Category: Learn

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Discovering Sentence Craft

Discovering Sentence Craft is celebrating its birthday!

In the forests of words that we writers grow, blazed trails mark the way to our destination. Without those trails, without paths leading down to sun-sparkled streams, without the yellow brushstroke painted on tree after tree, we might lose our direction and our sanity.

Reading through that opening paragraph, most writers will recognize the extended hiking metaphor. Many will spot inversion and alliteration. A few will appreciate the anaphora and auxesis and zeugma, even when not familiar with those terms.

This is Sentence Craft. Controlled use creates appreciative readers. Over-blown use drives readers away.

  • Sentence Craft—from easy imagery to involved structures—is essential for the poet.
  • Bloggers and other nonfiction writers will find it a marketing tool, distinguishing them from their competition.
  • Speech writers and great broadcast journalists use these devices to make their spoken words become memorable.
  • With fiction, writers paint expositions and settings and character tags, capturing readers who may not even recognize the sweeping stroke of the magical wand.

Discovering Sentence Craft is for writers new and old. For newbies, word-tricks can be fascinating ventures into an unknown forest. These tricks can renew a veteran writer’s love of words and sentences flowing onto the page.

In small offerings, of course. Too many tricks glaze our readers’ eyes.

Discovering Sentence Craft covers figurative and interpretive concepts as well as the structural elements that build meaning, emphasis, and memory.

Concepts

I: Figurative

II: Interpretive

Structures

III: Inversion

IV: Repetition

V: Opposition

VI: Sequencing

Writer M.A. Lee believes writing is a skill-based craft which can be learned and practiced. Artists learn composition, perspective, depth, proportion, and shading. A baseball player learns in-field and out-field, pitching vs. throwing, batting and bunting. An electrician learns reading blueprints, voltage and current, circuits, outlets, and panels.

A writer needs much more than grammar and spelling. Reading widely, Discovering Sentence Craft concepts and structures, and practicing them will open doors for anyone who wants to improve.

Check it out here.

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Enhance your Writing with Sentence Craft

Enhance Your Writing

  • How do you enhance your writing?
  • What is enhancing our writing?
  • Why do we do it?

Here are the answers for writers who want to improve their skills.

In the forests of words that we writers grow, blazed trails mark the way to our destination. Without those trails, without paths leading down to sun-sparkled streams, without the yellow brushstroke painted on tree after tree, we might lose our direction and our sanity.

Reading through that opening paragraph, most writers will recognize the extended hiking metaphor. Many will spot inversion and alliteration. A few will appreciate the anaphora and auxesis and zeugma, even when not familiar with those terms.

This is Sentence Craft. Controlled use creates appreciative readers. Over-blown use drives readers away.

Yet you can enhance your writing with simple techniques.

  • Sentence Craft—from easy imagery to involved structures—is essential for the poet.
  • Bloggers and other nonfiction writers will find it a marketing tool, distinguishing them from their competition.
  • Speech writers and great broadcast journalists use these devices to make their spoken words become memorable.
  • With fiction, writers paint expositions and settings and character tags, capturing readers who may not even recognize the sweeping stroke of the magical wand.

Discovering Sentence Craft is for writers new and old. For newbies, word-tricks can be fascinating ventures into an unknown forest. These tricks can renew a veteran writer’s love of words and sentences flowing onto the page.

In small offerings, of course. Too many tricks glaze our readers’ eyes.

Discovering Sentence Craft covers figurative and interpretive concepts as well as the structural elements that build meaning, emphasis, and memory.

Ways to Enhance Your Writing include ~

Conceptscover designed by Deranged Doctor Design

I: Figurative

II: Interpretive

Structures

III: Inversion

IV: Repetition

V: Opposition

VI: Sequencing

Writer M.A. Lee believes writing is a skill-based craft which can be learned and practiced. Artists learn composition, perspective, depth, proportion, and shading. A baseball player learns in-field and out-field, pitching vs. throwing, batting and bunting. An electrician learns reading blueprints, voltage and current, circuits, outlets, and panels.

A writer needs much more than grammar and spelling. Reading widely, Discovering Sentence Craft concepts and structures, and practicing them will open doors for anyone who wants to improve.

