Write Your Truth

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James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

On a cool April night in 1950, a young actor got the chance to do a scene in the Actors Studio, in front of the legendary Lee Strasberg. This was the Valhalla of all up-and-coming actors in New York. It wasn’t easy to get a scene here, let alone be invited to join.
The scene called for this young actor to portray a soldier dying of gangrene. When the actor finished, Strasberg told him he had not sufficiently portrayed the pain of someone dying of this condition.
The actor interrupted him. He said that he, Strasberg, was the one who was misinformed. You see, this actor had been a Marine in combat during World War II, and had seen soldiers dying of gangrene. He knew that in the final stages they felt no pain at all.
Furious at being contradicted in front of the class, Strasberg told the actor to leave and never return. The actor responded with a two-word exit line before storming off.
The young actor’s name was Lee Marvin. 


Marvin would ever after infuse his acting jobs with whatever truth was inside him. And what was inside him was a volcano.
Growing up, Marvin had ADD and dyslexia in a time when no one really knew how to deal with them. More discipline was the only prescription. No wonder Marvin hated school and was constantly in trouble. He was always fighting. Once, as a teenager in a boarding school his parents desperately tried, his roommate threw some trash out the window. Marvin told him that was a stupid thing to do. The roommate called him a son of a bitch. Marvin later recalled, “I said, ‘Call me that again and I’ll throw you out the window.’ He called me it again and I threw him out the window. So, they kicked me out of school.”
With fighting such a constant in his life, it was no surprise when, at age seventeen, just after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Lee Marvin joined the Marines.
After Boot Camp and training, he shipped out for action in the South Pacific. What he saw there was not the glory often depicted in the movies. He saw life-altering horror. He was a sniper with many kills. He also saw hand-to-hand combat, wiped out machine gun nests, and was almost killed on several occasions. Once, a Japanese soldier came at his face with a bayonet. Marvin took it away and bayoneted the soldier “all the way to the gun barrel . . .”
A climactic battle in Saipan resulted in 80% casualties in Marvin’s unit. Marvin was wounded and ended up in a hospital. He was 21 years old.
And from then on dealt with PTSD, alcoholism, and a four-pack-a-day cigarette habit.
But American men of that era were expected to “soldier on” in life, and that’s what Marvin did. Like so many returning vets he had a hard go finding what work to do. He spent time digging ditches and hand-threading pipes. And drinking.
Then one morning in 1946, Marvin was sleeping off a drunk in a public park in Woodstock, NY. A Red Cross nurse woke him up and started talking about community service. Next thing he knew he was involved in a local Red Cross benefit at the town hall, a production entitled (appropriately) “Ten Nights in a Barroom.”
He got the acting bug. He did what most actors did in those days, pounded the pavement in New York. He got some work, told Lee Strasberg off, and later headed to Hollywood where he heard there was money. He started landing small roles, and turned up on an early Dragnet episode. Jack Webb, star and producer of the cop show, was so impressed with Marvin’s performance that he made sure influential people around town saw it.
Marvin’s breakout role was Vince Stone, a mob strong arm in Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat (1953). In a chilling moment that made movie history, Vince gets mad at his girlfriend, played by Gloria Grahame. She’s been yapping to a cop. He throws a pot of scalding coffee in her face, scarring her.  No wonder Marvin became a steady movie heavy after that. 


To expand his image, Marvin starred in a late 50s TV cop series, M Squad. The money was good but he never took to the small box. Later he said, “Creatively, an actor is limited in TV. The medium is great for pushing goods. Sell the product, that’s the goal. . . But, I’m not interested in pushing the products; I’m interested in Lee Marvin, and where he’s going as an actor.”
We writers need to ask ourselves the same thing. Are we just trying to push a product, or do we have somewhere we want to go as a writer? Are we playing it safe? Or is there a truth we have that is burning to get out?
When Marvin was cast as the drunken gunfighter in Cat Ballou (1965), no one thought the movie or the role would do that much. But it became a surprise hit, and Marvin’s hilarious performance (given reality by his own struggle with the bottle) ended up winning him an Academy Award for Best Actor of the Year. 

