Barbara G.Tarn - writer

Career authors write a lot of books. One or two books is a great start, but to go the distance in this business, you need inventory, which means lots and lots of books! I find that many authors can write five or ten books, but can they write fifty or a hundred books? Inventory is where the rubber meets the road and makes the difference when it comes to longevity in a very competitive business. I encourage indie authors to keep their focus on producing new books and getting them out to readers as fast as they possibly can without sacrificing quality.

– Marie Force

Editors do not write your book. You write your book. The idea is yours, the characters are yours, the setting is yours, the plot is yours, the voice is yours—unless you paid one of these “editors” to “fix” your manuscript, which considering how inexperienced most of these idiots are, consists of removing every trace of originality from your prose.

Even then, shades of your voice and your perspective remain.

Your book is yours, not theirs. Readers aren’t reading your book because Annoying Person took a red pencil to your prose. Readers are reading your book because you’re a hell of a storyteller, and they like the stories you’re telling.

Have some confidence, folks. Stop giving these egotistical editors so much credit. They’re people you hire, people whose advice you can (and should) ignore if they don’t understand your work or your voice.

Keep writing

I still feel the self-doubt, but it’s not crippling anymore, it’s just something that I acknowledge. I let it sit with me, and put my work out anyway because there’s a part of us inside, as writers, where if we don’t write, we’re going to cripple ourselves in other ways.

We’re going to be unhappy. We’re going to feel blocked.

You need to get your words out into the world.

You need to break through that self-doubt because your words are important.

We need to hear your voice. You don’t know whose life you could change with your story, or your non-fiction book, or the words, the wisdom you have.

As an introvert, the thought of the videos I share going out into the world and people seeing them is difficult enough. But we embrace it anyway as part of the process.

And that’s how we write, and create, put our words in the world, and change peoples’ lives.

– Joanna Penn

WRITE IT BADLY. Write it badly, write it badly, write it badly, write it badly. Stop what you’re doing, open a Word document, put a pencil on some paper, just get the idea out of your head. Let it be good later. Write it down now. Otherwise it will die in there.

— Brandon Sanderson on overcoming writer’s block to create a first draft as a professional author

The fact is that no matter who you are, it’s almost guaranteed that your work is probably not where you want it to be. This could be because you don’t know what your work is (a writer is always a suspect judge of their own work), it could be that your work is actually flawed (your craft hasn’t been honed), or it could be any one of a hundred different things.

For new writers in particular, though, writing six stories in six weeks gives you the opportunity understand an important truth: the best way to learn how to tell stories is to tell a lot of stories.

To understand what I mean by that, let me state the counter rule: The slowest way to learn is to keep working on the same story over and over and over.

– Ron Collins

P.S. on Wednesday I mis-scheduled the post… if you missed it, scroll down below! Sorry about that! 😊

Sunday Surprise

And it’s the day again. Words of wisdom, writers on writing, quotes for writerly life or whatever you want to call them. Have a great Sunday!

But the truth is, I always had confidence in myself as a writer – I had arrogance, even. Yet I had endless times of self-doubt. I think what carried me through was simply commitment to the job. I wanted to do it.

Talent is no good without commitment. I’ve had students who wrote very well, but weren’t willing to commit to write, to go on writing, and to go on writing better. But that’s what it takes.

“Feeling successful” – well, that’s something you have to work out for yourself, what it means to you, how important it is. You’re quite right that very good and highly celebrated writers may not feel “successful.” Maybe they have unhappy natures, and the Nobel Prize would just depress them. Or maybe they aren’t fully satisfied with what they’ve done so far, don’t feel they’ve yet written the best book they could write. But they have the commitment that keeps them trying to do it.

Hang in there. And don’t push it. No hurry! Writing is a lifetime job.

– Ursula K. Le Guin

A few years ago, I met a famous novelist at a conference. He’d sold millions of books. It seemed like he published a new book every time the wind changed direction. As we talked about NaNoWriMo, though, he asked me, “How many novels does the world need, anyway? Why should so many people write?”

I sometimes twitch with churlishness when I hear questions like this. Somewhere within the question, I hear a gate crashing down on people’s creativity. I see a sign, “Don’t presume to call yourself a writer.” I feel a judgment: Why write a novel unless it’s going to get published and made into a product to be purchased and consumed? Why write a novel if you’re not going to make money from it?

The question disregards the spirit that has guided every writer since the beginning of time: the need to create just for the sake of creating. The need to shape the world, see through others’ eyes, tame reality, find oneself, lose oneself—to touch what is magical, astonishing, and wondrous; to exult the possible, to make the strange obvious and the obvious strange. And much more. This need is what we need to remember every day in order to show up at our writing gym and write the story that is demanding to be told.

– Grant Faulkner

Why is Annoying Person on Amazon? Why is she all over Amazon?

