35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 16: A little writing humour

Instead of writing a post today, I decided to add a few tidbits of humour on writing. And of course, being an engineer, project manager and writer...it had to be Dilbert. Enjoy!

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 15: What I learned at #ROSACon2015

Like all good things, #ROSACon2015 had to end. Two days of sharing experiences, and making new friends. Listening to presentations were I either learned something new or was reminded of an important aspect of writing.

Work sessions and discussions that were open and honest, even when the discussion got between the bed sheets. This was a romance authors' conference after all!

We shared lots laughs, but were also moved to tears. The organisation is still in its infancy, but the foundations have been laid for a future of authors growing within themselves, growing as writers and passing on the lessons learned to help and support new authors.

While the publishing industry is changing almost by day, self-publishing notwithstanding, there was much to be learnt from the experienced authors. Persistence, coping with fear and rejection, the daily demands of our time, and commitment to our craft despite all the challenges we have to face.

I enjoyed making my presentation on marketing for authors. While the subject matter is very close to my heart, there was not enough time to cover all the aspects in an hour. It is a good thing then that I am committing myself towards finishing the first draft on Indie Author: The Good, the Bad and the Hard Work by the end of November.

Once I am back home, I will assess the progress on the book and update my planning to ensure that it will be completed on time. In the meantime, my travelling is done until December, and my posts will return to the schedule to complete the book, and a few more posts on planning for pantsers and NaNoWriMo.

See you tomorrow - from my home office!

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Why not pop on over and leave a comment?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 11: Planning for Pantsers - scene setting

As pantsers we tend to write our stories chronologically. To be able to do this, we sit down and read what we wrote the previous day and then simply continue where we left off. This is a simple process when you write every day and keep the story and characters alive in your head while you are writing.

But what if you did not write yesterday? Or the day before? What if you had to work overtime for two weeks and was simply too exhausted to look at your story? How far do you go back to pick up the plot?

The major plot would probably stare you in the face during the last scene, but now the finer details of the sub-plots are gone from your memory. Do you start reading from the beginning, or is there some way to help you keep track?

If you need to read many pages every time your writing is interrupted, you will be frustrated because you are reading instead of what you want to do...write.

But there is help and it's not so complicated as you might think:

1. Use visual images to help you with the setting of your story. A Pinterest Board is an excellent tool to gather and pin landscapes or seascapes, or a city, or spaceship where your story is taking place. Even fantasy or imaginary graphics could help you. The world is filled with exceptional artists and pinning their work to your board could help you create the most interesting settings for your stories.
2. If you cannot find what you are looking for, make a drawing. It doesn't have to be a masterpiece, it is only an aid to keep your story straight. I did a drawing of the village of Akan for my Nations of Peace series so that I could remember the lay of the land. Where the forest was, the houses, the school of Magic and Knowledge, etc.
3. Another way is to sit down and describe the city, town, farm, asteroid or spaceship in as much detail as you can. The lights, the smells, the sounds, the odd green colour of the walls, etc. Describe each room. Or specific place (such as the barn) where your story could have a scene. You are not going to use so much detail in your story, but writing it all down helps to fix the setting(s) in your mind. By adding the details you can add depth to the story via the experiences your characters have in that environment.
4. All the points described here are especially helpful when writing a series where the characters or stories have the same setting in common.
5. It will also save you a lot of reading time to refresh your memory when you have not written for prolonged periods of time.

Keep all your notes, planning and preparation in the same place for quick referencing to save time. You can then focus on writing, instead of constantly backtracking to search for details about the setting.

See you tomorrow!

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Why not pop on over and leave a comment?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 10: 6 Easy SEO tips for bloggers

Linzé's Google Result

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the technique used for websites, and blogs, to be found by Google or any of the other search engines. While most people know about keywords, it is one of many algorithms used by the search engines to find your blog and list it on the results page if someone searched for something.

For authors the one thing that we want others to see is our books, isn't it? Whether the searcher types in the title you want yours to be listed first. Problem is that book titles are far from unique.

