Hit a wall with your current project? At a loss for words, literally? Yep, I’ve been there and other writers have too. The words stop… The creative juices reach a dam and stop… It’s like your internal hard drive crashes…
Push past that wall…
Everyone hits a wall, it’s only human. It’s how you react to that sudden wall standing in front of you that counts. So, here’s a couple of things I do when that wall jumps out and blocks my path.
1: Step back… Yes, step back. If you’re at a wall, then you need to clear your head, and redirect back to the project. When this happens to me, I’ll put that project aside and bring out an upcoming project to outline or even create some ads to inspire me.
2: Go back and read from the beginning of the project. Reintroduce yourself to the characters… Fall back in love with the story…
3: Don’t give up! Even though it seems like you’ve lost the battle, you haven’t. You’ve hit a wall that all writers hit. Push past it! Don’t let it control you. You’ve got this.
Now, get to writing and know that there will be obstacles, but you have the power to push through them. You’re a writer and that’s what you do. So write!
As always, good writing and May God Bless You…
P.S.: Don’t forget that Marina’s Story is coming out on Saturday.
Wow! We made it people, we’re halfway to the weekend… I have question and it’s one that’s been asked of me, plus I’ve asked it myself. What is the genre you write in?
It’s like sitting down to watch a movie. You have to choose what you want to watch. If you love Rom Com’s, then you’re not likely to choose a Horror Flick. Same with books, people are specific when they look for a book.
So, you’re probably saying, you write romance, that’s easy. But, when you put your book on a publishing site, it’s not that easy. Ok, the main genre is romance for me, but there are many styles of romance. It’s endless and sometimes gives me a headache. How do you break it down?
For example, when putting a book on Amazon for instance, you have to list 2 categories and then 7 keywords. Yikes! And if you get it wrong, you won’t explode, but your sales may not either. If you get it right, you nail it!
Now, the categories for romance are long and sort of specific. Yes, I know that I don’t write Dystopian Romance. To be honest, I had to look up Dystopian, just to clarify. And no, I don’t write Erotic Romance. But, does my book fall into Contemporary, New Adult, General, Comedy, Western, etc… The list goes on.
My best advice on this subject is to go to writers that write like you. See where they have their books at and always, always, look at the bestsellers in that style. Because if they aren’t bestsellers, then they may be doing the same thing as you, trying to wrap their head around it.
Oh, and don’t forget the keywords. This is something that I change up often and I mean often. Of course, sometimes Amazon will put your book in other keywords or categories, like if your book is short, it could be listed under Kindle Read under 2 hours. Do your research!!! Let me repeat that so that all of those in the back heard me, DO YOUR RESEARCH!!! Don’t you hate shouty capitals. Well, I hope I got your attention.
Go now and look at the book that’s not selling as well as it should. No, really, go now. You can’t afford for your book to be sitting in the wrong spot. It’s like a cook book that’s put under historical romance. Wrong! So get to it. And let me know how it goes. Make sure that you keep a spreadsheet on sales before you make the change, then after. See if it works and if you haven’t see a change in a couple of weeks, tweak it.
It’s Tuesday morning and I’m cozying up with my coffee cup. Morning’s are so hard, but after a couple more cups of coffee, I’ll have this thing in hand…
Ok, so I promised part 2 of my outline process would be about structure. And I always do my best to live up to my promises…
Structure!
Outlining gets me through the writing progress, but as I stated in my last post, there needs to be structure, the bones to the writing.
Now, this is the way I structure my writing process. It works for me and I hope it works for you.
Start your book by introducing your main character. Don’t overdo the backstory, but let your reader know who the main character is all about, what they are looking for, or what they need to happen. Maybe it’s looking for Mr. Right or solving a mystery.
Then, of course, things can’t go exactly right with your character, that would be boring. So, something needs to happen that changes their course, maybe setting them up for an exciting change. Maybe it’s an obstacle that’s put in front of their goal.
At this point, the character will want to give up, but they press forward.
In the middle or somewhere near it, your character should be at their breaking point. Your reader should be asking, what will happen next? I call this the top of the hill.
As you start to let things happen that go right for the character, you need to toss in one last zinger. Your reader has started to feel like they know how it will end, but then…
Now, and only now do you let your character have victory. This is when they slay the dragon, win the love, or find the killer.
This is the closing out of your story. Your character marries their love, sees the killer put in prison, or whatever their turmoil was, ends and they see the rainbow, so to speak. Then they walk into the sunset, or fall off a cliff, if it’s a cliffhanger for the next book in the series…
Now, I now this was a very relaxed explanation, but that’s how I roll. I don’t get into fancy words, because that just confuses the situation. This is how I do it and it may or may not work for you. It works for me!
Good Tuesday morning! Let’s talk about reviews. Yes, I know, some say don’t read them. Some say read them. Me, I read them. But how do we react when we read them? Anger? Confusion? Laughter? Happy? Sad? There’s a lot of things that go through your head when you read reviews of your work. But I have a couple of things to discuss with you about them.
