Catching The Speeding Train in the Writing Journey

This week I have been thinking of added content....following on from ideas sparked by the 1000 true fans post and talking to various friends about the widening fields of being a content provider(author)

On Monday I was at Te Papa for the Institute of Modern letters Monday lunchtime talk series which featured Kate de Goldi talking to Vic. Writer In Residence, Paula Boock. Paula’s journey from editor to YA writer to script writer to TV Film producing to writing her first adult novel which we were privileged to listen to a bit of...(main character is a child tho, so she hasn’t strayed far away from us) and it got me thinking about the writing journey.

A long time ago I scribbled stories for myself then I thought I‘d better learn how to write so I went looking for the magic formula.(guess what... there isn’t one) Along the way I collected rejections...then I got an acceptance...I’ve made it, I thought...No I hadn’t.

Lots more rejections later then writing took a back seat to life...I got involved in the writing community, so I wrote by osmosis...free association with some of the best in the world at writers talks etc. Then back to collecting rejections, trying my hand at new styles of writing but always, always learning.

Our writing journeys take us into many lands where the language is different and the culture is foreign and obstacles look insurmountable...and so it is with the new ideas of writing content and digital media to the children’s author. But in essence it is applying your skills in a different way using a different medium or media. (I joked to Fifi on Monday that Paula could be a poster child for the Spinning Gold Conference as she has applied her skills across two or three medias. Fifi is a poster child...Martin Baynton is the poster child, Janice Marriot who is writing scripts for the Wot Wots is a poster child... (they are all marvelous New Zealand children's authors trying their hand at new media.)

They are leading the way for the rest of us...and I will learn from them by osmosis and posting little snippets of interest to you all, who are struggling, like I am, to make sense of the speeding train called ‘Social and Digital media as it applies to our craft.

So onto the Future....Eeeeek I’m not ready.....

Fourth Story Media a new publishing company in the ‘states’ are ready to launch The Amanda Project. CEO Mike Smith describes the company this way on their website.

Traditonally, stories would be told through one medium. A film would exist as a film. A book would exist as a book. Now, the internet and new forms of technology are enabling storytellers to tell their stories not through one medium, but through every conceivable form of media.
— Michael Smith, CEO & Owner, Mind Candy and Perplex City

To have a look at what they are doing with The Amanda Project go here or just look at the video below.




Chorion based in the United Kingdom is working with a range of writers and literary estates to add media content to enhance the book presence. Here’s what they have done for Agatha Christie but their flagship is Children’s lit....(their slide show is really cool)go take a look at their website.

Merchandising: PC games, jigsaw puzzles, mugs, pencils, cushions, deckchairs and more are available at retail and online.
Stage: We license first class productions worldwide and actively oversee the hugely successful Agatha Christie Theatre Company's ongoing professional tours in the UK.
Online: The official website at http://www.agathachristie.com/ features blogs, games, downloadable content, information on Agatha Christie and every story she wrote, newsletters and a very popular forum for her fans.

The world is getting bigger and bigger for the author(content provider)...but seriously have you thought about turning some of your writing into added content slogans for merchandise????

And finally as a present to Tania Hutley...(stat counter says her site sends the most people over to read my blog...I’m awed...) the following video because she loved the Buffy staked Edward post.

maureen

pic is the Ave Solar train in Spain and the new way to travel without carbon emmissions... it's as fast as a jet...the way of the future????

How To Succeed after you have dusted...

Ok, I missed my usual blog day post...sorry...School holidays got in the way and also dusting.

Yes I am dusting...well orgy of cleaning anyway...this is in an attempt to finally make sense of the clutter on my desk so I can sit down at it and work this coming week. That’s the plan.

But as soon as I shifted some clutter I exposed more clutter and then there was the dust which not only could you write your name in but a short novel as well... get out the buckets etc and two days go by very quickly.

At least I’m feeling virtuous (dusty tho)

Two things have caught my eye recently. One was Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 Blog.
Joe was commenting on the cover article of Fast Company magazine about Amazon head Jeff Bezos plans for the future of publishing.
Joe is a publisher with O’Reilly Media Inc so he has an interest in the changing face of publishing...The italics are quotes from the article in Fast Company.

Here is a snippit.

Jeff Bezos is trying to do to book publishers what Steve Jobs of Apple did to the music industry. With its iPod and iTunes Store, Apple carved out a largely virgin market so fast that it was able to wrest control of the digital-music distribution system and thus dictate what the record labels could do.

