CornerScribe

Miscellany, and a Reminder for Submissions

Posted by Jo | Filed under Writing, Books

Just a reminder, April 30 is the deadline to submit a link for my Writer’s Resources Page. I’m treating this as a blog carnival, so I’ll be putting together a post with all the submissions as well as making additions to the Resources Page.

I picked up a good plotting book the other weekend, Plot and Structure by James Bell. I’m about half-way through it, and it gives some good tips on plotting, managing sub-plots, crafting good beginnings, etc. I’ll write up something a little more in-depth once I’ve finished it.

I also picked up a copy of Writing the Breakout Novel, but I haven’t done anything except browse the table of contents.

In the comments, list your favorite writing-related books.

Submissions, please

Posted by Jo | Filed under Weblogs, Writing

I’m looking to fill out my Writing Resources page some more, and I’m looking for some submissions. My goal is to put together a really kick-butt listing of online writing resources, so submit your own best work or others’ work that you find really useful.

Please leave a comment on this post with your link and a brief summary of what it covers. Don’t worry if there’s not already a category covering it; as long as it’s writing, publishing, or blogging related, I’m interested.

And while you’re here, don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS feed so you don’t miss any updates.

If you prefer, Direct Message me on twitter with your link. Follow me here. If you follow me, I’ll follow you back.

You can always friend me on StumbleUpon as well. I’ll friend you back, and please feel free to use SU to send me links in the future. When friending me, please mention that you found me through this post so I’ll know who you are.

And please spread the word, the more the merrier!

Edited to Add:

I also posted this as a blog carnival. If you came here via the carnival, then feel free to submit your post that way as well. I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone sends along.

Spiffy new theme

Posted by Jo | Filed under Administration Notes

Well, how do you like the new theme?

I got it at themelab as a free download. I have to say it is the most painless install of a wordpress theme I’ve EVER done. I only had to do a couple code edits, and those were very simple.

If you’re looking for a new wordpress theme, check these guys out. They have quite a few nice-looking free ones, and if they’re all this easy to install, even better.

By the way, I ran across them via my twitter feed. Somehow I ended up following themelab on twitter.

And my twitter feed is at www.twitter.com/cornerscribe so follow me!

9 Good Writing Excuses

Posted by Jo | Filed under humor, Weblogs

writing, novel, freelancing, book, fiction, blog, grammar

Dear Novel,

Yes, I know I have 60,000 words of you written already. I have a scene outline. I even know your ending (and I still respect you). Yet I haven’t sat down with you in days, haven’t added a word to you or done even a little tweak here or there.

Here is what I’ve been doing instead. You can see it’s all really important, so you won’t feel neglected.

I helped my husband find his keys. I can’t have him wandering around tearing up the house looking for them any longer.
I did laundry. Writing naked is overrated. Besides, it’s COLD.
I organized my knitting supplies. Stepping on one of those stitch markers could be painful.
I checked my facebook page. What if a publisher is desperately trying to find me?
Made coffee. That one is obvious.
We helped the guinea pig get un-impacted. You really don’t want to know about that one.
I watched Battlestar Gallactica. (It’s inspiration, okay!)
I cooked dinner
I wrote a blog entry.

O.K. so maybe I’ve been procrastinating just a little bit. I promise to do better.

How are you using Twitter?

Posted by Jo | Filed under Weblogs, Promotion, Writing

writing, blogging, blog, fiction, novel, book, freelance

Are you on Twitter? You can follow me here. I just crossed the 100 followers threshold, so I’m pretty excited about that.

What is twitter?

Twitter is a social networking site that allows you to post updates in 140 character blips. Think IM plus social networking, and you’ve more or less got it. With twitter, it’s perfectly acceptable to follow complete strangers while that’s frowned on by other sites.

Ideas for using twitter

I use twitter to post updates for some of my blog posts. It’s also a nice way to jump in to interesting conversations that I run across, and that’s more acceptable on twitter since the conversations are public.

One thing that I don’t see talked about as much with twitter is the value of just following. It’s a great way to get ideas about a topic, see what people are talking about, etc. I’ve gotten good results asking for responses on twitter, so it’s another option besides the traditional blog poll.

I can see other potential uses for twitter. I can see it as an interesting medium for poetry or even ultra short stories. I’m hoping that as more people use it and experiment, other interesting uses will come out.

