What Is The Best Place To Find Craft/Critique Partners?

Are you busy working through MBTWRIMO?

Pretty soon you will have a first draft. Where will you go from there? Where do you find someone who can understand writing and all the necessary components to make a great story?

We’ve tackled that question today.

I’m back with my absolute favorite editors, Edie Melson and Beth K. Vogt.

If you would like to watch this question and answer session, click here.

If it’s easier for you to read, read on!

Where do you find craft/critique partners and what’s the difference?

One Thing Marketing: When to take a marketing break

This blog series is all about marketing. But is it ever okay to take a mini marketing hiatus?

You bet.

In fact, sometimes it’s more than okay. Sometimes it’s just plain smart.

When should you take a marketing break?

1) When you’re spending more time marketing than writing.

This is always a no-no. You’ll hear experts give all ranges of ratios and percentages about how much time you should spend marketing versus writing. And feel free to go with the ratio of your choice. But I don’t think you’ll ever hear someone tell you to spend MORE time marketing than actually writing. (That is, unless you’re in that 2- to 3-month window around a book release. In which case, just ignore this. 🙂 )

If you’re spending way, way more time marketing than writing, your writing may be suffering. So take a break. Whether for a couple days or a couple weeks, you need to reevaluate how you’re spending your time and come up with a plan to make sure marketing isn’t overshadowing your writing. After all, without good writing, you don’t have anything to market.

Keep on writing, keep on writing

I wrote a novella last week. 31, 160 words. That’s over 5K a day. Now, here’s what we all have to keep in mind – many of these words will have to be rewritten or deleted. I will have to go scene by scene and make sure I’ve inserted storyworld, and the 5 Ws to anchor the scene. I’ll have to ask what the main emotion of the scene is, and how to strengthen it. I’ll have to tighten my writing, make it clearer, make sure I’m not overwriting.

I’ll have to make sure I am telling the story between the quotes, and that I am wrapping up my dialogue with the right meaningful action and body language, adding zingers.

And, I’ll have to make sure I all the ingredients of the Scene Tension Equation.

All these things are in my brain as I’m writing, trust me. But, if I want to forget ahead and give myself something to work with, then I have to be like Dori in Finding Nemo.

Don’t look back. Forget everything but my goal….reaching the end. (or, P Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way)

But how do we keep that focus? I know it can be hard, because even in the middle of a scene you suddenly think: WAIT! I just came up with something BRILLIANT and I need to add it into chapter 3!

Five Reasons Why You Quit

I’ve done it. I’m sure you have too. You get a great idea and dive right in. Somewhere along the way, you chip away at your enthusiasm until one day you suddenly realize you haven’t pursued that thing in quite a while. You quit.

That’s fine if you started watching season one of Castle or took belly dancing lessons. There comes a time when those things naturally come to an end. But when it comes to quitting your writing dream, it will leave you empty and utterly unhappy.

There are any number of reasons why individuals throw in the towel on their pursuits, but here are ones I have found to be the top five:

Rachel Hauck

What Comes After “Once Upon A Time?”

Well, here it is the middle of November and you’ve been pounding away on your NaNoWriMo novel.

Sometimes, it feels like this picture. Once upon a time…

And you’re out of room.

Out of juice

Out of creativity.

NaNo is supposed to be a grind-it-out month.

No stopping to plan or rework your story or edit.

Just write.

So what do you do if you’re just stuck?

Here are a few tips:

1. Remember what the story is about? What the protagonist want? Have you shown this enough? Have you caused them to move farther and farther from their goal?

2. Write a scene out of sequence. The other day I came home and wrote a scene for the first of the book rather than the beginning of the middle where I’d written to at that point. The scene came to me and I knew it was one I needed so I wrote it.