writer

Christmas Gifts for Writers

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A Google search for gifts for writers(or photographers or gardeners) and out comes a list of blogs to newspapers, all advising what to buy. I noticed that only one or two items on each list interested me, so I’ve put together my own. Some are expensive, some not.

1) A writers’ retreat. My favourites are the Writescape retreats organized by Ruth Walker and Gwynne Scheltema. Find them at http://writescape.ca/writescape.

2) Scrivener, a superb writing programme from the folks at Literature and Latte. http://literatureandlatte.com. I’ve been using this gem through two books now and couldn’t do without out. It replaces everything from research notes on random bits of paper to character biographies kept in notebooks without a search function. It   allows the generation of a rudimentary plot synopsis and a virtual corkboard on which scenes can be repositioned. I could go on and on, but try it for a month. Now available for Windows.

3) Pens: To record those thoughts that would other wise be lost. I like Staples Optiflow: ca709364grp_1_std

 

 

 

 

 

 

4) Books on writing: I love to read books about writing. Writers Digest has a good selection, but there are others:

1. Stephen King, On Writing

2.David Morell: Lessons for a Lifetime of Writing

3.William Brohaugh: Write Tight

4. P. D. James: Talking About Detective Fiction

5. Sol Stein: On Writing

6. Jack Hodgins; a Passion for Narrative

5) A Kindle: Writers need to read everywhere and a Kindle is handy on the subway, in a bus, on that trip to  Europe.

7) Coffee maker, coffee mugs, coffee.

8) A web design package, perhaps from Linda Lyall who did Louise Penny’s http://www.louisepenny.com

9) A smart phone with a camera, because you never know when the perfect scene to jumpstart your imagination will pop up in front of you. (The phone is always in your pocket, unlike your SLR)

10) Time, uninterrupted. If she has children, offer to babysit. If she needs a day away, offer your cottage, or pay for one day in a lovely B&B. I like the Gardener’s Cottage near Elora. http://gardenerscottage.ca

Publishing and still more waiting.

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The printer finally shipped a book to me. A book, not my book, so I’m back to waiting. Strange business, publishing.
While I’ve been waiting, I’m polishing another novel, and have it almost ready to go. It is set in Toronto, with side trips to Rome, Venice, Florence and Dubrovnik. A lot of fun to write. It’s working title is HIDDEN.
I’ve started planning another, which occupies my thoughts much of the day. This one will require more research, especially into the world of art restoration.

Sakineh Ashtiani still sits in that Iranian jail, awaiting her stoning sentence to be carried out. Latest news is at this link:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/d5bpwvs

Publishing and waiting cont.

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I heard from the publisher a couple of days ago, well, two, that  No Motive for Murder, the proof copy is on its way to me. Now the waiting depends on the USA post office, Canada Post and customs.

In the meantime, I’m working on the press release and trying to solve a strange problem. For some reason, Word for Mac can’t connect with Amazon from a hyperlink in a document. It connects with Barnes&Nobel, my local bookstore, the publisher, but not Amazon.

I joined a site called Blogtour.org which puts together bloggers and people who want to promote  a book. Kersten L. Kelly is touring for her new book Ec*o*nom*ics: A Simple Twist on Normalcy. I’ll be hosting her on Sept. 5/2012 for a guest post and an author interview.

Publishing a novel

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I’ve been away from the blog for two weeks or so, correcting proofs of my latest book in the Dangerous Journeys  Series. When the manuscript is finished and sent to the publisher, in my case electronically, time passes, and then it is returned, or at least the files are, downloaded to some vast internet cloud, and then to me. Line by line, error by error, recorded first on legal pads and then into Excel, and finally it is ready to return to the publisher. The process repeats itself, she corrects, then I correct again, and finally we both agree that we can find no more errors, omissions or outright howlers. After that, I wait, and wait and wait, while mysterious manipulations go on to convert the files to e-book format and prepare for the paper press as well.

