by Richard Risemberg

Do you love subordinate clauses? I know I do. And how about assonance and alliteration, rhythm and rhyme? Let’s face it: they can be as tasty as chocolate.

But would you make an entire meal of just…chocolate? (Okay, whoever said “yes” please leave the room now!)

Consider this a meeting of Overwriters Anonymous. My name is Rick, and I used to write overelaborate sentences. Clever and musical they were; there was just too much of them. Frankly, my dependence on brilliant phrasing destroyed my relationship with my early novels, and we haven’t seen each other in decades. The words just got in the way of the meaning after a while, exhilarating though they could be.

by Ruth Harris  on Anne R Allen Site:

Shhh!

Secrets.

Everyone has them.

Every book must have at least one because secrets are the jet-powered engine that propels fiction forward. Ever notice how many blurbs in the daily BookBub email include the word secret?

Secrets provide motivation, plot, character, even a setting (a haunted house, anyone?) From Madame Bovary to Carrie, from Rebecca to Big Little Lies, from thrillers to romance, from mystery to women’s fiction to sci-fi, every story revolves around a secret.

Secrets ripple outward and can produce unexpected consequences a writer can take advantage of. Secrets need to be protected, denied, defended, and excused. This means they will have predictable (and unforeseen) consequences. These consequences will affect the people who guard them, excuse them, or wilfully blind themselves to their existence.

People with secrets are good at keeping them—until they’re not—or else until some…

Following the closure of CreateSpace’s eStore, Amazon has now delivered a further blow to the company. This makes it all more likely that all of CreateSpace operations will eventually be rolled into KDP Print.

In a surprising statement, Amazon announced its decision to move CreateSpace out of paid author services such as professional design and editing:

After a thorough review of our service offerings, we’ve made the decision to discontinue Createspace’s paid professional editing, design, and marketing services. We will work closely with impacted employees through this transition to help them find new roles within the company or assist them with pursuing opportunities outside the company.

Amazon Statement

Even though most Indie authors I know prefer to use their own resources for such services, CreateSpace’s design and editing services were in direct competition to book publishers such as BookBaby and IngramSparks. Still, Amazon says the latest round of layoffs…

By Dana Sitar  on The Write Life Site:

The world offers a lot of ways to become a writer.

You can go to school for journalism or creative writing, get a Ph.D. and publish in journals, start a blog and turn it into a business, write a book and become famous…The paths are innumerable.

Whatever kind of writer you want to be, you can probably find a blog or online community to help you get there.

Each year, The Write Life celebrates these vast resources available to us online by releasing a list of the 100 Best Websites for Writers, and we’re excited to do it for the fifth year in a row.

Thanks to your suggestions, you’ve helped us curate hundreds of websites to bring you the best of the best.

Many are tried-and-true favorites previously featured in our 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 lists, and this year we’re…

by Frances Caballo  on The Book Designer Site:

Embedding your social media posts on your blog or elsewhere on your website can benefit your website in several ways.

You can demonstrate your social proof to your blog visitors. In other words, they can see your number of shares, retweets, and Likes you’ve accumulated.

If you are trying to explain something, your social media posts may provide the examples you need for a post.

If you find a quote on social media you’d like to share on your blog, you can embed that tweet or Facebook post.

You can further boost engagement of the post.

You can show off some of your social media content.

See the step by step tutorials HERE

Is your writing pretentious. Do you write to impress others or is your writing real? I’ve written several blogs on pretentious writing, but I’ve never used those words to describe it.

So what is pretentious writing? It’s writing that uses those million dollar words. You know, the ones that leave the rest of us scratching our heads and wondering what we just read.

Pretentious writing is something you probably learned in college or high school. It may work great in technical or scientific magazines and would probably fly in government documents or procedural manuals, but please don’t try to pass it on in a fictional novel.  Your attempts to make yourself sound sophisticated will actually backfire and make you appear unsophisticated.

Think of the novels you read. Do they use a lot of flowery prose and million dollar words? The answer is probably no. What the author has done is…

– Today, upon a bus, I saw a very beautiful woman, and I wished I were as beautiful as her. When suddenly, she rose to leave as her stop had come, I saw her hobble down the aisle. She had one leg and wore a crutch. But as she passed, she gave me such a broad smile.  Oh! Dear God, forgive me when I whine.  I have such beautiful two legs; the world is mine.

-I stopped to buy some candy at a store nearby. The lad who sold it had such charm and a wonderful expression.  I talked with him and he seemed so glad to chat with me.  It was so nice to be pleasant with people even though they are strangers. And as I left, he said to me, ‘I thank you, you have been so kind. It is so nice to talk with folks like you…

The inspiration for this list was preparing myself to attend four book festivals this year. I was making a list of items that I needed, and it occurred to me that I should prepare some answers to obvious questions. One thing leads to another, and the list is born.

10 If you meet an author, do not ask the question, “Do you make a lot of money writing?” If you do, at best you might get a chuckle in reply. At worst, you might have to listen to a long diatribe about the meaning of art as opposed to monetary considerations. (Wow. You didn’t realize just how little the author made from his books did you, Dylan?)

9 If you meet an author, do not ask the question, “How does your spouse feel about your writing? If you do, at best you’ll get a two-word answer, “They’re Fine.” At worst, you may…