CBW-LA Blog

Rave Review from Story Sprouts Alumna Caitlin Hernandez

Alana Garrigues — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 23:00:00 GMT

Ed. Note: This review comes from Story Sprouts Caitlin Hernandez. Caitlin attended the Story Sprouts Writing Day Marathon in 2015. You may recognize her talent from reading her Titanic scene in our Kayla Wayman collaborative novel. She will also appear in the forthcoming resource and anthology, Story Sprouts: Setting.

Caitlin is a published writer, a teacher, an advocate, an activist, a singer, an actress, and an all-around incredible person. She wrote this review in 2015. Since then, she has finished grad school and is now a full-time teacher. She has given us permission to share her thoughts.

We are so thankful to Caitlin for her kind review, and look forward to the day she attends her next Writing Day Marathon. Caitlin lives in the Bay Area. Likely obvious in the review, but possibly worth noting: Caitlin is blind.

Story Sprouts Review

by Caitlin Hernandez

Though I've always loved to read and write, my path to literature has never been a typical one. When I was growing up, producing Braille was so costly and time-consuming, and required so much expertise, that professionals were quick to advocate audiobooks instead.

I fell in love with Braille at three years old and mastered its myriad of rules and shortcuts by six. Though I loved being read to, I longed, constantly, to hear characters' voices in my head as the story took shape beneath my fingertips. Try though my parents and teachers indisputably did, I never had enough Braille books to keep me happy.

These days, as I work towards my masters degree in special education, I'm able to write essays, read textbooks, and download assignments, supplemental materials, and novels with my Braille notetaker. But though translating between Braille and print is simple, low-quality scans, cluttered, image-heavy page layouts, and professors' busy schedules often mean that having Braille on hand at all times isn't always possible. In a pinch, I grudgingly fall back on the standbys of my school days: asking classmates to read the board and explain charts, taking notes on oral presentations rather than muddling through the PowerPoints, and, essentially, listening more than reading.

* * *

In the summer of 2013, CRE Outreach, a Los Angeles nonprofit which hosts the only all-blind acting troupe in the country, produced a short musical for which I wrote story, script, music, and lyrics. Bryan Caldwell, one of CRE's founding board members, not only acted alongside me in the show as my character's father, but found in me a kindred writer spirit. One day, before a rehearsal, he handed me a draft of his middle-grade novel on a thumb drive, so I could translate it into Braille. When I returned home to northern California after the musical closed, I recorded myself reading my latest middle-grade novel, so he could listen while he commuted to work. He and I called and texted constantly, sharing comments, critiques, and general excitement about one another's progress. I'd never known anyone who wrote young-adult and middle-grade prose as enthusiastically and copiously as I did, whose narration and voice already had the honest authenticity I was striving to create in my own characters.

Bryan attended Story Sprouts in 2014 and encouraged me to come to L.A. for the 2015 session. The conference itself exceeded my already-high expectations. Though I'm always more than happy to answer people's questions about Braille, blindness, and how I do things, I was delighted, that day, to simply be one writer among many. My handouts—every single one of them—had been meticulously organized on a thumb drive beforehand by Alana and Nutschell. Thus, I was easily able to follow along with everything, from lectures to written examples to the activities themselves. Bryan, always an intuitive, inconspicuous ally, sat beside me in case I ran into trouble. None of the others knew me, but everyone warmly and readily welcomed my contributions to the collective. Alana and Nutschell had even added a special, sensory-centered aspect to our final activity in my honor.

When the long, pleasantly exhausting day of writing drew to a close, I realized that I'd never before experienced an event quite like this one. Everything had run smoothly. My access needs had been met completely and graciously, and with much more sensitivity and attention to detail than I was used to. The other writers had all been kind, understanding, and unfazed by my blindness. Perhaps most importantly, rather than spending all my energy fighting to be included, I, like my sighted peers, had simply been able to sit back, learn, and enjoy.

2015 Kickstart Your Writing Career Workshop (Blog Summary)

Peleise — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 08:00:00 GMT

Every year many aspiring writers resolve to write that story they've been carrying within them for years. And every year they ask themselves “Where do I start?”

Here at Children's Book Writers of Los Angeles we understand that ALL writers need inspiration and industry information. After all, we are writers too! That's why we kickoff each year by hosting an annual Kickstart Your Writing Career Workshop (presented by CBW-LA President, Nutschell Windsor).

This year's Kickstart Your Writing Career Workshop was held on Saturday, January 10, 2015 at El Segundo Public Library. Attendees received a packet chock-full of handouts and worksheets to rev up their creative engines. The workshop covered A LOT of information that can’t fit on here but you can get a peek below at some of the highlights.

Reflecting on Fear

Everyone has fears and writers are no exception. It’s not uncommon for a writer to wonder if they’re good enough, if they have what it takes or if they will ever be published. It begs the question, “How do you deal with it?”

Nutschell presented two definitions of F-E-A-R for perspective.

Forget Everything And Run

Face Everything And Rise

Nutschell then gave writers time to quietly reflect on their fears by naming them and facing them. Naming a fear enables you to reduce its power and work through it.

Nutschell then gave writers time to quietly reflect on their writing fears by naming them and facing them. Naming a fear enables you to reduce its power and work through it.

Here are some of the questions participants were given (which you can reflect on as well):

What is preventing you from having a writing career?

What doubts do you have about yourself as writer?

What are your worst writing fears?

Why does writing make you happy? What are the joys of writing?

Pathways to Publications

Publication is every writer’s dream. Thanks to advances in technology there are more options to get your words in front of an audience each with their own pros and cons.

Traditional publishing is the Emerald City destination for a writer. While it is the most arduous of all publishing pathways, many authors feel that it lends credibility to their work when printed by a publishing house. Another perk of traditional publishing is that there is a team of people (e.g. editors, cover art designers, marketers, etc.) that handle the business side of writing. This route may be ideal for the author who wants to focus on writing.

Self-publishing is the fast track to getting your story published. While it may carry a stigma within the publishing industry, many authors have found it lucrative because of its author royalty (Amazon authors get 70%!). The challenge is that authors may invest a lot of their money or time into the business side. This route may be ideal for the author who wants full-control of their book.

Community publishing has socialized writing. Websites like Wattpad give authors an entire community of readers who can read, comment and share the author’s story. It’s a viable way for a writer to gain readership before publishing via self-publishing or traditional publishing.

Commitment to Write Contract

Your writing dreams need your commitment! Writers were given a contract template on which they handwrote the following commitment to themselves and their writing dreams:

I am a writer.

I will commit time and patience into achieving my writing goals.

This year, my biggest writing goals are: (list goals)

I will do everything in my power to have the writing future I envision.

I will become an author.

Writers signed and dated their commitment contracts and had fellow attendees witness these contracts. It turned into an encouraging meet-and-greet where writers wished each other well on their goals and writing dreams. This concluded the 2015 Kickstart Your Writing Career Workshop on a high note.

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If you missed the Kickstart workshop, don’t fret! Check out our events page for a listing of upcoming workshops and critique sessions: http://cbw-la.org/events

We’d love to connect with you so please:

LIKE our Facebook Page

JOIN our Facebook group

AND feel free to leave a comment below!

March 29, 2014 (56th CBW-LA Workshop): Novel Writing Bootcamp

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sat, 29 Mar 2014 20:40:44 GMT

Last March 29, 2014, I facilitated CBW-LA’s Novel Writing Bootcamp.

In our three hour workshop, I covered the following topics:

I. Introduction

II. Preparing to Write your Novel

III. Introduction to the Elements of Fiction

IV. Elements of Fiction: Character

V. Elements of Fiction: Setting

VI. Elements of Fiction: Plot

CBW-LA Stationer (Publications Editor) Alana Garrigues manning the Registration Booth

For the lecture I developed my own way of classifying the Elements of Fiction. I divided each element of Fiction into three levels according their function within a story.

Today, I thought I’d share with you a short version of my lecture on the Introduction to the Elements of Fiction.

Nutschell’s 3 Levels of the Elements of Fiction (or How a Story Sprouts)

Abstract concepts are best explained through the use of concrete images, so in the case of story, I’ll be using the analogy of a tree.

Just as a tree needs three major things for it to grow, so too does a story need three major levels to develop.

LEVEL 1: THE BASIC ELEMENTS OF FICTION (SEED)

Most life forms begin from a seed. A seed contains all the ingredients for creating life. But it needs a place and opportunity for it to develop.

The seeds of fiction are contained in its 3 basic elements:

1. Character

2. Plot

3. Setting

Whether you’re writing a novel or a newspaper article, there are 6 basic questions you need to answer:

Who?
What?
Where?
When?
Why?
How?

In order for you to answer these questions in a work of fiction, you need 3 Basic Elements:

1. CHARACTER = WHO AND WHY

Who is the main character of the story?
Why does the protagonist respond to the event in a certain way? (character motivation)

2. PLOT = WHAT AND HOW

What is the story about?
How does the story unfold?

3. SETTING = WHERE AND WHEN

Where does the story take place?
When does the story take place?

Once you have Character, Plot and Setting, you’ve answered the six most basic questions.

The next thing you have to do is to clarify or expound on these basic elements, and you do that using the following elements of fiction:

LEVEL 2: ELEMENTS OF FICTION THAT EXPOUND THE STORY (SOIL)

Your seed may contain the DNA to propagate life, but without soil, it will remain a seed forever. Soil gives your seed a safe place to thrive in, it provides the proper nutrients and energy for it to grow.

In the same regard, your story ideas cannot grow without certain elements of fiction to expound or clarify them.

These elements of fiction move your story forward by clarifying the basic elements you already have.

1. Dialogue – stems from character

2. Point of View (POV)– stems from character

3. Conflict – stems from Plot

4. Mood– stems from setting

5. Tone – stems from character

LEVEL 3: ELEMENTS OF FICTION THAT ADD A LAYER OF MEANING TO THE STORY (WATER)

Soil may supply your seed with nutrients, but without water to transport those nutrients, the seed will simply shrivel up and die.

In the same way, without a layer of meaning, your story will be dry and dull. Meaning adds life to your story, and so do the following elements of fiction:

1. Theme

2. Style

3. Literary Devices (Metaphor, Simile, Hyperbole, etc)

Each element of fiction contributes to the growth of your story. Knowing how each element works, and what role they play within your story, can help you cultivate your novel to its fullest potential.

February 22, 2014: CBW-LA Workshop: Honing Your Middle Grade Voice with Author Kristen Kittscher

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sat, 22 Mar 2014 20:39:44 GMT

Last Saturday, February 22, 2014, CBW-LA was lucky to have middle grade mystery maven Kristen Kittscher, author of WIG IN THE WINDOW as its speaker.

After a short introduction (in which I struggled to read Kristen’s amazing bio from my smartphone’s tiny screen), Kristen immediately launched into the workshop.

Kristen began by reiterating that voice is a personal element, something that cannot be taught, but can be learned through experience. She set the tone of the workshop by inviting participants to actively explore the concept of voice with her. She asked participants to answer two questions:

What do you think is voice?
What are your fears about voice?

Participants gave a variety of responses. Some said voice had to do with perspective, or tone or feeling, others said it had to do with personality or knowing the characters very well, while others said voice is specific to the writer.

They also shared their fears about the concept of voice: having whiny characters or an unreliable narrator, of having to juggle too many voices within the story, and of having too much voice.

Kristen reminded us that despite our many fears, we do not have to worry about voice. She says:

“There is something in a person’s voice that is consistent in the background. You don’t have to worry about that because that’s in you already. It’s like worrying about your fingerprints. We want to demystify this idea that there is something outside of you that you need to learn today. Voice is already in you. This is something that only writing solidifies over time.”

She shared a favorite quote by Neil Gaman:

Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that - but you are the only you.”

undefinedNeil Gaiman

Remembering this, Kristen says, will help us not worry about our fears too much.

“Worrying that the audience won’t like it is kind of like worrying that the people won’t like you, which we deal with on a regular basis over and over again, and that we probably should get over, because we are ourselves.”

Kristen chose excerpts from 6 different middle grade books as samples of the different voices across the middle grade genre. Participants were assigned two excerpts each, and paired off with a partner. Each person read their assigned excerpt and wrote down everything they noticed about the group. Once they were done writing down their observations, each person would turn to their partners and share their discoveries.

A class discussion followed afterward. Kristen wrote down everyone’s observation on the whiteboard and broke each one down for the group. She emphasized that if we put voice outside of ourselves, that’s where the fear comes in:

“Everything has a voice automatically. It’s just what kind of voice is it? Maybe it’s a boring voice that doesn’t grab you.”

Kristen shared some fun exercises to further illustrate voice.

A few participants shared their fun pieces, and some had the class rolling with laughter.

One of the things Kristen taught was the group was that one of the things that middle grade writers should be wary of, is using adult comparisons to describe an object.

To put participants back in the middle grade mindset, Kristen asked them to call out some memories from their childhood. A freewrite followed immediately afterward where participants wrote about a childhood memory. One tip Kristen gave in case participants got stuck was to write “I remember…” and finish the sentence with a childhood memory.

Towards the end of the workshop, Kristen shared her own personal journey to publication, along with tips and techniques on how to develop voice.

Here are a few of Kristen’s most inspiring thoughts:

“One of the most important things you need to do to get back to voice, is to not criticize yourself yet. Don’t look analytically at anything. When you’re feeling stuckundefinedthe beauty of writing is that nobody’s there in your room and nobody’s gonna see it. The other thing is that you don’t have a finite amount of material in you and it’s over. You can keep going and keep creating things. “

“A lot of people ask me how long did it take to write your book, and I don’t think I know the answer to that question. Because I would remember coming up with that idea, and then I took up golf, and then I played with my puppy and hung out with my friends. I feel like we call it time, we talk about having time, but writing has nothing to do with time (although it does take time). But we are making choices all the time about how to use it, and most of the time we’re worried. It has more to do with fear….It probably would have taken me nine months if I hadn’t wasted so much time. But I don’t like to think about it as wasting, but some of it was that I wasn’t in the right mindset. And the way to get yourself in the right mindset is to just practice over and over again, have rituals and just keep writing and keep on doing these exercises…”

“I like giving a voice to kids, giving them fancy words, because their emotions are bigger than what they can express. Part of what we’re doing in writing for children is giving names to things, and to do it in the way that it captures that wonder or excitement or confusion, but helping them give a name to it.”

“Kids see complexity, too. Even if the language is simple like in Linda Irvin’s Hound Dog True, the language is simple but the feeling behind it isn’t simple at all. If you can tap into those emotions and feelings, you’re never going to be out of date…Just take the things that you remember and find the equivalent. Like if you remember using blackboards, ask kids what they use nowadaysundefinedmaybe a smart board with wires…”

The workshop ended with a Q & A, and a book signing session immediately followed. We even had a short photo shoot so we could have a souvenir of our fun workshop.

All the participants came away inspired and ready to write, thanks to Kristen’s wonderful workshop.

January 11, 2014 (54th CBW-LA Meetup): Kickstarting Your Writing Career Workshop

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sat, 11 Jan 2014 16:18:38 GMT

CBW-LA’s third Kickstarting Your Writing Career Workshop last January 11^th, 2014, was divided into five parts:

I. Reflection: Where Are You on the Write Path?

II. Reflection: What Do You See at the End of the Write Path?

III. Publishing 101

IV. Tools to Kickstart Your Writing Career

V. Making a Commitment to Your Writing Career.

In Part 1, participants were asked to reflect on their writing past and present. They had to answer the following questions:

Who are you?
What kind of writer are you?
When did your writing journey begin?

In Part 2, the following questions challenged participants to look ahead into their writing futures:

Why do you want to be a writer?
Where do you want your writing to take you?
How will you achieve the kind of writing career you want?

In order to achieve their writing dreams, participants first had to come face to face with publishing reality.

In the third part of the workshop, they were introduced to the publishing process and the key paths to publication: Traditional Publishing, Self-Publishing and Other publishing options such as In-Progress publishing, Blogs and Websites, Fanfiction and Crowdfunding.

In Part 4 of the workshop, participants were given a list of tools to kickstart their writing careers. Worksheets also helped participants develop their mission-vision, as well as list down their writing goals. They were given templates to help them get started on a five-year writing career plan, as well as templates to get their schedules and goals organized.

With the many publishing options now available, all writers need to do is to figure out what kind of writing career they desire, and commit to it.

The final portion of the workshop encouraged participants to take their writing dreams seriously by fully committing to it. Committing to being a writer means keeping true to the “write” path and keeping the promises they’ve made to themselves. These promises can be as simple as finishing a draft or trying their best to get published.

Workshop participants wrote the following words down as part of their personal writing contract:

I am a writer.

I will commit time and patience into achieving my writing goals.

This year, my biggest writing goals are:

List down your biggest goal/s for each role you plan to fulfill: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur

I will do everything in my power to have the writing future I envision.

I will become an author.

Once they’d written the words, they signed and dated their writing contract and asked fellow attendees to sign as witnesses.

Participants left with tons of handouts, worksheets, templates, a renewed passion for writing, and a sense of how to take their writing to the next level.

September 26, 2013 (50th CBW-LA Meetup): The Write Stuff: A Children’s Book Workshop

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 22:22:10 GMT

Workshop Description:

The Write Stuff:
A Children's Picture Book Workshop

Do you have the right stuff to write children’s books? Have you written a story you’d like to see published? Or are you at the beginning stages of an idea? Need ideas on how to market?

Join Cassandra Black, author and publisher of chapter book Twinkle The Only Firefly Who Couldn't Light Up,third edition, Fun Jokes For Young Folks, and picture book When I Wish Upon for our next meeting where we will explore who you are as a children’s author, why you’re writing children’s books, knowing your target audience and how to market your book in this fun, interactive and informative workshop.

Author Cassandra Black

Speaker's Bio:
Cassandra Black resides in Los Angeles, California where she was born and raised. Cassandra has worked with children ages 5 to 17 for many years in the non-profit sector and loves writing stories for them that reflect their real-life situations. Black began her writing career at age 12 when she wrote stories and articles for a kids’ magazine called “Young People Today.” She was the first writer/reporter for the magazine to score a celebrity interview with then hot television star Todd Bridges from the hit television show, "Different Strokes." Ever since, Cassandra has enjoyed the creative process of writing and the power that words can have. Along with creativity, she holds an Associates Degree in Cinema, a Bachelor’s in Marketing and a Masters in Business Management. Cassandra’s dream is to see Twinkle go world- wide and be made into an animated movie in all languages so that children around the world can enjoy, learn and grow from this story.

Workshop Summary:

Cassandra Black came more than prepared for the workshop. She even brought her own table cloth and posters, as well as giveaways in the form of bookmarks and cute pencils. She explained that her many book signings had taught her to always be ready for author event emergency. The workshop hadn’t even started, and we were learning already.

Cassandra's Set Up

After introducing herself and telling us her about her journey to publication, Cassandra began the workshop by asking us to reflect on some important questions. She explained that in order for us to write the right stories, we must know the answers to these questions by heart.

Why are you writing? Is it a hobby or a future career?

Who are you?

v What are your personal experiences?

v What expertise do you bring to your subject?

v What are you passionate about?

v What is your writing style?

v What is your ultimate goal or dream?

What is your genre?

Who is your audience?

v Who are you writing for?

You?
Your kids?
Your students?
The world?

v What is your demographic?

Age
Location
Home life
Challenges
Appearance

Why your book?

v What sets you apart from other authors?

v What sets your story apart from the others?

Why this story?

v What is your message?

v What do you want the reader to get from it?

v Why should we buy your book?

Author Cassandra Black and CBW-LA

Cassandra encouraged us to really reflect on our answers and to write them down as these are questions that we would be asked over and over again during our careers as writers.

The discussion on audience, genre, and story was punctuated by several creative writing exercises, which Cassandra created. The exercises were designed to help anyone out of a writing slump, and to get a writer’s creative juices flowing.

The first exercise was a madlib game. Each group was broken up into smaller teams, assigned a story to complete. The resulting stories were hilarious and over the top, and definitely helped break the ice.

CBW-LA Attendees playing madlib

The second exercise was equally fun. In our workshop packets, Cassandra had placed a list of random words. The challenge was to use all these words in the order they appeared, to create our own stories. She gave us time to come up with our own tales and had us all share our work. We all came up with completely different stories, no matter how many common words we shared. Cassandra said that this was proof that only we could write the stories we were meant to write.

Having experienced both traditional publishing and self-publishing, Cassandra also shared the pros and cons for each. She answered everyone’s questions patiently and gave some tips on how to find the right illustrator, if we wanted to self-publish.

For the final part of the workshop, Cassandra asked the attendees to pair up for a mock interview. In each workshop packet, Cassandra had placed a list of questions which often come up whenever an author is interviewed. We discovered many talented authors that evening, as each attendee took turns being both radio show host and author interviewee.

CBW-LA Attendees Interviewing Each Other

As usual, each attendee got a copy of the author's workshop as part of their fee. To end the workshop, everyone lined up to get their books signed by Cassandra.

Cassandra was a wonderful speaker, engaging and lively and everyone went home feeling inspired that evening.

August 17 2013 (48th CBW-LA Meetup): Potent World-Making: What’s Myth Got to Do With It?

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sat, 17 Aug 2013 23:33:17 GMT

Workshop Description:

Creating irresistible worlds is the main strategy we have as book writers to compete with entertainment modes that move at the speed of speed. And snagging a young reader’s interest is all about the world you bid them enter, one they will co-create (as we writer’s know, in our civilization’s past, video games were called “imagination”).

Why should they enter the world you’ve made for them? The ancient storytellers –mythmakers dialed in to the art of getting their audience to make the leap...and you can be, too.

Reece Michaelson and Pamela Jaye Smith, authors of THE JOURNALS OF PETRA VOLARE-- SCROLL I: FROM THE SHADOWS, a book with a new archetype for girls, share their ABC’s for creating irresistible worlds for readers.

Learn more about the book here: www.petravolare.com

Read an interview with the authors here: http://www.thewritingnut.com/ramblings/spotlight-week-interview-authors-pamela-jaye-smith-reece-michaelson/

Speakers’ Bios:

Author Reece Michaelson

When Reece Michaelson decided it was time to generate a new archetype for girls, she knew the one person who could help make it fly was Mythworks™ consultant Pamela Jaye Smith. With her considerable background in applied mythology and esoteric teachings, Pamela had provided insights on the mythical underpinnings of an original series idea Reece pitched to noted SciFi scriptwriter/executive director Rockne S. O’Bannon (DEFIANCE, ALIEN NATION, FARSCAPE, SF ONE) which resulted in an irresistible idea that snagged O’Bannon’s interest, and the subsequent pilot script was bought by ABC/Touchstone. As well, having been mentored at NYU by some of the great icon-creators of our time, including Arthur Laurents (WEST SIDE STORY) and Stephen Schwartz (WICKED), Reece could see that Pamela Jaye's sense for combining education with spot-on storytelling would help nail the most iconic aspects of the tale.

Author Pamela Jaye Smith

Pamela Jaye Smith is a writer, international consultant and speaker, and award-winning producer-director with over 30 years in the media industry, from feature films to music videos, commercials to documentaries. She is the author of INNER DRIVES, THE POWER OF THE DARK SIDE, BEYOND THE HERO’S JOURNEY, and SYMBOLS.IMAGES.CODES: The Secret Language of Meaning in Media. As well as in-person classes here and abroad, Pamela teaches online on Mythic Themes, Archetypes, and Symbols for a number of venues. She is the founder of MYTHWORKSand co-founder of the Alpha Babe Academy and Mythic Challenges. She has presented workshops for the Children’s Book Writers of LA in 2011 and 2012.

Workshop Summary:

Based on the ancient Greek mythology of Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun, THE JOURNALS OF PETRA VOLARE SCROLL 1: FROM THE SHADOWS is a story about a budding young inventor named Calice. The book steeped in mythology and as such was the perfect example for co –authors Pamela and Reece’s workshop.

Pamela Jaye Smith and Reece Michaelson on their Book Petra Volare

Creating irresistible worlds is the primary goal of any writer or content creator. In order to craft tales that engage their audience, they must use timeless world-making tools. These story-crafting tools were well known by the ancient storytellers--the mythmakersundefinedand are still useful in today’s writing process.

