, by raising the inbound link ranking with such places a Technorati and Google, meaning that you Blog moves higher in the ranks on search engins, resulting in more people finding your Blog and giving you more readers. Great huh? Absolutely!

P.$.

I only accept family friendly blogs into my Z-Lists, so blogs that promote sex, porn, hate, racism, violence, hunting, guns, drugs, and other such acts are never added to any of my Z-Lists. If after addition to one of my Z-Lists, I later find that such posts and links have been added to the blog, the blogs link well be removed from all of my Z-Lists.

Please note, that spam posts are deleted automaticlynow, cause I got sick of scrolling through dozens of Porn and sex posts. Blogs that are about or link to sex or porn sites are automaticle scanned and deleted and I never even see them at all now, sobe sure your blog has no sex or porn on it or linked to it, before you post it, because it well never be reviewd if it does.

  

This is the Z-List for Writers as it originally appeared. As you can see, it was thrown together as I read the blogs, with no rhymn nor reason. The new edition, well be in alphabetical order.

The Z-List, EK Edition 1.0: Blogs for Writers

The Copywriting Maven
Click Here to Advertise on My Blog
EK’s Star Log, the Pink Edition
EK’s MySpace Blog
Wayfarers Journal
Calling On All Serius Bloggers To Read This And Respond
Are most writing contests even worth it anymore?
Writer’s Block
writers are horribly boring
journalcomic
Troy Worman’s Blog
Copywriter’s Crucible
Copywriting Tuneups
bizsolutionsplus 
Servant of Chaos
darrenbarefoot.com
ANITA’S OWL CREEK BRIDGE
Decadent Tranquility
Welcome to Axe’s Asylum
NaNoWriMo: I Won!
Whew!
Hawaii, My New Novelwriting : thinkmap visual thesaurus
1minute book reviews
livingthequarterlife
Naughty Heather
Mom & Much More
ninglun
lew-lew
Writing Mamas take note
what you write
the book
Blog Of The Problematique
Chasing The Starlight
Saipan Writer
a lifetime of dreaming
 antithete
Michigan::Flint Red Hot Writers Blog
1 Word 2 Words
NaNoCaiRo
The Dream Thief
Reality is Running Away

Thinking Blogger Awards

I was just reading THIS POST on THIS BLOG, and thought it was such a great idea that I had to copy the post over to here, so that I could keep it for future referance… it gave me some new ideas on blog promotion, now I must go work on that.

March 2nd, 2007 by womensspace

I am a normally a conscientious objector to the “meme” or “tagged” thingy , but I kinda like the idea of the “Thinking Blogger Award,” and since Witchy-Woo tagged me, I figured, why not, just this one time. 

These are the rules:

1. If/when you get tagged, write a post with links to five blogs that make you think.

2. Also link to this post so that readers can track the meme to its origins.

3. If you want, display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ on your blog with pride – and a link to the post you wrote to pass it on.

Of course, there are far more than five blogs which make me think! Everybody who blogs and posts here makes me think!  Everybody who posts here and doesn’t have a blog makes me think! But here goes anyway.

Ballastexistenz  Reading Amanda Baggs’s writings at Ballastexistenz has been and is an ongoing experience of consciousness-raising for me.  Her posts and comments about language, coercion, medicine, psychology, her day-to-day life  as an autistic woman,  are a goldmine.  They continually challenge, provoke and inspire me.  I know Amanda is tired right now because of recent media publicity, and I hope being tagged will be a welcome and energizing diversion as opposed to a burden! 

Radical Goddess Theology  I really appreciate Athana’s thoughtful, interesting and educated writings about the dangers of male deities to all life, about saving the planet, and about the centrality and primacy of unconditional love as modeled by female deities.   I love her writings about mutuality, gifting and gift economies, matriarchy (as not an “-archy” at all), consensus decision-making,  and the importance of bringing the day of the male bully gods to an end.

