Amazon Announces ABNA 2010...

For all you aspiring authors out there, get your polishing pens ready...set...go!

Amazon JUST announced their ABNA (Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award) contest for 2010.

Submissions start January 25, 2010!

It's FREE, FREE, FREE to enter.

This year there are two categories (which will be broken out into genres): adult fiction and YA...(yes!!) There will be a winner from EACH.

Go here for more details: http://www.amazon.com/abna
AND here: https://www.createspace.com/abna (createspace handles all the registration portions).

Other significant changes this year include allowing previously self-published novels into the contest.

You'll need an MS between 50-150k, a 5k excerpt and a 300 word pitch...as well as a couple of other nominal items which you can find under the "How to Enter" section.

Good luck to all who enter!!

Do You Feel Lucky... Punk?

Let's go earlier than Dirty Harry. To the Old West, say.

In the first few seconds of the Clint Eastwood flick "Hang 'Em High," we see a beautiful example of a dramatic tool Blake Snyder calls a "save the cat" scene. This connects the viewer emotionally to the main character, and makes us care about and enjoy the story.

This tool can work for screenwriters and novelists. It's simple and quick, and can transform your story from something dull into something undeniably compelling.



I recorded this vid in April 2009, and Blake Snyder passed away in August. I would have met him at Write on the Sound. We miss you, Blake.

NaNoWriMo is upon us...

What kind of writing group blog would this be without mention of the annual novel writing frenzy, NaNoWriMo?

It's November and the weather has just gone down the toilet. Well, except for here in the Seattle area where today, November 1, happens to be quite pleasant and mostly sunny. Go figure.

But everywhere else, the bad weather has driven all type of creative folk indoors and readied them to let loose a torrent of brilliance.

Fifty thousand words in thirty days. HAH!

Hardly sounds like a daunting feat to the seasoned writer...unless of course you lack a plot of any kind, but that's what the pressure of self-competition is for, right?

So here's a word or two of advice to the NaNo Newbies. Before you can graduate into full fledged NaNo Nutcases you should mull over the REALITY of NaNoWriMo.

Fifty THOUSAND words in THIRTY days.

Let's consider the fact that most people around this country and planet (NaNo knows no boundaries) have written things as they progressed from kindergarten through high school. Most of that writing is maybe a few dozen words to a few thousand. From what I recall, most of my essays were under 10 pages, double spaced, which probably adds up to about 2500 words. Add to that, most folks may have dabbled in poetry, angsty journaling, or the occasional short story and you find we've all been a writer of one type or another at some point.

This is good. It means all of us CAN NaNo if we want.

But NaNo IS novelling and novelling is a whole other ball of wax. And it's a big'un.

This isn't meant to scare you off, but it is meant to give you fair warning about prepping as best you can for NaNoWriMo. Even now, on the first day, it's not too late.

I myself am not much of an outline first kind of writer, BUT when it comes to NaNo my personal preferences go out the window. I draft an outline pages long so I can stay on task and complete this self-driven race.

It also helps to connect with others through forums or on-line buddy groups or with just one other dedicated individual in person. That way you have a reference point and a little external nudge. If it turns out you need a lot of nudging, you can get that too. There are plenty of happy task masters and mistresses willing to offer their service.

In short, NaNoWriMo is about complete literary abandon (as they claim). A month to abandon your regular life (but please still go to work if you have a job, feed your kids, pets, whatever and remember to bathe), your insanity, and your inhibitions.

Try something you've always wanted to try before. It may be the first step into a fantastic writing career or it may be the last straw to convince yourself that writing isn't your bag. Either way it will be a memorable experience that you'll be able to regale others with at this year's holiday parties and watch them drop their mouths in awe at the fact that you wrote fifty THOUSAND words in THIRTY days.

Answer This

Take that image or dream or character that's been kicking around your imagination. You know the one. "Jaded New York cop vs. dragon." Or "zombie army." Or "talking butterfly." (Hey, it's your freaking imagination, not mine.)


