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November: A month of stress and delight in writing (#IWSG)
I just finished NaNoWriMo. For you non-writers (a/k/a normal people) out there, NaNoWriMo, affectionately known as NaNo, is National Novel-Writing Month, a worldwide phenomenon in which millions of writers try to write 50,000 words in the month of November. Free investment tip: buy stock in coffee companies before November. Alcohol and cigarette companies too. But I digress. A subgroup of NaNo participants are known as NaNo Rebels. We bust our butts all month like the “regular” NaNos, but we do something other than write 50K words of a brand-new novel. In my case, I committed to spending as much time revising a previous NaNo project as it would have taken…
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Blurbs, pitches, loglines, and other book marketing necessities I suck at (#IWSG)
For those of you who aren’t masochists don’t write fiction, here’s something about the writing world that you may not know: authors have to be marketers. Yes, even traditionally-published authors, because apparently even the big publishers don’t invest a lot in marketing authors unless they are big names. I’m going to admit 2 things up front that will color the rest of this post: I find this fact frustrating. With a family and a day job, I barely have enough time to write, let alone learn how to market my writing. When I first started writing, I thought that’s what publishers got paid to do, seeing as how they have…
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Where do I draw the line? (#IWSG)
It seems like everyone has an opinion these days about what writers should and shouldn’t do: Show me all the sex! Keep the sex behind closed doors. Write about diverse characters! Don’t write about identities you don’t share. Write honestly about difficult topics. Stop writing about rape. And on and on. Yeah, those are oversimplifications, but sometimes the discourse about what writers should write isn’t very nuanced. So today I’m going to piss off everyone by wading into these controversial waters. I’ve written about this topic before, but I’m going to get into it in a bit more depth in this post. But first: This post is part of the Insecure…
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Define your own success in 6 easy steps (#IWSG)
Today we’re going to talk about success. I’m not going to define it for you, and I’m not going to tell you how to get it. I suck as a self-help guru. Instead, I’m going to suggest a way of thinking about success that doesn’t get much traction in our rise-and-grind culture. But first: This post is part of the Insecure Writers Support Group monthly blog hop. On the first Wednesday of each month, I and my fellow insecure writers post something related to writing, and then we visit the blogs of our fellow members and read and comment on their IWSG posts. This month’s optional question is, How do you…
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Read these 6 Books to Improve Your Fiction Writing (With a Sex-Related Bonus)
When I first started writing fiction back in 2014, I devoured books about writing. Nerdy little librarian that I am, I was sure I could learn this writing thing from a book. Or three books. Or maybe twenty. And you know what? I did learn. I read, then I wrote, then I read some more, then I wrote some more, and I got a little better. I still made mistakes, but I made better mistakes. You can’t learn to write from a book–you learn to write by writing–but books (and blog posts and podcasts and YouTube videos and, especially, critique partners) help. So today I’ll share my top 6 writing…
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What would make me quit writing (#IWSG)
This post is part of the Insecure Writers Support Group monthly blog hop. On the first Wednesday of each month, I and my fellow insecure writers post something related to writing, and then we visit the blogs of our fellow members and read and comment on their IWSG posts. This month’s optional question is, What would make you quit writing? Sometimes these IWSG monthly questions are timely. Back in April, I wrote about a problem I was having with my right arm. In looking over that piece, I realize I failed to explain exactly what went wrong and why I included a pretty diagram of arm veins in the post. Ah,…
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Prepping for #PitMad (#IWSG)
Thursday I’ll be pitching my time travel romance, Vanishing, Inc., in #PitMad. What, you ask, is PitMad? It’s a pitch party on Twitter, in which unagented authors like yours truly try to distill their magnum opuses into a 280-character tweet in the hope of attracting an agent’s attention. And I thought writing a query letter was hard. Fortunately, there’s lots of great advice out there for PitMad virgins like me. I’ll share the most useful tips I found, but first: This post is part of the Insecure Writers Support Group monthly blog hop. On the first Wednesday of each month, I and my fellow insecure writers post something related to…
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Writing as risky business–or how to offend everyone (#IWSG)
I participate in the monthly IWSG (Insecure Writers Support Group) blog hop. This month’s optional question is: Are you a risk-taker when writing? Do you try something radically different in style/POV/etc. or add controversial topics to your work? When people make lists of the riskiest professions, those lists include jobs like mining and commercial fishing, not writing. But writing carries its own, albeit less deadly and/or smelly, risks. The most common one is poverty, because writing pays crap, but I’m not going to talk about that today. My day job keeps me in Pop Tarts and Extra Toasty Cheez-Its, so I shouldn’t complain. The IWSG question of the month mentions…
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Boost Your Writing Productivity: Make Writing a Habit
Every writer I’ve met has struggled to get in their daily word count or find a block of time to revise or escape work and family responsibilities long enough–and consistently enough–to make steady progress on a writing project. Every. Single. One. Including me. Of course. Absolutely. I can’t tell you how to get your spouse to stop asking you where the Pop Tarts are and let you write (1. I ate them. 2. I have a few suggestions, but most of them involve duct tape, so I’ll keep them to myself on the advice of my lawyer). I can’t tell you how to convince your boss that you should be…
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7 Reasons Why I Will Hate Your Book
Happy IWSG Day! For those who are new here, I participate in the monthly Insecure Writers Support Group blog hop. This month’s optional question is: Being a writer, when you’re reading someone else’s work, what stops you from finishing a book/throws you out of the story/frustrates you the most about other people’s books? The more I learn about the craft of writing, the more I read differently. I notice problems in other people’s writing to which I would have been oblivious before. Before, I might have noticed that I wasn’t really into a book, that the book didn’t hook me or engage me or hold my attention, but I might not have…
Janet Alcorn
Suspense | Horror | Romance