Stanselen  I am really appreciating Jo, who is an anarchafeminist.  I’ve connected with a couple anarchafeminists recently online, have added them to my blogroll and vice versa, and I am loving reading them!  There’s an old Second Wave article around somewhere in which the author says something like, “Anarchy is the theory, radical feminism is the practice.”  So true!  I connect so well with these women’s writings because at their core, our views are so much the same.  I’ve got a blog post fomenting about anarchy and am looking forward to writing it, thanks, in part to reading Jo and her sister anarchafeminists.

Midwife: Sage Femme This is the beautifully-written blog of a  homebirth midwife who is lesbian mother.  She and her partner are raising their three children together.  I so appreciate Sage Femme’s compassionate, respectful, woman-honoring writings, her amazing birth stories, her counsel in the tradition of wise woman healers and mystics, and her practical, down-to-earth advice.

Amy’s Brain Today  Amy and her partner, Kya, are radical feminist lesbian separatists whose writings and photographs never fail to inspire and teach me, whether they’re writing about the oppression of women,  their land dyke oddyssey, womyn’s community, war tax resistance, woman-only space, radical feminist sexuality, radical feminist history or theory, whatever they write about, they write as thoughtful revolutionaries committed to living the dream in all of its mundane, difficult, frustrating, challenging, heady and nourishing glory.  I’m so glad you two are in the world!  You give me so much hope.

Well, I could go on like this forever.  I would have liked to include Professor Zero, Chasing Moksha, Shannon at Egotistical Whining,  Twisty, Sokari at Black Looks, Trula Mama, Womanish Words, Tiyospayenow, Uppity, Rural Womyn, Ginmar, Compartments, Ann Bartow, Heather, argh, there are way too many women who make me think!  But I have to follow instructions, so those are my five. 

Heart

This is kind of a lot like my “beloved” Z-Lists crossed with web reviews… such a great thing to do!

~~EK

The Z-List, EK Edition 2.04: The Ultimate D-List

Like the chain letter, the Z-List contains addresses, but it differant in that it never asks you to buy anything. You don’t even have to buy a stamp. The Z-List is the chain mail for bloggers. It gets a blog pingbacks and inbound links, and helps to send more traffic to the blog, hopefully traffic that well stay on to become regular readers.

Anyone can start a Z-List. It’s easy. Just take a list of Blogs which you enjoy reading, and put them in a post on your own blog. Some say not to add your Blog to the list, while others say to go ahead and put your Blog right on the top of the list. Well, it’s your Blog and your list so you can put links to any Blog you please in it.

With the list you leave a message, asking that the next person to read this post, copies it and pastes it into the next post they make on their own Blog. They are free to add as many Blog links to the list as they like, and they are welcome to remove any links that are already in the list, if they feel that theose Blogs are inappropiate to be linked back to their own Blog.

Most Z-Lists start out with five or ten links, but after being passed on to just ten more bloggers, that Z-List can quickly have 100 or more links in it. The advantage of this is, that for each post, that each Blog in each link, well recieve a ping-back for that post. In other words, their Blog becomes linked to your Blog and your Blog to thiers, making it a win-win situation for both your Blog and their Blog, by raising the inbound link ranking with such places a Technorati and Google, meaning that you Blog moves higher in the ranks on search engins, resulting in more people finding your Blog and giving you more readers. Great huh? Absolutely!

Daily Blog Tips

DaisyCake — oh yeah! crafty crap!

Dane Carlson

darrenbarefoot.com

Design Sojourn

Did You Ever Get the Feeling… Difference Make Identity

The Digital Cloud

Dinosaurs: A Creationist’s Fairy Tale

Dipping into the Blogpond

Dishpan Dribble Do You Have Issues?

DoshDosh

DotMySpot.com

Dove Pro-Age Campaign

Drew’s Marketing Minute

A droll way to look at things.

The Z-List, EK Edition 2.03: The Ultimate C-List

Like the chain letter, the Z-List contains addresses, but it differant in that it never asks you to buy anything. You don’t even have to buy a stamp. The Z-List is the chain mail for bloggers. It gets a blog pingbacks and inbound links, and helps to send more traffic to the blog, hopefully traffic that well stay on to become regular readers.

