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Small Pond, Big Splash

Make a Splash!

On my recent mini book tour, I discovered how easy it is to create major buzz in a small geographical pocket.  Since Phoenix has 1 ½ million residents, I haven’t made much of a local splash for all my marketing efforts. Call me a city girl, but you can imagine how thrilled I was to create major splash in several small communities?

I chose a small Ohio town (the setting of my novel) and an Indiana Mennonite community because my characters are, yes, Mennonite. In twelve short days, I connected with hundreds of people who started a local buzz about my books. I did my part, and the rest just happened.

Imagine hundreds of rocks simultaneously tossed into water. The ripples intersect and make a major splash. The same disturbance would go unnoticed in the ocean, but is visible in a pond.

Helpful Tips for a Mini Book Tour

Establish a relationship with local influencers. They work hard on your behalf. Influencers booked my speaking engagement, organized book signings, and blogged and promoted my events. They placed newspaper notifications for me. See what I mean about easy?

Keep costs down. If you need to buy books, don’t over purchase (like I did) unless you wish to haul them around. I left unsold books with influencers. I did cover half of my expenses, and I’m sure I can do better next time.

Book at least one paid speaking event. My event had 200 + guests. I sold 40 books and gave free handouts with my contact information. It was a bonus when a newspaper reporter covered the event.

Take a guestbook to your events. I didn’t, but I will next time! A guestbook would provide a relaxing way to get name spellings, information, and jot notes for later—all while making pleasant conversation with readers. I frantically jotted notes that got shoved into my purse. Not very professional.

Attend local events, even if it’s not your event. When a book tour is the reason for your visit to a community, the topic naturally accompanies personal introductions.

Giveaways. Offering free bookmarks opens conversations with people who wouldn’t otherwise make eye contact. Book giveaways are both promo and ministry. Trust God with your offerings.

Get prayer support. I would have remained fearful and frazzled without my prayer support team. Thanks guys!

Take your vitamins. Even good stress is hard on the immune system, and I ended up going to Urgent Care two days upon my return. (Probably because I was an introvert on overload)

Benefits and Blessings

–          Meeting local authors

–          Opportunity to sign shelved books in local bookstores and gift shops.

–          Networking – (Got featured in summer reading group. They approached me!)

–          Media/newspaper coverage

–          Unexpected opportunities – Books placed in church and school libraries

–          Purchasing items for future promo.  Of course I bought a handcrafted Amish doll.

–          Photographing opportunities for website, blog, and promo use

–          Research for blogging topics

–          Gleaning new information about the book industry

–          Ministry – planting spiritual seeds and encouraging readers

–          Personal growth

 

Who are your influencers? Are you building relationships with them? Do you implement the small pond, big splash method for marketing your books?

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Keeping the Ideas Coming

The writing life is a sedentary one, requiring hour upon hour of sitting in front of a computer screen—not good for the eyes or the metabolism or that almost forgotten New Year’s resolution to lose ten pounds. Desk-bound inactivity is also not good, I’ve lately read, for the brain—particularly those portions of the brain that support a capacity of supreme importance to the writer: creativity. To keep the brain in good shape and new ideas flowing in, say scientists who study creativity, you need to change things up a bit. Do something active. Think about something else.

The solution for me is running. I run twenty-one miles a week on the back roads around my house. Because of my work schedule, I run in seven to ten mile chunks, which is a bit hard for a nonathletic person like me, so I’ve come up with various strategies to take my mind off of what I’m doing. In addition to thinking about my current writing dilemmas and planning new books, I count the different kinds of birds or flowers or grasses or trees. I carry binoculars for locating birds and have trained myself to recognize their voices and habits. I phone distant family members and friends whom I rarely get around to talking to otherwise. I pray.

On especially long runs, though, even these distractions get boring, so this winter I started playing a sick, depressing game of building alphabets from the roadside trash.

I made up rules for myself. I had to follow the alphabet’s order. I had to actually see a letter—not guess or surmise it from the visible part of the trash—for it to count. No slowing or stopping to look more closely. No stopping to turn a piece of trash over to see the other side. No touching at all! I had to read on the fly.

