Short Story: A Night In The Country, Part One

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The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt, Sylvia Plath

Having one of those days where the words won't come? Here are a few inspirational quotations for the writer in us all.

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.  The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.  ~Sylvia Plath

A word is not the same with one writer as with another.  One tears it from his guts.  The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.  ~Charles Peguy

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.  ~James Michener

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.  ~Anton Chekhov

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.  ~Orson Scott Card

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood.  I'd type a little faster.  ~Isaac Asimov

These quotations were taken from Quote Garden.

Ann Voss Peterson, Long time Harlequin Author, Goes Indie

Ann Voss Peterson has been writing for Harlequin since 2000 but doesn't have enough money for her son's braces. Joe writes that, in paper sales, Ann has outsold him at least 5 to 1 but that he earns triple what she does.

Granted, Harlequin gave Ann, and many other authors, their break into the industry -- and she thanks them -- but if the company isn't going to give her a decent contract (20% ebook royalties on net but with "net" undefined) then they're practically pushing her, and other authors in the same boat, out their doors.

To announce her departure Ann is offering her new book, Pushed Too Far, free for the next few days. Get it on Amazon here: Ann Voss Peterson, Pushed Too Far.

Read Ann's guest post on Joe Konrath's blog, A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, here.

Go Ann!

Whatever happened to Herbert Morrison?

Yesterday was the 75th anniversary of the Hindenburg disaster. Herbert Morrison was the radio reporter at the scene of the accident, the person who described the tragedy as it unfolded.

Morrison's emotional description of events impressed me as a child, perhaps it even haunted me me a little. The horror in his voice, the incredulity. Thinking back on Morrison's reporting of the tragedy, yesterday and today, I'm struck by the fact that I have -- well, had -- no knowledge of what happened to him afterward. I needed to remedy that so today I'm dedicating this blog post to the late Herbert Morrison.

One for the record books
 There's a lot I didn't know about radio reporting back in the day. Everything had to be live so the very existence of Morrison's recording is somewhat unusual. In fact, when portions of Morrison's description of the disaster were "rebroadcast nationally by the NBC Radio network the next day ... it was the first time recordings of a news event were ever broadcast, and also the first coast-to-coast radio broadcast. (Wikipedia, Herbert Morrison)"

Morrison's life before and after the tragedy
Before his historic reporting of the Hindenburg tragedy, he was an announcer for musical programs for WLS Radio and he had recently reported on several floods. A year later he left WLS "to work for the Mutual Broadcasting System and that network's New York flagship station, WOR.

Morrison served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II, and later became the first news director at WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In the 1975 motion picture The Hindenburg, Herbert Morrison was employed as a technical adviser. He was portrayed by actor Greg Mullavy in the movie, but his recording was used in the film. He was also sent across the country by Universal Studios to promote the film.
- Wikipedia, Herbert Morrison

Morrison's audio recording of the Hindenburg tragedy
Here is a transcription of Morrison's audio recording of the tragedy, courtesy of Morrison's page on Wikipedia.

It's practically standing still now. They've dropped ropes out of the nose of the ship, and they've been taken a hold of down on the field by a number of men. It's starting to rain again; it's—the rain had slacked up a little bit. The back motors of the ship are just holding it just, just enough to keep it from — It burst into flames! It burst into flames, and it's falling, it's crashing! Watch it! Watch it, folks! Get out of the way! Get out of the way! Get this, Charlie! Get this, Charlie! It's fire—and it's crashing! It's crashing terrible! Oh, my, get out of the way, please! It's burning and bursting into flames, and the—and it's falling on the mooring-mast and all the folks agree that this is terrible, this is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world. [Indeciperable word(s)] It's–it's–it's the flames, [indecipherable, possibly the word "climbing"] oh, four- or five-hundred feet into the sky and it ... it's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. It's smoke, and it's flames now ... and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring-mast. Oh, the humanity and all the passengers screaming around here. I told you, I can't even talk to people whose friends are on there. Ah! It's–it's–it's–it's ... o–ohhh! I–I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest, it's just laying there, a mass of smoking wreckage. Ah! And everybody can hardly breathe and talk, and the screaming. Lady, I–I'm sorry. Honest: I–I can hardly breathe. I–I'm going to step inside where I cannot see it. Charlie, that's terrible. Ah, ah—I can't. I, listen, folks, I–I'm gonna have to stop for a minute because I've lost my voice. This is the worst thing I've ever witnessed.

