Category: Twitter

Creative Writing, Goodreads, literary agents, Nas Dean, RNA, Top Tips, Twitter, Weight of The Crown

Creative Writing: The Selling Business…

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By Antonio Litterio

Once you’ve finished writing your book, it feels like the hard work’s over. Then you discover it’s only just beginning. Unless you’ve got a literary agent, you’ll have to come out from behind your keyboard and start selling–yourself, as well as your books. This is the toughest part for many authors. Most of us like to spend every spare moment shut away in our own little worlds. The bright lights of publicity are dazzling, but here are some great ways to cope:

1. Buddy Up: To be an author, you only need to put words down on a page, or up on a screen. Telling a story needs an audience. Actually selling a book needs readers willing to hand over good money. Start gently, with your friends and family. If they like your work, they shouldn’t take much persuading to set up a daisy-chain of sales by recommending your book to their friends. News spreads like ripples in a pond, on the Six Degrees of Separation principle. Make friends with your local librarian (see the next point!) as they’re often keen to give publicity to local writers. Join groups such as the  Romantic Novelists’ Association, whose members are keen readers as well as writers. They’re a fund of useful advice when it comes to book-selling opportunities. Go online where the readers are, too, on sites such as Goodreads. Twitter‘s a great way of networking but remember, the most important thing is actually to build friendships and find out what readers like, rather than go all-out to sell. The internet lacks the subtlety of face-to-face contact. Make sure you only include a sales pitch once in every dozen tweets or so. Make contacts, have fun, and see any effect on sales as a bonus.

2. Go Equipped: Never leave home without something you can hand out to people you meet. A picture tells a thousand  words, so get illustrated! If you don’t have a good local printer, you can pick up some great stuff online; bookmarks, flyers with your book’s cover on one side and a teasing quote on the other, and business cards. Make sure your contact details are on everything. If your book’s available in hardback or paperback form, carry a couple of autographed copies, too. Libraries are aways glad of donated books, and you can give them some bookmarks at the same time. It all helps to get your name recognised, and that’ll help widen the audience for your work.

3. Contract Out: This is where literary agents and virtual assistants can really save you time and stress. Ok, you have to pay for their time and expertise, but they spend their working days honing their specific skills. Wouldn’t you like to do the same with your craft? Employing someone to do all your non-writing work gives you more time to be creative. You can read more about the pros and cons of literary agents here. I did a blog tour with Nas Dean for The Weight of The Crown, and it was an easy, fun way to connect with readers. While Nas did all the organisation and paperwork, I dropped in at every blog to answer questions, and reply to comments from readers. It was great–the dates, scheduling, formats, information spreadsheets and prize draw admin was handled by Nas, while I spent all my time doing what I love: writing, and chatting online with readers.

For more writing tips, visit my website by clicking here. You can sign up for my occasional newsletter by mailing me at christinahollis@hotmail(dot)co(dot)uk, putting “NEWSLETTER” in the subject line.   

#1k1hr, 3 Top Tips, Creative Writing, fiction, Neo, Susan Maushart, Twitter

Three Top Tips for Getting Your Writing Done…

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Distracted? Who, me? 

1. Enjoy yourself and your work, and it’ll be reflected on the page. If you’re wrapped up in your characters and can’t wait to find out how their story unfolds, then it will show in your work. Indulge yourself in your imaginary people and their fictional landscape. Those powerful feelings will travel from your brain, all the way down to your writing (or typing!) fingers.  To paraphrase the old quote: write, and they will read–but only if they get swept up in your enthusiasm.  You’ll know when you’ve found the right mix of characters and plot. The writing won’t feel like work!

2. I love using  #1k1hr on Twitter to join forces with other writers who need the motivation of writing to a deadline. It’s really useful to be part of that supportive online community, but like fire, the internet is a great servant but a terrible master. If you want to produce a reasonable amount of quality work, you’ll have to find some way to stay off-line for long periods.  Who hasn’t gone online for a few minutes to check their emails, only to then lose hours to WILFing (What Was I Looking For?) as Susan Maushart put it. Read her book “The Winter of Our Disconnect” to discover that there really is life on the other side of the screen.  

3. Like it or not, whether they’re going to be self-published, emailed to an agent or publisher, or sent out conventionally by post, manuscripts have to be put up on a screen eventually.  Writing things out longhand then transcribing means you get an extra look at your work as it goes through the process. That’s useful, but it takes more time than simply tapping away at a keyboard from the start. If you’d rather type than write out in longhand but get easily distracted by the internet, try a Neo. It’s a simple keyboard with a basic memory–that’s all. No facility for going online means no distractions (well, not from that direction, anyway!). When you finish your writing session, you just upload your work into your current WIP document. 

If you’ve enjoyed these tips, you can find more at my website, christinahollis.com What’s your most useful tip for getting the writing done? 
3 Top Tips, Facebook, Pinterest, Quality, social networking, Twitter, Wriitng

Writing In Perspective

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Description English: A Stipula fountain pen lying on a written piece of paper Date 26 May 2011 Source Power_of_Words_by_Antonio_Litterio.jpg Author Power_of_Words_by_Antonio_Litterio.jpg: Antonio Litterio derivative work: InverseHypercube
By Antonio Litterio
Writing is a dream job – most people would kill to spend their days just thinking about stuff, then writing some of it down. The internet offers so many ways to connect with readers and get feedback, it’s tempting to think that the more time you spend in social networking, the better your sales will be. That’s one good way to measure your success, but it’s a pretty narrow one. Broaden your outlook, and you can widen your horizons. Formulate, Focus and Feed to give your self-esteem a boost.