It was, as I say, a sick, sad game. So much trash. I fantasized about returning after my run with a box of trash bags and picking it all up but never found time.

Then spring came, burying the trash in weeds. That made the game harder and longer. I was on J one day—Js and Vs were always the hardest letters to find—and had been jogging along for miles without seeing even the Juicy Fruit wrapper I’d seen the last time I’d run there. Up ahead, a square of paper stuck up like a tombstone out of the freshly graded borrow ditch. On it was one word: TIME.

It occurred to me that it would be much more fun to collect whole words than single letters, so I wrote down TIME in my little bird notebook and jogged on. Soon I had grand, subway, rub, natural, ice, aqua, buried, cable, light, wet, ones, bud, sonic, key, stone, mountain, and dew and decided to make a poem.

It has always bothered me how advertising and brand names undo words. Light doesn’t mean light. Mountain has no real connection to a mountain nor dew to actual dew. My poem, I decided, would reclaim these words’ real meaning. I would redeem the trash words.

My rules were few. What linguists call structure-class words (pronouns, helping verbs, articles, conjunctions, etc.) and inflections (verb forms, plural forms, etc.) were allowed. So was divvying a word into its parts: keystone offered key and stone. Homophones—such as bush from Busch—were off limits. Once my poem got going, though, I threw out all my rules and just concentrated on making the poem work as a poem, importing non-trash words as I saw fit.

Writing that first poem made me cry. Don’t know why, exactly, except that it felt holy. I decided, in any case, to collect trash words and make poems routinely when I ran. I even started a blog of the poems that have resulted. I find the project profoundly satisfying, from collecting words to redeeming them as poems to posting them for others to read.

I don’t have much of a message here, except this: Get serious—and creative—about your creativity. Every moment, every event, all the minutiae of your life, even the worst things—even running!—can be re-purposed for something good.

In what ways will you choose to redeem your creativity this week?

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Ebooks: To Create or Not Create

A lot of WordServe authors have asked me about ebooks lately. In fact, with the digital age continuing to progress with new technologies, many who don’t have an agent or a publisher or a book wonder whether they should take that leap. While you (and your agent if you have one) ultimately get to decide whether or not to self-publish, I thought I would offer a few tips that might help you during your decision-making process.

  1. Spend Money on the Cover. If you have decided to publish an ebook, congratulations! Now, make sure that you do it right. Don’t try to design the cover yourself if you have limited or no experience in graphic design. Go on Craigslist or post a flyer on your local college’s graphic design program bulletin board. A starving student would love to design the cover of your book for probably half to a third of the cost that you would spend on a traditional graphic artist. Of course, if you have the money and decide to spend it, then hire a professional. Either way, make sure that the cover of your ebook looks as well-designed as a traditionally published book.
  2. You’re Hired! When you create an ebook, you may not just sit back and watch your rankings grow every day. Instead, you just became your own boss at your new sales company. You need to call several people a day to ask if they will review and like your book. Chances are about half (or less) of the people that you reach out to will actually follow through with their commitment, so the more people with whom you connect, the better. Your contact list should also include local celebrities, well-known bloggers, local radio hosts—anyone you can think of who has a strong sphere of influence (sorry, your Mom and Grandma don’t cut it). Those people can reach out to even more people without you even trying.
  3. Invest in InDesign. Numerous software programs create ebooks. However, most people recognize the high quality of InDesign. It does take a bit of a learning curve, though, so if you have the gumption, watch as many tutorial videos as you need and start learning yourself. I did this, and I moved along pretty quickly once I understood the basic premise of ebook creating in InDesign. If you need a more hands-on learning approach, then check into classes at your local library (usually free!). Or, again, you can always stop by your local community college and ask for directions to the graphic design school. For only a couple hundred bucks, you will receive a nice tutorial in InDesign, and your starving college student will receive more than a few nights of entertainment at Buffalo Wild Wings.
  4. Don’t Do Anything Stupid. Often writers get so excited about the prospect of self-publishing that they sell their soul to the self-publishing devil. You have all heard about “publishing” companies that offer to publish your book for a fee. At the completely awful soul-sucking companies, you get a worse cover design than if you would have created it yourself. However, legitimate self-publishing companies do exist. You still have to pay, but they offer valid services. One of my favorite, Dog Ear Publishing, offers several great self-publishing options. They also offer editorial services with comparable prices. Of course, you still have to do your research before you invest in any self-publishing company to make sure it fits well with you and your book.
  5. Read the Well-Fed Self-Publisher by Peter Bowerman. It has a ton of great resources. Seriously, even if you completely ignore all of my advice above, please go read Peter’s book. You will not be disappointed.

