Linda Nelson

Can you believe it is already the third Sunday of the Month? Where did the days go? Next week is Thanksgiving.

Being the third weekend of the month means that yesterday was the third Saturday of the month, and it was the day my other writing group meets. The Monadnock Writers’ Group meets every third Saturday of the month from September to June at the Peterborough, New Hampshire town Library, downstairs. For all but two months, we are entertained by a speaker, a guest who shares tidbits about what it means to be a writer. We have had screenplay writers, poets, artists, photographers, and others who have something to share with the art form of writing.

This weekend we were visited by Judson D. Hale, Sr., The current editor-in-chief of The Old Farmer’s Almanac and Yankee magazine and is Chairman of the Board at Yankee Publishing. He shared tidbits of what an editor faces when it comes to submissions. He gave many example of queries he has received over the years and why he told the person no and why he said yes to a story. He said it was all in the blurb or tag line of the story on whether or not he found the story to his appeal. If the story line sounded boring he would say no, and if they gave him a blurb with juice to it, he would say yes. It wasn’t the subject matter that made the difference it was all in the way it was presented.

Judson had some genuinely excellent points, and he shared his witty humor with us along with some of his favorite quotes.

So who is doing NaNo-ing?

*raises hand…

ROW80 Check In:

I’m still NaNo-ing. Yep, that’s right. I haven’t given up hope just yet, even if I missed writing a few days this week.

Remember, my best is writing a first draft in 90 days. So, if I can beat that best, then I win my own personal goal, even if I don’t finish the work in progress in due time to make the NaNo goal.

Today I am happy to report my 5k for today. I might finish the first draft by the end of January.

I did have to go and revamp my plot outline before I could go any further. It is so helpful to have that plot point by plot point all figured out. The characters may not always behave the way you might want them too, but if the goal is there already for them to get to the rest of the character building falls into place.

It does not matter if your character is not as strong as you wanted them to be. They can still be kick ass and sweet and simple too. The most crucial thing is to make your characters likeable. Then you can pick the characters off one at a time if they don’t want to behave.

I must say, I can’t kill off characters as easily as Suzanne Collins did in Hunger Games. As I read her book I was miffed at how easily she was able to kill them, one after the other. In the end, I found myself saying – out loud – huh? Now why did she kill him off, I kind of liked him? He must have been a terribly crummy boy for her to do that to him.

Now I am learning the art of killing off characters (lol). At the 20% point of the work in progress, I have successfully managed to kill off one character. I wonder how many more characters that I can kill off by the end of the story.

Happy NaNo-ing and may your WIP treat you well for your next ROW80 check in.

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Sunday Scoopful and #ROW80 (authorlindanelson.com)

On Saturday, November 9^th, we had another speaker for our NH Chapter of Romance Writers. We meet in Bow, NH the second Saturday of the month from September to June. Each month we have a speaker to give us tidbits on what they found worked best for them as in writing or promoting.

So yesterday, we had a visit from none other than – wait for it – wait – Marie Force. That’s right. She was our speaker.

What she brought to us was tidbits on being a hybrid author. You see, she is not only traditionally published but she is a self-pubbing author as well. If you ever get the chance to hear her speak in person than take it, she has a lot of insight into what comes into factor for being a hybrid author.

She spoke mostly about the importing things a self-published author needs to know before hitting the mighty publish button.

Write a book that is not just good – but great. Make sure your plots are sound and your characters are likeable.
Have your book professionally edited. It is costly but well worth the money spent. That is copy-edited for the most part. They are the ones who pick up on a lot of grammar problems and spelling problems, maybe a proofreading error or two.
Use a professional designer to make your book covers. Book covers do have a huge impact on whether your book is going to attract a reader.
Make sure your manuscript is properly formatted. If you can’t figure out how to format your book then pay someone to do it for you. Lots of times sites like Smashwords will tell you to try again if the formatting is not correct. But if it takes you more than five tries and you still don’t get it or all your hair has been pulled from the top of your head then you really need to seek out a formatting service to take care of your manuscript properly for you.
Even eBooks do need front matter. This is where you put the name of the book followed by author name then published by and so on. Smashwords has good examples of this in their style guide that is free for everyone to read and use.
Every book needs an ISBN. Or should read, every different format of you book needs its own ISBN. That means that an eBook needs its own for ePub and Mobi, PDF and so on. Right down to making sure that you have a separate one for you paperback. You can’t use the same ISBN for all the books under that same title. Each one has to have its own.
You need to distribute your book. This can be done by setting up an account with the various venues like Amazon Kindle Direct, Barnes & Noble Nook Press, Kobo Writing Life and so on. Or you can do the one shoe fits all and use Smash words for you distribution needs. (Note: you still need a separate account for Amazon Kindle Direct when using Smashwords unless you are a bestselling author, otherwise, if you are not a bestseller, Amazon will not open their distribution gate for your Smashwords file. So it is best to work with amazon direct in the beginning.)
Promoting your book. Marie found that Facebook was the best social media avenue when it came to promoting your book. This is without posting multiple posts about your book. Just engage with your readers and treat them the way you would love to be treated and word of mouth about your book and how nice you are really makes a difference in how well your book sells. Readers love to say my friend – so and so – Facebook link – wrote a book that I loved. This is so good for you and your reader. Let them have at it. Friends are some of your best readers. Believe me; everyone wants to be someone’s friend.
If your book is not selling, revisit it and take a peak to see why. If the cover needs to be improved than change it. If your formatting is not good enough than fix it. Update your books periodically so they can keep pace with the ever changing face of technology.

If you need help with your self-published book Marie has a solution for this as well. She runs a service called
Formatting Fairies. They do everything from formatting to copy editing and book cover design. She also has a self-pub loop at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/selfpublish/

ROW80 Update: My NaNo Work in Progress

It has been a couple of weeks since I last checked in or maybe just over a week. I’ve been working on a Nano project for this month. It will be interesting to see how far I can get with this WIP. I missed two days this week and fell short on word count on one day too. As of yesterday my word count sits at 7k words. I might be done after the first of the year. (LOL)

I have to keep telling myself that the best I have done is writing a first draft in 90 days. That is still not too bad. So if I don’t make the NaNo deadline I will not beat myself up over it.

Next weekend Sunday Scoop: Monadnock Writers’ Group

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