And that, in turn, rocketed Marvin into a star status he never gave up. Next came some iconic roles, including the tough major in The Dirty Dozen, and the remorseless thief bent on revenge in Point Blank.

But I think my favorite Marvin performance is in the under appreciated Western, Monte Walsh (1970). It’s an elegiac tribute to a cowboy in the fading West who refuses to give in. In a way, it sums up what the actor was all about. There’s a point in the film when Walsh is offered a part in a Wild West show, but he’d have to dress up in gaudy duds and put on a false front. Despite the money, despite the comfort, despite the security this would offer him, he refuses, saying, “I ain’t spittin’ on my whole life.”

Which assumes you have a life to be spat upon. A life lived with purpose and a truth you will stand up for.

When you can get that into your art—acting, fiction, painting, song, dance—you are leaving behind something more than product-pushing. You have a chance to carve out a unique and, perhaps, unforgettable place in your chosen field. Like Lee Marvin.
So what about you? Do you want to dress up in gaudy duds? Or do you want to be an artist with something to say?  
***
Details in this article based in large part on the new Marvin biography by Dwayne Epstein, Lee Marvin: Point Blank (2013, Schaffner Press)

You Can Observe a Lot, Just by Listening

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I have adapted —some might say maladapted — Yogi Berra’s famous observation for my own purpose today, occasioned by a pair of incidents which took place on this past Valentine’s Day. I have written before here about how observing individuals who are caught in the act of everyday life can provide fodder for literary inspiration. Today we are going to talk about listening.

My wife and I celebrated Valentine’s Day by having dinner at the restaurant where we had our first date, even scoring a spot in the very booth where we sat some eighteen years ago, though for some reason the seat has gotten a bit closer to the table, at least for me. This time, we had our younger daughter with us. I have schooled our daughter on being aware of what is going on around her at all times and in all places, and, as in so many other things, she exceeds the expectations and abilities of her father. As it happens, her hearing is better than mine at this stage in our lives. So it is that about a third of the way through our meal she leaned across the table and whispered to us, “That guy over there? He’s breaking up with his girlfriend!” She nodded at a couple seated three tables over, and, indeed, the gentleman was on Valentine’s Day, over dinner, severing connections, romantic and otherwise, with the woman seated across from him. She was crying, though nonetheless doing a halfway decent job of containing an emotional meltdown while her companion sat impassively across from her displaying about as much empathy as he might when commenting on the occasion of a fifth of a series of spring days. I could not hear much of what he said, but he did not sound concerned, not even when she raised her voice slightly —the only time the entire evening — and said, “But how am I going to move out by next week?!” He merely shrugged and responded in a manner that was less than helpful. There was a bit more of some back and forth; my daughter was able to hear and relay some additional information, confirming what appeared to be going on, and, indeed, fully documenting that the fellow involved was a walking waste of skin. He finished his dinner — his soon to be ex-companion left hers untouched — before they left the premises while he patted her shoulder in the manner one does when assuring someone upon whom disaster as fallen that this too shall pass.

