Which social media site do you use most frequently for doing the following:
- Discovering new books and authors
- Networking as a writer
Tag Archives: #amwriting
Creating Tangible Connections in an Online World
Later today I’ll be driving north up the coast to attend a book signing in Santa Barbara. The event will be held at Chaucer’s, which the LA Times has called “the little bookstore that could“. Chaucer’s has flourished and grown during a time when other local retailers, including mega-bookstores such as Borders and Barnes and Noble, have faltered and closed their doors in the wake of Amazon and the advance of online marketing.
I’m enthusiastic about the prospect of enjoying some tangible, human interaction that is centered around reading and books. I should seek out this experience more often, I suddenly realize. In years gone by, I used to make regular pilgrimages to bookstores, if only for a fly-by and to grab a cup of java. Nowadays, most of those bookstores have disappeared. Seldom did a month go by in the past when I didn’t find some reason for dropping by our local library. Today, I always seem to be hunched behind my laptop or iPad.
When did the reading experience become so solitary? (Let’s not even mention writing–the craft of writing has always been a lonely road.)
So here’s my epiphany for the day (you’re probably already aware of it): when we replaced our physical reading venues with virtual ones, we also lost a quality of personal connection. Those connections may have seemed fleeting and minor in real time, but they added real value, I think. I miss them.
So tonight, I’m planning to set things back to rights. I’m going to honor and celebrate the human connection of reading, by driving two hours to attend a book reading at Chaucer’s. (Tonight’s author, by the way, will be Robin Winter. She will be signing and reading from her latest science fiction novel, WATCH THE SHADOWS. If you’re in the Santa Barbara area, I hope to see you there!)
Am I alone in feeling that something important has been lost during the gradual transition to an online reading world? Please share your experience about what has changed for you as a reader in recent years.
First-page Critique: THINGS NOT FORGOTTEN
Today we’re critiquing the first page of a story called THINGS NOT FORGOTTEN. I’ll add my comments at the end, and then I invite you all to add your thoughts in the Comments.
THINGS NOT FORGOTTEN
Wednesday, 10:30 p.m.
But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.
James 3:8
Keep running. Don’t stop until you know the madman is gone. But he was still alive.
Jason smelled his own sweat…pungent and sour. And vomit. He’d thrown up, splattering the front of his plaid flannel shirt, the taste still in his mouth. Urine soaked the front of his jeans. He couldn’t believe he’d pissed himself.
How could he run away and leave his best friend?
Eric’s screams still echoed inside his head.
His feet pounded the earth. He glimpsed over his shoulder to see if the maniac chased after him. His heart pulsed in his ears.
When he turned back, his forehead slammed into a branch. Jason staggered but stayed on his feet. Eyes watered from the pain.
Got to keep running. Don’t look back.
His feet obeyed despite the dizziness swimming in his head. Moonlight flickered patches of light through the trees. Instead of providing a path, it only contributed to the vertigo. It had been two years since he and Eric came to the cabin to hunt. If only he somehow had grabbed his rifle when he escaped, but there was no going back.
As he ran, he used his hands as battering rams to clear a path. Knock down any low hanging branches. Twigs and brush slashed at him but he refused to stop. Blood trickled down his face and arms. It mixed with sweat and stung his eyes. He swallowed. His stomach lurched, threatening to spew whatever contents remained.
His mind replayed the events in short, choppy segments. Eric and he had been drinking beer, swapping sea stories in the navy when someone knocked on the front door. If only they had never opened it.
Now his best friend was dead, or soon would be. He didn’t know for certain. As the psychopath tortured Eric, Jason worked his hands and feet out of the rope binding him to a chair.
The nearest neighbor was five miles away, but he didn’t know in what direction. In his haste, he rushed into the thicket of trees and brush, running as fast as he could. Nothing else mattered.
But he must be far away from the cabin by now. Rare streaks of moonlight revealed glimpses of the ground. He tripped over a fallen tree. He tried to catch himself, arms flailing to catch anything his hands could grasp. He went down hard, his body spiraling across leaves like a helicopter until it crashed into a tree.
Pain shot through his ankle.
Get up!
His leaden legs wouldn’t obey. A twig snapped, then a rustle, soft and subtle. Then the crunch of leaves and footsteps like someone closing in on him.
It’s not possible. How could he have found me?
