What’s in a Title by Guest Blogger Jane Merryman Naked Lunch A Crack in the Edge of the World The Borrowers Book titles. Delicious. They provide entertainment in themselves, never mind what’s between the covers. The words on the front offer promise, titillation, or confusion. Of course, some titles are strictly workaday: Wildflowers of North America; The History of England from the Accession of James II; Math Formulas and Tables. But other titles are delightfully misleading, some are curiously ironic, others are satirical or even nonsense. A Moveable Feast Fezzes in the River Manhattan Transfer The title may or may not be an exact pointer to what’s inside, but it’s definitely a label that fixes itself in mind and memory. Take Pride and Prejudice—it has a lilt to it. But do you really want to plod through several hundred pages of unillustrated text enumerating the consequences of a couple of…
Category: Guest Bloggers
Guest Blogger Clara Rosemarda – writing with depth and clarity
Guest Blogger Clara Rosemarda reveals how to write with depth and clarity. Clara writes: Many years ago I took voice lessons from a master teacher. He worked with people who believed they were tone deaf. I was one of those people. My voice seemed flat as the ground I walked on, and I was too embarrassed to sing unless I was in a group large enough to swallow the sound of my voice. My teacher, robust and powerful, sat opposite me on the floor of his music studio. With full-bodied fingers born to make music he plucked the strings of his tambura going up and down the scale. Then he sounded a note and had me repeat it. At first I couldn’t reproduce the exact sound, but after a few tries and great concentration, I was able to. He told me I had a good voice which was a surprise…
Avoid clichéd characters. . . and more, from Guest Blogger Daryl Hajek
Guest blogger Daryl Hajek discusses a writer’s journey. I was taught to learn to read and write at a young age, even before kindergarten. My parents had told me, because of my deafness, they were determined that I was going to learn to read and write. That was the beginning of my journey into reading and writing. As Stephen King says, “Read a lot, write a lot.” I do this by reading two or three books (or ebooks) concurrently, but that’s a quirk of mine. I also write at least one hour a day, up to eight hours, depending on my mood or how I’m feeling. Learn as much as you can about writing. Take a writing course or two. Get how-to books on writing. Join a book club. Network with other authors/writers online via social media. Get a professional editor which is an absolute must, no exceptions whatsoever. Otherwise, unedited works show…
Guest Blogger Amanda McTigue talks about marketing your book
So, you’ve got your book written, or almost written, or you have an idea for a book, but you’re stuck dead in your tracks because you detest the marketing aspect of the book business Amanda McTigue says, “No doubt about it: we writers love to write, hate to sell. How could it be otherwise? We’re the odd balls who’d rather spend vast quantities of time alone in our imaginations. And yet these days, we’re told not only must we craft (and sometimes publish) our works, but also find readers to read them: a daunting challenge compounded by our own dread. What’s a writer to do?” Amanda shares resources on one of our least favorite challenges: marketing yourself and your book. “The Psychology of Writer Promotion. How to Promote Yourself,” Chuck Wendig “Book Marketing 101,” Jane Friedman “Five Mistakes You’ll Make on the Way to Publishing Success,” Carmen Amato via Jane…
Guest Blogger Mona Mechling, In memory of Karen Batchelor
Mona first posted “In memory of Karen Batchelor” on her blog, Envelope of Random Things. In memory of Karen Batchelor A year ago a talented, amazing woman left us too soon. I always felt she was a mentor to me, not just in my writing world, but about life in general. In memory of her I want to post what I call my mission statement. Ok, other writers out there, let’s send the world some stories! I can only hope that somehow I might continue her legacy in that way. Mona’s Mission Statement My mission is to be a mentor to upcoming writers struggling to find their way with the craft of writing. I hope to do this as a testament to the mentors who were there for me. I will do this by being an example of how crucial it is to continue in my quest for knowledge…
Guest Blogger Ted A. Moreno – You Don’t Need Silence to Be Quiet
The following is from Ted A. Moreno’s 12/16/14 email, “You Don’t Need Silence to Be Quiet.” Sit back, relax and enjoy. Ted writes: Last night I sat in a filled auditorium and watched as my 9 year old daughter, along with scores of other elementary school kids, gave her first band performance. They played 5 notes. When the curtain rose, she was right in my line of vision, wearing the white shirt and black pants her mom had picked up for her that afternoon. She sat with her clarinet, Taylor Swift hair, and sparkly eyes. She spotted me and returned my thumbs up sign with a huge grin. And even though the auditorium was filled with hooting parents calling out their kids’ names, I felt a stillness within. It hadn’t been a really good day, too busy, but right then and there it got a whole lot better. It wasn’t…
Guest Blogger Ted A. Moreno . . . and the jewels deep within.
