Writing Prompt: Desperate Phone Call

I thought I'd try something different and post a writing prompt.

It's the middle of the night and your phone rings. Grumpy, you answer it. The voice on the line is breathy as though whoever it is has been running. "You're in danger. Take it and leave town. Now."

You hear the gurgle of a semi-automatic machine gun and a muffled scream. It sounds as though the phone has clattered to the ground.  

Sleep forgotten you sit up in bed. "Hello? Hello!" No response.

After a moment you hear slow, deep, breathing. "We know who you are" This voice is menacing and gravelly. "We only want the package. Go to the police and you're dead."

What do you say? What do you do?

Good writing!

"Writing Prompt: Desperate Phone Call" copyright© 2012 by Karen Woodward.

How To Write In The Shower

I get my best ideas when I'm in the shower. Or at least it seems that way. Perhaps it's like the dream where you understand the answer to everything but forget it when you wake. I suspect if I remembered it would be something like 'hamsters'. Or '42'.

But I really do get my best ideas in the shower. For a while I kept a pad of paper by the bathroom sink and I'd dart out, try to dry my hands, and scribble down my epiphany.

It wasn't pretty.

I mentioned my dilemma to one of my writer friends, C.G. Cameron, and she had a great solution: keep a special water-friendly writing pad in the shower. I always wondered why she had the best ideas! Here's her solution:

At Staples I picked up a cheap plastic clipboard and a Help Wanted sign. ("Closed" signs don't encourage creativity.) Total cost, about $8. Turn the sign over (the back is plain white and exactly enough texture to grab the graphite of the pencil). You could do without the clipboard if you have a handy wall in your shower. Grab a pencil with a pocket clip on it, run a rubber band through the clip and through the hole at the top of the clipboard (chain multiple rubber bands to make it longer), or just grab any pencil to set at the side of the tub or on the soap dish. The graphite will write on the rough back of the sign, and you can clean it off using a Magic Sponge or a bit of scrub/cleanser (something slightly abrasive). Just remember to take the clipboard into the bathroom with you, with your towel and rubber ducky, and you're set.

Now you'll never again lose those ideas.

(Or you could go to a store that carries SCUBA gear and buy one of their writing tablets for underwater, and then just leave it in the shower, but Staples was much closer.)

C.G. gave me her permission to post these instructions (thank you!). She has a great Twitter feed: @jazz2midnight.

I'm curious, has anyone tried something like this? In any case, good luck constructing your water-proof writing tablet!


Other reading:
- Pixar: 22 Ways To Tell A Great Story
- Publishing With Amazon: The Hidden Cost Of Delivery
- Conflict Creation: The Needs Of Your Characters

Twylah: Turn Your Tweets Into A Blog

I was surfing the electronic currents of the web when I chanced upon Elisabeth Spann Craig's Twylah page. It looks incredible! I signed up too and today received my own Twylah Page. I'm thrilled to bits.

For some time now I've been looking for a program that could do two things: first, show which of my tweets were the most popular and, second, display them in a blog-like interface.

Tweets and popularity
I've often wanted a quick way of determining which of my tweets were the most popular--I guess this is known as 'trending'. After all, I don't want to bore anyone! It's true, there are a number of programs that will tell you how many times a certain tweet has been retweeted (for instance Topsy Labs Social Analytics and Tweetreach) but, in my opinion, they lack clarity. That said, I love Topsy Analytics and use it all the time to find who is re-tweeting my tweets as well as interesting people to follow.

Blog-like interface for tweets
I'm not complaining about Twitter's interface. I like it that I can go to my twitter account and see a timeline of my tweets. I can't tell you how many times my cat has jumped onto my keyboard while I'm composing a Tweet and I need to find out whether it was cancelled or published prematurely.

That said, it would be handy to have an attractive visual interface which allowed a user to take in my most re-tweeted tweets at a glance.

I've only just received my Twylah page so all I can give you are my first impressions. I'll write again about my experience with the service after I've used it for a while.

If you'd like to try out Twylah, here's the link: Twylah. The service is still in beta so you have to request an invite, but I got mine after two or three days.

Other articles:
- Aherk! Makes Writing App 'Write Or Die' Look Tame
- Changes in Amazon's Algorithm: An Update
- Mark Coker, Founder Of Smashwords, Talks About Indie Publishing

His Wish Granted: WIlliam Faulkner's, "The Sound And The Fury", Color Coded

I read William Faulkner's The Sound And The Fury as part of an English course taught by one of the most fabulous people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting: Sue Anne Johnson. I took the course in my second semester of college and it turned into one of the best experiences of my life.