Here is Morrison's audio file overlaid on newsreel footage taken at the same time.



Apparently the original recording distorted Morrison's speech -- it ran about 3% too fast. I believe the file I've embedded, above, has been corrected for this. To see your yourself, you can compare this version with the version embedded in the Wikipedia article on Morrison.

In putting together this post I've drawn heavily from the Wikipedia article on Herbert Morrison, but I've only touched on a fraction of the material included there. It's well worth the read.

A Writers Reward: Recipe For Chocolate Cupcakes with Dream Filling

I think writers need to celebrate when reach a milestone, for instance, when we finish a story.  Yesterday I completed a short story, A Night In The Woods, I began years ago -- exactly how many is depressing to contemplate. Perhaps that's why typing "the end" felt like such an accomplishment.

What do we do when we achieve something? We celebrate!

I celebrate by baking. Lately I've had a craving for my Chocolate Dream Cupcakes, so that's what I made. (Not at my apartment, though, my kitchen is the size of a postage stamp!)

Anyway, this is, hands down, my favorite cupcake recipe so I wanted to share it with you. It's super easy.

What you need:

Cupcakes
- A box of chocolate cake mix, I prefer Duncan Hines Devil's Food Cake Mix (wickedly delicious!).

Icing
- 6 ounces of unsweetened chocolate
- Three tablespoons strong coffee
- Icing sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 tsps dark rum
- 250 grams (1 cup) cream cheese, room temperature

Filling
- 1/3 cup water
- Three large egg whites
- 1 tbsp white corn syrup
- 1 1/2 cups white sugar

Instructions
First, following the instructions on the box, make the cupcakes and leave them to cool on racks. They'll need to be completely cool before they're iced. A tip: I like to use paper cupcake cups so I don't have to grease and flour the pans.

When the cupcakes are cool, use a paring knife to cut out a small circle in the middle of each cupcake. I put the fluffy chocolate cores in another bowl and snack on them later.

Now, let's make the filling. This is just 7-minute frosting. I should cut this recipe by a third (so only 1 egg white is used, etc.,) but I haven't tried that yet so I'll give you the full recipe and you can experiment. Combine all ingredients in a medium sized glass bowl and set over a pot of simmering water. Beat with a hand mixer on medium or high for 7 minutes. Take the bowl off the stove and continue beating every two minutes or so as it cools.

I know the filling sounds like a lot of work but, trust me, it's worth it. The filling is what makes these cupcakes mouthwateringly delicious.

Now we're ready for the icing. This is simplicity itself, just melt the chocolate with with the coffee in a double-boiler and, when the chocolate is melted and blended with the coffee, start mixing all the icing ingredients together in a large bowl.

Assembly
If you have a piping bag for icing then use this. I don't so I make a piping bag out of wax paper or use a medium sized Ziploc bag. Just fill up the bag and cut off one of the corners. So armed, fill up the hole you've made in each cupcake. Now take a big dollop of chocolate icing on your knife and slap it down in the middle of the cupcake on top of the hole and seal it up. You'll end up using a lot of icing, but the more the better; we're celebrating after all!. :)

That's it! These are great cupcakes to share, everyone I've given them to has come back for seconds and I've never had to take any home from a pot luck.

Good luck! I hope these cupcakes satisfy your sweet tooth as thoroughly as they have mine.

Photo credit: Me! Can't you tell? ;)

"A Writers Reward: Recipe For Chocolate Cupcakes with Dream Filling," copyright© 2012 by Karen Woodward.

How To Self Publish: An Introduction

This is what I'd like you to get out of this How To Publish series: If the only thing holding you back from self publishing is fear, fear of failure, fear of the unknown, then my goal for you is that by the end of this series, you'll have taken the plunge and published something.

Remember, there's no rule saying you have to publish under your real name, you can use a pen name. The important thing is: If you want to self publish, if this is something that interests you, then do it! It is free and can be infinitely rewarding.

By the way, this post is part of my How To Self Publish series (see Related Reading, below, for links to other articles).

Fear of Technology
It's natural to be hesitant before doing anything new but don't let fear of an unfamiliar process keep you from publishing your work. Self publishing doesn't require any special technical knowledge, anyone can do it.

Later on in this series we'll step through how to publish your work on each of the major platforms: Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords. (I've published many of these posts already, links to them are below in the 'Related Articles' section.)