Make them work for you…
What am I talking about? Well, hear me out… Bad reviews can go two ways, one being they are just nasty and have no meaning for your writing, or two, they are well thought out reviews that can tell you something about the work.
Let’s talk about some ways to use bad reviews to make your work better. Here goes:
1: There are misspelled words and grammatical errors!
We know that it doesn’t matter how many times your work is edited and even if it’s by the best editor out there, mistakes can be missed. I’ve read some of the bestsellers out there that have some mistakes that weren’t caught. SO, use that bad review as a reason to read through your work just one more time with a critical eye.
Now, do remember, some people are not experts and what they think is a grammatical error, really isn’t. But, I still go back over my work, just in case I missed something, or my editor did. It’s worth the effort in the end. Especially if you get several reviews about the same problem.
2: The book was left on a cliffhanger!
Ok, this one shocked me the first time I read it. When I read a book that’s part of a series, most of the time I expect a cliffhanger to get me to read the next one. Think about a series on television. They always leave you at the end of the season wondering what the heck just happened and what will happen next. The reason I put this one in my post is because if you get this and it bothers you, then insert a sentence in your description that says, ‘This book ends on a cliffhanger’. That way you don’t have to worry about a reader not understanding that it’s a series and can end on a cliffhanger.
3: The characters were not fleshed out…
If you get this one, maybe look back at your work and see if you never described your main characters. I know that as a reader, I love to be able to picture the characters in my mind. I’ve received this type of review before and realized that I was so into writing the story, I never fleshed my character out. Yep, that was a facepalm moment for me. Go ahead and add a little description, because as a writer, you know in your mind that you have a picture in your mind of the character.
4: The book was too short… or This book was too long…
Now this one took me by surprise. But yes, reviewers have opinions on the length of your book. There are those that don’t like them too long and those that don’t like them too short. My thoughts on this are, input in your description, at the end, ‘This is a novella’ or ‘This is a full-length book’. Maybe that little key point will stop some of those lower star reviews.
5: The story doesn’t flow well…
Now this can be a problem if your story doesn’t flow well. My suggestion is to read the manuscript out loud and don’t do it as the writer, do it as a reader. Meaning, in your mind, you’re the reader wanting to be entertained by the story. Believe me, I do this with my books before I publish them and its eye opening. Sometimes I wonder what on earth was I thinking…
Now there are many more aspects of reviews to look at. Also look at the good ones. This keeps you motivated and let’s you know what your dedicated readers loved. Of course, there will always be those that give a bad review just to do it. I’ve had those.
If you do have a review that’s particularly nasty and doesn’t match your book, report it to the distributor whether it be Amazon, Barnes and Noble or iTunes. I had one that mentioned characters that weren’t even in my book. I reported it to Amazon and the review disappeared. But I had one that didn’t represent my book and they didn’t take it down.
The moral of the blog is this, use even the bad reviews for good. Let them roll off your back and move forward. Now, if you get only bad reviews, then I would definitely take another look at the work. But hey, smile and keep writing. A writer has to have a thick skin. Sometimes when I get my work back from my editor, I have to thicken my skin and push through it. So, keep up the good work!
Good Monday morning! As writers, we have to make decisions that hurt. When editing our hard work, we have to cut out parts that took hours to type. But it’s necessary to make the manuscript flow. It hurts…
Not long ago, I was working on my manuscript and something felt wrong. But I couldn’t figure it out. The more I wrote into one part, the worse it felt. About three chapters into the bad feeling, I did something that most writers face, I deleted three whole chapters. I really think my fingers bled as I did it.
The fact was, once I deleted the three chapters and started back up writing, it felt right. Although I’d deleted over 6000 hard earned words, my manuscript started to flow again. It was worth the pain and agony of deleting those words.
Sometimes as writers, we do things that don’t make sense. We make mistakes, we correct them, then we move one. But there is one thing for certain, with every red slash of an editors pen, a little piece of us grows stronger. The editors red mark lets us know that the story goes on, even without the deleted words.
So, edit without mercy and write with intention. It’s in a writers blood to continue with the story. Never give up and never surrender even when the red slash of the editors pen rips your heart into pieces.
As always, good writing and May God Bless You…
P.S. Here’s a link to the book I spoke of above. It hit the top 100 on Amazon in the first three days!
It’s Saturday, a day to relax and enjoy life. So, before we get to the easy-going weekend, let’s talk about rejection. Ouch!
Every author has to accept rejection. It’s part of the job. But, it’s not always that easy. Rejection is also good for us. Yes, I said that, but it is a good thing. Sometimes rejection is just what the doctor ordered.
So, let me jump right into the explanation. When a manuscript is rejected, it should make us look into it more. With each rejection I’ve received, it made me relook at my manuscript with different eyes. Sometimes I find things I didn’t see before.
Now, with that being said, rejection hurts, but I read an article a while back that told how many rejections some of the biggest authors out there have received. Even their bestsellers that went mega-platinum were rejected a time or two before they were snatched up. So, that should give us hope beyond the rejection.
Good morning! It’s a rainy Sunday here in Georgia.