I'd heard Faulkner's book was difficult, I'd heard it was written as a flow-of-consciousness narrative, but I was still unprepared. As I read the words on the first page I couldn't make them form a narrative. For me it was, as Shakespeare wrote, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

The next day Ms. Johnson asked us to raise our hand if we finished our reading assignment. One person had.

It got much easier after that first introduction and largely because Sue Anne explained a few things about the viewpoint Faulkner was using in the first part of his book. I won't go into that, but an excellent summary can be found in the Wikipedia entry on The Sound And The Fury. I remember Sue Anne telling us that Falkner wanted shifts in time indicated by a change of ink color but that the cost was prohibitive.

It thrilled me to read that now, for the first time, Faulkner's book has been printed as he first envisioned it. The following is from the Los Angeles Times:

In a special edition, the Folio Society is publishing "The Sound and the Fury" in 14 colors. It's a fine press edition, quarter-bound in leather, with a slipcase and an additional volume of commentary. It also includes a color-coded bookmark that reveals which time period is designated by each color.

The Folio Society worked with two Faulkner scholars, Stephen Ross and Noel Polk, to figure out how to divide the text. Only the Benjy section is rendered in the 14 colors of ink.

"With the Benjy section the different threads are sufficiently clear that I don't feel we are distorting or compromising the novel," Folio's commissioning editor for limited editions Neil Titman told the Guardian. "I found the book tremendously confusing the first time I read it, so I think that overall you have a net gain here, rather than feeling over-guided."

The color edition of Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" is being published July 6 in a limited edition of 1,480 and is priced at $345. One thousand preordered copies have been sold.

To read the entire article, click here:  'The Sound and the Fury' as William Faulkner imagined, in color.

If the colored copy of The Sound And The Fury retails at $345 today I cringe to think what it would have cost a publisher to produce back in 1929!

I would love to own one of these versions. Perhaps one day it will be released as an ebook.

Cheers.

Other reading:
- WorldCat: Find Books In A Library Near You
- How Important Is It To Promote Your Books?
- Query Tracker: Keep Track Of Your Stories

Penelope Trunk Discusses Time Management

A few months ago a friend sent me the link to Penelope Trunk's blog and I've been reading it ever since. This is easy to do since Penelope only posts every few days. Her articles are long and rambling, but in the best of ways. They are the kind of posts/stories you don't read so much as fall into. She has the knack of making you feel as though she's speaking right to you and, though I don't agree with everything she says--wouldn't that be boring?--I at least find it interesting.

This morning I realized I hadn't checked her blog in a couple if weeks and was pleasantly surprised to find a few new articles. I love it when she writes something relevant to writers, or that is relevant to me, and since I'm a writer, I hope it'll interest others.

One of the Penelope's new articles was on time management (Time management tips that'll work for your life). It's excellent. I think I like it so much because it's filled with what I think of as common sense. For example, she writes:

Tim Ferriss, (who I have complained about in the past) also, provides the fastest, easiest way to lose weight. He’s a time management guru and he’s extended that to weight loss. You don’t have to spend time at the gym. Instead, you can do stuff like eat in extremely restricted ways and binge one day a week. But how do you do this with a family? What do you tell your kids when you’re eating like a crazy person?
- Time management tips that’ll work for your life

The text I just quoted was written about her first point which was: Experiment in ways that won't risk the sanity of the people around you. Too few people say things like that.

As I read this I thought of some of the nutty things writers do. Sure there's the quasi-normal things like staying up all night to meet a deadline and sitting in front of a computer monitor typing away non-stop on a little keyboard for hours each and every day--I mean, students do this all the time. But we do other things, things like trying to write a novel in a month--whether for NANOWRIMO or not (and I don't meant to bash Nano! I think it's terrific.) But many of the things we do routinely could be said to risk the sanity of those around us.

The rest of Penelope's article is good too, and I'd encourage you to read it for her time management advice, although she does say more about what not to do than how to make it all work, but I'm not sure anyone can do that. I did especially enjoy her post about what it's like to have a film crew come and stay for a few days and film a reality TV show (it's called How to choose a new career).

Well, I'm off to get some grist for my writing mill by visiting a local Farmer's Market. Isn't research great?