Because writers don’t understand the “editor” field in KDP. That field is for anthology editors, like Fiction River. When we do a Fiction River, and I edit it, we list Kristine Kathryn Rusch as the editor. Because I compiled the damn book. I chose the stories. I put them in order. I line edited them. I worked on the theme with the writers. I wrote the introductions to the stories.

The volume has my fingerprints all over it, and not because I changed someone’s words or added a semi-colon here and there.

Stop, stop, stop acknowledging this new breed of “editor” in the sales material of your novels. You’re hurting your own sales and doing free advertising for those “editors.” (And yes, dammit, I’m using the quotes on purpose.)

If you need to acknowledge the “editor” as a term of your contract with her, then do so inside the book in the acknowledgements. Write: Thanks to Annoying Person, who copy edited my manuscript. She knows more about the Chicago Manual of Style than I do.

That’s it. And if Annoying Person doesn’t like it, if that doesn’t fulfill the terms of your agreement with her, then don’t work with her again.

Ever.

You will fail more than you succeed. You will remember the failures more often than the successes.

The people who believe in you now will believe in you always. Get rid of everyone else.

Readers will love your work. They will think this means they love you. They will be wrong, but do not correct them. You will no longer be yourself when you’re among readers, but an amalgamation of their perceptions of you based on your work and the pixels that make up your face. After a while, even your oldest friends will see you this way.

Pick one person you can be yourself with. It will be the person who doesn’t live-tweet your breakdown.

(…)

You will spend your entire career wondering if it’s already over but no one has told you yet.

You will not sell a lot of books. You will not earn out your advance. You will be passed over for awards. You won’t be a Campbell nominee. You will be convinced you’re not a real writer.

(…)

Fans of your work will clap and cheer at your arrival at events and then sob when they meet you and gush about how your work has touched and inspired them. It will be overwhelming. You will never know what to say. You will be celebrated, wined and dined. You won’t be able to meet with everyone who wants to see you.

Outside of those spaces, you will be treated with all the respect this society owes someone of your race, class, gender presentation, and/or orientation. If you’re a middle-aged white woman who doesn’t know how to dress herself, you will simply blend in. You will not be seen. This will be both a great relief and a big comedown.

(…)

You will travel. You will say YES! to opportunities. You will meet dynamic, amazing, talented, influential people. You will be so tired and jetlagged and anxious about money that you won’t remember any of their names. This will lead to many awkward conversations, later.

You will forget to introduce yourself to George R.R. Martin at the Hugo Loser’s Party.

You will regret being a writer. You will quit, often. Sometimes you will quit for long stretches of time.

(…)

You will be a bestseller, somewhere, even if it’s just on Amazon. You will hit a list. You will be an award winner. Hollywood will talk a lot about movies that probably won’t get made, but the free money will be nice.

You will be jealous of writers who don’t have day jobs. You will celebrate the full-time writing status of at least half a dozen colleagues who end up going back to their day jobs within five years of quitting.

You will never quit your day job.

You will dabble with scripts and comics and tie-ins. You will get invited to so many anthologies and special projects that you will have to say no to a lot of them. You will say no to Marvel, and yes to a book packager project whose team ultimately doesn’t want you.

– Kameron Hurley

by Barb on 24/05/2020 • Permalink

Posted in Guest Post

Tagged words of wisdom, writers on writing, writers quotes

Posted by Barb on 24/05/2020

https://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2020/05/24/sunday-surprise-251/

Sunday Surprise

Again a monthly feature, I give you words of wisdom, writers on writing or whatever you want to call it. Have a great Sunday and see you next month with more writerly quotes!

What Goes Up Must Come Down

Sales fluctuate, and after being in this biz for almost two decades I still don’t know why some things hit and some miss. It’s frustrating, but expected.

Here’s some things I’ve learned.

1. Ebooks are forever, and shelf space is infinite. Once you’re published, you’ll always be selling as long as you tend to your backlist.

2. Ebooks are not a trend. They are the new, preferred way to read, and mankind will always have the need and desire to read.

3. Ebooks are global. Doing poorly in the USA? That’s okay. There are plenty of other countries where you can make money.

4. This is a marathon, not a sprint. You’re a writer. You’re in this until the day you die. As long as you write good books, you’ll find readers. This may take time. And it may take some tweaking because the books you think are good need a rewrite, or that cover art you bought at a bargain price of $19 is scaring readers away because it sucks.

The universe doesn’t owe you readers. You have to earn them.

– Joe Konrath

It feels like a calm period before the next big shift, a time to bed down your processes, grow your backlist by writing more, build relationships, make sure you have sustainable health and creative practices, make the most of your IP by expanding into other products like print, and look to position yourself for the next phase of growth.

