Writers in the Storm

Sierra Godfrey

You might remember a hullabaloo in August on Twitter called Pitch Wars. It’s a contest where writers submit queries to agented and published writers in the hopes of being taken on as a mentee. The contest is a terrific opportunity to get detailed, one-on-one coaching from an experienced writer, but the sheer number of people who enter and talk about it also provide an excellent opportunity for something entirely different: learning about how to present yourself online.

Christopher Keelty, an active writer in the #PitchWars feed, began to notice a few things about potential mentees based on the flurry of mentee bios going around: the way writers presented themselves online varied greatly.

And it really shouldn’t. Not when it comes to the basics. And that’s what I’ll tell you about today.

First, know that Keelty did a little data gathering after looking at a hundred or so Pitch War mentees in one of the many blog hops going around, and posted about what he found. He noticed that:

• Only about a third of writers had their own name as the URL.
• About a third of sites he looked at didn’t feature the author’s name anywhere.
• Many sites were missing an email address or contact form.

Some of these things are obvious to me, but it’s my business to pay attention to the way things are presented on websites. Your website is your calling card, brochure, brand—and it works 24/7 for you.

Here are a few tips on keeping things clear, whether your site is a custom-designed affair or a Wordpress/Blogger/Tumblr site:

Your URL

Keelty said, “Another third or so owned “TheirName.[Something].com,” as in Tumblr, WordPress, or Blogger. The remaining third use a URL that is basically unrelated to their name–in almost all cases, because the URL matches the title of the web site.”

Domain names are cheap, but I know that’s not what’s holding a lot of you back from getting your own domain name. It’s that sense of permanence – of holy shmoly-ola, I’m really doing this. Yes, you are! Look. It’s just you and me here, so lean close: You’re here to stay. Domain names are a relatively cheap investment.  It shouldn’t cost you more than $15 or so per year. Get one.

Additionally, having yourname.com increases your Google ranking. You can get a domain name no matter what type of site you have—Blogger, etc. You can also simply purchase a domain name from webhosting sites like GoDaddy and forward it to your free blog. (Note that whatever site you buy your domain name from, they’re going to offer the domain at a low intro rate, but they almost all go up to the $15 at the end of the promotional period.)

If you just can’t be convinced to buy your own domain name no matter how many chocolate cakes I offer you, then please get your name in your blog, so it’s “yourname.blogger.com” or wordpress or whatever. If one of your objections is that your domain name is already taken, add books, author, or writer in there, so it’s “yournamewriter.com.”

Your Name

Consider this fact: websites are like billboards. Your visitors are flying by at 85 65 (really, Officer) miles an hour and they spend about five seconds looking at your site before deciding to move on or engage. There’s a whole industry around the effort of getting people to simply click on something--anything! Just please don’t leeeeave!

Keelty wrote: “In some cases, their name might be in a sidebar somewhere, but several writers didn’t have their name anywhere on their site. In some cases the only clue to the author’s identity was their embedded Twitter widget.”

Get your name up there on every page. Try to avoid putting it in an image (Google searches like it better when your name is in text), and make it large. Don’t hide it as a teeny, tiny little monkey peeking out from behind something else. And don’t be afraid to be big! Yes, it will feel weird to put your name in large letters. Sit with it for at least two weeks.

Keelty noted that Blogger and Tumblr users “were particularly likely to omit their name from their page.” It’s not clear why this is, but a lot of bloggers like to name their blog. That’s fine. Look at the lovely Jenny Hansen’s* blog. Her blog is called More Cowbell and that blog name is large, but her name is also easy to see, consistent, and clear at the top.

*Jenny is lovely on her own, but especially lovely because she is my editor here at WITS today. And also, she knows Weekends in Las Vegas Things about me.

Contact information

Oh, I know. You don’t actually want anyone contacting you. But yes you do, because you have no idea who is looking at your website or blog. Agents! Editors! Employers! They’re all looking. (Stay tuned for a super duper secret bonus trick for learning how to see if they’re looking.) So give them a way to reach out to you. You might find yourself with an award, or money, or a package of fresh cookies, and we all know you don’t want to miss that.

If you’re worried about putting your personal email address on the web, you’re right to be worried. It’s going to be picked up by the Evil Spam World Order and then you’ll be getting emails about resurfacing your garage floor and promises of anti-wrinkle secrets. A contact form solves this problem nicely, as does setting up an email address for this express purpose through Yahoo or Gmail. (Just remember to check it now and then.)

Super duper secret bonus tip: Confirm Everything.

So how do you know people are looking at your site? If you have a Wordpress site, you may be able to install Google Analytics or the Jetpack plugin depending on your theme, both of which give you site statistics in a handy toolbar format. Blogger also offers some basic site statistics in their settings area.

