by J. U. Scribe

What’s your favorite genre? For some it’s romance, others it’s fantasy, sci-fi, or maybe a mystery/thriller. For those that know me well I enjoy reading a variety of genres, so it’s hard to pick one genre over another when I enjoy different books spanning across the many genres of fiction. However if you were to ask me what genre is your favorite to write, in my answer would be a bit more concise.

I’d planned a post about self-editing. But then I thought – really, Roz? This close to the holidays, who cares?

Indeed, it’s more likely that the seasonal ding-dong is turning your routine downside up. If that’s merry and welcome, great.

But some of us (including me) get panicky about losing touch with our work.

This post is for you.

Don’t fight it

Resolve to do smaller sessions on your book. To stave off anxiety about your slower progress:

1 Figure out how much time you can regularly set aside, realistically.

2 Make a schedule.

If you do this, you’re in control. You’re making a plan you can stick to. Goodwill henceforth.

How to think small

Here are ways to think smaller while still making progress.

1 If you use wordcount targets, reduce them, obvs – then surprise yourself when your concentration lets you exceed it.

1.5 Or turn the limited…

on Jane Friedman site:

Earlier this year, the book publishing world was rocked by stories of unethical behavior by literary agents.

On the one hand, this news was disheartening to hear.

On the other hand, it opened up a candid discussion on social media about how different agents communicate with their clients and approach the submissions process.

This led to a bigger discussion about how to distinguish between an agent who is unfit for the job—and an agent who is fit for the job but a mismatch for a particular client, and vice versa.

Continue reading HERE

Writers are always looking for information on marketing these days whether they are self-published or have chosen the traditional publishing route. As even the big publishers encourage the authors themselves to take a big share of the publicity burden, we are all getting thrown into the same pool to sink or swim.

With that in mind, I came across a book recently with a title that promised information on how to publish and market a specific genre of book. I got a sample and had a look first at the table of contents. What I saw there inspired me to write this article, shedding a little light on a phenomena that I’ve been noticing across different media for some time now.

There are many books, articles and blog posts that give good advice on various aspects of publishing and marketing. The thing is, most of them are telling us the…

Add authenticity to your writing by exploiting your experiences. Use what you know and what you’ve gone through as a person.

Nicolas Spark’s books are set in North Carolina. Why? He lives in North Carolina. He’s familiar with the towns and the customs of the south.

Beyond settings, think of embarrassing moments in your life where you simply wanted to disappear or have a do-over. Is there something there that could be used with your main character. You should have no problem defining the moment. You went through it and have all the raw emotions tucked away in your brain somewhere.

We all go through cycles in our life. I’m in the midlife cycle and often wonder if I’ll ever be successful or do anything meaningful in life. What is my purpose? Think about putting your characters in similar situations to your own. It will help you to connect…

All writers face the blank screen and think about what they’re going to write. Too often we start and realize we didn’t format properly and stop, then get distracted by something else and we’ve lost our train of thought all too quickly. Getting started can be daunting enough without spending time getting everything just right in your word processor.

Well, in Scrivener there’s a good way to beat back all that pre-writing distraction so you can sit down with your ideas and write. Who wants to lose their ideas while setting brand new, all over again? The answer is to make a template within your project. You may have heard of making a project template but how do you make a template within a project? Just follow these instructions.

1. Create a folder within the project and designate it as the Template folder by clicking on Project and Set Selection as Template…

Hello, everyone. I wanted to give a quick update. My surgery went well. The surgeon did run across some bowel adhesions that he had to repair. I don’t know how that happened. I guess he’ll explain how those could have formed in two weeks when I see him.

I have to be honest . . . I’ve never known pain like this before in my life. I got Percocet for the pain but it only seems to work when I’m reclining or lying perfectly still. Getting out of bed and standing/sitting is the worst. I was warned there would be pain but I had no idea it would be this bad. I guess the repairing of the bowel adhesions added to the the overall pain of having my uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes and lymph nodes removed.

Despite the pain I’m happy that the surgery went well and that the surgeon…