In the meantime, I write and then of course, rewrite, a press release, find multiple free services that could disperse the press release across the internet, and read books about marketing and the importance of an author platform. So  I sign up for twitter, post more books at Goodreads, expand my Linkedin network and ask friends and relatives to post my press release when the book is ready. And then I wait some more. A problem with the files at the printer, I’m told, is delaying the appearance of NO MOTIVE FOR MURDER.

I  return to writing, now a rewrite of a book that has been hanging around in a virtual drawer. It was fun to write and now even in rewrite, mostly because of the settings, besides Toronto, my protagonist travels to Rome and Venice, Bari and Dubrovnik.

I’m still waiting.

Marketing for writers, cont.

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http://preview.tinyurl.com/cldz5s5 

This link takes you to a Globe and Mail article this morning about publishing and marketing. The writer interviews Martin Crosbie, author of  My Temporary Life, an e-book, self-published megahit. He offers 10 pieces of advice here.

Number 4 talks about that promotional tool peculiar to the e-publishing industry, the freebie, or how to make money by giving goods away. He says the rule-of-thumb is: for every one you give away, you make one sale, so lots of freebies equals lots of sales, and moves you up on the Amazon ranking, which also means more sales.

Number 3 discusses the self-publishing programme at Kindle, and especially its lending programme, something new to me. When did Amazon become a library of sorts?

Beverly Akerman, author of the article and of  The Meaning of Children, listed in the top ten for the Giller People’s Choice award, chose to keep her electronic rights and  self-publish the e-book version on Kindle.

My latest novel, No Motive for Murder, the third in the Dangerous Journeys series, is at the publisher. Marketing is now a huge part of the author’s responsibility, although I’m fortunate that Write Words Inc. handles all the nuts and bolts of production and distribution. Coming from a profession in which the clients found me(Pediatrics), I’m struggling to learn this marketing business.

Marketing for Writers

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I’ve just posted a new link on my blog to The Creative Penn http://www.thecreativepenn.com/, a blog by Joanna Penn, an Australian writer, whose blog was voted one of the top ten for writers in 2011. Her online, free course titled Author2.0 details the myriad ways an author can promote herself and her writing, and make some money along the way.

She has also posted a video introduction to the course, available here: http://bit.ly/DjL1M. Joanne is an engaging and enthusiastic speaker, who manages to make the online and offline marketing world clearer.

The development of a blog, a website, a facebook page, a twitter account, a linkedin presence etc and so on is daunting, but Joanne makes it all seem possible.

I’ve just sent off Book 3 of my Dangerous Journeys series, entitled No Motive for Murder and set in modern-day Bermuda, but as in all Anne McPhail’s adventures with perilous links to the past, to the publisher. I’ll keep progress detailed here.

In the meantime, below are the links to Anne’s first two journeys.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/7antbxm Write Words Inc.com
http://preview.tinyurl.com/7wdtnwu My Amazon.com page

Writers’ Retreat: Spring Thaw

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I just spent a lovely, productive weekend at Spring Thaw, a retreat organized and facilitated by Ruth E. Walker and Gwyn Scheltema of Writescape.

The Venue: Elmhirst Resort on Rice Lake near Keene, Ontario. http://elmhirst.ca, a comfortable old resort complete with separate cottages, a salt-water pool, a work-out room and a masseuse with “magic fingers”( so I am reliably informed}

We had two dinners and a fabulous brunch, the latter worth the drive. Elmhirst has a deserved reputation for its expansive dessert table.

Ruth and Gwynn generously catered the rest of our meals in their cottage where the conversation ranged from the progress of the writing, to the business of publishing to the merits of George Clooney as an actor.

They gave us unfettered time to write and think and walk, talk if we chose, to other writers, or silence to listen to the lake and the birds.

Each of them blue-pencilled ten pages of work for each of us and one-on-one, invaluable sessions that combined encouragement and critique.

The other writers: a range from the never-published to the soon-to-be published to those making a living by their pen. The most extraordinary voices emerged from unexpected people.

This was my second retreat with Ruth and Gwynn. It won’t be my last.