Discover more ways here: 

 

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Celebrate *Discovering Your Author Brand*

Brands identify quality work with artistic effort. They serve as a stamp of approval for the customer.

It’s the anniversary of Discovering Your Author Brand, the guidebook for developing writing brands for yourself as writer, for your book, and for your series.

Here’s something not sexy. Brands for writing is a contract with the reader.

Here’s two more.

  • Brands identify quality work with artistic effort.
  • They serve as a stamp of approval for the customer.

Yeah, yeah. You’ve heard that before.

Look around, and you’ll spot lots of flash-bang presentations on creating author brands. As more writers become self-published and traditional writers try to increase their marketing, the Author Brand is a hot topic.

Everyone talks about it. Few people can explain how to do it or give instructions to follow.

Well, gee, here’s another book, too.

How is Discovering Your Author Brand different from the other books in the marketplace?

1st ~ It’s packed with examples based on highly successful writers.

Face it, in today’s marketplace, our competition is our peers and every other writer who has come before us. Agatha Christie is still selling. Ray Bradbury is selling. Arthur Conan Doyle sells. Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot was made into a Will Smith movie over two decades after Asimov died.

These writers aren’t on the best-seller lists; only new books earn places on those lists. But Christie and Bradbury and Doyle and many, many more writers are competition for everyone else entering the marketplace. And they have the cachet of quality that new and recent writers struggle to achieve.

So, we’ll look at successful brands and analyze the secrets of their success.

2nd ~ Discovering Your Author Brand understands that the browsing readers will only give a few nanoseconds to our books.

So, we explain the three main glances that hook the readers before they swim down the river. We also look at the keys to unlock those glances. With the right keys, the brand is revealed, and the door to the reader opens.

To help with the keys and glances, we have worksheets (charts!) to help you discover the brand for book, series, and your author persona—because the first leads to the last.

3rd ~ We have something the other books don’t have, another way to catch the attention of that swimming reader. Video trailers!

Advertising claims that consumers have to see something seven times—7!—before they’ll buy. Static ads and promo posts are all well and good, but we writers need an extra oomph to get that seventh look. Enter the video trailer.

Have you ever wanted to set up a video trailer or a brief clip, currently big on social media sites like TikTok and Instagram? Have you hesitated because you don’t know where to start?

We have an easily adaptable script as well as guidance on settling the debate between music and narration. (We pick music!)

Discovering Your Author Brand is packed with explanations and examples.

Book 7 in the Discovering set, the manual is designed for new writers on the journey to becoming totally professional.

Purchase at Amazon or purchase at other online distributors

View the trailer at this link: https://youtu.be/uthI5gEWic8

. ~ . ~ . ~ . 

Writer M.A. Lee has been self-publishing fiction and non-fiction since 2015. She has over 50 books published under her three pen names.

 

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Plot ~ All Writers Need to Know

From September to December, The Write Focus podcast will focus on Plot.

Everything to do with Plot.

Freytag’s Pyramid and the Beats.

Plot Points and Pinch Points and the Complex Plot Structure.

Three-Act … or Four-Act Structure.

Shakespeare’s Structure.

And the best Structure of All, the most adaptable to every writer’s needs, able to be stripped down to the basics or built into cycles for epic length.

We cover it all, every Wednesday as the year cools into autumn and winter.

Information comes from our host M.A. Lee’s guidebook Discovering Your Plot, with assistance from Edie Roones and Remi Black.

What do writers want from plot?

What do writers need from plot?

As wordsmiths, we writers know that want and need are two different words.

  • The want is a circumstance that we writers can control. We want plot specifics to help us craft story and exceed reader expectations.
  • The need is a circumstance of obligations from reader expectations of story. While readers may want the comfort of the genre elements (the tropes), they also wish to have their interest and curiosity piqued.

Can we writers deliver on the expectations and the surprises in order to please our readers?

That’s the involved question that our series based on Discovering Your Plot hopes to answer.

Join us.

How to Find Us

 

Listen on your favorite podcast site: from Apple to YouTube, Spotify and Podbean (my favs), Google Play, Amazon Music / Audible, Samsung and Player FM, Podcaster, the rivals iHeart and Tune-in, and too many to list.