The evening, however, was not over. Shortly after the couple which I described had left another couple was seated behind us. It was easy to hear their conversation. I was able to tell that 1) they had not been dating overly long and did not know each other well (though I was able to discern from some other comments that they were acquainted in the Biblical sense; obviously they were somewhere in that stage which follows the third date and precedes a six month anniversary); 2) they had taken a trip together recently; and 3) had decided to end the relationship. Neither of them seemed especially upset about the turn of events. The gentleman was interested in trying to ascertain what had gone wrong, and when, and why, but his analysis was more suited to that of a biology teacher wondering why the oscillatoria specimen on the slide under the microscope is not behaving as it should. He apparently thought he had discerned the moment when things had turned south saying, “Things were fine until the fourth day (of the trip) and then something seemed to change.” The lady mumbled a response I didn’t quite catch but which indicated, in context that a) he was right and b) she didn’t know what happened either. Whatever had happened, they had determined that the relationship was dead at some point in the very recent past and had decided to perform the autopsy on Valentine’s Day. It was apparent that while they weren’t interested in a dating relationship any more, it wasn’t as if one of them had found the other’s secret porn stash and was so utterly repulsed that they decided to put an end to things. it was just…ending. After overhearing this, we asked for go boxes and the check. Kidder that I am, I thought for half a moment about turning to my wife and solemnly saying, “Honey, now is as good a time as any to tell you, but, uh, well, I’ve decided that…” I of course didn’t do that. She would never break my heart on Valentine’s Day, but she might filet it, given good cause.



Thus, a somewhat unusual night. I ask rhetorically: what sort of a character breaks up with a live-in girlfriend on Valentine’s Day? And what sort of couple uses the romantic occasion as an auld lang syne? And on the same night, in the same restaurant, at about the same time? Feel free to incorporate them into your project, whether as a springboard or as background. There are many ways you could use them. But what I really want to ask you is: What is the most unusual conversation you have ever overheard? Was it on or during a noteworthy occasion? And did you use it in a story or novel?

Reader Friday: Q & A

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Today’s topic — a Q & A — comes to us from a suggestion by our friend Diane Krause.  Let us know in the comments whether you have any specific questions you’d like the TKZ’ers to address. We’ll all pitch in with our thoughts as the day goes on. Happy Friday!

How a great story can change the world

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by Matt Richtel


TKZ is once again delighted to host Pulitzer prize-winning author Matt Richtel. His latest release, THE CLOUD, just hit bookstores, and I can personally highly recommend it!
This true story ends with me sobbing. In public.

The story starts five weeks ago, on a Monday night, with a text. I was amid an exciting time, working on a front-page story for the New York Times (my day job) about a controversial new twist involving computers and schools, and I was preparing for the Jan. 29 release of my new thriller, The Cloud. 

The text came at 8.06 p.m. It read:  “Call me.”

The text was from Adam, a good friend of mine and editor at The New York Times. About a year earlier Adam had been put in charge of a group of eight, mostly veteran reporters, including me. The group was called “How We Live,” and its charge was to make a journalistic beat of the way people live their lives; how we eat, sleep, learn, fight, procreate, and how we die.

We were supposed to be a new generation of newspaper story tellers – part of an overall move in the newsroom to infuse stories with narrative, voice, and character. The days of authoritative top-down explanations in the New York Times were increasingly giving way to showing and not telling, and sophisticated story telling, appealing to heart not just head.

We were responding to the need to capture and keep reader attention amid the white digital noise of an Angry Bird world.

In response to Adam’s text, I called him. Before I tell you the shocking news he told me, please indulge some additional, necessary, backstory. 

Over the last year, my fiction career was also evolving to suit the digital world. Like many thriller-writing peers. I was writing more and more, adding to the already heavy book-a-year-load.

In August, I published a short story, Floodgate, 15,000 words I hadn’t anticipated writing, aimed at staying in touch with an audience feeding from the all-you-can-tweet-buffet.

And I took hard to Facebook, something initiated as a marketing tactic, but that transformed also into a usually welcome labor, in which I write stuff my toddlers say (funnier than I could ever make up) and occasionally quip about story telling. 

I amassed some 20,000 Facebook subscribers on my personal page. And several thousand likes on my fan page. We got nice press for Floodgate. Apparent success on all fronts.

The New York Times stuff seemed to be working out too. The How We Live team killed it. Something like 35 front-page stories and 90 stories for the front of our feature sections, like Dining, Home, Travel. We generated a ton of traffic. We were a hit. 

