Tips for eAuthors

We Interrupt This Program

Posted on

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

Two events are going to put a slight zig in the zag of this blog over the next week. Even if you follow my blog religiously, you may not notice either one of them, but I think it’s good practice to have full disclosure.

Facelift
After some careful consideration and advice from friends and family, I’ll be testing out a new theme (MistyLook) and layout for the site this week. The aim is to increase readability, improve access, and to speed up the reader experience on the site. Thanks to WordPress’s almost seamless theme integration, the only thing you may notice is your own sigh of relief as you read my 600-1200 words post in regular black-type-on-a-white background instead of reverse type.

Major changes will be:

  • Black type-on-a-white background for easier reading
  • Wider central column for less scrolling
  • Homepage will be the blog (like the rest of the universe), not fluff text
  • Post summaries with “read more” links instead of entire post
  • Nicer serif to sans-serif font changes for titles vs. content areas

Nothing to do with the theme, but planned-for changes in the future:

  • Richer, more meaningful masthead graphic
  • A side-bar “Best of” list of my better blog posts for easier finding

Hiatus
My wife and I will be taking a short trip to Key West next week. I’ll be scheduling blog posts to keep up the conversation, but may not be able to thank you for commenting or add to the chatter myself. But please know I value each and every comment, “Like”, and pingback!

We’ll be back to our regularly-scheduled commentary by February 24. Thanks for your patience and thank you for following my blog.

Buck Up: The Importance of Little Wins for Your Writing Morale, Part II

Posted on

(This is part II of a two-part series about keeping up your writing morale. Find Part I here.)

Critique Groups
Critique groups are certainly double-edged swords: you can feel relentlessly beat down if the criticism is destructive rather than constructive. Even when the critiques are useful, honest, and diplomatically couched, you can feel irritated and depressed that you haven’t “nailed it” on your novel or poem.

Your first duty to yourself in this regard is to find and cultivate a critique group that is helpful and not abusive (and your duty to your fellow critiquers is to be helpful and not abusive…don’t be the problem). After that, put your big boy britches on and accept the criticism. If it’s substantial, honest, and thoughtfully expressed, it’s going to do one thing: help you grow as a writer.

[Read more…]

Buck Up: The Importance of Little Wins for Your Writing Morale

Posted on

(This is the first part of a two-part series. Part II coming soon!)

I’m of a cynical bent, so am ill-disposed towards cheerleaders, positive thinkers, and canned morale boosts. But the life of a writer is a lonely and often discouraging one. If you don’t want to end up jumping off a cliff with the pages of your last manuscript fluttering after you, you have to find small victories to keep you going.

I think this is worth writing about because the need for encouragement came as something of a surprise to me. Whether it was because I believed I would become an overnight success or I was young enough to have a naturally rosy outlook when I started writing I don’t know, but as I’ve moved along in my writing career, I’ve found it invaluable to try for, grab onto, and celebrate the little wins…while I work towards the big ones.

If you find your hope flagging and lately all your short stories have titles like “I’d Rather Work in a Coal Mine”, try a couple of these paths to the little victories that will keep those serotonin levels up and empower you to stay in the game. If you have your own ways to boost the ego, please share; there’s no such thing as having too many tricks.

[Read more…]

Micro-reading: Experiments with Wattpad and Scribd

Posted on

Today marks the one week anniversary of a little experiment of mine: posting my fantasy short story Sword of Kings for free with two different mobile reading services, Wattpad (http://www.wattpad.com/3237579-sword-of-kings-part-i) and Scribd (http://www.scribd.com/doc/79242254/Sword-of-Kings).

If you haven’t heard of either service, don’t feel bad. I’d vaguely heard of Scribd before but only came across the possible sales and promotional potential of both it and Wattpad after reading David Gaughran’s attempts with both his own short stories and serially posting his novel A Storm Hits Valparaiso.

In essence, both services offer a variation on the same theme: they facilitate the process of writers finding readers. Writers post their work (though Wattpad is almost exclusively fiction and poetry) without charge; readers can download those works for free. The reasons why writers might want to offer their work for free are many: to find beta readers, to “field test” an odd-ball idea, to stimulate interest in your writing so that it leads to sales of other works, to simply spread your ideas.

While Wattpad and Scribd may seem like just another internet fad, consider that Wattpad claims 1 million users, 3 million comments/votes per month, and the average user spends 30 minutes twice a day on the site. The top stories in each genre of the “What’s Hot” category routinely register over 1-2 million reads. That’s exposure.

[Read more…]