Pamela and Reece explained the ABC’s for creating irresistible world for today’s readers.

A – Access an Applicable Myth. (Or Access several)

B – Burn and Crash vs. Crash and Burn: reverse causality.

C – Cadence.

D – Drives: Inner Begets Outer.

E – Etymology: be a detective.

F – Field notes.

G – Go out.

H – Hire Pamela Jaye!! (not kidding!) Alternate: Hallucinate.

I – Inquire of main character: “What’s YOUR favorite myth/mythic Archetype?”

J – Journaling: accessing characters’ innermost secrets.

K – Kaleidoscope journaling – use a single event [think “Roshomon”].

L – Legends vs. Myth vs. Folk Tales.

M – Map the world.

N – Name the Nobody.

O – Orphans: why they’re so potent (and prevalent in KidLit).

P – Pay attention to patterns in contemporary media.

Q – Questify everyone’s role.

R – Reverse Engineer: unravel and reweave your applicable myth.

S – Symbology: infuse your story.

T – Trailer: conceive your book’s trailer.

U – Ultimatum: tool of the gods/goddesses.

V – Value Add: make a Teacher’s Guide.

W – World Making Through Mythic Cover Art.

X – XENA: Watch old episodes.

Y – YouTube Field Trips.

Z – Zeus Ex Machina….or, Zip It Up!

Attentive CBWLA participants

One of my favorite parts of the workshop was when Pamela discussed the differences between Legends, Myth and Folk Tales.

According to her, Legends are stories about people/things that happened but gain a higher status. The stories are based on truth but over time become grander and more metaphorical in nature.

Folk Tales are stories told by locals to get everyone in line with the local customs and beliefs of their village. They teach kids and newcomers how to behave in a certain way within their culture.

Myths are universal truths dressed up in local lore, and can be used to add a depth of meaning to one’s writing. The best myths are true on several levels:

Geological
Geographical
Physiological
Psychological
Sociological
Historical
Astrological
Cosmological
Astronomical

Pamela Jaye Smith and Reece Michaelson

Pamela also suggested using Symbology to infuse one’s story, since symbols have a built in pattern that humans can subconsciously pick up. Finding the main symbol in your storyundefinedwhether it’s a symbol for a character, an element (like earth, water, fire or air), or even architecture will add a layer of meaning to your work. For example, high ceilings actually heighten creativity just as low enclosed spaces dampen them. So placing a character in a cave vs placing him in a cathedral will bring about different meanings to the scene.

Pamela and Reece also shared a list of valuable resources that writers can use in order to learn more about myths and symbols.

After a Q & A session, the workshop ended, and everyone lined up to get copies of their books signed by authors.

Pamela and Reece were very generous with their time and knowledge. They answered all of the participants’ questions about their own manuscripts and even brought cookies for everyone to share as snacks! They also proudly wore the CBWLA pins which we had given them during their entire workshop.

Authors Reece Michaelson and Pamela Jaye Smith ( proudly wearing their CBWLA pins),

with CBWLA Officers Nutschell Windsor and Tiffani Barth,

Their workshop can only be described as outstanding and we are truly lucky to have had Pamela and Reece as speakers.

Authors Pamela Jaye Smith and Reece Michaelson with CBWLA

46th CBW-LA Meetup: Writing Between the Lines: The Power of Multiple Revisions with Author Carmen Rodrigues

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sat, 20 Jul 2013 16:16:51 GMT

Last Saturday, July 20^th, 2013, CBW-LA had the pleasure of having YA Author Carmen Rodrigues as its workshop facilitator.

Carmen studied creative writing and theater at Florida State University and got her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She is the author of Contemporary Young Adult novels NOT ANYTHING and 34 PIECES OF YOU, and is currently working on her next novel CARRY YOU WITH ME, due in the Fall of 2014.

YA Author and CBWLA Speaker Carmen Rodrigues

Carmen wanted the workshop to be more of a conversation and less of a lecture, so she asked each participant to introduce themselves and share a little bit about the kind of writing they’re working on.

With the ice broken, Carmen then proceeded to the presentation portion of the workshop.

In his book ON WRITING, Stephen King describes watching his uncle drag this big toolbox full of tools to repair a window. His uncle took out one screwdriver from among his many tools and proceeded to do his work. Once he was done, he replaced his screwdriver and hauled the big toolbox back to the shed. Stephen then asked his uncle why he needed to bring such a big toolbox when he just need one tool. His uncle replied that he brought his whole toolbox with him because he wanted to make sure he had everything he needed on hand, in case he found something else that needed fixing along the way.

YA Author Carmen Rodrigues at her CBWLA Workshop

Taking her cue from Stephen King, Carmen introduced to us the concept of The Writer’s Toolbox. As writers, we all have our own toolbox. When we start off, our toolboxes are empty, but as we learn more and develop our skills, it becomes filled with our tools.

Along with some of her favorite quotes on writing, Carmen shared the tools that make up her own Writer’s Toolbox:

Your Readers - Find five readers and apply the rule of three. If you take workshops with more readers than you have fingers, then apply the rule of five.
The Delete Button - I have written many 65,000 word novels and yet I have never published one.
The Works of Others - When I’m stumped I read-- not for enjoyment but to steal from someone else’s genius.
Workshops - Writing happens alone. Revision happens with readers. Where better to find them than at a workshop?
A Coat of Armor - Writers need to be criticized. They need to be rejected. It’s in this criticism and rejection that you will push forward towards some of your best writing.

And just to inspire us even more, Carmen read from her own book 34 PIECES OF YOU. She also encouraged us to ask her questions that we might have, not just about the writer’s toolbox, but about revision as well. Her answers to all our questions were full of wonderful tips, insights and gems of wisdom.

YA Author Carmen Rodrigues with her CBWLA Revision Workshop Class

Once we were done peppering her with questions, Carmen steered us toward the workshop portion of the day. She gave us several writing prompts, actual creative writing exercises that we could use in our own revision process. She asked us to pick one exercise from the list she had given, and gave us 15 minutes to apply it to our own manuscripts.

Time flew, and soon some participants were sharing what exercise they had chosen and how they had applied it to their own works.

To end her presentation, Carmen gave us a list of books that we should read in order to know how elements of writing such as proper exposition, point of view and narrative voice are done correctly.

As she signed copies of her book, Carmen even made it a point to spend a few minutes with us so we could ask her anything we wanted about writing.

Carmen was a wonderful and inspiring speaker, and we were certainly lucky to have her facilitate our workshop.

YA Author Carmen Rodrigues with the CBWLA Officers (Photo by Kate Conrad)

Writing Day Anthology Workshop

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sun, 23 Jun 2013 01:20:37 GMT

Often, the only kind of writing we do is related to the book, short story, or article we’re working on. Sometimes we need a break from our work. We need to have moments when we write just for fun, or for the purpose of learning how to write itself. This is when creative writing exercises come in handy.

In an effort to encourage its members to constantly work on their craft, CBWLA held its first ever Writing Day Anthology Workshop last June 22nd, 2013. The whole day was dedicated to practicing various writing exercises designed to help attendees improve their writing skills.

Our main goal for creating this workshop, however, was to give our members the opportunity to gain publishing experience. I specifically designed the creative writing exercises so that at the end of day, each participant would have two pieces ready for publication in our first CBWLA Anthology. In September 2013, we plan to release the anthology through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing, as well as through its Create Space program.

Since we only had one day, we focused on four short literary forms: essay, flash fiction, poetry and picture book.

I. FREEWRITING

The workshop began with a freewriting exercise to warm up everyone’s writing muscles. Shutting out their internal editors and forgetting all rules of grammar and punctuation, attendees wrote nonstop for 5 minutes.

CBWLA Writing Day Anthology Workshop Attendees Doing Freewriting Exercises

Their writing muscles loosened, we proceeded to a guided freewriting activity in which everyone used the question “How do you feel about writing?” as a guide for the second freewriting exercise.

Author Melissa Donovan said this about freewrites:

Freewrites can also be used to bring creative, colorful language into prose. Strong images and rich language generates work that is more literary in nature and if done well, it’s a lot more fun to read. It will help you generate words that show rather than tell and make your story or essay come alive more easily in a reader’s mind.

The ten minute guided freewriting exercise was a treasure trove of inspiration and ideas. I asked participants to unearth the gems in their pieces by underlining or highlighting the words, phrases and sentences that called out to them; words they found meaningful or beautiful.

I gave a short talk on the literary forms we would use that day (essay, flash fiction, poetry and picture book), along with tips and techniques to help them in the next activity. Choosing one of these four forms, participants used the gems they harvested in their freewriting exercise to write their first anthology piece.

Handouts were also provided so they could refer to them as they wrote their “On Writing” pieces.

CBWLA Writing Day Anthology Workshop Attendees

The 50 minute writing time was filled with the sounds of scribbling pens and clacking keyboards. While attendees focused on creating their first anthology piece, I quietly went about preparing for the next part of the workshop: Lunch!

Snacks were provided throughout the day, but lunch was still a welcome event for the attendees. They got to eat a hearty meal and make new friends with other writers.

Breakfast and snacks provided throughout the day

Although lunch only lasted for 30 minutes, attendees returned to their workstations and ready for the next round of activities.

II. STORY SPARKERS

Story ideas are generated by our experiences, and emotions, but their mostly generated by our five senses, particularly by things we might see. We might get story ideas from things we read in the newspaper, a photograph or painting , or an event we witness live or see in the news.

In the next exercise called “Shopping for Ideas”, I asked attendees to pick several pictures from a box. These were pictures of shops they might encounter as they travel.

Using the shop pictures, participants came up with several story ideas.

Shopping for Ideas Setting Box

And to help them out further, I distributed two other types of story sparkers: the Conflict Cards and the Character Archetype Cards.

Conflict Cards & Character Archetype Cards

Since they already had the setting based on the shop cards they got earlier, participants now had the option to pick characters they could put into that setting, using the Character Archetype Cards. They could also use the Conflict Cards to come up with problems their characters might encounter in their stories.

Ideas beget ideas. So after 15 minutes of jotting down story ideas, I asked participants to share one with the rest of the class. Everyone came up with intriguing and fascinating story concepts.

I asked them to pick one story idea which they really liked, and to choose the literary form (flash fiction, poetry, picture book) they’d like to use for their next piece. Using their handouts as a guide, the attendees were given an hour to write their second piece for the anthology.

In order to make sure that the writers have chosen the best form possible for their anthology piece, I gave them two final exercises.

CBWLA Writing Day Anthology Workshop Attendees Writing Away

The Point of View exercise required them to pick an alternate point of view for their second anthology piece. If they wrote their stories using the third person POV, they would have to rewrite it to first person, or second person and so on.

The attendees re-read the two versions and picked which POV worked best for their anthology piece. Afterward, they moved on to the final writing exercise on Voice.

The Voice exercise was designed to make sure their anthology piece had the right voice or tone. I challenged the attendees to rewrite their piece using a different tone. For example, they could rewrite their piece as if everything about the story infuriated them, or broke their heart or scared the hell out of them.

Once the attendees had picked the voice that best suited their stories, they immediately set to revising and editing their two anthology pieces.

The minutes flew by really quickly and soon it was time for the writers to submit their works. While co-officer Tiffani went about collecting the anthology pieces on a flashdrive, I collected the works of those who used pen and paper instead of their laptops.

With their pieces all in, the attendees could finally breathe a sigh of relief.And to end the wonderful writing day on a high note, we all posed for a class picture.

CBWLA Writing Day Anthology Workshop Class of 2013 (Formal picture)

The day certainly went by so fast. Attendees barely noticed the hours fly by because they were so busy doing what they loved best: writing. They left the room, already looking forward to the next big anthology workshop--and asking us to organize a launch party for the anthology in September.

CBWLA Writing Day Anthology Workshop Class of 2013 (Informal picture)

CBWLA Presents: Queries, Blurbs & Loglines: Oh My! A Workshop with Author Samantha Combs

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sat, 25 May 2013 17:09:23 GMT

Last May 25^th, 2013 CBWLA was fortunate to have one of its own, Author Samantha Combs, as its workshop presenter.

YA Author Samantha Combs

YA AUTHOR SAMANTHA COMBS' BIO

I am a Southern California author with six published books; the Global Ebook Award-winning debut title: SPELLBOUND, EVERSPELL, and GHOSTLY, all YA paranormals. My Middle Grade horror, THE DETENTION DEMON is out, along with two adult horror collections, TEETH AND TALONS and WAY PAST MIDNIGHT. WATERDANCER, a new YA fantasy, comes out in Sept. I enjoy writing YA paranormal romance and supernatural fantasy, but I also dabble in the horror and sci-fi genres as well, and writing for the Middle Grade audience.

When I'm not writing, I enjoy spending time with my husband and two children, and my guilty pleasures include reality television, the Food Network channel and shoes. I truly believe I can accomplish anything if I have the right pair of shoes.

I love writing and I am in awe of the technological advances of our lives. Ereaders and similar gadgets are bringing the written word to a generation that might never have discovered books otherwise and every time I see a kid pick one up to read something it fills me with joy to be a small part of that process. If a child can connect with literature because he or she did so electronically, a connection still was made. I am excited to see what our world has in store for literature and excited to be along for that ride.

http://samanthacombswrites.blogspot.com/

Samantha Combs at the CBWLA Workshop on Queries, Blurbs & Loglines

Samantha’s talked focused on three things which every writer has to write at some point: Queries, Loglines and Blurbs.

QUERIES

She began her workshop by defining what a query was and giving us various techniques that writers can use to formulate their own query, along with very helpful examples to illustrate each technique.

She also shared with us her own tried and tested formula for writing a query, which involves answering the following questions:

1. Who is the protagonist and what is their goal? (Motivation.)

2. What is keeping the protag from achieving that goal? (Conflict.)

3. How will the protagonist overcome this problem? (Plot.)

4. What happens if the protagonist fails/what choice does the protagonist have to make? (Stakes, and why the reader should care.)

Samantha Combs at the CBWLA Workshop on Queries, Blurbs & Loglines

Samantha broke down the three paragraphs that are essential in a query (the hook, the mini-synopsis and the writer’s bio) and explained what important details to include in each one.

She also gave us a helpful list of the Do’s and Don’ts of a Query:

-Skip rhetorical questions. No “what ifs?”

-Don’t name too many characters

-Don’t describe your book as a theme (about peace and love)

-Don’t clutter the query. You don’t want to tell the whole story….leave ‘em wanting more

-Spell check, proof, revise and edit. This will be more important than the actual book

-Don’t mention other manuscripts.

-Don’t grovel, beg or plead

-Do research the agent and mention something proving you researched them; Did you meet?

-Do address the query to a specific agent and spell their name correctly. Also get their gender correct

-Do state the title of your book

-Do mention word count and genre of book

-Do advise why you are approaching this particular agent

-Do be professional and respectful

-Do have many, many people read the query before you send it

Samantha Combs at the CBWLA Workshop on Queries, Blurbs & Loglines

BLURBS

When dealing with blurbs, Samantha encouraged us to think of the dust jacket of our favorite book, or the description line for a lifetime movie. From these examples, we can gather that a blurb is designed to entice, tease and ultimately make the audience buy the story.

According to Samantha, a Blurb is used for the following things:

Book cover

Press releases

Interviews

Bloggers

Publisher’s site

3rd party seller sites: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, All Romance, etc.

She gave us examples of blurbs taken from her own books in the Spellbound Series.

Samantha Combs at the CBWLA Workshop on Queries, Blurbs & Loglines

When writing a book blurb, she gave us the following reminders:

* A good blurb will only introduce one character in an intimate way.

Introduce others via the experience of the main protag – always keep focus on MC
This way, the reader develops a bond and learns to root for your MC. Make the reader care what happens to them.
Focus on one specific conflict, not theme.
If your theme is strong, it will shine anyway

* Appeal to universal human emotions, even with less than human protags

Don’t be flashy; be concise and write with restraint. This impresses publishers
Subplots need not apply.
Never give away the ending; coyly suggest with precise, gripping language
Pick exact verbs instead of spineless ones like “seem” or “being” or “may”

Samantha Combs at the CBWLA Workshop on Queries, Blurbs & Loglines

LOGLINES

After condensing 300 our manuscript pages to 3-4 paragraphs, we now have to whittle them down further into two sentences which comprise the logline.

The logline is sometimes called a pitch or a tagline.

Samantha gave us examples of loglines based on popular movies, asking us to guess which movies each described.

Afterward, she gave us another helpful formula for creating loglines:

Give the main character an epithet: vengeful divorcee, bitter amputee, struggling aspiring author
Identify the MC’s main mission and what he stands to lose if he fails
Brainstorm words and phrases that conjur up images of your book
Pick 25-30 that sound the most compelling
Now pick 5-8 that sound even MORE compelling
Now use them to fashion a tight, 25 word pitch

Samantha Combs at the CBWLA Workshop on Queries, Blurbs & Loglines

Samantha wrapped up her workshop by saying that there is no right or wrong way to really write queries, loglines and blurbs. But however we write them, we should put the same passion into our few sentences that we put in our 300+ manuscript pages. Most importantly, we should edit, edit, and edit.

She ended with these words of wisdom regarding the stories we write: “If you believe in them, someone else will too.”

Samantha Combs signing books after the workshop

Samantha was a wonderful speaker. She spoke in a fun, engaging manner, sprinkling funny comments and jokes throughout the workshop to keep us all entertained. Her explanations were easy to follow, and the examples she gave were very helpful in understanding the material.

Her workshop on Queries, Blurbs & Loglines was a definite hit, and many of our members left with valuable information, and heaps of inspiration to use in their own writing.

CBWLA Presents: Blogging Workshop with Arlee Bird

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 18:06:47 GMT

March 30, 2013 (42^nd CBW-LA meetup): Blogging Workshop with Arlee Bird

On the 30^th of March, 2013, I had the immense pleasure of meeting in person awesome blogger and A-Z Blogfest founder Arlee Bird.

Arlee and I became bloggy buddies, thanks to his famous A-Z blogfest. I had no idea that Arlee lived in L.A. Luckily, I found out about this fact, thanks to my fellow CBW-LA officer Alana (also a prolific blogger), who had interviewed Arlee for her local newspaper article.

I asked Alana to invite Arlee to do a workshop for CBW-LA, and Arlee kindly agreed.

Arlee’s workshop focused on how blogging builds author platform. Lee began the workshop by introducing himself, and talking about his origins both as a writer and a blogger.

Blogger and A-Z Blogfest Founder Arlee Bird

His parents were professional jugglers, and soon he and sister became part of the act. His family spent their summer vacations touring and performing in front of crowds. Lee developed his love for stories through the many intriguing folks he and his family met, thanks to juggling.

The Juggling Jacksons, Arlee, his parents and his sister

When Lee decided he would try out blogging, he decided on the title Tossing It Out, as a reference not only to his roots as a professional juggler, but also as a reference to his love for juggling words.

During the workshop, Lee encouraged us to think about why we writeundefinedwhether it be for fun, for self-expression, or for publication. He said that our answers will also define why we blog.

Lee answered the following questions during the course of his workshop:

What Is A Blog?

Why Blog?

What Is Platform?

How Can Blogging Help Establish Platform?

Is Blogging Enough?

Are the “Internet Time Sucks” Enough?

How Do I Start My Blog?

So I’ve Got a Blog--Now What?

Blogger and A-Z Blogfest Founder Arlee Bird speaking to CBW-LA members

Lee defined author platform as:

Who you are

What you can do

Where you can be found

Who your audience or customer base is

What you have done

Through blogging, we are able to establish our author platform by:

Building relationships

Displaying our abilities

Sharing our news

Creating a community via our interaction with other bloggers

Establishing credibility

And building our SEO skills

Lee discussed other social media venues where we can expand our following/author platform such as Twitter, Facebook, Triberr and Google Plus.

Lee also spoke about What Not to Do when blogging, such as tell people too much about our lives, get into fights, or leave comments on other people’s blogs that we might later regret.

In the second part of the workshop, Lee talked about the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge. He explained what the challenge was, and how he had come up with the idea.

Lee explained the benefits of joining the A-Z Blogging challenge. Not only was the challenge fun, it would also encourage discipline and creativity, since we would have to write up posts matching a specific letter for each day. The A-Z challenge would also help us network and get noticed, which would help our author platform.

Lee cited several of our bloggy friends as prime examples of the A-Z’s success:

Damyanti used the A-Z as a spring board for her works of fiction and later published her entries in an ebook entitled A-Z Stories of Life and Death.

Blogger Doris Plaster, inspired by her A-Z posts also published Home Sweet Nursing Home: An A-Z Collection of 50 Word Stories on Aging and Healthcare.

We mentioned how Ninja Captain Alex Cavanaugh’s army of thousands of bloggers help him promote his Cassastar Series, and support him on his many challenges. (We also discussed theories on how Alex is able to balance blogging, writing, performing in a band, working and attending to his family, citing being an alien or a wizard as possibilities. :) )

Lee patiently answered a lot of questions on blogging and social media. He ended the workshop by encouraging the attendees to go home and start a blog tonight.

Thanks to his workshop, many of our members were inspired to begin their own blogs and join the A-Z:

Lucy Ravitch	http://www.kidsmathteacher.blogspot.com/
Chontali Kirk	chontalikirk.blogspot.com
Michael Cahill	http://nouveauscarecrow.wordpress.com/
Kate Conrad	http://katloveswriting.blogspot.com/
Christina Romero	http://amamhc.blogspot.com/

And of course, our members who already had blogs, discovered ways to gain more followers and make more connections online.

Samantha Combs	www.samanthacombswrites.blogpost.com
Alana Garrigues	http://writercize.blogspot.com/
Jennifer Carson	http://jennifercarson0423.wordpress.com/

Our big thanks to Arlee Bird for coming out and speaking to CBW-LA!

If you'd like to know more about Arlee, check out his many blogs:

http://tossingitout.blogspot.com/ Tossing It Out

http://wrotebyrote.blogspot.com/ Wrote By Rote

http://afarawayview.blogspot.com/ A Faraway View

http://psalmsunday.blogspot.com/ A Few Words

http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/ The Blogging from A to Z Challenge Blog

CBW-LA Presents: Author Chris Lynch Discusses Everything You Want to Know About Self-Publishing

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 04:02:29 GMT

Speaker Chris Lynch, Author of One-Eyed Jack

Speaker Bio:

Author Christopher J. Lynch is a Southern California native living in Los Angeles. A member of our group, CBW-LA, Chris has written articles for various newspapers and magazines, as well has various short stories.

His hobbies include cycling and mountain climbing. He recently trained and led a group of blind individuals to the summit of Mount Baldy, the highest point in Los Angeles County. A documentary film is being made of the adventure. www.baldyfortheblind.com.

In May of 2012, Christopher J. Lynch finished the first draft of his debut crime novel “One Eyed Jack.” By June 13^th, he had it revised, edited, formatted, and published as both an e-book, and a “Print on Demand” on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Since then, he has enjoyed brisk sales, received rave reviews, done four author signings, and had it placed in Pages Bookstore, Small World Books, Apostrophe Books, and Frog Books. He also produced a video trailer and has done numerous guest blogs, author interviews, and promo pieces. How did he do it all in such a short time? He self-published.

Christopher J. Lynch will share his experience and talk candidly about the self-publishing route and what it means to the writer of the 21st. Century.

Workshop Summary:

Chris was a wonderful speaker. He offered us a no-holds barred presentation on the ups and downs of self-publishing and gave us a lot of helpful tips and tricks, which he had to learn the hard way.

Some of the questions Chris answered included:

·What is traditional publishing versus self-publishing?

·Is self-publishing right for me, or for my book?
·What are the benefits of self-publishing?
·What are the downsides to self-publishing?
·What is POD (print on demand)?
·What are the steps necessary for self-publishing?
·What are the costs involved?

Workshop Highlights:

Is Self Publishing For You?

Cons:

- Major bookstores (B&N) - and even some “indie” bookstores - will not carry self-published titles.

- If you are selling on consignment to bookstores, you will have to get a sellers permit and resale certificate from the franchise tax board.

- You may not be eligible for some book awards.

- The “New York Times” and many other mainstream publications, are reticent to review any self-published book.

- Some blogs may not review self-published books.

