photo by Theophilos

Hello to all my friends at Writer Unboxed. So happy to be back with you again this month, and particularly happy to announce the release of my new novel, The Texas Twist, which streets on June 1 from Prospect Park Books and answers the eternal question, “What happens when a con man gets conned?” As is my practice, I’m giving away e-versions of my new release to WriterUnboxed readers according to my whimsical nature. This time the quest is simple: Guess the number I’m thinking of! (You can do it, trust me; it can be done. There’s even a clue in my twitter stream.) Send an email with your guess to . All answers will be evaluated honestly and prizes distributed accordingly.

Okay, now that the shameless self-promotion is out of the way, let’s get down to the fun stuff.

The other day I was rooting through some paper archives, and discovered, or rediscovered, the text you’ll see below. It seems I wrote this comic piece for a syndicated newspaper column called Laugh Lines, which bought a bunch of my stuff back in the mid 1990s but did not, so far as I can tell, print this one.

It’s going to make you laugh. I think I can promise you that. More than that, though, I hope it reminds you how amazing long your writing life is, and how stuff that you thought would never see the light of day may again re-emerge. I mean, this piece lay fallow for almost 20 years. I’d forgotten I even wrote it! Then I stumbled across it again, and the rest is, well, as you’ll see, a bunch of dumb jokes. The point is that nothing goes to waste. Nothing! At minimum, everything we write makes us better writers – this we know – but there’s always a potential new market or second life waiting for your work somewhere down the road.

Okay, here we go, coming to you live from 1994, it’s The King’s English Dethorned…

—-

Being a pro writer, people are always asking me how to make their prose more fine like wine like mine and I answer that the two most important things to pay attention to are spelling and grammer and I also tell them to never ever split an infinitive and I also tell them not to have run-on sentences or missing commas which are bad. Now I read where the children that are of our schools are’nt learning about good structure and puncturation these days, so as a public service I have drew up a list of all the things you need to make your English well.

Continue Reading »

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• Simile Fever Spreads Like Wildfire
• What I Learned This Time

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It is a cool, slightly overcast morning. I’d like to be in my garden, planting more of the bedding plants I have waiting, puttering, pruning and plucking weeds. It has been a very long wait for spring this year, and every fiber of my being is screaming to get outside, play in the dirt, create this year’s painting from the canvas of bare earth waiting for me.

But I have to work.

I could make the case that days like this one are rare this time of year, when the sun starts to blaze here at 7200 feet. It’s cool enough I could be out there all day. I’d get so much done.

But I have to work.

I have to work. The way I do that is by taking myself up to my office, turning off the Internet, and opening the WIP. Then I begin to put words on the page.

Last month, I talked about the need to fill the well, but this is the flip side of that. To write for a living, or write in any meaningful way, you have to put in the time. You have to do it when you don’t feel like it, when the garden is sprawling like a naked siren across the yard, when you haven’t had time enough to exercise and really ought to get to the gym in the off-hours before the place is packed. Not all the time, but during those times you say you will work, you do so.

Every successful writer creates rules about time and is very disciplined about those rules. Mine are simple: Monday through Friday, I write in the mornings, usually starting after breakfast and going through until about noon or a little later. Sometimes, if I’m racing a deadline, I’ll go back into my office after lunch and a little nap and write for another hour or so. When I’m being very disciplined and productive, I get up at 4:30, as I’ve discussed before.

That means nothing happens in the morning, five days a week. I don’t make appointments for that time, I don’t go to the gym, or meet friends for coffee. I allow myself ten minutes to wander around the garden with my second cup of coffee. I admire a new sprout and pluck a couple of weeds, then I take myself upstairs and start working. If I get behind, the rule is that I have to make it up on Saturday, which I resent very much because that’s the day I go into the garden or hike with friends or putter around the house doing pleasant little chores. I never work Sundays unless things are dire; that’s the bargain I’ve made with the Girls in the Basement.

My rules might look nothing like your rules. I know a lot of writers who don’t start working until everyone in the house has gone to sleep. That’s fine. It doesn’t matter what your rules are, just so long as you make them and follow them. When are you going to put your bum in the chair and do your work?

What gets in your way ? Where does your discipline falter? What are your best writing times? 