I've occasionally been concerned about this but I'm not sure there's much to fear after all. I'm seeing more and more e-storefronts popping up every week and even though the Kindle is pretty popular it hasn't been the runaway success the original iPod was. Even the iPhone itself is a worthy competitor to the Kindle. Ironically enough, I think it's when Amazon fully opens the Kindle platform that we'll have to worry the most about this. That will probably have to happen at some point, but Amazon doesn't seem to be in any hurry, so relax...for now.

Should that happen, book publishers would have more to fear than just being squeezed. Amazon could phase them out completely, treating them as the ultimate middlemen orphaned by a new technology.

Forget about Amazon. Any publisher that isn't already worried about this in general is asleep at the wheel. With all the great self-publishing services out there and the ever-growing importance of social media and author platform it's crucial for all publishers to determine the value they add to the ecosystem.

In some ways, book publishing operates like one of Joseph Stalin's five-year plans.

This statement made me laugh out loud. Literally. It's painful to admit but true that some publishers still try to lay out 3- and 5-year financial plans. This, in an industry where most have had a hard time coming close to their latest annual and even quarterly forecasts. Ugh.

Read the whole article...it’s interesting...thought provoking and will give you a heads up to the future....which with the speed of the digital revolution will be here next year....after all blogs are more than five years old...twitter has just had its third birthday...
Joe is optimistic and thinks there will be great benefits for authors... coming soon....

The other thing to catch my eye is a comment by Seth Godin on Social Media. Do you need twitter and face book etc? And before you think oh sure, yeah, I know what he will say....watch the one minute video...he doesn’t think they are all that useful but something else is...



As the great Jane says

"the strength of your relationships is essential to getting ahead, which means having a network of people who like you and/or trust you."

Go out there and enable each other...

maureen

pic is from http://www.mybigcareer.com/?p=22

1000 reasons to read this post.....

This week having pushed the kids out the door back to school...I tried to turn my attention back to the WIP. Which one tho...well both...also conference fine tuning is happening as well, so as usual the hours fly by.

For the revision of Craic I came across a great little list, The best checklist around on revision. posted on Agent Nathan Bransford’s blog. Nathan works out of the San Francisco office of Curtis Brown, Fiona Inglis from Curtis Brown, Australia will be our guest at Spinning Gold.

Some of the list Nathan has posted

- Does the main plot arc initiate close enough to the beginning that you won't lose the reader?- Does your protagonist alternate between up and down moments, with the most intense towards the end?- Are you able to trace the major plot arcs throughout the book? Do they have up and down moments?- Do you have enough conflict- Does the reader see both the best and worst characteristics of your main characters?

So after cogitating on the list and thinking about Craic, My thoughts turned to Mars and what’s happening up there.

Poor Spirit has been stuck in a sand dune since May. There is a movement on Earth called Free Spirit following the tribulations and talking about how to free the little guy. NASA has created a website called Free Spirit where you can follow the team on Earth recreate the problem on Earth and work to fix it.

I have also come across a website called alltop.com which does a search by subject for the latest research on any subject. Absolutely brilliant if you want to become an instant expert on any topic for research purposes.

This week I came across one of the most thought provoking posts I have come across in a long time, 1000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly.

Kevin says that the true creative needs only 1000 True Fans to make a living...he sees it as a better fit than The Long Tail by Chris Anderson.

Here is a small taste of what Kevin is talking about but I really recommend that you go and read the whole post...It gives such food for thought to a creative in business...and isn’t that what we all are?

Other than aim for a blockbuster hit, what can an artist do to escape the long tail?
One solution is to find 1,000 True Fans. While some artists have discovered this path without calling it that, I think it is worth trying to formalize. The gist of 1,000 True Fans can be stated simply:
A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.
A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can't wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.

and from the 'Yeah Right' Box, the following video....
enjoy
maureen

Feeding Flu...

I have been learning about RSS feeds and Google Reader.

Yeah I’m slow, but remember the purpose of this blog is learning about marketing and the web and what’s out there for authors. So I am learning in public as it were.

As I stumble around I find all sorts of interesting things. Sometimes I link to them in a blog post or put them in my cool websites list. Elizabeth Pulford is my latest add and what a cool little site this is...

Sometimes I overwhelm myself with new information...it could be delaying tactics on my part tho. (I am rewriting, Fleur... slowly.)