I hope the weather is gorgeous where you are and that you can get out to enjoy it. Cheers!

Related articles:
- The secret to making a living as a writer: work for free
- Pixar: 22 Ways To Tell A Great Story
- Henry Miller's 11 Writing Commandments
- Penelope Trunk's Blog

WorldCat: Find Books In A Library Near You

This is a fantastic idea! Ever wondered if a certain book was in a library near you? I know I have. Here's a page that takes the pain out of your search, and it doesn't just work for books, you can use it to locate things such as CDs, DVDs and Articles. (If you'd like to try it out for yourself, go here: WorldCat: The World's Largest Library Catalog.)

To try it out I entered the city I live in and typed in the title of one of my favorite books, Lord Of The Flies, by William Golding. After hitting the enter key I was given a list of links to various editions and formats. I clicked the first link and was presented with a list of libraries in my area that have the book, what format the book is in, the distance to the library, and a list of links to information and services the library provides.

As if that weren't enough I was also presented with links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Better World Books in case I wanted to purchase the book.

Reviews
At the very bottom of the page I was presented with a smattering of reviews Lord Of The Flies has received and which rate it on a scale of 1 to 5. Which brings up the issue of how useful reviews are.
One reviewer on Goodreads.com gave Lord Of The Flies one star out of five and, which may be worse, 102 people agreed with that rating! Let me quote from this review:

See, I would have cared a bit more about the little island society of prepubescent boys and their descent into barbarism if you know, any of the characters had been developed AT ALL

As I say, the mileage you get from the reviews will vary. By the way, I can't give you a direct link to the review I quoted, but you can read it here, it's the last one on the page.

WorldCat: The Site For Mobile devises
WorldCat also has a site for mobile devises (WorldCat: Mobile Web Beta) so I thought I'd try it out on my iPad. This is terrific! It works just the same as the standard website but it seems more streamlined and user friendly.

WorldCat on Facebook
WorldCat also has a Facebook app, to learn more about that go here, WorldCat search plug-ins, or head straight over to Facebook's WorldCat application page.

Cheers!

David Gaughran Shares His Sale Figures: Print Pays

Last year David Gaughran used to list how much he was making from the sales of his books, what he was doing in terms of promotion, where he was selling his books, and so on, but he hasn't done it in awhile and I missed it.

Perhaps it's voyeuristic, but when David had a great month I felt inspired and when he had a slow month it made me feel better about the slow months I've had, so for me it was a win-win.

In any case, I was very happy to see David is once again reporting his numbers. In his latest post he concentrates on paperback sales of his book, Let's Get Digital (love that title!). He writes:

I was really slow to see the potential in print, and it was probably the biggest mistake I made over the last year. ...

I had felt that the market for Let’s Get Digital would be largely, um, digital, and that whatever was left would be cannibalized by the PDF version being available as a free download from my blog.
I was wrong.

Paperback Growth

Here are my paperback sales for the last five months:

February: 6
March: 24
April: 20
May: 49
June: 67

Note: A Storm Hits Valparaiso was released in Feb, Let’s Get Digital in May

I’m pretty happy with that growth – especially because I’m averaging $5 in royalties per copy sold. Last month, paperbacks brought in $330 (profit) – which is about 25% of my current income, helping me break new ground. I cleared $1000 in May and easily topped that in June – largely on the back of stronger print numbers.

Most of those paperback sales came from Amazon US, and, following that, direct sales to indie bookstores (mostly in the UK).
- Making Money From Paperbacks

Let's think about that. In one month David's paperback sales from just one of his books earned him 25% of his current monthly income from writing. That's what I call significant!

CreateSpace
This is the second time in the last few days I've come across an author singing the praises of Amazon's CreateSpace. (What Jen Talty of Cool Gus Publishing thinks of Amazon's CreateSpace.)

David makes another excellent point and one I hadn't considered. Let's say you're selling your ebook for $2.99 on Amazon and are offering a print version through CreateSpace for $13.99. When a reader views the ebook version they'll see the $13.99 price crossed out, the Kindle Price of $2.99 highlighted, and the customer will be informed that, in buying your ebook, they will save $11.

Now that's good advertising!