Let's work that baddie into a story. You just need to answer the right questions.

We recently heard these from Brian McDonald, the keynoter at Write On The Sound. They are however, immortal. You've probably heard them before (they are oddly popular with improv groups).

Ready?

Once upon a time...

And every day...

Until one day...

And because of that, ...

And because of that, ...

Until finally...

And every day thereafter...

Hey, nice story. Now get writing.

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Oops, wait. We're not done yet. There's another type of "creative" questions that I enjoy, besides the "prime the pump" type I listed above.

And that's the type that ask, "Are you sure you're ready to start writing?" In other words, if you don't have the answers to these babies, you'd better take some long walks before you put pen to paper.

My hero, David Mamet, says:


Who wants what from whom?

What happens if they don't get it?

Why now?

If you have the answers to these, you might actually write something that's useful to somebody. Now... get writing.

Flash Me...

And make it short and quick.

Of course I'm talking about flash fiction.

Most of us writers, it seems, start in the same place: dabbling in short stories, poetry, personal reflections in our journals and the like.

Then some, like myself and my writing group peers, branch off into novelling some time after high school or college.

However, I only first heard the term flash fiction about two years ago and wondered what the heck it was.

For those of you wondering, it's a complete story in less than 1,000 words, generally . Wikipedia gives a decent overview and provides this often associated example (though I've heard it attributed to other authors as well as with the wording slightly different): six-word flash allegedly penned by Ernest Hemingway "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

I myself wanted to know more about writing flash fiction so recently partook in an excellent on-line flash fiction bootcamp hosted by Flash Me magazine.

After pure novelling for the past two-plus years, these folks put me to task taking accountability for every word I wrote.

Trying to write a whole story under 100k words seems hard enough...

But a whole story under 1,0o0 words or 100 words, or nano-length with 140 characters (thanks Twitter)? This feels impossible.

And yet it's not.

Think minimalist art. What's the bare minimum you can do to convey what's on your mind?

Example:

“Smile, Polly.”

“Nope.”

“Pretty please?” That’s when the damn parrot flew into my head.

I finally decided to quit my job at Pet Pics.

I was thinking about how much some people hate their jobs, but stay at them because they have to. Then I wondered what it'd take for some one to call it quits. I wanted to convey the frustration of the main character as well as the humor of the final-straw situation. I relied on Polly and parrot as cues to set up the final line without necessarily giving away the ending.

(Notice this description of what I was trying to do is easily two times as long as what I actually did.)

In the end, practicing writing complete flash fiction stories as a regular exercise can condition your skills as a novelist. It can help you 'see' the true value of each word you pick as well as keep you mindful of delivering the story line in a timely fashion.

If nothing else, a little diversity may be just what you need when you're mired in a dead-end chapter or seemingly endless edits.

So go ahead...and flash me.

Honorable Mention

I've been mentioned honorably by the people at Writer's Digest, in their 78th Annual Writing Competition. Yay, me. "Genre Short Story," naturally.

Because, you know, science fiction.

I sent them an unpublished oldie called "Midgigoroo and the Singularity." I figured it had a good shot, since Stanley Schmidt at Analog said he was "tempted" by it (although he rejected the rewrite I sent him).

For the record, this story has been rejected by websites and magazines eight times (if you count both rejections from Analog).


The story is hard SF, about an Australian Aborigine tracking footprints through the outback, squarely in the middle of nowhere.




Turns out the footprints belong to a city feller who clearly has access to arbitrarily advanced technology. He's come to tell the Aborigine that the Singularity... has pretty much happened.

(It's not clear in the story if the stranger is a cyborg or not... I just liked this picture.)

This story has won and lost, been rejected and accepted. Whether it's a good story or a bad story is a silly thing to contemplate. It's worth reading, says the author, so it'll stay in the mail until it finds a home.

