Time and Space to Write



St. Michael's Hall

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate enough to go on a writing retreat. My writing group, the Saskatchewan Romance Writers, goes on an annual retreat each spring at St. Peter's Abbey, a monastery and school in the Saskatchewan countryside. For three and a half days, I got to write, talk about writing, and spend time with writing friends.

The minute I step onto the grounds of St. Peter's I relax. It's quiet and peaceful, probably the most peaceful place I know. The only thing that breaks the silence is the sound of the occassional tractor or the singing of the birds.

St. Scholastica, the former convent where we stay.

I've written previously about retreats and how much I enjoy them. Even if you can't go away, you can still create a mini-retreat for yourself. For some ideas about how to get that retreat feel, even if you stay at home, please click here. For me, a retreat is a way to 'fill the well' of my creativity and a chance to simply think.

I enjoy going for walks and communing with nature while I'm at St. Peter's. I also like to visit the cemetary where monks have been buried as long as there's been a St. Peter's. It's my way of paying my respects. But mostly I'm there to write. And write I did. I finished the first draft of a new novella I'm working on. Yay! I was probably able to complete the novella because I could concentrate solely on the work without the rest of the world interrupting. Not once did I have stop to cook a meal, put laundry in the dryer or take the dog for a walk. Perhaps that's selfish, but I think a writer needs to be selfish once in a while so she can hear the voices in her head clamering to be heard. Every writer needs a little space and time.



Saskatchewan countryside with St. Peter's in the background.

I hope you enjoy my pictures of St. Peter's Abbey. I know whenever I look at them I'll remember friends, good conversations and ideas rushing through my brain! Have you ever gone on a writing retreat? Would you like to if given the chance?

Guest Blogging with Cherie LeClare

This week I'm being interviewed by author Cherie LeClare at  http://cherieleclare.com/blog  I'm talking about my latest release, "Flawless" and about what I'm up to now. I hope you can drop by!

Targeting My Audience

Photo Credit: Melissa Gray

I’m taking a class from Writer U right now called “Growing Your Audience: For Published, Unpublished, and Under-published Authors”. The whole concept is about finding an audience for my books and selling more copies.

We’re talking at present about targeting our audience for our books, a concept I have not even considered before. The idea is to focus our promotion efforts into identifying and finding those people who would be most inclined to read our books. One of the examples that Ann Charles, one of the co-presenters gives is of comedian Jeff Foxworthy, best known for his “You might be a redneck if…” schick. Ann says “Do you think he's interested in attracting white-collar urbanites of any age? Or gangsters? Or sticky-handed, Disney-loving munchkins? No. His target is the heartland of America-whether rural or blue-collar, and those from the low to medium income bracket. He's not so interested in age groups as a socio-economic target audience.”

So, as an exercise for the class, Ann and her partner Jacquie Rogers have asked us to write down who we think makes up the target audience for one of our books. Notice I say “one of our books”. Turns out that in promotion, one size does not fit all.  Patricia Fry, in her article “Your Book Promotion Plan” says “The point is that every promotional method does not necessarily work for every book. In fact, it might take an author several weeks or months of experimentation to develop a plan that’s appropriate for his or her title.” For example, for her book The Mainland Luau, How to Capture the Flavor of Hawaii in Your Own Backyard, Patricia targeted reviews in cooking magazines and cooking sections of newspapers. If her next book was How to Create a Hawaiian Garden, she’d have to take a totally different approach.

But I digress. First we have to figure out who are target audience is before we can aim our promotion towards them. Patricia Fry’s article “How to Determine your Target Audience” urges writers to take a close look at their book, whether it is fiction or non-fiction, and find some aspect of it that can be used to target an audience. For example, if your heroine is an animal lover and animals figure prominently in your work of fiction, you could target groups on the web devoted to animals and animal welfare, such as shelters, humane societies, kennels clubs etc.

It doesn’t hurt to have marketing in mind when you’re writing your book. For instance, Ann Charles wrote a series of mysteries set in Deadwood, South Dakota, knowing there would be a built-in audience for a story set in this historic western town. Jacquie writes: “Some authors will tell you that you should write the book of your heart. This is great advice, and we wholeheartedly agree. Write that book with your audience in mind, making sure to include the "what's in it for me" concept, giving them more bang for their buck than just 200+ pages of sentences.”