Self Publishing is NOT Vanity Publishing
It used to be that the only kind of self-publishing was vanity publishing but the two, today, are quite different. Vanity publishers were stigmatized, and rightly so, because they preyed on writers. Vanity publishers would charge the moon to publish your book and fail to place it with any reputable retailer so it was impossible for you to make your money back.

The end result of publishing through a vanity press was often a drained bank account and a basement full of books.

On the other hand, when a person self publishes with Amazon.com, for example, they will publish your book for free, but take a pre-agreed upon percentage of the sale, either 30 or 65 percent. This is the sign of a reputable publisher.

The rule of thumb is: Money flows from the publisher to the author, not the other way around.

Note: Companies or people who charge a flat fee for specific services -- editing, formatting, cover art, and so on -- aren't publishers and so the above rule of thumb doesn't apply. Just like any business will need to pay for services (telephone, internet, hydro) so authors sometimes employ people to help them with certain tasks. That said, a writer doesn't need to employ anyone to self publish.

If You Don't Try, You'll Never Succeed
There's one thing all successful people have in common, no matter the area: they're all failures.

No, that's not a contradiction in terms. Everyone who has succeeded has made many mistakes along the way. I believe it's a fundamental truth of human existence that in order to succeed we must first fail. No one succeeds at everything, so if someone isn't failing occasionally, they aren't trying. So don't let fear of failure stop you from trying something new.


I'm writing a book on self-publishing and have decided to pre-publish the draft chapters on my blog so, please, if you have any comments you'd like to make, please do! I would welcome the feedback. There are three was to contact me. You can comment on this post, you can contact me through the contact form on this site (use the 'Contact Me' tab on the upper right), or you can contact me through Twitter (@woodwardkaren).

Cheers, and thanks for reading. :)

Related Reading
Self Publishing on Amazon: Kindle Direct Publishing
How To Self Publish on Barnes & Noble
Self Publishing on Smashwords

Photo Credit: Debbie Weil

Character Names: How To Create Them

Dan Schmidt, over at The Write Practice, has excellent tips on how to pick character names.

I don't know about you, but I find choosing character names agonizing, so I love reading advice on the subject.

Without further ado, here are Dan's tips (I'm paraphrasing):

1. Mine Your Contacts
Dad suggests using the names of the people around you. Your friends, relatives, acquaintances, the pizza boy, your waiter. I try to keep a notepad with me at all times in case I get inspired on the bus. After this, when I hear a name I love -- and I'm guessing we've all had this experience -- I (hopefully!) won't just think, "Wow, that would make a great character name" and then forget all about it, I'll write in down.

Dan suggests changing the name in subtle ways so it's not obvious where it came from, just in case the person we received inspiration from reads our story one day. Excellent advice! Especially in the case of a villain. I can think of a time or two someone ticked me off and I thought of them when writing an unattractive character, best not to make it too obvious.

2. Interesting Street Names
I had never thought of this before, but Google Maps provides oodles of street names from all over the globe. At the very least, looking at maps would be a great way to get inspiration for naming.

3. Movie Credits
Again, this was a point I'd never thought of, but Dan recommends studying the names of the cast and crew listed at the end of a movie. Awesome tip, and something I'm definitely going to do after this. Or try to do, I have a memory like sieve.

4. Think Outside The Box
Dan mentions the name of one of his favorite characters came from a length of PVC piping. This is awesome advice, to be constantly on the lookout for anything we can incorporate into our stories.

5. First and Last Names Don't Have To Go Together
Dan suggests keeping different lists for first and last names. He mentions using index cards, but I imagine that computer files would work just as well (he sounds much more organized than I am!).

6. Create A Cast List: Make Your Names Work For It
Don't accept any old names, put them through their paces. Write a list of all the names in your story and check to see that most of them start with different initials, that they have a different tone and that the name has a realistic feel.

7. Read the names out loud
Your book may one day be an audiobook, so someone may have to read all the names you've used. Make sure they are pleasing to the ear (or not, depending on the kind of character they name). Vowels are you friend. Dan advices asking a friend to read all your character names aloud. This is great advice, but if you can't manage that, I often like to have my stories read back to me by text-to-voice programs. The first time I did this I was amazed by the number of typos I caught.

8. Google it
You don't want to a real person as your arch villain, at least I wouldn't! Especially not if it's someone I might actually meet. Awkward.

I hope this list will be of some use. It's based on Dan Schmidt's post here: 8 Tips for Naming Characters.

