If you're like me, then you know that time has a way of moving fast, leaving you with many undone to-dos. Over a month ago, while getting back into my dissertation writing, a friend of mine told me about the Pomodoro Technique, and since I've started implemented it into my daily goings on, I have seen an increase in my productivity in many areas, specifically my writing and my workouts. For those not in the know, "The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. These intervals are known as 'pomodori,' the plural of the Italian word pomodoro for "tomato" (" Pomodoro Technique "). Image from Wikipedia There are five basic principles to the pomodoro technique: Pick a project you'd like to work on. Set your pomodoro to a certain amount of minutes. Traditi...

Interiority refers to a character's inner life: his thoughts, feelings, and view of the world. In order to show interiority, you have to reveal to the reader your character's internal struggle and self-talk. What he says to himself affects what he does and says to others. Does internal monologue constitute telling? It shouldn't.  Sometimes action and dialogue are not enough. We want to see inside Jane's head. Interiority gives us insight into the character's thought processes, decision-making, internal struggle to do the right (or wrong) thing, his moral compass, and value judgments. It reveals how he perceives other characters, the overall story problem, and his internal dilemma. Interiority is related via interior or internal thoughts, aka interior or internal monologue, aka internal narration. If the character argues with himself or talks to himself, it is interior or internal dialogue. Using interiority well is a skill worth mastering. ...

My proof copy of Madison Lane and the Wand of Rasputin A question came up recently in a Facebook group about submitting a cover to CreateSpace in the correct proportions. I, myself, ran into a few minor glitches during the process, so I thought I’d share the solutions (and tips) I discovered in case others are similarly perplexed. 1. Use the CreateSpace Template It might be confusing at first, because it looks like this: CreateSpace cover templates are calculated and generated according to your specifications ...but that extraneous white space is actually useful for having somewhere to move stuff while you’re working on various aspects of your cover. The biggest benefit of the template is that the spine width is calculated perfectly for you based on the number of pages in your interior file. Which leads me to tip 2: 2. Make sure your interior file is finalised before you begin working on your cover. Or, at the very least, don’t change the page count. 3. Work directly...

You’re a writer. You know writing is all about self-discipline. Okay, it’s also about technique and talent, but I’m not blogging about those. Work with me here. Ahem. Writing is about self-discipline. Steely, hard-eyed, butt-in-the-chair-hands-on-the-keyboard discipline. I get that. But before you plant your butt in that chair have you… 10. Checked the level of your coffee supplies. Some say you can never have enough coffee; and they may be right. I say you know you’ve reached your coffee limit when your typing starts to look like this: “ ttttttttttttttttttttthhhhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisssssssssssss ”. 9. Ensured your food drawer is stocked. Everyone has a food drawer; don’t try to deny it. Some say their drawers are full of healthy snacks. I say some lie. One word, my friend, one word: Chocolate. 8. Set your radio/computer/mp3/cd player to your preferred music. Some of us write to music; some don’t. I write to the dulcet tones of warring cats and the occasi...

I've heard, "There's a place for everything, and everything in its place." That may be the case, but most often than not the DH and I don't seem to know exactly where the place is. That's when The Great Hunt begins. At that point one or both of us decide we absolutely must find a particular object, or we'll never have a moment's peace.Today, the hunt is on for a phone charger, which mysteriously has disappeared. Fortunately, we both bought the same model car charger for each of our cell phones, and we can use the one that's left. Still, it's particularly irksome to get the number of chargers reduced to one, when we originally purchased two. I'm hoping to find the missing charger, but if not, we'll cope with sharing one. Neither of us wishes to spend extra money if it's not necessary to do so. The concept of The Great Hunt can be applied in many ways to writing and publishing. Here are some examples: Just the right idea -...

Writers spend so much time in their chairs, it's important to remember to move those joints to keep from getting stiff and sore. Here's a longer yoga session - why not kick off the month by making a commitment to your physical well-being? Don't just stop there. Make it a habit to get out of your chair a few times every hour. Click here to reading an article from Dr. Joseph Mercola about why sitting too much is bad for your health.

From the first page, an author must pull the reader into the story by assuring him of its forward movement. There’s no better way to do this than to involve your reader in your protagonist’s goal-oriented behavior. Here’s an easy way to remember how to do that, straight from a master of story action. If things get slow, just ask yourself, WWJBD? One thing I feel sure of: Once James Bond enters the scene he will not sit down somewhere and get lost in his head. He will set a goal. Do not fear stating this goal overtly. Doing so can actually ramp up suspense and remind you to push your story forward. Let’s say we are writing a middle grade novel about a boy named Brandon who hopes to find the courage to tell his first crush, a recent immigrant named Parvati, that he likes her. He knows she likes soccer, and he wants to demonstrate his proficiency at it, so you set a scene at a game, show him playing, and put the girl in the stands. This scene sounds relevant to the story, b...

Every time I come across an intriguing article I think has story potential, I save it in folder labeled “History’s Mysteries.” As Dan Brown has proven with his DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons , readers love a good thriller that sheds light on a piece of history that has intriguing possibilities. There, among the real artifacts, are shades of unwritten historical gray that are fertile ground for writers. A good historical thriller prompts the reader to learn more about the details of the story it is based on. I present a list of some mysteries that have intriguing potential. 1) The Portal to the Sun According to this theory, magnetic portals exist between the earth and sun and every eight minutes or so we are connected by a magnetic cylinder as wide as the earth. What happens when the portal is open? Strange Portal Connects Earth to Sun 2) The Divine Matrix According to this theory, we are all part of a cellular web that forms a force field. Everything we do creates...