With almost two hundred thousand books being published every year (yep, it is that many and growing!) the probability of duplicated titles are getting higher and higher. So if you want to have a high ranking, you have to the be keyword. Sounds weird I know, but you are your brand and unless you are writing one book and one book only, the title is not going help you much. Unless you think of something completely new and catchy - which of course, I hope you do - your name is the only keyword that will help with search engines.

Here are some easy SEO tips for bloggers to get going:

1. Your blog has a theme. Make sure the majority of your posts are about this theme. I would say >90% of posts should be about the theme your chose for your blog.
2. Plan your post content and use the keyword a maximum of five times in a sentence that make sense to the reader. The shorter the post, the fewer the number of keyword sentences. In a post of 500 words, 5 times could work. In a short post of 300 words or less, don't use it more than 3 times. If you do more, it will only irritate your reader.
3. Use the keyword in the title of the post.
4. Use the keyword in the first paragraph of your post.
5. If you use a graphic image with the post, make sure to add its metatags too, since the web crawlers cannot see images, only recognise the text associated with it.
6. Don't use your name all over, use it to tag book covers. The images are just as important as the text on your blog.

Is there more to SEO for bloggers? Yes, there are many ways to help your blog to be visible and gain a high ranking in a search, but using keywords and metatags is an easy way to start and not technically challenging for even the most inexperienced blogger.

See you tomorrow for the first of my Follow Me posts - I am on my way to #ROSACon2015

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Why not pop on over and leave a comment?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 9: Planning for Pantsers - backstory

Photograph and cross stitching by Linzé

Planning for pantsers might sound like a contradiction in terms, and to some extent is it. However, without at least some planning the amount of editing that a pantser has to do, is exponentially more than that of a writer that plans her story in detail.

As a fiction pantser, and a non-fiction planner, I have learned that there is a way for a pantser to plan without going into details about the story. I am a pantser because I don't want to know how the story is going to end until I write...the end.

link to VISUAL TOOLS FOR PANTSERS

That still leaves a round or two of editing that the planner may not have to do, but it significantly cuts down the number of edits you have to do, if you plan at least some aspects of your story.

link to CHARACTER PLANNING FOR PANTSERS

Backstory is a tricky thing for pantsers and planners alike. This is especially important when you write a series of books, with either the same lead character or group of characters. You need to keep your story straight so to speak, or your readers will call you out for inconsistencies and boo-boos.

Each and every single writing course will tell you that backstory needs to be woven into the thread of the story. That means you don't start with 10,000 words explaining the main character's childhood abuse or bullying or sexual history in detail before the story starts.

You have to write the story and add a sentence here or a small paragraph there to fill the blanks. Like the thread that holds the tapestry in place for the stitches to be sewn into. In the back. You are aware that it is there, but you don't look at it, nor does it stand out to compete with the image.

Good backstory telling works the same way. Your reader will read it without noticing it. It is there; it provides necessary colour to the story, but it is NOT the story.

If you have this habit of writing 10,000 words before getting into the actual story, then do that, just remember to cut the words and save it another file for you to reference. Or leave it in your first draft, and cut it when you start editing. Just remember to draw those threads into the story when you cut the backstory text.

If you don't do this, then you need to write the backstory anyway. You need to have the history of your main character (at least) done before you write. What made him the man he is today? How did she get to the place/time where the story will start?

This is not a character sketch, but it is history and experiences that your character(s) have had to make them the way your define them in the character sketch.

See you tomorrow!