My comments:
I have to say my stomach tightened as I read this page, which is good news for the writer. The use of short sentences and strong verbs (pounded, slammed, staggered, flickered) are appropriate for an action scene. The punchy verbs and short sentences used in this example help underscore the sense of urgency and panic that is being experienced by the character. (An aside: this scene reminded me of a newspaper story I once read about a mass shooting that took place in Australia. The story included an unforgettable description of a mother and her two young girls fleeing into the brush, trying to escape from the shooter.)
I did get distracted by a couple of things in the writing. As I first read the third sentence, “But he was still alive,” I wasn’t sure if “he” referred to to the victim or killer. That unclear pronoun reference should be fixed to avoid causing potential confusion.
I found the references to the actual encounter with the killer to be generic, and therefore a bit of a let-down. Imagine that a maniacal killer has suddenly appeared at the door of your remote cabin in the woods, tied you up, and tortured your best friend. Wouldn’t you have a vivid impression of the experience as you attempt to flee? Each moment spent with such a monster would be burned into into your brain cells. I think the writer could improve the scene by finding a stronger way to convey that experience to the reader.
The sentence, “It had been two years since Eric and he came to the cabin to hunt” was confusing. Had they been living in the woods for two years? The writer needs to rework that section, or simply edit out that line.
The phrase “dizziness swimming in his head” struck me as a bit off the mark. Same comment applies for the image of the body spiraling like a helicopter. That sentence comes off as a bit of overreach. (Also, I think one tends to think of a person’s arms flailing in space in a circular pattern like a helicopter, not the entire body.)
This comment is a really tiny nit: I stumbled on “rare streaks of moonlight”, probably because I initially misread it as “rare steaks.” (Silly, I know, but you don’t want to lose any reader for a reason that can easily be avoided.)
Overall, I think this page is in promising first-draft condition. The writer just needs to sharpen the language here and there, and do some polishing with an edit.
Now I’d like to hear from the rest of you. How do you like this first page? Please add your comments and suggestions. And thank you to the brave writer who submitted this work!
What is Your Writer’s Personality?
So I just took an online personality test offered by the The University of Cambridge, and now I’m trying to absorb a few puzzling facts about my personality. Based on the principles of psychometrics, the test measures a person’s personality profile on the classical “big five” personality traits (Extroversion, Emotionality, Openness, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness). The test also classifies one’s general personality “type”.
According to my test’s results, my personality is characterized mainly by Openness (52%), Extroversion (58%), and Neuroticism (52%), with Agreeableness lagging behind (34%). Conscientiousness came in a distant fifth (16%).
Wait, Neuroticism? Is that what the University of Cambridge meant by the “Emotionality” personality trait? Wasn’t that a label switch?
Also, according to this test, my MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) personality type is an ISTP, which is a kind of personality that is usually found in engineers. That’s confusing, but I can’t say more about this finding because I lost the page with the results about that part of the test (which is probably a reflection of my low score on the Conscientiousness personality trait).
I don’t know how accurate this psychometrics stuff is, but I don’t think these results are problematic for a career in writing. In fact, I think writing is about the only thing I can do, given my personality. (I’d certainly never get very far as an engineer).
Why don’t you take the personality test, and share your results? They can’t be more embarrassing than mine.
http://tests.e-psychometrics.com/
First-page Critique: LAND SHARKS
Happy Thursday, gang! Today we have a first page submission for discussion. I love the title, LAND SHARKS, mainly because I get to post a picture of Sharknado. After my comments about this page, please add yours!
LAND SHARKS
Beverly Hills – the home of beautiful clothes, beautiful cars, and beautiful people. Where the perfumed smell of money floats in the air. And like blood in the water, it attracts sharks.
Not the ones with fins, but those that walk on two legs and camouflage themselves in human clothing.
I’ve been lucky. I’ve never run into a real two-legged, great white face-to-face. I hope I never will.
At the moment, I’m eating at a trendy Asian Fusion restaurant a block away from Rodeo Drive. My spicy shrimp dumplings and miso soup are excellent. I like the soup so much, I’m even wearing it dribbled down the front of my best white blouse. Not an unusual occurrence for me. It would be nice if bibs were fashionable for women to wear at meals other than lobster. I’d save a lot on my dry cleaning bill if it were.
Sadly, even in this nice restaurant there’s a nasty fish, and I don’t mean on the menu. I’d classify him as a piranha. A piranha is a shark wanna-be, and I do run into a lot of those.
