Upcoming Opportunities to Develop Your Characters

Workshop Book Passage, that wonderful bookstore just north of San Francisco, CA, is once again allowing me to offer my character development workshop: Grow A Great Character

10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Sat., June 9 51 Tamal Vista Blvd. Corte Madera, CA (directions) $85 register now Presentation The California Writers Club San Francisco/Peninsula Branch has done an amazing job of scheduling writers and book professionals who will offer a variety of presentations at the Galleria Literary Fine Arts Stage of the San Mateo Fairgrounds in San Mateo, CA, during the San Mateo County Fair June 9 - 17. Here's the info for my presentation: Growing Great Characters From the Ground Up 2 - 3 p.m. Sun., June 10 Galleria Literary Fine Arts Stage San Mateo County Fairgrounds And and Offer for All You Blogging Writers If you'd like me to write about character development for your blog, let me know. I'm happy to offer answers to questions or troubleshoot problems. Simply poll your blog followers about what they'd like to know about or issues they're having with their own characters, send me a list, and I'll send you my responses to post. Happy writing!

Great News From Dixon Long: Two New Books

Fellow writer Dixon Long sent me great news recently, which I'd like to pass along for two reasons: 1. Dixon, who has had his work published in literary journals and by mainstream publishers, is a great role model for those interested in self-publishing. 2. His most recent book of fiction is a truly wonderful collection of short stories, most of which were previously published in journals, while some are brand new delights. In a recent press release, Dixon so announced his most recent successes:

The blood, sweat, toil, and tears that go into making a book, whether fiction or travel, are hard to describe. But there is an incandescent moment when you hold the proof in your hands for the first time and feel the satisfaction of authorship. Over the past year I have concentrated on two projects, both of which have now been completed.

Short Stories Weekend in the Luberon and Other Stories ($9.49 including shipping)is Dixon's first book of short fiction, and fourth self-published book.

He wrote:

After assuring myself that the text was clean and getting an appropriate photograph for the cover (one of my own iPhone photos) I worked with CreateSpace to design the book and provide a final proof.

Nonfiction His second piece of news is the May 15 publication of Markets of Paris, Second Edition ($12.63 including shipping), by Dixon and his collaborator, Marjorie Williams, a food writer from Cambridge, MA. To create this updated version of his first book by the same title, published in 2007, Dixon said, "I went to Paris for three weeks in April and May 2011 to revisit flea markets, antique markets, clothing markets—the non-food markets that make Paris such an important destination for market lovers."

Both were published by The Little Bookroom, which publishes travel books about off-the-beaten path places in the world's "best-loved cities" such as Paris. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review wrote of this new edition of Markets of Paris:

There's shopping, and then there's shopping in Paris. For those fortunate enough to have the problem of finding the best Parisian goods, be it cheese, clothing, botanical prints or porcelain, there's Markets of Paris.

Dixon's first nonfiction book was Markets of Provence: A Culinary Tour of Southern France (William Morrow Cookbooks, 1996). Congratulate — and Help Publicize — the Expert Besides being a wonderful writer, Dixon is also a wonderful person. If either of these recent books or his past novels sound like something you're writing and would like to publish, consider following his lead and taking the plunge. And as always, help out a fellow writer by passing along his good news. If you've got happy news of your own, let me know and I'll be happy to post it. Happy writing!

Industry Tidbits: ARCs and Human Trafficking

Just as celebrity fans need their in-the-new shows, so we writers need our Industry Tidbits Hour.

Since I doubt networks will take an interest in such a project, I'll occasionally pass on publishing industry news that comes from a variety of sources.

The ARC of Big Budgeting

Most writers know that before books are published, a certain amount of them are distributed to reviewers as advanced reader copies. The books are often not yet finished in terms of copyediting and cover art. The point is to get the story out and publicly reviewed in order to heighten consumer demand.

Most writers might think in terms of 20 copies or a hundred. If your book is lucky enough to get the attention of a marketing-minded publisher, however, that number may increase to one considered by anyone as more than sufficient to carpet-bomb the reviewer market.

