Photo by Cara Lopez Lee Fifteen thousand people at one writing conference are enough to bring out my inner introvert. That’s what I learned at my second springtime leap into the swarms of the annual AWP Conference , this time in Los Angeles. (AWP stands for Association of Writers and Writing Programs, so can anyone tell me why it’s not AWWP?) People often talk about creative writing and introversion as if they’re inseparable, but thanks to writing’s dual requirements of solitude and communication, I believe it attracts a spectrum of introverts and extroverts. I’m an ambivert: exhibiting qualities of extroversion and introversion in almost equal measure. In Myers-Briggs personality tests, I typically score 51% extrovert/49% introvert. I’ll bet if the tests were not designed for bilateral results, I’d test 50-50. Non-writers often seem surprised to meet an extroverted writer. Meanwhile, writers who know me seem surprised to learn I’m half-introvert. “But you’re so social!...

In yesterday's post here at the Blood-Red Pencil , I talked about how writers can use PR to grow their writing career. Today, we're moving on to advertising, a totally different beast. As mentioned yesterday, PR tends to have a long-term goal in mind, that of building a relationship with its public so that the public grows to trust the company, to have loyalty with that company. In the end of all that relationship building, the company hopes that the relationship is strong enough that the public will buy their wares, support their causes, etc. Buy Now image by Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net Buy me now! Advertising typically has a short-term goal in mind. You are attempting to lure your audience into buying your products/services or support your causes NOW, not later. Being able to communicate in a concise way the availability and benefits of your products is vital in advertising. What is your product? Why does your audience need this product? What can thi...

If you’re looking to develop or redevelop your public relations (PR) and advertising activities for your writing career, it’s good to first differentiate between the two sets of activities and then take time to consider how each will benefit your career. Before doing so, however, you do want to think about two things: 1) how you will brand yourself and 2) who you are trying to reach because without knowing these two things, developing PR and advertising activities won’t connect with your career goals and with those (your audience) who will help your career grow. PR image by Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net Let’s build a relationship for the long haul . PR often has a long-term goal in mind. You are attempting to build a relationship with your public so that they become loyal to you, so that they begin to trust you. In building that long-term relationship and the loyalty and trust, your public ultimately comes on board to buy your product, support your causes, etc. On...

People don't think alike, and the strangest of all are writers. To prove it, here are some examples: Snow  A child:  What fun. Snowball fights, sledding, ice skating, snow forts.  A stay-at-home adult: How pretty. Great time to hibernate.  A worker: Please, not more of that stuff. It'll take forever to get to work today. An animal lover: The poor dears can't get to their food. Time for me to feed them. A writer: It's hard to hear footsteps in the snow. Perfect for my villain to sneak up. Easter A child: Can't wait for my Easter Basket. Hope it has good candy in it.  A woman: Can I find a new outfit in time, or will someone notice if I wore the same thing as last year? A worker: Will the boss let me out early the Friday before, or by some miracle, give me the whole day off? An animal lover: Easter Bunny decorations are so adorable. A clergyman: Why is Easter so secularized? A writer: I've got to write this great ...

This post was first published here on November 27, 2013. Prior to the invention of the Internet, writers holed up in their attics, alone and palely scribbling, fantasizing about an elusive publishing contract. They spent sunny afternoons deep in the bowels of libraries flipping through the card catalog and paging through thick reference books. Scribes developed callouses on their fingers. They sported perpetual ink stains from writing draft after draft on paper they wadded and tossed in bins. They longed for someone, anyone, to talk to about their passion. They were isolated introverts with impossible dreams, often in desperate need of a critique group or at least someone to help with plot snags or elusive titles. Then some smarty pants invented the electric typewriter, which led to the personal computer, which led to the Internet. Writers were able to research from the comfort of their living rooms while still in their bathrobes. They could draft and revise a hundred ti...

Use the creative process … to get to know yourself better . -Catie Curtis When we discuss writing, we often talk about the preparation needed to gear us up to write; the important aspects of writing, such as character, plot, dialogue, and scene development; the need to be a good self-editor and to find an even better professional editor; the ins and outs of writing sparkling queries and synopses for agents and publishers; and the ins and outs of going the self-publishing route. In short, we focus on the writing, submitting, and publishing of stories, which is good. We need to talk about these things. We don’t, however, talk much about what we learn about ourselves in the act of writing. And that’s just as important. We are the vessels in which stories flow. If we’re not checking on ourselves, our connection(s) to what we write; our common threads, themes that can be seen within our works; and how what we write might even change us, we may find ourselves churning out the same story w...

So, who do you write for?  Yourself?  Your readers?  A combination?  We all talk about this a lot. One side firmly states that you write for yourself. Of course, this has to be true, as you’re the one up in that sequestered (hopefully clean and well-lit, as Hemingway would suggest) place, toiling away. If you don’t like your people and story, odds are no one else will either. It’s funny, I see a lot of manuscripts where the villain is all villain, and all the evil gets pinned on his shoulders, which is not only unbelievable but belies that the writer hated him to the core. And that has the paradoxical effect of flattening out the character so that his effect is minimized. But that’s another discussion! The point being that the essence of writing, especially fiction, stems from your own inspiration and connection to your words. To your people. Your story. All of that has to be interesting enough so you keep stepping into that writing room.  The other side says...

This simple posture is excellent for releasing tension in the hips and relieving back pain. Try the level that best suits your flexibility.  