Then, fast forward to five weeks ago, I got the text. From Adam, on the Monday night. “Call me.” I called. In a nutshell, he explained, the paper was disbanding the How We Live group. And not just that; the paper was doing a whole bunch of shifting, all over the place. Voluntary buyouts, long-time editors and friends leaving, reorganization.

Why? Stating the obvious: because the paper’s news gathering operation – the news gathering and storytelling operation – cost too much. It was built in a different era, when our costs were supported by print advertising. Remember that old thing?

I’m no stranger to the ups and downs of the changing media landscape. I started and worked my way up from small newspapers, starting in 1990, at which I survived probably half a dozen rounds of layoffs. I know not to let macro-economic forces get me down.

But after I talked to Adam, I went into a tailspin. One that had been a year in the making, at least.

All this hard work. All this adaptation. So much terrible uncertainty. Part of what I experiencing, I am adult enough to know, was the personal uncertainty of the reality I’d need to find a new job inside the paper (I have), and that I was poised to have The Cloud come out (it did, two weeks ago). That meant marketing, travel, speaking, radio, and the subterranean terror that accompanies a book release: will only my family buy it?

But there was something much bigger for me too. I was confronting, squarely, for the first time, the reality that we don’t know what works. We.Do.Not.Know.What.Works.

What has value? How much value? Will we have mere chaos, only chaos, since Jack Dorsey, of Twitter, wrote his infamous missive:  “…we came across the word ‘twitter’, and it was just perfect. The definition was ‘a short burst of inconsequential information,’ and ‘chirps from birds’. And that’s exactly what the product was.”

Inconsequential? Only if you’re not competing against it to pay the bills, and satisfy your muse.


My sleep deteriorated. I experienced a very unusual level of anxiety. I couldn’t write. I was a rotten dad. For two weeks, I felt like crud. I couldn’t find steady ground.  

Then on a Monday, two weeks after the text, I took myself on a Monday afternoon to see Lincoln. No sooner had the opening music began to swell then I had tears in my eyes. They stayed there, persistently, throughout. And by the time a bereft Sally Fields dropped to her knees during a particularly emotional scene with Daniel Day Lewis, I began sobbing. Just lost it.

I was a mess the rest of the movie.

When I walked out, it was the best I’d felt in weeks. Cleansed.

And it’s when I finally understood the thing that had been eluding me for weeks, maybe for much longer. I finally understood the value of The Story. And of storytelling. And of its place in the digital world.

I’ll tell you first my conclusion, and then explain.

My conclusion: The bad story and story teller has little value, or, at best, ephemeral value; so too the mediocre story and storyteller, and even the merely good ones.

The great story and story teller is more valuable than they have ever been.

They are a port in the storm. A place to pause and heal from all the white noise the world throws at us, a tiny closet to cower inside and rest from the swirl of inconsequential missives.

And, more than that, great stories are the place where we will change the world. In Lincoln, Tony Kushner and Steven Spielberg, two of the greatest story tellers of our age team up to make a movie that is, perhaps above all, an homage to storytelling. They teach us that Lincoln used story-telling, narrative, anecdote, quip and emotion, to deliver the United States from slavery. 

I know this doesn’t answer the business-model question. That’s the one that plagues us, still. Will the New York Times face bigger challenges? Yes? Will The Cloud take flight? Not as it might have when the institutions of publishing had more power (It is my most ambitious and mature and entertaining work to date).

But it’s not the business model question I needed an answer to. It was the emotional one, the real one. And I got that answer sitting in a movie theater, sobbing. 

Fellow story tellers, take seriously your duty. The world seeks deliverance. You hold its key.

FREE on Kindle

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Today is my first venture with the Kindle Select Program wherein a book goes free to the public.WarriorRogue_w7578_300
Wild Rose Press, who publishes my romance novels, decided to enter their new titles into this program before the official release date. I am really hoping this offer raises awareness of my series.
  
