Pulling The Plug On My Pride

One of the basic tenets of my early childhood education – mostly in the schoolyard rather than the classroom, if truth be told – was that “self-praise is no praise”. These words were particularly powerful where I came from, but it’s really a general Irish thing. Boasting is second only in social torts to not buying your round in the pub. Both are punishable by flogging, ostracization, and eventual death. Fact.

But the internet is a perilous place. It’s full of braggarts, self-aggrandisement, and general preening and strutting. It becomes infectious. One minute you’re sneering at someone’s humblebrag, the next you find yourself telling the world how SURPRISED you were that some YouTube star liked the photo you put up of the dinner you said took you 25 minutes to prepare, when in reality you spent three hours on it.

I Should Have Known Better

So there I was last Sunday week, merrily congratulating myself, telling myself I’d just had a GENIUS…

 A reflection of our hearts;

Words unsaid…

of,

Comfort and confidence

Belief and courage

 Assurance.

A smile;

A tale of a child loved

A tale of a thankful mother

A tale of a life time friendship

A tale of two hearts tangled.

The best way to say,

I am loved

I am at peace

Content

Full

And I am thankful…

A smile.

Susan McMillan

Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Wikipedia explains that a narrative consists of three components:

• Narrative point of view: the perspective (or type of personal or non-personal “lens”) through which a story is communicated.

• Narrative voice: the format (or type presentational form) through which a story is communicated.

• Narrative time: the grammatical placement of the story’s time-frame in the past, the present, or the future.

We want to create a sense of intimacy, of being in the character’s head. One way to do that is to use stream of consciousness, a narrative mode that offers a first-person perspective by attempting to replicate the thought processes as well as the actions and spoken words of the narrative character.

This device incorporates interior monologues and inner desires or motivations, as well as pieces of incomplete thoughts that are expressed to the audience but…

Most of this post is focused on how writers should behave but is only my opinion. If you think something different, completely disagree, or think it’s pretentious for me to spout guidelines about how people should act, that is perfectly fine and is one of my rules.

In other news, I noticed I am pretty close to 300 WordPress followers, so once you are done, I’d really appreciate it if you hit the little button at the bottom of this page. Be warned, you will likely get updates on rants, stuff I have seen in the slush pile, and my general thoughts on the publishing industry. I tend to heavily slant toward traditional publishing (since I am an Associate Editor at a PodCastle) but occasionally I’ll have guests representing self-publishing and small press.

10 Do Not’s of Writing Etiquette

1. People can have different opinions. This doesn’t make them stupid…

Today, we continue our discussion of the author’s media kit. If you missed the earlier installments, click the links to catch up.

• Part 1: What Your Author Website is Likely Missing (a brief intro)
• Part 2: Author Media Kit, Part 2—The News Release

This post will cover the One Sheet and the Author Biography.

The One Sheet

The one sheet (also known as a sell sheet or pitch sheet) is a professional document that contains all the pertinent information of your book. As you probably guessed by the name, it should be no longer than one page.

This is the first, and possibly only, document someone will read after reading your news release. It should be punchy, carefully crafted and edited, and easily scanned so people can obtain pertinent information quickly.

Parts of a One Sheet (Not necessarily in this order—let design dictate composition)

• Book cover
• Book title
• Purchase…

We have family coming to visit in the next couple of days from out-of-state and I’ve cleaned up the devastation caused from the tornado (3 teenage boys) that hit over the summer. I’m pleased to report that I’ve actually been rather happy with the progress of restoring the house back to its former glory. In the cleaning detox stage, I’ve used several products and when in a pinch, still resorted to my favorite of all – Baby wipes.

During my cleaning routine mission,

some products I noticed have warning labels on them like:

WARNING!! This product is known to cause cancer in lab rats. Who would attempt to “clean” a lab rat with a stain remover?

DANGER!! Do not inhale fumes or lungs will explode. If contact occurs, leave the area immediately and breath pure oxygen. How am I suppose to know if the oxygen outside my house is “pure”…