– Joanna Penn

“Audience” literally means “the people listening” – which tells you what an odd business writing stories down is. We are silent performers in an empty room. We lack the instant feedback that maintains and sharpens the story-teller’s consciousness of and relationship with the audience. So, does the writer consciously try to imagine a reader? An ideal reader? A whole lot of readers? Or are we each our own audience, writing a book we’d like to read, the way we’d like it written? Or do we seek a peer-group for the feedback? Such choices are entirely up to you the writer. And nobody can say what the right balance of conventionality and expectability, challenge and originality, is for you. Tailoring your writing to a specific audience/market is good for writers to whom salability is a prime value, for others it can be demoralizing, a sell-out.

The only advice I can offer is tentative: If you imagine your “audience,” your readers, imagine them as intelligent and sympathetic — ready to read you if you give them the chance.

– Ursula K. Le Guin

Nothing sells your old books like having a new book. Listen, the more that you write, the quicker and faster you tend to write. So writing that new book doesn’t just give you extra sales, it helps you become a better writer. Too many authors don’t understand the value of practice. Only a fool would believe that he could sit down at a piano and become a concert pianist in one sitting, yet millions of writers imagine that they become a professional writer without practicing. Even authors who apparently take off effortlessly tend to have had a lot of preparation and secret struggles.

Art is not a competition.

There is more than enough room in the world for all of the authors and books that are out there. Don’t worry about what other people are doing. Just focus on writing your stories and connecting with the readers that love them.

If you haven’t found those people yet, have patience. Instead of lamenting that other authors have devoted readers, use that energy to find new ways to promote your books. There are people out there who will become devoted readers of your books. You just have to find them.

Some people tend to get overwhelmed and discouraged by the high number of indie authors and the fact that it keeps increasing. However, as Joanna has reminded us on her podcast, when someone becomes more serious as a writer, it’s likely they will read more books as well.

I know that my reading has increased immensely since I started self-publishing my books. So we should be glad whenever someone writes and publishes a book!

More authors in the world means more avid readers in the world, which is good for everyone.

– Sara Crawford

by Barb on 26/04/2020 • Permalink

Posted in Guest Post

Tagged ghostwriting, words of wisdom, writers on writing, writers quotes

Posted by Barb on 26/04/2020

https://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2020/04/26/sunday-surprise-250/

Sunday Surprise

And in spite of the new blog schedule, I won’t give up on sharing words of wisdom, writers on writing or whatever you want to call this. I’ll try not to post them when there’s the Backstage Pass on the other site, so while I fly to London to watch a Bollywood movie and meet friends, I leave you with the usual collection of quotes. Have a great Sunday!

The work, once you’ve released it into the world, no longer has anything to do with us. We create the work, and then send it on its journey, but we do not control the journey—or the reaction to the work.

Our stories cease to be ours the moment someone else reads them.

Our job is to write and release, to create the best stories we possibly can, and to continue to create the best stories we can.
Since we need to eat, we must manage our businesses and our copyrights, so that we get paid for our work. We can control where it goes and who sees it.

But we cannot control how people will react to it. And if they decide they love our work—whether we love that particular story or not—we need to honor that. And if they hate it, we need to make sure we do not let that hatred influence our future work.
The easiest way to do that is to realize that once the work is in the wild, it is no longer ours. It belongs to everyone who reads it, everyone who reacts to it.

In this industry, it is true that readers and critics will often look at your work and compare it (negatively) with the best there has ever been. They’ll say, “Yeah, that David Farland is good, but he’s no Tolkien.” If you’re really fortunate, they might even think that (according to their own tastes) you are the best.

But I think that comparing yourself to others can be unhealthy. The truth is, as a writer, I don’t want to be the next Tolkien or Rowling or Shakespeare. I want to be unique—me. Ultimately, that’s all that I ever can be, and so I try to gather as much wisdom as I can from other writers as I struggle to become the best version of me ever.

I finally came to the realization that despite the wisdom and good intentions of these publishers, at the end of the day, they can only make an educated guess. The dirty little secret in publishing is that publishers are just throwing spaghetti against the wall. Publishers don’t know what readers want to read. Only readers know that and often, readers don’t even know what they want to read until it comes out of nowhere and smacks them upside the head. I imagine the hundreds of thousands of authors who came before us just like us who stared into this abyss of failure, whose dreams of publication were crushed by publishers. I imagine the millions of books that would die with those authors, unpublished and unread. I imagined the literary masterpieces hidden in those books that would forever be lost to humanity, undiscovered like buried treasure because these writers were never given a chance.

– Mark Coker

So right from the start with fiction writing, we are in a battle with the world around us and ourselves. I could spend an entire chapter listing all the crap we all were trained about fiction writing. I did some of it in books called Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing. All of us took in most of that crap in in one form or another.

You know. From things like: “You can’t make a living writing fiction.”

And then there is the big one: “You must rewrite everything.”

(I bet that hit a few belief systems right there. Taught belief systems.)

We all learned chapters full of silly stuff that actually has nothing to do with the creative process in fiction writing.