Word Lovers - This is Cool!

This website allows you to paste in any group of text and it creates a random picture of the words, making the ones you use the most the largest. Very interesting for writers to see what words they overuse! Here's a sample of all the text from my last novel. Of course the charater's names come up, but so do those pesky words that I know I over use--just, know, and really.

http://www.wordle.net

Stalking the Wild Agent

For new writers, finding an agent is one of the most difficult tasks. You’ve been working on your masterpiece for a year, maybe two. You’ve joined a writer’s critique group, you’ve gone to several writers conferences. Maybe you’ve taken a class or two.
You completed the first draft with immense satisfaction. You never thought you would write the words “The End.” Maybe you even wrote them first, then went back and filled in the parts you missed.

Then comes the re-writing. For months you slaved, marking up your manuscript. Getting input. Re-working scenes. Fixing broken plot lines. It seemed as if it would never end.

But finally you are there. You are ready to send your baby out into the world. But how do you sell it. How do you go from manuscript to the bookstore shelves?
I’m sorry, but I have hard news for you. Book selling is a business. Publishers print what they can sell, not what they like.

I have met two kinds of writers in my writing career. The hobbyist and the would-be author. The difference between a writer and an author is that an author has something published.

We all write with the hope that someday, our work may find print. That it will be on bookstore shelves and people will lay down their hard earned bucks to read our words. We’ll be on Larry King, Oprah. We’ll go on a book tour.

But, the hobbyist writes to please themselves. They have a story that has to be told, they can’t wait to get the words down on paper (or under glass in our modern world).

The would-be author writes to sell their work. There is a world of difference. The book business is not about art. The goal of the publisher and the book sellers is to sell books, to make a profit. They can do that only by publishing what sells. There is very little profit margin in the business and little room for experimental work.
There are small publishers who look more kindly on out of the mainstream work, but if your goal is to get a contract with a major publishing house, I am sorry to tell you that you will have to write by their rules.

I don’t want this to sound too depressing. There are lots of good books out there that meet the publishers’ requirements. I also see many books that break the rules. However, you must know what the rules are and have a good reason for breaking them, before you go off on your own tangent.

You must also be a successful author. Patricia Cornwell or Steven King can break any rules that they like. Whatever they write is guaranteed to be a best seller.

Me, I can’t break any rules, go out on any limbs, blaze any new trails. The publishers would not be willing to take a chance on my writing. Maybe someday, after I’ve sold a few million copies I can write some of the stories that are brimming up inside of me, but for now, I need to get that first book published. And that means, I need to write commercial fiction that fits the publisher’s perception of the market.

And that brings us back to the topic, Stalking the Wild agent. I’ve completed the ninth draft of my new thriller and am in the process of selling it. My focus since this spring has been on finding an agent. It’s hard, time consuming work. This is the marketing part of being an author that many writers do not or can not do. In order to sell your book, you must be a salesman. That is a job that I don't like and would never do, unless my writing life was at stake. Which it is.

In my next post, I’ll tell you about my method, the helpful books that I’ve read and clue you in on my progress. In the meantime, finish that book that you’re working on. Getting to “The End” is the first step in becoming an author.

--Penn

Write On The Sound A Success

Thanks to everyone who came to The Legion of Plume's session at the Write On The Sound Writers Conference in Edmonds, WA last weekend. We enjoyed the session and hope you got some tips on having a successful experience in a writers group. We, obviously, think writers groups are a great idea! If you missed the conference, hope to see you next year. Here's the link to their website: http://www.ci.edmonds.wa.us/ArtsCommission/wots.stm .