Statcounter.com is my most favorite site statistic tool, even better than Google Analytics. It works with most types of sites (although I have only used it with Wordpress), and it’s free. My goodness—it tells you who came to your site, what they’re looking at, and when they left. That means if I have a page about Real Madrid on my website that I put all my time and effort into, but I can see from my stats that no one is looking at it, and instead they're all looking at my page about Atletico Madrid (because they’re a more fabulous team, obvs), then it’s time for me to switch focus.

And, gratuitous soccer reference aside, I’m just saying that if you happen to know where in the world someone is located, someone like an agent in New York for extremely random example, and then you see someone in New York is looking at your website right after you happened to send her a query… well. You might feel prett-tty, rootin-tootin’ pleased with yourself, is all.

So what’s your experience with getting your name, URL, and contact info on your website? You DO have a website, right? Leave your URL in the comments—I’d love to see it.

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About Sierra

Sierra Godfrey writes fiction with international settings and always a mention of football (soccer) or two. She is a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association and a quarterly contributor to the Writers in the Storm. She writes weekly about Spanish football for various sports sites, and is also a freelance graphic designer. She lives in the foggy wastelands of the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.

Come visit her at www.sierragodfrey.com or talk with her on Twitter @sierragodfrey.

Kathryn Craft
Turning Whine Into Gold

“Oh man, I love that book!”

Are there any more seductive words for an avid reader? You may be reading on right now just to discover which book I’m talking about.

Never underestimate the power of love.

This is a post about marketing. Set aside your technological age cynicism and its resistance to messages delivered 24/7 to buy, buy, buy. I want to invoke a much older sensibility. The impulse that inspired the first cavewoman to, after adding a few herbs to the game in her kettle, run straight to her neighbor and say, you’ve got to try this!

Why bother, you might ask. It takes a big promotional budget to create a bestseller. Yes, money can work, but so can the long tail of love. For a year after its hardcover release, enthusiasm for Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees spread through book clubs. When the book club-preferred trade paperback released, sales exploded and it hit the New York Times list—where it stayed for two and a half years.

The love you share for your favorite title can, without a doubt, affect book sales.

So. What if that title is your own?

Let’s set aside the upbringing that suggests we are not to toot our own horns. We all know that writing is a magical experience—the characters emerge through the mist, their words shudder through our typing hands, their journeys often surprised us. If we can credit ourselves for anything, it is learning our craft and preparing our minds for the labor ahead. As would, say, a midwife. If you were a midwife, wouldn’t you think it was just fine to share your love of the child you brought into the world?

Might as well face it: Refusal is not an option. With promotional budgets slim, publicists overworked, review pages shrinking and book blogs overwhelmed, the onus is upon the author to spread the word about new releases. Like it or not, we must sell.

Instead of damning ourselves to “selling,” though, why not elevate ourselves to “sharing the love”?

If you have a book in hand, your love for your characters has already brought you so far. It has informed every word you used to present their deep desires and dilemmas in your query, your synopsis, and your manuscript. That love made your premise feel important to the agent that offered representation and the editor who offered to purchase rights.

Why stop there, when it is clear that love can help you sell books?

Now that your book has been published, each in-person event, blog post, and social media micro-post presents a similar chance to shine the spotlight of love on your project. When you hear an impassioned author speak, don’t you want a bit of what they have? Their curiosity, their empathy, their vibrancy? Your readers will want the same from you, and they will intuitively know that they’ll get more of that from your story.

This approach can reinvigorate the dreaded task of online promotion. I’ve written here before about the benefits of online positivity. You will always have haters—miserable cusses who don’t understand that not all books are for all people, who don’t connect to your message, and who wish you would simply disappear. They skulk online, dropping one-star reviews like bombs and then scurrying back into the shadows.

Sometimes, however, such people are book reviewers.

I had an early three-star review for The Far End of Happy that left me scratching my head. By definition that meant she liked the book, but that was a bit of a miracle, since her review said she “hated” all three of my point-of-view characters and the way they reacted to the suicide standoff at the heart of my story.

Months later, when she posted the review on her blog and rather inexplicably tagged me in her tweet, I asked the other authors in my marketing collective not to retweet—fine that she has her opinion, but I saw no benefit in broadcasting it for her.

That’s when the most amazing thing happened.

Feigning innocence, a couple of my colleagues commented on her tweet, saying, “I loved that book too!” Quite a dialogue ensued, in which my advocates specifically stated how much they appreciated my book’s imperfect characters—women like them, who would have no clue how to conduct themselves in a similar emergency. The loving attention they brought to this blogger’s tweet publicly changed her opinion about my title. Soon she was tweeting about how much she, too, loved the book and its characters! Those tweets testified to the transformative power of love.

Reality is, once your book is out in the world, there are factors that affect sales over which we have little control. What if love doesn’t sell enough books? The way I see it you will have arrived at the same place, only your life will have been full of love. I can’t see a downside.

There’s never harm in practicing love. Let’s do it! And maybe your enthusiasm for your work will result in a sale right here, on this blog, today!