– Dean Wesley Smith

Wouldn’t it be nice? But alas, there are no recipes. We have no Julia Child. Successful professional writers are not withholding mysterious secrets from eager beginners. The only way anybody ever learns to write well is by trying to write well. This usually begins by reading good writing by other people, and writing very badly by yourself, for a long time.

There are “secrets” to making a story work — but they apply only to that particular writer and that particular story. You find out how to make the thing work by working at it — coming back to it, testing it, seeing where it sticks or wobbles or cheats, and figuring out how to make it go where it has to go.

– Ursula K. Le Guin

by Barb on 20/10/2019 • Permalink

Posted in Guest Post

Tagged indie publishing, words of wisdom, writers on writing, writers quotes, writing

Posted by Barb on 20/10/2019

https://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/sunday-surprise-238/

Random Friday

Words of wisdom, writers on writing, just chill and enjoy these quotes!

And the best thing you can do for finding your process is to never be entirely sure that you’ve found your process.
Because once you’re sure, once you’re really for real sure that you’ve figured it out, you’ve closed yourself to change.
I’ve changed my process subtly over time. Sometimes by necessity. Sometimes because I hear how another writer does it and it’s a thing that sounds like it might work for me.
Sometimes the changes aren’t subtle.
(…)
Fiddle with the dials.
Jigger the levers
Stick the egg-beater up your — well, you know.
Change your process. A little here. A lot there.
Whatever makes the work better
Whatever makes you better.
(And happier.)

Be tenacious and thick-skinned

“Anything is possible if you’ve got enough nerve.”

-J.K Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Great writers never quit. The writers who make it believe in their work. Believe in yours. Do not quit. You will face hardships and criticism, and it takes a lot of work to learn to accept the fact that not everyone is going to love your work. Take every piece of criticism from whence it comes and an added bucket of salt, and use it as a learning opportunity to make your next book even better. There is success at the end of the sweat and late night coffee number 10, and you’ll never know how much you can achieve if you stop short of giving publishing your very best shot.

– Justin Osborn

Writing is hard when you start. You probably won’t have any fans cheering you on. If you’ve got a mother or a spouse who believes in you, count yourself extremely fortunate. Most new writers only get discouragement from their family members.
I once read an article that said that the average writer takes seven years from the time that they begin writing to the time that they begin publishing. Once you begin publishing, it normally takes five to seven more books before you can gain the status of a “lead author” for your publisher—the author who gets most of the hype and publicity during the month that his or her book is released. And after that, it may take years until you actually become an “overnight success” and have a novel top the charts.
There are ways to beat those odds–to publish much more quickly than seven years and to top the charts more quickly, but the truth is that if you are starting out as a writer, you’d better buckle down for the long haul.
So, I would rank persistence as one of the greatest virtues a writer can have.
On that theme, I would like to offer a couple of quotes from other authors. I once heard Dean Wesley Smith say, “When I was trying to break into writing, I felt like I was trying to break down a door by banging my head against it.” Ah, how I know that feeling! But he continued, “Now that I’ve gotten in, I kind of feel like I should make sure that the door is securely locked behind me.”
And the last quote comes from Kevin J. Anderson himself. “People often look at my big contracts with DUNE or STAR WARS or some other project and say, ‘Man, you sure are lucky! I’d love to do that!’ But I find that in my writing, the harder I work, the ‘luckier’ I get.”

Critique groups really are invaluable. Except when they’re not. Readers, like reviewers, are going to give you mixed feedback, but there’s a chicken-and-egg conundrum going on here of, “I need critiques to learn to write well, but I need to know how to write well to be able to effectively judge my critiques.” Early on, everyone tells you to get a critique group, and it’s true you need feedback—but you need the right feedback, from the right readers, always balanced with your own artistic judgment, experience, and vision. It takes time to gain all of that.
(…)
So there you have it: an antidote to the relentless urgings to write with abandon, spew words onto the page, hit word count every day, just get that first draft done as fast as you can! You can take your time, build your skills, and write toward your singular vision slowly and in stages. If NaNoWriMo works for you, fabulous. If it doesn’t, fabulous. Like me, you can stink at it year after year and still end up with a bunch of books to your name. Don’t confuse speed for progress, but also don’t make excuses to let yourself off the hook from getting shit done. Often, we writers are like competitors on the Great British Bake Off comparing kitchen gadgets and recipes and proving technique when the only relevant question is, “Is the cake done and does it taste good?”

– Fonda Lee

I’m considered a hybrid author. I’ve been with big publishers, smaller e-first presses, and now indie. In my experience, the only certainty with marketing is that the playing field is constantly changing. One year we’re all pushing Yahoo forum groups, then Myspace, now Facebook.
Yes, self-publishing has made it easier to put out a book, but keeping a consistent income in light of industry changes, marketing ups and downs, and what feels like a flooded marketplace can be difficult. There are many things we can’t control.So what’s an author to do when faced with this journey? Having allies to navigate the waters will make flowing with the changes easier.
After being in the ever-changing publishing world for close to 15 years, there is one tried-and-true marketing effort that has remained consistent—networking. I’m not just talking about going to conferences and meeting editors and agents to get those publishing deals. I’m talking about a vast resource of other professionally minded authors.