Whatever you decide, enjoy the publishing process. Become involved in marketing. Continue blogging. Work on enhancing your Facebook fan page. Write for magazines. Book speaking engagements. Oh, that sounds a lot like traditional publishing? Well, yeah. Whether you traditionally publish or self-publish, you need to make sure that you market yourself.

So, are you looking into the possibility of self-publishing a book or a promotional device for your book? What steps have you taken in that direction? What fears hold you back from moving forward with self-publishing?

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Sitting and Receiving

How is your writing going?

I usually feel uncomfortable answering that question. However, I’ve discovered the answer is often linked to an even more intimidating question. How is your quiet time going?

Thankfully, I have people in my life who care enough to ask me that question. I must admit, there have been seasons when my quiet time wasn’t going well at all. There have even been periods of time when I yielded to the temptation to skip my time with the Lord all together.

At one point last year, after about a month of whispering arrow prayers to God as I rushed from one task to the next, I broke down in tears. I missed my connection with my Lord. I was exhausted and weary. I knew I desperately needed unstructured time with Him. I finally put my to-do list aside, opened my Bible, and just started reading. I longed to connect with God and sense His presence. I was hungry for His Word and thirsty for His Spirit. As I read in John chapter six, I came across the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand and noticed something unique about John’s description of the event.

Crowds of people were gathered, and they needed to eat. When one of Jesus’ disciples identified a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, Jesus said,

“Have the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass in that place and the men sat down (about five thousand men were there). Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish (John 6:10-11 NIV).

Our Lord told the people to sit down, and about five thousand men sat on that grassy mountainside, anxious to receive what Jesus had for them. He distributed to those who were seated. As I read and re-read the words, “to those who were seated,” it occurred to me that some of the people on that mountainside chose not to sit down. If you are familiar with the account of that amazing event, you know those five loaves of bread and two fish miraculously fed everyone who was seated, with twelve baskets of leftovers to spare.

As I questioned why some of the people would choose not to sit down and receive the sustenance Jesus was offering them, God’s tender conviction washed over me.  I realized I had been just like the people who chose to remain standing. I had been so busy writing and checking off tasks from my to-do list, I hadn’t taken time to sit and receive the spiritual food Jesus had to sustain me and strengthen me and inspire me.

Are you taking time to sit and receive the sustenance Jesus has for you? I can relate to a hectic schedule and deadlines that make setting aside time with our Lord seem difficult. However, if your writing isn’t going well, perhaps you need to have a seat on a grassy mountainside with your Lord. Whether you need inspiration or direction, or simply a few words of encouragement, Jesus has more than enough to sustain you with baskets full to spare. Sometimes, we have to sit in order to receive.

So, my fellow writing friends, how is your quiet time going?

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Keep Doggedly at It – Writing That Is!

 

 Isaac Asimov at work                                         

                 

Samuel Johnson, the 18th Century Englishman who penned the first dictionary of the English language said this of writing.

“A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.”

There is a lot of wisdom in this statement. I believe the main thing which separates successful writers from would-be is that most people who think they can write don’t have the stomach for it. Just like any other enterprise of worth it involves hours and hours of hard work.

On the radio this week I heard the story of two 12-year-olds, swimming hopefuls both of them outstanding athletes. The young boy said it was his dream to swim for Great Britain in the Olympics in 2012. The young girl said she had the same dream. The boy talked a lot about winning a gold medal. The girl got stuck into training. Five years later the young girl, now 17, has been picked for the GB team and she has a good chance of getting a medal. What about the boy? Well he’s still talking about winning, but he hasn’t even got a spectator ticket for the event. He dropped out of training long ago.