I've just concentrated on a couple of the things David talks about in his article; it's well worth the read: Making Money From Paperbacks

Related reading:
- Jen Talty: Amazon's CreateSpace Vs LIghtning Source
- Kobo's Self-Publishing Portal: Report From A Beta Tester
- Mystery Writer Elizabeth S. Craig's Reasons For Self Publishing

Photo credit: The Guardian

Kristen Lamb: Don't Let Trolls Make You Crazy

Don't Feed The Troll

I love Kristen Lamb's blog, but this time she's outdone herself! Anyone who has ever dared to do something that took them out of their comfort zone has had the unpleasant experience of being trolled. Kristen gives some excellent advice on how to respond to trolls: don't. She writes:

It is easy to have a bad day and snap on-line, but here’s the thing. That is a luxury only afforded to amateurs. If we are serious about being successful writers then we know that publishing/the blogosphere are small worlds. People who blog and take time to serve other writers are generally viewed in high regard, because let’s be honest. They don’t have to help other writers.

Read the rest of Kristen's blog post here: Trolling the Trollosphere–Staying Sane in a World of Crazy.

Sometimes, often, tolls make their presence known in comments--I have been extraordinarily fortunate in this regard, and (*knock on wood*) haven't yet had the displeasure of meeting one--but in my experience trolls also rear their heads in real life.

It is no secret that the world of publishing is rapidly changing and many folks who haven't been paying close attention don't realize there's a difference between self publishing a book and being taken to the cleaners by a vanity press.

When strangers think you're nuts for self-publishing that's one thing, but when friends take a condescending tone and try to show you the error of your ways it's quite another. But that could just be me! When someone tries to 'set me straight' about 'how it is' in publishing it puts my teeth on edge.

Now, I'm not saying I know it all, far from it! But I do know that for many authors self publishing was the right path for them, both temperamentally and financially. They are far happier on their own than they would be with a traditional publisher and they are making a decent wage through their writing.

If you are cornered by a friend in troll aspect, don't let his remarks get you down. I usually make the mistake of trying to educate my interlocutor about the current state of the publishing industry but this is useless since he doesn't think I've got the good sense God gave a slug and so won't believe anything I say. My advice: Kristen Lamb is (of course!) right. Don't waste your breath. Don't engage, just smile and change the topic.

Is that cynical? I hope not!

Have you ever had a run-in with a troll?

How Important Is It To Promote Your Books?

Book Promotion

Kris Rusch says: not very. She writes:

The person who disagreed with me ... was convinced I didn’t know what I was talking about when it came to the necessity of promoting work, particularly for a new writer. The writer actually said that I had never had a point in my career where I was unknown, which made me laugh. Um, we were all beginning writers once upon a time.

The writer challenged me to self-publish things under a super secret pen name, and was convinced I would understand then why new writers need to promote. I actually responded to this one—I usually don’t—because of the challenge, and because I’d met it  years ago.

I have four things up under four super-secret pen names, things which I put up with no promotion. One outsells everything I do under my name and my known pen names. One isn’t doing very well at all, and two are doing okay. All outsell some titles I have under the Rusch name. So I have met the challenge, plus some.

Because I had to explain to this new writer that back in the Dark Ages of Publishing when I started, there was no such thing as Twitter, blogging, Facebook, and the like. If a writer wanted to promote her work, she had to spend more than her advance to do so. Because even back then, publishers didn’t promote 95% of the books they published. Those books would sink or swim based on sales in bookstores that might or might not carry the books. Some of my early work wasn’t even listed with description and a cover photo in the publisher’s catalog. Just a one line listing under “Also Available” which was arranged by genre.

So how did a writer sell a lot of copies of her book? She wrote another. Back in the Dark Ages of Publishing, before the conglomerate bean counters got involved, most writers (even new writers) got a multibook contract. Because publishers knew it was the number of titles on the shelf that sold books, not the quality of an as-yet-unread single title, that got a reader to pick up a book.

So I not only met the challenge in this new world of publishing, I met that challenge every time I had traditionally published a book with a brand new name on the spine.

Read the rest of Kris' post here: The Business Rusch: Careers, Critics, and Professors

It's nice to know a writer can make a living using her craft without needing to promote.

I wonder though, if Kris had promoted her work perhaps she would have sold even more books. I guess then the question would be: would she sell enough copies to make the promotion worth it. If, rather than spending time and money on the promotion, she had just written, would she have made more money in the end? I could see that being the case.

Kris' post this week is wonderful, as always, and very encouraging. It follows her and Dean's theme of: Just write! I don't think we can get better advice than that.