Before we proceed further, please go now and download your free copy. Share this link with everyone you know! Please “Like” the page while you are there.

Warrior Rogue (The Drift Lords Series) by Nancy J. Cohen is FREE on Kindle Feb. 13-17. http://www.amazon.com/Warrior-Rogue-Drift-Series-ebook/dp/B00AU62NQS/.

I’m also running a Valentine’s Day contest in conjunction with the free giveaway. Click on the Contest tab here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nancy-J-Cohen/112101588804907 and remember to Like the page while you are there.

What have I learned from this experience? It takes a tremendous amount of time away from writing to put up a free book. Why? Because you have to publicize it all over the Net. How do you do this? Here are some sites that will help:

http://digitalbooktoday.com/maximize-your-kdp-select-free-days/
http://indiereviewtracker.com/making-your-e-book-free/
http://www.rachelleayala.com/p/promo-sites.htmlhttp://www.thekindlebookreview.net/author-resources/
http://writeonthewater.com/?p=11162

From helpful sites such as these and from posts by other authors, I’ve gathered two pages of places to notify about an upcoming or current free release. Twitter and Facebook accounts have to be notified on the day of the freebie, but a bunch of other ones expect advance notice. So I’ve been busy filling out these forms.
Here is a list of tips, in no particular order, on what to do before your book goes free.

  • Make a list of promotional sites that will announce your free book.
  • Notify the sites that require advance notice.
  • Decide if you want to pay for ads at any of these sites.
  • Get your book reviewed. Some of the sites will only take your title if you’ve had XX number of reviews with a rating of 4.0 or higher.
  • Schedule a blog to run on the first free day to announce your freebie offer.
  • Prepare a sheet of tweets with hashtags and Facebook posts in advance.
  • Schedule tweets ahead of time to run throughout the day of your freebie.
  • Send a newsletter to your mailing lists with your free book announcement.

What else would you add?

What to Expect When You’re Expecting…to Be Published

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by Boyd Morrison

If you’ve just gotten an offer for publication of your debut novel, congratulations! Keep the celebration short, though, because you’ve got a lot of work to do ahead of its release. Before I got that magic phone call, I didn’t realize how much an author has to do in preparation for a book launch. It’s no longer a hobby; it’s now a job. So here’s a compact primer on the responsibilities you’ll have during the gestation and birthing of a published book.


1)   Sign the contract. At this point, you will usually receive one-third of your negotiated advance (sometimes a fourth portion of the advance is retained until paperback publication of a hardcover release).

2)   Deliver the manuscript to your editor.

3)   Receive notes from your editor. These can come as comments in the document, a summary letter of notes, or both.

4)   Revise, revise, revise.

5)   Deliver revision to editor. Continue steps 3-5 until revisions are complete.

6)   Editor officially accepts the delivered manuscript! You get the second third of your advance.

7)   Receive the copyedits. The copyeditor is a different person from your editor, who comments on story issues. The copyeditor comments about typos, grammatical errors, repeated words, inconsistencies (name changes, timing issues, etc.), and typesetting notes (italics, bolding, etc.).

8)   Copyedits are also called galleys. The cover of a galley is typewritten with the title and your name. You suggest other authors to send these galleys to for possible blurbs. I often get blurb requests that require me to read the book in two weeks, which is usually impossible for me to do because of other commitments. You want to give authors at least 2-3 months to read it, and even then it’s very possible they won’t have time because of other galleys on deck for blurbs or deadline issues.

9)   Go through all the copyedits and either accept each change, modify it, or write “stet,” which means you want it the way it is.

10) Send the approved copyedits back to your publisher.

11) Approve the cover. Most authors have no say in the cover art, so the publisher usually sends it and says, “Isn’t it great!” But some authors get consultation so you can at least raise concerns if you find something objectionable. However, the final decision is with the publisher.

12) Write the book jacket and back cover summary.

13) Write your author bio for the book jacket.