Here’s a quote from the Novelist Doris Lessing, “I don’t know much about creative writing programs. But they’re not telling the truth if they don’t teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.”

“The only difference between a writer and someone who wants to be a writer is discipline” Ayelet Waldman.

Bah humbug! Discipline, the bane of all who want to be a success overnight, can’t I just have it all without the discipline, the work, and the misery?

We all know the answer to that question. Lee Iaccoca said “The discipline of writing something down is the first step towards making it happen.”

Ernest Hemingway used to get up at dawn and write until lunch time then enjoyed his afternoons not writing. CS Lewis had a daily schedule which he kept to and that meant writing 4 hours in the morning and 4 hours in the afternoon. Jean Plaidy wrote 5000 words before lunch. Graham Greene did only 500 words a day, but look at the output. Isaac Asimov awoke each morning at 6 AM and worked well into the night, sometimes churning out entire books in a matter of days, amazing, but not for me.

Whatever your plan is just keep to it, doggedly, and then one day you’ll walk past a book shop with your own creation smiling proudly in the window.

I love this from Harlan Ellison “People on the outside think there’s something magical about writing. That you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones about and come down in the morning with a story. But it isn’t like that. You sit in the back with a typewriter and you work. That’s all there is to it.”

I leave you with this quote from your own John Adams, which is good advice to any writer.

“Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.”

How do you maintain discipline in your writing life?

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Fame and Fortune

Twenty-three years ago, when I first began writing a humor column for our local newspaper, my editor told me that I could expect local fame, but no fortune.

Today, I know he was right.

And wrong.

He was right because within a few months of my byline’s first appearance, I had a stranger come up to me at the local ice skating rink and tell me how much he enjoyed my column. Even bundled up in my parka and stumbling around on the ice with my children, he recognized me, thanks to the photo that accompanied my column. I thanked him for reading and promised myself to never leave the house again until I’d at least applied some mascara.

Fame makes so many demands on a writer.

My editor was wrong, however, when it came to the fortune part. True, I received a mere $5 a week for the short column I labored over for days, and no New York book agent or Hollywood scriptwriter came knocking at my door offering me any contracts. My net income from writing is abysmal, I’m still clipping coupons for groceries, and my husband politely refrains from laughing each year when he prepares to file my taxes.

But my fortune has steadily grown over the years and sometimes even surprises me with dividends I didn’t know I’d earned.

My fortune lies in every reader I have reached and in every life I have touched, whether I know about it or not.

This realization came to me especially powerfully a few months ago. I had an email on my author website from a woman I’d never met, asking me if I would give her permission to use my poem in an online anthology she was preparing for young mothers. When she told me the name of the poem – “A Mother’s Midnight Prayer” – I was stunned, since I’d written it 17 years ago, and it had appeared in a monthly magazine to which I occasionally contributed. The woman told me someone had given her my poem to read, and that it had inspired her in the course of many long nights with her own children. She also told me that my poem appeared on several websites for moms, and lo and behold, when I searched  for my own poem, I did, indeed, find it on the web, always with my name attached, and often accompanied by reader comments noting how meaningful they found my poem. One reader even reported that she’d had my poem on her refrigerator door for years, reminding her to cherish the fleeting days of her children’s early years.

To connect with others in our humanity and love – this is why I write, and it’s worth more than any material fortune could hold.

What unexpected dividends have you experienced in your writing life?

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Seeking a Revelation

source: Fotolia via MS Office

We’ve all been there—happily plowing through a manuscript when we’re suddenly brought to a squealing halt. Or maybe it comes on gradually, like so much mud solidifying as we try to trudge through until we find ourselves frozen in place, blinking at the ground and wondering what happened.  It could be our outline didn’t foresee all it might have, or we wandered down an unexpected path only to find it’s a dead end. Or perhaps our characters took on lives of their own and staged a coup when we weren’t looking. However we got there, we’re stuck, and being stuck mid-project is no fun. So what’s a writer to do? 