Sunday

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The myth of Tory economic performance – The Globe and Mail.

Check out Lawrence Martin’s assessment of the Harper record. The out-of-control cuts and spending left us with a deficit where there had been a surplus. Martin puts it all together in this fine article. Politics is ever the same. The politicians “spin”, trying to convince us that up is down, black is white and guys who denied the economic downturn in ’08 are somehow our saviours in ’12.

Writing: I’m working on book three in my Dangerous Journey’s series. Anne is in Bermuda this time, fending off a police detective who thinks that Anne is a killer, and a killer who thinks she’s a nuisance that needs to be eliminated. I hope to be finished by the end of March, so watch for it next fall. Title, as always, pending.

Reading; I finished The Hare with the Amber Eyes, by Edmund de Waal. De Waal writes the biography of his family’s collection of netsuke and through it a memoir of his family of Russian Jewish bankers and their sad fate at the hands of Austrian Nazis. A fascinating and moving story, and a very good read.

Writers’ Retreat/Turning Leaves

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i spent the weekend at a writers’ retreat—Turning Leaves—at the Fern Resort on beautiful Lake Couchiching. Writescape, a joint enterprise of Ruth E. Walker and Gwynn Scheltema who produced the event and taught. http://writescape.ca/writescape/

The resort itself is old, turn of the nineteenth century old, but with modern amenities, at least in the section we inhabited. The spacious room assigned to me overlooked the long breakwater out into the lake, and the ducks and geese that lived within the calm waters. It faced west, with glorious sunsets.

I have stayed in resorts that promised a fireplace in every room, only to be disappointed by the ersatz fire with its electrically-produced flames. Not this time. A genuine log-burning fireplace, with supplied artificial(and therefore easily started) logs.

Otherwise—clean, comfortable, spacious. My only quibble concerned the lack of electrical outlets for my various electronic devices. I solved that one by unplugging the clock, substituting my phone. It has a reliable alarm clock!

We met in the same building which provided a boardroom and a spacious living room(yet another fireplace), supplied with coffee, tea, juices, snacks, comfortable chairs and good lighting.

The package included three meals a day which were delicious and generous. My only complaint would be that the distance from the kitchen to our small dining room meant some dishes arrived, not cool but not hot either.

Poet and author Jonathan Bennett filled in at last minute for a scheduled guest speaker Barry Dempster. He spoke on point of view, a subject I find very interesting as was the discussion that followed. He also read some of his own work, including his award-winning poetry and answered questions about the writing life.

What else—free writing time, lots of it; workshops which we could attend, or not; discussions at meal times with other writers; the privilege of talking with Gwynn and Ruth.

Writescape. What a resource for writers.

Off to Spain

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I have been watching a lecture series on DVD, produced by The Teaching Company, taught by Professor Brooks Landon of the University of Iowa,  entitled Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft. This is my first exposure to a university level course in writing, although I have taken other on-line practical writing courses and attended workshops, and read books on the subject, all practical, none with the in-depth discussion of the sentence as an art form, not considering just its function, but the way in which phrases and clauses, vowels and consonants play against and with each other. I’m enjoying this series, although some of the concepts are so new to me, that I will watch it a second time, take notes, do the exercises and explore at greater length some of the concepts, as well, I might add, as learning the new vocabulary, not included in the language I learned in medical school. It seems a practical course in many ways and it is great fun.

Sakineh: She’s still in that prison. I see that the Iranians have accepted five hundred thousand dollars as the price of an American woman accused of spying and released this week. Some people in Oman arranged it, so we are told. I wonder what it would cost to buy the freedom of Sakineh and the others.

Spain: I’ve spent the last few months trying to learn some Spanish, using the course supplied by RosettaStone, enough to be polite, and not assume that everyone that I meet speaks English. I did the same with Italian several years ago, finding that it took at least two years to gain enough language to communicate a little. It becomes more difficult as I get older, or so it seems. We’re leaving shortly, so this will be my last posting for a while, unless I have access to a computer somewhere along the way.