In the comments, please share what you especially love about a premise or a certain character, whether in your published novel or work in progress. Don’t forget the title—this is marketing, after all. Let’s spread some love and awareness of our favorite novels—even if they’re our own!

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About Kathryn

Kathryn Craft is the author of two novels from Sourcebooks: The Art of Falling, and The Far End of Happy.

Her work as a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, specializing in storytelling structure and writing craft, follows a nineteen-year career as a dance critic. Long a leader in the southeastern Pennsylvania writing scene, she hosts lakeside writing retreats for women in northern New York State, leads workshops, and speaks often about writing.

Kathryn lives with her husband in Bucks County, PA.

Twitter: @kcraftwriter
FB: KathrynCraftAuthor

Everyone knows what I call the 10,000 foot edit – it’s the content/developmental edit – it’s looking at your story from a plane, to spot the plot mountains and canyons that need to be fixed. Genre no-no's? Unsatisfying ending? That night with the weasel scene?

Everyone knows about ground level edits – copy/line/stylistic edits that look at sentence structure and grammar – they’re small, but important.

We all know those two edits are critical.

But there’s another edit that is very seldom talked about, that could take your manuscript from good to sold.

I call it the 5,000 foot edit. It’s the edit for EMOTION. I don’t care if you’re writing a romance or a legal or espionage thriller; if you don’t have a solid bedrock of emotion in your book, you’re not going to have readers. It’s what they come for!  Think of your favorite author. Why is he your favorite? I’ll bet right up there with plot, is the emotion. If we don’t have emotion, the reader won’t care about your character. And that’s a story-killer.

Have I convinced you? Okay, let’s move on to how to do this thing.

In a book, regardless of genre, the character has to grow, right? So you need to follow the character’s arc, and be sure it happens in a timely, logical fashion. It’s okay if the character grows in fits and starts, or even if they progress, then back up a few steps. As long as their character arc doesn’t look like this:

A problem I've seen (and had) is that the character seems bipolar, going from laughing to angry to loving in three paragraphs. For emotion to be satisfying, it has to be deep. Take those three paragraphs, and dig deeper. It doesn't mean you have to turn three paragraphs into three pages - sometimes a visceral hit and a one sentence reminder of the emotion will do:

This is from my RITA winner, The Sweet Spot:

The red flowers had some brown edges, and looked a bit bug-eaten. She’d planned to stop at Wal-Mart and pick up a bouquet on the way to the cemetery, but . . . Her stomach settled a bit. “These are Benje’s flowers. He’s not going to care about a few bugs.” She headed for the tool shed, to find her clippers.

I added a sentence of dialog that added emotion - a reminder to the reader of an emotional memory: working in the garden with her child (the child she's going to visit in the cemetery). See?

No matter what genre you're writing, not all scenes are action. If they are, you're going to wear out your reader in no time. It'll be a fast read, but also, unsatisfying, because in action, you can only show flashes of emotion - like paint splattered on a canvas, rather that brush-stroked on. You need what Dwight Swain, in his book, Techniques of the Selling Writer (a 'must have' on your craft shelf, IMHO) calls a 'sequel scene'.

A quiet scene, where the POV character can reflect on what just happened, and compare the results to his world-view. These are the scenes that move him along his growth arc. You can only do that by getting deep into the emotion - because that character's flaws in his world-view usually come from damage in his childhood: abuse, neglect, or even over-indulgence (poor little rich kid). And that's emotional. Be sure you're plumbing all that good stuff.

Ease into the sequel scene, naturally. You do this all the time, in your own head. This is from a Women's Fiction my agent is shopping now:

And yet, nothing had been different last night than the zillions of other times she sat in a group, alone.

Except maybe her.

I'll leave you with a Donald Maass-type (more must-have books for your craft shelf) homework lesson of where to edit for emotion :

• Find 5 turning point scenes. Laser focus the emotion. Go deeper.
• Find 5 small, quiet scenes. Laser focus the language.
• Use turning point scenes to plot a graph for your protagonist, showing their progression on their growth arc - is it logical? 
• First line/page – better be the best work you’re capable of.
• The End – make it satisfying, using all the above.

So, Faithful WITS Readers, have I convinced you to use my 5,000 foot edit? Do you have any edits strategies to share?

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About Laura

Laura Drake is a city girl who never grew out of her tomboy ways, or a serious cowboy crush. She writes both Women's Fiction and Romance.

She sold her Sweet on a Cowboy series, romances set in the world of professional bull riding, to Grand Central.  The Sweet Spot won the 2014 Romance Writers of America^®   RITA^® award in the Best First Book category.

Her 'biker-chick' novel, Her Road Home, sold to Harlequin's Superomance line (August, 2013) and has expanded to three more stories set in the same small town. The latest, Twice in a Blue Moon , released in July.

In 2014, Laura realized a lifelong dream of becoming a Texan and is currently working on her accent. She gave up the corporate CFO gig to write full time. She's a wife, grandmother, and motorcycle chick in the remaining waking hours.

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