Hello wonderful SEers! Mae here today with a Friday Five. I hope you enjoy my list of  five things every writer should have in their arsenal. These may be abstract, but I think you’ll recognize their importance:

1. Supportive Loved Ones
Non-writers don’t often understand what authors go through. We seal ourselves away, hunched over a keyboard, and block the outer world. Sooner or later, no matter how diligent our attempts to balance family life and writing, our craft can infringe on time spent with loved ones.

When we’re writing into the wee hours of the morning, or putting off dinner “just one more hour,” it’s great to have family and friends who understand that the life of a writer spins on a different axis.

2. A Tough Exterior
There’s a lot of the obvious in this one. Writers are subject to having  work rejected and garnering bad reviews. Sooner…

Many, if not most, readers have a few go-to or auto-buy authors. Readers support their go-to authors by buying almost everything they’ve released, keeping their name top-of-mind to suggest and recommend to others, and generally feeling a sense of loyalty.

As authors, we long to be on readers’ auto-buy lists. We want readers who support us, share the word about our books, and love what we do.

As readers, we know how we feel about our go-to authors. I don’t expect their every book to be a five-star, keeper-shelf story of perfection, but I know I’ll get a consistently good story that hits my buttons.

And that brings us to today’s topic. Just as we have go-to favorite authors that we know we can depend on for delivering a certain type of story, readers are evaluating us for what we can deliver: What’s our promise to readers when…

Do you feel like rules stifle your creativity?

That too many rules, like cooks, ruin the outcome?

Well, following the rules need not be confusing. Thanks to Barbara Delinsky boils down the rules of writing to 5 easy to understand and follow.

1. Homework.
   • Research will help you write about everything. Thank goodness for Google. Personally, I love researching a new topic. Too bad I get lost in all the cool info.
2. Likable characters.
   • Everyone loves to cheer on the heroine and boo the villain. Don’t overdo their attributes.
3. Scene purpose.
   • Write scenes that don’t distract or slow down your story.
4. Move it, move it.
   • Keep the pace moving forward. Readers prefer heart-stopping speed to eloquent prose.
5. Edit, and edit some more.
   • Edit everything. Edit typos, flow, context, inconsistencies, repetition, and boredom.

There you have it, my take on How to Write Like Delinsky: Five Rules Of Writing by Barbara Delinsky

Head…

When I originally gave Scrivenera whirl several years I didn’t know how the software worked. But I read several articles and posts about how other writers put this writing tool to good use. I took my time working through the provided tutorial after which I began using it with increasing regularity.

Over the time I’ve used Scrivener, I shifted to using it for almost all of my writing. I’m so impressed with its usefulness, I’ve begun writing about this software to share my ideas. I’m getting lots of mileage out of blogging with it and used it for my newsletter and other writing projects, including freelance assignments.

Here are 8 ways Scrivener boosts my efforts as a writer:

1. I’m better organized from the beginning of projects. Because Scrivener is an organizational tool, I’m able to develop structure from the beginning of the project.
2. I can easily make changes to…

Do you want professional looking print and ebooks to delight your readers? Of course you do!

Following my post about the best tools I found to create and produce books, here are some 14 specific, highly-useful tips about how to use Adobe InDesign to create print-ready PDF files and ready-to-upload ePubs for the best effect!

1. Using InDesign

First, let’s be clear that this is a tips column, not a general instruction on how to use InDesign. It’s a tool I love and have used to produce several books (mine and others’), but it has a steep learning curve and price. If you’re unfamiliar with it, you might want to get the 7-day free trial from Adobe. Spend those 7 days with some free learning resources (like YouTube videos) and play around with it. Refer to the list below as you go, and see if you can make sense of…

Writing descriptively scenery and surroundings comes more naturally to some writers than others. If you’re wondering why your novel is too short or moving too fast, that’s sometimes due to a lack of character development or to the plot itself. Sometimes, though, it’s caused by a lack of description, including descriptions of settings.

Why is it important to write about setting? Well, arguably, it’s not as important as it was one hundred years ago, when readers didn’t have ready access to images of other places through TV, movies, and the Internet. Contemporary readers can draw on many more visual memories of settings than readers of past centuries could. That’s why nineteenth-century novels tend to have lush, detailed visual descriptions.

But even in modern novels, which we expect to move more quickly, setting or a sense of place is important. It’s often neglected, but it can be a writer’s secret weapon.

This is a guest post by author Gary D. Holdaway. Gary is a young writer from the UK with big ideas, and an even bigger passion for words. A multigenre author of both novels and short fiction, Gary has a flare for the suspenseful, the frightening, and the unknown.

5 Simple Tips To Take Your Writing to the Next Level

Strip away the book sales, SEO, analytics, marketing, covers, editing, social media engagement, and publishing deals, we’re all here because we share the same creative passion—writing. All those other things are the unforeseen jobs we take on when we commit to the one thing we love, and they have a huge part to play in a writer’s success. But let’s put all that aside for a few minutes. In fact, for the duration of this article, I want words like ‘SEO’ and ‘analytics’ locked up in a box and chucked…

Dreams of publication? Yes!

Here’s support from ALLI, the Alliance of Independent Authors, for my claim that you SHOULD NEVER PAY SOMEONE TO PUBLISH YOUR BOOK. Yes, there are some reputable book packagers out there who will charge you for various services, but the chances that you will make back what they charge you are slim. YOU CAN DO THIS YOURSELF. This ALLI article explains why it is so easy to fall for vanity scams. Here’s an important quote:

Many vanity presses will try to persuade authors that they are incapable of producing a professional book without an expensive full-service publishing package. This is particularly effective on authors who may not be comfortable with new technology; the idea of handing off the details of publishing to someone who will take care of it for you is alluring.

Do not be fooled. You can start your book off with a…