Writing

You won’t believe what the US Trademark Office is doing

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Bosnian land mine warning sign. Source : Wikipedia
Bosnian landmine warning sign. Source: Wikipedia

Imagine that words and phrases in the English language could be bought. A company could purchase words and become the only entity who could ever use them.

It would fill our language with landmines, forcing writers to navigate through a whole new kind of stylebook. If we used a forbidden word, we could be sued by the word’s owner. One day our use of words like “iced tea” or “notebook” might be completely fine; the next day, if we tried to use that turn of phrase, we could get our websites shut down.

Sounds like crazy science fiction, doesn’t it?

It’s not.

The US Trademark Office is allowing companies to trademark phrases in common and widespread use, such as the term “fire cider,” just because a company wants to have exclusive rights to using a phrase for a product.

Read moreYou won’t believe what the US Trademark Office is doing

My journey to become a novelist

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Although I didn’t know it at the time, I started my first novel as a senior in high school.

It began as a short story about two characters in a fantasy world, and as I recall was inspired by the 1980s Robin Hood television show. Before I began my novel, I had completed a beast of a project, a 20-page short story. It was for one of my classes, and until that point had been the longest thing I had ever written. After that challenge, I would have been scandalized if someone told me I could write an entire novel.

So I wasn’t writing a novel that day. I just had an image, a scene in my head that wouldn’t leave me alone.

Read moreMy journey to become a novelist

Judging a book by its cover

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Novels are a collection of ideas and images and characters and philosophies and stories, all twisted up in a blender until all the bits come together into a coherent series of words that we recognize as a book.

These words then get wrapped up in their cover like a Christmas present, with shiny and colorful paper that includes the title and author.

Some books have fantastic covers, others… not so much.

Read moreJudging a book by its cover

Author Platforms Turn Writing into a Business

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Writing your novel or nonfiction book is only the beginning. If you want people to buy your book, you need to develop an author platform as part of your marketing efforts and to build a relationship with your readers.

Speaking to the Indie Publishing Austin meetup, Tom Corson-Knowles (the bestselling self-published author of 20+ books including The Kindle Publishing Bible series, founder of TCK Publishing, and host of The Publishing Profits Podcast), offered up excellent tips on how authors can build an online presence and an audience for their books.

As he defined it, the author platform is the combination of methods, tools, and resources that an author uses to connect to readers and build an audience.

Read moreAuthor Platforms Turn Writing into a Business

Just past the halfway mark…

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It’s November 17th, and the month is a little more than half over.

For a writer that can only mean one thing… NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), also known as the month in which writers nearly go insane, is also half over. We have willingly accepted the challenge to craft a new novel of at least 50,000 words, and it’s all downhill from here.

This is my second year participating in NaNo, and this time it should be a lot easier, right?

No, it doesn’t get easier. Sure, you learn some techniques and tricks during your virgin NaNo experience that make the mechanics easier the second time around. The writing, though… the stringing together of words in some sort of (semi) logical fashion, and constantly moving forward with a story? That never really gets easier. There may be times when you can spit out 3000 words without breaking a sweat… and times when putting together a complete sentence almost is beyond your grasp.

Some people treat NaNo as a game, and put word count above all else. There are those who wrote 50,000 words on the first day. Bully for them, bravo, whatever. In my opinion, they miss the whole point. NaNo isn’t a competition, it’s about giving you permission to be creative, and to make a commitment to yourself to write every day, no matter how good (or not so good!) it is. It’s about keeping the writing going even when you want to throw your computer out the window, when you want to scream, when everything you write sounds worse than the screenplay for Battlefield Earth.

Earlier another writer and blogger, Ingrid Sundberg, posted a bunch of inspirational images for NaNo writers. One of them struck me as particularly effective:

I like this because it reminds me that writing is hard work, even for people who like to write, and even for people who have turned out as many books and stories as Stephen King. (It’s no wonder so many famous novelists ended up becoming alcoholics and substance abusers. My guess is that intoxication was their only recourse to silencing the demons of doubt that haunt every writer.)