Today’s Guest Blogger, hypnotherapist Ted A. Moreno, writes about reflection and the passage of time . . . We’re still enjoying 80 degree temps here in Southern California. But it’s obvious that fall has arrived and that summer is on its way south. Can you feel it? The morning chill, the early darkness, the long shadows of late afternoon. Leaves releasing themselves for the slow descent to the ground. Autumn has always been my favorite time of year. Something about the shorter days and chillier nights make me pensive, perhaps because I was a winter baby. For me, this is a time of introspection, of going within. It’s as if the fading fall light casts a different perspective that makes me take a step back to examine my life. I’m getting more present to the fading away of a younger me. Remembrances of younger days seem to be visiting me lately. Not only…
Guest Blogger Jean Grant-Sutton and glorious messy imperfections
Guest Blogger Jean Grant-Sutton writes: This time of year I am reminded so pertinently of the glorious messy imperfection of life. I see it in an amass of leaves on the ground that are so exquisitely beautiful in their array of color, but they make for a lot of clean up and clutter in the yard. Great in the compost to make nutritious soil — glad for that. I take comfort in reality. Life is made up of much glorious messy imperfection. I feel like I’m one of them And I continue to practice acceptance for that. It takes courage to be imperfect. Click here for a great article by Roger Allen on this topic. I hope you enjoy it. Integrative Yoga Therapist, Jean Grant-Sutton loves to share writings that stem from an understanding of life based on the ancient art and science of Yoga. She writes to connect and…
Guest Blogger Angela Ackerman gets physical
Here’s what Guest Blogger Angela Ackerman has to say about writing physical descriptions. I’m going to be totally honest here. There is little I detest more than trying to describe how my character looks. The reasons are numerous. I think it sounds boring. It slows the story. It reads like a list or sounds clichéd, etc, blargh de blargh. I write in first person, to boot, making it even more difficult to create natural-sounding character description without using the dreaded MIRROR technique. After all, every time a writer uses a mirror to describe their character’s physique, somewhere in the world a zombie dies. Think about that. Right now, Zombies are dying. I can’t add to this terrible crime. Can you? But then I read Word Painting and realized I was looking at it all wrong. Physical description doesn’t need to be a dry, tasteless blob of facts to help the…
What killed it for me. — Becca Puglisi
Guest Blogger Becca Puglisi, co-founder of Writers Helping Writers, talks about clichéd characters. It’s hard to come up with characters who are believable yet don’t sound like every other character out there. It’s especially easy to fall into this trap with certain archetypes, like witty sidekicks or wise old mentors. Unfortunately, a recent book that I started had a whole cast of clichés: the jaded, super-sarcastic teen girl hero; the loving but confused single parent; a villain in the form of a Queen Bee Mean Girl. As for the love interest and sidekick…I didn’t stick around long enough to meet them. But even one clichéd character may be too much; you don’t want to give readers a reason to lose interest or roll their eyes when they’re introduced to a character they’ve seen a dozen times. Character creation is one of our passions at Writers Helping Writers, thanks to the research…