This week has been the Flu week.(excuses excuses)

Wellington has a third of the swine flu cases in NZ at the moment and schools are recording a lot of absentees. Middle child came down with the flu this week. The speed of it was alarming.

Treat the symptoms. Isolate. Also wash your hands after every thing... That’s all the ministry of health can tell you. So we don’t know if it is swine but you take no chances....as you can’t go anywhere to confirm it.

The baby is happy and healthy and sleeping in our room...that means we are grumpy and sleep deprived. The middle child has thrown up over three beds so far... missing the buckets, bowls and towels...
The eldest has lurched from room to bathroom to room to fridge to room for the last two days, coughing...but had to go to school to sit an internal and go to work tonight...She just has a heavy cold...It’s not the flu as she doesn’t have all the other symptoms...(we hope)
Meanwhile husband is working from home.(just in case)

So before it all went flu shaped I was finally investigating Google reader...a nifty invention by Google designed like your personal magazine with articles that you want to read because you have subscribed to the RSS feed of that site.
Updates are collected in the Reader which looks like an inbox and you can just scroll down and have a look.
If you have a gmail address just go to the top and click on Reader...

The two sites I have subscribed to this week are
Kidlit.com...because I found their post ‘The pros and cons of going to writing conferences’ very good reading...( go and have a look if you are thinking about it in the future or you are coming to Spinning Gold.)

And Author Tech because it had a great post on a survey done about what readers want to see on an author website....

We have posted a question on the Spinning Gold website writers and illustrators pages about the best books on their craft that they would recommend to others. We have a chance to locate the books and arrange to have them for sale at the conference.

If you are coming to the conference jump on over to the website and add your favourite to the list. If you aren’t joining us but you think there is a must have, that should be there, feel free to jump on over to the website and add it.

maureen -staying healthy....

pic is fromhttp://openedweb.com/blog/tag/plugins/

Doing The Numbers By The Book...

This week I have been thinking about books...writing them... collecting them...reading them...re reading them...analysing them...stacking them...searching for them...paying library fines.

It started when I had to accept and face my fears as a writer of midgrade fiction.

Emotion.

I have a huge block when writing any scene which might get anywhere near a wallow in emotion. So having faced up to my fear, I have been reworking scenes in my Craic MS and trying to let myself go a bit....(thanks Fleur for the verbal beating around the head...honestly...apparently it’s because I’m a nine...we are the peacemakers.)

I talked to my brother a few days ago about wonderful childhood books that we both want to collect, (The Martin Falconer series By John Harris) but they are out of print...I found a link to abebooks and $60 later I have ordered four (only one in the series tho. Dang.) They are a treat for me which I won’t get until close to the conference (taking my mind off it as we go to the wire) but never mind....maybe I will have sold something by then to pay for them. (haha)

While I have been delving into the world of revision I came across this Susan Meier short version of what looks like a brilliant (online) writing revision course.

Susan Meier is a top notch Harlequin writer and Five Scribes Blog is a great reading resource. Here is a little taste of the interview with Susan....(yep My poor MS suffered from not enough No.2...however it is a great story...apparently.)

There are seven common reasons books get rejected:

1. Doesn’t fit our line/Isn’t right for the publisher to which it was submitted
2. Not enough emotion (too much emotion/romance if it’s going mainstream or single title)
3. Pacing off/bad
4. Tone wrong
5. Bad characters (FOR A MULTIPLICITY OF REASONS)
6. No conflict/weak conflict
7. Weak story

Unfortunately, those are only symptoms of what’s wrong with your book. Think of going to the doctor. You go in. You say, I have a fever, body aches and I’m throwing up. He doesn’t say, “Oh! You have fever, body-aches and puke disease.” He says, “You have a virus.”

That’s one of the most important things about figuring out what’s wrong with your book. Most of us deal in symptoms and forget the disease. So what does a book “disease” look like?

So jumping back from the seven reasons to rejection I came across an article by Jonathan Crossfield on the power of three (set up, repeat, payoff)...which I have always believed - fairytales are stuffed full of this. This article looks at rhythm in writing and although it’s familiar territory you can always reread it and get something out of it for your own work in progress...or even the revision...

Finally Maria Schnieder has a great post on painless self promotion...

Baaaaawwwwwwkkkk. Why Are Kiwis so self effacing...It’s not like it’s a bad thing... Maureen, slightly freaking out at the thought of it. So... I’m supposed to show people a sample of my writing...Ok....here goes....

New revised opening paragraph of Craic...