The Literary Diet

Any one out there wish they could lose a few pounds? You’re not alone. According to the National Academy Press, tens of millions of people in the United States are dieting. At the same time, there are numerous studies that prove diets don’t work.
Dieting is a lot like writing. It’s takes commitment and discipline, but even more, it’s about creating new habits. Like dieting, when it’s going well, writing is joyful and strengthens your self-esteem. But when you’ve plateaued and you’re stuck, it can be agonizing.
I’ve read all the diet books. One message is clear--to be thin, you must see yourself as a thin person and think like a thin person. This is effective advice for writers as well. Tell yourself and the world that you are a writer. Treat yourself like a writer. Stand up for what you’ve written. Visualize yourself completing a novel, publishing articles, accepting awards—whatever defines success is for you. See yourself doing what you dream--believe it—and it can be a reality.
When we start out on a diet we often set a goal for our weight loss. We usually know what we’d like to weigh. We might add five pounds as a cushion, but we have a goal weight. As a writer, do you know what your goal is? Do you have a plan and a way to get there? A standard time management rule is to take big, often seemingly insurmountable, projects and break them down into small pieces. Taking small, baby steps toward a goal helps in dieting and in writing. Don’t focus on losing 50 pounds, just the first five. Don’t focus on writing a 350-page novel, only the first scene.
A diet counselor will often ask a patient what they gain from being fat. They probe to see if there is some benefit to a person holding onto their weight. What benefit do you receive by not writing? Do you save yourself from fear? Protect yourself from rejection? Guard yourself from the changes success might bring? Fear of success is often hard to admit but recognition might actually propel you to new levels of achievement.
Losing weight, like being a writer, isn’t about teamwork. Weight-loss support groups are helpful and inspiring, and they are often the key to dieting success. But the group itself doesn’t take the weight off. Joining a writers group will support you but the writing is something you must do alone. Going to classes and writers conferences doesn’t make you a writer. Getting energized and going home to write afterward does.
Dieting isn’t easy. In dieting, quick fixes, fasting, diet pills and other ‘miracle cures’ don’t work. Making long-term life-style eating changes and creating new exercise habits to live a healthier life does. Any writer with commitment, a strong vision of success, and a whole lot of patience can achieve more than they ever dreamed.

Reveling in Writers

Attending a writers conference is like dropping yourself into a hive of bees. Everyone is buzzing around frantically looking for someone to pay attention to them, to find someone to connect with, to find an agent or editor to give a thumbs-up to their dream. But it is also a swarm of bees working together, working to create something, to fashion a hive together.
I love hanging out with writers. They’re like my real family, the people who get it, who get me. Most of them are crazy, of course. Some certifiably nuts—or are we all nuts for embarking on this stressful, yet sometimes joyous journey?
As I walk the halls, people buzzing around me, I feel an incredible energy. Creativity oozes from the passers-by and I feel inspired just moving along with the crowd. I relish in the short conversations with these folks who have similar goals. They are all ages, ethnicities, and genders (although always more women—is it because we are more social creatures?) Our lives are all different, yet the same.
I suck up the energy and hope to store it like a bees store honey for later when I’m alone writing and feeling stuck, or thinking all my writing is crap. So later at home, when my teenager is crabby and wondering why mom is off to another writing event, I’ll recall those memories of energy and revel in the fact that I am a writer and I’m not alone in this crazy, frustrating, miraculous pursuit.

Truth in advertising...

Let this be a warning to all writers: Be sure you can back up that promise of literary gold.

Because I'm a writer of YA I naturally have to read the competition a.k.a the latest phenom fad Twilight. I have lot's of thoughts and feelings about this series, but mostly I enjoy it (and its sibling cinematic franchise) for its ability to entertain me.

When I recently saw this cover screaming at me from the checkout stand I couldn't help but buy it (good news for OK!). I'm usually more leery about these things, but I couldn't BELIEVE they'd flash a headline like this unless there was a serious truth behind it.

There wasn't.

In fact, it wasn't any kind of exclusive story because the only 'wedding' they discussed was from the fourth installment, Breaking Dawn.

This was some of the worse speculative 'reporting' I've ever read. At least with other so-close-to-libel-it-hurts stories there will be a tiny on-cover print that says 'As imagined by our writers' or some other disclaimer.

