Life is like...

Spring Spring Spring. The buds are on the trees. The sun is warmer. 

The Spring storms have hit with a vengeance. Today landslips (from all that rain) caused two trains to collide north of Wellington...no serious injury. At least the snow has stopped and the rain has kept the hay fever down.

We are in the middle of school holidays and I find my good intentions of getting some writing done have being hijacked by either dispute resolution or transportation imperatives.

So it is a rather patchy collection of interesting links for your delectation this week.

Debbie Redpath Ohi has enjoyed some well deserved success this year and in a great post on time management and creativity she outlines how she juggles the many projects she does and keeps her sanity. One of her advice gems is to get an accountability partner. This is a good strategy that I have made use of now and again...nothing like having to justify why you are so slack, to get you moving again.

I have been looking at my Mars story and trying to isolate where the plot is going to go...I can head off in a few directions and I really need to nail down one direction to get the story finished. With this in the back of my mind I have found myself spending more time looking at back story and prologues trying to pull out the essential information and work it better. Two great posts on these topics this week have caught my eye.

Kristin Lamb part of Bob Mayer’s Warrior Writers group has written an excellent post on 7 Deadly Sins Of Prologues If you are tempted at all by using a prologue....take a look.

Laura Pauling has written a nice post on how to use backstory effectively and she links to Story Sensei who has a more in depth analysis of backstory writing.

In my quest to uncover marketing gems for you, gentle reader, I have often read lots of posts on blogging. I don’t usually share these as I figure each writer will find their own way if they want to blog. However I do read a few writer blogs and I know they read me so in the spirit of sharing interesting stuff on writing blogs, Tribal Writer has a post entitled How Fiction Writers can Turn Into Badass Bloggers

Problogger always has useful ideas on blogging and publishing and this week they have a great post on 11 Ways To Convince Readers To Buy Your eBook. (If you have an eBook...or even an eReader...) eBooks are just starting to appear here in New Zealand so if you are a sneezer (an early adopter of technology who shares the experience around) or a ‘wish I had the money to be a sneezer,’ you might be interested in this post.

Over on Craicerplus ( My Amplify Page)

In Defense Of Dead Parents In Children’s Literature.

5 Things A Writer Always Overlooks...(brilliant)

Giving Stuff Away Is Not A Strategy

Finding The Perfect Collective Supernatural Noun...(a very funny list)

Joe Konrath – The Acquisitions Editor. (This satire will make you laugh and make you think!)

Over at Adventures In Children’s Publishing they have a YA Giveaway happening and our own Brian Falkner has a book review on their site and a book to give away. Nice One Brian!

And for those counting down to the end of November there is a new Movie Trailer up.

enjoy

maureen

pic is chocolate....points for those who get the quote reference

Niche Learning

Do you have a niche?

How do you get one if you don’t have one? 

Does a writer need a niche?

Tony Eldridge has a great article on niche and what it means to an author when it comes to marketing yourself and your books.

The BlogHer group have taken these ideas a step further and put together a comprehensive social media strategy to think about when you have defined your niche/brand.

As part of looking into niche and branding, these ideas had me thinking about Author websites and blogging.

Alexander Chee has written a great post on Author blogging. Why should an author have a blog? Should you blog if you have been pressured to do it? 

This is thought provoking stuff to all the author bloggers out there.

I was encouraged (strongly) to blog by a friend. As you can see my blog is not about my writing...(if I didn’t have the link to my book blog you wouldn’t even know.) 

This blog is about my learning. 

Since I have been blogging (just over two years, once a week) I have learned an amazing amount. I have found new friends that share some of my ideas (or humour me:) I have been challenged, stretched and energised by the blogs of others I have read and the discussions that I have participated in. The discipline to write an article once a week about my learning has hopefully made me a sharper fiction writer.... I hope that my learning discoveries have helped others.

Alexander also has part two of this article which is even better about the story that sells the story. He takes a look at James Kaelan and the Zero Emissions Book Tour and how James got corporate sponsorship and ended up bare chested on the cover of Poets and Writers magazine.

Seth Godin and his decision to abandon traditional publishing has been a hot topic across a niche blogosphere that I read this week. The decision has angered some and dismayed others. Seth’s ideas on marketing and his innovative way of publishing has given him a huge following. Linchpin was an instant bestseller and will be the last book he traditionally publishes. (i.e. paper and ink)

Mike Shatzkin has talked about Seth’s decision and what it may mean for authors and publishers now and in the future. As Mike says 'not everyone is a Seth Godin...'some of us need traditional publishing but for how long...