1 – Formulate A Plan
Set yourself long term, intermediate and short term goals. What do you want to achieve 5 years, 1 year, and 6 months ahead? Make these objectives as specific as you can – “Earn (name your own price!) from writing within the next five years”, “Write at least two books within the next twelve months” or “Finish my novel by Christmas”. You may need to readjust your timescale, but don’t alter your dreams. Keep your eyes on the prize. Print these plans out on paper, and pin them up by your writing station. They’ll act as a spur.

2 – Think Quality as well as Quantity
Spend as much time as you can writing. That sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s amazing how much time gets eaten up by promotion and, let’s be honest, surfing the net while you’re on line typing up or researching.  Every self-publishing site will tell you the best way to drive sales is by publishing another book (incidentally, notice how this nugget of helpful advice is most often pushed by people who then offer to edit/format or illustrate that next book for you – at a price). While frequent releases keep your name in front of your readers, don’t sacrifice quality for the sake of quantity. Work towards both.  Once your work is out in the public domain, it’s there forever. Spend time and care perfecting your work, and only release your very best work.

3 – Feed Your Friends
Not literally, although chocolate cake (real or virtual) always goes down well! Think beyond the boundaries when promoting. Don’t just flog your book: too much of that is an instant turn-off. Market yourself, your whole canon of work and maybe even the genre in which you write. Interact with your real, face-to-face friends as well as your Facebook friends, Twitter followers and other online contacts. Make sure you can be easily found online: if you don’t feel confident setting up your own website, contact your local college. They may run courses, or have students who would relish the challenge of developing a page for you (when was the last time you tried getting a teenager away from a keyboard?). 
Create a Pinterest Board for your book, offer to guest blog, maybe even as one of your characters! Comment on other sites, and join in wherever you can. Be enthusiastic, be helpful and be open to every opportunity.

Above all, write – all the time. Using your skills will hone and improve them, day by day.
Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn, marketing, Pomodoro Technique, Twitter, Writing

A Writer’s Life: Twitter, Amazon, LinkedIn ….

christinahollis
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMetamodel_Linkedin.jpgFile URL: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Metamodel_Linkedin.jpgAttribution: By Jean-Marie Favre, LIG, University of Grenoble (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
By Jean-Marie Favre
…and Uncle Tom Cobley and all.
If you’ve dropped by my blog before, you’ll already know technology means nothing to me. My main aim in life is to tell stories. To my mind, settling down with a notebook and pencil or my Neo  is sheer luxury, but these days that’s just the start of the process. If your aim is publication, putting words on a page is only part of a writer’s life. You have to market yourself and your work, which takes time – time I’d rather use for writing.  
Getting your name out there and becoming “searchable”is seen as a vital career move  – but what happens then? As well as  blogs, websites, accounts with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,  author pages on Amazon (.com and .co.uk) and publisher’s sites are practically mandatory. All these pages need to be kept up to date, and that’s a continual work-in-progress. The net’s thirst for information is unquenchable, and the sea of snippets is immense. I love keeping up with gossip, so I Tweet regularly as  @ChristinaBooks. Once on-line for that, I find it hard to leave. The quick look at one site I’d intended soon stretches into half a hour of surfing far and wide. I now ration my time on line, so I can concentrate on writing. It’s difficult to break the habit of dipping in and out, so I set a target for the amount of work I’ll get done before I can have a session of idling on the net. This is where the Pomodoro (TM) technique mentioned in my last blog comes in useful. I work intensively for short bursts, then reward myself with a spot of site-hopping.
I’m still trying to find out exactly what LinkedIn is for, by the way. It seems to be full of interesting and like-minded people, but I’m not entirely sure why. Obviously there’s an employment-exchange element, but if someone endorsed my copy-typing skills I think I’d be more likely to refer them to an optician, rather than  offer them a job! 
How do you use LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and the other social networking sites, and what’s the best thing your surfing has done for you?
Christina Hollis author, Goodreads, Twitter

Technology – How Do You Like Yours?

christinahollis
My lovely NEO 

Not many years ago, a writer’s only real hopes of getting an audience outside their own little corner of the world was to either get their book taken up by a big publisher, win a competition or have their work accepted or reviewed by national magazines or newspapers.Things changed in a big way with the arrival of home computers. Now everyone can self-publish, and the Internet has opened up world-wide possibilities for getting your name and work in front of the public. There are all sorts of temptations, too. Who hasn’t looked at the clock and gulped at the amount of time they’ve spent surfing on line? With everything from The Times to Lolcats just waiting to be explored, it’s like having a whole sweetshop of treats at our fingertips. One of my New year Resolutions was to cut down on my non-work related computing time, but that’s proved difficult to keep. It’s so interesting to discover what other people are working on, or reading. Then I feel guilty for not taking part, so for example I’ve just loaded a few of my favourite books up onto my Goodreads page http://bit.ly/zGpWE9. Unfortunately as I’m not very computer savvy and resent toiling over inputting information when I could be writing, my online presence is rather patchy. I love Twitter, where I tweet as @christinabooks, but I’m not keen when sites want to burgle my email inbox for links. Call me suspicious, but I don’t like the idea of a site keeping in contact with my computer even when I’ve logged out. That’s why I use my Neo such a lot – all the benefits of a typewriter none of the distractions of a computer and work is easily transferred to my main computer. Then when the work’s uploaded, it’s back to Twitter and Skype for me!
What are your favourite ways of keeping in touch with your friends, indulging your interests and keeping up to speed with developments in your workplace?