So, who’s my worst critic? As I write, I edit. I know, that’s not supposed to be the way it works. I should write, then edit, but guess what? There’s something inside of me that as soon as a line is written if a word comes up as wrong, my brain says go back and correct.
But the worst thing is, I’ll write almost a full chapter, then turn around and erase it. Then a little way down the road into the manuscript, I wish I hadn’t done that. Even though it doesn’t work in that spot doesn’t mean it won’t in another. Of course by the time I figure that out, well, it’s gone.
The moment I type ‘The End’ is when the worst critic in me starts. Even a couple of my bestsellers still haunt me. I think of a line I used and how I could make it better. My editor constantly tells me to stop overthinking. But it’s like a bad habit that I can’t break. One of my books pulled at me so hard that I almost took it completely down, but since it gets a great response, I held back. (That didn’t stop me from printing the manuscript and going back over it.)
If a line bothers me, I’ll write it over and over, which takes valuable time out of my writing. Then I’ll break down and just go with it, which is what I need to start doing. Since my brain stays in autocorrect mode, this is hard to do. But, I’m learning to push that mode off.
So, how do you form your characters? Do you develop them as the story goes forward? Or do you write a character sketch before putting the first word into the manuscript? In Scrivener, I always start out with a blank page for each character. Of course, I know basically who my character is. When I start a new manuscript, I develop their main character sketch, but what is included?
Name – Oh, this can take hours for me. I play with first and last name combinations. It’s crazy, but as a writer, I know that when the right combination comes across, it will pop. So, I scan name lists, Scrivener’s name generator, and even newspapers. Sometimes things just stand out.
Flaws – Ok, so maybe your main characters don’t have flaws, but I try to make mine less than perfect. Of course, my first books had perfect characters, but I want my readers to relate to my characters, so I add flaws. It could be as simple as having an attitude, but I make it a flaw at the time.
Looks – Does my character have blonde hair and blue eyes? That’s something important because you don’t want to suddenly say something about their auburn hair halfway through. You need to know what they look like or at least have an idea so that it stays consistent throughout the book.
Career – What does your character do? Are they a lawyer, doctor or maybe a rodeo king? It’s important to know this so that you can add elements of what they do to your character.
Hobbies – This is not as important as other attributes, but if it’s going to play a role in the book, then you need to remember if they knit or oil paint. Changing it midway can confuse the reader at times.
You may be saying, but why are these important? Every writer is different in how they do their work. For me, I like to get to know my characters. As I write, I like to know what my character might say or do and why. In Scrivener, I always have a character note that details things and I can add to it as things happen. Believe me, it helps to keep the process going forward.
Good Saturday morning! I hope all of you had a great Thanksgiving. Mine was wonderful. Now the Christmas season is officially in full swing, which excites me. This is my favorite time of year.
As for words, sometimes as a writer, the words are slow to come. It’s the dreaded ‘writer’s block’ that every writer fears. That happened this month with my Christmas book that’s being released in a very, very short time. The words were there, then I developed a horrible cold, needing medication which made my head go fuzzy. Well, the words came to a halt.
I sat with my fingers hovered over the keyboard, trying to form the story that was inside my head. I could see it, hear the characters screaming, but for some reason, the words wouldn’t come out of my fingers onto the screen. It can get frustrating when you’re up against a deadline and the words just seem to be within reach, but won’t come.
But then, as I lay awake, coughing like a crazy person, it all flowed in like a wave of a storm. The areas that I was unsure of, came rushing in. That’s when another problem reared its ugly head, I couldn’t type fast enough and my time became limited, with holiday preparations and life. But now, it’s on the page and almost ready for release day. Some stories come in like a lion, then others hold back, waiting until just the right moment to stream in.
The funny thing is, if I’d rushed the story, it wouldn’t be what it is. This story is such a sweet story and I know that taking the time to listen to my characters and taking a short break helped build the story.
Good Tuesday morning! This morning I have a wee bit of a rant. And you know I don’t rant often, but this morning I have to get this off my chest, so get ready and here we go…
As a writer we’re supposed to have perfect grammar, right? Well, I need to ask something. Do you always speak with perfect grammar? I read an article last week about your characters needing to have normal conversations and don’t make it too formal, but then writing 101 says to make sure you use perfect grammar. We don’t always in normal conversation talk in perfect grammar, so what are we supposed to do as writers?
So, I’m going rebel. What does that mean? Well, it means that I’m going to write my dialogue like I talk, which may make editors cringe, but I want my readers to enjoy the work I publish. I’ve had comments on previous work stating that it was too formal and normal people don’t talk like that, so I am going rogue…
Also, to further give my rant a purpose, I’ve read several books by famous, best-selling authors that use normal talk and they do well. Some are even horrible in the grammar department, but they are best sellers and the readers don’t seem to mind at all.
Now, with all of that said, I don’t mean using the wrong form of a word or wrong punctuation. I’m talking about in the dialogue between my characters, so don’t think I’m putting up my English 101 book.
Stephanie Hurt - Romance Author 