Writers in the Storm

Angela Ackerman

It’s that time of year...bustling crowds in malls, shoppers lining up in endless droves, bulging virtual carts at Amazon and other e-retailers...all in pursuit of the perfect gift. We make a list, check it twice, and the jump into the holiday fray, looking forward to the joy our thoughtful presents will bring.

But in all this rushing and wrapping, inevitably we forget one very important person on our Christmas list: ourselves.

Have you thought about what to give yourself this Christmas?

I’m sure you’ve hinted to loved ones about your wish list. Likely an array of writerly things, such as books (we love our books!), software or hardware to help your write, and maybe a few other fun, bookish things. But there is one gift only you can give yourself, an offering that will paint the future and help set your steps in the New Year: A RENEWAL OF YOUR PURPOSE.

As one year wraps up with a scenic sleigh ride into Christmas, we are presented with a great opportunity to take stock and reflect on the strides we made toward our writing goals. This window between one year and the next is the perfect time to recommit to our writerly purpose, and lay the foundation for a fantastic and productive future. All it takes is 3 easy steps!

1) Reflect

Take a moment to look at this passing year, and what you accomplished. Maybe you wrote a new novel, or even polished and published one. Perhaps you worked on building your platform, or researched the industry in order to feel more confident about submitting to agents. Likely there are also a few things you hoped to do, but ran out of time. That’s how it goes.

2) Commit

With each new year, the slate wipes clean. Now is a great time to make a list of new goals for yourself, goals that are realistic and achievable. Write down what you want to concentrate on during this next year, areas in which to improve. Maybe you wish to further your craft, strengthen your marketing skills, build your platform or get organized. Formalize your commitment by making a simple business plan, one you can print out and keep by your computer. Each day, look at it and ask yourself: is what I am doing right now helping me achieve my goals?

3) Act

Success happens when we follow through, so stick to your plan. Write up a storm and embrace learning, because the more we learn, the more we grow! Each of you will have different areas of focus in the coming year, but here are a few helpful starting points to consider that may help.

Hone Your Craft:

• Read widely, both in your chosen genre and beyond. Study each novel to understand what makes them compelling
• Do your homework by taking webinars in areas you want to improve, attending workshops either in your area or online, and by studying reference books on the craft
• Get involved in a critique group--peer learning is one of the best ways to grow your craft quickly
• Visit blogs known for their strong craft articles, ones like Writers In the Storm, Helping Writers Become Authors and my own Writers Helping Writers

Flex Your Marketing Muscle:

• Once you become an author, you must learn to market and promote. Learn what works (and what doesn’t) by observing other authors in social media. Follow strong marketers like David Gaughran, Joanna Penn and Molly Greene
• Reach out to other authors for Collaborative Marketing opportunities
• Discover how to find your book’s ideal audience

Build Your Platform:

• Follow Kristen Lamb to understand how to best navigate Social Media, learning how to connect genuinely with readers
• Think about who might be influential with your audience and try to connect with them
• Seek out website, blogging and social media help from Jami Gold, and create a strong “home base” to act as your sticking point for author information and book news
• Read Rise of The Machines: Human Authors in a Digital World

Investigate the Industry:

• Subscribe to thought leader Porter Anderson’s Writing on the Ether as well as follow Jane Friedman’s blog.
• Investigate self publishing as an option by reading blogs like A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing, and The Book Designer or picking up a copy of The Indie Author Survival Guide
• Join Agent Query and Query Tracker for up to date information on Agents

Get Organized:

• Make time for words. Create a writing routine and stick to it. To keep your butt in the chair, try the Tomato Timer
• Make your Business Plan, even if you don’t think you need one quite yet. By following a plan, you will hit more milestones because your writing goals are clearly laid out
• Give How To Make a Living as a Writer a read. Bestselling Author James Scott Bell has some great tips, especially for writers interested in Self Publishing

YOUR TURN: What do you hope to achieve this coming year? Do you have a plan of action to get there? Let me know in the comments!

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About Angela

Angela Ackerman is a writing coach and co-author of three bestselling resources, The Emotion Thesaurus: a Writer’s Guide to Character Expression, The Positive Trait Thesaurus: a Writer’s Guide to Character Attributes andThe Negative Trait Thesaurus: a Writer’s Guide to Character Flaws. A proud indie author, her books are sourced by US universities and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors and psychologists around the world. Angela can be found at the popular site, Writers Helping Writers, which specializes in building innovative tools for writers that cannot be found elsewhere.

Julie Glover

I’ve come to enjoy pitching my story to agents. Not because I’ve landed a seven-book, multi-million-dollar deal, but because I relish the opportunity to talk about my book and learn how to better present my story. The feedback I’ve received has helped me hone the answer to “Am I ready to query?”