Links:The Write Practice

Photo credit: Webdesigner. (I generally try to have some kind of connection between the topic of my post and the image I use, but today I couldn't find anything so I chose a Pirate. Why? Because Pirates are cool! Aarrrgggg.)

"Character Names: How To Create Them," copyright© 2012 by Karen Woodward.

Amanda Hocking: An Update

In her latest blog post, Amanda Hocking tells us how she feels about signing with a traditional publisher (St. Martin's Press), how her traditionally published books are selling and what her future plans are.

For me, one of the most interesting comments she makes is this:

Some people have been speculating that I'm not doing so well based on my Amazon rankings - which aren't terrible, but none of my books are in the Top 100 right now. They think this means that I'm not selling and the books must be doing poorly.

But one of the biggest reasons I went with a publisher is because I wanted to expand outside of the pool of Amazon readership. I know ebooks are continuing to grow, and I know that right now Amazon controls the largest share of ebook sales (they account for roughly 60% of my self-published ebook sales, with Barnes & Noble covering the vast majority of the other 40%).

And you cannot discount the fact that I sold nearly a million books copies of the Trylle books before I went with a publisher, and a large portion of those were through Amazon. I thought I'd already mostly tapped out the Amazon audience, so the fact that my books are doing as well as they are (Switched is ranked in the #1,000s of the Kindle store at the time of this writing, and Ascend is ranked #325) is impressive to me.
- Amanda Hocking, How Am I Doing Now?

Statistics on how well books sell on Amazon versus Barnes & Noble are difficult to come by, so I appreciate it when authors choose to share their numbers (Joe Konrath is wonderful this way). Amanda Hocking sold about 60% of her books through amazon and, I'm guessing, about 30% through Barnes & Noble.

Some might say, "Who cares?"

These numbers are relevant to writers trying to decide whether to enroll their books in KDP Select because that program requires authors to sell their ebooks exclusively through Amazon. I'm not suggesting that Amanda Hocking's numbers are representative, but with so little information about this sort of thing, every little bit helps.

Thanks Amanda!

Related Articles:
Amanda Hocking Joins The Amazon Kindle Million Club
The Secret of Amanda Hocking's Success Amanda Hocking's Story Amanda Hocking, Barry Eisler and Mark Coker: Legacy publishing versus indie publishing

Links:
Amanda Hocking's Books on Amazon
Amanda Hocking at Macmillan Books
The World of Amanda Hocking
How Am I Doing Now?
KDP Select

Photo credit: Thinking About Books

"Amanda Hocking: An Update," copyright© 2012 by Karen Woodward.

Mur Lafferty: How to Podcast

Here are some terrific tips how-to tips on podcasting from Mur Lafferty, a finalist for the John W. Campbell award for best new writer.

Mur Lafferty is an author and podcaster, creator of the podcasts I Should Be Writing and the Angry Robot Books podcast.

She is the editor of Escape Pod, the premier SF podcast magazine. She has written for the gaming magazine Knights of the Dinner Table, Games Quarterly, Suicide Girls, and Anime Insider. She is also the editor of the new Worldbuilder project for Angry Robot Books.

Called the "podcast SF doyenne" by Cory Doctorow, Lafferty has been bringing award-winning commentary and SF to the podcasting sphere since 2004.

Based in Durham, NC, She enjoys running, kung fu (Northern Shaolin five animals style), Skyrim, tabletop games, and the Durham Bulls.
- Writertopia, Profile of Mur Lafferty

Without further ado, here are Mur Lafferty's tips, taken from Jim C. Hines's interview with the author:

 6) You run or work with several different podcasting sites (Escape Pod, I Should Be Writing, Princess Scientist’s Book Club, and the Angry Robot Books Podcast), and have podcast at least one of your novels as well. What is it that draws you to podcasting?

I was drawn to podcasting in the beginning, 2004, when it was a new medium - that excited me. I wanted to play with all the new ways of storytelling. I didn’t need NPR to publish essays, I didn’t need the BBC or a US radio station to do an audio drama, and I didn’t need a publisher to make an audiobook. I was able to build an audience for my work well before I got a book deal. Podcasting has been instrumental for building my career, when I never expected it to.

7) For anyone who might want to get into podcasting, what resources would you recommend, and what’s the most important lesson you’ve learned about doing a successful podcast?

Microphone: Start small. A  $20 mic from the store will do just fine.

Software: Windows - Audacity is free. Mac - Garageband is free. (Aside - Audacity is also available for the Mac, but crashed a lot for me, so I got Amadeus Pro, which is quite affordable and much like a stable Audacity.)