14) If you don’t yet have a professional-quality author photo, get one.

15) Receive the proof. This is what the book will actually look like in print.

16) Proofread the book. This process is called “proofing.” Sometimes you will get a second proof to read.

17) Send proof back. A part of you hopes you never have to read this novel again.

18) Once you approve the final proof, it goes to the printer. No more changes can be made unless they’re incorporated into a future edition.

19) Ooh and aah over any ARCs (advance reader copies) that are sent to you. ARCs look like the final book with the actual cover, except it is in paperback instead of hardcover. ARCs are typically sent to reviewers and bookstores to generate reviews and excitement about the book.

20) Approve or write publicity releases. These will be sent out with the ARCs or to news outlets to create buzz about a book.

21) Approve or write marketing materials. These will be used for advertisements, catalog inserts, or in-store promos.

22) Approve or write website materials. These can be for your own website or the publisher’s website and can consist of your process for creating the book, extensive Q&A sessions, or book club guidelines.

23) The book hits stores! You get the final third of your advance. But you’re not done…

24) Write blog posts to promote the book. This can be done as part of a blog tour, where you visit a new blog every day for a few weeks.

25) Keep Twitter and Facebook followers engaged and informed about the release.

26) Double-check all of the online booksellers where your book is listed to make sure there aren’t any errors (this has happened to me many times—e.g., bookcovers that were the wrong version, inaccurate descriptions, broken links).

27) Respond to written interviews. An interviewer gets to email you 5-10 short questions, and then you have to write all the (sometimes lengthy) answers the way you want them to appear because they will be published verbatim.

28) If you or your publisher has put a good effort into publicity, you’ll need to do phone or in-person interviews with radio and TV stations.

29) Even if you only visit bookstores in your own town, you’ll be doing some booksignings. This can also involve traveling to multiple cities. You may be booked to appear at writers’ conferences, fan conventions, or bookfests. You’ll need to come up with some sort of presentation for all of these—sometimes you’re just on a panel and other times you might be the only one talking to a roomful of readers.

30) Obsess over your Amazon ranking and reviews. You know you shouldn’t, but it’s almost impossible to ignore them.

31) By the way, while all of the preceding is going on, you need to write your next book. Have fun with your new job!

How to Work on More Than One Book at a Time

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The most critical thing a writer does is produce. — Robert B. Parker
When I started writing seriously, after ten years of believing the Big Lie that you can’t learn to write fiction, I decided I had no time to waste. I wanted to be prolific. So I set out to work. Looking back at 20 years of getting paid for what I write, I see three practices that have helped me more than anything.
First, a quota. I’ve always written to a quota and that, IMO, is the most important thing a writer can put into practice.
Second, I systematically and consistently studied the craft. I read novels with intention, examining author technique. I subscribed to Writer’s Digest, went to conferences, devoured books on writing and practiced what I learned.
Third, I always worked on more than one project at a time. That’s what I want to talk about today.
No publishing house or agent is looking for one good book. They are looking for authors who can keep on writing them. Which is why it pains me when I see the same faces at writer’s conferences who are still working on the same projects, year after year.
I am always telling writers who show me their first finished manuscript, “That’s great! Congratulations. You learn a tremendous amount finishing a novel. Now get to work on the next one. And the one after that.”
This is especially important in the new era of self-publishing. The winning indie formula is quality production over time. You want a trend line that looks like this:

