Good-bye to POD-dy Mouth

I just wanted to mention the going of POD-dy Mouth. She had a wonderful experiment of finding self-published print-on-demad authors, reviewing them, and even coming up with a top list of books with the reward being that the winner of her Needle Competition would have a reading with a literary agency. She’s done a lot of good work these last two years trying to change the way the publishing industry looks at POD and self-publishing.

This is kind of big for me. Her posts kept me inspired to continue the work of being an independent author. In fact, I was hoping she would keep it up long enough for me to possibly submit my own work… sadly, I have taken way too long and worried too much about my details/characters/whatever to get farther than 25% done with the manuscript.

Which is another update: I’m more than 25% complete with the current draft! How exciting is that! This is the one bad thing about finals week: instead of studying, I start writing. But then, when I indulge the writing urge, I can focus on studying because I’m not daydreaming about writing…

Anyway, I just thought I’d make note of POD-dy Mouth’s leaving the blogosphere. She’ll be missed.

Happy New Year, Get Studying

Happy New Year everyone! May your muse shine brightly this year.

Now to some business: for those of you who are interested in taking graduate-level courses, check out the following programs. Some of them are only a week long, but cram enough information to cover a year-long publishing internship/entry-level job. I suggest looking these over, especially if you’re thinking of self-publishing and doing it properly and well. Also, it looks great on your resume, and, I think, looks even better than saying you have a graduate degree in Creative Writing. The thing is, a creative writing degree is hard to sell unless you came from a prestigious school or had a well-known writer as your lecturer. Even so, having the degree only means you know the tricks–it says nothing about whether you can apply them or not. With a publishing degree, it shows you take the process of writing a book seriously. Your publishing house/agent/whomever knows that you understand the process and therefore know that even though they’re publishing the book, your marketing skills are absolutely key.

NYU Summer Publishing Institute: Provides lectures, workshops, simulations, site visits, special events, and career planning sessions to those interested in developing a publishing career. Explore key principles and practices in this thorough introduction to publishing, as well as the role of editing, marketing, design, new media, production, budgeting, advertising, circulation, publicity, and much more.

Columbia Publishing Course: Shortest graduate school in the country; would take you a year in an entry-level position in publishing to learn what you will learn in six-weeks here, and ten years to meet all the people you will meet. For almost sixty years, the course has been training young men and women for careers as editors, literary agents, publishers, designers, publicists, and more. Graduates can be found in every kind of job, at major magazines and publishing houses across the nation.

University of Denver Publishing Institute: An intensive, full-time, four-week, graduate-level course that devotes itself to all aspects of book publishing: editing, marketing, and production. During the final week, the Institute provides career counseling sessions to assist students in finding positions in publishing.

Emerson College MA in Publishing and Writing: Offers courses in book, magazine, and electronic publishing; in fiction and nonfiction writing; and in literature and criticism. Internship and apprenticeship opportunities are available, for credit, in Boston publishing and production firms and literary agencies.

Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing: Canada’s premier training ground for professional publishing, Simon Fraser University’s Master of Publishing (MPub) is a rigorous 16-month program of seminars, guest lectures, technology workshops and an internship.

Publishing Training: Learn publishing skills from the industry’s training provider. Classroom-based open courses cover everything from editorial skills to marketing and publicity. Can also study proofreading, editing, copywriting or picture research by distance learning.

Linking Squee

So, after updating the website with little things here and there, updating links, adding a nifty (and random) blockquote to the main page, among other things, I decided to do the exact thing most writers shouldn’t do: I googled myself. Well guess what? It turns out that one of the blogs that I read somehow found me! Word Nerd edited one of her journals to include other bloggers in a chain-blog with the subject “What five things would I like to do one day?” Because she went back to add people to the list, I never saw that I was added. But how exciting! Though, now I feel a little self-conscious.

Anyway, here are my five (a month late):
1. Go to England and visit the locations that I’ve been researching for my novels.
2. Publish a novel. I can’t decide if I want it self-published or traditionally published…but I do know that I don’t want to do vanity again.
3. Meet John Krasinski and get my picture taken with him.
4. Do a re-write of the screenplay for Xanadu. I don’t care what anyone thinks, that movie had potential, it just got a little wrapped up in itself.
5. Own my own company. I don’t know what it will be, yet, but I have a company title picked out.

Feel free to do this if you feel like it. :)

Re-write update: 4039 words

Research: Text and Games

Getting stuck on finding the texts you need for your research? Believe me, I’ve been there. After reading one book, liking some of the information but wishing I could read the book that a certain chapter referenced, I then start the hunt. I look at my local library, I look in my university library. Given that my university is huge, when the book isn’t here, I begin to despair. I look at the bookstores, but all the chain stores around here have no imaginative texts at all. I look online, only to find the book is completely out of print, or, I could use my soul and some change as payment to get a mint condition version of the book from Amazon or eBay. If I’m lucky.

And then came Project Gutenberg. Oh, it’s wonderful. Maybe your book is completely out of print, and you don’t want to buy it off of eBay or Amazon for the $1506483-gajillion dollars the used merchant is asking for. Project Gutenberg is a group of people working to bring copyright-free (aka really old) texts online. There’s a book here that was published three different times, and I needed the 1886 version, specifically. Guess what? Project Gutenberg has all three versions. I think they even take requests for new titles. And they’re always looking for helpers! Wink wink nudge nudge, you know what I mean.