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Why not pop on over and leave a comment?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 8: Make it a good morning, and a great day

Earlier in the year I started reading The Artist's Way with the intention to follow the program this year. To my shame, I have to admit that I have not progressed further than Chapter 4. The one thing I did start, and am still doing is what the author calls morning pages.
While I have been keeping a diary since I was very young, the idea of morning pages struck me as a better approach and I have since converted to the practice.
For those of you not familiar with the term, morning pages is written first thing in the morning for about half an hour. It is a brain dump basically. Anything and everything that pops into your brain can be written down, there is no structure nor any other rules. The idea with morning pages is to get your brain cleared of all kinds of stuff so that you can then focus on being creative for the rest of the day.
Since I start work at 6am, I have no time to do this "first thing" in the morning. So I do that as soon as I get to the office. While I wish that I would have 30 minutes available, ten is about as far as I get.
But, 10 minutes is better than nothing, and I find that even that small pinch of time makes a difference. Not only does it help me get clarity on the issues inside my head, I have upon occasion gotten an idea for a story. That alone makes the effort worthwhile. And I get to write every day.
The one other pleasure I gain from the experience is writing by hand. And in long hand too!
If I have a little time, usually over the weekend, I will use a fountain pen or even a nibbed pen to pen my thoughts.
Morning Pages is journal writing at the next level, and that alone makes me grateful that I found The Artist's Way.

See you tomorrow!

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Why not pop on over and leave a comment?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 7: Review a book (part 1)

Photograph by Linzé

This is the first of three posts about book reviews. The second will be aimed specifically at reviewing erotica or erotic romance, so watch out for that if you need some guidance. The third will be about reviewing non-fiction.

I am a blog host for two websites, and every now and then I volunteer to read and review books for them. While my first choice of genre is romance, I also read and review mysteries.
So how do you review a book that you liked?
That is the easy one. But I have a request: please don't tell me the story...seriously! I really can read. Rehashing the synopsis or summarizing the story (without giving away the ending, of course) is really not helpful. That is why the author/publisher adds a summary/teaser to the book or website so people can see what the story is about.
What I want to know when I read a review, is what you liked about the characters, or the plot, or the story. Why should I also read this book? Is the hero hot and sexy, yet an interesting character to read about? Is his enemy a multidimensional character with his own issues, making you almost want to root for him instead? Is the story believable? Does the plot keep your attention to such an extent that you lost sleep in order to finish the book?
Do you like the way the author wrote the story? Can you smell the roses? Will you pay money to read another book from the same author?
The answers to these questions tell me what your experience was when you read the story, and that is what I want to know.

But how do you review a book that you wouldn't normally read? I am honest, I do not like reading out of my preferred genres, but sometimes someone asks and then I say I will do it.
Since I am a romance lover, happy endings are part of the definition of the genre. Now I read  a book where a happy ending is not a guarantee, and oftentimes it can be tragic. Okay, so I don't like the ending, now what? Do I shoot down the book? Of course not.
I don't give the ending away, but if I am not careful in writing my review, the tone of I might give my displeasure of it away and that would be unfair to the author.
So how do I tackle a review, of say a literary novel, where the ending may not have been to my liking? I do it the same way as a review of any other book.
The characters, the story and the writing. Just because I may not have liked the book, does not mean that the book has no merit and cannot be enjoyed by a number of people.
So instead of shooting it down outright, unless the writing is bad or the characters one dimensional, I will say what I did like. Even if you don't know the technical details of creative writing, you can still write a positive review.

See you tomorrow!

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Why not pop on over and leave a comment?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 6: Another Follow Me Tour

One thing that I love about blogging is that I can show you my country as I travel for work or pleasure. Or in this case a writers' conference. Yep, I am grinning like an idiot, as it will be my first local conference. Local as in the same country, but not the same province. I live in Pretoria in the Gauteng province and the conference is in Stellenbosch which is in the Western Cape province. For my non-South African friends - if you can find Cape Town on a map, you will see that Stellenbosch is not far away.
Since I am not much of a travel writer, I will beg your indulgence as I do my tour guide impersonation from 24 to 27 September. One thing I should mention in my favour is that I can take good photographs, so at least the pictures will be something to look at. And I should warn you, this is one of the most beautiful parts in my country, even if the region is famous for its wine making. Cheers!

"Stellenbosch fan Papagaaiberch grut" by Fmalan at en.wikipedia.