- You will have to pay for your own editing, formatting, cover design, etc.

- All promotion, bookkeeping, sales, etc. is on you – You are a business!

Pros:

- Time: Your completed book can be available as an e-book in under 8 hours, and a print version in about one day.

- Creative Control – This can be both good and bad.

- You can set the list price (minimums for e-book and POD).

- Higher royalties.

- If successful, you can always get an agent and a publisher and go the conventional route.

Where do you begin? An e-book from manuscript to product.

- Step one: Finish the damn thing!!

- Step two: Revise...Revise...Revise.

- Step three: Have your manuscript professionally edited…by a reputable editing service.

- Step four: Your cover is the first thing a customer sees - and it will only be a thumbnail on-line. Again, pay the pros. Only a front cover will be needed for an E-book (more on converting it to a full cover with spine and back for a POD).

- Step five: Formatting from mobi, to epub to pdf can be hell, so it’s worth it to get a professional to do this for you.

Why do a POD, if e-books are all the rage?

- It doesn’t cost you much more.

- It broadens your sales.

- Many people still like holding a physical book.

- You are going to have to do lots of in-face promotion (book fairs, signings, libraries, etc.) and you can’t sign an e-book.

How the steps to do a POD differ from an e-book

- You will need to have your original, revised and edited manuscript, formatted into a different size (typically, trade size paperback).

- Companies like Ironhorse formatting can do this: Pricing: 20 to 45K words – $40

- You will have to have your e-book front cover made into a full cover with spine and back (app. $50.00)

DO NOT…I REPEAT DO NOT, HAVE THIS FINAL STEP DONE UNTIL THE BOOK IS FULLY FORMATTED AND YOU KNOW THE EXACT PAGE COUNT!

Sales, the “driver” of all business

Three ways you will sell your book:

- On-line

- Consignment through bookstores

- Private sales

The truth about self-published book sales:

- The average self-published book sells about 100-150 copies across all formats and venues.

- Some don’t sell at all.

- Don’t count on all of your family and friends - especially your F/B “friends” - to buy your book

- Sales require endless promotion: reviews, blogging, social media, author events, book fairs, swag…and some luck. It takes a lot of time…and some money.

- It’s a crowded marketplace

“The good news is, anyone can self-publish a book.”

“The bad news is, anyone can self-publish a book.”

Author Chris Lynch with CBW-LA Officers

CBW-LA Presents: What I Wish I'd Known: Avoiding Publishing Pitfalls from Draft to Deal

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 03:51:46 GMT

Workshop Description:

Authors Leigh Bardugo (Shadow and Bone) and Jennifer Bosworth (Struck) discussed common mistakes made by first-time authors and the things they wish they'd done differently on the road to publication.

The topics they touched on included: how to build a better first draft, balancing critique and community with the integrity of personal voice, researching and approaching agents, what writers need to expect when they''re on submission, and how to evaluate their publishing deals.

They also shed light on what happens after the sale and discussed what writers may want to know as theywork with editors and publicists to polish and promote their books.

Speakers Bio (from their websites):

YA Author Leigh Bardugo (Shadow & Bone)

Leigh Bardugo was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Los Angeles, and graduated from Yale University. These days, she live sin Hollywood, where she indulges her fondness for glamour, ghouls, and costuming in her other life as make up artist L.B. Benson. Occasionally, she can be heard singing with her band, Captain Automatic.

Her debut novel, Shadow & Bone (Holt Children’s/Macmillan), is a New York Times Bestseller and the first book in the Grisha Trilogy. Book 2, Siege and Storm, will be published in 2013. She is represented by Joanna Stampfel-Volpe of New Leaf.

www.leighbardugo.com

YA Author Jennifer Bosworth (STRUCK)

Jennifer Bosworth was born in Price, Utah, a small, coal-mining town in the desert. As a kid, her favorite thing to do was roam alone through the barren hills and tell herself stories. As an adult, she continues to do the same thing, only now she’s roaming the streets of Los Angeles, her favorite city in the world.

Jennifer attended college at the University of Utah, where she later taught continuing education classes on writing horror, fantasy, and science fiction.

Struck (FSG/Macmillan) is Jennifer’s first published novel. She is represented by Jamie Weiss Chilton of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency.

Jennifer is the writer half of the writer/director team with her husband, Ryan Bosworth.

www.jenniferbosworth.com

Workshop Summary:

Last Saturday (August 18, 2012), CBW-LA had the wonderful pleasure of having YA Authors Jennifer Bosworth and Leigh Bardugo as speakers.

The Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore was packed with writers eager to learn more about writing and the publishing industry.

The speakers prepared a wonderful presentation, full of information that would help beginning writers get started on their writing careers. They even prepared a handout so members could easily follow the workshop.

Speaker Jennifer Bosworth explaining the handouts

The authors were generous in the information they shared, and despite the presence of handouts, the workshop attendees found themselves furiously scribbling pages upon pages of notes.

Speaker Leigh Bardugo giving tips on how to create an exciting middle in one's novel

Authors Jennifer and Leigh emphasized the importance of understanding your story idea, and considering the audience you wish to write for.

They also stated the importance of being able to sum up your story in one sentence. They discussed the value of loglines, and the difference between high concept loglines and and regular loglines.

Attendees volunteered their loglines. The speakers helped them figure out if their loglines contained high concept ideas, and even helped them improve and strengthen their one sentence summaries.

The speakers also explained the ingredients of a proper logline: character + conflict + hook. Not all stories need to be high concept, but they should always have some kind of hook.

Leigh and Jennifer listening to an audience member's question

Leigh and Jennifer gave the following questions writers need to ask, when Crafting their logline:

1. Who is your main character?

2. What does your MC want?

3. Why does your MC want it?

4. What’s the catch? What stands in the MC's way?

5. What sets the MC's journey in motion?

6. What makes this story unique? What’s the hook?

After helping the attendees with their loglines, the speakers discussed the two kinds of writing: Plotting and Pantsing, and the pros and cons between the two.

Jennifer and Leigh are polar opposites in their writing styles, and they were perfect examples of how different plotters are from pantsers.

Leigh is a plotter and admitted that she would not be able to sit down and write without some semblance of an outline. The wonderful benefit of being a plotter, is that the revisions are less painful because you already know the structure of your story. One of the cons of plotting, however, is that there is no perfect plan, and sometimes too much research can bog a writer down.

Jennifer is a pantser and loves the process of discovery and of surprising herself. One of the downsides she mentioned was that without an outline, it was easy for her to get lost in the story.

On Getting Feedback

Jennifer and Leigh warned writers about submitting a manuscript without getting feedback for it first:

*An agent or editor should never be the first person to see your manuscript

They explained the different ways of getting feedback, such as attending a critique group or going to workshops and conferences that offer manuscript critique.

They gave the following tips for making the most of your feedback:

1. Listen. Don’t argue. Give the critique a chance to settle in before revising

2. Beware critique overload – there is such a thing as having too many betas

3. Red flags: betas who don’t like your genre; nitpickers; the beta ego

4. Stack the deck: Tell betas what you need, keep readers in reserve.

Audience members eagerly listened as the two speakers talked about the process of finding the right agent.

The speakers had very different experiences in getting their agents.

Leigh got her agent through the usual process of querying, and she gave the attendees some great tips for writing their query letters:

• Keep it short: One page, roughly 3 short paragraphs

• Put the hook up front: What makes your story different?

• Do your research and personalize your queries (Why this agent?)

• Query in small batches so that you can adapt to feedback

Jennifer, on the other hand, got her agent by pitching in person. She and Leigh even did a demonstration on how a pitchfest usually works. Jennifer gave the following helpful tips for pitching in person:

•Be excited about your book!

•Speak for 1 minute and then let the agent/editor ask questions

•Use time wisely. If agent/editor is not interested, use remaining time to ask for his/her opinion or advice

The speakers also discussed what writers should do when they do get The Call. They cautioned writers against saying "yes" right away, likening the process of choosing an agent to marriage.

They gave a list of some helpful questions to ask an agent before deciding on who to pick:

• How many authors do you represent?

• What kind of revisions do you have in mind for the book?

• How wide would you go with the book?

• How and how often do you like to correspond with your clients?

• How involved are you with social media and marketing of your clients?

• Do you have clients I could speak to?

• If the book doesn't sell right away, what would be your approach?

In the final part of the workshop, the speakers discussed what happens once an author signs a contract with a publisher.

There are a lot of things to consider when signing a publishing contract: foreign rights, , royalties, bonuses, marketing plans. An agent can help an author handle all of these things.

Leigh also weighed in on the subject of writing a series. If you're planning to write a series, don't write the second book until the first one sells. If the publisher offers to buy your book as a series, be ready with a synopsis for the succeeding books.

The speakers also explained that the submissions process takes anywhere from 1-2 years. Agents have to find the right editor, and these editors also have to find a way to sell the author's book to the whole publishing company. It's important that the author stay busy during this submissions phase. While they're waiting for the editor's notes, they should be writing the next book, or working on a promotion strategy for their books.

Jennifer and Leigh ended their workshop by inviting audience members to take a piece of paper and write down their writing goals. The attendees wrote down their goals and slipped the paper into the SASE's they had brought.

The authors promised to mail these letters off in a few months, as a reminder to the attendees about the writing promises they had made to themselves.

Leigh and Jennifer were gracious, generous, knowledgeable (and funny!) speakers and we were very, very lucky to have them indeed!

CBW-LA Officers with Authors/Speakers Leigh Bardugo & Jennifer Bosworth, photo by Maiko

CBW-LA Presents: Myth, Magic & Madness - Writing for the Children’s Market

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 03:47:41 GMT

Summary:

Whether your project is a novel, short story, or script for film, television or the internet, the Children’s marketplace is an exciting arena for writers. But once you’ve completed writing your project, what are the next steps you should take before submitting your work to a publisher, editor, agent, producer or studio?

There are a lot of myths out there about how to become successful. One thing we do know is that following the myths can enrich your stories. Everyone agrees that success requires a bit of magic, both in your marketing and in your stories. The madness is just an integral part of the marketing, but if you know what’s ahead you can better navigate the choppy waters of the Children’s marketplace for books, films, tv series, and web series.

Last night, we gathered at Barnes & Noble 3^rd Street Promenade for another wonderful workshop facilitated by two of Hollywood’s top screenwriting consultants.

Authors/Speakers Kathie Fong Yoneda and Pamela Jaye Smith

with Barnes & Noble Events Manager Shane

Published authors and veterans of the entertainment industry, Pamela Jaye Smith and Kathie Fong Yoneda presented their individual Top10 challenges that all writers must face in order to successfully conquer the “myth, magic and madness” of writing for children today.

Pamela Jaye Smith discussed the use of myths and symbols as a way to deepen the layers of our stories. She discussed ten important questions for us to ask ourselves as we develop or revise our short stories/novels/scripts:

1. Have I aligned my story with a universal Mythic Theme?

2. What is the Archetype for my Protagonist – is it clear and yet unique?

3. What is the Archetype for my Antagonist – is it clear and yet unique?

4. Have I aligned both Protagonist and Antagonist with an identifiable but not stereotypical Inner Drive [chakra] and how do they differ from each other?

5. How does my Protagonist change and grow, as expressed by their arc from one Inner Drive [chakra] to another?

6. What internal problems does my Protagonist have?

7. What external dangers must my Protagonist overcome?

8. Is my main symbol expressing an emotion, a situation, or a concept?

9. Is there a symbol for the Protagonist and one for the Antagonist?

10. Have I layered my story with related and age-related symbols?

Author Pamela Jaye Smith

Pamela taught us that symbols are primarily used for three things:

1. To express emotion (emotional)

2. To tell us something about the situation (physical/situational), and

3. To show a concept (if your story about freedom, love, etc)

As humans, we’re built to grasp the meaning of symbols. Symbols are universal, and timeless and if we work them into our stories, we’ll be plugging into that deeper mythical and psychological part of our readers.

Pamela gave us some great examples of how myths and symbols are put to great use in popular children’s books and movies. One of the examples she gave was Harry Potter’s lightning scar. Lightning, linked to mythological gods such as Thor, and Zeus, has long been a symbol of the connection between the deities and humanity, heaven to earth.

JK Rowling’s decision to put a lightning scar on Harry’s forehead implies so much more, and is a more effective symbol of his character than say a circle or a dot on his forehead.

Another example Pamela gave was the use of the mirror symbol in Alice in Wonderland. The mirror symbol represents the concept of duality of the world. On a situational level, it symbolizes that Alice is now in a world where things are in reverse; and on an emotional level, it symbolizes Alice looking into herself to find out who she really is.

Author Kathie Fong Yoneda

Kathie Fong Yoneda posed her own 10 Question Challenge for writers, based on her book THE SCRIPT-SELLING GAME.

1. Are my characters well-drawn and interesting?

2. Does my dialogue add to the personality of each character and support the plot points of my story?

3. Does my story fall within a general 3-act structure?

4. Does each scene/segment have a distinct purpose for being included?

5. Have I paid attention to details by doing proper research?

6. Do I know who my target audience is?

7. Have I streamlined my storytelling?

8. Can I summarize my story in one or two sentences?

9. Is my completed work in professional form?

10. Is this a story that I love?

Kathie reiterated the importance of well-drawn secondary characters. An editor Kathie spoke with one day, mentioned that the one of the common downfalls of a book is that the secondary characters are weak and not memorable. Where would Luke Skywalker be without Han Solo or Darth Vader, Ariel without Flounder and Sebastian.

Harry Potter had his friends Ron and Hermione. Although all of them went to the same school, they have very different ways of approaching the same problem. Having three different mindsets made a good blend. It gave the whole story a sense of vitality and energy because of different types of people solving the same problem together.

Kathie also reminded us of the importance of dialogue, and of having each character have their own voice. In Screenwriting, they have this technique were they cover up the names of the characters, and they try to guess who’s speaking to make sure the dialogue is consistent with the personality of the character.

After Kathie’s talk, she joined Pamela at the table and they both talked about the madness of writing, and answered questions from the audience. They discussed the common mistakes writers commit when submitting their queries or manuscripts to agents and editors, and what to do to avoid them. They even gave us great ideas on how to take our writing to the next level, by using the trans-media approach. They reminded us that novels aren’t the only creative outlet we have. Apps, web series, screenplays and other media are all available for us to use.

CBW-LA Officers with Authors Pamela Jaye Smith & Kathie Fong Yoneda

The workshop was a definite success. Kathie and Pamela did a great job of challenging us to create better stories that will stand the test of time.

Creative Writing Session: Find Your Voice, Style & Learn the Art of Description

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 04:44:17 GMT

Practice makes perfect. We know this to be true about every skill. The only way we can develop our writing skills is to keep on practicing. I’m not just talking about writing one novel after another, or writing picture book after picture book. I’m talking about honing our craft by focusing on the act of writing itself.

Last Saturday’s meetup was dedicated to learning various writing exercises designed to help writers find your authorial voice and style, and hone their art of description.

WARM-UP: FREEWRITING

Freewriting is a great way to spark that new story idea or to warm up your writing muscles before diving into their manuscript.

I began the session by having everyone do some Freewriting.

I asked them to bring out the questions they had picked out from the box as they signed in earlier. I set the timer for 5 minutes. Using the question as a general guide for what they would write about, my group members wrote continuously for 5 minutes without stopping to edit or think, and without worrying about grammar, punctuation or sentence structure.

Facilitating the creative writing session

A. SOUND, STYLE, TONE & VOICE

In the first part of our session, we discussed the difference between Sound, Style, Tone & Voice. Most of the materials were taken from Noah Lukeman’s First Five Pages, as well as various other books and articles found online.

According to Noah Lukeman:

SOUND has to do mainly with the basic construction of the sentence –its flow, its rhythm, and is more of a technical issue.

Some sound problems we may find in our manuscript include poor sentence construction; echoes as found in the repetition of character’s names, pronouns or specific words; alliteration in prose, and resonanceundefinedthe way the sentence resounds within the context of a paragraph, line break, or chapter.

STYLE also has to do with sentence construction but has more to do with the intention behind the construction, and thus is as much an artistic issue as it is a grammatical one.

Ernest Hemingway wrote in simple, direct sentences and used few adjectives. Stephen King uses a lot of foreshadowing, and descriptive language in his books.

TONE is the voice behind the work, the driving intention behind the sound and style.

Sound/sentence construction can be technically wrong, but tone can never beundefinedit is always subjective, a matter of personal taste.

Sound, style and tone work jointly to affect the overall melody of a piece; but tone or voice sits on the opposite end of the spectrum from sound, with style falling somewhere in between.

Some authors use Voice and Tone interchangeably, while others believe Voice actually means the Writer’s Style. For our group however, we’ve defined Voice as a combination of both Tone & Style.

To illustrate how each author’s voice is distinct and unique, I gave them Worksheet 1 – which contained paragraphs taken from some popular books. I told them to see if they could recognize what books the paragraphs were lifted from.

Worksheet 2 also contained paragraphs lifted from some books. We went through several to see if we could identify the Tone used in each paragraph.

CBW-LA members working on the exercises

EXERCISES: FINDING YOUR VOICE

Here are some of the exercises we did after our discussion on Sound, Style, Tone and Voice:

1. Paraphrasing

Pick a paragraph from Worksheet 1 (or your favorite novel) and rewrite it with the same meaning, but in your own words. Try to make it as distinctly your own as you can.

2. Character Chat

Think of your protagonist, the lead in the story you’re currently writing, or the story you want to work on. Imagine him/her in a setting, staring at an object that’s in high contrast to her usual world.

For example, if your lead is a preschool teacher, put her in a prison yard. Or if your lead is a brain surgeon, have him describe watching a Native American dance. Or if your lead is a billionaire, have him describe the flavor of SPAM meat.

Try several of these chats, you’ll notice that one kind of perspective on life feels more right than others. Why is that?

3. Many Moods

Again, pick a paragraph from any of the two worksheets (or any book) you currently have. Write this paragraph in three ways.

a. Write as if everything about the story infuriated you
b. Write as if the story were breaking your heart
c. Write as if the story scared the hell out of you.

Which one seems more natural to you?

For that particular story, that is your writing voice.

You can do this same exercise on your own. Take a single page of any novel and rewrite it in these three ways. Do the same with any one page of a novel and rewrite it twice, once as formally as you can and one informally. Look at these pages. Which one seems most natural?

CBW-LA members doing some creative writing

B. THE ART OF DESCRIPTION

The power of description is such that it can transform the two dimensional page into a 3D word. Often, however, description is something that find hard to write because it incorporates so many different elements –not just the setting, but also descriptions of the characters’ clothes and appearance, the objects they use, the weather, what they’re feeling and so on.

Some writers love action and dialogue and tend to forget about description. Their characters end up wandering through vague buildings and their readers don’t get a sense of time or place from their story. Some writers, on the other hand, include too much description. They expound on their setting so much, that it hinders the flow of their narrative. Their readers might read through a whole page describing a character’s room, and at the end of it, still wonder what the character is doing there and when the action will actually start.

I shared with everyone Anne Marble’s article on the art of description, and the eight tips she lists down to bring a setting to life.

Anne Marble’s 8 Tips to Good Description (Paraphrased, short version)

1. Avoid huge lumps of description.

Long description describing the setting used to be popular in the past, but today’s reader won’t put up with that sort of thing anymore.
This is especially true if you’re writing for kids and teens.

2. Make description an active part of the story.

Find a way to blend your description into the story instead of writing lumps of narrative description.
Use description in combination with action.
Ex. “Zara grabbed her mug and gulped it down, shivering when a few drops of ale trickled under her leather top” vs. “The ale was cold. She wore a leather top.”

3. Describe what your characters would notice

If your hero has been in that office building dozens of times, she will only give it a passing glance, so you shouldn’t spend time describing it, unless something within it has changed that’s important to the story.

4. Use strong, active, concrete writing words when writing description.

Avoid adjectives.
Use strong nouns and strong verbs

5. Use all the senses.

Most writers tend to concentrate on sight and sound, but you can bring a scene to life by including the other sensesundefinedsmell, taste, touch.
Also, just because sight and sound are commonly used, doesn’t mean you have to make them common. Find a new way to describe things your characters see and hear. Don’t fall back on clichés to describe your character’s eyes or featuresundefinedinvent new ways of describing.

6. Fit description to the type of the story

If you’re writing an action oriented piece, description will get in the way of pace
If you’re writing a slower paced story, description will be an important part of it.
Spooky paranormal tale might use description to build up the sense of the uneaseundefinedlinger on descriptions of dark hallways in the old mansion and hint that there are ghosts there.

7. Avoid excessive name dropping.

It’s okay to use brand names in stories but get the trademark correct, don’t use them in a generic or incorrect sense and don’t portray the product in a disparaging light.
Brand names can be a good way to provide the reader with a quick, concrete description but don’t use them too much and too often.

8. Don’t let description hang you up during a first draft.

If you’re not comfortable writing description, don’t let it get in the way when you’re writing the first draft. Remember you can always go back and add them in later.

DESCRIPTION EXERCISES

1. WORDPOOL

Susan Goldsmith Woodridge, in her book Poem Crazy, suggests that we collect words whenever we can. Words we see around us, or words that just pop into our heads. Look into dictionaries, field guides, write down street names, product labels, names of people, etc.

Wordpools are an excellent source of inspiration and a great way to stretch our imagination.

Anne Marble suggests that we use strong active concrete words when we write description.

In this first activity, I asked my members to create 2 wordpools. A Noun Wordpool and a Verb Wordpool. In their given Wordpool worksheet, they wrote down specific nouns (not house, but cottage or bungalow) and strong verbs (not walk, but stagger or stride).

2. WORD ALCHEMY

Alchemy is defined as a medieval chemical science and speculative philosophy aiming to achieve the transmutation of the base metals into gold, the discovery of a universal cure for disease, and the discovery of a means of indefinitely prolonging life. But it is also defined as a power or process of transforming something common into something special.

Susan Goldsmith Woodridge, in her book Poem Crazy, suggests giving colors to abstractions or concepts.

For example: Blue love, Chartreuse agreements, Silver deliberation, Magenta pride

For the second exercise, I gave out two colored pieces of paper. On the yellow paper I asked them to write a color (such as magenta or periwinkle), and on the blue piece of paper, I asked them to write an abstract concept (such as deliberation, love,pride,etc).

Once they had done that, I had them pass the yellow card to the left and the blue card to the right. Combining the words on the two cards, they came up with a new color-concept word (such as Maroon Love or Silver Fear). I had them pass their cards several more times so they could come up with new color-concept words.

3. SENSE STOREHOUSE

Anne Marble encourages us to use all the senses when describing things in our stories. One way we can do this is by building a Storehouse of sense related words.

The 3^rd exercise was all about thinking up descriptive words that pertain to each of the senses.

For example:

sight = blurry, twinkling,
sound = honking,
smell = lemon, pungent
taste= vinegary, sweet
touch= furry, curdled, silky

Whenever you encounter a new sense related word as you read your books, newspapers, listen to the radio or watch TV, add them to the list.

4. IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST

Our final exercise was from Brian Kiteley’s book The 3 A.M. Epiphany, (which is a great book to have if you want to get your hands on hundreds of wonder creative writing exercise).

But I modified the exercise to include all the stuff we just learned about sound, style, tone, voice and description.

IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST (From Brian Kiteley’s 3 A.M. Epiphany)

Describe an unusual interior space, one with lots of interesting appurtenances and gadgets sticking out: a submarine, a small plane, a subway tunnel away from the platform, a boiler room in the subbasement of a high rise building, the warehouse-sized vault of a Federal Reserve Bank.

Do not yield to the easy use of this scene. The boiler room, for instance, we all expect would conceal an axe murderer. Put two innocent children in it instead, romping and playing among the glow and roar of the fire and steam events as if this were a sunny playground (their father is the superintendent of the building and he prefers to keep the kids where he can see them).

RULES:

Use words from your Noun Wordpool and Verb Wordpool
Usedescriptive words you previously listed down in the Sense Storehouse exercise.
Use at least one color-concept word (from the Word Alchemy exercise)

After this exercise, we all shared what we wrote down.