We could ditch the whole thing. Occasionally that is the right answer, but being persistent writerly-types, thank goodness that’s not our first inclination. There are lots of ways to get unstuck which leave us with a better manuscript in the end. Here are my top five:

  • Walk away for at least 30 days. It never ceases to amaze me how insightful this can be. When you’re writing, you’re close to the material. You leave a part of you on the page, and sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. Many writers know this, and they take frequent steps back from their material in the hopes of approaching it later with a less familiar eye. It’s tempting to think a week or two is sufficient, and sometimes it is. But if you’re really stuck, I highly recommend walking away for a full month to get a truly fresh perspective. That distance can do wonders for improving your writing on the next go-round.
Source: Wikipedia
  • Ask for help. While many writers recognize the value of a critique group for the craft side of writing, I’m surprised how few ask for help with storyline. Asking for help does not make you weak. It makes you resourceful. I recently rewrote the entire end to my novel because an editor thought it predictable. I asked a trusted critique partner for help. She brainstormed with her daughter (this was a YA story) and came up with a slew of possibilities. One contained the thread of an idea I ultimately spun into a much better ending. And let’s not forget the power of prayer. Realizing you don’t have all the answers and asking for guidance from above is simultaneously humbling and empowering. Just remember to let go of any preconceived ideas and be open to whatever form inspiration may take.
  • Print it. This isn’t the first time you’ve heard this, but it works. Seeing your work in print is strangely insightful. You will plainly see things you don’t when looking at it on the computer.
  • Push through. To put it bluntly, give yourself permission to write crap. Knowing the next chapter or two will be ‘throw away’ material is incredibly freeing. It takes the pressure off and lets you work through the block. Not everything you write needs to be brilliant. You’re not going to go with that first or second draft anyway, right? So give yourself permission to make a mess before you refine it all.
  • Read in your chosen genre or non-fiction category. Some writers worry if they do this they’ll either find someone beat them to the punch or they’ll inadvertently pick up another author’s voice or idea. In the case of the former, you’re better off knowing this sooner than later so you can make your story stand out as different. In the latter, you can influence this: you’re a disciplined, creative being, not a machine that regurgitates what you’ve read without your knowledge. The benefits of understanding what’s successful (or not) in your chosen field far outweigh the possible risks. Read—and keep a pencil handy for when the revelation hits.

How do you get through when you find yourself ‘stuck’ during a writing project?

Third Day Give Me a Revelation

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Making Dialogue Work

Dialogue is one of the hardest working tools we have because we ask it to do so much. It has to convey information, develop and move the plot, increase tension and conflict all while sounding natural.

Perhaps most importantly, dialogue must engage the reader through revealing our characters. It brings them to life and shows their personalities, their quirks, their goals, and their fears.

The most effective and real dialogue comes when we know our characters as intimately as possible. Whether our story is plot-driven or character-driven, we have to invest the time in writing biographies, character analyses, Meyers-Briggs assessment, journals, interviewing them, and experimenting with how they speak, act, think, and feel. And they’ll still surprise us.

In my first novel, Journey to Riverbend, I had a problem with the story arc of my female protagonist, Rachel. She was a former prostitute who received Jesus. She was also striving to open a dress-making business in a town where many were hostile to her because of her past. It wasn’t until I interviewed her that I learned Rachel was a feisty, determined young woman with numerous questions about her new-found faith, anxieties about her future, and wondering if love could ever be part of her life.

And I discovered her voice changed depending on her situation. She had a business voice she used with customers and an almost child-like awe when she talked about her faith. At times her prostitute “don’t mess with me” voice came into play. When the mayor attempted to get too familiar, Rachel stopped him cold with the whispered line, “I’m making dresses for your wife. I can make her look like a laughing stock while convincing her she looks like Queen Victoria.”

With these new insights, Rachel’s dialogue became stronger, more connected to her emotions at the moment, more realistic. It revealed more of her personality, her dreams, her fears.

Rachel came to life through her dialogue.

Make the time to know your characters. They’ll reward you with stronger personalities and become people that readers will keep turning pages for.

How has dialogue allowed you to develop your characters even further? What have you learned about your characters through dialogue that surprised you?