– Michelle M. Pillow

by Barb on 23/08/2019 • Permalink

Posted in Guest Post

Tagged words of wisdom, writers on writin, writers quotes

Posted by Barb on 23/08/2019

https://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2019/08/23/random-friday-371/

Random Friday

Words of wisdom, writers on writing, writers’ quotes, anything to ponder in a cool place away from the heat… Have a great weekend! 🙂

Listen, here’s what I usually tell authors: you can, with some earnestness and enthusiasm, maybe sell a few books. Maybe you can even sell tens or hundreds of your book. And that’s not nothing. Every sale of your book is a pebble thrown into a pond, and a pebble thrown into a pond creates ripples that may reach the shore. Meaning, even one person who reads and loves your book might share their love of that book with others — and if they love it, they share it, and on and on. A CHAIN OF LOVE. Like an orgy, but slower!

(…)

Obviously, yes, you should talk about your book.

You should share it.

You should be ready to commit to interviews and podcasts and exploring ways to get the word out. And your publisher should be your guide through that. If they’re not, you should be self-publishing because what’s the point?

Beyond that the solution to all of of this is the solution to many a writer’s woes:

Write the next book.

Always, always, always write the next book

Writers write, and you’re a writer.

So go write, writer.

Go write.

The idea that you can only get ahead by cheating is especially pernicious because it creates more cheaters. It’s like that old cliché about the underworld where you can only join the inner circle after your first kill. You have skin in the game now, and it’s attached to your own ass.

However, it’s a lie.

While competition is greater now, the tools we have to reach readers have improved immeasurably: Kindle Countdown Deals, reader magnets, BookBub CPM ads, permafree, Facebook Carousel ads, cross-promo, RobinReads, free runs (now gold again in KU btw), Kobo promos, BookFunnel, iBooks First Free in a Series, BookBarbarian, merchandizing opportunities, mailing list automation – this is just a tiny sample of the powerful options we have at our disposal today.

When you put them together, it’s a heady mix. Incredible marketing campaigns that catapult books into the charts, bringing in thousands of dollars a month, or even tens of thousands of dollars a month. And all cleanly.

If all that sounds too hard, you’re just going to have to pull on your big boy pants and get stuck in. No one owes you a chart position, a readership, or a living. You have to build it yourself. Okay, sometimes you do work hard and don’t get the reward you deserve. That sucks, but that’s life. You must persevere.

– David Gaughran

No matter if you’re extremely successful as an indie author or just starting out, all of us will need to adapt and change. Maybe Amazon will change KNEP again or another service will rise up while others go extinct (I see your days numbered, Nook). We have virtual reality, augmented reality and who know what other “reality” is coming down the pike. Change will continue to happen and disrupters (like the Amazons of the world) will continue to affect the publishing industry.

The challenge for us as authors is to hold two incongruent ideas in our mind at the same time: We need to be as creative and inspiring as we can with our fiction but also need to understand marketing and its implementation in the real world.
– Ron Vitale

So: how often should you publish?

The answer is: as often as you can while maintaining quality and avoiding burnout. This is going to be different for each writer, but if you try to push yourself too hard and put out books before they’re ready, you will lose readers. If you push yourself too hard and get burnt out, you harm yourself. If you don’t publish books and don’t advertise, you will lose your readers, so there is a balance in between publishing frequently and getting smart with advertising. Unless you sell so much that you can employ someone to advertise for you, you will probably have to choose between either of those activities. You can either spend a lot of time writing, and not that much advertising, or you can devote more energy to marketing and less time writing.

Somewhere in that equation, there is a balance that everyone needs to find for themselves.

– Patty Jansen

1. Write every single day, with or without inspiration

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.”

-Stephen King, On Writing

Writing needs to be your breakfast, lunch, dinner and in-between snack. You need to be writing in every spare moment in your life. When you aren’t reading, you need to be writing. Most writers pace the hallways or the four walls of life, waiting for a single moment of inspiration to hit them into their chair behind the computer and create a bestseller. It will not happen. Inspiration will come, but you have to pave the pathway with hundreds and thousands of words to earn that vital inspiration, to make that bestseller. If you do not practice, you do not learn. The more you write, the easier it will become. The more you write, the closer success will be.

– Justin Osborn

by Barb on 21/06/2019 • Permalink

Posted in Guest Post

Tagged words of wisdom, writers on writing, writers quotes, writing

Posted by Barb on 21/06/2019

https://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2019/06/21/random-friday-2019/

Random Friday

Words of wisdom, writers on writing, whatever you want to call them, enjoy these writers’ quotes!