So, how do you get people to follow you on twitter?

First, go to Twitter search and look for people with interests similar to yours and follow some of them. You’ll start getting their updates in your friends list. Chances are, some of them will follow you in return.

Ask for followers on your blog. That seems so obvious, but it’s all to easy to forget to do the simple things. You might want to put a “follow me” button somewhere on your site, but I’ve had good results writing a quick post just asking people to follow. In fact, I just gained about 15 followers in the last week by doing that and asking for followers on a forum I frequent.

Ask for followers on forums you’re a member of. First though, be sure it’s okay to do so and within the community guidelines. Even if it is, be sure it’s acceptable in the culture of the forum you’re on as well. Otherwise, you could end up doing yourself more harm than good.

You’d be surprised, but explaining what you want and just asking works wonders. I wanted to cross the 100 followers threshold, and I did by simply asking. So, I’m asking again. I’ve got 102 followers right now, and I’m curious how long it might take to reach 200. Care to help me get there?

writing, blogging, blog, fiction, novel, book, freelance

Must Read New Blog

Posted by webmaster | Filed under Weblogs, Writing

Genreality is a new blog that I’ve really been enjoying lately because of its great information for new writers.

It’s staffed by midlisters, including Lynn Viehl, author of Paperback Writer, which I’ve mentioned here before. Others are Alison Kent, Joseph Nassise, Carrie Vaughn, Sasha White and Jason Pinter.

They discuss various topics of interest to new writers, particularly those looking to be published. This last week, the theme was “First sale,” and reading how each author landed their first sale was interesting and inspiring.

I think this blog has real potential to provide lots of great information and entertainment. This is definitely one you’ll want to add to your RSS reader!

Seven to get started with

Posted by webmaster | Filed under Miscellaneous, Writing

I hope you’ve had a great holiday and New Year’s. I’ve been doing a lot of work on the novel and thinking about where I’d like to go with the blog this year. I’ve committed myself to finishing the novel and starting to approach agents by the spring, so I’m obviously going to be busy.

To kick things off, how about some links to get started.

Lynn Viehl’s work on Scribd is a good place to look for novel outlining help. She also has the text for last year’s online writer’s workshop she did there. If you’re unfamiliar with her work, then she also has some short stories there as well.
Writer’s Digest’s 101 best sites for writers is a good place to go for both inspiration and information.
Ponoko is a site that’s new to me. Think cafepress, but you can design whatever you want here. So if you’ve ever had a great idea you’d like to market, here’s one place to look.
The snowflake method is one of many ways to lay out your novel.
Need some medieval inspiration? How about an interesting torture method? Check out Medieval Castles.
Need a quick ancient history refresher? See the ancient history timeline.
And if you’ve ever thought your job was good fodder for a book. Read The Tribulations of a Checkout Girl.

Don’t Panic

Posted by webmaster | Filed under In the news...writing

You’ve probably already heard about Houghton Mifflin’s cutbacks, and the big news, that they plan on not accepting new manuscripts. There’s also some speculation that Borders may not be able to keep their bookstores open. Ouch!

I heard it on NPR on my way home the other evening, and my first reaction was to wonder how any publisher can survive without new books. I’m not sure I’ve gotten my head around that yet, in fact. Of course, the media reaction amounted to lots of gloom and doom with a touch of panic thrown in for spice.

Yes, I do find it disturbing that a major publishing house is laying off workers and suspending buying of new manuscripts.

No, I don’t think it’s the end of the world for publishing or for writers.

I think a lot of people, me included, are falling into the panic-trap of this recession, and the truth is, the more people in general panic, the worse the recession is likely to get. I think that’s a little scary, don’t you?

I don’t know what will happen to the publishing industry, but my point is, no one else does either. All the pundits who are saying this and that on the news, each being more negative than the other, don’t know what’s going to happen either. My solution? Don’t listen to them. Oh, and write!

Maybe publishers will lay off or cut back. Maybe some of the major houses will go under. Maybe POD and e-books are viable options, even for traditional publishers, since there’s less outlay of cash up front. Who knows? I still believe that good writers will attract readers. As writers, I think it’s in our best interest to focus on being the best writers we can be. I know it sounds naive, but I believe that if we do that, everything else will fall in place.