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• Cultivating The Observer
• The Value of Editors
• Cornerstones of Excellence: the Art of Detail
• The 20 Minute Win

Tags: barbara o'neal, barbara samuel, discipline, writing

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It (finally) appears the stigmas once associated with self and indie-publishing are disappearing, or at least waning – though in some cases there are new ones arising and there will always be naysayers. Let me clarify that while I think there are pros and cons to traditional publishing, self publishing and Indie publishing alike, I have always been a supporter of each and never agreed with those stigmas. As a PR and marketing professional having helped launch several successful self and Indie published books, I knew there were high quality stories out there by talented authors that needed to be told that didn’t have a publisher for various reasons. It’s been great to see some of the national media open up and begin writing about these books and authors more. For me, it’s been great to see these authors and books find readers and success – sometimes as much so, or even more so, than books I’ve worked on that have a big publisher.

More authors, agents, and readers are embracing Indie of self-publishing. It’s even becoming a viable option for several of my very successful traditionally published authors who are seeing that success and now considering making the leap.

But thus far the media has covered the breakout stories of self-publishing that are not the norm – often leading to unrealistic expectations. The purpose of this post is to share well thought-out tips from several self-published authors who have been successful on many different levels and in their own right – not just those that have sold millions of copies. (Note: most of these authors are clients of mine. Through years of innovation and creativity working on Indie and self-published books on a case by case basis – along with our traditionally published clients – we’ve helped these authors become award-winning, bestselling – or both – and many have gone on to sign with agents, publishers and even sell film rights. Or they have continued to successfully self-publish). But hiring professional PR and marketing is only one piece of it – they have each done their own things to make their success unique. I tapped them to share the tips direct from their experiences and mouths. Continue Reading »

• Post-traumatic publicity disorder: More tips to avoid a bad PR (hangover) experience
• Indie Authors – You CAN Do It!
• How Book Publicity is Like a Zip Line
• Goodreads and Other Genuine Publicity Thoughts
• 3 Ways to Use Pinterest for Book Publicity

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I awoke from a nightmare last weekend and did the sensible thing. I got up and showered off the flop sweat, crawled back in with the ToolMaster, and poked him in the shoulder — firmly, since he was the cause of my distress.

“Hey,” he said with a fair degree of irritation. Then something must have shown on my face. “Another bad dream? What do you need?”

While he wrapped his arms around me, I told him the sordid tale.

Despite it being considered a huge no-no in fiction to begin with a dream, I’ll repeat myself here. I’m hoping to first illustrate some linguistic elements, then discuss how they might be intentionally used to help with world-building and characterization.

So, the dream…

On a gorgeous day in early spring, we’d gone for a family hike in the mountains. The snow was a good three feet deep but packed underfoot, so navigable, if slow going. To the right was a half-buried snow fence, and a yard beyond that, a canyon carved smooth and deep by a river.

We were alone, free to enjoy the sounds you’d expect in such a setting: from far below, the gentle shushing of meltwater. From a quarter-mile back, the voices of our kids as they argued about an episode of Dexter. Overhead, the loopy birdsong of robins that had dined on fermented mountain ash berries.

At one point, the ToolMaster turned to say something to me — knowing him, it involved some kind of Jan-ribbing — and he lost his balance. Before I could draw breath, he slipped sideways, his momentum carrying him over the snow fence and toward the canyon’s edge. At the last second, he grabbed the branch of a pine tree on the proximal side and his feet found purchase on a narrow ledge.

If he’d stayed there and waited for a rope, he might have been fine, but he looked down. Whatever he saw spooked him.

He pinwheeled backward, ended in a worse position yet — feet on that small shelf, shoulders on the opposite wall of rock, his life depending upon the strength of his core. He might have been a tree lodged at an angle, except that he was clad in layers and wearing the latest in moisture-wicking technology.

I screamed to the kids to get help and went to him, stretching out from the pine tree. Naturally, I awoke as he was risking it all to grasp my hand, and Molly and Frank were disobeying my orders, easing past the snow fence to try and haul us up. If you saw their body mass versus ours, you’d know it couldn’t end well. Without equipment or help, we’d end in a daisy-chain of doom.

Continue Reading »

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• A Solution for Your Lonely Inbox

Tags: characterization, Jan OHara, linguistic quirks, speech communities, worldbuilding, Writer Unboxed

46 Comments »

Today’s guest is Marybeth Whalen. Marybeth’s novels include THE MAILBOX, SHE MAKES IT LOOK EASY, THE GUEST BOOK, and THE WISHING TREE, and she is the founder of the website, She Reads. Marybeth says,

I’m passionate about sharing the ups and downs of the writing life with other writers and believe that building a community of fellow writers is beneficial to an otherwise isolated profession. 

Follow Marybeth on Twitter and Facebook. 