Anyone can start a Z-List. It’s easy. Just take a list of Blogs which you enjoy reading, and put them in a post on your own blog. Some say not to add your Blog to the list, while others say to go ahead and put your Blog right on the top of the list. Well, it’s your Blog and your list so you can put links to any Blog you please in it.

With the list you leave a message, asking that the next person to read this post, copies it and pastes it into the next post they make on their own Blog. They are free to add as many Blog links to the list as they like, and they are welcome to remove any links that are already in the list, if they feel that theose Blogs are inappropiate to be linked back to their own Blog.

Most Z-Lists start out with five or ten links, but after being passed on to just ten more bloggers, that Z-List can quickly have 100 or more links in it. The advantage of this is, that for each post, that each Blog in each link, well recieve a ping-back for that post. In other words, their Blog becomes linked to your Blog and your Blog to thiers, making it a win-win situation for both your Blog and their Blog, by raising the inbound link ranking with such places a Technorati and Google, meaning that you Blog moves higher in the ranks on search engins, resulting in more people finding your Blog and giving you more readers. Great huh? Absolutely!

Calico Monkey

Calling On All Serius Bloggers To Read This And Respond

Can I Make Big Money Online

The Case of The Bulletproof Harpist

Celebrating Holidays Everyday Celebrityday

Chasing The Moon……

Cherry, Plum, Peach and Damson Blossoms CKs Blog

Click Here to Advertise on My Blog

Clo’s Fascinating Things.

Coffee2go

Coleman Web – The personal Website of Anthony P. Coleman

The College Marketer

Community Guy

Composing Myself

Conspiracy Theory, UFOs, and Alternative Topics

converstations

Copywriter’s Crucible

The Copywriting Maven

Copywriting Tuneups

CrapHammer

Creating Passionate Users

Creative Confusion

Crisisblogger

Critique My Blog

Crumbling Spires

Customers Rock!

Curbside View

The Z-List, EK Edition 2.02: The Ultimate B-List

Like the chain letter, the Z-List contains addresses, but it differant in that it never asks you to buy anything. You don’t even have to buy a stamp. The Z-List is the chain mail for bloggers. It gets a blog pingbacks and inbound links, and helps to send more traffic to the blog, hopefully traffic that well stay on to become regular readers.

Anyone can start a Z-List. It’s easy. Just take a list of Blogs which you enjoy reading, and put them in a post on your own blog. Some say not to add your Blog to the list, while others say to go ahead and put your Blog right on the top of the list. Well, it’s your Blog and your list so you can put links to any Blog you please in it.

With the list you leave a message, asking that the next person to read this post, copies it and pastes it into the next post they make on their own Blog. They are free to add as many Blog links to the list as they like, and they are welcome to remove any links that are already in the list, if they feel that theose Blogs are inappropiate to be linked back to their own Blog.

Most Z-Lists start out with five or ten links, but after being passed on to just ten more bloggers, that Z-List can quickly have 100 or more links in it. The advantage of this is, that for each post, that each Blog in each link, well recieve a ping-back for that post. In other words, their Blog becomes linked to your Blog and your Blog to thiers, making it a win-win situation for both your Blog and their Blog, by raising the inbound link ranking with such places a Technorati and Google, meaning that you Blog moves higher in the ranks on search engins, resulting in more people finding your Blog and giving you more readers. Great huh? Absolutely!

Bathos

Battlestar Galactica Blog BecKaDoodles

Being Peter Kim

Billions With Zero Knowledge

bizsolutionsplus

Blogging Secret

Blogging to Fame

Blog-Op

Blogtrepreneur

BlogSire

Bob Sutton

Boise Wants Jay Mariotti

The Branding Blog

Branding & Marketing

Branding and Marketing

BrandSizzle

Broadband and Me

Bullshitobserver

The Busy Dad Buzzoodle