I say that having just read on a recent PW Daily that independent publisher Sourcebooks Fire sent out 4,000 ARCs of Jessica Shervington's Embrace, a young adult book about warring angels and humans.



The free books paid off, in that the response was so positive the publisher decided to bump the marketing budget to $200,000.

It's nice to know at least one writer will be properly taken care of!


Choosing Topics From Today's Headlines

There's no surprise that choosing a hot topic can increase a book's potential for sale and publication by a major publisher. Kim Purcell, a former journalist, has captured such attention for her new young adult novel (Viking Juvenile), Trafficked, about a Moldovan teen who thinks she's traveling to America to be a nanny in Los Angeles, only to discover she's been sold as a slave.

I am curious how many authors choose their topics based on current headlines. If you're one, let me know!

Happy writing!

Valentine's Day Love Poem Recommendations

Today The Guardian started a thread — The Best Love Poems — based on the recommendations of famous authors such as Hilary Mantel and John Burnside.

For those of us who love to write poetry, but do so only in secret, feeling the medium is too far beyond our abilities, maybe these poems will inspire you to not only keep writing, but to share your work with those you love:

Love After Love by Derek Walcott (I found the poem on a very interesting site called PoemHunter.com, which includes love, death and I'm sorry poems among its various categories.)

Thank-You Note by Wisława Szymborska, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature

The Silent Lover by Sir Walter Raleigh

Air and Angels by John Dunne


For those of you seeking a more contemporary love poem scene, check out this list by Poets.org, including this one by San Francisco Bay Area poet Kim Addonizio:

My Heart

That Mississippi chicken shack.
That initial-scarred tabletop,
that tiny little dance floor to the left of the band.
That kiosk at the mall selling caramels and kitsch.
That tollbooth with its white-plastic-gloved worker
handing you your change.
That phone booth with the receiver ripped out.
That dressing room in the fetish boutique,
those curtains and mirrors.
That funhouse, that horror, that soundtrack of screams.
That putti-filled heaven raining gilt from the ceiling.
That haven for truckers, that bottomless cup.
That biome. That wilderness preserve.
That landing strip with no runway lights
where you are aiming your plane,
imagining a voice in the tower,
imagining a tower.

Happy (love poem) writing!

SomebodySays Experiment Underway: Dialogue Junkies Take Note

(Join SomebodySays)


A number of years ago I started an experiment in which each day I wrote down something I heard someone say, with the goal of continuing the practice for a year.

The results were fascinating:

"I love you so much even my socks want to be near you."

"But between the two kids I lost four babies."

"I'm getting to think novels are like waffles and children: you should throw the first one out."

"There isnít even a word for how un-delicious trash is."

"It cost too much to keep them alive."

"He said a girl in his class is bio-sexual."

"Okay, screw it, Iím going to kangaroo you to death."

What make the list of quotes so fascinating is that without context, each line of dialogue is open to reader interpretation. Where one person might find a quote funny, another might find it disturbing. That and what a fabulous way to study how people talk, both in the words they choose to express themselves and the order in which they place those words.

Unfortunately I only managed to keep up the practice for 85 days before the task got lost in the shuffle of a busy life.


The Good News

The good news is that a week ago I restarted the experiment in a public realm by establishing a Twitter account called SomebodySays. For those of you unfamiliar with Twitter, think of it as a blog in which your posts can only be a sentence long.

The goal of my SomebodySays experiment is again to write a line of dialogue each day for a year.


The Rules

1. The dialogue can only be one sentence long

2. The dialogue must be written verbatim, rather than being cleaned up in any way

3. I have to make every attempt to each day choose dialogue from a different person

4. I have to make every attempt to choose different types of people in various venues to get as wide a variety of word patterns as possible

Help Me!

While I haven't been that involved in Twittering until now (I do have a Growing Great Characters account to post my blog entries), SomebodySays seems ideally suited to a medium where I'm forced to write only one sentence. Knowing someone might be following my posts each day will go a long way toward encouraging me to continue.

