Time to become prosperous with your creation

Every so often, a writer needs to take a step back and reassess their writing habits, their productivity, and their motivations for writing. This is particularly important when struck down by a bout of self-doubt.

No writer is immune to the self-doubt monster. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is deluding themselves. But how you deal with that self-doubt is the difference between a writer who gives up and a writer who has turned their writing into a career.

It was during my recent reevaluation that I encountered the book Prosperous Creation by Monica Leonelle. The book discusses the various steps universal to every writing career, starting with the mindset and craft through to marketing tactics. But it's not a book with magic answers. Instead, it's a roadmap that forces you to ask yourself the hard questions.

The hardest question: Am I ready for the next step?

It doesn't matter how good of a marketer you are, your sales will be short-lived if you don't have the craft skills necessary to generate a high-quality product. But generating a high-quality product takes more than just the ability to write. It is also important to understand who is part of your publishing team. And with how often writers suffer from self-doubt, a vital, foundation step includes having the right mindset and building a strong support network.

Prosperous Creation has exercises to help you every step along the way.

The Spectrum of Genre

Whenever I meet a writer for the first time, the conversation often turns to what genre we read and write. Will we be able to find some common ground from which we can build a connection — other than the fact that we're both writers?

When I first started out on my editing career, I would encounter the odd person who insisted that they didn't write a genre. They wrote fiction. To this, I would nod and smile — and gauge whether they would be receptive to a quick education. But now, the writers I encounter seem to understand that fiction is marketed based on genre. It is important for a writer to understand the ins and outs of their specific genre and subgenre. Get it wrong, and the fans of those subgenres will flay you alive.

In today's post, we going to take a quick look at the spectrum of genre.

The difference between a critique partner and a beta reader

Getting another set of eyes on that manuscript is vital. Sometimes, we think we wrote something in a certain way, but for whatever reason, what we thought we put on the page isn't what we actually put on the page. Sometimes, we get too close to our stories that we can't see the forest for the trees. Without having that external input, vital issues easily slip through the system.

It can be a costly venture to employ a developmental editor, something that can be beyond the budgets of many writers. But a developmental editor is NOT the only way you can get that vital feedback.

Every writer I know, myself included, uses critique partners and beta readers as part of their editorial process. However, there seems to be some confusion about what these two types of readers do.

It's time to delve into the nitty-gritty as to what makes a critique partner different from a beta reader.

The Occupation Thesaurus (A Book Review by Ann Bell Feinstein)

Many writers are familiar with the mantra of Show, Don’t Tell. Exactly what it means is a subject that is up for debate, and not what this post is about. Nope. This post is looking at a brand new resource for writers designed to help writers show their stories.

Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi have just release The Occupation Thesaurus, and one of our regular readers and friend to Black Wolf, Ann Bell Feinstein, decided to share with us her thoughts about the new book in the Thesaurus series.

Realistic Character Occupations: U.S. Army Soldier, Patriot Launching Station Enhanced Operator Maintainer (14T)

To win readers over, we need to write characters so authentic they feel like real people. How do we do this? By brainstorming a character’s backstory, personality, needs, desires, and their day-to-day world. Lucky for us, one aspect of their daily life is a goldmine of characterization: the type of work they do.

Think about it: a job can reveal personality, skills, beliefs, fears, desires, and more, which is why Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi created The Occupation Thesaurus, a writing guide that profiles 124 possible careers and the story-worthy information that goes with each.

However, there was only so much space for only so many jobs.

Those of us at Black Wolf Editorial enjoy reading stories that have one of the elusive spies, assassins, or military personnel. On that note, we've coordinated efforts with one of our military connections to create this special entry to accompany The Occupation Thesaurus.

Staff Sergeant David Feinstein is a U.S. Army soldier with the unique role of being a Patriot Launching Station Enhanced Operator Maintainer (14T). That job title might be a little convoluted, but here, in a nutshell, are the key things that a writer needs to know.