Are you feeling a chill in the air lately? For the first time in a long time, I'm actually looking forward to snow. See, I've been looking at this festive cover for months, and it's finally time to share it with the world. Friends, I want to introduce you to the latest from Red Tash Books, Let It Snow! Season's Readings for a Super-Cool Yule . I'd love to tell you more about how this collection came about, too.   See, it's kind of Dani Greer's fault.   Over the summer I threw in a story with several of the BRP bloggers and a few other regulars of the BBT Cafe.   The result, The Corner Cafe , continues to garner great reviews and was a really fun experiment for me as a writer, as I decided to set my contribution in the world of my first novel, the best-selling dark fantasy, This Brilliant Darkness .   The Corner Cafe was the first of what would become seven anthologies I would contribute to in 2012.   I quickly realized the value of these ...

Thanks, Internet Friends! If I'm at home alone, I don't have to feel lonely. That's because with a few clicks of the keyboard, I can connect with friends I know and those yet to be discovered. Because this is a month for giving thanks, I thought I'd offer a huge thank you to my many friends on the Internet. Whether they be in e-groups, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, or other social media, I can't begin to count how many wonderful people I've met and bonded with. Some are writers who not only share their journeys to and after publication, but also bits and pieces of what's happening in their personal lives. From connecting with my writing friends I've learned so much more about the publishing world than I ever would have figured out on my own. I've also gained friendships with those who appreciate writers and books, and are all too happy to offer encouragement and praise, often when it's badly needed. On the Internet, I can read a hodgepo...

Writers need talent. We all know that.   They also need to learn and master the skills that go into fashioning great fiction and nonfiction. Again, no news flash here! But one of the hidden attributes a writer must have, which isn’t apparent going in, is courage. Because one of the biggest bugaboos pretty much all writers face is fear. Is my work good enough? Do I have talent? Can I make it in this business? Universal questions, all.   Almost every writer I’ve worked with has been plagued by that internal voice that says: What makes you believe you can be a writer? In many cases, this is followed with that snippy little Puleese!   Funnily enough, the folks I’ve worked with who had tons of confidence , and no self-doubt, almost always proved to be not as talented as those who question themselves. Kinda like the old saying that it’s the healthier people who go into therapy. Especially when searching for their sea legs, new writers become terrified when i...

This month marks my fourth year participating as a contributing blogger for the BRP, and it's a ride that I've enjoyed immensely. I have connected with some wonderful editors, writers, and advocates of the writing craft here on BRP, and as I reflected on that and these last four years, I found myself pointed toward one topic for this post: the importance of community in a writer's life. Sure, we all know the saying, writing is a solitary act , but the success of that writing, the success of the writer is connected to the community the writer belongs to. And what community is this? Well, there are many communities, to include (My category titles are fairly loose; I apologize in advance for that.): The "familial" community, those in our family (and I would add close friends) who support our zany idea of becoming an author, who listen to our doubts and help to push them away, who put the pot of coffee on in the late-night hours, who clean the house and make d...

What is a “defining moment” book? Well, for me, it is a book that made me think, made me move, made me change something in how I wrote. Most of the stories and books I wrote pre-defining moment book were relationship based, delving on the lives and loves of my characters. If I had to pick a genre, I would say it was women’s fiction with a heavy romantic element. That all changed for me when I read Mary Higgins Clark’s All Around the Town . I was taking a novel writing class as an elective and for the class, we had to select a book we would read and analyze. While we did that, we would write the first three chapters of our own novel in the same genre as the book we selected. I had always loved mystery, thriller, and suspense fiction, but never thought I would or could write it. There’s so much to think about when writing a mystery and making sure the puzzle(s) fit just seemed too daunting. So, as a challenge, I picked AATT , one of the few books from Clark that I hadn’t read. ...

As part of the new Blood-Red Pencil feature, The Care and Feeding of the Writer , I wanted to celebrate Valentine's Day by giving love to the busy little worker bees in the writer's arsenal: the hands. As a writer, I spend ungodly amounts of time on my computer and needless to say, my tendinitis is none too happy with me for it. Even if you don't have tendinitis or Carpel Tunnel, from time to time, all writers will get the cramping in their hands or pains that keep them from writing. Because our hands work so tirelessly for us, we ought to dedicate part of our VDay to saying thank you and letting them know just how much they are loved. Below are a few things you can pick up to help in easing hand pain. Of course, if the pain is persistent, then you should contact a doctor and be examined; however, even then, these products can only help alleviate the pain. HAND MASSAGE Now, you can go somewhere and have a full body massage and tell them to pay extra attention on ...

Recently, a friend of mine asked for advice on starting a workshop for writers. I quickly went back to my days in the MFA program, where the major part of the program was the weekly fiction workshop. The advice I gave my friend closely adhered to those things learned from the MFA program as I learned a great deal about myself as a writer and as a critic within our fiction workshops. For anyone that's interested in starting a writer's workshop, I hope this information proves useful. In my experience, there are three components that are necessary for a good writing workshop, and they are: 1- A great moderator 2- Appropriate size for the workshop 3- Rules for the workshop MODERATOR. A moderator has to be kind yet firm and have a great knowledge of storytelling. This is the person that the workshop participants are relying on to guide them as writers. It also doesn't hurt that the moderator has some publishing credits. Participants want to feel that they are learning from someo...