Vary Sentence Structure
By G. Miki Hayden
Instructor at Writer's Digest University online and private writing coach
firstwriter.com – Saturday November 10, 2018
This past week I edited a novel written in a way meant to emulate the method used by a handful of successful mystery writers.
"He took the stairs down. He walked into the kitchen. He stood at the refrigerator. He got out a pitcher of cold water."
5 helpful books for National Novel Writing Month
syracuse.com – Wednesday November 7, 2018
If you've ever wanted to write a book, this is the month to begin! November is National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo, as it is often referred to, is an artistic writing project online that occurs every November. People who participate in this write a 50,000 word manuscript during the month.
Take part in this project by visiting nanowrimo.org and learn more about it by checking out books from your local library or by logging on to www.onlib.org.
How Writers Map Their Imaginary Worlds
atlasobscura.com – Tuesday October 23, 2018
One of life’s great treats, for a lover of books (especially fantasy books), is to open a cover to find a map secreted inside and filled with the details of a land about to be discovered. A writer’s map hints at a fully imagined world, and at the beginning of a book, it’s a promise. In the middle of a book, it’s a touchstone and a guide. And at the end, it’s a reminder of all the places the story has taken you.
A new book, The Writer’s Map, contains dozens of the magical maps writers have drawn or that have been made by others to illustrate the places they’ve created. “All maps are products of human imagination,” writes Huw Lewis-Jones, the book’s editor. “For some writers making a map is absolutely central to the craft of shaping and telling their tale.”
How to Find the Perfect Time to Write
lifehacker.com – Tuesday October 23, 2018
If you dream of becoming a writer, you have to eventually sit down and write. Whether you’re doing National Novel Writing Month in November, or you dream of being a writer “someday,” the first inescapable step is making the time to do it. Here’s a 15-minute exercise toward that end that you can do today.
How to write a novel by author & commissioning editor Phoebe Morgan
marieclaire.co.uk – Tuesday October 16, 2018
In the second instalment of our Writers Bloc series, we get the inside scoop on how to write a novel from commissioning editor and author, Phoebe Morgan
A commissioning editor by day and novelist by night, Phoebe Morgan is the author of The Doll House, published this month, and The Girl Next Door which is released in February 2019, both psychological thrillers. She is 28, and lives in Clapton, East London, with her boyfriend.
Why can’t life begin after 40 for a writer?
irishtimes.com – Friday October 12, 2018
Last year, at a writing festival in rural Ireland about 60 attendees sat listening to presentations from publishers and agents. It was the kind of segment that has been popular on the writing festival circuit for quite a while now. The attendees hear a lot of familiar advice from people in the industry, both domestic and overseas. And there are occasional insights into the metamorphic and precarious state of the publishing industry.
At this particular event, there was a lot of advice about presentation, synopses and introduction letters, how authors should market themselves and their books, and the common mistakes made by aspiring novelists.
(Don’t) Relax (Too Much)
By G. Miki Hayden
Instructor at Writer's Digest University online and private writing coach
firstwriter.com – Monday October 1, 2018
I told my friend about a grammatical glitch I found in Outside magazine:
A man came upon a dead bear cub and leaned over and touched it, but the bear had been electrocuted by a downed electrical wire, and the man, too, was zapped. (He lived but had terrible physical damage.) At any rate, the article said the bear had been laying on a live wire. Of course, obviously, the bear had been lying on the wire. (I tweeted the editor and was ignored—so much for the power of social media.)
How to write a killer crime novel, by Val McDermid (who’s sold 15 million of her own)
marieclaire.co.uk – Tuesday September 25, 2018
For the first in our new Writers Bloc series, prolific crime writer Val McDermid tells Charlotte Philby the secret to writing 32 books in as many years
Val McDermid is the multi award-winning author of 32 crime novels, which have sold more than 15 million copies worldwide and been translated into 40 languages. She is married to the professor Jo Sharp, and has a teenage son. McDermid divides her time between Cheshire and Edinburgh. Her latest novel Broken Ground is published by Little Brown (£18.99)
You’ve written 32 books in as many years with no signs of abating, and had your work adapted for TV. What are the most important lessons you’ve learnt about successfully drawing readers into the worlds you create?
Penguin Random House Is Building the Perfect Publishing House
newrepublic.com – Wednesday September 12, 2018
When Penguin and Random House announced in the fall of 2012 that they intended to merge, Hurricane Sandy was barreling toward New York City, America’s publishing capital. It was an instant metaphor for headline writers: “As Sandy Loomed, the Publishing Industry Panicked.” People inside both companies worried about their jobs; people outside the companies worried about the market power of a new conglomerate comprised of the country’s two largest trade publishers. Agents and authors, meanwhile, worried that the consolidation would further drive down advances.
Random House’s top brass insisted that there was no need to panic. “The continuity will far outweigh the change,” Markus Dohle, the CEO of what would become Penguin Random House, told The New York Times when the merger was completed the following summer. “We have the luxury to take the time before we make any strategic decisions. There is no need to rush.”
E-book pricing: because you’re worth it
irishtimes.com – Monday September 10, 2018
You’re a self-published author. You’re digitally publishing and you are responsible for pricing your e-book. How do you decide the price?
There are two schools of thought in the interminable self-publishing pricing discussion. One believes firmly in the pile ’em high and sell ’em cheap philosophy. The other side holds that to be a horrible undervaluation of our talents and time.
I’m firmly in the second camp. I’ve long been of the opinion that self-published authors selling at “remaindered bin” prices are doing themselves, and self-publishing authors generally, a huge disservice. They’re not valuing their own work sufficiently highly, and they’re encouraging readers to place less value on independently published work than traditionally published. They’re saying, “my book is not as good as one you would find in a bookshop, so I can’t charge as much for it. The only way I can encourage you to buy it is if I either give it away free, or charge what a bookshop would charge for books that nobody wants (the ‘remaindered bin’)”.
Why has that become an accepted tactic?
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