This is true however you publish, whatever you write.
Writing begets writing. Writing sells writing.
Writing is an act of doing. It is an act of making.
It is also an act of persevering.
And surviving.
A lot of writers simply can’t hack it, so they quit. The road ahead and behind you is littered with the corpses of writers who just couldn’t hack it. (And spoiler alert, some of them are the desiccated carcasses of shit-flinging gibbons.) They couldn’t deal, so they gave up and gave in.
Writing is you not quitting. It’s you taking a bite and digging your teeth deeper like a cranky-ass bulldog who refuses to let go. It isn’t you being a crap-tossing primate.
Be the best version of yourself.
Let your writing be the guide.
Write the greatest damn book you can write.
And don’t be a shitty monkey.
The end.
– Chuck Wendig

Let me tell you something someone mercifully told me: If readers do not empathize with what your character wants by the end of your first page – and that’s the stubby little three-quarter page of text floating under the title – it will be remarkably difficult to sell your book.
Now read that again: not just understand what your character wants. To empathize. As in, to go, “Oh, I could want that too.” You need to trigger a resonant emotion within 250 words or so. It likely won’t be a deep emotion by that point, but that first “I get this person” has to be birthed on Page One.
You don’t get emotion by explaining things to people. And as such, “Everything is inverted in The Uploaded!” became a liability.
– Ferret Steinmetz

Oh, and one more thing. I get that writing about spaceships or elves or super-spies or whatever may seem frivolous in times like these. I’ve been there, man. We should be out there donating, marching, calling representatives – spending our time better, right? And yeah, I’ve done those things as well, and I’d encourage y’all to do that too.
But writing really does matter. I had a reader reach out on social media recently just to tell me that reading one of my books was a welcome respite from all the craziness out there. And wow, let me tell you, that was something. I hadn’t really thought of my stuff that way, and it was incredibly awesome to hear that.
I wrote 2,000 really good words that day.
So yeah. It’s OK to be angry, scared and/or discouraged at the world – or your own personal stuff, for that matter, because life throws curveballs all the damn time. Do what you gotta do to get you through it. Watch crap movies or call your reps. Donate, cry, march, hide, scream. Take care of yourself. But know that when you get back to the keyboard, you have a chance to bring stories to life that can help people think about a better future, or get some solace from a rough present.
Saddle up, wordpeople.
– Michael J. Martinez

Writing by committee makes dullness. It takes out your writer voice, and often your character voice.
And I honestly have no idea why writers don’t have more pride in their work. That is the aspect of all this that bothers me. No one touches my work. It is my work. Period. Good or bad.
And I am proud of that fact. Good or bad.
The Solution?
Just stop. Go cold turkey.
Grow a backbone and believe in your own writing.
Maybe have one trusted reader and then ignore anything they say that doesn’t fit with your vision.
Get a copyeditor who will only find typos. Ignore anything the copyeditor says if they try to change your style or writing in any way.
Think how much easier that will be.
Keep learning skills and craft and applying it to the next story.
Bad grammar be good in right times and right places. Toss out the Chicago Manual of Style unless you are writing nonfiction.
Toss out the window your copy of Strunk and White unless you are writing nonfiction.
I am talking fiction here.
You are an artist. Allow your characters to live on the page. Allow your own voice (which you can’t see) to be there for your readers.
Always focus on the next story, not the last story.
Just stop even thinking of using beta readers to destroy your work.
Because that is what beta readers do.
– Dean Wesley Smith

Almost nobody else is judging our progress. We might imagine that all of our Facebook friends and all of the relatives we see at Thanksgiving dinner are always thinking about how we’re falling short of expectations. The truth is, almost no one is thinking about our writing success at all.
Nobody is making harsh judgements about our return on investment except the imaginary judge we’ve invented for ourselves, and we can kick that person out any time.
(…)
If you love writing, you have to learn to be shameless.
That way, you can always enjoy it, no matter what comes or doesn’t come from it.
Shameless” is a funny word, because we use it as an insult. But we accept “shameless” is negative, then we have to accept being ashamed of ourselves as a positive, which is madness.
The really good things in life rarely result in money and accolades. Walking in the moonlight. Playing with your dog. Turning up the music and dancing around your apartment.
– Bryn Donovan

by Barb on 17/05/2019 • Permalink

Posted in Guest Post

Tagged words of wisdom, writers on writing, writers quotes

Posted by Barb on 17/05/2019

https://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2019/05/17/random-friday-358/

Random Friday

Mm ‘kay, I didn’t appear in the Sunday linky link, so I’m not going to bother again. And I’m going to close the month with a few words of wisdom, writers on writing, whatever you want to call them. Have a great weekend!

You’re a writer.

Your most valuable asset is, ideally, your writing.