Here are links to the easiest podcast services. Find our green logo and follow.

My favorite podcast is Podbean. https://eden5695.podbean.com/

YouTube direct link to the last playlist on Branding: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXi3M_aM-d7L4OtDk2Bde7LDwQ2l7K8NE 

Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-write-focus/id1546738740%20

Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/4fMwknmfJhkJxQvaaLQ3Gm?si=ffeb71ed17c3409d

Amazon/Audible https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/062ecc60-d61c-432a-ad99-8234c1044ef1

ListenNotes https://lnns.co/y_Jg5rpaMNo

Google https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL2VkZW41Njk1L2ZlZWQueG1s

Tune-in https://tunein.com/podcasts/p1608565/

The Write Focus presents information on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

For up-to-date links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

 

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A Messy Miscellany For Writers

A Messy Miscellany for Writers is Crowded with Information.

A Messy Miscellany covers a broad range of topics on …

  • craft and process,
  • productivity and tools,
  • writing crimes to avoid,
  • the how-can’s and why-should’s of writing guidance,

and much, much more.

These miscellany chapters first appeared on The Write Focus podcast; that’s another reason for the word messy.

Miscellany: separate writings on varied subjects collected in one volume.

What makes this miscellany of writer guidance so messy?

  • A scattering into the many areas of writing, original sketch to final draft, revision to publication
  • Writing professionally, both process and attitude
  • Ways to maintain productivity and keep the writing fresh
  • Tools that writers find helpful
  • References to help writers grow
  • Writing as a long-term career
  • Necessity of promotions and marketing

Five of the chapters come from episodes in the podcast’s first year, another five from the second year, and four others began the third year.

Chapters in Messy Miscellany

Beginning to Write

01: Resolve to Be a Writer ~ Once writing becomes not only a resolution but also a devotion, what steps do we take to achieve our devotion?

02: 7 Newbie Mistakes ~ Every successful writer begins with failures. The trick is to rise above the mistakes. That takes awareness as well as solutions to overcome them.

03: 3 Notta Mistakes ~ These could easily have turned into failures. I lucked into avoiding them. Here’s the reason they’re mistakes and how we can avoid them.

04: Write the Book, part 1 ~ Every writer needs a process to achieve that first goal, a finished manuscript. Here’s guidance for the initial steps, the flailing of the middle, and how to reach the last word of our goal. (For more detailed information, please consult 12: Revision Is a Process.)

05: Write that Book, part 2 ~ What’s needed after we type the last word of our manuscript? We have three more steps to complete and plan before we send our newly finished book into the reading world. (For more detailed information, please consult 13: Edit & Correct and 14: Publish & Promo.)

General Knowledge for All Writers

06: Horror Stories for Writers ~ We’ve all heard the list of no-no’s that writers shouldn’t do. In avoiding these, we sometimes tumble into five other horrors. Here’s guidance on avoiding these career-killers and how to fix them if we stumble into their mucky mire.

07: Gifts for Writers ~ No, not sticky notes or nacky pens. The best gifts for writers touch the heart, inspire the soul, and motivate the brain. We suggest opportunities that bring beaming smiles to writers’ faces.

08: Four Recommended Books for Writers ~ These improve our writing world. Keep them as ready reference all through our writing careers.

09: Three Essential Tools for Writers ~ These don’t include writing software. Not only are these tools, but they’re also essential habits. They create long-term success and prevent stress.

10: Three Films that Writers Need to Study ~ We deal in words. Why am I recommending films? Well, films begin as words, and they’re a quicker study than novels. I present how to choose films to study then launch into my recommended three chosen for their writing craft skills and the reason those skills are important.

11: Five Writing Crimes to Avoid ~ While these aren’t potential career-killers like the five horrors, they can slow our journey to success. These are crimes we’ve all heard to avoid as well as solutions to fix them—and not once do we include the classic “Show, not tell”.

With a Finished Manuscript ~

12: Revision Is a Process ~ So many people tout revision as a key to improve a manuscript draft. Few tell us how. Revision needs a critical brain and these four major steps.

13: Edit & Correct ~ These two harsh words are often confused with revision. They’re not revision, yet they’re just as critical. Even writers unsure of grammar and punctuation as well as MS style have necessary work before sending the book into the next stage.