Without further ado, take it away, Marybeth!

1. Check your Amazon rankings. Then check the rankings for other writers.

2. If you’re feeling especially cruel, look at the rankings for some writer you’ve always envied because he/she is 1) much cuter/thinner/prettier/more fashionable than you 2) has better covers for his/her books 3) has that publisher, agent, editor you always dreamed of having or 4) all of the above.

3. Read your reviews on any bookseller site.

4. Go to various literary event websites and find the cool things that you have not been invited to.

5. Read the hip writer-type sites that you’ve never been asked to contribute to.

6. Compare your Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or other social media followers with those of other writers. Continue Reading »

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• Funny Oxymorons for Writers
• When to Hold Em’ and When to Fold Em’: Knowing If Your Manuscript is Worth Fighting For

21 Comments »

photo by Rupert Ganzer

The highway to publication overflows with cars: luxury behemoths; sensible hybrids; nondescript, windowless vans with strange dents that protrude from the inside. Each bears the logo of the mechanic who brought it to life. You’ve built a car, too, with good mileage and a cherry spoiler. [Author’s note: The cars are a metaphor for your books.]

But when you get your baby on the highway, you can’t ignore that a metallic paint job and tilt steering is all that differentiates your vehicle from every other car in its class, no matter what shiny-metal totem adorns its hood. How does your creation stand out? You don’t need a better insignia. You don’t even need the car metaphor. You need to remake yourself. You must become the deer sprinting headlong across the road. When your book crumples someone’s hood and cracks their windshield, rest assured you’ve got their attention. And that’s pretty much the Tab-A and Slot-B of branding.

As a twenty-first-century author, the fulcrum of your success is your personal brand. Think Hemingway’s manliness. Neil Gaiman’s leather jacket. Harlan Ellison’s sociopathy. A lot of folks are confused about what exactly branding is. Folks like me, for example. After extensive research in the furthest corners of the internet–at great risk to my personal safety and sanity, you’re welcome–I’ve determined that branding means pretty much whatever you say it means (and since I’m the big shot with the column, when I say “you” I mean “me”). So here’s how to get started building your personal author brand:

Continue Reading »

• Hacks for Hacks: How to PWN Twitter
• Hacks for Hacks: Top 5 Affectations Every Writer Should Adopt

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Image by Brocken Inaglory licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

In the last couple of months, I released one book and wrote another in six weeks, start to finish. (No, I don’t usually write that fast; yes, I really, really wish I had the magic recipe to make novels come that quickly and easily all the time– if I ever figure that recipe out, I’ll post it here!) I have more to do– there’s always more to do. Edits on another mostly-completed book, a sequel to the just-finished novel . . . But this week, I’m not working on any of it. This is the part of the process where I know I need to take some time to regroup and recharge, because I’m just . . . empty. If you imagine a story-well inside where the creativity bubbles up, then mine is at the moment dry.

And not that that’s a bad thing. There was a time– a LONG period of time–when being creatively empty would have felt like a bad thing to be– scary and unpleasant and wrong. Earlier in my writing career, I would have fretted and fumed at not being able to write, or worried that that inner story-well would never be refilled. To be honest, I still feel a bit restless when I have to take a break from writing– I love getting my daily word count; I’m happiest when I’m on fire with a story that is begging to be told. But this time around, it occurred to me that I was feeling much more at peace than usual with the idea of needing to take time to recharge. Somewhere along the way, I’ve learned to trust the process, to trust that the well of creativity will once again be filled- because it always is. To trust that my fingers will soon start to itch with the urge to write another story–because they always do. This time around, I’m letting myself relax into all the ways I’ve found over the years to help with a creative recharge.

Here are my chosen strategies: Continue Reading »

• Take 5: Kitty Bennet’s Diary
• The Voice
• A Broken Piece
• Plot vs Story
• On the Care and Feeding of Your Writer

28 Comments »

Trained by reading hundreds of submissions, editors and literary agents often make their read/not-read decision on the first page. In a customarily formatted book manuscript with chapters starting about 1/3 of the way down the page (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point type), the first page has 16 or 17 lines.

The challenge: does this narrative compel you to turn the page?

Let’s Flog Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Following is what would be the first manuscript page (17 lines) of Beautiful Ruins, the number 1 trade paperback on the May 5, 2013 New York Times bestseller list.

The dying actress arrived in his village the only way one could come directly—in a boat that motored into the cove, lurched past the rock jetty, and bumped against the end of the pier. She wavered a moment in the boat’s stern, then extended a slender hand to grip the mahogany railing; with the other, she pressed a wide-brimmed hat against her head. All around her, shards of sunlight broke on the flickering waves.