Related reading:
- Henry Miller's 11 Writing Commandments
- Kris Rusch: The Value of Imperfection

Mystery Writer Elizabeth S. Craig's Reasons For Self Publishing

Don't worry, Elizabeth isn't saying goodbye to Penguin, but she has decided to write one book expressly for the purpose of publishing it herself. She writes:

It’s baffled me how acrimonious the traditional publishing vs. self-publishing debate has become. Emotions have run high in both camps and it seems to be centered around who’s right and who’s wrong.

I don’t think it matters who’s right and I don’t think it really matters what we choose to do with a particular book. We should probably just write plenty of books and experiment.

I’ve just handed in the fourth book of my Memphis Barbeque series to Penguin.

Now I’m writing a book to self-publish. I’ve self-published two other titles, but one was backlist and one was written for traditional publishing but didn’t sell. This is the first time I’ve written a book for the sole purpose of self-publishing it.

After that, I’ll be working on my 3rd book for the Southern Quilting mysteries for Penguin.

I couldn’t feel less-conflicted about it. I won’t try to shop the book I’m writing independently—it won’t be sent to my agent. I won’t agonize over the fact that I’m writing books for a traditional publisher and whether that means I’ll miss out on higher royalties.

Actually, it’s a real luxury to have more than one option. What’s a good approach for one book may not be right for another.

Exactly! I especially like this line: We should probably just write plenty of books and experiment. I couldn't agree more.

Read the rest of Elizabeth's article here: The Luxury of Having Options. Her wonderful Twitter feed is here: @elizabethscraig.

Elizabeth Spann Craig writes the Memphis BBQ mysteries (as Riley Adams) & the Southern Quilting mysteries (2012) for Penguin as well as the Myrtle Clover mysteries for Midnight Ink. (Taken from Elizabeth's Twitter bio.)

Cheers, and good writing!

Related reading:
- 5 Points To Ponder Before You Self Publish
- Amazon Award-Winner Regina Sirois & The Problems Of Indie Distribution
- How To Self Publish: An Introduction
- Kobo's Self-Publishing Portal: Report From A Beta Tester

Photo credit: Writers In The Storm Blog

The BlaBla Meter, Test Your Prose For Meaningfulness

I love this tool! From the site:

How much bullshit hides in your text?
PR-Experts, politicians, ad writers or scientists need to be strong here! BlaBlaMeter unmasks without mercy how much bullshit hides in any text.

A useful tool for everyone involved in writing!

Simply copy your text into the white field and check your writing style. It works with English text up to 15.000 characters (overhead will be cut off). For a meaningful result we recommend a minimum length of 5 sentences.

This is a fun way to spend 5 minutes, and there's the possibility of learning something. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself!

To try it out, go here: BlaBlaMeter.

Related reading:
- Aherk! Makes Writing App 'Write Or Die' Look Tame
- Write Or Die: The App

Query Tracker: Keep Track Of Your Stories

Robert Heinlein told writers to put their stories on the market and to keep them there until they sell, but he didn't tell us how to keep track of them.

Unfortunately it can take many, many, mailings before a story finds its home and it would be embarrassing, to say the least, if a writer sent his or her masterpiece to the same place twice!

This is where QueryTracker.net comes in:

Find Literary Agents & Publishers
- Use our extensive database search tools to locate the perfect agent or publisher for your work.
- Watch a demonstration video.

Organize and Track Your Query Letters
- Keep track of your query letters using the most advanced tracking system available on the web.
- Watch a demonstration video.

View Statistics about Agents and Publishers
- Our database allows information to be collected and shared. This gives access to useful statistical information about literary agents and publishers.

And, amazingly, it's free!

I wondered about this--how can this service be free? Here's the explanation given:

Why is QueryTracker free? QueryTracker is free because it is our goal to collect as much data as possible about query letter results.

To do that, we need as many members as possible to submit their data, and the best way to do that is to make it free.

One of my writing friends recommended QueryTracker to me. She uses it and swears by it, so I'm going to give it a try. If you use it, let me know what you think! Cheers.

Happy 4th of July!

Related reading:
- 6 Rules of Writing from John Steinbeck
- Henry Miller's 11 Writing Commandments
- 7 Tips On How To Get Your Guest Post Accepted

Photo credit: "Punctuation marks made of puzzle pieces" by Horia Varlan under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.