In the meantime I have to finish preparing my presentation. Yep, I will one of the speakers at the Romance writers Organisation of South Africa (ROSA) Conference. My talk will be on marketing for writers, and it will focus on the things a writer have to do to get started on marketing.
I will be talking about topics such as branding, blogging and social media. The contents of my presentation is an extract from Chapter 6 of my book, Indie Author: The Good, the Bad and the Hard Work.

PS: I will email a PDF of the presentation to my blog subscribers after the conference.

See you tomorrow!

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Why not pop on over and leave a comment?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 5: Suddenly the challenge is too much, or is it?

Linzé Brandon (photograph Francois A Venter)

Most writers work full-time to pay the bills and write after hours to indulge in their passion. I do the same. Only writing to me is not just a passion, it is an escape from the stressful hours I call work obligations.

I have often heard that people say they didn’t write or have stopped writing because real life interfered. And I think, seriously? If your writing is not part of real life, then what is it a part of? A fantasy? A dream? Of course, bad things happen, and it happens to everyone.

Think about it. If you or you child gets sick, you get time off from work. If someone close to you passes away, you are allowed time off. My employer allows me time to take care of myself or other issues, but then I get back to work. Right? The question I then ask myself, why should I stop writing if something happens? Is there not anything more to writing than spinning tales in book format?

Unlike my job, I find that writing can be therapeutic and healing. It doesn’t have to be the next book in my fantasy series that I write; it can be my journal. Sometimes it is only my journal and nothing else for days. The need to write has become such a part of me, that even when ‘real life’ happens, I have to write about it. Yes, I share my pain with people I love, but it is not the same as pouring out everything onto paper.

Paper never gets impatient with me. It never tries to ‘help’ where help is often not what I need. Sometimes people understand, sometimes they don’t. But in writing I can let go in a way I cannot do with another person. Perhaps that is just me, or perhaps you are the same, but it works for me. Writing is my ‘real life’ and the longer I do it, the more it becomes part of the way I define myself.

See you tomorrow!

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Why not pop on over and leave a comment?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 4: That creativity thing: myth, magic or something else entirely

I will not give myself out as an expert on creativity, but this subject is close to my heart (it is my blog theme for this year). It describes the essence of what we as writers aim to achieve: a creative life. Creativity comes in many forms, but for a writer the words are our paint brushes and the computer screens our blank canvasses.

If you are fortunate enough, to be able to either write/paint/design or do some other creative activity full-time, count your blessings. On the other hand, if your daily slog is as non-creative as mine, the time I spend writing becomes that much more of a blessing. Like the quiet of a country garden after hours of listening to the grind of heavy equipment.

I don’t need particular quiet, or a specific kind of music to be playing while I am writing. In fact I do prefer some background noise, as it helps me to focus and think. Some people prefer music, others want complete silence around them, but I think we all want the same thing from our inner self – a chance to the creativity flow.

For some it comes easier than for others, but in that I have a firm belief: the more you practice, the easier it will become. You have to keep your hand in, in a matter of speaking. While I love writing, I also like to paint and sketch. I take a break once a year from writing, but never from doing something creative. It is then that I dig out my pencils and paint brushes. For the first few days I feel rusty and stiff, as if I have never held a piece of graphite in my hand. Then the door springs open as the skills return and the lines or brush strokes flow as if I had never stopped. Yes, I do prioritize my creative activities, but time does not allow me to do much more than write at any given time.

Is living a creative life a myth? I don’t think so. Neither does it require a magic wand to make it happen. I feel that a creative life is a deliberate choice, whether as a paying job or as a serious after-hours activity. Writing for me it is not a hobby, because I make sacrifices to write. I have hobbies, but I only indulge in those when I have time or an opportunity with other people to enjoy them.

See you tomorrow!

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Why not pop on over and leave a comment?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 3: A picture says more than a thousand words

Photographs and graphic images play an important role in a self-published author’s life. While you may not be a photographer, it is important to understand why these requirements must be met. Let’s start at the beginning.

