The ‘How’ of the Writing

Writing Tips

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigred_coat

For someone who doesn’t think of herself as much of a speaker, I’ve been very busy with speaking engagements in the last few months.  I’ve got less than two weeks before my next talk, this time at a North Carolina high school.  An English teacher invited me (I have a very difficult time turning down high school English teachers…my father was one) to speak during lunchtime to a group of kids who were interested in creative writing.

I asked the teacher what she’d like me to speak on and she mentioned a variety of different topics.  Then she said, “They mostly struggle with the how of it.”

Which I remember.  I remember poring over writing books and thinking, okay, this is all fine, but how do I do this?

The sad thing is that now I’m in the same boat—the how is no longer a problem, but how do you explain how?Continue reading

Twitterific Writing Links

Twitterific

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Twitterific writing links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engineBlog (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 30,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers.

Carolina ConspiracyAnd it was a sad week for cozy mystery lovers.  Joyce Lavene, who wrote cozies with her husband Jim, suddenly passed away this past week. They have about a dozen mystery series written under a variety of different names.  Joyce was a great writer and a good friend.  They live close by and I considered Joyce a mentor… she helped me jump start my writing career about ten years ago.  My thoughts are with Jim and his family.  Joyce will be missed. 

LinkedIn for Authors:  http://ow.ly/TI5v8 @ritesh_kala

Using Myers Briggs for Building Character Personalities:  http://ow.ly/TI4x9 @shesnovel

5 cures for writer’s block:  http://ow.ly/TKZG1 @JennyAlexander4           Continue reading

Backing Up, Organizing, Managing Time

Business of Writing, Tools for Writers

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigIMG_4741

Although there are so many things that we can try to help us manage parts of our writing careers, I’ve found that some of the best are the smaller, quieter things.  It’s easy for me to get distracted by trying Facebook ads or working over my metadata…and these are both really good things to do.  But sometimes I need to return to the basics, especially when I’m very busy and don’t follow some of my own best practices.

Here are a few:

Backing up:  I don’t know how many times I’ve heard nightmares about losing content. Too many! It’s like a horror story for writers.  We hear all the time about backing up our work in progress, and that’s certainly important. But it’s also important to have previous projects backed up, covers backed up, contracts backed up. I just went through and backed up a ton of stuff and shuddered when I realized how much time had passed since my last backup.  I usually do it daily.Continue reading

Preorders

Business of Writing, Promo Tips

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigCruisingforMurder_ebook_Final

I’m not one of the front-runners, ever, on promotion-related things.  I tend to be a lot more cautious.  Or, really, it’s more that I’m super-protective of my time and jealously guard it.  I want to make sure there’s plenty of data that something works before I spend the time figuring it out and pursuing it.

I’ve been hearing for the last year or so about the importance of preordering.  But I didn’t see how it would be something I wanted to pursue. When I was on the trad-published email loops, authors would complain about how preorders killed their chances for the bestseller lists and watered down their release day/week sales.

I also kept reading that preorders on Amazon didn’t make any sense because the visibility we gained on the site was only at the time of the order…not accumulated and toward release day sales.Continue reading

Twitterific Writing Links

Twitterific

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Twitterific writing links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engineBlog (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 30,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers.

Sell More Books with Better Descriptions:  http://ow.ly/TrDD4 @SarahBolme

Storytelling Strategies: Sicario’s Vanishing Main Character: http://ow.ly/TrzCN by Paul Joseph Gulino @scriptmag

Remember our bios are also marketing devices:  http://ow.ly/TrDqf @stapilus @BookWorksNYC               Continue reading

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