by Lauren Sapala

I don’t know if it’s that time of year or what, but I’ve been getting a lot of emails from writers lately about finishing things. This is also a topic that comes up frequently in my coaching sessions with writers. Lots and lots of writers out there are terrified that they will never be successful—or even halfway decent—because they have a lot of trouble finishing things.

This is a guest post by Lily Kaligian. Lily is an editor at Businesscheck.co.nz and Canadabiz.net. She creates a variety of articles about careers, entrepreneurship, technology, business, education, as well as travel and personal development.

Who Should You Listen to – Reviewers, Peers or Readers?

Having your writing work read and appraised by others can be a very emotional experience. When you’ve poured your heart and soul into creating a novel, a short story, a poem or even just a blog post, you need to know that it’s not just you who sees your creation as valuable.

But writing and reading are incredibly subjective. One person’s prize winner could be another’s trashy holiday read. It can be hard working out who to trust when it comes to feedback and critique. Whose opinion should you take into account when reviewers, peers, and readers all have something to say?

Reviewers

Yes I know there are tutorial for WordPress about how to use and improve your websites & blogs (especially for beginners. The tutorials are brilliant and informative. It is a great place to start your journey. Here is a tutorial link to various things you may want to learn

http://www.wpbeginner.com/category/wp-tutorials/

However. I keep getting asked how to do various things on wordpress, or I assist where I can depending on what I know.  Like everyone else I am still learning due to technology changing and updating.

This post is about Share Tabs…How I sorted mine out prior to knowing about wpbeginner.

SHARE TABS

Everything you do on your wordpress site starts with your HOME PAGE – Whatever name you call it. Mine is PACKAGES. This is also called your LANDING PAGE so it needs to be impressive.

Up on the top left hand side you can see the words MY…

by Michael Mohr

David Corbett—New York Times Notable author of many novels including Blood of Paradise (2007), Do They Know I’m running (2010), and The Mercy of the Night (2015)—published a sparkling, extremely-helpful nonfiction writers’ guide in 2013 entitled, “The Art of Character.”

So dear readers, as promised I’m going to talk to you about the dreaded book cover!

I know that most of my followers are writers, and often self-published as well, or considering that route. When you’re in that situation, the more information you can find, the better. So to that aim, here’s a short tutorial, chalk full of links and helpful hints. I’ll keep this short (it’s around 1200 words) because I know how little you want to wade through a word heavy slog of a tutorial : D

We can start with the question: Pay for it, or make it? There’s nothing wrong with paying someone else to make your book cover, if you can afford it. There’s also nothing wrong with accruing a hardcore useful-as-all-fuck skill. Pre-made book covers are expensive (if you don’t have extra money). Unless you’re some triple-bestseller writer, you don’t have money coming out…

Dig Deep.

Use ambiguouswords.

Did you know the word “break” has 75 different meanings!

Would you like a quick link to help you discover ambiguous words? 

Well, you’re in for a treat. Because I’ve discovered a terrific website that has done most of the work for us. I know, I know we all use dictionary websites but this is totally different. Below is a link for hypernym, hyponym, and synonym of a word. And having all that info at your fingertips might just improve your story. 

Go check it out and let me know what you think.

Could knowing the 51 different ways to use the word “make” help your writing?

Had you ever thought about it before?

Do tell.

Ambiguous Words ListBy http://muse.dillfrog.com/lists/ambiguous

Want to know more?

Click:     Improve your novel with these tips

Don’t forget to look ME up ON SOCIAL MEDIA BY CLICKING ON THE LINKS…

Happy Monday to all the Story Empire readers. It’s so good to be back with all of you once again to share a few helpful (hopefully) thoughts. Today I wanted to share a few tweaks so that you can use Dragon Naturally Speaking with Scrivener. Let’s jump right in and get to it.

Dictation with Dragon & Scrivener

Nuance created Dragon NaturallySpeaking

For those who may have missed my last few posts, I will include a few links back to those so that you can get more detailed information about Dragon. I’ve been using Dragon now for a couple of months which has allowed me to make significant progress in two novel projects. In fact, I am working on both projects at the same time as I write this post. That’s the power of Dragon; I can dictate while I’m in the car and edit the other book at nigh…