Linear Writing

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by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I mentioned last week that I enjoy hearing other writers’ book-writing processes.   I share a variety of writing-craft tips on Twitter because although something may not be useful for me, it might be useful for someone else.

But sometimes, I think, it’s helpful to hear how others write.  Although I’m pretty set in my ways with my process, sometimes I need to try something new.  And sometimes I think I need to try something new because I’m so set in my ways.  It helps to keep my writing fresh, even though I may be working on book ten in a series.

I read a post from writer B.E. Sanderson’s Outside the Box blog on linear writing … working straight through scenes to reach the end of the story.   Continue reading

Why Free is Still a Smart Marketing Strategy for Fiction Writers

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by Jason Kong, @storyrally

If you’re wondering whether not charging for selected stories is benefiting your promotional campaign, you’re not alone.

With all the free writing flooding the internet, it’s harder to stand out. Even if someone downloads your free eBook, your fiction is competing with all the other stories on that person’s digital reader.

Given the ubiquity of free, it’s reasonable to question whether the market is saturated, thus reducing the effectiveness. I, on the other hand, believe free still works.

Let’s take a closer look on why that is.Continue reading

Twitterific Writing Links

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by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

A weekly roundup of the best writing links from around the web.

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.

How a writer wrote 29 stories in 29 days:  http://ow.ly/s4YX301dgNM @sophiegood @Write_Track

Crime Writers: Can a DNA Sample Reveal Age? http://ow.ly/xvGl300Q9M3 @DPLyleMD

Hook Your Reader: 3 Tips for Novelists:  http://ow.ly/hXpF300SzUg @womenonwriting @WriteToSell

Offline strategies for building your email list:  http://ow.ly/rH9T300SArL @cksymeContinue reading

Mysteries as a Reader and a Writer

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by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

What makes a solid mystery?   What is it about murder mysteries that draws readers to the genre? How good are mystery writers at picking out the killer as readers?

Today, I hope you’ll join me at Benjamin Thomas’s excellent blog, The Writing Train, where I discuss these questions and others…including why Scooby Doo could be counted as one of my major influences.   :)

Hope you have a great weekend.

 

From Trad-Pub to Self-Pub–Tips and Observations

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by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

This is the second time I’ve gotten the rights to my characters back from a publisher and taken a trad-published series to self-pub.  The last time I did this was five years ago.

There were some big differences between this time and last time.  The first time I’d had only one book released in the series before taking it to self-pub.  This time the series had five books in it.

This latest series had a nice following but I found that many of my readers for the Penguin series  seemed unaware of my self-published series.  They would email me asking when the next Southern Quilting Mystery was coming out and I would tell them…and then ask if they knew about my Myrtle Clover series.  Many times they didn’t.

One reason they didn’t is because Penguin didn’t want any non-Penguin books included in my author bio.  I can understand this.  So not only were my self-published books not included in my bio, the original trad-published book in the series (from Midnight Ink) wasn’t, either.Continue reading

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