REFERENCES:

The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman

Your First Novel by Ann Rittenberg & Laura Whitcomb

The Art & Craft of Storytelling by Nancy Lamb

The 3 A.M. Epiphany by Brian Kiteley

The Art of Description: 8 Tips to Bring Your Settings To Life by Anne Marble

Get Started On Your Write Path: Plan Your Writing Goals & Your Writing Career

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 04:40:01 GMT

Last Saturday’s meetup was all about setting writing goals and planning our writing career. I was quite proud of how we managed to fit 20 people into the small library meeting room. We had to ~~steal~~ borrow some chairs from the other library tables, but we made it work.

I. WRITING REFLECTIONS

The first part of our session was called “Writing Reflections.

In the Philippines, we have a saying “One who doesn’t look back at where he’s come from, will not get to where he’s going.” Before we achieve the kind of future we want, we must take a good look at our past and present.

I had the audience reflect on how far they’ve come along the “Write Path” by answering the questions on their worksheet.

How we view ourselves as writers is an important part of our writing journey. It’s important to take note of our writing quirks and habits, what we dislike and like about writing in order for us to know whether the path we’re taking is the right one for us.

We have to know who we are and what we want before we sit down to write our stories. More importantly, we have to know why we want to be writers, why we want to travel this writing path. Do we write for fame? For money? For others? For ourselves? Do we write for the simple joy of writing or do write because we feel that our skill will get us somewhere?

Before we do everything to get what we want, we have to know why we want it.

After looking back at their writing past, I asked the audience to look ahead at the writing path they were on.

I talked a little about the power of visualization, even telling them the story of computer specialist Natan Sharanksy. He spent 9 years in USSR prison because he was accused of being a US spy. While in solitary confinement, he played himself mental chess, saying he might as well try and become a world chess champion. probably to have something to do. In 1996, Sharansky beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov.

I explained the importance of visualization and mental practice. Writing is 90% mental work. We must have strong, active minds if we wish to pursue a career in writing. Research, reading, plotting, creating stories, writing – all depend on our brain. Scientist Stephen Hawking, who suffers from ALS, and yet has published several best-selling books, is great proof that even without the use of our limbs or our voices, we can still be writersundefinedbecause all our stories come from only two places---our hearts and our minds.

To put into practice this power of visualization, I asked everyone to close their eyes and imagine themselves as a successful author. Maybe they’re climbing on stage to accept the Newbery Award, maybe they’re signing books at B&N. I asked them to imagine the scene in great detail, engaging all of their senses in their visualization.

After a minute, I asked them to open their eyes. And I told them they just got a glimpse of their possible future.

Now we had to figure out how to get ourselves there.

II. REALITY: PUBLISHING 101

We now had our writing dream clearly etched in our minds. But in order for us to make our dreams come true, we must first come to terms with the reality around us.

Before we even begin to figure out our writing goals, we need to first know what we’re getting ourselves into.

This is where I gave the group several handouts on the publishing process. I talked to them about the different types of publishers, the difference between traditional publishing and self-publishing, and the pros & cons for each type. I also talked to them about the various processes involved in traditional publishing (finishing a manuscript, getting an agent, finding a publisher, marketing their work, etc).

After half an hour of this discussion, the group now knew what they were in for.

I told them that they may find themselves wondering whether it was still possible for them to achieve that writing dream they visualized earlier. The answer is yesundefinedwith hard work, patience, determination and the right knowledge.

III. MAKING A COMMITMENT TO WRITING

The task of getting published seems daunting, especially now that they’ve been exposed to a dose of publishing reality. But I told them not to give up on their writing dream.

The best way to do accomplish something, or to make a dream come true is to take it one step at a time.

The first step to getting published is to make a commitment to writing.

And here, I took them through some ways for them to prove their commitment to writing.

1. Admit that you are a writer.

In their first worksheet, they encountered the question “Do you consider yourself a writer?” If they answered yes, then they’re already past the first hurdle. If they answered no, then it’s time to overcome the first obstacle in getting published.

I gave them this little tidbit of motivation:

You become a writer the moment you take up your pen (or type on your PC) and begin to write creatively. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a story, an essay, or a news article. If you write because you love to write, or simply because you enjoy writing, then you are a writer.

You become what you think you are. If you want to get published, you must set aside your insecurities and doubts.

Publishing a book is a long process and some people who start out wanting to get their book published, often give up after a year or two, when they realize it’s too much work and it’s taking too long.

Depending on how much time and effort we put into building our writing career, getting published might take anywhere from 3-10 years. That seems daunting, but keep this in mind: time flies when you’re having fun.

If writing is a passion for you, if it’s something you would do anywayundefinedwhether you knew you’d be successful or not, then it shouldn’t feel like work. If you really love something, you keep at it no matter how long it takes and no matter how hard it seems to be. It’ll all be worth it in the end.

And to help them keep to their writing commitment, I had the group sign a contract between them and their writing dreams.

On their worksheet #3, I asked them to write down the following words, and mean every word of what they write:

I am a writer. I will do everything in my power to get published in one form or another.

I will commit time and patience into achieving my writing goals.

I will become a published author.

Then I asked them to sign and date the contract and pass it around to their fellow writers to sign as witnesses.

The worksheet will serve as a constant reminder of their commitment to their writing goals, and as a source of inspiration for when they feel their writing passions waning. Maybe someday one or all of the witnesses who signed on their writing contract would become famous authors too!

For the next few steps in fulfilling their writing commitment, I had the group take out Worksheet #4, where they had to plan out their writing space, their writing tools, their ideal writing atmosphere, and their actual writing schedule.

VI. PLANNING YOUR WRITING GOALS

In this part of our session, we discussed the difference between dreams and goals. I also talked to them about the importance of writing down their goals.

I gave them a handout on how to make SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic & Time-Bound) Goals, as well as a list of some writing goal examples.

The final worksheet provided some questions to guide them on planning their writing goals, and also on how to develop their book ideas.

First Holiday Party & New Name & Logo Launch

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 02:05:34 GMT

We (Torrance Children's Book Writers) had our first ever Holiday Party on December 10^th, 2011. It was a potluck affair, and everyone brought special dishes to share with the group.

Wonderful potluck food

We all sat around the table getting to know each other in a more social setting, and exchanging tales of writing woes and writing joys.

Holiday lunch

Once we were all stuffed to our ears, we started our program. We began by introducing ourselves to the group. I thanked everybody for making time to join us despite their busy holiday schedule. We had some new faces in that day, so I also introduced our officers so they would know who to approach if they needed something.

I also told our newer members a little about the group's history and what we do. I told them that I had started the group a year and a half ago because I was pining for a writing group in the area that would support people like myself, who aspire to be published in the world of children’s books. I wanted a group that would provide mini-class sessions to teach me not only about the publishing industry, but also about writing itself. Since there were none in our neighborhood, I decided to create one to see where it would take me. My teaching experience kicked in and I figured I could maybe learn more about writing by teaching about writing.

Our writing group has grown and with it our dreams. There's so much more we want to do for our members including more class sessions, more helpful handouts and worksheets and more writing events. This takes a lot of time, which we are more than willing to give--and money, which unfortunately we don't have much of. We've already started the process of applying for a nonprofit status, and we hope that once that has pushed through,we can start trying to get a little bit of financial help so we can do more for our members.

My officers and I have kept busy while waiting for that nonprofit status to come through. We've come up with a new slogan and logo for our group based on our group's new name (which I had used when I sent in the non profit application).

At last Saturday's party, we launched our new name, logo and slogan.

Presenting our new slogan and logo

Next year, our name will officially change from Torrance Children’s Book Writers to Children’s Book Writers of Los Angeles, or CBWLA. This is the name we are using in our current nonprofit application, and the name which we hope future authors in our group will mention as inspirational in their careers.

After presenting our new logo and slogan, we moved on to the fun part of the party---the games.

The first game was human bingo and our members had to scramble all over the room asking people to sign in squares describing a certain trait they might have.

playing human bingo

The amazing Lucy finished all her squares first and won the tote bag. Amazing, considering she won the game while holding her daughter Ella (cutest baby ever!)

Lucy won the tote bag for human bingo

The second game was the funnest ever. The Gift Wrap Race rules were simple: form a group of three and work together to wrap the box as quickly as possible. The catch? They had to do it one handed!

The Gift Wrap Race

The winners of the race received this stainless steel water bottle with our name and logo.

The final game was a bit more challenging. Each group was given a riddle sheet. The riddle contained words with alternate titles for several well-known Christmas songs.For example, I Spied My Maternal Parent Osculating was also another name for I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. Each group had 8 minutes to fill in the proper title beside the riddle.

Members playing Yuletide Carol Riddler

The group with the most number of correct items won the prize--mousepads!

Yuletide Carol Riddler Winners

Our program ended with the white elephant gift exchange. White elephant is a gift game that involves picking a number, opening your chosen present in front of everyone else, and waiting nervously to see if someone else would steal the cool present you got or if they'd go for a new one.

white elephant gift game

The holiday party was a fun success and I only wish more people could've come! The food was yummy, the games entertaining, the prizes worth keeping and the people worth knowing.

And we got to help our local library by donating old books!

Books our members donated for the holiday book drive

Here's hoping next year will be just as fun!

Torrance Children's Book Writers soon to be Children's Book Writers of Los Angeles

Picture Book Bootcamp

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 02:02:50 GMT

We held our first ever Picture Book Bootcamp last Saturday, November 12^th, 2011. The 3-hour workshop was facilitated by our TCBW’s Second Scribe (a.k.a Vice-President) Lucy Ravitch.

Most of the material came from Ann Whitford Paul’s Writing Picture Books, Nancy Lamb’s Crafting Stories for Children, as well as past SCBWI conference talks and other writing retreat Lucy Ravitch has attended.

Lucy did an amazing job of compiling all she’s learned from Ann Whitford Paul’s & Nancy Lamb’s books, past SCBWI conference talks and other writing retreats she’s attended into 21 pages of extensive notes.

The LA Public Library Harbor Gateway Branch librarians were helpful as usual. Librarian Donna (who became a member of our group after our first meeting at the library), was kind enough to reserve our usual conference room, and to photocopy a page of our materials when we were missing two copies.

The meeting room normally holds 10 people, but we managed to rearrange the table and bring extra chairs to accommodate all 21 picture book writers who RSVP’d for the event.

Attendees of the Picture Book Bootcamp

Lucy brought 45 different picture books, which she beautifully showcased.

A showcase of picture books used in Lucy's Talk

She used many of the books to illustrate various points of her talkundefinedfrom picture book writing techniques to the many styles and types of picture books.

Lucy’s discussion included instruction on how to create compelling characters, create an eye-catching first line and a great story beginning, hold a story together, develop a satisfying story ending. She also discussed the art of picking a great book title, and the benefits of making a dummy book. She also briefly touched on the language of the story as used in picture books, and rhyming in picture books.

Before the meetup began, Lucy had asked everyone to pick two picture book manuscript samples from the board. Writers who attended used the manuscripts as a sample to work on some of the writing techniques Ann Whitford Paul discusses in her book.

Lucy uses picture books to illustrate various writing techniques

Writers who attended added their own notes to Lucy’s 21 page handout, and eagerly asked questions.

The workshop ended a few minutes before 4pm, and we all gave Lucy a big round of applause. Everyone clearly appreciated all the effort she put into the handout, as well as the presentation.

An Insider's Look at the Family Entertainment Market for Children's Book Writers

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 00:54:33 GMT

I first met our wonderful speakers Pamela Jaye Smith and Kathie Fong-Yoneda at a book signing in Barnes & Noble, Santa Monica on June 28, 2011. I listened to them, and two other script-writing consultants talk about Screenwriting, and writing in general.

At the end of their talk, I lined up to get copies of their books signed. They asked me about my own writing, and I told them about the writing group for children’s books writers that I had founded last year. Kathie was most interested, and when she heard that we were always looking for speakers who would teach us for free (since we didn’t exactly have the funds), she immediately offered to be a speaker.

Lena and I had taken pictures at the event, and so we emailed to them a week later. I was thrilled when Kathie said that she was coming down to L.A. sometime in August and she had some free time to maybe come speak to our group. She even got Pamela Jaye Smith to agree to be a speaker as well.

Kathie Fong-Yoneda & Pamela Jaye Smith, with a poster of our event

The event was held at the Torrance Municipal Airport meeting room from 7-9PM.

Torrance Municipal Airport Zamperini Field - General Administration Building

Thanks to Lena, Lucy and Tiffani’s help, we got the room all set up before the speakers and our fellow writers arrived. One of our members, Jeff, was kind enough to bring some coffee in case anybody needed it for a quick boost.

Kathie and Pamela arrived early, and even gave us some cookies from King’s Hawaiian to add to the snacks we were providing for everyone.

We waited a few minutes until everybody had signed in, gotten their name tags and chosen their seats; then I introduced our speakers.

Introducing the speakers

Kathie Fong Yoneda is a former development exec who has worked at such studios as Disney, Paramount, MGM, 20 thCentury Fox and Universal, specializing in live action, animation and both film & television projects. She conducts workshops worldwide and is the author of THE SCRIPT-SELLING GAME (2 nd edition) and teaches an online class on PITCH & PRESENTATION for Writers University (www.writersuniversity.net). She also co-exec produced the cable series BEYOND THE BREAK for Teen Nick.

www.kathiefongyoneda.com & www.facebook.com/TheScriptSellingGame

Pamela Jaye Smith is a writer, international consultant and speaker, and award-winning producer-director with over 30 years in the media industry, from feature films to music videos, commercials to documentaries. She is the author of INNER DRIVES, THE POWER OF THE DARK SIDE, BEYOND THE HERO’S JOURNEY, and SYMBOLS.IMAGES.CODES: The Secret Language of Meaning in Media. As well as in-person classes here and abroad, Pamela teaches online on Mythic Themes, Archetypes, and Symbols for a number of venues. She is the founder of MYTHWORKS and co-founder of the Alpha Babe Academy.

www.pamelajayesmith.com

Kathie began her talk by telling everyone the story of how we had first met, and of how they had come to be our speakers. She also told us of how she and Pamela have been friends for years, and of how they work together often on certain projects.

Kathie gave us an inside peek into how family projects are acquired. First, she answered the question, “What is the family entertainment market?”

Family entertainment, Kathie says, consists of feature films, games, books and web-based projects, although every day technology comes up with some other new way for us to enjoy the art of story telling.

Based on her years as Disney executive, Kathie has come up with several answers as to what makes family entertainment so popular.

1. There is an understanding that children don’t necessarily have to take center stage.

2. Kids like to see funny, outrageous, out of control or scary situations are popular

3. Most publishers and studios like projects that appeal to the entire family, and not just to kids that are under 10 years old.

4. Projects Need to have Cross-Over appeal.

Another question that Kathie often gets asked is, What kinds of projects attract a buyer?

Kathie listed down the most popular kinds of projects, along with examples of movies in each genre.

Comedies – Home Alone, Night at the Museum

Comedies that have a positive message – Shrek, Toy Story, Up

Dramas that have some kind of action/magical supernatural elements – twilight, Harry potter, spiderman

Dramas that have universal themes – lion king, mulan

Action –Adventure – Indiana Jones, M.I.B, National Treasure

One of the most important questions that Kathie answered that night was How can a writer get his/her work noticed?

Kathie says that over 80% of Oscar-nominated films for BEST PICTURE are adaptations. Almost 45% of all TV & cable movies are adaptations. Of those 70% of all Emmy Award winners for TV & cable movies are from adaptations.

Still most books are not meant to become movies.

Studios & networks take a hard look at making films based on books because they have to pay twice as much – once for the book & once for the screenplay.

Kathie then gave us a list of things we should consider if we wanted to use this strategy.

Aside from teaching us about loglines, Kathie also gave us a list of things the producer or studio would need to know if we were to submit a synopsis:

·Who is the hero/heroine?
·What is his/her goal?
·What is the issue, problem or challenge he/she faces?
·Where does a majority of the story take place?
·What is the time span involved?
·Does it take place in the past, future or present?

Kathie reminded us that studios always look for stories that have one or more of the following elements:

I realized that story elements studios and producers of film look for in projects they receive, are the same elements that publishers look for in the stories submitted to them.

Kathie also listed down some major challenges in adapting our books into screenplays. Some of these challenges include the fact that many books span a large chunk of time, and while the main storyline is usually apparent in a book, many writers want to “remain true” to their work by keeping in too many subplots or characters.

This is possibly why novelists can’t write screenplays, the same way most screenwriters can’t write novels.

She said writers and their formats are like athletes and their sport. You may be good in golf, but you may be crummy in skiing. Or you may do well in track, but you can’t swim. Sometimes you can do well in 2 or 3 kinds of sports, same as writing.

Kathie ended her talk by giving us other advice for submitting our works to a publisher or studio. She says we should keep in mind that once a studio buys the rights to our book or manuscript, they “own” it & we no longer have control over the subsequent adaptation that results from their purchase.

Kathie ended her talk to a loud applause, and we entered the second phase of our event:

Pamela Jaye Smith's talk: Symbols and the Dark Side in Family Entertainment, Yes You Need It.

Pamela started her talk by asking us to imagine a pie chart for our story. Within that pie chart, there are three elements that we should consider to make our stories good:

Enlightenment

Entertainment

Expression

Pamela explained that we should ask ourselves what the ratio of these elements is in the story we’re writing.

Enlightenment is art, which shows us some kind of different vision. This is something our stories need, after all, Pamela reminded us, we don’t get much enlightenment from watching “Dumb and Dumber”.

Entertainment is the element that allows the audience to enjoy the story, while Expression is basically the part of the story that allows us to express ourselves.

Another important thing to remember is that writing is made up of Art, Craft and Business. Pamela said that Kathie did a great job of explaining the Business part, and so her task was to talk about the Art & Craft part.

Pamela went on to define mythology. She emphasized that a myth isn't a female moth undefined as one child once put it, but that myths are stories we tell ourselves to explain the world around us and within us.

She talked a little bit about human developmental ages. Each human developmental stage is related to the kind of stories people like to hear about at the different stages of their lives.

The first 7 years of our lives is devoted to learning about how to work our bodies. In the second 7 years of our lives, we learn about emotion. In the third 7 years of our lives, the focus is on our mental growth. The 4^th 7 years of our lives is about combining all those elements.

For the most part, as children’s book writers we work on the first and second 7 years and so our stories are mostly about the physical and the emotional.

One thing to remember is that idealism is part of what creates the magic that makes a book work. That’s why we have heroes, so that we could look up at something or someone. Heroes represent that enlightenment part of a story.

Stories with heroes have worked for thousands of years. One of the first books that Pamela remembers that she loved was Oscar Wilde’s fairytales. Most of the stories in that book are about good behavior for children, appropriate behavior for young adults and sacrificial behavior for adults to get to that greater good.

Lawrence of Arabia is one of those movies that Pamela said made a really big impression on her when she was younger. It wasn't a kid’s movie, but it was so idealistic undefined about a person going by themselves into a situation, and becomes a part of it, and adds and improves the situation by what he brings into it.

Pamela calls this the “Going Native” theme. And this is interesting for teens, particularly because teens think they are “the only one in the world who has ever felt like this.”

She also told us to keep in mind when we write our stories that kids’ brains are usually wired for empathy by age 5 undefined if they’re not, then we may have a psychopath on our hands. And that’s the value of puppies and cuddly things.

Pamela went on to explain that the way to make our characters grow and learn things in our stories is for them to encounter conflict undefined which she also calls the “dark side”.

There are 3 levels of the Dark Side, or three kinds of conflicts:

Personal

Impersonal

Supra-personal

Stories that are most effective are ones that use at least two of these three elements.

Pamela also listed down the 10 Aspects of Opposition and taught us how to select the best ones for our story.

1. Self

2. Other individuals

3. Family

4. Sweethearts & rivals

5. Religion

6. Environment

7. Technology

8. Wars - and warring factions.

9. Gods, monsters, magic, demons, and aliens .

10. The Dark Brotherhood – the really big bad guys.

The 3 categories of Symbolism and how to coordinate your imagery

Emotional

Situational

Conceptual

Our two wonderful speakers spent a few more minutes answering the many questions about writing, publishing, symbolism, and conflict that our members asked them.

Before we lined up to get our books signed, we took a picture of our group with the fabulous speakers Kathie Fong-Yoneda and Pamela Jaye Smith.

Children's Book Writers with Authors & Speakers Pamela Jaye Smith and Kathie Fong Yoneda

The workshop was a definite success. Kathie and Pamela did a great job of challenging us to create better stories that will stand the test of time.

Johnny Covey Discusses How to Survive A Writing Career in this Economy

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 00:49:42 GMT

Johnny Covey, author of the self-published novel “The Answer”, contacted our group and offered to speak to us. We’re always happy whenever authors offer to share their time and knowledge, and naturally we said yes.

Johnny Covey, author of The Answer

Johnny Covey is the author of The Answer and creator of The 7 Equity Extractors, a framework that unleashes each individual’s equity, that untapped potential. He is also the creator of The 8 Dexterities, an exercise that distinguishes your strengths and how to focus on them. Johnny is an inspirational speaker who has been recognized for his ability to rejuvenate an organization by creating a new level of innovation. Examples of this innovation have been featured in a book by the all time best selling business author Robert Kiyosaki, creator of the internationally acclaimed Rich Dad Poor Dad series.

You can learn more about him at www.johnnycovey.com.

Johnny began by introducing himself and telling us about his writing journey. At the young age of 13, he had developed an interest in Real Estate. As he grew older he learned more about the real estate business, and became very successful for many years.

However, when the market collapsed a few years go, Johnny found himself without a job and without a future. This made him reflect on his own life, and on what he might do to regain the success he once add.

That’s when he came up with the book, “The Answer.”

Johnny created the book in order to help people break through the stale, negative energy that keeps them from reaching their full potentialundefinedwhether in business or in writing.

The book is formatted like a journal, and unlike other booksundefinedthe font is unique. The book is printed entirely in Johnny’s handwriting. He formatted the book this way to allow the reader to feel like they are the author, because they are. Readers reflect on the various questions Johnny has posed in the book, then write down their answers in the space provided therein. The interactive style of the book was designed to help the readers discover who they are, and what their potential is. Johnny hopes for people to recognize that all of us have the answers within ourselves, if we only take time to ask the right questions.

After Johnny’s introduction, he gave us an exercise that he called “Pen Ponder”. He gave us a few minutes to answer the question “What is the next step for me?” –the next step referring to our writing careers.

To give us an example of how we can go about finding the answers to the important questions we have regarding our writing careers, Johnny asked for a volunteer.

Johnny Covey asking Lucy questions

Lucy volunteered. She wanted find out what the next step was for her writing career (in effect, how to get published, and what to do with the books that she had written). Johnny proceeded to ask her questions. Each answer Lucy gave was followed by another related question. Johnny ended his interview with Lucy when he was satisfied that she had arrived at several useful answers to the question “what is the next step for me.”

Johnny Covey and Lucy

Johnny shared the 4 M’s of finding the answers:

1. Models – successful people/ actions we could watch from a distance. They are role models, or good examples of how we can find success.

2. Mentors – People who have achieved what we want to achieve, or a book to help us achieve the goals we’ve written down. In our case, we would need to find other successful writers who we can learn from, and read up on a lot of writing books to help us improve our craft.

3. Mastermind – A critique group or writing group that we can join. A group of like-minded people who can accompany us in our writing journey.

4. Me – In the end, we decide what we need to do to find the next step in the ladder of our success.

Johnny ended the session by asking us to answer the question “What is holding you back from your next step?”

Johnny Covey and the class

All About Plotting

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:38:51 GMT

Our writing group always met at Borders in Torrance. But last week, they announced that they would be closing all 399 stores, so we lost our only sponsor. I had scheduled our meetups with them all the way up to September, and now I had to scramble to find us new venues.

Saturday, July 23^rd, 2011 was supposed to be our last ever meeting in Borders. But when I passed by on Friday to check, I was greeted by a long line to the cashier that snaked around the store. There were tons of people bargain hunting and the shelves were nearly in disarray.

In short, I had to quickly find a new venue for our group. I emailed those who had RSVP’d for the event and informed them of the situation. I asked for their cellphone numbers so I could text them the new venue address the following day.