There was none of that here.

Suffice it to say I was P-O'd.

What does this have to do with writing??

Well, I'm glad you ask.

Once you've finished that brilliant manuscript and are ready to shop it around, you'll struggle (and I mean STRUGGLE) with writing a brilliant, mind blowing, catchy, and totally unique query letter.

You'll bend over backwards to make your novel's plot sound so cool, you might even consider fluffing it. I'm not saying you're looking to lie, goodness no, but you might write, rewrite and workshop it so much that your book's promise is more than what you deliver.

Things agents look for in your query include a snap shot of your novel's tone AND your style as a writer.

If you finish your glorious 300-word all-encompassing mini tale and pitch and you read it and are like 'meh'...STOP. Be 100% certain it isn't actually mimicking your story's style because if it is then...well you're being totally honest. That's good, but you may need some more rewriting.

If your novel makes you laugh, cry, shudder, etc. (and all in a good way of course) each time you think about it AND your query does the same, then you're promising is in line with what you can deliver.

Seriously, this is so important these days.

Earlier this year there was a flutter of posts (and they tend to pop up routinely) on agent blogs regarding the perfection of queries that only disappoint in the delivery of the novel.

Two things happen here: 1) The agent is ticked off for having been a fool and having their time wasted. 2) You'll be left in the dust wondering what happened to that excited agent.

So, back to the moral. How you sell yourself matters. Don't promise what you can't deliver because it's something akin to crying wolf.

I sure as heck won't be buying OK! again anytime in the foreseeable future or ever for that matter. I only tolerate getting burned like this once.

I'd hate to submit a 'misleading' query to an agent like me, and I'm certain there are more than a few of them like that out there.

It's Been Written Before

My new all-time favorite writing website isn't about writing at all. It's called TV Tropes, and it's about the "tropes" we see over and over in TV, movies, literature [there we are], and video games.

That's a long list.

I happen to be reading Stephen King's breakout novel, Carrie. I looked it up on TV Tropes and got a hell of a list. Here are the first 22 tropes in that movie. Notice that those 22 constitute only the first three letters of the alphabetical list.

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This movie contains examples of:

Abusive Parents: Margaret takes this to an extreme.

Acceptable Religious Targets: Christian fundamentalists.

• Although, to be fair, Stephen King does make it clear in his book that Margaret's behaviour is not typical of most Christians.
  

Adaptation Decay or Adaptation Distillation: The original film had to cut a lot of scenes from the book (namely Carrie's rampage through town and a flashback scene), mainly due to budgetary concerns. However, Stephen King finds the movie to be the best adaptation of his books, and has even said that he wished he had thought of some of the scenes in this film when he was writing the book.

Adaptation Displacement: Most people (this troper included) have only heard of the book as a result of this movie.

Adaptational Attractiveness: In the book, Carrie is portrayed as being rather pudgy and covered in acne. In the film, she is played by Sissy Spacek.

• To be fair, her crippling shyness does hinder her beauty by some.
  

All Of The Other Reindeer

Alliterative Name: Sue Snell.

Anvilicious: It's one thing to point out that bullying is bad (mmmkay?). It's something else entirely to turn nearly everyone (other than the protagonist) into either an overblown Jerk Ass or a complete whackjob to drive the point home. On the other hand, this is exactly how a troubled teenager might see the world, so it might just be a case of identification with the protagonist.

Asshole Victim: Let's face it, Billy and Chris kind of had it coming. For that matter, so did everyone at the prom (except Tommy, who was pissed off at his date's humiliation).

Ballroom Blitz

Beautiful All Along: Carrie at the prom, where everybody comments on how good she looks.

Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted hard. Carrie gets doused with pig blood in her prom dress.

Berserk Button: Carrie can't stand blood.

Beware The Nice Ones: Pretty much the moral of the whole story.