And something else to tickle your history bone: Rules to Period Games. I think the ones listed here are mainly card games, but nonetheless, if you’re writing a period piece, or a fantasy and want something to spark your gaming imagination, check this place out.

All right, it’s back to Finals Week for me. I just finished writing my second paper and I need to print it, then I get to cram for my evening exam AND my 8am tomorrow morning exam. Continue writing, everyone!

Withdrawal

So, as you all know, I finished my first complete draft this past Friday. This means that I’ve been thinking about the novel the entire weekend, wanting to read it through, but each time, not being able to because I’m too close to the work and so can’t read it without wanting to edit it. I know how my writing mind works: I have to work and work, and then leave it alone for a couple months to be completely unassociated with it. Look at it with fresh eyes. I just love the ending, though. Not how it’s written, but the feeling of it. The mood. The atmosphere and hope.

Anyway, I’m still reading Dorian Gray. I only read it while waiting for my Folklore class, so that’s about twenty minutes a week. Otherwise I would have finished it way before now. I keep jotting little phrases I like out of it, which also takes time. Paperback Writer found a couple cool links about writing novel queries, which you can find below.

By the way, how are your projects going? What do you do once you’ve completed a draft?

Sample Query from Preditors and Editors.
Tips for Romance Queries from Terri Irene Blaine’s free Basics of Writing Romance lessons.
Another Sample Query from Kelly James-Enger.
StoryTellers Unplugged gives a good idea about what to send as a novel proposal, cover sheet etc included.

Exciting New Links!

Bloomsbury, an independent publisher whose home is the UK, has a wonderful Writer’s Area with articles about how to submit materials, approach a publisher, what you can expect an agent to do for you, and even lists agents from the US and UK/Ireland. I spent quite a bit of time here. They also have a Research Center, which I haven’t played around with yet, but they claim to have over 17,000 cross-referenced, free entries that you can utilize for your writing. I’m just itching to try it out! (And yes, this is the publisher that found J.K.Rowling.)

Book Connector is a website helping to connect authors, reviews and small press publishers together.

Small Press Center is a delightful little collection of small press publishers grouped alphabetically and by genre. Take a chance with a small press, especially if after reading their website you think you two would make a good fit. A small press publisher takes a larger chance on you because they have small print runs, but that also means they spend much more time with you, and you have a smaller risk of having to mold your work to fit what they think the industry wants (as is sometimes the case with larger publishers).

Preditors and Editors is an amazing resource of vanity, self-, and small press publishers. The great thing about this website is that many people in the industry use it and report back when links are broken or when an author had a bad experience. I can easily spend hours browsing through, trying to decide where I think my book will fit. Of course, it might help if I finish it first haha.

Fairy Tales

Stuck in a rut? Want to begin a new novel (since NaNoWriMo is coming up)? I find that I love fairy tales, and that they have the best themes to make the backbone of any good draft. Tired of the Disney versions? Don’t worry, they are by no means the only and official version of these stories.

Tales of Wonder: folk and fairy tales from around the world.
National Geographic’s Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales: 12 “unvarnished” tales based off a 1914 translation.
Encyclopedia Mythica: focused on the folklore, mythology, and religion from around the world. Split up by region and then by genre.

Guide to Book Publishing

Things to keep in mind about publishing. A series of reputable articles (there are about seven of them right now, and more coming in the future) that every writer should be familiar with.

Nifty Online Plotting Tools

I found these tools online by searching “character, writing tools” through Google. Some of these are actually meant for students to map/study an already published text, but I see no reason why we can’t also use them to analyze our own work.

Drama Map: this is a smiple organization tool to help with character, conflict, resolution, and setting mapping. Not the most detailed, but if you are working scene-by-scene, this could actually be very useful. Plus, it’s always fun to work with pretty graphics.

Circle Diagram: another way to map out scenes (or your overall plot) is to use the circle diagram theory. The idea is that you place the beginning at the 23:55 and the ending at say… the 00:05 position (if we’re thinking clocks). Then, you put the exact center of your plot at the 12:00 position. Keep filling in with plot twists, etc, and when you’ve filled the sides of the circle, you can start drawing lines across it. This allows you to draw on information that only you as the author knows early in the plot, and have it relate to something much later.

General Themes that (almost) all stories start from:

*The journey there and back.
*Winning the prize.
*Winning or losing the loved one.
*Loss and restoration.
*The blessing becomes the curse.
*Overcoming obstacles.
*The wasteland restored.
*Rising from the ashes.
*The ugly duckling.
*The emperor has no clothes.
*Descent into the underworld.

I’ll return later with quick summaries of all the books I’ve been reading. I sort of fell behind on my reviews. Such is the life of a student. Or rather, such is life.

Fun Character Building Links

Here are some helpful links for character development:

* This BBC Character Builder is fun, I think. It lets you literally “build” how your character looks from a set of hair, noses, eyebrows, chins, etc, and then you answer a series of questions about the character. You can go completely random, or try to build a character you’ve been working on for a while. It prints off onto a nice little profile page for further reference.

* The Hopeful Writer is a British-based website with links and articles for writers hoping to expand their knowledge.

I’ll post more articles later, about writing historical fiction, developing good dialogue, and getting location down.