Upward direction is a function of producing new work, the best you can do, in various forms (short stories, novellas, novels, non-fiction). So work on more than one project at a time.
My method is to think of myself as a mini-studio. I always have a main project (my work-in-progress, or WIP). I have several projects “in development.” That means I’ve started making notes on character and plot, and perhaps a preliminary story board (I use Scrivener’s index card view for this). Projects in development go into a file I call “Front Burner.”
Then I have a file of hundreds of ideas I’ve collected over the years. Usually one or two lines. Sometimes just a title. I scan these ideas from time to time, looking for the ones that catch my fancy and, if they do, I make a few more notes. If I start to like something, I move it to the Front Burner.
As far as the writing itself goes, my first priority each day is to my WIP. I want to meet my word quota on that project. Part of my day will usually be spent editing a finished work. To do this, I print out a hard copy. I still like to be able to cross out and write notes on paper.
Another portion of my day will be spent on a Front Burner project. I prioritize these. I want to concentrate on the ones that meet this formula:
Desire to Write + Commercial Potential
Somewhere in the intersection of those two things is the project I “green light” for writing in full. I lean heavily on the desire line, because I believe you write best what you’re passionate about. For example, I love writing my Jimmy Gallagher boxing stories. They only make me Starbucks money, but I write them because I want to. Eventually there will be enough for a collection. I write the Sister J vigilante nun series because the concept was too good to pass up. (Note: I’ll have Force of Habit 2: And Then There Were Nuns out later this month. And a new Jimmy Gallagher next month). 
Now, I realize time is an issue for many writers. There’s the day job, the family, the remodel, the PTA. But that doesn’t mean a writer cannot put into practice a personal plan for prolificity (like all those p words? That was fun to write, but there’s no money in it). Here is what I suggest:
1. Figure out how many words you can comfortably write per week. Up that by 10%. Make that your writing quota.
2. Keep a notebook (or electronic equivalent) with you, and train yourself to think “What if?” all the time. Write down lots and lots of ideas in this notebook. The key to creativity is to take in a ton of ideas without judgment, and only later choose the best ones.
3. Spend a few hours each month looking at your idea file and expanding the ones you really like into a few paragraphs.
4. Try this: write like mad on your WIP. Take a break. Then write like mad on another project. Go back and forth.
5. Finish your novel. If you’d like some help with it, I will soon be offering you a way to do that. Check here for more information.
6. Revise your novel. At the same time:
7. Get to work on your next novel (or novella or story).
8. Never stop.
A plan like this, consistently followed, will please and amaze you. And you will be a real writer, one who produces words. That’s the main ticket in this game. Everything else is secondary.

What about you? Do you have some sort of system you follow for consistent productivity? How do you choose what projects to write? 
* * *

My new thriller DON’T LEAVE ME is available here:

Regarding Rejection

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by Mark Alpert

I’m familiar with rejection. Before my first novel was published I wrote four books that went nowhere. I received rejection letters from every major publisher in the industry and a hell of a lot of minor ones too. (And because this record of rejection dates back to the late Eighties, some of them were actual letters rather than e-mails. Typed on paper, for crying out loud!) The rejections that hurt the most were of the “It’s good, but…” variety. You know what I mean: It’s well-written, but I didn’t like the characters. It starts well, but I lost interest. I liked the book, but I didn’t love it.  Or the worst: I loved the book, but it’s not right for us.

I hated those letters. My reaction was: If you like it so much, why don’t you just publish it? In my disappointment, I wondered whether the compliments were sincere. Perhaps the editors actually disliked the book but were trying to soften the blow. In a perverse way, I almost hoped that the praise was false. If it was genuine, that meant I’d come close to success but fallen short, which was more frustrating than missing by a long shot.

In retrospect, I realize how wrongheaded my reasoning was. First of all, I’ve learned that book editors are outrageously busy people. The notion that they’d take the time to invent a compliment seems so ludicrous now. I’ve also realized there are many valid reasons for rejection that have nothing to do with the quality of the novel. The publisher may have too many books on its list already. Or perhaps the imprint rejects a manuscript because it just published something similar and it didn’t sell very well. Publishing is a business, after all. An editor can afford to make a few money-losing bets, but not too many.

But my worst mistake was ignoring the obvious message of those letters: You’re getting close! You should keep trying! Now I see that receiving one of those “It’s good, but…” rejections is the equivalent of hitting the green outer ring of the bull’s-eye on a dartboard. If you can consistently hit that ring, then it’s just a matter of time before you’ll land within the inner circle and win the big prize.

