Fiction Scribe

I was asked a while ago to write a post on historical fiction. I apologize for the delay. Historical fiction is a bit out of my usual range of knowledge of genres.

So I interviewed!

Hello and welcome to Hawke from Hawke’s View and Scribed. I’ve enjoyed reading her short stories since we met, and it’s my pleasure to be able to interview her. (more…)

This is just an additional few sites to go along with the interview for historical fiction writers.

Want to know anything about time or calendars? Go to Virtual Perpetual Calendars. You can find anything and everything you need to know about time, calendars (including zodiac), and even holidays.

Last Words might be a bit morbid, but you can find out the last words of many famous people.

If you’re not so keen on famous lasts, how about checking out this list of famous firsts?

Enjoy!

Having an author site for yourself (and your latest piece of work you’re promoting) can be quite important in getting word out about you and your books. Even if you’re unpublished, having an author site can show a publisher that you already have and are more than willing to promote yourself and your work.

Blogger.com is a popular choice for many people, and is they way I got started in blogging. An easy to navigate and visually pleasing site, I recommend blogger to those just starting out in blogging and/or in HTML.

When you sign up with Blogger, it’s easy to find your way around with easy-to-understand-and-read terms and fonts. For the new blogger, it’s as easy as signing up with a valid email address, picking your blog title, template, and URL, and then going off to post! The blogger unfamiliar with HTML can step in and start posting without having to worry about any bits of code. However, the basic codesmith can easily switch over to the “Edit HTML” tab and give it a go.

After Blogger’s recent switch to “the New Blogger,” it’s even easier to make your blog your own - no HTML experience needed. All you need do is drag and drop elements as you want them to look, and you can have a preview. For the HTML dabbler, this can be a good thing as well because you can drag and drop the main elements as well as add your personal touch in the raw template.

If you’re looking to make a little cash with your blog, you’re likely thinking to go the popular way of Google adsense. Blogger has that covered in an easy add-on in the drag and drop template manipulation section. All you have to do is sign up for it.

However, Blogger has its down points as well.

To sign up for the new Blogger, you have to have a Google account or you will be signed up for one. This isn’t a strong negative, but if you’re like me, you groan at the thought of signing up for yet another thing you won’t use. I have yet to explore to see exactly what I can do with my new account with Google.

Blogger’s main function is for its users to be able to blog. Your posts will go up in diary style format and will be archived all the same. If you want a Bio page, Blogger does give you a profile page. However, it is meager and you want something more, plan on having a blog all about you with its own unique URL just sitting there.

Finally, Blogger is meant mainly for blogging, as I said above. Thus you have a blog, but that’s about all. If you have seen other author sites and like the idea of having a page for your prose, a page for your poetry, a page for your blogging, etc, be prepared to have quite a few blogs. I know quite a few people who manage this and manage it well, but I prefer to have everything I want and need on one site, one URL.

Blogger is my definite recommendation for people starting out and those who want to start experimenting with template HTML. However, if you’ve been using it for a good amount of time now, I recommend branching out and trying a few other spaces so you can find your true fit for your needs.

Some links to templates:

Aspiring Romance Writer uses the Thisaway Rose template provided by Blogger.
Hawke uses a template I partially designed myself. This is an example of how you can use a base template and experiment with a few things to get the look you want, and you don’t have to know how to make a template from scratch.
Infinite Monkeys uses an original, monkey-themed template.

blogger, blogging, author sites, free sites, free blogs, websites, author websites

The internet can be a great way to promote yourself. More and more authors are straying away from the publishing company’s profile page to have their own personal sites. Having your own site can be a wonderful way to promote yourself and your writing.

Things you need to decide are:

*if you are going to pay or not.
*if you want to try to make money off it.
*what you want in your site.
*how much of it you want to do yourself.
*whether you want your own domain or not (which will work into whether or not you want to pay).
*how much space you want/need.

You should also consider the amount of experience you have with HTML and/or CSS, working with images, and basic graphic design.

If you’re thinking about creating an author site, it’s better to start thinking about this sooner than later because websites take a while to build. Having a well thought out site map, even just loosely written on a piece of paper, rather than something just slapped together shows.

Reviews coming up:

Blogger
FreeWebs
Angelfire
WordPress

If there is a program I don’t mention that you are unsure about and would rather not sign up, let me know. I’ll snoop around and give a review.

Do you already have an author site? I’d like to review a variety of different services, so I’d love to hear from you.

Comic courtesy of: Will Write for Chocolate

will write for chocolate, websites, author sites, writing, creative writing, promotion

This is an extreme pet peeve of mine, but it’s not technically incorrect.

“That’s right,” said he. “Not technically incorrect, indeed.”

A couple years ago, I noticed a lot of writers moving toward “said he” instead of the more common “he said,” and thank full the movement didn’t stick.

When I read (or try to read) a story with “said he” in it, I tend to get a picture of an old man with wild white hair smacking a ruler against the blackboard while he’s trying to teach English. Needless to say, it distracts me from the reading.

Maybe you like writing like that, but always keep in mind your goal is to get and keep as many readers as you can. Things that could possibly distract the reader from the story should be kept to a minimum, and only if you deem them absolutely necessary.

writing, fiction writing, pet peeves, creative writing

Last week, I talked about the fear of rejection popping in every now and then while getting ready to make submissions to publishers. However, it’s not something I’m horribly worried about at this point. Yes, it invades my mind, but it’s not keeping me from pursuing getting published.

Rejection happens a lot to many writers. It can sting, but it’s a growing experience. I had posted up a question for my fellow 451press bloggers asking about rejections. A few people, ones I mentioned in part one and those I’ll mention here, responded.