And what am I going to be doing? I’m going to finish the novel. Yes, it’s coming along quite well (almost 60k words right now). I’m going to shop it around to some agents in a couple months. If nothing comes of that, then I’ll explore using a POD publishing instead. In short, my plans haven’t changed. I’m working on writing the best novel I can and I’m trusting that there will still be readers out there for it. And no matter what happens to “publishing,” I feel safe saying people will still be interested in reading.

Just another slush pile

Posted by webmaster | Filed under Uncategorized

I saw a site mentioned in this month’s Reader’s Digest (of all places), Authonomy.

The gist is this, you put up your novel on the site, which is run by Harper Collins, it gets voted on, and the top novels get read by editors at HC.

That led me to doing some research on whether other publishers are doing something similar. One of the first sites I found was Writer Beware Blogs, which is a site I head to whenever something looks a little too good to be true. They give a good summary of Authonomy, including some of the potential problems. Essentially, they argue that it’s still the slush pile of old, just moved online.

Authonomy seems to be combining the traditional slush pile with social networking. Instead of an agent or reader looking at your work, online readers do. If you’ve used any social networking sites like StumbleUpon or Digg, then you probably know that it’s not just the quality of your work that makes you popular. It’s also the quality of your social network.

So, I can see a mediocre novel getting more attention that a good one, providing the author has an active network on the site. Fair? Not really, but that’s the way popularity on all social networking sites works.

So, has anyone used a site like this? If so, I’d like to know how it worked out for you.

Writing on the go

Posted by Jo | Filed under Productivity, NaNoWriMo

November is one of those months when I find myself wanting to write away from home more and more. For one thing, participating in NaNoWriMo means that I need all the writing time I can get. It’s not just that though. It’s the cold and gray I think as well. I just get the itch to go somewhere else.

So, how do you keep up with your writing when you’re on the move?

Don’t forget the old standby, pen and paper. Whether it’s a moleskine, a nice notebook or journal or something you pick up from a Dollar Store. This is a cheap and handy solution. The only problem I have with this is that I need to type it into the computer at some point. One year I did a lot of my NaNo novel this way, and my husband was nice enough to play secretary!

Almost as cheap, but higher tech, is a USB thumb drive. If you’re not sure what I mean, check out this froogle search. It’s simply a storage device that plugs in to your USB drive on your computer. This is easier for me than carrying a laptop. I attach one of these to my keyring, and anywhere I am, I can plug in to a computer and write. And since I’m saving directly to the USB drive, I don’t have to worry about uploading and downloading my files. This works great if you’re working on a computer that isn’t yours (library, office, etc.). Of course, the catch is that you need access to a computer (obviously).

A laptop is an obvious choice, and I was lucky enough to get one of the new Dell Minis. It’s small enough to fit nicely into a zip up Bible cover!The keyboard takes a little getting used to, but after about an hour with the typing tutorial included (I got the Ubuntu version of the Mini), I was fine. Battery power is great, screen size is good and the brightness is great. It’s a wonderful little writing laptop. The one thing you might want to know before buying is that the ‘ and ” keys are in a wonky spot. Rather than relearn where they are, I simply replace them with > and << >>. Then a simple search and replace fixes all my apostrophes and quotes.

I’m almost tempted to say that this is a “woman’s” laptop because of the size of the keyboard. While I can type on it comfortably, my husband finds it almost impossible to use. His hands are pretty large, even for a man, so that’s something to keep in mind.

I’ve been able to write on the Mini for a couple hours at a time without having any problems with my hands tiring…well no more than usual. I think my speed suffers a little, but I’m a pretty fast typist. I hit around 90 wpm, but on the mini I’m probably getting 70-75 wpm. Still, that’s not too shabby, and I’m willing to take the hit in speed to get the convenience of a laptop that’s so small and light. Besides, it looks very cool too. (I’ll post some pics of it in action this week).

What kinds of things do you do to write while you’re away from home?

CornerScribe

Miscellany, and a Reminder for Submissions

Further Reading

Submissions, please

Further Reading

Spiffy new theme

Further Reading

9 Good Writing Excuses

Further Reading

How are you using Twitter?

Further Reading

Must Read New Blog

Further Reading

Seven to get started with

Further Reading

Don’t Panic

Further Reading

Just another slush pile

Further Reading

Writing on the go

Further Reading

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