Billing Displacement: Home video releases of the film give John Travolta top billing, even though Billy was a fairly minor character.

Blessed With Suck: Carrie's powers cause her mother to think that she's an evil witch and try to kill her. In the original novel, Carrie winds up killing herself by overusing her powers.

Blood Splattered Wedding Dress: Prom dress, actually.

Censor Steam: The television edit put in a ton of CGI steam to hide all the nudity in the opening five minutes.

Coming Of Age Story: Albeit one that goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Confessional: Margaret White has one in her house, where she locks Carrie periodically. It is decorated with horrifically vengeful images of God and Jesus.

Cool Car: Billy, Chris' boyfriend, drives a 1967 Chevrolet Chevelle. Shame that Carrie blows it up.

• In the remake, Billy drives a Cool Truck. It suffers a similar fate — Carrie slams it against a tree. Roof first.
  

Crucified Hero Shot: Carrie's mother, in her final shot, impaled with steak knives in the style of the Christ on the Cross picture in the confessional.

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It's educational. It's fun. It eats up all your time, so you won't get anything else done tonight. Enjoy!

Writers - I want to be one!

Writers, a strange, driven batch of folk—words jammed up in their heads and hearts, tumbling over one another in a rush to emerge onto paper—into the computer. Truly strange folk—ones who go to the dictionary, driven by curiosity, not quite idle, to find a word's root or origin but get distracted on their way to the word by five other words and their origins—by the possibility of using a new word in an old sentence—or an old word in a new way.
Writers look at people and see stories, look at skies and see settings.
Writers, a strange, driven batch of folk.
I want to be one.

Music for Writing

Fiction has a soundtrack, sometimes. I once wrote a novel (Mountain Man) while listening to Massive Attack's "100th Window" over and over (probably eighty or ninety listens as I wrote those 63,000 words). Before that, I once wrote a short story while listening to a single track -- "Seti I" by Banco de Gaia.

The readers never know, but the story and the music intertwine in the writer's memory, so when the writer hears the music later, the writer remembers the story... and if you read the story, sometimes you hear the music.

Other works seem to require silence.

Now, I'm writing my current novel (Point of Divergence, which the other authors of this blog know well) while listening to "electronic breakbeat jazz" artist Jonah Dempcy, also known as Revolution Void.

He's not for everyone, but since I really like widgets (and because maybe now I can listen on my own blog if my cute little red refurbished Sansa mp3 player ever bites the dust), I put a Jamendo widget below that plays his music.

Pirates, Knights, Minotaurs? Oh my.

Ever since I found this on screenwriter John August's blog, I've been trying to find a way to apply it to my writing.

I give up.

But I still love looking at it... which is why I'm passing it on here. Now you can play the game too: how many of these characters are in your novel?

On Storytelling...

I recently posted a rant (I'll be honest) about the lousiness of storytelling with particular focus on the 2009 movie "Knowing".

One of the things I hit on was the value of telling a story AND telling it well. As an author, I'm always striving to tell my stories in the most engaging and entertaining way possible with as few holes in my plot as possible.

Suspension of disbelief is more than trying to get one's audience to buy into your fiction. It extends to getting your audience to forget how boring your story might be if it was told in any other way.

There are some incredibly dull stories out there told in utterly brilliant ways and that's what keeps the audience tuned in.

In line with this, a friend recommend a four-part series posted on YouTube where Ira Glass (of NPR's this American Life) speaks on storytelling. Though he's particular to radio, the art of telling the story extends to all media.

Ira Glass:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Jarucia

Happy Birthday

"I've gathered you here to achieve one goal: to destroy Superman!"

Oops, wait... wrong Legion.

This is the Legion of Plume, see? It's a whole play-on-words thing -- we writers dig that.

This blog is our writing group's place to put neat stuff. I'd add more, but I'm drafting my novel now... so more later.

While you're waiting, here's some advice from Stephen King.