Bobbi has a quote in this post about rejection from the book Writing Brave and Free by Ted Kooser and Steve Cox:

“Build rejection into your expectations; plan to have magazines reject your writing,and treat it as a gift when you get published. As hard as it is to accept, every failure is a chance to learn.”

I honestly expected a little piece about rejection I could agree with and perhaps gain a bit more perspective about rejection from, but instead I found that quote. A quote which made me a bit angry, truth be told.

I’m sorry, but no. I will not build rejection into my expectations. If you are in any way a believer in The Secret (which basically says you will attract what you think about most) then you’ll agree with me. Yes, rejections have and will be sent to me, but I won’t expect them to come. I’ll merely trudge along if they do.

Expect rejection? No. I have too much optimism left in me (apparently) to go in with the expectation of being rejected. That’s entirely too depressing a thing to do, in my opinion.

Samantha Schwartz’s Australian Guide to Getting Published lists several reasons you might not get published, which might make you feel better the next time you get a rejection letter.

“The publishers:

*Don’t publish those kinds of books. For example, it is futile to send a New Age manuscript to a publisher of high school text books.

*Genuinely don’t have space in the list for more books (budget constraints).

*Think the writing is fine, but that the book would need expensive promotion, more than the publisher can afford.

*Think the writing isn’t strong enough and don’t have the time, interest, or capital to work with the author.

*Think that the ideas, or the content, isn’t sufficiently original or contributes nothing new to the subject area from which it derives.

*Think that the author doesn’t have a sufficiently high profile in their subject are. This is especially true of poetry and some anthology publishing which is traditionally very hard to sell.

Or,

*Think that the writing is just awful or the subject totally unmarketable.”

Okay, so not all of those may make you feel better, but now you see that rejections aren’t always sent just because “you and your writing suck.”

So don’t worry, and keep plugging away. I certainly will.

As you know, I only feature writer goodies I have or would like to have myself, and I definitely want these as part of my writer goodies collection.

Elisa Neal, the fiction writing editor for Bella Online has come out with the Grammar Slam! line of pillows, mugs, hats, bags, teddy bears, and more, all with grammar rule reminders. (There are also items with writer sayings instead of grammar rules.)

The Who or Whom? teddy, Lay or Lie mug, and Bag Your Grammar messenger bag are definitely on my wish list.

Check out these cute (and useful!) items along with her other range - Click Less, Write More - at Grammar Slam at cafepress.com.

I say … and you think … ?

1. Nude ::
2. Support ::
3. Rachel ::
4. Crane ::
5. Candy bar ::
6. Material ::
7. Mind games ::
8. Eviction ::
9. Produce ::
10. Joke ::

“Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.”
Olin Miller

“Books are never finished they are merely abandoned.”
Oscar Wilde

“The great art of writing is knowing when to stop.”
Josh Billings

Bruce Barton, who made a name for himself years ago as a writer and advertising man, was talking to a class of students about writing one evening. One of them asked him how he got his inspiration for his magazine articles.
“Well,” Barton replied, “picture me sitting at breakfast in the morning. As I sip my coffee, my wife glances down at the floor and observes, ‘Bruce, we really need a new dining room rug. This one is wearing out.’ Right there I have the inspiration to write another article.”

“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.”
Linus Pauling

“The faster I write the better my output. If I’m going slow I’m in trouble. It means I’m pushing the word instead of being pulled by them.”
Raymond Chandler

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.”
Tom Stoppard

“The first step is to find out what you love — and don’t be practical about it. The second step is to start doing what you love immediately, in any small way possible. I’ve seen what happens to people when they get to do what they love. They light up. They glow. They have a kind of energy that’s wonderful.”
Barbara Sher

“Nighttime is really the best time to work. All the ideas are there to be yours because everyone else is asleep.”
Catherine O’Hara

“At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night.”
H. P. Lovecraft

“What an author likes to write most is his signature on the back of a check.”
Brendan Francis

For this exercise, I want you to not only think positively about the future (a point in time when you’re a published author) but about your fellow writers.

Think about a day in the future when you’re a published writer. An aspiring writer, perhaps in your genre or from your hometown, asks your advice on being a writer. What do you tell him or her?

I sighed, looking at the computer screen and sticking my bottom lip out slightly. I stared at the red nearly covering every word on the five printed pages.

“But I don’t do short stories,” I said, pouting in what I hoped would be an adorable manner.

This happened a few days ago, and the scene has stuck in my mind. The fact is, I can write short stories, but it hasn’t been my main writing focus, so I still have a lot to learn when it comes to the art of the short.

Writing in itself is an art, but each form is also an art. Some forms we are comfortable with while others we aren’t so much. Naturally, we focus on what is comfortable and tend to avoid what makes us uncomfortable.

It’s my goal with this blog to explore all kinds of writing. Thus, when I get out of my areas I feel most comfortable, I interview. This time around, I will be interviewing my editor, my fiancé, the man who had held my hand as I’ve learned to walk in the realm of short stories.
(more…)

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Fiction Scribe site now has a newsletter. This is a trial and error period to see how much interest there is for it, but I have high hopes.

In the March issue, you will find:

*A letter to the readers from me
*My plans for what will be coming soon to the site
*Your guide to the site for if you’re new here
*A full-page article about starting from scratch with your writing
*A bit of fiction from me
*…and much more

I’d love to get this all to you in printed format, but that’s a bit out of reach as of yet. The newsletter will come to your email in a PDF attachment. Most computers come with some version of Adobe Acrobat Reader, so there should be no problem.

If you’d like to sign up to receive this and following newsletters, click on the “Contact Me” under my about space, and send me your email. You’ll be added to the list.

The first issue was sent out today. Sign up and get your copy!