Early on Saturday, I drove to the nearest library. I waited for the doors to open, and as soon as it did, I rushed to the Reference Desk clerk.

I told her our situation and she suggested one of the conference rooms. They were supposed to be used on a first come, first served basis, but she reserved it for our group’s use from 1-4pm. The clerk used to be a member of the SCBWI, and was more than happy to help our group.

I was so happy to have found us a great venue at such short notice. I quickly emailed and texted all my members, and though a few of them didn’t make it, most of them were happy they did come---because I gave out a whole bunch of handouts and worksheets on plotting.

Torrance Children's Book Writers, photo by Janet Merrigan

Most of the worksheets and handouts were based on Deborah Halverson’s incredibly helpful book Writing Young Adult Fiction for Dummies, and Evan Marshall’s equally useful Marshall Plan for Novel Writing.

Following is an abbreviated transcript of the session:

ALL ABOUT PLOTTING

Some people are plotters-they like to outline the story and develop their characters before they even begin writing the first draft. Some are pantsers- they start with a story idea and just go from there.

Everyone has a different approach to writing, particularly to plotting. While outlining works for some people, it might not be a pleasant experience for others.

Whether you're plotters or pantsers doesn’t matter. What matters is that you learn as much as you can about plotting from several different sources. Because in the end, only you can decide what works for you or not.

The first thing you need to do when reading any writing bookundefinedespecially one on plotting, is to understand what is being said. Once you understand the rule, then you can take it and use it as is, or adapt it in the way that makes sense for you.

You must think of every writing book you read, and every writing session you attend as a GUIDE and not as a set of fixed rules or commandments.

You can follow whatever you learn from today’s session about plotting to the letter, you can tweak the steps to suit your style, or you can even add and subtract certain steps. The point is that as long as you understand the “rules”, feel free to break them.

BEFORE YOU PLOT YOUR NOVEL

Before we actually start plotting our novels, there are certain very important things we must first do.

A. TARGET AGE RANGE & GENDER

Who are you writing for?

Are you writing for children or adults?

Knowing the exact age range of your audience will help keep your plot on track.
Not only that, it will help you when you begin to query your work, and will help publishers and booksellers know where to place your books on the shelf.
Let’s go over the following handout really quickly.

Handout 1: Understanding Children’s Book Genres by Laura Backes

Are you writing for girls or boys?

From Deborah Halverson’s Writing Young Adult Fiction for Dummies:

B. TARGET AGE RANGE

Now that you know the age range of your target audience, it’ll be easy to figure out the word count for each.

Why is word count important?

C. TARGET GENRE

Knowing the genre of the book you are writing/planning to write will help agents/publishers decide whether to pick you as a client or not.

But within each general genre, there are also specific types of sub-genresundefinedand knowing these will help you keep on track when plotting/ writing your stories.

Handout 2: Genres and How to Choose One pp.30-33 The Marshall Plan Workbook by Evan Marshall

D. TARGET YOUR THEME

From Deborah Halverson’s Writing Young Adult Fiction for Dummies:

Worksheet 1: Choose Your Theme. p. 33, Writing Young Adult Fiction for Dummies by Deborah Halverson

E. FIND YOUR STORY IDEA/ HOOK

Worksheet 2: Write Your Hook. p. 71-72, Writing Young Adult Fiction for Dummies by Deborah Halverson.

Worksheet 3: Novel Information at a Glance

F. FLESH OUT YOUR CHARACTERS

1. Worksheet 4: Character Thumbnail & Profile by Deborah Halverson

2. Worksheet 5: The Marshall Plan Character Fact Lists by Evan Marshall

3. Worksheet 6: Comprehensive Character Profile (compiled by myself)

No matter what worksheet/ character development technique you wish to use, there is one particular technique that you all must know and use. If there’s one technique that I recommend you use, it would be this one:

GMC or Goals, Motivation, Conflict by Debra Dixon

Handout 3: Goals, Motivations, Conflict by Debra Dixon

WHO, WHAT, WHY, AND WHY NOT

From Debra Dixon's Goals, Motivations, Conflict

· These are important questions for any story

Who	Character
What	Goal
Why	Motivation
Why Not	Conflict

A character wants a goal because he is motivated, but he faces conflict

DOROTHY	EXTERNAL	INTERNAL
Goal	GET HOME 1. Get to the Emerald City 2. See the Wizard 3. Get the broomstick	To find her heart’s desire and a place with no trouble
Motivation	Auntie Em is Sick 1. The Wizard is there. 2. He has the power to send her home. 3. The price for sending her home	1. She’s unhappy 2. Trouble follows her everywhere
Conflict	1. The WITCH 2. The balloon lifts without her.	She doesn’t know what she wants

OTHER REFERENCE FOR GMC:

Conflict: The Power of the Dark Side by Pamela Jaye Smith

Characterization/Motivation: Inner Drives by Pamela Jaye Smith

G. PLOT YOUR STORY

1. WHAT IS PLOT?

Have you ever seen one of those Domino exhibitions on TV? The one where an artist (or a person with a lot of time on his hands) places a whole sequence of dominos on the floor. As observers, we have an idea of what the shape of the artist’s domino work is, but we can’t really tell the final outcome until the artist finishes the process and pushes the first domino forward.

Plot is defined as the events that make up a story, particularly as they relate to one another in a pattern, in a sequence, through cause and effect, or by coincidence.

In short, Plot is a series of linked events. How are these events linked? By Cause and effect. Each event in a novel must have consequence and therefore, will affect the event that comes next.

2. PLOT STRUCTURE

Handout 4: Conflict and Character Within Story Structure

Simply put, every story has a Beginning, a Middle and an End.

The Basic 3 Act Structure is very important in plottingundefinedand is important to keep in mind in any stage of writing. Some of the problems we have we our novel’s structure is due to the fact that we may not have a clear idea of these 3 important phases in our story. We have to know where our Beginning ends, where our Middle starts and where our End begins.

Each Act in the structure performs certain functions.

A great article by Peder Hill explains The Basic Three Act Structure, and relates it to Character Arc.

The simplest building blocks of a good story are found in the Three Act Structure. Separated by Plot Points, its Act 1 (Beginning), Act 2 (Middle), and Act 3 (End) refer not to where in time in the story they lie but instead fundamental stages along the way.

From Peder Hill's Structure & Plot

In the Beginning you introduce the reader to the setting, the characters and the situation (conflict) they find themselves in and their goal. Plot Point 1 is a situation that drives the main character from their "normal" life toward some different conflicting situation that the story is about.
- Great stories often begin at Plot Point 1, thrusting the main character right into the thick of things, but they never really leave out Act 1, instead filling it in with back story along the way.
In the Middle the story develops through a series of complications and obstacles, each leading to a mini crisis. Though each of these crises are temporarily resolved, the story leads inevitably to an ultimate crisisundefinedthe Climax. As the story progresses, there is a rising and falling of tension with each crisis, but an overall rising tension as we approach the Climax. The resolution of the Climax is Plot Point 2.
In the End, the Climax and the loose ends of the story are resolved during the Denouement.Tension rapidly dissipates because it's nearly impossible to sustain a reader's interest very long after the climax. Finish your story and get out.

From Peder Hill's Structure & Plot

3. PLOT DRIVEN VS. CHARACTER-DRIVEN STORIES

PLOT DRIVEN STORIES: Acting on Events

CHARACTER-DRIVEN STORIES: Focusing on Feelings

4. HOW TO PLOT

A. OUTLINING WITH TRIGGER POINTS

Worksheet 7: Plot your trigger Points p.104, Writing YA Fiction for Dummies

B. CHAPTERS VS. SCENES

Handout 5: Pushing Readers Buttons with Scenes & Chapters p.123-127, Writing YA Fiction for Dummies

C. SECTIONS

But how do you know how many scenes you should have in a story? And what if your story has 3 characters? How many scenes should each of them have?

I had the same problem when I was just starting out with novel writing. Luckily I found Evan Marshall’s The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing, and the Marshall Plan Workbook.

Marshall doesn’t work with scenes or chapters. Instead, he works with what he calls SECTIONS, which if you ask me, are very similar to scenes.

Handout 6: The Novelmaster

Handout 7: Section Sheets

*As you've seen from our session today, Deborah Halverson's Writing Young Adult Fiction for Dummies is a great source of information. It's one of the best books I've seen out there, that guides you step by step on how to write great young adult fiction, but all of Deborah Halverson's techniques apply to writing any kind of fiction. I encourage you all to get a copy of this book , as well as The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing.

Thank you all for joining me today. Let's discuss whatever questions you may have about today's discussions.

Re-energizing Your Writing Passions

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sun, 29 May 2011 00:29:25 GMT

Often times as writers, we encounter moments when we begin to question our decision to write. We experience writer’s block or maybe even the general desire to just give up and take up a hobby that doesn’t require too much blood.

Yes, sometimes, writing feels like a long drawn out war and every battle just makes us feel like weary soldiers who think the fight isn’t worth it anymore.

But we writers all know that writing is always worth it. We just need to be reminded sometimes.

So last May 28^th, 2011, I decided that the topic for our Torrance Children’s Book Writing Group would be about “Re-energizing Your Writing Passions”.

I’m going to share the transcript of our session.

You can do the exercises on your own and maybe come up with some new ideas to help you in your writing. Feel free to share these activities with other writer friends, just make sure you link it to this post so they too can go through the exercises.

RE-ENERGIZING YOUR WRITING PASSIONS

I. REFLECTION ON OUR CURRENT STATE

Have you been writing lately? Why/Why not?
How do you feel about your writing these days?
What are some of the things that hinder you from writing?
Why do you think we let these things hinder us from writing?

At the root of writer’s block is Fear.

Our fears hinder us from becoming the authors we want to become. In order find the energy to write, we must confront our subconscious fears and find ways to overcome them.

II. SOME OF THE COMMON FEARS OF WRITERS

1. The Fear of Failure or Rejection

We sometimes fear that we’re not good enough to call ourselves writers.

But we’ll never know if we don't try. Better to try and fail than to live the rest of our lives with an unfulfilled dream.

2. The Fear of Criticism.

Bad reviews or bad critiques always get us down. But we must remember that a bad review of our work has nothing to do with us as persons. Critiques and reviews, though they may lower our self-esteem at times, are only there to make us better writers.

3. The Fear of Offending.

Sometimes we unintentionally offend people with our writing. As writers we have the responsibility to be honest with our writing and to write about what we know. We can’t please everyone and if we try to do that in our writing, then we won’t end up writing the best work we’re capable of producing. Just look at all the books who made it to the Banned Listundefinedthese writers wrote from their hearts and minds and though some people might have found their works offensive, the rest of us certainly think these books are gems of literature.

4. The Fear of Becoming Empty.

Our writerly muse can be quite unpredictable. Naturally, as writers, we’re afraid that we’ll run out of stories to tell. But imagination is something we’re born with and there are always ways to spark our creativity.

5. The Fear of Success.

Performing in front of an audience is one of the most common fears. Sometimes, as writers we are required not only to share our work but to read it out loud or to promote it even. Success is something we shouldn’t fear, but something we should embrace.

How do we overcome our writing fears?
First, we must admit to having them, and we must figure out what we are afraid of.
We must name our fears. Naming our fears gives us power over them.

Activity: Naming Our Fears

Write down your writing fears. It could be one word, one sentence or more. Actually, the more specific you are the better.

Now that we’ve named our fears, the next step is to find ways to overcome them.

III. COMBATING OUR FEARS THROUGH THE POWER OF THOUGHT

Dr. Masaru Emoto, a Japanese doctor and researcher, made an astonishing discovery about water, which he documented photographically. Using a very powerful microscope in a very cold room along with high-speed photography, Dr. Emoto discovered that crystals formed in frozen water reveal changes when specific, concentrated thoughts are directed toward them.

He put stickers with words like love and appreciation or “you make me sick” on different bottles. He photographed the water before and after the stickers were placed. It didn’t matter whether the person placing the stickers understood the words. The words affected the water crystal, whether they were written in Japanese or German.

Water from clear springs and water that had been exposed to loving words showed brilliant, complex, and colorful snowflake patterns.

"HOPE"

Polluted water, or water exposed to negative thoughts, formed incomplete, asymmetrical patterns with dull colors.

"YOU MAKE ME SICK"

This experiment shows the power of thought on water.

Up to 60% of the human body is water, the brain is composed of 70% water. About 83% of our blood is water, which helps digest our food, transport waste, and control body temperature.

With this much water inside of us, imagine just how much our thoughts affect the water inside our bodies.

Changing The Way We Think

We must change our negative thoughts into positive ones.
We must change our fears of writing into the joys of writing.
We must turn that writer’s block into a glob of clay and mold it into something else.
We must look for things that inspire us to write, instead of things that hinder us from writing.
- Why does writing make us happy? What are the joys of writing?

Activity:

Look at the writing fears your wrote.

How do you turn this negative fear into a positive joy?

Example:

I’m afraid of being rejected by an agent.

I’m excited to be accepted by the perfect agent.

Practical Ways to Inspire Ourselves to Write

1. Re-read our favorite books/ the book that made you want to write.

2. Read new books in the genre we’re writing in.

3. Read inspirational writing quotes

4. Find a good visual motivator and paste it to your screen/ wall.

5. Buy some office supplies or a new journal that you’ll actually write in

6. Start a new journal

IV. THE POWER OF VISUALIZATION

From an article by resilience coach Angie Le Van

Mental practice can get you closer to where you want to be in life, and it can prepare you for success!

Let’s take the case of Natan Sharansky, a computer specialist who spent 9 years in prison in the USSR after being accused of spying for US.

While in solitary confinement, he played himself in mental chess, saying: “I might as well use the opportunity to become the world champion!”

In 1996, Sharansky beat world champion chess player Garry Kasparov!

A study looking at brain patterns in weightlifters found that the patterns activated when a weightlifter lifted hundreds of pounds were similarly activated when they only imagined lifting.

In some cases, research has revealed that mental practicies are almost as effective as true physical practice, and doing both is more effective than doing either alone.
Guang Yue, an exercise psychologist from Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio, compared “people who went to the gym with people who carried out virtual workouts in their heads”. He found that a 30% muscle increase in the group who went to the gym. However, the group of participants who conducted mental exercises of the weight training increased muscle strength by almost half as much (13.5%). This average remained for 3 months following the mental training.

Noted as one form of mental rehearsal, visualization has been popular since the Soviets started using it back in the 1970s to compete in sports.
- Nowadays many athletes employ this technique - Tiger Woods who has been using it since his pre-teen years.
- Seasoned athletes use vivid, highly detailed internal images and run-throughs of the entire performance, engaging all their senses in their mental rehearsal, and they combine their knowledge of the sports venue with mental rehearsal.

Brain studies reveal that thoughts produce the same mental instructions as actions. Mental imagery impacts many cognitive processes in the brain: motor control, attention, perception, planning, and memory.
- So the brain is getting trained for actual performance during visualization. It’s been found that mental practices can enhance motivation, increase confidence and self-efficacy, improve motor performance, prime your brain for success, and increase states of flow – all relevant to achieving your best life!

Study results highlight the strength of the mind-body connection, or in other words the link between thoughts and behaviors – a very important connection for achieving your best life.

To see is to believe – to see something clearly in your mind is to believe it’s possible. Once you believe it’s possible, your mind finds a way to make it so.

Writer’s Mental Training

We writers, above anyone else, need to train our minds. Why? We use our minds for 90% of our work.
Research, reading, plotting, creating stories, writing – all depend on our brain. Stephen Hawking, scientist, and said to be the most intelligent man in the planet, is severely disabled by a motor neurone disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
- He has lost the ability to use his arms, legs and his voice, and yet he has managed to write several best selling books such as A Brief History of Time, The Grand Design and even two children’s books co-written with his eldest Lucy, called George’s Cosmic Treasure Hunt and George’s Secret Key to the Universe.
- He proves that even without the use of our limbs or our voices, we can still be writersundefinedbecause all our stories come from only two places---our hearts and our minds.

So How Do We Train our Brain?

Earlier, I mentioned the study that stated that thoughts produce the same mental instructions as actions. This means that when we imagine ourselves playing basketball, the neurons in our brain that fire when we actually play basketball are firing when we just think about playing.
In writing terms, when we imagine achieving a writing goal, such as finishing a manuscript, the neurons in our brain fire as if we were actually finishing a manuscript.
- I also mentioned earlier that this study highlights the mind-body connection. There is a link between our thoughts and our behaviors.
- When your mind has a subtle memory of how to solve a particular problem, or achieve a particular goal, it will be easier for it to translate these thoughts into physical solutions.

What Are Some Visualization Exercises We Can Do to Achieve Our Writing Dreams

1. We need to establish our goals. Sure we all want to get published, but do we want a two-book deal? A Series deal? A book deal worth millions? We have to be specificundefinedand honest about our goals.

Sometimes, when you’re trying to solve a particular problemundefinedwhether writing related or notundefinedyou spend hours working it out, but find no solution. A friend advises you to “sleep on it” and you do. You wake up the next morning, and you have the answer.
In sleep, our minds still continue to work while our body rests.
Our subconscious minds cannot find ways for us to achieve our goals unless we’ve told it exactly the kind of goals we want.

2. It’s not enough to think about these writing goals. We must also write them down. If you were here during our Rewriting the Manuscript Session, then you might have heard about this study.

In 1964, all members of the Harvard Business School graduating class stated that they have, at graduation, clear goals that they want to accomplish in life. Among them, 5% took the time to write it down on paper. In 1984, a follow up study was done and it was discovered that 95% of those who wrote down their goals were able to achieve them within 20 years. Among the “lazy” majority, only 5% of them were able to reach their expected goals.

An earlier study in Yale University also had similar results. This time, only 3% of the 1953 graduating class made written goals. Twenty years after, in 1973, it was found out that this 3% of Yale graduates were able to accomplish more goals than the rest of the other 97% combined.

Amazing isn’t it? But let’s try to enumerate some possible and more rational explanations for these results.

What happens when you write down your goals?

It becomes a written contract to yourself which usually sparks a personal motivation to achieve them.
It makes you define clearly what your goals are. Writing them down encourages you to state what you want in greater detail.
It frees your mind of perpetually thinking and “remembering” your goals.
It stimulates creativity and motivates you to think about the next step.

Activity: Write down your top 5 Writing Goals

Examples: find an agent, get a series deal, become a bestselling author, get a big enough advance to quit your job and just write, sell a million copies, win the Newberry award, be featured on a talk show, etc, use your author popularity to do speaking engagements, etc.

Activity: The Movie in Our Minds.

Which among the writing goals you’ve listed would you say is proof that you’ve made it as an author?

Ex. Winning a Newberry? Signing thousands of books in one sitting? Going on a trip and finding someone reading your book?

Close your eyes. Hold a mental picture of this moment in time, as if it were occurring to you right at this moment. Imagine the scene in much detail. Engage as many of the five senses as you can in your visualization. Who are you with? Which emotions are you feeling right now? What are you wearing? Is there a smell in the air? What do you hear? What is your environment? Eliminate any doubts that come to you.

3. Visualize the pinnacle of your writing career. Remember the image you just saw in your mind. You must play this scene in your mind again and again. Hold the scene right before you sleep at night. While you sleep, your mind makes connections about your last thought at night. While your body is resting, your mind is working on ways for you to make that scene come true.

Variation of this Visualization Exercise:

Visualize every step of your writing career. For example, if you are still in the process of writing your manuscript, your most immediate goal would be to finish editing it.
- Visualize achieving this writing goal. Be very specific about every detail of this ”movie in your mind”. Imagine raising your arms in victory, or laughing in delight, or calling a friend and telling her all about how you finally finished your novel.

This power of visualization also works when you want to solve a storyline problem. Imagine yourself finding a way to work out the kink in your plot line before you fall asleep. Chances are you’ll have a good idea of how to when you wake up the next morning.

4. Do something physical to further promote that vision in your mind.

No matter where I go, whenever I pass by a bookstore, I go inside and I head straight for the middle grade section. I make a space for my book.

The mind body connection is not a one way street. Just as our minds influence the way our body moves, so too do our bodies influence the way our mind works.

The act of making a space for our book teaches our mind to expect things.

Now, What other physical things can you do to promote this vision of writing success?

When asked about what you do. Introduce yourself as a writer.

Attend book signings, especially of your favorite authors. Listen to these authors speak. List down the things you like about their presentation and think about how you would present the topic if you were the author.

Imagine what your book is going to look like. Create your own book covers, or ask the help of a friend who is good with art, to help you create your book cover.

Create a writing signatureundefinedone that you will use when you start signing those books during those book tours.

Imagine that you’ve already been published, and that you’ve been invited to do a talk and book signingundefinedwhether its at a school, or at a bookstore. Talk aloud about your book, or your writing journey, or how you came up with your story idea.

V. GETTING SOME WRITING INSPIRATION

We’ve now faced our fears. We know how to overcome them.

We’ve written down our goals and etched the mental picture of us achieving them firmly in our minds.

The next step is to find the writing inspiration to actually achieve these goals.

Before we become bestselling authors, we must send our manuscripts out. But before we can even do that, we must make sure we finish these manuscripts.

I want to share some writing exercises that are bound to give you tons of creative ideas.

1. POEM FISHING

2. SCENE IT

3. WORD ALCHEMY

4. WORDPOOL

HANDOUT: 31 Ways to Gain Writing Inspiration by Leo Babauta

Here’s a handout. This guy has compiled several ways to gain writing inspiration. Let’s go over them very quickly.

VI. REVIEW

Today we named our writing fears, and found out ways to overcome it using the power of thought and several mental exercises. We also discovered or re-discovered some activities to help us gain some writing inspiration.

Aura Imbarus Talks About Her Journey to Publication

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 00:21:31 GMT

Aura Imbarus Bio:
(from her website www.auraimbarus.com)

Aura Imbarus is an educator, professional speaker, and the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, Out of the Transylvania Night: A Story of Tyranny, Freedom, Love and Identity, and a book for teens, 101 Great Ways to Make the World a Totally Awesome Place - By Teens For Teens, both fall 2010 releases.

Born and raised in Sibiu/Hermannstadt, Romania, or more precisely in “Dracula’s county Transylvania," Ms. Imbarus attended Lucian Blaga University, earning an MA degree in American and British Studies and a Ph.D. in Philology with the distinction Cum Laude. From 1990 to 1997, she worked as a journalist for Radio Contact, The National Journal, and Gallup Poll in Sibiu, Romania.

In 1997, Aura immigrated to Los Angeles, where she continued her education at UCLA and began her teaching career both as a high school and college professor. She spends her mornings at West High School, a designated California Distinguished School in 1984, 1994, 1999, 2005, receiver of the Excellence in Education Award from the United States Department of Education in 1984, and nationally awarded Blue Ribbon School distinction in 1984, and her nights at LA Harbor College and El Camino College in South Bay.

Aura is actively involved in RAPN (Romanian American Professional Network) as well as Eurocircle, a professional networking organization with over 60,000 members of European origins. She is also a mentor for Blue Heron Foundation, a non-profit and professional organization whose mission is to help Romanian orphans in her native country with money and counseling in order to receive a higher education degree. Aura is also a member of MLA- Modern Language Association, NCTE- National Council of Teachers of English, NEA- National Education Association, and many others. Other interests include: reading, painting, skiing, ice-skating, hiking, beach volleyball, and traveling the world.

“I want to live life to the fullest," says Aura, "and in the process, to help others along the way. I want to squeeze out each and every moment of life, and use to the maximum. Every day has the potential of a lifetime."

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Aura contacted me through the Torrance Children’s Book Writers website in January of this year. She was interested in speaking to our group about her book and about her journey to publication. Over the next few months we emailed back and forth constantly, trying to figure out the schedule and venue for the events.

We immediately scheduled the talk for April 23^rd, but over the next couple of months, I had a difficult time finding a venue. Finally, two weeks before her talk, Catalina Coffee Company in Redondo Beach came to our rescue. And boy, did we strike gold with that venue! The venue was free of charge, provided we bought at least one drink. And who wouldn’t want to buy a drinkundefinedand food with all the wonderful aromas floating around in the building!

The Catalina Coffee Company manager immediately made us feel welcome. He cleared a space for us in the Libraryundefineda part of the coffee house that looks like an actual library.