14: Publish & Promo ~ We’ve reached the final stage. What do we need in place before we publish? How do we plan for our promotional marketing, in amount and cost?

Work through these 14 topics of A Messy Miscellany for Writers, and be well prepared when you declare yourself “a published writer pursuing long-term success”.

~ ~ ~

A longtime tinkerer with words, M.A. Lee published her first novels in 2015 and continues to write and explore the world of writing. As of this date, under her three pen names, she has over 50 titles.

A Messy Miscellany for Writers is her ninth non-fiction book. She also has three planners for writers, each with a different focus: for newbies, for writing projects, and for a word-count tracking throughout a year.

Since 2020, she has hosted The Write Focus podcast, which offers ideas for fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. The heart of the podcast is productivity, process, craft, and tools. The summer series includes interviews with other writers.

Find yours here:

https://books2read.com/u/38ezzB (ebook)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B6Y5GWG2 (ebook)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B713BXGS (paperback)

The various topics are scattered through the first three seasons of The Write Focus.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

Listen on your favorite podcast site: from Apple to YouTube, Spotify and Podbean (my favs), Google Play, Amazon Music and Audible, Samsung and Player FM, Deezer and Podcaster, the rivals iHeart and Tune-in, and too many to list.

Here are the 4 easiest:

My favorite podcast is Podbean. https://eden5695.podbean.com/

YouTube direct link to the Mixed Miscellany playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na5LXb-83iM&list=PLXi3M_aM-d7ISCaEcoK4JV5wSUkGCmx_Z

Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-write-focus/id1546738740%20

Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/4fMwknmfJhkJxQvaaLQ3Gm?si=ffeb71ed17c3409d

 

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3 Planners for Writers

Why do Writers Need Planners?

I’m not just promoting 3 Planners here. I have a reason for creating each one.

The #1 guarantee of continual writing success is tracking your progress, with all the successes recorded. We writers have a tendency to focus on our current problems and set-backs.

While every publication is a major success, the daily grind often has us thinking we’re back-pedaling rather than advancing. Tracking our minor successes and checking off our benchmark goals provides us with the incentives we need to keep working.

Cover by Deranged Doctor Design

The Basic Planner: a Word-Count Focus

What helps writers achieve those two goals? For speed, we need to concentrate our mental energies on writing daily. For the long haul, we need to know our projects, current and next and future. When we focus on speed and longevity, we write more than we ever have before.

Word Trekker accomplishes these goals by advance planning for our projects and tracking our words daily, monthly, quarterly, and yearly.

Any hikers out there? This planner is for you. Match those words to the step-count for the Triple Crown of Hiking.

  • Pacific Crest Trial > 2,650 miles
  • Continental Divide Trail > 3,100 miles
  • Appalachian Trial > 2,193
  • AT international extension into Canada 1,319 >> 2, 193 with 1,319 = 3,512

One hiking mile = 100 words. As hikers venture along each trail, they trek from state to state. Setting the Triple Crown of Hiking as a writing goal keeps us going through the year.

Much less than $1 a month, this 6 x 9 planner helps you work toward One Million Words in a Year. Click the link to discover more.

Cover by Deranged Doctor Design

Think in Projects Rather than Words?

Plan those writing goals. Nest the projects; hatch as you achieve them. Celebrate victories; analyze challenges. Soar with Success with the Writing Nest.

Long-term goals are easy to set. Breaking the long-term goals into short-term goals helps us slog through the slow times. Those slow slogs can lead us to think we’re not achieving, yet a simple record will keep us motivated to continue on.

Where can we keep that record of achievements, short-term and long-term? A daily system that builds to mid-term benchmarks and seasonal achievements. That system should help us not only record our achievements but also set our long-term and short-term goals.

Sized 8 x 10, this undated planner (priced for $1 a month) lets us start anytime, taking breaks between projects or powering through the year. Click for more info.

cover by Deranged Doctor Design for Writers Ink Books
Cover by Deranged Doctor Design

The Planner for Newbies

Want to make writing a commitment rather than a hobby? Striving for professional publication rather than wannabe status? The Think/Pro planner helps make the conversion from newbie to writing pro.