Twenty meters away, Pasquale Tursi watched the arrival of the woman as if in a dream. Or rather, he would think later, a dream’s opposite; a burst of clarity after a lifetime of sleep. Pasquale straightened and stopped what he was doing, what he was usually doing that spring, trying to construct a beach below his family’s empty pensione. Chest-deep in the cold Ligurian Sea, Pasquale was tossing rocks the size of cats in an attempt to fortify the breakwater, to keep the waves from hauling away his little mound of construction sand. Pasquale’s “beach” was only as wide as two fishing boats, and the ground beneath his dusting of sand was scalloped rock, but it was the closest thing to a flat piece of shoreline in the entire village; a rumor of a town that had ironically—or perhaps hopefully—been designated Porto despite the fact that the only boats to come in and out regularly belonged to the village’s handful of sardine and anchovy fishermen. The rest of the name, Vergogna, meant shame, and was a remnant from the founding of the (snip)

My vote and editorial notes after the fold.

• Flog a Pro: 50 Shades of Grey by E L James
• Flog a Pro: The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown
• Flog a Pro: Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks
• Design a Book Cover for Less than $50
• Made-Up Facts (Plus: Giveaway)

22 Comments »

We are so excited that our guest today is consulting editor Alan Rinzler. Alan has edited and published Toni Morrison, Tom Robbins, Hunter S. Thompson, Jerzy Kosinski, Shirley MacLaine, Robert Ludlum, Clive Cussler, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan and others while working as Assistant Managing Editor at Simon & Schuster, Director of Trade Publishing at Bantam, west coast editor for the Grove Press, VP and Associate Publisher of Rolling Stone, where he was also President of Straight Arrow, and Executive Editor at Jossey-Bass/Wiley. Alan’s years of experience spans the gamut from commercial to literary, and he’s also edited a wide range of memoirs, histories, biographies, among others. We feel fortunate that Alan agreed to share his wisdom and expertise with WU today.

Check out his website and blog at www.alanrinzler.com to learn more. 

Being an author these days requires much more than working alone in solitude. But you knew that, right? Many authors are taking charge of their work and stepping out at conferences, trainings, pitch sessions, writer’s groups, readings, and especially online with web sites, blogs, and social networking, no longer stuck in the stereotype of the shy or invisible recluse.

Authors are also required to navigate radical, unprecedented changes in getting published. Prior structures, procedures and assumptions have fallen apart. The balance of power has shifted and it’s unclear exactly who’s in charge as the traditional gatekeepers have lost their supremacy.

What does all this mean for you? My view is that it’s the best time ever to be a writer. Best but not easiest. Here are some of the questions a writer faces.

State of the Business 

Will the book business survive hemorrhaging revenues, downsizing, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, merging haphazardly to reduce overhead, experimenting with one insane ebook program after another, reinventing itself desperately to convert from all print to all digital? Is this at long last the Death of the Traditional Book Publishing?

Have people stopped reading, stopped buying books? Are they getting their news and information for free online, so why spend the money. Is our culture suffering from a universal attention deficit disorder, too busy texting, YouTubing, friending on FaceBook, social networking. Is this the End of Intelligent Reading?

Have as yet unknown writers been left high and dry as agents won’t take on an author without a track record or platform. Are all publishers so risk aversive that they’re looking for only best-selling stars or celebrities getting contracts?

Reality check

There’s a lot of confusion and contradictory advice going around today among writers and book publishing professionals. The only thing you can count on for sure is that people who think they know how it’s all going to fall out or what it’ll be like in two years don’t know what they’re talking about. 

Nevertheless, I’m happy to play pundit and offer my unabashed opinion about the major issues a writer needs to confront these days, along with my short prognosis of choices to consider. Continue Reading »

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• Funny Oxymorons for Writers
• When to Hold Em’ and When to Fold Em’: Knowing If Your Manuscript is Worth Fighting For

26 Comments »

Me and Mom

I’ve decided that I have a new quest as a writer. And I think it could help any other writers who dare to join me in this quest.

Like any good quest, it has a mission statement: Say no to woe.