Avoiding the Shiny, New Syndrome

There comes a point within a manuscript's life cycle where it loses its shiny luster. Sometimes, it's because we've been working on the manuscript long enough that there is nothing new in it for us to discover. Or maybe we've gotten stuck and have no idea how to move the story forward. Or perhaps we've hit a scene that we just don't want to write though we know it needs to be there.

Regardless the reason for why the manuscript now seems dull to our imaginations, that will be when a new shiny bauble dangles in front of us, distracting our brains from the story we are meant to be working on.

Some writers will chase the new shiny, but following every shiny, new idea can lead to the road filled with incomplete manuscripts. There is one thing that all successful novelists have in common: They finished a manuscript.

As such, every writer wishing to pursue publication needs to develop the discipline needed to persevere on a manuscript that has lost its shiny-new luster.

Gaining followers the right way

So, you've joined up to a new social media site. It's only natural that you want to gain followers. Let's face it, you likely joined that social media site so you can forge meaningful connections that will help you in the future to actual sell stuff.

Or did you?

This is where things get a little muddled, because there are many people who delude themselves about the truth of what they're doing—writers in particular.

Social media, regardless of the platform you are talking about, is all about building connections. It's about building those networks. The larger that network is, the better off you will be when it actually comes time to sell a book or whatever.

I'm not saying that you're going to blast "Buy my book" ads to your networks, because that is the LAST thing you should do. But, with fostered connections, when you do mention that you have a book coming out, those networks will help you to spread the word.

It might take years to build those valuable connections, but there is a right way and a wrong way to go about it.

Trick from the Editor’s Hat: Create character style sheets as you go.

Editing is a BIG job, and sometimes it can seem like it's taking forever. Trying to get a story to flow and hit all the emotional beats at the right points… Getting your head around the nuances of voice, show vs tell, and the dialogue flow… And we shouldn't forget the dreaded punctuation and grammar.

But sometimes, editing has nothing to do with voice, writing style, or what might be in the dictionary. Sometimes, it's the little details that define our characters or settings that need to be filtered through an entire manuscript (or multiple manuscripts).

When you are working with a long story, the little details can sometimes get lost among the screes of words in all the random notes and files that might be thrown all over the place. This is particularly problematic when working in a series where particular characters might be used in story after story.

To help keep the little details straight, create character style sheets as you go.

Scene & Sequel, but not that Scene & Sequel

Sometimes, certain words carry multiple meanings and those multiple meanings can be at complete odds with one another. And when those words are literary terms, writers everywhere are bound to get confused.

The words scene and sequel are two such words.

The common meaning of a scene is as we might see it in a film or on stage. A setting has been pieced together and the characters walk into view to do some action or talk about random things. As writers, we talk about scene transitions with great importance and many of us will break down our manuscripts into scenes. But this is not the scene I'm talking about today.

Nope… Today, we're talking about a scene as the portion of the story that propels the action forward, where characters attempt to achieve goals, and things happen. Scenes are moments of conflict rooted in a constant stream of time. (Note: flashback scenes are rooted in the past.)

The word sequel is just as confusing. Normally, when we talk about sequels, we're talking about the next story in a series. But nope, not today.

Today, sequel refers to those passages where characters reflect over what just happened and form the plan to move forward.

After every scene, you need a sequel.

Are you confused yet? Let's see if we can do something about that.

How “current” should our stories be?

COVID-19 has entirely changed the global landscape and has likely driven a few writers into insanity (not that we weren't insane before). The #BlackLivesMatter movement has changed the landscape too, but in different ways. You put the two forces working together, alongside a whole range of other current events, and it's no wonder that so many of us are confused about what defines a contemporary setting.

But is it vital that we include "current events" into our stories?

I've written about this topic before, recently in fact, highlighting that if our brains are demanding that we write that story, whatever that story might be, then we should write it. Writing can be therapeutic for many writers, myself included, and putting our thoughts to paper can be a vital component of making sense of the crazy that the world has thrown at us. And I dare anyone to say that 2020 hasn't been filled with crazy—and mean it.

But the real question isn't whether we should include these current events into our stories. There are many events throughout history that have had a massive impact on the way we view the world, and that change in mindset should be explored. But by the time a book hits the market, how "current" is it?