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The Search-and-Find Feature

Over the years I’ve harped at authors never, ever to turn in a first draft. Some writers think the editor’s job is to spiff up their grammar, correct misspelled words, change passive voice to active, eliminate repeated words and phrases, or do laser surgery on their mixed metaphors.

Word travels in publishing circles about whether you’re a professional or you’ve made your living on the backs of good editors. You don’t want to be known as a hack writer.

Hopefully, the electronic tool known as search and find will make your self-editing chore more enjoyable.

  1. Passive voice (one of my pet peeves): Passive voice is created by using a form of be, such as am, is, are, was, were, being, be, or been and followed by the past participle of the main verb, or gerunds comprised of a present participle (ending in “ing”) that functions as a noun. Learn more in Hacker’s Rules for Writers. Search for these words and recast your sentences to make them more active. Examples:

Passive: He was jumping over the cliff into the river below to escape.

Active: He jumped over the cliff into the river below to escape.

  1. Qualifiers: These words clutter up your writing. Sometimes I think writers use them to boost their word counts. Examples: begin, start, started to, almost, decided to, planned to, a little bit, almost, etc. Examples:

With qualifier: Mary felt a little bit out of place among the nouveau riche.

Better: Mary felt out of place among the nouveau riche.

  1. Weasel Words: These words are easy to spot. You can drop them and no one will notice. My high school English teacher told me that if you could replace the word very with the word damn, you didn’t need it. Other examples: really, well, so, a lot of, anyway, just, oh, suddenly, immediately, kind of, extremely, etc. I’m sure you can come up with your favorites.

With weasel words: Suddenly, she stood up and said, “Oh well, let’s retire to the drawing room and just stay out of his way.”

Better: She stood and said, “Let’s retire to the drawing room and stay out of his way.”

  1. Adverbs: I don’t hate adverbs, but they “usually” are unnecessary, especially in dialogue tags. Your prose should communicate a character’s state of mind without using a tag line such as the example below. Use search and find to look for an ly followed by a space or a period.

With adverb: “I’ll kill him,” she said ferociously. (Really?)

Better: “I’ll kill him,” she said.

  1. Extraneous thats or thens: Use the global search-and-find feature for the word that. If you can understand the sentence without it, you don’t need it. You notice I didn’t write, then you don’t need it. Both of these words are over used.

Writing is rewriting, and rewriting involves self-editing. It’s your job to turn in the cleanest manuscript possible to your agent or editor. Use the search-and-find tool to speed up the process.

Can you think of other ways you can employ the search-and-find feature in Word to edit your work?

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Perspective

Life came to a standstill, in an instant.
Or did it?

Life moved into slow motion.
Or did it?

Or is this when God escalated life and what living really means?

Or is this when I finally understood what “chasing after the wind”
sings to us in the Book of Ecclesiastes? (Do we really listen and hear what it says?)

It is true life as we knew it stopped on December 3, 2011.
Our daughter walked into an airplane propeller, by accident, and almost died.
Because of this tragedy, we are reminded, once again, of the things that really matter in this life. It again reminds us to think from an eternal perspective instead of our shallow temporal point of view.

I’ve tried to sit back these last 5 months and ferociously attempt to gather my thoughts. There are so many, at times, that my mind wanders aimlessly, and I find myself frustrated trying to capture it all.

How could this have happened? Why did this happen? Were we ready spiritually for such a time as this? Was she? How did we function when we had no idea if our daughter would live or die?

But God continues to calm my spirit  and remind me of eternity. He reminds me that He is Father and of all the good things He has given me.

  • The warmth of my husband’s embrace
  • The relationship I have with my daughters
  • A good night’s rest
  • The Power of the Bible
  • Warm comfy blankets and puffy pillows
  • The comfort of prayer
  • The taste of a good cup of coffee
  • The depth of our friendships
  • The depth of love
  • The real definition of patience
  • What family is really about
  • The blessings of our favorite breakfast spot

So I beg to ask the questions:

Does it have to take a tragedy for us to never take life for granted?
Does it take being forced into a situation to truly trust our King Jesus and live our lives for Him, rather than ourselves?