Category: Pro Writer

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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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Want a Writing Life? Enter the Writing Business

Are you heading into a Fall Writing Challenge? Visit The Write Focus podcast to listen to the Enter the Writing Business series and inspire your writing.

Want a Writing Life?

Enter the Writing Business offers, in eight episodes, everything you need to transition your mindset from a wannabe writer to a pro-writer mindset.

Check out the opening blog post at https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2022/10/343-dream-it-enter-writing-business.html

There, we have direct links for the podcast to YouTube and Podbean as well as links to Apple and Spotify.

The Write Focus is also on Samsung Podcasts, Google Play, iHeart Radio, Tune-In, and many many more. Look for our green logo.

Workbook!

A workbook for Enter the Writing Business, book and podcast, is now available.

Visit Emily Dunn / M.A. Lee (buymeacoffee.com) to get yours now!

Here’s the book description for Enter the Writing Business.

How do I succeed at writing? Most answers to that question focus on creativity ~ story development, character explorations, poetic contemplations, blogging topics, and more.

Business needs to be added to that list.

Refine the question ~ How do I succeed at the writing business?

Even our refined question can be divided into several.

  • A] What are the best systems for writers?
  • B] What are the best daily procedures?
  • C] The best ways to balance creativity and practicality?

These are the first decisions to build a writing business.

Think of writing as running a small business. Writers create content ~ stories, poems, blogs, any of our writing. That content is our product to sell.

As creators of quality products, when we want a writing life, we need a Writing Biz.

Imagine a writing career. What is the reality? No, not the fantasy. What will the actual day-to-day writing life be?

Daily writing requires that we find ways to cope with the soul-suckers who interfere with your creative energies.

Enter the Writing Business offers the reality of the writing life.

This guidebook is a series on the daily creative process and the daily devotion to writing. Transitioning to business decisions, wee look at the necessary writing space then the essential hard and soft skills. To succeed, though, we need a business plan designed for writers. That biz plan will direct our daily actions, weekly plans, and monthly reviews and previews :: the Do’s that few consider until swamped by the constant Do-ing of them.

This guidebook is more than a tossed life preserver. With the practicalities discussed here, you can avoid the swim across the channel and build a bridge to cross from newbie to pro writer.

As part of the five-year publication anniversary of her first book, Edie Roones filled last August  with a blog series about these basic business decisions. The last two posts in the series chatter about the Hell and Heaven of Writing to answer every writer’s constant unspoken question: Is it worth it?

Interested in reading rather than listening? Here’s a link to purchase the ebook. On Amazon    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0848CK3C2

A paperback version of Enter the Writing Business is located in the 8 x 10 big bundle Inspiration for Writers. The other books in Inspiration 4 Writers are Just Start Writing and Write a Book in a Month.

Achieve the Writing Life as the Author Did

Most new writers drop out before the five-year mark. Edie Roones (a pseudonym of a professional writer who has published over 50 titles) began her commitment to writing in 2012. “I’ve made mistakes,” she says, “but I’m seeing better results every day.” Avoid those mistakes in actions and expectations, and achieve success applying the lessons in Enter the Writing Business.

Roones’ fantasy series of Seasons in Sansward  has three novels Summer Sieges, Autumn Spells, and Winter Sorcery.  Her most recent endeavor is the Wild Sherwood series, with the two collections Into Wild Sherwood and Outlaws of Wild Sherwood, ten stories than fuse the Robin Hood legends with the Faeries of British myth.

Write to Edie at winkbooks@aol.com

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Brand your Books with Classic Tropes

Used in discussing market copy and branding in Discovering Your Author Brand by M.A. Lee

Covers for Tony Hillerman’s first novel featuring Jim Chee and Detective Leaphorn
Cadfael — the first book in the 20-book series, A Morbid Taste for Bones, by Ellis Peters
Amelia Peabody — the first book in the series by Elizabeth Peters
Head-boiled Detective Covers
Action Adventure with Louis L’Amour and Lester Dent
three covers for my favorite writer Mary Stewart ~ these are the covers that sold me.
Classic Mystery Pulp Writers of the 1930s to 1950s
Victoria Holt ~ vintage gothic
More vintage gothic
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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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Discovering Characters

Discovering Characters Guideline: One of the hardest things to do in writing

is to create characters that readers will care about,

that will make them have to read on.

Noah Luke

Discovering Characters is like investigating a house we want to buy.

No, I’m serious. Characters have an exterior façade that we comment upon as we drive past. Through the windows we catch glimpses of interior lives.

How are Characters like Houses?

Even in cookie-cutter boxy cliques, characters have individual characteristics, just as the suburbia ranch houses have their garden plantings and the urban row houses have their painted doorways. These small touches create individual homes in neighborhoods.