As a self-published author you have control over all aspects of your brand and you need to make sure that the quality of your brand is of the highest standard. When it comes to photographs of yourself for profile pictures on social media sites, or author biographies for blog posts, make sure the images are of high quality and give you a professional image.

It does not matter if the photographs you use are not posed, but they have to be full face on, and not your dog or cat. Yes, we are all sensitive about the way we look, but your audience would rather see you, than your pet pig’s face.

And no, selfies do not qualify. Get a professional photographer to take a handful of images of you that you can use. If you don’t know a professional photographer, or cannot afford one, ask a friend with a good camera (a digital SLR or bridge-SLR) to take the photographs of you. Remember these are not happy snaps, so ask a friend that understands the basics of lighting and composition of portrait photography to take them.

The same applies for your book covers. High quality images. In most cases the publishing site will also specify the minimum and maximum size that the book cover image has to be. Make sure you read these rules before you use any images from the web. Beware of copyright infringements. Just because the image is on the internet, does not imply that you have the rights to use it for commercial purposes. Even if you make the book free of charge, it is still a commercial application.

There are many sites that sell images of the right quality, so investigate those and buy from them. They are not as expensive as you might think.

See you tomorrow!

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Why not pop on over and leave a comment?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 2: Measure Yourself

image © Dana Rothstein | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Do you set goals for yourself? In your job? In your hobby or sport? You should do the same for your writing. It is easy to come up with excuses not to write, sometimes it is so easy it is shameful. But it doesn't have to be that difficult to write if you set means to measure yourself. There are several ways to do that and many applications to help you do that. Don't have one of the apps available? That is another excuse!

Set yourself a target for every day. If you choose to set a minimum word count target, and it has to be the minimum, then write with software that helps with that. All the word processors, and some other more simple applications, will do that for you. It is a matter of one or two mouse clicks and you know how many words you have written.

Does that feel like too much pressure? Not sure how many words you can write each day? Maybe you are a slow typist and it feels like a mountain to climb if you set a target that you think everyone else can achieve in a matter of minutes. Then set yourself a time limit - not a word target.

Take an old fashioned egg timer, no fancy mobile phone or computer app to distract you, and set it to fifteen minutes. And then you write! The number of words are not important. The time you sit and write - and you have to write - is your target for the day.

See you tomorrow!

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Why don't you pop over and leave a comment?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 1: My Challenge

I don't consider myself impulsive, in fact as an engineer I am one of those people that tends to overthink rather than jump in. Upon occasion, I do step out of character and boom!
I did that about three days ago when I saw the link on Facebook, and two minutes later I enrolled into the 35 day blog challenge. You would think considering my ten-hour workdays, freelance commitments and working to finish a non-fiction book, I would have thought twice about taking part. Second thoughts did come though, but not to withdraw, instead I got a brainwave. Rather like that little light bulb you see popping up in cartoons when a character gets an idea.
I have a blog post list which I drew up early in the year, but have done only a few of the posts I had planned. Thirty-five posts are a lot to manage for someone who barely makes the one post per week schedule. While I was staring at a blank page (yes, I do my blog planning on paper) that light bulb moment happened. Why not do two things at the same time?
I have to finish the book - it is aimed at the writer and in keeping with the theme of the challenge - and I have to write the posts. Since this thought happened, I had often wondered why I had not thought about this before. The creative brain seemed to have been constrained too much by the rational brain of late. I say, no more.

So here we go! Challenge accepted! Thirty-five days of posts and thirty-five days of writing to complete Indie Author: The Good, the Bad and the Hard Work.

See you tomorrow!

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Pop over and leave a comment!

Creating Dangerous Characters - reblogged post

The 10 Secrets Of Resilient Characters

'Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.' ~Josephine Hart

The key to surviving in this world – and any fictional world you create – is resilience. It is not the strong who survive, but those who can weather change, because life is nothing but change. You do not need to be braver or bigger or louder. You do need to be able to bend with the wind, get up when you fall, and move forward when it seems impossible. This resilience strengthens you emotionally in either a positive or a negative way, and allows you to continue.