So I keep plodding along, even when inspiration doesn’t hit me, even when I’m sick with a cold. I’m staying above ‘par’ every day, with over 30,000 words in the ‘bank,’ so to speak, as I write this post. What’s a little bit terrifying is that while there’s just a mere 20,000 to go to ‘win’ NaNoWriMo, this novel will need easily three times that before I’ve reached the end of the story.

If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo this year, please leave a comment and let me know how it’s going. Are you pantsing or planning? Are you writing every day, and keeping on track, or are you falling behind?

NaNoWriMo 2014 – Let the Adventure Commence!

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Participant-2014-Web-Banner

 

Last year a colleague suggested I try NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month challenge. I decided to take the plunge, having no idea where it would take me or if I could even meet the terms of the challenge: To write a novel from scratch in 30 days. To write 50,000 words. And maybe hardest of all, to write approximately 1700 words every single day of the month.

What was I thinking? I’ve written a couple of novels… and that took almost twenty years!

All the same, I gave it a shot, thinking that I’d be able to get a little writing done, and test out a new story idea.

I had no idea how much it would change me.

I wrote about my experience just after NaNo 2013 concluded, but now it’s been a whole year. In the past eleven months, I’ve become a much more serious writer, and now I do my best to write or edit every day for at least a couple of hours. Sometimes I’m still writing at dawn. I’ve spent countless, wonderful hours over the past year rewriting, editing and shaping the novel I “completed” in November, which as it turned out was barely a fraction of what my novel would become. Along the way, I’ve invented new characters, created a new antagonist while turning my bad guy into a hero of sorts, and explored all kinds of twists and turns, highways and byways.

It’s been both rewarding and frustrating, because let’s face it: editing is hard work.

Writing a 50,000 word novel is difficult, but turning that into a quality piece of fiction is a whole different beast.

What I didn’t expect about NaNo was how it would change me as a person. In addition to taking my writing more seriously, I’ve begun to interact with other writers, and have made new friends. I’ve researched publishing options. I’ve written more blog posts. I read different books, and more of them. And now, every Facebook post or TV show or conversation with friends over beer could turn into something amazing.

As the month of October races on, I’ve redoubled my efforts to finish the draft of my first novel so that I can start with a clean(ish) slate come November 1st. There are a lifetime of possible stories in the new world I’ve created, and so this year’s novel will be a sequel of last year’s. This comes with the benefit of having some ready-made characters and backstory, and hopefully will help me refine and expand upon some ideas that I can later port back into novel #1.

While I’m very excited to be able to once again create something new, I’m a little apprehensive about what I’ll have to do once December arrives. I’m still not completely done with my last novel; will I end up with editing debt? It’s a bit intimidating. Nonetheless, I shall press on and see what happens. I’m hoping that having a better idea of the concept of this story, and a possible ending, will keep me from getting way off track, so that my editing process will be a bit cleaner. I also anticipate being a bit more organized and clever in how I approach the task in general, having done it successfully once and learned a lot of lessons along the way.

With that in mind, these are my recommendations to myself and to anyone else who wants to give NaNo a shot this year:

  • Have a clear idea of the novel’s concept, even if you have no idea of the plot.
  • Start getting to know your main character(s) before you start. Give them names, occupations, a couple personality quirks.
  • Have at least a vague idea for how the novel should end. Maybe even write the ending first. That way you know where you’re going. (I wish I had done this last year!)
  • Don’t plan too much out in advance… allow each day to be an adventure.
  • Write fast and furiously for the first week while the ideas are fresh and your energy’s plentiful, and get way ahead of your wordcount. That might save you later in the month.
  • Make a solemn promise to yourself to not edit as you go (it’s hard to do it, but very liberating!).
  • Deny the existence of writer’s block. If you get stuck, just start typing anything. Seriously. Even if it’s just “I don’t know what I want to write about tonight. I’m tired and I don’t know where to take my character now…” What happens when you do that is some of the most powerful magic I’ve ever experienced.
  • Meet fellow NaNo writers in person, on the NaNo forums, on the NaNo facebook group, or wherever you can find them. Lean on them for encouragement, inspiration, accountability, and friendship. 🙂

For a writer, participating in NaNoWriMo is one of the greatest adventures we can ever have. I can’t wait until November 1st!