Rants and Research

The holidays are fast disappearing and my To Do list stays the same. This week has had some highs tho.

My family managed to all go to the movies together. It may not sound like a big deal to you but it is to me. With so many things pulling at each one of us, we can only usually manage to eat together once a week. Family events of more than the fifteen minutes to eat dinner take major planning.  We saw The Sorcerer’s Apprentice...and we all enjoyed it for various reasons...How they managed to cleverly mix physics and magic, the mop scene from the old Disney version, Nicolas Cage, and the Harry Potter trailer....

Straight after the movie I raced into The Children’s Bookshop for Diana Menefy’s little soiree to celebrate her book, The Shadow of the Boyd. This ripping yarn’s journey to publication has been long in the making. Diana has been researching this piece of tragic New Zealand History for about a decade. She has cleverly woven in many facts about shipboard life in the early 1800’s but not at the expense of a great story of tragedy and survival against the odds. When I got home after dinner out with some great writers...I started the book and kept going...finishing it in one bite. Shadow of the Boyd is the last book picked up by a publisher from the pitch session at Spinning Gold to be published and I was delighted to be able to celebrate this with Diana and some of the Spinning Gold team.

I haven’t been doing much researching on the net this week so this morning I took a look at what has caught peoples attention that might be of interest to you.

Lynn Price, Editorial Director Of Behler Publications has ripped into Christopher Pike for not only NOT researching properly but for then trying to defend the resulting mess. She does not spare the editors of his publishing house either who did such a sloppy job that they didn’t catch obvious errors which ruin the whole foundation of the story....You may think she is a bit harsh...but I don’t. Diana Menefy spent ten years getting the history right, the life and times, the names of the characters and the language right for Shadow of The Boyd. It is children’s novel but it has been meticulously done. I know how much time I spend researching...writer friends have called me on it...(stop and just write the damn book...) We have a duty to our readers after all to write a good story. Our readers are not dumb and treating them as such shows an amazing arrogance which will fast lose you credibility and readers.

While I am ranting (but not half as well as Lynn Price) Suzannah of Write It Sideways has a minor rant on her blog about being plagiarized. Suzannah has discovered that whole articles have been copied and pasted, cut up and attributed to other bloggers. She is trying to get a perspective on it that doesn’t involve wasted energy...and negative thoughts. Suzannah has posted a short list of rules for new bloggers to understand about linking to others work, and commenter’s have linked to some great sites for copyright protection.

Off on a different tack Victoria Moxon has another very fine article on How To Make Your Novel Hopelessly Addictive and Nicola Morgan has one on Dialogue Techniques. Both of these bloggers are a valuable resource if you are looking for writing help.

Chip MacGregor has posted an exhaustive list of things a good agent needs to know. As Chip is the owner of a successful literary agency he is well qualified to speak. As always I urge you read the comments of the articles I link to because they often have some great extras to add to the discussion.

Over on Craicerplus my Amplify page I have links to articles on

7 Factors For Success In Finding An Agent

Earth Like Planet Can Sustain Life (geeking no apologies)

9 Ways To Prepare For NaNoWriMo

A Writers Guide To A Successful Interview (how to use an interview to get your message across)

Writing Series-Thoughts and Resources (this is great if you find your story going on longer than one book)

Kindle Self Publishing (writers can now self publish on Kindles....)

On a slightly different facet of the writing life...Alexis Grant has a good article on Writer’s Colonies. These are amazing residential places that writers can go and just write. Someone else takes care of all the other details...food, laundry etc etc. Some colonies will pay you to go there...It is to dream...

Guy Le Charles Gonzales has been doing a bit of that lately and has re mixed his ideas on 21st Century Publishing. Traditional print plus fan sites plus book cafe sites plus on demand printing equals a very interesting publishing model for writers.

For those of you interested in the 1000 fans idea, my friend Justin sent me a link to a photographer who is experimenting with the concept and has chronicled his two year journey...(yes he is making money...and he doesn’t have 1000 fans...)

enjoy,
maureen


Pic is the cover of The Shadow of The Boyd and below a little clip (you can find anything on YouTube)

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