This is why your two most important characters – your protagonist and your antagonist – need to be resilient. Resilience is neither good nor bad, which is why it works for all characters who have goals and the desire to achieve them.

Are your main characters resilient enough for your story?

Resilient characters:

1. Accept help when they need it
2. Adapt to change
3. Learn how to cope with setbacks and disappointments
4. Focus on finding ways to get around problems, rather than on the problems themselves
5. Make mistakes and then learn from them 
6. Learn to accept constructive criticism
7. Make the most of their strengths
8. Recognise their weaknesses
9. Recover from failure and rejection
10. See the bigger picture in challenging situations

We do not enjoy reading about static characters who are trapped by their thoughts and circumstances. We want them to find that self-belief that forces them out of the prison of their heartaches, tragedies, and even the limitations of their victories.

So dare to create dangerous characters who have more moments of strength than moments of weakness. We love characters who are strong enough to withstand anything we throw at them - these are the characters worth rooting for.

Reblogged from www.writerswrite.co.za

Book Review: Writing Magic by Gail Carson Levine

I spotted this book, small as it is, on a bookshelf in a secondhand bookstore and took about three seconds before deciding to buy it. It was only once I started reading it, that I realised it is intended for children older than eight who want to learn how and what to write. I kept on reading. Why? Because the book is straight forward. No fancy words, no trying to explain abstract concepts and leaving the reader, or writer, hanging.

Short chapters to explain the essence of dialogue, characterisation, using your senses when writing, showing not telling, etc. Each chapter has at least one example that illustrates the content and at the end there is a section with recommended exercises to practice.

The author touches on aspects such rejection letters, but mostly the book is focused on writing. My favourite lines from the book comes from the chapter about writing for oneself, journal writing if you like.

"It also makes me more of a writer. It makes writing penetrate all the way into the marrow of my bones. It makes writing as natural for me as thinking and talking."

Thank you, Gail for reminding me what my writing means to me.

Linzé's Rating: 





Find the book on Amazon

Writing a Marketing Plan for Camp NaNoWriMo

Writing non-fiction during NaNoWriMo is not easy. Not that writing fiction is, but the real world words tend to create problems all on their own. Yeah, you guessed right – I will be tackling a non-fiction project in July. Contrary to my previous journey into non-fiction NaNoWriMo (not to be confused with NaNonFiWriMo taking place in November), I am better prepared this time.
My project is planned properly. Refreshing my memory on what a marketing plan entails, went better than I thought it would. It’s been years, literally! The contents have been thoroughly thought out and the Table of Contents already structured (and restructured) and ready for those first words to be penned.
And they will be something like “Michael’s Mystery – a story about a man investigating the truth behind serial murders, only to discover a woman could be involved whose power could destroy the future of the universe.”
Maybe a bit overly dramatic, but hey, that is what a blurb is supposed to do, right? Although in this case perhaps not dramatic enough.
Speaking of drama, I have also been looking into what goes into the making of a book trailer. Interesting concepts have come to light, and I am excited about exploring the option of making a book trailer for Michael's Mystery.
While I have watched my share of video clips on YouTube, I have by no means explored the platform for promoting my books. I have some ideas and will keep you posted on how I plan to accomplish bringing one of my books to life.
Marketing anything, books especially, is no longer the advertising campaigns they used to be not so long ago. In some ways marketing has become more personal, and to my inexperienced mind, more exciting. There are more platforms to explore and more exciting ways of doing things. And not only social media platforms. I think sometimes people get saturated with the advertising, and buy-me buy-me posts on the various sites. It could be that we forget there are people on the other end of that internet connection. People want interaction with a person not an IP address.
With Camp NaNoWriMo starting tomorrow I plan to write a marketing plan for a book, as my project. Hopefully, I will not make the same mistakes as others have, yet still manage to put a plan on the table that would get people interested in the adventures, challenges and lives of the characters that live in my fantasy world.