Some characters enjoy the bright city lights. Some are loners, nestled against a national forest.  Characters, houses—each have individual personalities. Some are blingie, with the latest décor while others enjoy the comfort of yoga pants and old sneakers.

As writers, we capture these individual characters and save them from the cookie-cutter boxy stereotypes. We delve into interior rooms for glimpses of formative baggage. Finding their backstory is a search through attics and cellars, storage closets and garages. Characters hide their pain and fears, painting them over and adding distracting artwork.

How do we Individualize our Characters?

Our job as writers is to find every detail of our characters then use snippets so our readers will see our characters as they drive through our books. We hint at the foundations while opening doors to their plans and purposes.

Discovering Characters is designed to help writers find the exteriors and interiors, public and private. We’ll dig around the foundations and climb to the roof. We’ll explore the open rooms and the storage closets. And we’ll peek into rooms inhabited by such characters as diverse as Elizabeth and Darcy, the Iron Man, Aragorn and Frodo, Travis McGee, Medea, Macbeth, and Nanny McPhee.

Five areas comprise this guidebook.

Just as characters—and houses—are individual, this info is individual. You won’t need every bit. Dip in and out, skim around. When you reach locked rooms, come back and explore to discover the keys to your characters.

  1. Starting Points ~ offering templates and character interviews
  2. Classifications ~ common and uncommon ways of discovering characters
  3. Relationships ~ couples, teams, allies, enemies, mentors, etc.
  4. Special Touches ~ progressions, transgressions, and transitions for character arcs
  5. Significant Lists ~ archetypal characters and much more

Discovering Characters, with 44,000-plus words, is the second book in the Discovering set, part of the Think like a Pro Writer series for writers new to the game as well as those wanting to up their game.

Worldwide Distribution: Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and more: https://books2read.com/u/3RJrZB

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Defeat Writer’s Block

Don’t fear the great *unmentioned unmentionable* for writers. cover by Emily R. Dunn

Let’s DEFEAT WRITER’S BLOCK.

How do we defeat Writer’s Block?

  • Strategies to tackle that monster.
  • Advice from other 15 best-selling writers.
  • Detailed explanations to start doing now!

This book comes direct from The Write Focus podcast and its host M.A. Lee.

Suffering every writer’s serious malady of writer’s block?

We may say the mantra “Writer’s Block doesn’t exist”, but something more than simple disruptions and distractions can interfere with our writing, creating insurmountable walls.

The Write Focus analyzes the three most common types and offers solutions to Overcome and Defeat this monster looming over the writer’s desk.

The best solution, though, is Leo Tolstoy’s mantra: No days without lines :: Nulla dies sine linea. Make that your own mantra.

Published August 8.

Ebook from Worldwide Distributors like Kobo, B&N, and more:  Find it here.

Ebook and Paperback from amazing Amazon: Also on preorder, available on the 8th.

Audiobook also available (although some distributors may not have the book available for 30 days from publication. Ah well.).

Available Now: Storytel / https://www.storytel.com/se/sv/books/defeat-writers-block-think-like-a-pro-writer-6-8875896 

and Libro /  https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9798988473985

Coming Soon to Apple, Audible, Chirp, Kobo, and more!

created by Emily R. Dunn
Audiobook and Ebook publishing in the Summer as part of the Summer Writing Challenge.

Chapters

  1. Introduction
  2. Overcoming Type 1: Refusal, easy to defeat
  3. Overcoming Type 2: Procrastination, difficult
  4. Overcoming Type 3: Inertia, the worst
  5. Pro Writers’ Advice, part A ~ 5 best-selling writers speak on writer’s block and how they defeated it
  6. Pro Writers’ Advice, part B ~ 6 best-sellers talk about writer’s block and strategies
  7. How One Pro Writer Defeated the Monster ~ Erle Stanley Gardner and his strategies
  8. More Techniques from Erle Stanley Gardner
  9. Avoid These Mistakes, part A ~ offered by Judy Delton
  10. Avoid These Mistakes, part B ~ more to avoid from J. Delton
  11. Mary Stewart on Writing Flow ~ shared by her in her novel The Stormy Petrel
  12. Storyteller and Story Teacher ~ Kate Wilhelm’s remembrances on writing barriers
  13. Burnham Talks Block ~ Sophie Burnham devotes a chapter to writer’s block in her book On Writing
  14. Whitney’s Solutions ~ America’s first great writer of romantic suspense, Phyllis A. Whitney shares many techniques in her book Guide to Fiction Writing

The book comes from the series of the same name on the podcast The Write Focus, hosted by M.A. Lee with the assistance of Edie Roones and Remi Black. The podcast is a presentation of Writers’ Ink Books.

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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