Surrounded with loaded bookshelves and filled with comfortable couches and armchairs, the room is a haven for readers (and writers) who wish to relax in a comfy chair while sipping on their coffee. The manager told us that book clubs often hold meetings in the library during weekday nights.

Aura came bright and early that afternoon and I immediately felt a kinship with her as she introduced herself and said how excited she was for the talk. As we sat down with our food and drinks in the library, she told us about her day so far. Her warm and friendlyundefinedeven bubbly personality shone through in the first few minutes of our conversation.

TCBW members found their way to our meeting place, and by the time all nine of us had settled down, Aura had already launched into her story.

Aura spoke a little about her childhood in Transylvania, and how she grew up with supportive, open-minded and encouraging parents amidst a tumultuous communist regime.She also spoke of her personal journey as an immigrant from Romania to the US. It was a scary leap for herundefinedleaving her job as an assistant professor in a university and coming to America to start from scratch. She started off with $400 in her pocketundefinednot nearly enough money to start a new life in a foreign country, and not enough money to buy a plane ticket back to her homeland.

Aura also told us how she had initially started writing a book about dating based on her experiences as a member of a matchmaking site. Her story about how she gets her publisher is both funny and amazing. (You can hear her story for yourselves in the video below). Enormous amounts of research, persistence and a little bit of luck help her land a meeting with an interested publisher.

Once she had a book deal, however, a call from Romania changed her life. She learned that her mother had liver cancer and had 3-6 months to live. The last thing on her mind was dating, but she was already on contract with the publisher. So Aura spoke to her publisher and explained her situation. Her publisher, being an author herself, and having gone through the same thing with her mother, understood Aura’s predicament. She encouraged Aura to write five pages on the last week Aura had spent in Romania, to which Aura replied that she could write five pages on the last five minutes she had spent in Romania, since there were so many things going on around her, and in her mind. She sent the pages to her publisher, who liked her writing and decided that they should do a memoir. And that’s how Aura’s Pulitzer-nominated, 5-Star Amazon-rated memoir came into existence.

Aura knew we were all writers interested in getting published, so most of the time, Aura spoke of her journey to publication. She answered all our questions and gave us valuable tips on writing, and self-promotion. One thing which stood out clearly in my mind, was when she said that writing is just 30% of the work. The other 70% is research, and another 100% was for self-promotion. Aura constantly stressed the value of constant self-promotion, especially after publication. She said that not a day goes by when she doesn’t do at least one type of self-promotion. She shared examples of how she would promote her own books, and even gave us tips on how we could start self-promoting, even before we get published.

To give us an example of how persistence and hard work pays off, she told the story of how she got the elusive book signing spot in Barnes & Nobles, the Grove. She was a journalist, so she wasn’t shy about approaching people. So she started calling the Barnes & Nobles manager every week, until finally, out of frustration or name recall the manager picks up and talks to her. She immediately tells him that she can bring in 100 people for the book-signing event. So when the publisher called the B&N manager the following week, and presents the three authors she had for the book signing, the manager chose Aura.

Of course, bringing in 100 people was not easy. But Aura tapped into her various social networks (twitter, facebook and other organizations she belonged to), and despite a rainy booksigning day and a sudden change in schedule, she managed to bring in the hundred people (and more) she had promised the bookstore manager.
Aura also spoke about the projects she’s currently working on, and the stories behind them. One is a book for teenagers, written through a school project, in collaboration with her students, and another one is a cultural cookbook. She says cooking isn’t something she’s an expert on, but with enough research, and a few new ideas, she’ll be able to pull it off.

The talk ended all too soon. We all bought copies of her book, which she signed for us. She made sure to talk to us individually, and even gave us business cards with the reminder to email her if we had any other writing-related questions.

I’ll definitely make it a point to invite Aura over again as a speaker. All in all, Aura’s talk was funny, informative, and downright inspiring. We all left that day filled with hope, inspiration, and energized to get our own writing careers started.

As an added bonus, if you have time, please feel free to watch the video below. It’s the first 20 minutes of Aura’s talk and you can hear all about her writing journey, as well as her other adventures, and writing tips from her own lips.

Leeanne Krusemark Talks About Getting Published

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 01:16:06 GMT

Three Sundays ago, our group met at the Torrance Airport Meeting Room.

LeeAnne Krusemark, our guest speaker, spoke about how to build up publishing credits.

LeeAnne Krusemark is a journalist, author, and owner of an award winning southern California public relations business since 1988. LeeAnne is a Chamber of Commerce past president and has been asked to speak at a Senate-sponsored business conference as well as for the Department of the Army. Her in-person lectures are offered at more than 200 facilities nationwide, including Purdue, and her online publishing class is offered at more than 1,000 facilities worldwide, including Harvard Adult Education. The inspiration given to others in her comprehensive workshops has even been compared in writing to Oprah.

She started the session off with a writing activity. She gave us three words: summer, breeze and ocean, and gave us five minutes to write anything with those three words in it. While we wrote our poems, essays, or story beginnings, she gave out handouts for the lecture.

When our five minutes were up, we shared what we wrote. The activity made got put us in a creative mood, and we eagerly soaked up what LeeAnne had to share with us about getting published.

LeeAnne emphasized that getting published is one part writing, one part timing, one part luck, and a few parts experience. She stressed that getting published is more often than not, about climbing the ladder of publishing success, it’s about starting out in smaller, easier publishing markets and building up from there.

The entire session focused on easier first publishing markets, which we writers can submit to, in order to gain publishing credits. LeeAnne enumerated six of these, and went on to give examples:

1.      Fillers
2.      Greeting Cards
3.      Contests
4.      Newspapers
5.      Editorials
6.      Alternatives (Newsletters, In-House Publications)

Fillers are short pieces which newspapers use to fill gaps on their pages. Some readers just want a quick, easy read and fillers are a great way to put a lighter touch on a dull page, and generate reader involvement. LeeAnne says writing fillers is a great way to start off your writing career and get some publishing credits in. Examples are some the Reader’s Digest materials such as “All in a Day’s Work”, and other segments which deal with humor.

Greeting cards are a normal part of our lives, and yet we don’t stop to think about who makes these cards. There is a good demand for writers who can come up with good greeting card materialsundefinedwhether it’s witty one liners, poems, jokes or quotes. This particular industry needs to come up with new material all the time.

Joining writing contests is a great way to get publishing credits. It doesn’t really matter what type of contest it is, as long as you get to flex your writing muscles. The prizes don’t count either. LeeAnne told us that once, she entered an essay contest which asked the question “What would you do if you won the lottery?” Her essay won second prize, and she got several lotto tickets for free, but the most important thing was that her essay was published in a newspaper.

Submitting articles or writing freelance for newspapers can help get your writing career started. Major newspapers such as the LA Times might be quite as eager to publish your pieces, but your local newspapers are often in need of these freelance articles. You might not get paid at all, but the payment comes in the form of another publishing credit you can add to your list.

Letters to the editor are another way of earning those writing brownie points. Write a controversial letter that will get a good debate going, or write something that you feel strongly about. The more readers can relate to or react to your piece, the higher the chance that the editor will pick your piece to get published.

Lastly, LeeAnne encouraged us to take advantage of whatever writing opportunities our current jobs might present us with. In house publications such as flyers, posters, brochures, company newsletters, correspondence letters, and so on are a useful way of flexing our writing muscles, and also one way we can earn those publishing credits.

We ended the session with a question and answer portion. We asked LeeAnne whatever questions popped into our minds about the publishing industry, and about writing. She answered all our questions, and afterward, presented us with some books which we could purchase from her at a low price. These are books which she had written about various topics such as writing, finance and real estate, business, and even ways to make money with a computer.

I thought the session went well, and tied up nicely with our previous session on Query Letters. In that session, we had talked about the author bio, which comprised the third paragraph of a query letter. A lot of us were worried about not having any writing-related credits to put in that paragraph. LeeAnne’s helped us understand what publishing credits we could use to fill out that paragraph. She even gave us a few tips to help us make our author bios more marketableundefinedsuch as how to word our author bio paragraph so that our publishing credits, no matter how small they are, can seem impressive.

How to Write a Smashing Query Letter

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 01:09:40 GMT

Last Saturday’s meetup was the biggest yet, with 19 people in attendance. We met at our usual meeting place – Borders, Torrance (thankfully not closing).

The usual round of introductions made it clear that our group was a diverse and varied one. While most of us where children’s book writers, there were also adult fiction writers in attendance. Our genres of interest ranged from non-fiction to fantasy to historical fiction and thrillers.

After a few announcements, where I plugged in upcoming events for our group, I asked my fellow scribblers to do something before we started our main discussion. I instructed them to pick three books that are similar to the books they are writing, or are trying to sell.

When everybody had returned to their seats with three books in hand, I began the discussion.

Most of my materials came from the following amazing ebooks:

Noah Lukeman’s HOW TO LAND AND KEEP A LITERARY AGENT can be downloaded here for $12.99 as a PDF file or for $9.99 on the Kindle Store.

Noah Lukeman’s HOW TO WRITE A GREAT QUERY LETTER is likewise FREE, and can be downloaded here.

Elana Johnson’s FROM QUERY TO THE CALL can be downloaded for FREE on her website.

All of these ebooks were amazing sources of information for writing a query letter. The tricky part was figuring out how to use the wealth of knowledge presented in their pages, and arranging them in a logical and comprehensive manner.

I took it upon myself to organize all the information in these ebooks, along with other information I’ve gleaned from my research on query letter.

In the first hour of our meeting, we discussed the following topics:

I. QUERY BASICS
(Based on Noah Lukeman’s HOW TO LAND AND KEEP A LITERARY AGENT)

A. What is a Query letter?
B. Who do you query? Publisher vs. Agent.

10 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Query A Publisher Directly

10 Reasons Why You Need An Agent

When To Query A Publisher Directly

C. Steps To Take Before You Write A Query Letter

1. Research/ Make a list of 50 Target Agents

You must make a list of at least 50 agents which you wish to query
landing an agent is a numbers game
a person who mails out 200 resumes has a huge advantage over the person who mails out 5. Same is true for landing an agent
Research is important. Make sure they represent your genre.

13 Factors To Consider When Evaluating An Agent

2. Gather more information about the agents on your list.Create your own database containing the following details:

Full name of agent
Mr/Mrs/Ms
Literary Agency information – name, address, website
Submission Guidelines
Email address/ physical address
What agent is looking for/ What genre he represents
List of clients he represents and their books
You can use the following programs to create your database

Excel spreadsheet
Sonar3 (www.spacejock.com)
www.querytracker.net membership

3. Prepare the common tools of querying

a. First 10-20 pages of your work

b. Synopsis

I gave everyone handouts on the above discussion, along with 26 FREE and 11 FEE based sources of resources for writers who wish to research literary agents, which Noah Lukeman outlined in his book HOW TO LAND AND KEEP A LITERARY AGENT.

Here’s a sample of what could be found in the handout:

26 FREE RESOURCES FOR WRITERS

1. www.publisherslunch.com

2– 4.www.publishersmarketplace.com (contains 3 resources)

5 – 8. www.publishersweekly.com (contains 4 resources)

9. Agency Websites

10. Search Engines

Noah Lukeman only outlined 24 free resources but I added two which I found on my own search:

25. www.querytracker.net

26. http://caseylmccormick.blogspot.com/ Literary Rambles by Casey McCormick

One of our members, Madison, also added a couple of websites, which she found useful in her own research.

11 FEE BASED RESOURCES FOR WRITERS

Aside from www.publishersmarketplace.com, www.writersmarket.com and www.publishersweekly.com, www.agentresearch.com, Noah Lukeman also mentions other sources of information on agents, such as :

Books

Writers Digest Guide to Literary Agents

Writers Digest Writers Market

Jeff Herman’s Writer’s guide to Book Editors, Publishers, and Literary Agents

Literary Marketplace

Children’s Writers and Illustrators Market by Alice Pope

Magazines

Poets & Writers

The Writer

Writer’s Digest

Conferences/Seminars/Workshops

* The key in choosing a conference is finding out in advance which agents are attending, how many of them will be attending, and the ratio of agents to writers.

Example: 2 agents for 500 writers vs. 10 agents for 200 writers

* Downside is that conferences can be expensive. Attend if you have the money to spare.

Examples of good conferences for children’s book writers:

Big Sur Writing Workshop by Andrea Brown Literary Agency

SCBWI Summer/Winter Conference

SCBWI Agents Day

SCBWI Writing Retreat

PART II of our workshop covered the formula for writing query letter based on Noah Lukeman’s Three Paragraph Rule, gleaned from his ebook HOW TO WRITE A GREAT QUERY LETTER.

Noah Lukeman’s THREE PARAGRAPH RULE states that a query letter should fit on one page, and should consist of only three paragraphs.

A. The first Paragraph is the introduction, in which writers should make a personal connection with the agent.

Examples of introductory sentences are:

“ I am writing to you because your client, John Smith, recommended I do so”

“I saw you speak at the SCBWI-LA Summer Conference last August, and I liked what you said about the importance of research in historical fiction.”

”I am writing to you because you represented TITLE by AUTHOR, and I feel my book is similar.”

Noah Lukeman, being a literary agent himself, says that a way to grab an agent’s attention is by making the letter about the agent, and not about yourself. Referencing a title he has represented accomplishes this, and also shows the agent that we have researched him well before we even approached him.

B. The second paragraph is the Plot Paragraph. This paragraph should be limited to three sentences and should offer a short description of the plot and nothing else.

Noah Lukeman outlines common mistakes to avoid when writing a plot paragraph, as well as 4 positive traits to have in a plot paragraph. Using his book as a guide, we discussed these topics:

3 Common Mistakes to Avoid in your Plot Paragraph

1. Don’t exceed one paragraph

2. Don’t name names

3. Don’t mention subplots

4 Positive Traits to Have in Your Plot Paragraph

1. Specifics

2. Time Period

3. Location

4. Comparison

C. The Third paragraph is the author bio.

4 Common Mistakes to Avoid in Your Author Bio

1. Don’t list minor credits

2. Don’t include irrelevant information

3. Don’t be overly personal

4. Don’t forget the visuals

8 Positive Elements to Include in your Author Bio

1. Publication Credits

2. Track Record

3. Subsidiary Rights

4. Strong Industry Connections

5. Awards, Grants, Fellowships or other laurels

6. Writing-related education or prestigious residencies

7. Potential endorsements

8. Insider knowledge

PART III of our Workshop focused on the PLOT PARAGRAPH, which is actually the most important paragraph in a query letter.

Before we discussed this however, I asked everyone to read the back cover/blurb of the three books they had picked out. I gave them a few minutes to study the blurbs.

When they were done, I asked them what they noticed about the back cover. A lot of people suggested answers. I explained that book blurbs accomplish one thing: They sell the book. They make the browsing reader want to buy the book and take it home.

I had asked them to pick out three books most similar to their own for several reasons:

1. I wanted them to realize that in the same way that the goal of the book’s back cover blurb is to sell the book, the goal of a query letter is simply to SELL THEIR STORY.

2. I wanted them to understand that there are in fact, several books out there similar to what they were writing. This might give them an idea of which agents to approach for their own book.

3. I also wanted them to get an inkling of the elements that make up a successful plot paragraph. They could study the blurbs and apply what they have learned to their own query letters.

After this BOOK BLURB EXERCISE, we proceeded to part three of our workshop.

In this part of our workshop, we discussed two techniques or guidelines for punching up our plot paragraph.

A. The first one, is derived from agent Mary Kole’s article on how to write query letters. In this article, she listed several questions which serve as guidelines for writing the plot paragraph:

WHO is your character?
WHAT is the strange thing going on in their life that throws them off their equilibrium and launches the story?
WHAT (or who) do they want most in the world?
WHO (or what) is the main character’s ally?
WHO (or what) is in the way of them getting what they want most in the world (their obstacle)?
WHAT is at stake if they don’t get what they want?

B. Elana Johnson’s ebook FROM QUERY TO THE CALL was an amazing source of information for writing the plot summary, and most of part III of our workshop on Plot Paragraph was taken from her brilliant work.

Her technique consists of four elements that need to be included in the plot paragraph:

a. The Hook

Your hook should:

1. Sum up the novel in one sentence

2. Propel the reader to read the whole letter with interest

b. The Setup

In the setup, you have a few goals:

1. Provide a few details about who your main character is. You've hooked the agent to find out more about your main character, so give them what they want.

2. World-building information if pertinent. For fantasy and science fiction, a little taste of the world would go in the setup section of the query. For mystery, horror, thriller or other genres, including the setting here wouldn't be a bad idea.

3. The catalyst that moves the main character into the conflict. In each of the examples below (which are numbered to go with their hooks from the first part of this section), I’m going to expound on what each sentence brings to the table as far as setup. The same as in writing, what you include in the letter should have a purpose for being there.

c. The Conflict

So you've hooked and setup your query letter. Now to the part that everyone wants to readundefinedthe conflict. Every novel needs it. In fact, the more conflict, the better. In the query letter, you want to highlight the main conflict, not every single one in every single chapter. You can't even do that in the synopsis, so don't try.

Main conflict [meyn kon-flikt]: The central thing that prevents the character from getting what they want. If you didn't setup what the character wants in the setup, you can do it during the conflict. In the examples section, I’ve included the hook and the setup so you don’t have to go back and find them.

d. The Consequence

The final element you need in your query letter is the consequence. What will happen if the MC doesn't solve the problem? Doesn't get what they want? Will evil forces achieve world domination? Will her brother die? Is it a race against time across Antarctica to find the long lost jewel of the Nile? What's the consequence?

Elana Johnson also gives us several examples for each stage/ element of the plot paragraph:

This sample is taken from her own query letter:

Example:

1. Hook: In a world where Thinkers brainwash the population and Rules are not meant to be broken, fifteen-year-old Violet Schoenfeld does a hell of a job shattering them to pieces.

Setup: After committing her eighth lame ass crime (walking in the park after dark with a boy, gasp!), Vi is taken to the Green, a group of Thinkers who control the Goodgrounds. She’s found unrehabilitatable (yeah, she doesn’t think it’s a word either) and exiled to the Badlands. Good thing sexy Bad boy Jag Barque will be going too.

Conflict: Dodging Greenies and hovercopters, dealing with absent-father issues, and coming to terms with feelings for an ex-boyfriendundefinedand Jag as a possible new oneundefinedleave Vi little time for much else. (she’s got problems. Lots of them.) Which is too damn bad, because she’s more important than she realizes. (Whoa. She’s important? How so?) Vi’s main conflict is that she doesn’t know who and/or what she is. How important she is. But everyone else does. And it’s not something she’s going to

like…. This is all established in a mere 42 words.

The final blurb/plot paragraph which includes the 4^th element of Consequence looks like this:

In a world where Thinkers brainwash the population and Rules are not meant to be broken, fifteen-year-old Violet Schoenfeld does a hell of a job shattering them to pieces. When secrets about her “dead” sister and not-so-missing father hit the fan, Vi must make a choice: control or be controlled.

Elana Johnson also posted links to several successful query letters, which I copied and gave as handouts to my members. I also printed copies of Elana’s free worksheets, along with a worksheet on creating a logline, which I had compiled.

In PART IV of our workshop, we discussed other things to keep in mind when writing a query letter,such as the 7 common mistakes of query letters, The 4 musts of submitting queries, 3 things not to do when submitting queries, Email queries and of course, formatting basics of a query letter.

Throughout the workshop, members asked questions, and gave their own suggestions and tips based on their own experiences.

All in all, the workshop was a smashing success. Everyone left with more handouts and worksheets than they bargained for, and an eagerness to apply what they had learned.

Rewriting Your Manuscript

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 01:04:15 GMT

Last Saturday, January 29^th, our writing group met up again at Borders Torrance. We had three new faces join us for the meetup on “Rewriting Your Manuscript.”

A usual, we started our meeting with introductions. After stating our names, current projects and answering a strange but creative question from the box, we proceeded to the next activity.

I like to start our meetups with a hopeful, positive note, so before diving into our main topic, I had everybody join in an activity inspired by the recent SCBWI-LA Westside schmooze.

In that schmooze, Rita told us about her Illustrator friend whose instructor required his students to spend 15 minutes illustrating three dreams or goals that they wanted to achieve. They put this illustration in an envelope and forgot about it until a year later. When they opened their illustration, they realized that all the dreams they had illustrated had come true.

I explained to the group, that though it seems like magic, the principle behind this activity is the same principle behind the Harvard study: In 1964, all members of the Harvard Business School graduating class said that they had clear goals they wanted to achieve. However, only 5% of them took the time to write these goals down. A follow up study 20 years later revealed that 95% of those who wrote down their goals were able to achieve all of them. Among the other half of the class who said they had goals but didn’t write them down, only 5% reached their expected goals.

The truth is when we write down our goals, it becomes a written contract to ourselves. It sparks personal motivation within us to achieve these goals. And since we’ve written down exactly what we want to achieve, we see our goals more clearly, and our brain starts seeing innovative ways to achieve them.

I then handed out pieces of blank paper. I instructed them to write down their writing-related dreams and goals for 5 minutes straight. I encouraged them to write down all the details they could think of-- the name of the agent who is going to them back and say “I’d like to represent you”, the name of the publishing house who is going to give them a six-book deal, the color of the dress they’re going to wear when they accept the Newbery medal,etc.

The activity helped us get into a positive and hopeful mindset. We were now ready to tackle the topic of Rewriting.

I gave out handout1 which described the four types of editing: Proofreading/Copyediting, Line Editing , Content/Developmental Editing, and Heavy/Substantive Editing.

We discussed the difference between rewriting and editing, the four kinds of editing, and the different processes of writing, just to get a clearer picture of what rewriting means.

We agreed that there are generally four stages to writing a novel:

Stage 1: Writing the First Draft

Stage 2: Rewriting

Stage 3: Editing

Stage 4: Copyediting/Proofreading

Ideally when we write the first draft, we don’t stop to edit ourselves. Grammar, punctuation, spelling and all the nitty gritty things don’t matter at this stage.

What matters is that our stories have a beginning, middle and end, and that it gets finished.

Once we are done with our first draft, we move into the second stage of writing, which is rewriting/revising our work. In this stage, we go through our first (or 2^nd or 3^rd) draft with a creative eye. This means that spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors shouldn’t distract us from polishing and tightening our stories.

Instead, our focus is to fix the story itselfundefinedcharacter, plot, setting, etc. Before we even begin to actually rewrite our story, we must do some content editing. This means we have to look at the flow and the structure of our story.

After developmental editing, usually comes substantive editingundefinedwhich means we reorganize paragraphs, sections, or chapters for overall clarity or readability.

Elements of style such as punctuation, spelling, word usage, grammar and sentence construction fall under the third stage.

Copyediting/Proofreading is the final stage before we send off our manuscripts. Here is where we check that everything is totally correctundefinedthere are no typos, the format is perfect and the manuscript is ready for an agent’s eyes.

Content editing is basically what we do when we revise for Story. Substantive or Heavy editing is similar to revising for Structure, since this is the part of rewriting where we rearrange our scenes, chapters (and even paragraphs) so that our story can flow smoothly.

Before we can Revise for Story or Structure, however, there are certain steps we must take in order to prepare for a major rewrite.

James Scott Bell in his book REVISION & SELF-EDITING lists down 6 Steps to follow before rewriting. I added my own tips, as well as other authors’ tips I found while researching the topic, and shared this with the group.

1. The Cool-Down Phase

2. The Preparation Phase

3. Print Out and Prepare a Fresh Copy

4. Get Ready to Read

5. Read

6. Analyze

*** You can check out James Scott Bell’s article here:

Once we’ve done all these things, we’re ready to do some actual rewriting based on the many notes we made.

The next thing we need to do is gather all our needed materials:

Manuscript copy
Favorite editing pens
Notebook/pad where we jotted down possible revision notes
Other notes that we created while working on the book, plus maps, charts, diagrams, character descriptions, etc, which we used while writing the novel.

Robert J. Ray, in his book The Weekend Novelist Rewrites the Manuscript, says that there are three important elements to consider when rewriting: Story, Structure and Style. When you rewrite, always rewrite for structure and story first When story hums and structure runs smooth, work on Style.