Guest Post: Writing’s not for Cissies by Richard Beynon

Writing is tough. In fact, I don’t know of any activity that is more difficult than writing. I know this is not so for every writer. There are some gifted individuals, as disparate as Joyce Carol Oates on the one hand, and Nora Roberts on the other, who write seemingly without effort, turning out vast numbers of books and, even more impressively, vast numbers of pages a day.

Nora Roberts is famous for publishing, on a quite routine basis, some ten novels a year. She is loved by her readers, and despised by the critics. Joyce Carol Oates, loved by both critics and readers, in her prime wrote forty five pages a day.

These are the outliers. Speaking for myself, and for many writers, both published and unpublished, I know that the process of developing story that is both rich and inevitable is just about as exhausting as anything can be.

And yet, we persist, because the personal rewards are so great – and the lure of professional, not to say, financial, success, as distant as it may sometimes seem, so enticing.

I’d like to dwell on one particular personal reward for a moment.

A curious phenomenon has been playing itself out in the US for some years now, which a couple of observers have started drawing attention to. On the one hand, talk therapy has been in decline for a decade or two. Woody Allen might, famously, have consulted a therapist five times a week for decades – but people like him are in a shrinking minority.

At the same time, writing schools, both academic and non-academic, writing retreats, short writing courses and online writing programmes have flourished as never before.

Everyone and her mother is writing a memoir, or thinking of writing a novel, or secretly has written not just a novel, but a trilogy!

Surely there’s a connection somewhere here? Less talk therapy, more writing. It’s merely a correlation at present, but I’m waiting for the research that shows a causal connection.

Because writing fiction is therapy, even if what we write is the airiest possible piece of romantic froth. To write it demands that we plumb our own experience, and our own feelings and, yes, even our own traumas. Romance in life is never trivial, although romance in fiction is so easily – and so wrongly – dismissed as meaningless nonsense.

Of course, that’s why writing’s difficult: because we have to drill deep to the emotions that drive the fiction. And that process of finding within ourselves the wellsprings of both joy and despair will always leave us wrung out.

Which doesn’t answer the conundrum posed by people like Roberts and Oates – but it does explain, to my satisfaction, why a morning’s brainstorm leaves me beached and panting for the rest of the day.

About the Author

Richard Beynon is an award-winning film and television scriptwriter with a long and accomplished career in the industry. He, together with novelist Jo-Anne Richards, run Allaboutwriting which teaches creative writing face to face in Johannesburg and Cape Town, as well as online – and mentors writers through the process of writing fiction, non-fiction and screenplays. Richard is currently cruising the canals of England, on his narrowboat Patience. Read about it here.

Tips, Tricks and Tales: Infographics for Authors

You can learn more about infographics for authors from TrainingAuthors.com

Linzé Interviews: Massimo Marino of the Book Garage

I welcome my Facebook friend, Massimo Marino to my blog today to chat about his new business.

Linzé: Why did you start the business?
Massimo: We started BookGarage because we are convinced that self-publishing is here to stay, but we also think that successful self-publishing is not a do-it-alone thing. Rather, it requires the collaboration of professional experts, just like any other business venture. We do think that any committed author—no matter of how good he or she is—needs assistance with things like editing, proofreading, cover design, marketing, and the like. With BookGarage we want to create a community of like-minded people and be the one-stop shop for everything related to professional self-publishing.

Linzé: With all the publishing companies already in existence, what makes BookGarage unique?