$1 a month, this undated planner tracks word counts and healthy habits, offers creativity tips and tax tips, offers progress meters for projects and a weekly inspirational quote from a major writer.

In addition to the weekly spread with a Top 3 Task List are Monthly Reviews & Previews and Seasonal & Yearly Planning pages.

The Monthly Review has a Productivity Tracker and a Progress Meter as well as places to jot down Business Contacts and Expenses. Seasonal Previews ask you to polish the nuts and bolts of your projected words per week and sharpen up the time remaining before your deadline.  At the end of every month, the planner offers a record for victories as well as upcoming challenges.

Time to change “Seize the Day” into “Seize the Dream.”  For success, we need to Think/Pro.  This 8 x 10 planner will help.

 

 

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Writing Challenge Rewind ~ All through June

On The Write Focus, we’re posting a daily podcast from Write a Book in a Month, by Remi Black.

Daily check-ins include the project stage progressing word count as well as speculations on writing in general and the writing business in particular.

Click this link to visit TheWriteFocus blog.

 

Criteria for the Challenge ::

1] Daily Word Count

2] Length to Goal

3] Reason for the Goal

 

Each episode runs less than 10 minutes. Listen briefly every day or hoard up several episodes for when you fix a quick dinner, drive a short commute, or take a brisk walk.

Lessons for writing happen along the way!

Each episode will conclude with the two quotations from professional writers (Hemingway! Heinlein! Atwood! More!!!) that opened and closed the day’s writing sessions.

Episodes ::

  • 1 :: No Fooling
  • 2 :: Change of Plans
  • 3 :: Stick with the Plan
  • 4 :: Nix Distractions
  • 5 :: Watch for Warnings
  • 6 :: Life Rolls
  • 7 :: Win-Lose-Wind
  • 8 :: Critical vs. Creative
  • 9 :: Eat the Frog First
  • 10 :: The Tax Man Cometh
  • 11 :: Cocoons
  • 12 :: Six Words Short
  • 13 :: Wonders Never Cease
  • 14 :: One Project, Two Project
  • 15 :: Promotions
  • 16 :: Covers
  • 17 :: Frittery Jittery
  • 18 :: Flipping Out
  • 19 :: Input / Output
  • 20 :: Looking Ahead
  • 21 :: Short Post
  • 22 :: Biz Monday
  • 23 :: Master Book
  • 24 :: Expect the Unexpected
  • 25 :: Carpe Diem as Writers
  • 26 :: Nose to the Grindstone
  • 27 :: Writers’ Groups
  • 28 :: First Celebration
  • 29 :: Writers Conferences
  • 30 :: An End that’s Not an End and Lessons List
  • July 5th :: Aprés-Draft Update

Listen on the following sites. 

Bookmark your favorite to come back daily.

Podbean: The Write Focus (podbean.com)

Apple podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-write-focus/id1546738740%20

Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/4fMwknmfJhkJxQvaaLQ3Gm?si=0GFku2PbShWXiDhRp7JaDQ

YouTube Channel Writers Ink Books – YouTube

Join us!

Resources as of April 20

Amazon links are given because it’s easy, and for no other reason.

Purchase Write a Book in a Month at Amazon here.  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0848MWXGD

Also mentioned in the first 10 episodes (March 31 to April 5) ~

Patty Jansen’s Self Publishing Unboxed Amazon.com: Self-publishing Unboxed (The Three–year, No-bestseller Plan For Making a Sustainable Living From Your Fiction Book 1) eBook: Jansen, Patty: Kindle Store

Purchase Think/Pro at Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Think-like-Pro-Advent-Writers/dp/1983248266/

The Think/Pro planner for writers can be purchased here: https://www.amazon.com/Think-Pro-Planner-M-Lee/dp/1983248673/

Dwight V. Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer https://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Selling-Writer-Dwight-Swain/dp/0806111917/  

Anne Morrow Lindbergh Gifts from the Sea https://www.amazon.com/Gift-50th-Anniversary-Anne-Morrow-Lindbergh/dp/0679732411/

Marie Kondo The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up https://www.amazon.com/Life-Changing-Magic-Tidying-Decluttering-Organizing/dp/B00RC3ZGN4/