The book I’m targeting for this class is called “Flawless”. It is a historical romantic suspense set during World War Two in occupied France. A priceless blue diamond, “Le Bleu Coeur” has been stolen by the Nazis. They plan to barter it for weapons and supplies that could crush the Allies. The French Resistance, with help from a spy from the British Operations Executive, plans to steal back the diamond from the Nazis.

So, based on that, my target audience will be:

- readers of romantic suspense
- readers of historical novels
- readers of spy novels
- people who are interested in stories about WW2

I’m not sure whether I have listed all my targets, and at this point I have no idea how to find this audience on the Internet or anywhere else. Finding the audience I have identified will be the next part of this class, I’m sure.

Have you thought about targeting your audience? If you have, who are they? By the way, our presenters say that even if you are not published you can begin to target your audience, as long as you have a publishable product ready to go.

Taglines

My writing group, the Saskatchewan Romance Writers, is putting together an anthology of romantic short stories set in our province. Most of us in the group have contributed a story or two, and now as we prepare for publication, each of us is attempting to write a tagline for our story. I’ve never written a tagline before and oh my goodness, am I ever finding it difficult! How do you boil down the essence of a 1,500 short story (or a 50,000 word novel) to one succinct line? This line must tell a bit of the story, hint at the conflicts, and entice the reader. That’s a lot to ask of one little line!

Fortunately, Kat Aubrey, our intrepid editor for this project, has posted some helpful articles on our private blog to give us guidance. So liberally borrowing knowledge from these articles, written by people much better at creating taglines then I am, here’s what I learned:

1. From Michelle McLean, at the Query Tracker blog, I learned that a tagline doesn’t have to boil the whole book down to one line, but it does have to convey some important information, such as characters, conflict, distinction, setting and action. A tagline has to let us know a little something about who is in the story (the characters), and what problems (conflicts) they’re facing. Distinction refers to what distinguishes this book from all the rest; what makes it unique? Nathan Bransford calls this the flavor. According to Joanna Stampfel-Volpe of Nancy Coffey Literary it should let us know where the story is taking place, what genre it belongs to, and what kind of tone the book has; is it comedic, farcical, suspenseful, horrific? Lastly, the tagline should give a hint of the action we’ll see in the book/short story.

So with these things in mind, here’s my first attempt at writing a tagline for my story “Wings of Fire”:

Sometimes love finds you in the most unlikely places, like in the middle of the Canadian prairies in the middle of a war.

So going over the previous list, I think I’ve let the reader know the genre is romance (“love finds you”) and that the setting is on the Canadian prairies during a war, but which war? I haven’t made it clear whether we’re talking about the First World War or the war in Afghanistan. And I haven’t said a word about my characters or the action. And yes, I know I repeated the word middle. Back to the drawing board.

2. Next I checked out Nathan Bransford blog “How to Write the One Sentence Pitch”  He breaks down the pitch, or in this case the tagline, like this:

- The opening conflict – the first step in character’s quest
- The obstacle – whatever is standing in character’s way
- The quest – may be an physical of interior journey but it’s basically what happens to character during the story.

Bransford says that the basic pitch should go together something like this:  When OPENING CONFLICT happens to CHARACTER(s), they have to OVERCOME CONFLICT (obstacle) to COMPLETE QUEST.

Bransford also says that a good tagline is a description of what actually happens (the plot) rather than the theme of the novel (what the novel is about). The problem with theme as tagline (A young man comes of age and finds the meaning of life) is that it is very generic and doesn’t really tell us anything unique about this particular story.

Okay, so I’m going to try my tagline again.

A British pilot training in Saskatchewan crashes his plane in a farmer's field and unexpectedly finds a reason to believe in a future after World War Two.

This time I’ve got the character (the British pilot), the inciting incident, (crashing his plane), the setting and time frame (Saskatchewan in World War Two), the quest (surviving the war) but I think I may have lost the genre. Is it still a romance? Let’s try this one more time.