Massimo: First, and just to be clear, BookGarage is not a publishing house, meaning we don’t publish books. Nevertheless, one of the services we offer is assistance with publishing. So, if a self-publisher needs help with the publishing of his or her book on, say, Amazon Kindle or Apple iBooks, we will do that, and we can take care of the technical details to make the book available on major retailers.
Regarding competition, other companies offering publishing services focus on authors and freelancers. Our business model is built on interaction between not only authors and freelancers, but also readers. This is important because bringing readers into the equation is about discoverability. And that is one of the main challenges for any author, with thousands and thousands of new books being published every day. Additionally, readers are frustrated for the same reason: it is difficult to discover authors who approach self-publishing in a professional way, we think readers will be pleased to discover authors who work a lot—and, thinking of Hemingway, bleed on the keyboard—and books that are polished.
In this sense, too, we think of BookGarage as a community of like-minded people, having a common goal, producing and enjoying well written books.
There are other features, too, which make BookGarage unique. For instance, the way we approach crowdfunding. We will discuss this more in detail on BookGarage.com closer to the launch of that particular service.

Linzé: What services do you offer for the author?
Massimo: The services we offer to authors are:
Editing
Proofreading
Translation
File creation and conversion
ISBN
Book cover design
Blurb and synopsis writing
Design and management of author websites
Video trailer production
Aggregated distribution
Marketing
Crowdfunding

We have just posted our first article on professional self-publishing, and why a committed self-published author needs a team to turn a manuscript into a book.

Linzé: How can an interested author get hold of you?
Massimo: An interested author can get hold of us via our website www.bookgarage.com, can register to our newsletter, and contact us directly via email. We are also reachable on our social media pages, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.

Linzé: Thank you Massimo. My fellow authors it looks like the Book Garage might indeed be the one stop service you have been waiting for. Take a look at their website and share the news on your social media timelines.

Research Comes in Two Flavours: Reblogged from an email by Richard Benyon

The kind of research that writers do preparatory to writing their novels comes in two flavours. 

On the bottom shelf, in the pale pink bottle, there’s the sort of research you do in order to get the elements of your story right. 

You’re writing a police procedural? Well, then, for goodness sake find out what the relevant police procedure is. 

Writing a medical thriller involving illegal organ harvesting? Then attend a kidney transplant to get the pictures of the surgery firmly fixed in your mind. (And if every surgeon in the country turns down your requests to attend such an operation, then look online until you find what you’re after. It’s all there, believe me!) 

But there’s a different kind of research. It comes in the emerald blue bottle on one of the upper shelves. It’s not the solution to a problem – but the inspiration for story. 

At the Oxford Literary Festival, the thriller writer Christopher Fowler talked about a novel he was writing set in London during the blitz. He’d read all the usual books on conditions in the city at the time, he’d watched documentaries, he’d done his homework. 

But then he remembered that his mother had herself lived through the Blitz. 

“She’d worked,” he said, “as a legal secretary in The Strand.” He wondered what she remembered about the period. 

“Oh,” she said, “I remember the telephone directories.” The telephone directories? What telephone directories? “Well,” she said, “when shop windows were blown out, they filled them with sandbags – but when they ran out of sandbags, they used old telephone directories to fill the windows. Used directories.” 

Now that, Fowler said, is not something that you’d ever find in histories of the time, or online. It’s a detail that could only have been reported by someone who’d been on the spot. And it was a detail that, he said, he used to great good effect in his novel. 

So when you need the sort of textural detail that simply brings a story alive, don’t rely only on the “official” history – seek out someone who was there (if that’s possible), and ask them what they remember, what struck them with particular force about the event they witnessed. 

This goes for more than specific incidents. You’re writing a story that involves a horrific motor-car accident? Well, then, go talk to a tow-truck driver, or a paramedic, who’s attended more horrific motor-car accidents than you’ve had hot dinners. 

Ask him to tell you about what he looks for when he arrives at the scene of an accident. Ask him for details of the sorts of things that he’s seen thrown clear of the colliding motor-cars. Ask him what he most fears as he’s racing to the scene, and what he most hopes for. 

And then allow these impressions to guide you as you develop story around the fictional accident in your novel.

Note from Linzé: The post was reblogged with permission. Keep a look out for another post from Richard coming in June.