Revising for Story

Freelance editor Victory Crayne says the following things:

Content is King. Your story may have technically correct English, but still fail to sell.
The first draft is often for you, the writer. Now go back and rewrite it for your readers.
Writing to entertain is much harder than writing perfect English. Writing to entertain so well that hundreds of thousands of readers can't wait until your next book comes out requires a whole lot more. It requires two critical ingredients: (1) a great storyline and (2) excellence in storytelling. Just writing perfect English won't get you there.

It’s important that we know what our story is really about before we even try to rewrite entire paragraphs or chapters.

Revising for Story, also known as content editing, can save us a lot of time and trouble.

As a basis for our discussion on rewriting for Story, I used author Holly Lisle’s awesome article on One-Pass Manuscript Revision: From First Draft to Last in One Cycle.

You can read the whole thing here:

In this article, she recommends going through the process of discovery in order to get your story right. She suggests activities for figuring out our manuscripts’ themes, sub-themes and story arc.

Revising for Structure

Every story has a three act structure, also known as the beginning, middle and end. Knowing our story’s structure, allows us to understand what’s supposed to happen within each part.

For instance, in the Beginning, we’re supposed to introduce the reader to the setting, the characters and the situation or conflict they find themselves in, as well as their goals. When we revise our manuscript, we must figure out if we have accomplished this or not.

Peder Hill’s article on Conflict and Character within Story Structure was a great jumping off point for our discussion on revising for structure.

Afterward, we discussed some techniques for revising structure. I suggested that the use of index cards was a great way for figuring out the flow of a story.

In the index cards, we write down the title of our scene/chapter, along with a scene/chapter description. We can even assign a particular index card color to each of our major characters/major storylines.

Once we’ve finished our index cards, we lay them out on a big table or on the floor, and figure out if our story is flowing smoothly based on the scene descriptions. If not, we rearrange the index cards until the story does flow.

Picture from Chris Bell's blogpost on Manuscript Mapping.

Check out her article here.

I also suggested the use of the software program Anthemion Café Writers Storylines, as this is similar to the index card technique.

Holly Lisle’s article: One-Pass Manuscript Revision: From First Draft to Last in One Cycle, once more came in handy. In the final part of our meetup, we discussed steps to take in the actual rewriting of our manuscripts.

Towards the end of our meetup, I gave out a list of writing books which I found helpful in my own process of manuscript revision. Other members also suggested books they found useful.

Our heads were buzzing with a boatload of information by the time we ended the meetup. All of us had our minds set on rewriting our manuscripts based on what he had learned and shared with each other that day.

Overcoming Writer's Block

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 01:02:59 GMT

Last November 17, 2010, we met up at Borders Torrance to discuss an issue which plagues writers at least once in their lives: Writer's Block.

We started our discussion by sharing our personal experiences with writer's block. We then moved on to discussing the possible causes for writer's block. I pointed out that while writer's block is common for all writers, the cause and cure for writer's block is different for every writer.

Following are some of the more common causes of writer's block:

COMMON CAUSES OF WRITER'S BLOCK

Writer's Block happens when you try to do everything at once.
Writer's Block happens when you don't know enough to begin.
Writer's Block happens when you've exhausted all the good or original ideas and feel your creativity flagging.
Writer's Block happens due to physical stress, lack of sleep, depression, and bad health.
Writer's Block happens due to mental blocks: fear of failure, fear of success, overbearing inner critic.
Writer's Block happens due to psychological disturbances ranging from neurosis to something scary

Each cause, naturally, has a different treatment.

I shared with them some treatments for each cause. Some of the tips were based on my own personal experience. Others were taken from articles or books I've read on writer's block. Most of the tips, however, were taken from Jenna Glatzer's very helfpul book : Outwitting Writer's Block and Other Problems of the Pen.

TREATMENT

A. Writer's Block happens when you try to do everything at once.

Lists are your friend
Organize, prioritize

1. Set Weekly Objectives

Examples:

Write down titles of books you want to read
Read books/ take courses on children’s writing

2. Break down your writing into smaller pieces

Example: If you have a 500 word deadline, write 250 now, then 250 later.

3. Pad your deadline

Schedule yourself to submit two days earlier

4. Create Self imposed deadlines

5. Work with other writers - Find a deadline buddy

6. Enter quick contests to get yourself writing

Anvil Press 3 Day novel contests

www.anvilpress.com

Nanowrimo

www.nanowrimo.com

24 hour short story contes

www.writer-weekly.com

Toasted Cheese “ 3 cheers and a tiger” short story contest

www.toasted-cheese.com

7. Decide to meet a deadline by an outside force

8. Submitting on schedule - Try a commited campaign of submitting brand new material to brand new markets

B. Writer's Block happens when you don't know enough to begin.

Lack of research can be a hindrance to our creativity. Err on the side of getting more information than less
Maybe you want to write, but don’t know where to start, or where to get your ideas.

Getting Ideas

Keep a dream journal

The act of purposely remembering your dreams and recording it first thing every morning will open up chasms in your mind--even if you start with “I had an agitating dream”.
You can pick up scenes, emotions, descriptions for your writing.

Daydream, Percolate

* Stories are born from daydreams

Maybe you have a vague idea of what your story is about, but you don't know where your story is supposed to go.

1. Building Your Story’s House

Research
Read up on your subjectundefinedread books in the genre you want to write in
Have a conversation/ interview with your character
Call a friend and explain your synopsis
Talk into a tape recorder, listen to it and try to determine where you slow down, sound unsure of yourself, skip parts of storyundefinedthese areas need to be developed.

2. Characters Count

Create characters who are irresistible to you
Otherwise, writing becomes tedious, you try to make them interesting instead of allowing them to be themselves

3. Meeting New Characters

Go to crowded placesundefinedwith a tape recorder, sketchpad, camera or video camera
Observe people, pay attention to looks, the way they sound, phraseologies, etc

4. Respect your language

Study rules of language to develop a true ear for language

C. Writer's Block happens when you have exhausted all the good or original ideas and you feel your creativity flagging.

1. Train Your Brain

You Have Boundless Creativity

You have 72,000 thoughts a day, out of those surely 1 or 2 are worthy of writing down
Sometimes you just discount ideas as useless, but they might actually work.

Change Your Brain

If you want to see the world differently, you can change the way your brain works
Change how you see your writing - Retrain your brain to see writing as a reward in itself

Allow Yourself Time to Write

You do not have to write, you allow yourself to
Allow yourself to stop

See through writer's eyes.

Look at things and see words and metaphors.
Example: Woman at a grocery storeundefinedwarm and inviting as a fresh baked cookie, and just as likely to fall apart.

Make these moments happen

Practice consciously evoking your writer’s eyes
Keep a small notebook or tape recorder handy
Keep your perceptions sharp, force yourself to define things in words

Just do it.

Start practicing today.

Using Free Association

Subconscious will find its way to your head
Write without lifting your pen
Don’t correct your work, or reread
Can set a timer

All writing counts

Any form of writing you do helps you keep that brain limber and helps you make an easier transition into writing mode whenever you want to

Message Boards

Outwit your Writer's blockundefinedtrick it by actually writingundefinedanything

2. Spice up your writing life.

Maybe writing has become more of a chore and less of a pleasurable experience

Change your environment

Claiming Your Writing Space

Build a home office or consider portioning off a section of the room

Clear the Clutter

If you already have a writing base, maybe all you need is to tidy it. Clear the clutter, organize things.

Get more quotes

Read works that inspire you to write.

3. What to do when you're halfway through the story but you suddenly hit a dead end?

Quick Fixes when you’re stalled

Take a break

If you're writing a novel, stop. Write a poem instead.

Don't be yourself

Be your character or a different person you admire
Method writing

Opposite situations

Completely alter your writing environment and writing habits
Cd in the background, write in silence
Change rooms, change times, writing, rearrange furniture

Add a prop

Wear a writing hat

Look right before your eyes

Look at objects around you and ask questions about them. Make stories up about them

Let go when you've outgrown your story

There’s not just one way to tell your story

Playing the opposite game: change fundamentals of your story

Change sex of main character
Change setting
Change genre
Change POV

If your stuck on a scene, move it.

Use contrast to your advantageundefinedterrible fight at a carnival, happy reunion at a hospital
Tell your story in emails, phone calls, letters

Raising the Stakes

Show the character has a lot to lose then take him to the verge of losing it all
Character’s should wind up getting gmore than they intended
Moral should evolve naturally from storyline

D. Writer's Block Happens Due To Physical Stress, Lack Of Sleep, Depression, And Bad Health.

De-stress NOT distress yourself.

Dealing with the Stress of Writer’s Block

Breathing properly
Herbal – lavender n pressure points
I’m good enough, smart enough
Exercise
Progressive muscle relaxation
Meditate
Bath
Repetitive activities – knitting, crocheting, dishes, etc
Using music to relax

Invent your own relaxation techniques

E.Writer's Block Happens Due To Psychological Disturbances Ranging From Neurosis To Something Scary

Writer’s block may be a symptom of a bigger problem
Get professional help

Determine Your Motivation for writing

What would you write for the sake of writing, if you knew you weren’t going to get published anyway?

Your Reasons are the right reasons

Be honest with yourself about your motivations for writing
You’re allowed to write for whatever reason strikes you

Cognitive Dissonance Causes Writer's Block

When your real goals are in conflict with the goals you set for yourself, this can cause uneasiness in your mind
WB might be there to show you what your goals really are

Making Time

Prioritize
Dishes can wait

Long Term Goals

Be specific, realistic

Change is Good

Try new things, write new things

Carve out Writing time despite family obligations

Train your family to accept writing time.
Teach them to recognize boundaries

The Money Issue

You can have a full time job and still be a writer

When tough times fall on you

Ask yourself: is this writers block or do you just not have the concentration required to write

Using time for simpler tasks

Use writing prompts

You Must Write the Hardest Thing to Write

Let yourself write the very thing that is begging to come out
“Do not for the vanity of intellectual publication, turn away from what you areundefinedthe material within you which makes you individual, therefore indispensable to others.
It is the writing we must do that pours out of us effortlessly

F. Writer's Block Happens Due To Mental Blocks: Fear Of Failure, Fear Of Success, Overbearing Inner Critic.

1. Fear of Failure

Stop Being So Serious

Writing is merely an extension of those childhood daysundefinedyour writing can be as enjoyable, freewheeling as it was then
Drink lemonade, eat alphabet soup while writing, listen to muppets theme song, things associated with youth

You Owe It to the world to Outwit your block

Remember you’ve made the choice to write because it gives you some kind of pleasure
Zero in on that

Secondary Gains from WB

When a person gets something beneficial from something negativeundefinedsecondary gain
What is your block trying to tell you?
Maybe it’s a form of self preservationundefinedcruel to yourself about your writing talents, then y our block may be a way of saving yourself from criticism

Become your own best cheerleader

Putting Your Writing Into Perspective

Writing is just putting words to paper

Negative No More

Write down all your negative thoughts about writing
Replace them with positive ones

2. Fear of Success

Why Do You Fear Success?

Fear of bad reviews
Meet a deadline
Being better than your spouse
Fear of higher expectationsundefinedpeople will expect you to keep producing good work

Perfectionism in Disguise

You’ve set yourself up as splendid writer that you can’t live up to your own expectations
Procrastination is perfectionism in disguise – Dr. Paul Foxman
Take the risk

Writer, Compare not Thyself

Get caught up in comparing yourself to famous writers
There may be other less talented writers who got published
Setting bar high is good, but unrealistically high can paralyze you

By reading good works, you push yourself to excel

Bring down your standard of reading material, your writing will followundefinedif you read nothing but trashy magazines, that’s what you’ll be able to write

3. Inner Critic

Rehabilitate Your Critic

Make an agreement with your critic
You can’t divorce yourself from bad writing because without it, you’d never have made progress

How to Quiet Your Critic

Body in motion stays in motion
Commit to your badness
Write whatever garbage comes into your mind as you wake up in the morningundefineddon’t stop for coffee or whatever

Speak To Yourself Like a Friend

Don’t say anything to yourself that you’d never say to a good friend ---Paul Foxman, psychologist, Conquering Panic and Anxiety Disorders

We ended the night by affirming ourselves as writers and sharing our writing goals for the coming year.

Using Technology To Organize Your Writing Process: Software You Can Use Before, During And After Writing Your Bestseller

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 19:16:46 GMT

On October 23, 2010, members Torrance Children’s Book Writing Group, along with some members of SCBWI-LA joined me at the LA Public Library (Harbor Gateway Branch) for a workshop.

After welcoming everyone, I started the workshop by doing a little survey. I asked the participants questions like “How many of you have desks overflowing with papers, books and half eaten snacks?” and “How many of you use only Microsoft Word?”

These questions actually point out two concepts that commonly plague writers: Technology and Organizing. I listed down a few symptoms writers might show, if they had problems with organizing or problems with using technology.

I explained that we could solve both problems by addressing only one concept: Technology.

Freelance editor Emma Dryden had spoken about how technological trends affect the publishing landscape in the recent SCBWI Working Writers’ Retreat. A great example would be Patrick Carman’s book series: Skeleton Creek, where he used both book and video to tell the story.

The publishing landscape has changed dramatically. Agents and editors get hundreds of submissions per day. Understandably, they have to find ways to get through the ocean of manuscripts. Literary Agent Noah Lukeman in his book The First Five Pages, says “Presentation is looked at before all else in a manuscript, that can signal unprofessionalism to agent or editor.”

Gone are the days when writers can submit a handwritten or typewritten manuscript. We are now in the era of computers and laser printers, so agents and editors expect us to “get with the times”. We as writers need to make ourselves more connected with the digital world and more acquainted with the use of technology.

Technology is meant to make things easier for us, as such it is a natural organizational tool. One way of using technology to organize our writing lives, is by using it in various steps of our writing process.

After this introduction, I immediately dove into the meat of the workshop by discussing various SOFTWARE writers can use to organize their ideas before writing.

I. BEFORE WRITING

Brainstorming

The first thing we should do, before we even sit down to plot our next bestseller is to brainstorm. Since we already have a story idea, when we brainstorm, we try to come up with our story elements such as character, plot and setting. These elements are bound to change as we write, but that’s alright. The main purpose of brainstorming is just so we can have a jumping off point for our story and so we can have a pool of ideas to pick from.

One of the best ways to brainstorm is to use a Mindmap.

But sometimes even mind maps can get out of hand.

This is where the use of computer programs come in handy. Imagine if your mind map were digital. You can put all sorts of information in there: website links, pictures, articles, sounds, music and other digital data. This is exactly what the first software I discussed does:

PERSONAL BRAIN

The Personal Brain Software is a very intuitive mind mapping utility. The primary unit of organization in the application is called a Brain.

Each Brain is composed of thoughts--essentially, idea components, tasks, or goals--which can be created with a double-click and associated with one another freely.

Thoughts connect to one another not merely in a parent-child hierarchy, but can cross-connect to other thoughts.

( I showed the participants a short video demonstrating how they can use the Personal Brain for their writing projects. )

The software can be downloaded here.

Plotting

After brainstorming, the next step is plotting. With the Personal Brain mindmap, you have all your ideas and related research at the tips of your fingers. Now that you have an idea of where you want your story to go, the next step (since we are trying to get organized) is to plot your story.

ANTHEMION WRITERS' CAFE

The Anthemion Writers’ Café is a toolkit for writers that runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. It's built with wxWidgets, a project started by Anthemion's Technical Director, Julian Smart, and designed and actively used by Anthemion's Creative Director, Harriet Smart, author of five novels published by Headline.

Writer's Cafe is intended as a fiction-writing tool, but you can also use it for other types of writing.

The names for functions used throughout the program refers to storytelling: storylines, screenplay formatting, character development, and there's even a "name generator" for characters. But Writer's Cafe is also useful for project-based writing such as longer journal articles, book chapters or books, and also shorter documents like grants, forms, or reports.

The Writer’s Café has all sorts of helpful functions:

SCRAPBOOK – helps you organize and store your research. You can save texts and pictures for easy access while you’re writing.
PINBOARD – provides a space for quick notes not necessarily related to writing. You could also pin pictures in there.
DICTIONARY – Clicking on this icon will automatically link you up to the Cambridge online dictionary.
JOURNAL – If you want to chronicle your writing, or you have a sudden urge to journal in the middle of your work, you can easily open this function up. I actually find it helpful to do a little practice writing in my journal first before I dive into my manuscript. I find that writing in my journal helps me focus my mind by getting rid of random thoughts and stray ideas.
NOTEBOOK – is for writing down story snippets. Often ideas come up and you don’t know exactly where they should go in your story just yet. The notebook is a great place to store these ideas until you’re ready to use them.
NAME GENERATOR – generates names for your characters.
WRITING COOKIES – pop up whenever you open a certain function. The cookies are a selection of quotes about writing and are supposed to inspire you whenever you feel a little tired of writing.
BOOKSHELF - contains the manuals for each function, along with the WRITING COOKIES, and various other articles such as the WRITING RECIPES by Harriet Smart help you brush up on some writing techniques.
WRITING PROMPTS – help you kickstart your creativity by giving you something to write about. It can be a good story idea generator, or a good way for you to practice writing.
STORYLINES – The most important and most useful tool in the Writer’s Café program.

Storylines

Is the heart of the writer’s café program. Mostly used by screenwriters, this tool is the most helpful one I’ve found for plotting.

StoryLines is linear in the sense that its columns move forward, one column after another. Each column can represent then a chapter or a scene. A chapter is a collection of scenes, so then it may be best to use StoryLines one column for each scene. However, you can use one column per chapter in a more general overview way. For a full novel of 25 chapters you will then have 25 columns of cards going up and down. If you choose to use one column per scene you then will have to think of more like 150 columns in StoryLines, 6 scenes per chapter, and that is a lot of work to organize ahead of time before writing your dramatic text.

The software can be downloaded here.

II. DURING WRITING

Now that you have an outline of your plot, and a list of scenes, it’s time to delve into actual writing.

You can keep the window for Storyline open, or you can print out the list of scenes. Whatever your preference, storylines will definitely help you as you flesh out your scenes.

YWRITER 5

Ywriter is a software program which breaks your novel into chapters and scenes. It will not write your novel for you, suggest plot ideas or perform creative tasks of any kind. It does help you keep track of your work, leaving your mind free to create.

Simon Haynes created Ywriter. He has twenty years of programming experience and is also the author of the Hal Spacejock series which is published by Fremantle Press and distributed by Penguin Australia. Because he is an experienced programmer AND a published author, yWriter contains a bunch of tools a working novelist will find useful.

Ywriter focuses on scenes instead of chapters:

A scene is a pleasant chunk to work on - small and well-defined, you can slot them into your novel, dragging and dropping them from one chapter to another as you interleave strands from different viewpoint characters and work out the overall flow of your book.

You can also mark a scene as 'unused' if you've written yourself into a dead end, which will keep it out of the word count and exports without deleting the content.

Of course, you can't just write a bunch of unrelated scenes. You need an overall design goal ... your plot.

yWriter will generate a number of different reports from your scene and chapter summaries, from a brief scene list to a comprehensive synopsis.

If you update the 'readiness' setting for each scene it will even generate a work schedule showing what you have to do to meet your deadline for the outline, first draft, first edit and second edit.

yWriter also allows you to add scenes with no content - just type a brief description and you can pretend you've written it. This is great for the parts you're not ready to write yet, or for when you get blocked. Skip over that part and come back later!

Unfinished scenes, rough ideas ... it's so much harder to keep track of them when they're all pasted into one long word processing document.

Features of Ywriter

Organize your novel using a 'project'.
Add chapters to the project.
Add scenes, characters, items and locations.
Display the word count for every file in the project, along with a total.
Saves a log file every day, showing words per file and the total. (Tracks your progress)
Saves automatic backups at user-specified intervals.
Allows multiple scenes within chapters
Viewpoint character, goal, conflict and outcome fields for each scene.
Multiple characters per scene.
Storyboard view, a visual layout of your work.
Re-order scenes within chapters.
Drag and drop chapters, scenes, characters, items and locations.
Automatic chapter renumbering.

I showed the participants how to use Ywriter to write and even edit their novels using the various tools and reports ywriter is able to generate.

IV. AFTER WRITING

You’ve edited your work a hundred times, and now you’re ready to send it out your query. To have a better chances of getting an agent, you send a hundred queries a day :D.

A software program to help you keep track of these submissions is Sonar 3.

SONAR 3

Sonar is a manuscript submission tracking program, and Simon Haynes wrote it because he was going nuts keeping track of short story submissions.
This program tells you which market has each story, whether a story has been sold or rejected and which stories are gathering dust instead of earning their keep.
If you decide to use it, you will be able to view a list of all your stories and then filter them in various ways (e.g. only show stories which are available to send out).
You can add markets, stories and submissions and best of all it's completely free!

TO SUMMARIZE:

Writing Process to Organize	Software to Help us Organize It	Cost
Brainstorming/ Mind Mapping	Personal Brain	Basic version of Personal is FREE for noncommercial use, The fully-featured Core and Pro versions, cost $150 and $250, respectively.
Plotting	Anthemion Writers’ Café STORYLINES	A (limited) downloadable version of Writer's Cafe is available for no cost, and a registered full version costs $45 ($34 for educational discount).
Writing	Ywriter5	FREE
Editing	Ywriter5	FREE
Submissions	Sonar 3	FREE

4th Meetup: Creative Writing Exercises Extravaganza

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 18:59:31 GMT

We met at the Mitsuwa Food Court last September 30, 2010 for our first ever Creative Writing Session.

After a quick review of last week’s meeting, we dove into this meetup’s sessionundefinedwhich was about getting the creative juices flowing and about mastering the art of description.

The first part of the meetup was about generating/ sparking story ideas, and what to do with these story ideas, once generated.

The second part of the meetup was dedicated to various writing activities. The writing exercises were designed to improve writing skills, by honing the use of language.

I explained that often times, the only kind of writing we do is related to the book/short story or article we’re working on. Sometimes we need a break from our work. We need to have moments when we write just for fun, or for the purpose of focusing on the act of writing itself. This is when creative writing exercises come in handy.

Before we delved into the exercises, we discussed the answers to three questions:

1. Why are story ideas important?

2. Where do story ideas come from?

3. How do we generate story ideas?

Why are story ideas important?

Most of us agreed that it’s important to keep writing, even when we’re waiting for a response on our most recent submission.

Just as it’s important to go to the gym to exercise so we can keep our physical body healthy, it’s also essential that we exercise the muscles of our imagination often.

Where do story ideas come from?

Story ideas are generated by our five senses-- something we taste, smell, hear, touch, but mostly generated by something we see. Maybe we get ideas from something we read in the newspaper, a photograph or painting, an event we witness live or watch in the news.

EJ also suggested that story ideas are generated by our experiences. I added that ideas can also be generated by strong emotions or feelings we may have. Maybe we’re mad at something or someone when we sit down to write in our journal – and that sparks a future story idea.

How do we generate story ideas?

I found a few tips from a website on how to generate story ideas, and added some of my own.

These tips I shared with my group members:

Always carry a small notebook with you or any kind of writing material. Some writers carry index cards and a pen. Others a moleskin notebook that fits in their purse.
Keep your mind open. Be more aware and observant of your surroundings, and of people around you. Events you hear on the news can spark story ideas, as well as people you see on the streets.
When you see an interesting person, put yourself in their shoes. Imagine what their story is, or create a story about them.
Read the newspaper/ a current events magazine. Real life stories can spark ideas for a writing piece ---whether its fiction or non-fiction
Strive to have as many experiences as possible. Go to museums. Look at art pieces, or pieces of history. Looking at a particular piece might spark your next book idea. Be on the lookout for intriguing photographs or pictures. Watch movies & Read books undefinedespecially in your genre.
Ask your relatives (especially the older ones) to tell you stories about their childhood. Write them down. Take note of their dialect, intriguing names and characters they might mention, as well as the major events happening around them at the time (ex. WW2)
Keep a freewriting journal. Write for 15 minutes daily about anything that pops up into your headundefinedwithout editing them. Doodle on this journal, draw, create. Then look back at what you wrote every now and then. You might find an interesting passage to spark your story idea.
Most of all, constantly exercise your imagination.