When a British pilot training in Saskatchewan crashes his plane in a farmer's field, he unexpectedly falls in love and finds a reason to fight for a future after World War Two.

Does this tell you something about my story? Does it make you want to read it? Let me know what you think in the comments.

3. Hilari Bell had some great tips. The one I liked best of all is “Don’t go it alone”. Sometimes we writers are so close to our stories that we can’t see the best tagline. For this same reason, the Saskatchewan Romance Writers are posting taglines on our private blog and asking for critiques. It’s great to have friends.

Like Nathan Bransford says, mastering the tagline won’t make or break or your writing career, but it’s a handy tool for quickly describing your novel or short story to editors, readers, or your pesky relative who keeps asking what you’re writing. And it’s a great exercise for learning to distill your story down to its basic elements.Check out movies trailers at The Internet Movie Database for examples of how the movies create taglines.

Do you like creating taglines? Do they come easily to you or do they fight you all the way like they do for me? I’d love to read some of your examples.

In other business, the winner of a download copy of “Flawless” for commenting on my post at Judy Nickles blog, The Word Place on April 26, is (drum roll please!!) Karyn! Congratulations! I hope you enjoy it.

I'm Guest Blogging This Week

This week I'm over at Judy Nickles' blog on April 27, 2011. I'll be taking my turn with other Class of '85 writers from the Wild Rose Press to talk about my contribution to the series, a story I call "The Girl Most  Likely".  Have you ever attended a high school reunion, either your own or someone else's? Tell me your story (or just say hello) and you'll be eligible to win a copy of my latest release, "Flawless". Come on by! I'll return to Jana's Journey on May 5 with a new blog.

Plotting With Friends

This past Sunday I got together with friends on MSN for a live plotting party. Despite a myriad of problems with MSN and Internet connections, we managed to hash out some issues with a new story I’m putting together. I find it very helpful to have input from trusted writing friends when putting together a plot. They can pick out any glaring plot holes, point out questions of character motivation that I haven’t addressed (or even thought of), or shine a light on any weaknesses they see in the conflict. I find that having others look at the plotting at this stage, before I actually start the writing, saves a ton of time later in revisions.

This is the second time I’ve used this method. Back in January of 2010 I assembled the same group for an instant messaging session to discuss my then work-in-progress “Flawless”. Of course at that point, the story didn’t have a name. Actually it didn’t have much of a plot yet either. But with the enthusiastic help of my friends I was able to put together a plot, and eventually the story that became my World War Two romantic suspense set in occupied France came to life.

I highly recommend the plotting party. Not only do I find it extremely useful, it’s a lot of fun. There’s nothing I like more than brainstorming with other creative people.

But some rules need to be observed. Here’s my thoughts on what makes a plot party, or any plotting group work:

1.       Choose your group wisely. Use trusted writing friends you feel in sync with and whose work you admire. You want different points of view but if the ideas and opinions are counter to what you want to write, your plotting session will end in frustration.

2.     2.   Do some legwork ahead of time. Sketch out a rough synopsis, lay down the most important elements of the plot, do some preliminary research, if necessary. For instance in “Flawless”, because I was writing with the goal of being added to The Wild Rose Press’s Jewels of the Night series, the most important elements were that the story be a romantic suspense that somehow revolves around a blue diamond. I envisioned a story set in World War Two in which a reformed jewel thief is recruited to help the French Resistance steal back a blue diamond from the Nazis. I came up with a very rough plot and a “curse” that was attached to the diamond. Since we were meeting online, and I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time typing out all this information on the day of the party, I emailed whatever information I had ahead of time. Your friends are there to help you smooth out the edges of your plot and add depth. It’s not fair to ask them to write the whole thing for you.

3.       The person whose story is being discussed should lead the discussion. Christine Rimmer, whose blog post about her plotting group inspired me to form one of my own, says if the discussion goes in a direction you’re not comfortable with, speak up and lead it back to where you want to go. For instance if one member of the group argues for your story to take on a paranormal bent with vampires and slayers and you’re really not into that, speak up. It’s your story. You must take the lead and the rest of the group must respect that.