***
My notes:
After that fun title, I was ready to like this first page. I love snarky, self-deprecating humor in a narrator’s voice, and this page the has potential to be sharp and funny. But snarky humor is hard to pull off effectively, as this page demonstrates.
First line
I think the opening line could be a bit fresher. Using “beautiful” three times in a row has a quality of sameness to it. I think “beautiful people” could be replaced with something something more unexpected, something that conveys something humorous about the story we’re about to encounter. Keep the alliteration, but play around with the images you’re conveying. I would keep the first instance of “beautiful,” perhaps, but then go for something stronger and sharper from there.
Second and third paragraphs
“Not the ones with fins, but those that walk on two legs and camouflage themselves in human clothing.”
I think this paragraph, and the one that follows it, begin to strain the shark metaphor. Why don’t you just replace them both by adding “The two-legged kind” or something similarly brief at the end of the first paragraph? Then move on.
Fourth paragraph
We learn a lot about this woman’s messy eating habits, probably more than we want to know at this point. By now, we should be getting a sense of the character’s situation, not simply what she’s eating.
Fifth paragraph
This paragraph does a bit of wheel spinning, and again, it strains the shark/piranha image. Rather than saying a nasty fish exists in the restaurant, let us see your character encountering the fish. Something like, “I looked up from my noodles just in time to catch a flash of teeth. It was “(name). Of all the sharks prowling the waters of Beverly Hills, (name) was the nastiest fish.”
Tense
I used past tense, because I think present tense is very difficult to pull off in an adult story.
Overall
This could be a really fun story. Who doesn’t love to mock rich people in Beverly Hills? I like its potential, but t have a feeling that this page is simply a warm-up to the next page, As it stands, the story probably really begins on page two. I would condense most of this page and get right into the story.
Thank you to the writer for submitting this first page!
What do you think of LAND SHARKS, TKZ’ers?
What A Freelance Editor Brings to the Table
Jordan Dane
@JordanDane
Editor: Mary-Theresa Hussey
My guest today is my favorite editor (for my Young Adult books at Harlequin Teen), Mary-Theresa Hussey. Her passion for books shows in everything she does. I love collaborating with her. She has a meticulous eye for detail, but her true strength lies in her realistic understanding of character motivation and the emotion of a story. I’m proud to have her as my guest today at TKZ. Welcome, Matrice!
***
So you’ve written your book shared it with a critique partner, revised it, set it aside for a bit, revised it once more and are ready for the next step. Your mother, friend and sister love it and think it’s perfect.
What’s next? Well, it does depend on your goals for that novel. Do you want to find an agent? A publisher? Self-publish it? Go Indy? Do you want to share it with a few people or the wider world?
If you’re aiming at an agent or publisher, you might feel it’s in solid shape and you’ll wait for those professionals to give feedback and direction. That can be the right route if your project fits in with their goals as well.
However, if you haven’t gotten many bites, or you want to go indy, then you might want to investigate working with a freelance editor. The editor might help pinpoint some areas that will capture that agent/publisher or else give you the confidence to self-publish yourself. Freelancing can be hard for anyone who decides they are interested in going down that path. But knowing that various aspects like the finances can be handled with a simple invoice template, this means one less aspect to think about. You’ll have more time to focus on what you love to do, which is writing.
Luckily there are some places where you might be able to get the resources you need to help you along with your freelance career, for example, using an invoice template could be a good way of keeping on top of your clients.
So what does the freelance editor bring to the table?
She represents the reader in the bookstore or booksite, the ones who will pay to read your book—and hopefully all the ones after that!
She is not your friend or critique partner who listened to you talk about all the characters and plot and goals. If it’s not on the page for her, she’s going to question it and ask why—or why not.
She has not been in your mind to understand the motivations or conflict or themes. Though you don’t need to hit the reader over the head, sometimes you’ve got to explain the elements that you know but the reader doesn’t have a clue about.
She doesn’t love your darlings in the same way, and will tell you to cut or trim or toss as needed.
She’s caring but dispassionate. She’s looking for what will make the best story and draw that reader to the end. She won’t aim to hurt your feelings, but will challenge you on what makes a better novel.
She should be reading the manuscript that you’ve polished, gotten feedback on and are confident is ready to go, not the first draft. Have it in as strong as possible a shape so it’s better for both of you.
She should also have a knowledge of and appreciation for the genre you’re writing in so that the notes are targeted to your goals, not her own ideal book.
She has a strong sense of grammar, of rules, and knowing what to encourage as your voice and when to rein in flights of fancy.
