Regaining Confidence in a Project

Motivation and the Writing Life

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigDeathtoStock_Wired1

I hope that I’m not just accentuating the positive on my blog. Writing rarely comes super-easy to me.  It’s always a fight to stay focused and meet my daily goals.  I worry over every single project.  I absolutely love the writing and feel incredibly fortunate about being able to do this for a living…unless it’s a day when I’m not loving it.

My current self-published project has been interrupted a lot more than any other project I’ve ever worked on. Some of the interruptions were personal…like Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Some were professional—my agent asked me to write up a couple of outlines for proposed projects.  Then I got global edits in for a traditional project that publishes this summer.  Then I got copyedits for the project a few days ago.Continue reading

Working With a Cover Designer: Time-Saving Techniques

Business of Writing, Tools for Writers

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigDeathPaysaVisit_print_web (2)

I have a cover conference (via email) this week with my current cover designer, Karri Klawiter.  I’ve been told by cover designers in the past that they like working with me because I both know exactly what I’m looking for (or can quickly identify what I’m looking for when I get samples) and that I supply most/all of the information they need on their end immediately.

I’ve got sort of a template email that I use with designers to help speed along and clarify the process on both ends.  Below is the initial email I sent for the last, published, project of mine (fall release). Continue reading

Twitterific Writing Links

Twitterific, Writing Tips

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Blog

Twitterific writing links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (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.

Thoughts on Using Dialect :  http://ow.ly/Hw6KS by Jim Harrington

10 Tasks of the First Chapter http://ow.ly/Hw6KT @Diana_Hurwitz

3 Steps to Better Book Marketing:  http://ow.ly/Hw6KU @DigiBookWorld and Rich Bellis               Continue reading

Working from Home as a Writer—Some Truths

Motivation and the Writing Life

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Working from home is something that sounds amazing for many people.  Who wouldn’t want to work from home, right?  No commute.  No dry cleaning bills.  No annoying coworkers.  No gasoline budget, parking decks, or lunches packed.

The truth is that working from home is great.  Sometimes.  And sometimes it’s not as great.  Take this blog post, for example.  It should have been written yesterday (at the latest) and scheduled to post right after midnight this morning.  But it’s been a crazy last couple of weeks because my children have been frequently at home due to teacher workdays, a national holiday, and an odd midterm exam schedule.

Sometimes unusual weeks like these will knock me right off my game.  Maybe I can meet my writing goals (I have), but supper for the family ends up being canned soup and a grilled cheese sandwich.  Maybe I’ll meet some goals and not others. Continue reading

10 Common Fiction Problems and How to Fix Them

Writing Tips

Guest Post by Jack SmithWrite and Revise for Publication

When you write and revise your fiction, you deal with a host of problems.  With some novels, it’s hard to decide on the right point of view.  With others, it’s a struggle to work out the plot.  Sometimes it’s a matter of getting the language down just right.  Of course it’s one thing to spot a problem, another to fix it.  Consider the following ten rather typical problems most fiction writers face—and some possible fixes.

  1. A dull character

Perhaps in the abstract one can sympathize or empathize with your character’s ambitions, needs, desires, plight, etc., but when it comes down to the writing itself, the character is flat-out dull, vacuous—bearing nothing distinctly human.   If this is the case, you need to individualize your character by including:Continue reading

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