The last tip was our cue to start the creative writing exercises I’d come up with.

PART 1 EXERCISES

RIGHT BRAIN REIGNS (FREE WRITING)

Experimentation has shown that the two different sides, or hemispheres, of the brain are responsible for different manners of thinking. Simply put, we use our right brain for writing and our left brain for editing.

Left Brain

Right Brain

Logical
Sequential

Rational

Analytical

Objective

Looks at parts

Random

Intuitive

Holistic
Synthesizing

Subjective

Looks at wholes

This exercise allowed us to tap into our right brain and to shut our internal editors out.

I told my group members that we were going to write continuously without stopping to edit or think, and without worrying about paragraphs, grammar or punctuation.

To make it easier, I gave us a general topic to write about: WRITING.

I told them to let their writing breathe, then I set the timer for 5 minutes.

When our five minutes was up, I asked everyone to find a good sentence among their ramblings. Everyone was hesitant at first, but soon it became clear that within the seemingly incoherent sentences, gems of poetic writing and wonderful language could be found.

Thrilled by our discoveries, we eagerly started our next exercise:

SHOPPING FOR IDEAS (USING WRITING PROMPTS)

This exercise was designed to help train our minds to keep on generating story ideas, despite not having the time or opportunity to write.

The night before I had printed out colorful pictures of various shops such as these:

I told them that these are pictures of shops we might see around us as we go about our daily lives. I also told them that these shops don’t only sell things, they are also a treasure trove of story ideas.

I requestedthem to pick a picture from the pile, spend a few seconds looking at it, then make up a story about the pictureundefineda sentence or two would do.

After about a minute, we shared the stories we came up. It was amazing what we had come up with just by looking at a picture. One of us came up with a story about a library from the perspective of a cat, another came up with a story of a girl who inherits a psychic shop from an aunt, and so on.

Since there were more pictures, I told my group members that we should go for another round. We did the same thing and shared our ideas again.

We all eagerly wrote down our story ideas, knowing we would be able to use it in our own writing.

After going through the two exercises that would help us generate story sparks, we plunged into exercises that would help us practice our use of language itself.

PART 2 EXERCISES

WORDPOOL

I told my group mates that the journal every writer supposedly carries around isn’t just for writing down thoughts and feelings, it’s also for storing story ideasundefinedas well as creating Wordpools.

The Wordpool exercise is something I told the others we could do whenever we have some free time---maybe while we’re waiting for a ride home, while walking our dogs, even while cooking, as we come across an interesting food ingredient.

Wordpools are an excellent source of inspiration and a great way to stretch our imagination.

We created two Wordpools that night. A Noun Wordpool and a Verb Wordpool.

I encouraged them to write down specific nouns (ex. cottage or manor, instead of house) and strong verbs (ex. staggered or stumbled instead of walked). I set the timer for a minute and we all wrote down whatever nouns and verbs came into our minds.

We set aside our Wordpools for awhile and proceeded to the next exercise.

WORD ALCHEMY

I asked my groupmates what they thought Alchemy is about and they were pretty spot on with the definitions they gave.

Alchemy, according to Wikipedia, is defined as a medieval chemical science and speculative philosophy aiming to achieve the transmutation of the base metals into gold, the discovery of a universal cure for disease, and the discovery of a means of indefinitely prolonging life.

But dictionaries also define Alchemy as a power or process of transforming something common into something special.

The second definition, is of course, what we should always aim to do in our writing. And sometimes, the simplest process of mixing unexpected things together can create a great story idea.

Susan Goldsmith Woodridge, in her book Poem Crazy, suggests giving colors to abstractions or concepts. For example: Blue love, Chartreuse agreements, Silver deliberation, Magenta pride

In our Word Alchemy exercise, we combined two unlikely words to come up with a completely new word. On a post-it, I asked my groupmates to write down a colorundefinedmaybe something they remember seeing from a box of crayons.

I collected these post-its and placed them in one box.

In a second post-it, I asked my groupmates to think of an abstract concept. Examples would be love, pride, deliberation, agreement, etc

I placed these post-its in a second box, then I asked them to pick a color and a concept, combine them and write them down.

After writing down their new words, I asked them to pass the color post-it to the person on their right, and pass the concept post to the person on their left.

We did this several times until we each came up with six new color-concept words.

We came up with words like aquamarine peace, midnight suggestions, cerulean connotations and such.

We set these words aside and proceeded to the next exercise, which was inspired by one of the exercises from the book by Brian Kitely called 3AM Epiphany.

SYNESTHESIA

Synesthesia is defined as a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color. In writing, synesthesia is the description of one kind of sense impression by using words that normally describe another--color to sounds, odor to colors, sound to odors, etc.

I read an example: From Diane Ackerman’s A Natural History of the Senses;

A creamy blur of succulent blue sounds smells like week-old strawberries dropped into a tin sieve as the mother approaches in a halo of color, hatter and perfume like thick golden butterscotch.

Synesthesia is great for describing anything from characters to scenes, writing poetry and for breaking the monotony of paragraphs.

I asked everyone to divide their papers into 5 columns and label each column according to the five senses: Sight, Sound, Smell, Taste, and Touch.

We spent a minute on each column, writing down descriptive words that pertain to each of the senses.

For example:

o sight = blurry, twinkling,

o sound = honking,

o smell = lemon, pungent

o taste= vinegary, sweet

o touch= furry, curdled, silky

After five minutes, we proceeded to the final exercise of the night.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

I asked everyone to recall the Noun and Verb Wordpools we created, and color-concept words.

I gave them the following rules:

o Use at least 1 color-concept word.

o Use as many nouns, verbs and descriptive words from your lists as you want.

We combined all these words, along with the sense description words from our recent exercise to write a piece.

SHARING

After writing for ten minutes, I told them it was time to give our words power by sending them out into the ether. In order words, by sharing with others what we’ve created.

We shared our work with one another. We were amazed by the way our writing flowed when we used strong verbs, specific nouns, descriptive words which relate to the senses and added a flourish of color-concept words.

The language in our writing was poetic and much like a melody, flowed easily.

I summarized our creative writing session with the following words:

Much like physical exercises help improve our body’s health, writing exercises also help us stretch our writing muscles. Doing these exercises at least once a month, or even 5 minutes before working on your book will help us improve our imaginative and descriptive writing powers.

As a Bonus, I gave out a list of descriptive words pertaining to the senses (just like our Synesthesia exercise), which we might find useful when writing our novels. I encouraged them to keep on adding to the list.

We ended that night with minds full of story ideas and wonderful words.

3rd meetup - First Critique Session

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 18:54:45 GMT

It was my first time at the Lawndale Library and I was pleasantly surprised by how beautiful the library was--inside and out.

Everything looked new and modern. There were computer terminals for students to use, as well as computerized check-in and check-out counters for the books. Desks and chairs were spread out along the facility beside bookshelves.

The staff was accommodating, too . I arrived 30 minutes early for our 1 pm meeting. I wanted to set up the room for our critique session and prepare the usual sign-in materials. Though the room had been reserved for 1pm, Michelle, the librarian led me straight away to the meeting room.

There were a few teenagers working in the room when we got there, but they left without qualms when Michelle told them the room had been reserved. When I expressed my awe at how beautiful the library was, Michelle informed me the library had just been reconstructed about a year ago. I thanked her, and she left me to set up for the meeting.

I was so impressed with how functional the meeting room was, that I just had to take pictures.

A long table spanned the length of the room. It had two outlets on either end for people who wanted to use their laptops. There were two white boards complete with markers and erasers that we could use, as well as a TV.

People started trickling in around 1 PM. We asked them to sign-in for attendance and gave them nametags. (It was a good thing,too, because there were a lot of new faces that Saturday). I encouraged our members to eat the cookies I had baked for the event, as well as take some water that Amanda had brought for everyone.

We started the meeting at 1 PM. We introduced ourselves, and gave everyone an idea of what we were currently writing or what we wanted to work on. I always ask our members to pick a question from the box to answer. It's a fun way of getting to know people, as well as sparking story ideas.

After the round of introductions, I introduced to them the newly formed Leadership Team, composed of Jennifer Bailey (Second Scribe/Co-Organizer), Lucy Ravitch (Steward/Logistics Commander), Amanda Touchton (Chamberlain/Treasurer) and Nandini Dev (Herald/Publicity Head).

I went into a short review of the last two meetups, for the sake of those who were just joining us for the first time. I distributed copies of the old worksheets and handouts to our new attendees, and explained that these materials were the reason behind my request for them to bring a binder.

After expounding on the purpose of a critique session, and what to expect during a critique, I explained the format of our critique session:

1. Each person will be given 25 minutes. A voice recorder may be used to record the reading and the critique.

2. 5 minutes will be allotted for the reading of the piece. The work must be read by another member, to give the author a chance to hear her words, and make notes on what works/what doesn’t work.

3. The rest of the 20 minutes will be for feedback and comments, during which time the author is not allowed to say anything. She is instead, encouraged to listen to the feedback with an open mind and take notes.

I used the model I had learned from the SCBWI Westside Schmooze critique session I had attended (Thanks, Lee Wind and Rita Crayon-Huang!):

TACT. It's a word that means having a keen sense of what to say or do to avoid giving offense, as well as a skill in dealing with difficult or delicate situations. It's also an acronym that stands for:

T = Terrific (Where we share what we loved about the piece, what story elements really work in the writing sample)

A = Author Questions (This comes at the last few minutes of critique time, where the author is encouraged to ask questions to clarify comments or feedback regarding her piece.

C= Constructive comments (Members are encouraged to give honest and helpful critique of the author's work, in a tactful manner)

T= Talent (A round of applause ends the critique session, and we encourage the author to keep on writing)

I asked Lucy to be the timer for our critique. We started with Nandini's "Ladybugs", then proceeded to Amanda's "Twins", then to Jenn's "Dark Forest." The critiques went over the time limit so we had to take a break at 3PM because some of our members needed to attend to other events. During the break, we talked about logistics since our new members had questions about what to expect from next few meetups.

I informed them that the critique session was only part of what we planned to do in the writing group. I told them to expect writing workshops, writing sessions, as well as book discussions and discussions on various story elements. I also told them that once we got our membership up, we would invite local authors to share their work and words of wisdom with us.

I also brought up the issue of emails. I told them that some members might not appreciate having their inboxes flooded with meetup emails about other writing related activities or events. We try to accommodate all our members' needs, so they should feel free to tell us whether they mind the emails or not, as well as inform us about other issues that might come up.

We resumed our critiques with my own writing sample "Urth". I told them I didn't mind if it wasn't critiqued that day, because I knew we were running out of time, but everyone was nice enough to insist that they at least give their feedback. So, we skipped the reading and dove in right away to their comments--which were all very helpful, by the way.

The last critique we did was for Lucy's "Pizza Menu" picture book. We ended at 4pm, and though some of our members left early, they all promised to be back for the next session.

All in all, it was the best session we've had so far. The venue was conducive and very functional, the cookies very helpful in "sweetening the blow" of the critiques (though everyone was very good about giving constructive and helpful comments), the water great for washing down the authors' anxieties, feedback and comments were very helpful, and much appreciated, and most of all the energy brought in by our new attendees was positive and invigorating.

The book sale the library was having (where they were selling great titles from 25c to $1) was only a bonus.

I left the library 5 minutes before it closed, lugging the 17 books I had bought for $11.

As I drove home, I thought about all the wonderful new writers I met today, and about all the great feedback I got. I couldn't help but smile, and look forward to our next meetup.

Second meetup Writing Workshop and Critique Session Prepping

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 18:45:11 GMT

Since most of our members haven’t experienced an actual critique session, I thought it be good to devote a session to prepare them for their first ever critique.

So on August 11, 2010, We had our second meetup at Barnes & Noble, Manhattan Beach. The free (and ample) parking spots were a bonus compared to the massive interior of the bookstore and the spacious Starbucks coffee shop.

I had asked several members to show up earlier than the others to help me set up. Of course, they had no idea what they were really in for. I sprung the surprise once they were all assembled: they were going to be part of the first ever Torrance Children’s Book Writing Group Leadership Team.

After getting over the surprise, they eagerly went to their roles. They helped with the sign-in ---distributing nametags and membership forms to the members who were joining us for the first time. They also helped collect fees to help with the materials and the monthly website fee.

When he had all bought our drinks and snacks, we settled around the tables and began the introductions. We shared our names, what we were currently writing or what we hoped to write, and answered the question we had drawn from a box. The box was filled with questions like: “What’s the one book you would like to have with you if you were stranded on an island?” Aside from being a great way to get to know people, the questions might help spark the next story idea.

Since we had five new members, I had to re-introduce the group. I told them we would have writing sessions, critique sessions, discussions on various writing books and children’s books and much more. I also shared some writing events that they might be interested in attending, such as the UCLA Writer’s Faire on August 22^nd, and the various book signings at Borders.

After these announcements, we dove into the Writing Worksheet. The questions on the worksheet helped us reflect on our writing past, our current skills as writers, and helped us set writing goals we wish to achieve.

Once we shared where our writing goals and dreams, I told them we had to do something about it. If we want to get published and accomplish our goals, we needed to take ourselves seriously. After all, if we don’t take our own dreams seriously, who else will?

One way to take our writing goals seriously is to make time for writing and other writing related activities. I gave out the following worksheets based on Evan Marshall’s Marshall Plan for Novel Writing.

The worksheets had the following aims:

1. Writing Time and Place Chart

To help us develop discipline and routine as writers.

2. Choosing Genres Worksheet

To help us hone in on what genre/ type of book we will be truly comfortable writing –something we can actually commit to

3. Story Idea Crisis Worksheet

To give us ideas about what we want our book to be about, and if we already have story ideas--to hone in on the bare bones crisis/ idea that our storyline will be based on

4. Story Idea Checklist Worksheet

To help us hone our basic plot and our main character’s goal

5. Manuscript Preparation Worksheet

To help us figure out our target word length
To help us prepare our manuscript for the critique session

I also gave out a handout about word length in children’s books, based on Cynthea Liu’s book: Writing for Children and Teens: A Crash Course (How to Write, Revise, and Publish a Kid's or Teen Book with Children's Book Publishers).

The second part of our meetup was devoted to preparing for the critique session itself. Some of us shared our critique experiences. Others, who hadn’t yet been to a critique session, shared what their expectations were.

After sharing the purpose of a critique, I explained that different types of books required different critique elements. I gave out the following handouts based on Becky Levine’s The Critique Group and Writing Group Survival Guide:

1. Critiquing Picture Books

2. Critiquing Beginning Reader Books

3. Critiquing Chapter Books

4. Critiquing Fiction Books

5. Critiquing Memoirs

6. Critiquing How-To or Self-Help Books

We also went through the critique guidelines I had prepared. After reading through the guidelines for both writer and critic, we proceeded to plan our major critique.

We agreed that we should all get to read each other’s writing samples. In order to do that, we would have five people critiqued during the next meetup, and the others would be critiqued in the following sessions. We also agreed to email everyone our writing samples on or before the 30^th of August, to give our fellow scribblers time to make notes on each one before the meetup on September 4^th.

We ended the meetup half an hour later, our binders filled with worksheets and hand-outs, and our minds crammed full with new information.

Torrance Children’s Books Writing group – First Meetup

Nutschell Anne Windsor — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:14:13 GMT

Last month (partly because I was missing our SCBWI Westside Schmooze and partly because I wanted to join a writing group close to home), I went on meetup.com and started looking for writing groups near where I lived. I saw a couple of groups close by and decided to check out their webpages. The groups I found seemed interesting and very helpful, but I wanted something a little bit more focused on writing for children.

Toni Morrison said: “If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” I thought the same idea would apply to a writing group.

So, since I couldn’t find writing groups for children’s books writers close to my home, I decided to organize one.

Of course, I didn’t know I had to pay just to organize a group on meetup. I thought, what the heckundefinedI’ve already spent all this time filling out the forms and thinking of what the meetup group would be about, I might as well go through with it. I opted for the monthly payment of $19.99 instead of the discounted annual rate. I figured, well, if nobody’s interested in joining, at least I can say I only spent 20 bucks.

I was so happy, when days later, eight people join in. Now the group has seventeen members and I can only hope our little group grows even bigger.

Our first meetup was held yesterday (July 20, 2010) at Mitsuwa Marketplace (on Carson and Western) in Torrance. Mitsuwa was a great place for our first meetup. There were lots of parking spots, and available tables in and around the food court area.

Being the nervous organizer that I am, I got there at around 6:30PM to find a decent spot for our group and set up our table. I set up a little table-top sign that read “Torrance Children’s Book Writing Group Meetup” (I know, the name is awfully long, but it’s very informative), along with the sign-up sheet and a pen. I also prepared the business cards I wanted to give out and the cookies I baked especially for the meetup.

After arranging the said materials on the table, I ordered myself a bowl of ramen and ate dinner while I waited for people to arrive. Of course, they arrived early and I had to greet each of them with a spoonful of noodles in my mouth. They were nice enough to wait for me to swallow my food before asking any questions.

A few of us had come straight from work and hadn’t had dinner, so they went off in search of food while the rest of us sat down and talked. When the five of us were all seated at the table, we started the introductions.

I took out a box I had prepared for the occasion. The box was filled with questions like: “What’s the one book you would like to have with you if you were stranded on an island?”, and “What is the one food you’d never want to taste again?”. I had everyone pick a question and answer it. I thought it was an interesting way to get to know one another. When everyone had their turn, I asked them to formally introduce themselves -– their names, the genre they were writing in and their current writing projects.

After the introductions, I told them why I had decided to organize the writing group, and what my visions were in terms of what the writing group would accomplish. We would have critique sessions, discussions on writing books and children’s books, field trips to places that could inspire our writing, as well as writing practice sessions so we could develop our voice and style.

I gave out copies of the worksheets I had prepared for the meetup:

1. The Personal Goals Worksheet, which lists questions to help us reflect on our personal goals as writers;

2. The Writing Group Logistics Worksheet, which lists questions pertaining to the writing group logisticsundefinedwhen our meetings should be, how long, etc.;

3. The Group Work Worksheet, which lists questions to help us understand what we expect from the group, and how each of us works within a group setting;

4. And finally, the Writing Worksheet, which lists questions that would help us hone in on our strengths, weaknesses and skills as writers.

The Personal Goals Worksheet helped us realize that a writing group would help us become more focused and more determined to achieve our own writing goals. It would also help us get honest feedback from like-minded people, as well as help us make friends with fellow writers.

The Writing Group Logistics Worksheet helped us determine the format of our future meetup sessions:

We will meet twice a monthundefinedone meeting on a weekday (most likely a Tuesday or Wednesday), and one meeting on a weekend.
Each meeting would last 2 hours.
We will meet at the same place, unless we’re having critique sessions or writing lessonsundefinedin which case we will find a library or a house to have the sessions at.
We will have activities such as critique sessions, book discussions, book reviews, writing activities, and field trips .
All of the members present agreed that they would be happy to help out with a monthly fee of $5 to pay for the meetup website fees, snacks, drinks, and materials we would need for each session.

Since we were only able to go through the first two worksheets owing to the lack of time, we promised to go through the remaining worksheets on our own and to attend next month’s critique session.

Although only five of us were able to attend the meetup last night, we felt like we had accomplished a lot. We left Mitsuwa with new friends and a new passion for writing.

Standing from Left to Right: Nutschell and Nandini

Sitting from Left to Right: Amanda, Lucy and Silvia

CBW-LA Blog

Rave Review from Story Sprouts Alumna Caitlin Hernandez

Story Sprouts Review

by Caitlin Hernandez

2015 Kickstart Your Writing Career Workshop (Blog Summary)

March 29, 2014 (56th CBW-LA Workshop): Novel Writing Bootcamp

Nutschell’s 3 Levels of the Elements of Fiction (or How a Story Sprouts)

February 22, 2014: CBW-LA Workshop: Honing Your Middle Grade Voice with Author Kristen Kittscher

January 11, 2014 (54th CBW-LA Meetup): Kickstarting Your Writing Career Workshop

September 26, 2013 (50th CBW-LA Meetup): The Write Stuff: A Children’s Book Workshop

Workshop Description:

Workshop Summary:

August 17 2013 (48th CBW-LA Meetup): Potent World-Making: What’s Myth Got to Do With It?

Workshop Description:

Speakers’ Bios:

Workshop Summary:

46th CBW-LA Meetup: Writing Between the Lines: The Power of Multiple Revisions with Author Carmen Rodrigues

Writing Day Anthology Workshop

I. FREEWRITING

II. STORY SPARKERS

CBWLA Presents: Queries, Blurbs & Loglines: Oh My! A Workshop with Author Samantha Combs

CBWLA Presents: Blogging Workshop with Arlee Bird

Our big thanks to Arlee Bird for coming out and speaking to CBW-LA!

CBW-LA Presents: Author Chris Lynch Discusses Everything You Want to Know About Self-Publishing

Speaker Bio:

Workshop Summary:

Workshop Highlights:

CBW-LA Presents: What I Wish I'd Known: Avoiding Publishing Pitfalls from Draft to Deal

Workshop Description:

Workshop Summary:

CBW-LA Presents: Myth, Magic & Madness - Writing for the Children’s Market

Creative Writing Session: Find Your Voice, Style & Learn the Art of Description

Get Started On Your Write Path: Plan Your Writing Goals & Your Writing Career

I. WRITING REFLECTIONS

II. REALITY: PUBLISHING 101

III. MAKING A COMMITMENT TO WRITING

VI. PLANNING YOUR WRITING GOALS

First Holiday Party & New Name & Logo Launch

Picture Book Bootcamp

An Insider's Look at the Family Entertainment Market for Children's Book Writers

Kathie gave us an inside peek into how family projects are acquired. First, she answered the question, “What is the family entertainment market?”

Pamela Jaye Smith's talk: Symbols and the Dark Side in Family Entertainment, Yes You Need It.

Johnny Covey Discusses How to Survive A Writing Career in this Economy

All About Plotting

Following is an abbreviated transcript of the session:

ALL ABOUT PLOTTING

WHO, WHAT, WHY, AND WHY NOT

· These are important questions for any story

EXTERNAL

OTHER REFERENCE FOR GMC:

Re-energizing Your Writing Passions

RE-ENERGIZING YOUR WRITING PASSIONS

I. REFLECTION ON OUR CURRENT STATE

II. SOME OF THE COMMON FEARS OF WRITERS

IV. THE POWER OF VISUALIZATION

So How Do We Train our Brain?

What Are Some Visualization Exercises We Can Do to Achieve Our Writing Dreams

1. We need to establish our goals. Sure we all want to get published, but do we want a two-book deal? A Series deal? A book deal worth millions? We have to be specificundefinedand honest about our goals.

Activity: Write down your top 5 Writing Goals

V. GETTING SOME WRITING INSPIRATION

VI. REVIEW

Aura Imbarus Talks About Her Journey to Publication

Aura Imbarus Bio: (from her website www.auraimbarus.com)

Leeanne Krusemark Talks About Getting Published

How to Write a Smashing Query Letter

I. QUERY BASICS (Based on Noah Lukeman’s HOW TO LAND AND KEEP A LITERARY AGENT)

A. What is a Query letter? B. Who do you query? Publisher vs. Agent.

10 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Query A Publisher Directly

10 Reasons Why You Need An Agent

When To Query A Publisher Directly

C. Steps To Take Before You Write A Query Letter

1. Research/ Make a list of 50 Target Agents

13 Factors To Consider When Evaluating An Agent

2. Gather more information about the agents on your list.Create your own database containing the following details:

26 FREE RESOURCES FOR WRITERS

1. www.publisherslunch.com

11 FEE BASED RESOURCES FOR WRITERS

PART II of our workshop covered the formula for writing query letter based on Noah Lukeman’s Three Paragraph Rule, gleaned from his ebook HOW TO WRITE A GREAT QUERY LETTER.

3 Common Mistakes to Avoid in your Plot Paragraph

4 Positive Traits to Have in Your Plot Paragraph

Aura Imbarus Bio:
(from her website www.auraimbarus.com)

I. QUERY BASICS
(Based on Noah Lukeman’s HOW TO LAND AND KEEP A LITERARY AGENT)

A. What is a Query letter?
B. Who do you query? Publisher vs. Agent.