(Pretty cool, huh? It even rhymes! Hey, I’m a writer, so the whole making-magic-with-words thing – well, it’s just what I do. But I digress…)

To what woe do I refer? The ever-popular “woe is me” mantra, which so many writers seem all too eager to adopt and trumpet. After all, it’s hard being a writer. Nobody appreciates us. It’s difficult to find time and energy to write and still deal with real-world concerns like making a living and supporting a family. And the odds are stacked against us. People like Snooki get book deals and we don’t. The same two dozen authors occupy 90% of the shelf space at any Target or WalMart. Meanwhile the rest of us toil away, unappreciated and unknown. It’s all so unfair!

A notable example of the SPP (Self-Pity Party) movement was this author’s recent article in Salon, in which he bemoans how hard it is to make it as an author, particularly in the strange new world of self-publishing. (The alert reader will note that this guy has already published three well-reviewed books on major imprints, and is now dipping his toe into the waters of self-publishing, seemingly without having done any significant research on the nature of those waters. Oh, and he also gets to write articles for Salon, so clearly this is a guy who just NEVER can catch a break as a writer.)

I’m sorry – was my sarcasm not coming through clearly enough? Then let me voice my reaction a bit more bluntly: Boo-freaking-hoo. You poor thing, you.

Lest you think my quest is directed only at people who aren’t thankful enough for their current blessings, I can assure you, it is not. No, this is an EOQ (Equal Opportunity Quest), aimed at bursting the bubble of self-pity in which any and all writers may be attempting to envelop themselves. Why? First of all, because self-pity is an enormous waste of energy. But an even more compelling reason – for me, at least – came from something my mom said to me many years ago, which I’ve never forgotten. Continue Reading »

• Put That Banjo Down
• Be a Copycat
• Write Like You Mean It
• AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Jon Clinch
• 10 New Year’s Resolutions for Writers

48 Comments »

photo by marfis75

I once had a client tell me she’d heard that sentences should never run more than fifteen words. To this day I have no idea where that rule came from, though it was probably from someone who either had a short attention span or had read way too much Henry James.

The rule is nonsense, of course. It wound up making all her characters seem like they had short attention spans. But it shows one of the dangers with trying to write by the rules – you wind up limiting your characters or story so you can color within the lines. Sure, more sophisticated rule-givers (George Orwell, for instance) try to get around this danger by giving you the rules on when to break the rules, and maybe even rules on when to break those. My head usually starts to hurt by that point.

Are there guidelines that can help you shape your writing? Sure. I co-authored a book full of them. And I recommend that you learn as much about them as you can. The danger lies in treating these guidelines as rules. It’s much more accurate – and safer – to think of them as tools.

Rules are made to be obeyed. Tools are made to do specific tasks. They’ll do one thing well, and another not so much. Once you know what various tools can and can’t do – what’s in your toolbox – you can pick the right tool for the job. (Full disclosure: I‘m saying this as someone who has, on occasion, used a socket wrench as a hammer.) Continue Reading »

• Writers who Murder
• When you Really, Really Care
• English as a Foreign Language
• Writers who Hoard
• What a Coincidence

Tags: tools, writing rules

41 Comments »

Ever since I can remember, I’ve loved fairy tales, myths, legends, and fantasy. It’s something I responded to instinctively as a young reader, and something I took to easily as a young writer, too. In my imagination and my dreams, journeying to those magical worlds seemed to me as natural as breathing. Of course I was an imaginative child; but it’s only lately that it’s struck me that perhaps there was also another reason why I so took to those genres. For the classic fantasy themes of the journey between worlds, the sojourn in strange places, and the sudden irruption of a different reality into the everyday is at the very heart of my own lived experience.

I come from a family whose ethnic history is to say the least, complex. Taking in French, Basque, Spanish, Portuguese, and French-Canadian, our history was always more than a bit player in all of our lives. People to whom I’ve told even a fraction of the vivid family stories are thrilled by them; they say, No wonder you became a writer!

But it’s more than that, for three things happened to me as a child that were like fairytale gifts: First, though my parents were both born and brought up in France, I was born in Indonesia, as they were expatriates working there at the time; second, because of ill health, I was then taken as a ten-month old baby to live with my paternal grandmother in France for four years, was told many traditional stories by her–and did not see my parents in all that time; and third, I was then taken, at the age of five, to yet another new place, Australia, where I first discovered English. And what’s more the first book I read for myself in English was a Little Golden Book comprising three fairytales–Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel and Toads and Diamonds–in it (there it is, in the centre of the picture). Continue Reading »

• Finding a Good Title
• Writers’ Guides of the Past
• A Question of Description
• Writing an Outline
• Holiday Reading Then and Now

Tags: bilingual writers, fairy tales, fantasy, legends, Myths, Sophie Masson

15 Comments »