Therefore, feel free to help me out!


Follow me

If you have a Twitter account, sign up to follow SomebodySays. Then every day you can look at your Twitter page, which provides all the entries of people you follow. Scroll through the posts and somewhere among them you'll find mine.

If you don't have an account, consider starting one for the practice of using this social networking tool. Your profile can be as anonymous as you like and you can easily cancel your account at any time. And while others may sign up to follow you, you do not have to reciprocate. Instead, keep to people and organizations you know and like.

Pass on the info

Whether you decide to follow me or not, please pass along my SomebodySays URL (https://twitter.com/#!/2listenisgood), or forward them to this post. In a year — on Jan. 28, 2013 — I'll post the highlights of the experiment.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Happy writing!

Get a Writing Credit: Write a Review

I just got an email from editor Suzann Holland, who, along with the staff of Key Publishing House, is offering writers the chance to review the soon-to-be-published anthology Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing (click here for the Facebook page), which has gotten a much nicer book cover design.

This is a great chance to accrue a writing credit for the resume paragraph necessary for all query letters, while also getting to read a great book about writing. While win-win is cliche, the phrase is applicable in this case.

Lastly, if you'd like me to guest blog on your site regarding the topic of my article in the anthology — How to Write About Family Without Getting Sued, or Shunned — or any other aspect of writing nonfiction, let me know. I'll be happy to contribute a piece that's suitable for your blog community.

If you're interested in reviewing the book, here's some contact info. (be sure to say you heard about the book here!):

• Suzann Holland, co-editor of the anthology, (suzann@suzannholland.com)

• Carol Smallwood, co-editor (smallwood@tm.net)

• Heather in the Media Department of Key Publishing based in Toronto, Ontario

Happy writing!

Post Your Work! New Websites That Help You Gain Exposure

I recently got a message from a fellow writer about a new website where writers can post their writing. This is yet another example of how the shared writing phenomenon has grown over the past five years.

No longer do writers have to force their way through the intensely narrow, subjective doors of literary gatekeepers, agents and editors who pick and choose a few pieces from the thousands received each month. Instead, writers can post their work, thus appealing to readers directly.

In celebration of this exposure, here's a list of such websites, should you choose to follow others' example. Note that the blurbs below are from the "About Us" sections of the various organizations, so as always, check out the site carefully before uploading your work. As far as I can tell, all of the following sites are free to join:

Wattpad

On Wattpad you’ll discover a new form of entertainment where you can interact and share stories across text, video, images and through conversations with other readers and writers.

Smashwords

Smashwords is an ebook publishing and distribution platform for ebook authors, publishers, agents and readers. We offer multi-format, DRM-free ebooks, ready for immediate sampling and purchase, and readable on any e-reading device.

At Smashwords, our authors and publishers have complete control over the sampling, pricing and marketing of their written works.

Smashwords is ideal for publishing novels, short fiction, poetry, personal memoirs, monographs, non-fiction, research reports, essays, or other written forms that haven’t even been invented yet.

eSnips.com

eSnips is a social content-sharing site, where you can publish and share any media type.

eSnips offers one account that allows you to share anything with anyone - giving you options on who and how you want to share with. You can create as many folders as you like, each for a different topic. Then you can decide what audience can view each folder

Scribd

Scribd is the world’s largest social reading and publishing company. We've made it easy to share and discover entertaining, informative and original written content across the web and mobile devices. Our vision is to liberate the written word, to connect people with the information and ideas that matter most to them.

Scribd’s patent-pending conversion technology has democratized the publishing process. Now, anyone can instantly upload and transform any file -- including PDF, Word and PowerPoint -- into a web document that’s discoverable through search engines, shared on social networks and read on billions of mobile devices.

Booksie

As soon as you join this free site, you can upload your work.


If anyone has uploaded their work via such sites and you're willing to share your experience, please email and I'll be happy to include your wisdom for those who'd like to try this approach, but would like to hear more about the process.

Happy writing!