Two best selling authors have taken their book into social media and mixed it up. Today Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear announced that they have partnered with Subutai Corporation to deliver the worlds first digital novel on a social book platform. They are publishing a chapter a week with lots of supplementary material, all their research etc all on the ipad, iphone and ipod touch. This is story telling into the future. Of course it would be two speculative fiction guys who would do this....

Over on Craicerplus (My Amplify page) I have linked to articles on

Tension = Conflicting Emotion Article by  Donald Maass.

Beware The Eyes That March-What Eyes Can And Cannot Do In Fiction

Words To Think About from A to V from the Blood Red Pencil

Two Items Needed In Every Authors Toolbox (Melinda linked to this from her blog)

Mr Rochester Is A Creep...(those weird Bronte sisters)

Making The Most Of Criticism...( a good post for those critique-ing out there)

So there you have it... a round up of my learning and reading this week. As I ask my kids every day... what have you learned...anyone want to share what they have learned this week?

maureen

pic from niche market

For all those author bloggers out there!

Did you know that there has just been a conference in Portland Oregon about Kids Lit blogging?
Alice Pope, editor of the Children’s Writers and Illustrators Marketplace has just blogged about it. Here's a sample of what she has to say.

Next up I attended a session with Pam Coughlin, aka Mother Reader in which she offered tips to Kick Your Blog Up a Notch. Pam gave a dozen suggestions for being a bigger (not necessarily a better) blogger. These include having a distinct voice, filling a particular niche, updating daily, commenting on other blogs, and doing self-promotion. Self-promotional efforts can be as simple as including your blog on your email signature, sending out occasional updates to your email list, and asking other bloggers to mention something super-special that's going on on your blog. (Note: Pam volunteered to coordinate the 3rd Kidlitosphere Conference next year in D.C.)

You can read the rest of Alice's article on her blog.
She has linked to Laini Taylor, one of the organisers of the conference, who also gives a great run down on blogs in the kitlitospere.
Hot topics at the conference... Marketing and self promotion....

(wow...I wonder what the hot topics at our national conference of children’s writers and illustrators next year will be....)

maureen
and no I won't be posting every day...I had 11 interrruptions just doing this one...

why blog?

Amid the rain and the gales that have been lashing our fair shores...(goodness what have I been reading) I have been thinking about blogging.
Why blog? What is the point?
Do you have something to say and are there people who want to hear it?

Why do I blog?
Answer...to have a net presence, (and coz Fifi told me to...)

The current view in the international writing community is that if you are an author you must have a net presence. But what sort of net presence do you need?

The viewpoint of Jane Friedman( see no rules blog in sidebar) is that you must have a net presence where your audience hangs out so if you are going to write young adult you should have a my space page flickr bebo etc etc

If your audience is not net savvy, (and who is that these days?) then it is not so important.

The concept of having to maintain pages in various social networking sites is daunting.
If an author has a huge net presence you have to wonder when they find time to write anything at all, see cynsations(sidebar) to get an idea of what I mean.
That’s when you find little ads where people offer their services (for a fee) to do the blogging/ social networking stuff for you....

Chris Brogan(chrisbrogan.com) social networker extraordinaire has some ideas on what a social network should be doing for you. Here are a few of Chris’ ideas...

• social networking Blogs allow chronological organization of thoughts, status, ideas. This means more permanence than emails.
• Podcasts (video and audio) encourage different types of learning, and in portable formats.
• Social networks encourage collaboration, can replace intranets and corporate directories, and can promote non-email conversation channels.
• Social networks can amass like-minded people around shared interests with little external force, no organizational center, and a group sense of what is important and what comes next.
• Social bookmarking means that entire groups can learn of new articles, tools, and other Web properties, instead of leaving them all on one machine, one browser, for one human.
• Blogs and wikis encourage conversations, sharing, creation.

To see the rest of the list http://www.chrisbrogan.com/what-social-media-does-best/

In the meantime I will try to follow some of Chris Brogans maxims...like always post regularly and keep a supply of interesting things up your sleeve for when you have space and time to fill. I won’t be getting any myspace or bebo pages yet, I’ll leave that to the teenager in the house... and work on my launch speech. I was reminded by Pippa (Pippa Werry a fabulous NZ Children’s Writer-she should have a web presence...) to write one today.

maureen