She may, depending on the agreement, be able to give you feedback on titling, copy and other material. But that can be an editor specific element.
Most important, depending on your needs, you might want a development editor, line editor or copy editor. Make sure you know what you want and hire the right person at the right stage! Some editors are especially talented in one area or another. Make sure you’re getting the right person for you at the right time.
The Developmental Editor is looking at the big picture of pacing and structure and characterization and plot. She’s not going to focus on grammar or eye color or such, but is looking at the overall goals of your story and how you are achieving them.
The Line Editor will probably note specific areas where pacing or structure or characterization needs to be tweaked, but hopefully all those elements will have been addressed. She’s going to be looking at the specifics of reading the manuscript, looking for errors in fact and name and restructuring sentences. She does read it line by line to see if the author has expressed herself as clearly as she could.
The Copy Editor focuses on the details. She will know what all the characters names are, and their relation to each other and probably hair and eye color, but isn’t going to ask if the pacing is too slow. She’ll fix all the grammar issues and typos, but won’t comment on inconsistent characterization—unless the character is misstating facts between chapters. She’ll find the typos but won’t question the plot (unless you have your character walking out of the room twice—that she’ll notice!).
An editor—freelancer or not—will wear many hats, but there are some things she probably won’t do.
She’s not a writing teacher. She won’t teach you the ins and outs about craft. She should be able to point out the errors and why something would be better in another form, but it probably won’t lead to hours of one-on-one discussions about the reasons behind your choices and her corrections.
Since she probably won’t take the time to teach you how to write a better story, she’s also not going to (depending on the agreement) rewrite the book. She’s working with your words and making suggestions, not rewriting everything herself. She’s certainly planning on helping improve the story, but it’s your writing that is the base of it all.
Along those lines, she may or may not be a writer herself. If it’s important to you one way or the other, check that out first! It can be incredibly helpful at times to have an editor who is a writer, but sometimes not.
The freelance editor is not a publisher. She probably knows a bit about self-publishing and has picked up information on metadata and ISBNS, but it will be the author’s responsibility to work through the process.
She’s also not likely to be a miracle worker. No editor can guarantee the book will be picked up by an agent or publisher or become number one on the bestseller list. What she can strive for to the best of her knowledge and ability is that all the elements that make a stronger story have been reviewed and addressed and there are minimal errors of grammar and typos in the story.
Naturally, I think a good editor brings a lot to the table, but the author has to do the work first and understand her own goals for the project. It’s best if you are both on the same page going in, so you end up in the strongest possible position at the end of the revision/edit. In the end, it’s the author’s name on the book, and the author who stands behind her words.
So what are you looking for in an editor? Any good or bad experiences? Do share what you can.
Matrice
After a long editorial career at Harlequin, Mary-Theresa Hussey is now offering her years of experience to authors and industry professionals as a freelance editor. She’s passionate about books and good stories–and she wants to be sure that they are well told. Check out her site at www.GoodStoriesWellTold.com
Do your Research!
Today I leave for a very exciting trip to India – not only am I excited because it’s a place that’s been on my (long) ‘must see’ list for ages but also because it gives me a chance to do some ‘on the ground’ research. I’m lucky that my love of travel and history can be combined in this way, but I also understand that I have an obligation to future readers to get the details of any story I write as accurate as possible. Although ‘on site’ research isn’t always possible, few things compare to actually breathing in the air of the place you plan to write about or to feel, smell, hear and touch the very things your characters will experience. The immediacy of this kind of research will (I hope) translate into a more visceral sensory experience for the reader as well.
Following Jim’s theme from yesterday’s blog post – I also feel strongly that one of the top things guaranteed to make a writer fail is a failure to do research. This research includes critical information about the publishing and writing industry as well as everything pertinent to the book a writer is hoping to complete. And when I say everything – I mean everything. Readers today demand a compelling and accurate story – and be assured, if you fail to research something properly there will be an army of readers out there eager to tell you so!
This research can usually be done at the desk top – with the internet offering a wealth of information that was never as readily accessible as it is today. I can read antiquarian books that have been electronically scanned, view newspaper columns from a past era – even look up the weather reports for a particular date I have in mind. As a historical writer, I feel an obligation to get the facts right as much as possible and I have been known to spend way too many hours researching furnishings, paintings, and books that will comprise less than a few sentences of background in my novels (what can I say, I love my job!). Still – nothing quite compares to the thrill of actually being in the place you want to write about.