If it’s not, that’s a problem. A problem with you, to be clear, and not a problem with the rest of the world. It rests squarely upon your shoulders.

If your best way to get attention for yourself is to throw shit instead of write a damn good book, you are a troll, not a professional writer.

Your best advertising for yourself as a writer is to write the best book you can write.

Your best advertising for the last book you wrote is the next book.

Your best boost to your career is to be the best version of yourself. Online, in-person, all-around — summon the ideal version of yourself and present that face to the world, to your potential audience. That is how you earn your audience. You don’t build them. Your audience isn’t a fucking chair. They are a group of people who you can, in part, earn as readers and as fans. (I say in part because you can never please everybody, nor should you try.)

Pick any of the seven reasons above – finishing a book, being creative, achieving a flow state, growth through learning, celebrating failure, finding your tribe or bravely showing your vulnerable side – and use it to pull yourself out of your negative state. Find your smile again.

Use this newfound positive state to problem solve.

Look back: find possible reasons why the book has not sold and come up with ways to improve its sales. Or use being happier to look forward: tap into that creativity and productivity from before and write the next book.

Instead of being a sad, rejected loser you are now a courageous and creative author. Yes, it is simply a variation in language, but you are a writer so you know just how powerful words can be.

– Julie Schooler

But how about YOU? What are the things that you have achieved and accomplished? Even if you haven’t published the new project you were hoping to get done, did you at least get started on it? Have you at least made progress on it? That counts, and it puts you THAT MUCH closer to the achievement. And it’s okay to pause and celebrate that.

Too often, we also compare ourselves to others, and often to only those who are more successful than we are, failing to recognize that there are likely more authors “in our shoes” than the giants being celebrated by the larger media. The fact is that there’ll ALWAYS be someone doing better than you. The thing to measure, instead of comparing your own success, your own sales, to someone else’s, is to compare your own achievements today against your achievements in the past.

– Mark Lefebvre (KWL Newsletter)

Every single finished book is a struggle and a triumph and is merely abandoned (the knowledge that it could be better haunts every writer, every time).

But, and here is the good news; if there is no shining ‘after’ to counteract the wasteland of ‘before’, that means all there is is the writing. The daily work. The being a writer. The thinking up stories. The day dreaming. The delicious research. The learning.
That is all there is for any of us and you are invited to join in.So, take a piece of paper. If you prefer your invitation to come from me, consider it extended (with my warm wishes and a free hug if we ever meet in person!).But you can put whatever you like on your paper:

I am an author

I am creative

I am a writer

I write

Whatever resonates with you. Now put that paper somewhere you won’t lose it, but will see it regularly. In your wallet or on your desk or bedside table.

– Sarah Painter

Look. Cats belong in boxes. Stories don’t. Yes, it can be helpful for marketing, and yes, readers have certain expectations in certain genres, but it isn’t one hundred percent necessary. It isn’t a precursor to getting published, or to success. When I was writing Girl, I had to learn to let it go. When someone asked me what I was writing, I started answering, “I don’t know.” It was honest. I wrote the book I wanted to write: it’s historical, and contemporary. It’s both science fiction and fantasy. It has time-travel, but only one jump…so is it reallllllly a time travel book? Does that matter? Not really. I wrote the story I wanted to tell, and it blends genres until I can’t see distinct colors anymore. I’m really glad I didn’t force my book into a box. I love cats, but my book is not a cat.

– Katherine Locke

by Barb on 29/03/2019 • Permalink

Posted in Guest Post

Tagged words of wisdom, writers on writing, writers quotes, writing

Posted by Barb on 29/03/2019

https://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2019/03/29/random-friday-351/

Random Friday

And since not much is going on – again – here are a few writers on writing, words of wisdom and whatnot. Have a wonderful weekend

***

When you’re having a bad writing day, a hard writing day, remember that.

And remember too that when you sit down a week from now, or a month, or a year, the days the writing was hard and the days the writing was easy will be indistinguishable from one another. In fact, sometimes the easy days produce worse work than the difficult days. You never know. So don’t let it stop you. Put the bucket over your head and run at the wall anyway.

And remember that all of this is just a draft, that it can all be fixed and changed, that what doesn’t work can be made to work. It can always be made to work with enough practice, with enough blood.

You’re having a hard day of writing, write anyway.

Do it because it’s hard.

Forgive yourself because it’s hard.

Don’t let one bad day be the gravestone for the rest of the days.

Thanks to Quiet by Susan Cain, many writers are happily claiming their introversion. I’m an introvert, which means I get my energy from being alone. I hate small talk and large groups. I’d rather think than speak, and write rather than talk. I rarely answer the phone. I’m INFJ on the Myers-Briggs scale, and many authors fit a similar model. This also means that conferences and events are tiring, so I can’t do too many of them a year. If you’re like me, then we’re super lucky these days, because online marketing suits introverts. We can attract an audience online and connect with readers, while still spending time alone.
– Joanna Penn

There’s nothing like studying the bestseller lists of bygone years for teaching an author humility. You’ve heard of the ones that got filmed, normally. Mostly you realise that today’s bestsellers are tomorrow’s forgotten things.