Host: Libsyn.com - The first podcast host, designed to handle the greater demands of large audio and video files.

Other resources: Tricks of the Podcasting Masters, by Lafferty/Walch (Come on, I had to!), Podcasting for Dummies, by Morris/Terra

Advice: Interact with your listeners. Give them a place to contact/follow you and respond to them; when your voice is in peoples’ ears, it creates an intimacy not found in providing text.
-- Cambell Interview: MurLafferty

Thanks to a friend who, very kindly, sent me a link to Mur Lafferty's interview.

Related Articles:
Joanna Pen: How to Podcast
Podcasting on the iPad
How to record an audiobook at home

Links:
Campbell Interview: Mur Lafferty
The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities: Exhibits, Oddities, Images, and Stories from Top Authors and Artists
  Jim C. Hines

Photo credit: Podible Paradise

"Mur Lafferty: How to Podcast," copyright© 2012 by Karen Woodward.

Writing: The Starburst Method, Part 8: The Rough Draft & Narrative Drive

In the final installment of the Starburst Writing Method we're going to take the scenes we created in the last two installments and use them to write our rough draft. We want to be true to the characterization and plot we have so lovingly developed over the past few weeks, while being careful to maintain and develop narrative drive.

So, first things first. Let's discuss narrative drive.

Narrative Drive
What is narrative drive? Larry Beinhard in How To Write A Mystery says it best:

Narrative Drive is what sells books: To agents, publishers, readers. We all know near-illiterate, insultingly dumb books that (a) have made the bestseller list to our incredulous envy; and (b) have had us reading them even as we say to ourselves, "My God, why I am reading this brain-damaged idiocy?"

What is narrative drive? The best way to discover narrative drive is to read material that you can't put down, but you don't know why. It should not have literary merit (whatever that is) or have real and fascinating characters or be informative about subjects that interest you.

I think of narrative drive as that indefinable something that grabs you by the throat and pulls you -- at times kicking and screaming -- through a book. For me Stephen King's Misery is a prime example of this. Please don't misunderstand, I think King is a fabulous writer and Misery was probably one of his best works. It's just that I hate the particular kind of psychological terror he portrayed in the book and yet I couldn't stop reading. It was the last horror story I read for a good long while.

Now we know what Narrative Drive is, let's move on to the important bit: How do we infuse our stories with that quasi-magical quality that will keep good folks up far past their bed-times?

I don't think there's any recipe for imparting narrative drive to ones story, but one of my writing instructors had this to say:

Begin and end each scene with a question that the reader will be compelled to answer and they will be hard pressed to put your book down.

 An Example
Here's the opening sentence of J.K. Rowling's first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone:

Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

For me that sentence raises the questions: Who is it that Mr and Mrs Dursley are comparing themselves to? Who is it that isn't normal and what is it about them that makes them this way?

Here's the last sentence of that same chapter:

He [Harry Potter] couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: 'To Harry Potter -- the boy who lived!' 

 I'm left wondering why people need to meet in secret, what happened to Harry Potter and why he is so important to so many people.

Not a bad way to start a book!

Wrapping Up
By now, if you've been following along, you should have a rough draft of a story and I find that's often the hardest part. The next hardest part is finishing the darn thing!

I think the real trick of being a professional writer is simply finishing what we start. We all feel at a certain point that what we're writing is complete drivel but the professional writer battles through the feeling, revises, rewrites and ends up with something they're proud of where the rest of us (and I'm too often in this camp!) become discouraged and  bury our effort in the bottom drawer of a desk drawer, or under our bed, where it will languish for the next few decades.

This series of articles on the Starburst Method has been a rough draft for a book I'm putting together. The book will include more material -- for instance, I'd like to have said something about pacing.

 The Starburst Method, Part 1: A one sentence summary
The Starburst Method, Part 2: Developing our one sentence summary
The Starburst Method, Part 3: Creating a five paragraph summary
The Starburst Method, Part 4: Developing characters
The Starburst Method, Part 5: Creating a five page summary
The Starburst Method, Part 6: Developing scenes
The Starburst Method, Part 7: The character grid
The Starburst Method, Part 8: The rough draft

Further Reading:
Writers Despair
Writers: Don't Despair

"Writing: The Starburst Method, Part 8: The Rough Draft & Narrative Drive" copyright© 2012 by Karen Woodward.