So today I go armed with notebooks, computer and camera as well as all my (aging) senses – hoping to capture the essence of place and history for India that I want to capture in my future story. My travels will include Delhi, Agra, Hyderabad and Udaipur, and, I know I will find the experience overwhelming and confronting at times, as I witness the juxtaposition of modernity and history, poverty and riches first hand.
Unfortunately, I may not be able to view this post or comment as much as I’d like (as I’ll be flying part of the day), but I would like to hear from my fellow TKzers on a place that they would like to visit as research for an possible book they’d love to write.
So what country or place is on your ‘must see’ list for a possible future book? Have you ever given up on a book after realizing the writer failed to do their research?
Reader Friday: Name Your Memoir!
People Are Talking About #CrimeHeadlines2025
As if there weren’t already enough crime to worry about, people on Twitter are speculating about crimes of the future. The radio show Science Friday challenged its listeners to fantasize about how scientific breakthroughs could result in new crimes in the future, and asked them to post their ideas on Twitter with the hashtag #CrimeHeadlines2025. 
The results are entertaining. One guy suggested “drunk droning” as a new infraction (although as I recall, that one already happened).
I’m a fan of Michael Crichton-style scifi thrillers, so I love speculating about the ways criminals can exploit new technology. One of my favorite topics is brain research, so I started thinking about an article that described how scientists had transplanted memories into the brain tissue of rats. The ultimate goal of the scientists is to assist people with impaired brain function, but I foresee a dark potential. A criminal in the future could kidnap someone, and then transfer essential memories into his victim for safekeeping, or to elude police. And what if whole-brain transplants ultimately become possible? We might see a new crime of body snatching.
What are some #CrimeHeadlines2025 that you can imagine?
Mob Rules?
Two recent articles in the New York Times caught my attention – not just because they highlight the frenzy of vitriol that so often explodes on social media but also because they point to a disturbing ‘faceless mob’ mentality permeating our digital lives. As a writer, an active presence online (to both market and publicize my work as well as create connections with my readers) is, however, a necessity but one which, especially after reading these articles, I increasingly view with trepidation.
The first article “Feed Frenzy‘ details the misery of online ‘shaming’ victims – people like Lindsey Stone and Justine Sacco who, because of inappropriate and ill-advised jokes/tweets, were subject to relentless (and I mean relentless) Twitter attacks that all but ruined their lives. I have always been cautious about what I tweet but after reading this article I’m not sure I want to tweet anything ever again!
The second article entitled ‘The Epidemic of Facelessness‘ points to the dissonance between the world of faces (the real world of interpersonal communication) and the world without faces (our increasingly ‘anonymous’ digital lives). Apart from the disturbing number of ‘troll’ incidents reported with varying degrees of threats of person violence against actual people, there is also the basic lack of humanity and compassion that we now see spreading across the digital world. The article highlights a few key rules we need to adopt when ‘conversing’ through Twitter, Facebook and other social media. One is ‘Never say anything online you wouldn’t say to someone’s face’ (something you’d think would be pretty obvious) and the other is ‘Don’t listen to what people wouldn’t say to your face’ (a much harder proposition I think for most of us).
Now I’m pretty sure I’ve never said anything on social media that I wouldn’t say to someone in person. Likewise, however, there are many things I won’t say on social media that I would say to someone’s face – and that self-censorship is starting to make me feel disheartened. It’s hard to be a writer in this digital age and not engage online with readers across a range of social platforms and media – but often I feel that I cannot really present myself authentically on social media because of the risk of trolls, flame-wars and all the other horrible reactions seemingly innocuous posts or tweets can inflame (as anyone who’s ever been on any social media has witnessed). I find myself refusing to comment not just on political or social issues that I would otherwise freely discuss, but also hesitating to post or comment on a range of issues that in my ‘real world’ I wouldn’t even think twice about talking about. It’s become an issue not just about professionalism versus personal disclosure but about censoring my online ‘appearances’ to the extent that I fear I must be very boring indeed!
So what do you TKZers think about the current state of our ‘faceless’ digital world? How do you navigate the treacherous digital waters?
Have you ever been the subject to the kinds of ‘faceless’ attacks these articles discuss? Do you, like me, censor how you appear online (not just out of professionalism, but also out of fear?). Does the current ‘faceless mob’ mentality affect how you market and publicize your work online? What about what you actually write? Are you even hesitant to deal with controversial political or social issues in the work itself?