4.       Save the session! I always save a copy of our instant messaging session to my hard drive so I can refer to it later. There are so many ideas flying back and forth that it’s impossible to write everything down. And I can’t trust my brain to remember everything (or anything, for that matter). Christine Rimmer says that in her plot group, which gets together twice a year in Vegas, they use two tape recorders to record each plotting session, just in case there’s a technical failure.  The writer then gets to take her taped sessions home with her at the end of the weekend.  

I will definitely do this again. We talked on Sunday about how great it would be to be able to get together in person like Christine Rimmer’s group does. I really hope we manage it, but with the four of us living in three different time zones it’s going to be difficult. In the meantime, instant messaging remains an inexpensive if sometimes frustrating alternative.

Have you ever participated in a plotting group, either live-and-in-person or through your computer?  Would you participate if you had the chance or do you prefer to go it alone? 

Next week I’ll be out of town on a bit of a retreat, working on the new story I’ve just plotted out. So I’m taking a break from the blog. I’ll see you at the end of the month!

My Virtual Assistant

I am not good with technology. I never did learn how to program the VCR. Luckily, the PVR we have now is almost idiot proof (almost), but I still get my daughter to operate it if I want to record a TV show.

So it’s no wonder that I needed help when my blog went wonky. My right sidebar developed a huge space between the first piece of information, my website address and the rest of the gadgets. The labels and blog archives were located at the bottom of the page where no one was going to see them. Nothing I tried managed to fix it. And then my preview function suddenly quit working! I was ready to pitch this whole stinking blog!

I checked the yellow pages in my phone book to see whether I could find someone local to help me out. I found plenty of people who could set up a website for me, create an advertising campaign, or market a business using traditional and social media. After checking out several websites for these businesses, I came to the conclusion that a) they all were way too expensive for me, and b) none of them addressed my specific needs. I wanted someone who would take me by the hand and show me how to fix my blog or go in there and do it herself. And I didn’t want it to cost a lot of money.

And then the answer came to me in the mail.  The March 2011 edition of RWA’s Romance Writers Report carried an article entitled “Is it Time to Hire a Virtual Assistant?” by Jenel Looney. A virtual assistant can help a writer with dozens of tasks, freeing up the writer’s time to do what she really wants to do—write. A virtual assistant can help with marketing efforts, such as coordinating social networking efforts to make sure the writer is taking full advantage of the promotion these sites offer. A VA can help with updating a website, or can assist with design. She can set up a blog tour for you, which I know from experience can be time consuming. She can also contact review sites to set up book reviews on the writer’s behalf, if her publisher isn’t already doing that. A VA can help brainstorm the types of marketing materials such as bookmarks, sticky notes, pens and other goodies you want to give away as prizes for contests or as gifts at conferences. And speaking of contests, your VA can keep track of entries, draw a random winner and mail the prizes.

The great thing about this article was that it not only extolled the virtues of virtual assistants and listed what they could do for me, it told me where I could find one. Ms. Looney provided the website of the International Virtual Assistants Association (http://IVAA.org) She also offers this sage advice:

“I recommend starting with one small project to test the waters. Find out for yourself whether your VA has the skills you need, and whether she follows through on her promises. Limit your commitment in the beginning to give both of you the opportunity to determine whether you’re a good fit.”

Following Ms. Looney’s advice, I posted a request on the IVAA website, outlining my problems with my blog. Within 24 or hours (or less) I had a couple of replies. I chose to work with Amy Moore of Amy’s Winning Ways (http://blog.amyswinningways.com) For a reasonable fee, she fixed my blog problems and gave me some advice about some other issues. I hope to work with Amy again sometime in the future.

Have you ever had technical problems you couldn’t fix yourself (or am I the only inept one?) Do you ever wish you had an assistant to help you with the many non-writing tasks a writer needs to do? Have you ever hired a virtual assistant or some other kind of outside help?

In totally unrelated news, please join me at http://theromancestudio.com/party this weekend, April 8, 9, & 10 for a chance to win a Nook ereader! All you have to do for a chance to win is to comment on my posts or on the posts of any of the authors attending. There are tons of other giveaways as well. I hope you drop by!