(…)

I’m convinced if I keep going one day I will write something decent. On very bad days I will observe that I must have written good things in the past, which means that I’ve lost it. But normally I just assume that I don’t have it. The gulf between the thing I set out to make in my head and the sad, lumpy thing that emerges into reality is huge and distant and I just wish that I could get them closer.

– Neil Gaiman

The proper response to a rejection is to send the story out to a different publisher—not to rewrite the tale. So don’t fiddle with your language. There are times when it might be wise to make a “substantial” revision, one where you change the very bones of a story. For example, you might decide to write a new opening scene, or extend a climax, or something like that. In that case, it’s like re-setting the bones of the story, not applying new lipstick to the face of it. You’re fixing the underlying structure.

That’s the kind of writer you want to be. You want to be the writer whose work they buy because they love your work, rather than the writer who distracts them for one weekend and whom they never read again.

(…)

We all want our latest releases to sell millions of copies this year. Most of us—99.9% of us—won’t achieve that. But we will have published a book or two or three, and we are working in our chosen field.

We’re the day-to-day folk who provide the best entertainment possible in a non-special-event kinda way. And that’s what most readers want.

Remember that the next time you see a lot of hype.

And realize that the hype isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.

by Barb on 01/02/2019 • Permalink

Posted in Guest Post

Tagged words of wisdom, writers on writing, writers quotes, writing

Posted by Barb on 01/02/2019

https://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/random-friday-343/

Random Friday

Haven’t been doing much, so I’m posting the Words of Wisdom, Writers on Writing, whatever you want to call them, and happy new writing year! 🙂

Keep your ear to the ground. You can’t just hide out in your writing cave. Remember, the market changes. You need to be able to alter course if necessary, so stay informed of what’s happening in the industry, what other authors are doing, what the book trends are, etc. That doesn’t mean you jump on everything that comes your way, but you need to be aware of it. Don’t be the last one to catch the train.

Pay it forward!!! Support your fellow authors. Buy their books. Review their books. Share their releases and successes with your followers. I can’t tell you how many opportunities have come my way because of friendships with other authors. It takes a village to build a successful writing career, and your fellow authors are your village.

– Cara Bristol

I love to write. A lot of you love to write, I bet. But, as with any love, there are days you hate it. Some days, writing feels like endless toil. There are days when writing acts distant for no apparent reason, because writing can be a passive-aggressive jerk. Writing is the sort of lover who breaks up with you, then slinks in naked while you’re taking a shower, like nothing happened. You’ll stay up all night with writing and regret it when you have to go to work in the morning. There’ll even be times when you’re trying to focus on something else, but writing won’t stop talking to you no matter how politely you ask.

Simply put, writing is an asshole. Writing steals your money and spends it on stupid things, like another gimmicky book on how to write better, and then it acts like it bought that book for both of you. Writing will take you to heaven and back all day long, but the next morning it’ll be gone without even leaving a note.
Because writing is love, and love is hell.

– Robyn Bennis

Writing is something you do alone. It’s a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don’t want to make eye contact while doing it.

– John Green

If you are the kind of writer who can write the same thing over and over again and not get bored, then you might be able to develop the kind of brand loyalty that Child is talking about.

I can’t. I don’t want to repeat myself. So even though I know what he did is very smart, it’s not something I can or will replicate. I have to plan my own brand work around that decision.

That said, I am much more interested in building brand loyalty than I am in building customer loyalty. I didn’t have the words for this until I started this series.

I don’t want people to buy my books because they’re discounted or because I keep offering better and better variations of a good deal. I want people to buy my books because they enjoy my books.

Impostor Syndrome is real. Flip the script on it. Don’t let it have power over you. Admit you’re an impostor. Then admit that we’re all impostors — none of us belong here because art and story are forbidden, interstitial places. This thing we do is Buccaneer’s Den, it’s Mos Eisley, it’s a secret moon colony. Not a one of us “belongs” here. We all booked illegal passage through blackest night and sharky waters to get here. We’re not one ship, we’re countless life-boats strung together — a glorious flotilla of freaks.

This is who we are. It’s what we do. And what we do is sometimes hard. It’s hard for me. It’s hard for you. It’s hard for Stephen King. It’s hard for J.K. Rowling. King probably thinks that Rowling does it effortlessly, and Rowling probably thinks King sails through every draft, and the truth is, it’s hard for them, for you, for me, for every penmonkey that ever done monkeyed with a pen.

When a story reads effortlessly, it was not written effortlessly. In fact, the more effortlessly it reads, the more effort probably went into making it read effortlessly.

It took work.