Back in June 2013 here on The Blood Red Pencil , I offered some suggestions on taking a professional approach to being a book reviewer, so today I would like to take it from the other side. Writers, we are in a business, and it is so important to be professional in how we write, not just our books, but every letter and every e-mail we send, unless we're sending those to Mom, and then we can be all cutesy cutesy and forget about proper spelling and punctuation. Although Mom might remind us that she taught us better than that. Or at least she tried. I've been a professional reviewer for many moons, starting out for newspapers and magazines, and then moving into online sites. I now do reviews primarily on my blog, It's Not All Gravy , and also post reviews on the online retail sites and Goodreads. I get several review requests a week and turn down many of them for not being a businesslike letter. Such as:  Hi there. I am hoping that you will consider reviewing my lat...

Previously I shared some anecdotes on some of my less-than-ideal experiences with editors. My next editor at Walker remains a good friend. She let me stray from the genre to write a Time Travel Regency (having written one herself). Byron's Child came about because I wanted to tell the story of Lord Byron's legitimate daughter, Ada, often called the first computer programmer. Unfortunately, she wasn't born till towards the end of the Regency, but a time traveller from the present—a historian who happened to have Ada's biography with her--worked perfectly. I continued to write for Walker, but when I got divorced, I wasn't making enough to pay the bills. Regencies are very much a minority genre, and I had no interest in any other kind of romance. Though a part-time job helped, it wasn't enough. Then I had an amazing stroke of luck. At a(n) RWA conference, I met a senior editor from Harlequin. She actually knew my name! She told me that Harlequin were...

"Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book." ~Cicero, 106-43 BC Many people mistakenly think that selling and marketing are the same - they aren't. Selling is the “instant gratification” we all like—you hand someone a book and they hand you money. I sell about 90% of my books in person, by hand.  Marketing is a little like planting seeds in your garden. You put them out there and water and fertilize and you hope they will bear fruit (or vegetables.) With marketing you are putting your name or your books out there and maybe some people will buy it right away and maybe two years from now, someone will come across your name and decide to buy. You may not be able to tell how many sales you make from a website or a virtual book tour until you receive a royalty check from your publisher or from Amazon. Global management consultant Alan Weiss says, "There is no music if you don‘t blow your own horn." Like it or n...

Across the street, a small pile of sawdust sits where not an hour before loomed a towering tree. I'd watched a man climb up and saw various portions of the trunk off to fell the tree. It had to go, because it was old and diseased, yet it was a part of our neighborhood, and I felt bad watching its demise. I'm not the only one. While I gazed at what remained, I saw a bewildered bird scampering amidst the sawdust. I could only imagine what ran through its head. It had to be wondering, "Where's the Tree?" Though there are plenty of other trees in the neighborhood, the sight of the bird's confusion saddened me. It also made me think about the ongoing publishing industry changes. I'm not a huge environmentalist, but I do my part, separating the recyclables from other garbage, and turning off the lights when I'm not in a room. I've also joined the e-book revolution and have published all of my books in that format, but still a few in print. ...

Photo by Jason Odell One of the first things I learned when I toyed around with writing, was that despite decades of being a reader, I didn't know diddly about Point of View. I accepted the challenge, and discovered an affinity for using what author Suzanne Brockmann calls "Deep Point of View." I thought I'd share her tips, and add my commentary. In a nutshell, being in deep POV means you're in the character's head, very much the way you are in 1st person. You see only what he can see, hear only what he can hear. You're privy to emotions, to thoughts. The author isn't on the page. There is no narrator. And, just as with first person, you have to work to let the reader know what you want her to know, or not know what you don't want her to know. Nobody said it was easy. 1. Don't cheat the reader . If it's logical for a character to be thinking of something in a scene, you can't hide it from the reader. 2. Make sure your chara...

Poison, image by Andrew Kuznetsov , via Flickr This is from the “About Malice Domestic” link on their website: “Established in 1989, Malice Domestic® is an annual "fun fan" convention in metropolitan Washington, D.C., saluting the traditional mystery—books best typified by the works of Agatha Christie. The genre is loosely defined as mysteries which contain no explicit sex or excessive gore or violence.” I don’t write traditional mysteries or cozies, and the fact that all my books are self-published made me ineligible to participate on a panel. Had any of my books been published by a large or small press, or if I’d published three short stories in any of the accepted mystery magazines or anthologies before I switched to publishing my own books, I would have been considered panel-worthy. I could have moderated, but since that was my first time going, the program director thought it would be a good idea for me to get my feet wet first. I knew that going in, and I...

Photo courtesy of stock.xchng Back for another visit, dearies? Splendid. Things have been far too exciting around here lately; a bit of coffee and chat will be just the thing. We've touched on titles before, if I recall. The niceties of Your Majesty and all that, yes? In a same-but-different vein, let’s consider titles again. I’m thinking of blogs and books and such. Yes, those titles. There are two main types of treatment for titles of works. The most straightforward is sentence-style capitalization. In addition to the first word of the title (and subtitle, should you have one), you need only worry about capitalizing any proper names. High heels: A look at torture devices through the ages. Simple, but a bit boring, don’t you think? I’m inclined to believe that a title should grab the reader’s interest right off, and headline-style capitalization will help in that regard. While the CMOS allows for a certain amount of aesthetically-inspired deviation from the rul...