Tressa crumpled up the shrinks latest letter of positivity. La. La. Heard it all before. Tried it all before. Got the tee shirt....
Yeah, shrieked her inner voice, it has trouble magnet coward printed all over it.
Tressa pushed down the voice and counted to ten and then twenty slowly while thinking about books (not hard) beautiful colours (shades of happy red and yellow) and yummy food (peanut butter with cheese on toast.) She turned on the computer and looked at her in-box.
School.
School.
Sonnie. She opened that email first.
Her fantasy life with her overseas email pen friend was always better than school.

maureen

This post didn't start out about numbers but as I read through it I have only missed out two numbers...

pic is a set of funky numbers

Going Tribal

I have been intrigued lately with people referring to themselves as members of a tribe overseas.

The term seems to be gathering momentum as a convenient way to describe a social network group. This week the international forum group I belong to had a member create a twitter account calling us a tribe. (actually twibe...oh yuck...)

Is the world becoming so small that we need new ways of identifying each other...?

Of course here in New Zealand we have a closer identity with tribes and the implications of tribal alliances, wars.... etc, as our history is so much younger. Although that said, I’m affiliated to the Old Worlds, McKenzie tribe of the Scottish Highlands and the Davin tribe of the Irish West Country...grew up in the tribal lands of the Tuhoe and am now in the Fighting Bookworm Tribe...its a group of people that hang out in the Children’s Book Insider Clubhouse.

I belong to the Catholic tribe...the Wellington Children’s Book tribe...and probably a few more I haven’t recognised...

For those people in my tribe who might be interested. Online voting for the Montana Book Awards has opened here and you can go and vote for one of our tribal brethren to win the Peoples choice.

My marketing friend, Justin, sent me a great link to a post from Jon Dale (Agent of Change) about How to save the Publishing Industry....

We should be tribal...

Johanna Knox has her new blog up and running and there is an interesting interview with two priestess’ of the Spinning Gold Tribe....Go have a look if you have ever wondered why I only post once a week. (I’m being tribal...)

maureen

if you google search image tribal you come up with the most amazing tattoos...

I have a life?

“I have been wondering why my life has been so manic lately?”
“Like duh!” says a school mum, as we watch our respective kids hanging upside down. “Look at what you’re doing...you are choosing to have a life...if you didn’t have a life..it would be a lot less stressful.“

I have to say she is right...oh well, putting up with the stress...Thursday blog day rolls around and I am feeling slightly more productive than usual. Tax done...Yippee. Church work done...Thank God.

Interview questions answered....Fellow blogger Johanna Knox wanted to interview the convenors of the Spinning Gold conference. (I wonder who they are....?)

I have been catching up on my scientific reading...

We even got away for a little holiday over the long weekend...It was a wrench leaving the computer, the phone, and all the requests for a little bit of our time...not .

But there are a pile of things to do here and this blog will never get written if I run around noticing them like the back yard which is still covered with debris from the last storm, the big tree in the back yard needs three broken branches removed but I’m not looking....not looking...and the husband doesn’t see them in the dark which is the only time he see’s the back yard....

So a couple of links for you today...It is nice to receive positive comments from friends who say my links are great and they pass them on to others...

Book Expo America is over for another year. The Writers Digest conference the day before had the usual accolades...

Janet Reid has written an extra ordinary post about a session where she received fifteen pitches in public on a stage in front of 500 people. And critiqued each one as a learning tool for the audience...Reading the comments of people in the audience witnessing fifteen people with the courage to put themselves out there to do it, is amazing...

And here is something to contemplate about e publishing from Mike Shatzkin of Idealog.

Complicating things further is an entirely different sort of offer coming up from Google. Everybody else, whatever the differences (and there are many!), is selling you a downloadable ebook file which you “own”. Google is selling you access to a file which they will stream to you. What’s the difference? Two big ones.
* When you close your web browser, you no longer have the book.
* Because of that, any concern about piracy goes away. If you can’t grab the file, you can’t “share” it.
This is game-changing in a very dramatic way. If you’re reading on a web browser, then there are no format issues. And if you don’t have the whole file, there are no piracy issues.

These ideas were discussed at Book Expo... a wake up call for the industry who thought book trailers on YouTube were the latest things in e publishing...

Of course the conference work keeps going and going...with two more blogs to manage as well as meeting agendas to prepare for...
I got a couple of rejections in the mail... life goes on...same old... same old...

That’s why I have a life....

maureen

Pic is from the website career realism...