My third novel, Extinction, comes out on Tuesday, and as I stare at the gleaming hardcover on my desk I think of all those rejection letters. I suppose there are a few supernaturally talented writers who can hit a bull’s-eye on the very first throw. But for most of us mere mortals, success and failure march hand in hand. You can’t have one without the other.

5 Keys Steps to Adding Depth to Your Fictional Relationships

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Jordan Dane
@JordanDane




My Australian cover for Indigo Awakening


In Indigo Awakening (Book #1 in my “The Hunted” series for Harlequin Teen)—there is a love triangle that is layers deep. I’m a sucker for love triangles, but I wanted the one in Indigo Awakening to be a little more than a girl’s attraction to two very different boys. At the apex of this triangle is a very strong girl, Kendra Walker, the leader of an underground movement of Indigo children and feelings run high when beliefs and ideologies are tested.

Lucas Darby is psychic and becomes mentally linked to a girl he hears in his head after he escapes from a mental hospital. Kendra thinks she has made contact with another lost Indigo, but after she realizes that Lucas is a powerful Crystal child, she sees the future she always dreamed would be possible. And for Lucas to connect with the “hive mind” for the first time, the link is intoxicating and seductive. Kendra is older than Lucas, but for him their connection is as intimate as making love for the first time. It changes everything for both of them. Since Lucas is evolving into a Crystal child, the next evolution of mankind, Kendra is motivated to be with him so she can be a part of a new, more powerful movement. She is a modern day Joan of Arc on a mission to save the Indigos, but someone else is her rock when it comes to protecting her Indigo children.

Another boy, Rafael Santana, has helped Kendra build a safe underground oasis for the homeless Indigos. Rafe has feelings for Kendra that he’s never shared with her, but he’s also driven to protect Benny, a 10-year old boy he loves like a little brother. This conflict will drive how he reacts when Kendra’s Indigo revolution threatens the home he wants for Benny. After she focuses her attention on Lucas, Rafe becomes jealous, but in his quiet way he deals with it until the conflict between the Indigos and the Believers blows up, the fanatical church zealots who hunt Indigo kids to stop the next evolution of man. Rafael’s love for Benny collides with his loyalty for Kendra and changes everything.

Kendra must choose how far she is willing to go to save her Indigo family—the one she has and the one she’s dreamed about. Lucas, the powerful Crystal child, represents the future she had always hoped for, but Rafael is the heart and soul of the past she started with him—the boy who made her dream possible.

Key steps to adding depth to your fictional relationships:

 
1.) Give a strong character vulnerabilities that conflict with what they might want and force them to choose. There are consequences to actions. Someone’s gotta lose, even in love.

2.) Give them choices that test their emotions. Their choices shouldn’t be easy. For example, make them choose between their personal happiness or the greater good. This is classic and always relatable.

3.) Pair them with opposite types of characters to enhance the conflict potential. Opposites attract for a reason. Fireworks, baby.

4.) Create internal conflicts or flaws that make them struggle with their external goals and the goals of the character(s) you’ve paired them with. Conflict is key to any great story. But add depth to your character by layering the conflict inside them first.

5.) Give them a noble cause that is a roadblock to their personal happiness or someone else’s. What would they do? Not every character would make the same decision.


For Discussion for Readers and Writers:

1.) What are some additional points you would add to this list?

2.) What are some of your favorite literary or film love triangles? Please share your thoughts on why they resonated with you.

“Dane’s first offering in her new series, The Hunted, is sensational. Indigo Awakening has strong characters and a wild and intense story, matched only by the emotions it will generate within you. Readers will love this book and eagerly await the next adventure. Fantastic! A keeper.”
4.5 Stars (out of 5)
—Romantic Times Book Review Magazine