Here are five questions you should ask before sending out a query.

1. Do I know what my story is really about?

How do you pare down a 400-page novel into a five-minute or 50-word summary? It’s tough, but if you can’t tell someone what your story is about within a minute or two, you’re not ready to query.

An agent, publisher, or reader doesn’t need a meandering explanation of your world, your characters, and the plot to get hooked by your story premise. If you wonder how others successfully condense, head to the Internet Movie Database to peruse the single-sentence summaries of various movies or go to your local bookstore or your personal library to read back cover copy.

Once you think you have your book’s basics—who’s involved, what’s at stake, what’s the conflict– write it down and have others take a look. If your spouse or your hairdresser or your coworker or your critique partner doesn’t get it, an agent, publisher, or potential reader won’t waste their time trying to understand. Know what your story is really about.

2. Are you able to convey your writing voice?

I received this question at one verbal pitch: “Who would you compare your voice to?” My answer went something like, “Um…uh…I haven’t received that question before…let me think…” Nope, not exactly a shine-like-a-newly-minted-penny moment.

You must be able to describe your voice. Are you descriptive? Funny? Dark? What adjectives could you use? Come up with a few writers to compare your voice to, others who write similarly—even though, of course, you’re all unique. Also, your voice should come through when you query, so that even from the cover letter, an agent gets a taste of the spice that is you.

3. Can you name comparative titles?

Although I’d pitched several times, this was a new question I received at RWA National. Agents and publishers used to make the comparisons, write marketing copy, and sell your book accordingly. But in the days of agents doing-more-with-less-time, you’ll have a leg up if you can do some of the sales work in advance. That means knowing your genre and subgenre and what titles your book could be compared to.

With that information in hand, an agent or editor can approach potential publishers and say something like, “I’ve got a fabulous book that’s Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet meets Kafka’s Metamorphosis!” Not that anyone would actually read about cockroach love, but you get the point. The publishing pros then know who your book would appeal to and how to market to that audience.

4. Have you received feedback from valued critiquers?

Some writers have been known to keep their stories so close to their chest that they only reveal their book to an agent. Bad. Idea.

Yes, it’s unnerving to put your work out there for others to bleed their commentary on. It may feel less like receiving constructive criticism and more like receiving firing-squad bullets. Your book is your baby, but we all get a case of Ugly Baby Syndrome—unable to see our story flaws as clearly as others might. Beta readers, critique partners or groups, and/or a quality editor can provide valuable feedback and save you getting rejected over and over for things you can fix.

So find people (sorry, not just family) who will comment honestly and helpfully about your story. You don’t have to adopt everything they say, but if more than one person points out a specific problem, you likely have that problem in your book. And it’s better to know now…before you waste your time and an agent’s time with querying.

5. Have you made your story as good as you can make it?

I could re-label this recommendation as simply “Don’t send crap.” Too often, we writers think good enough and press send on the email to an agent or publisher. But publishing professionals are inundated with queries and pressed for time. If your book is sub-par, they’ll toss it aside like rotten fruit and move to the next manuscript in the pile.

Most verbal pitches occur at conferences, but you should only sign up to pitch if your book is finished and polished. That said, at the same time your manuscript is getting requested at a conference, you may also be having aha moments about how to improve your book in workshops and conversation with other writers. Suddenly, you realize your book’s not quite as ready as you thought. In that case, you may have some work to do before sending out your query.

Sure, you could miss the boat by taking time to make those edits. My last rejection from an agent came in the form of “since I requested this manuscript, I’ve taken on a project that would compete” and a rather blunt statement that I should have sent earlier. But while I missed that opportunity, I think I was right to wait. Because my book wasn’t as good as I could make it. It needed another round of edits for me to proudly, happily click send.

Your manuscript need not be unmatched perfection, but inasmuch as your talent and time allow, make your story as good as you can make it.

Still lost on querying? I highly recommend Laura Drake’s online Submissions That Sell course. This amazing rejection-survivor and RITA-award-winner helped me get my own query to the point that I read it and said, “Hey, I want to read this book! Oh wait, I wrote this book.”

Soon, I’ll be sending out my manuscript. And happy to sign that seven-book, multi-million-dollar deal.

How's your querying savvy? Do you have query stories--or questions--to share?

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About Julie
Julie Glover is the author of “Color Me Happy,” a young adult romance story in the Orange Karen: Tribute to a Warrior anthology, and My Sister’s Demon, the first of a series of young adult paranormal shorts. She is also working on a novel and lives with her wonderful husband and two sons in her beloved Lone Star state. (That’s Texas, y’all.)

Find Julie at her website or on Twitter. She loves to tweet.

Susan Spann

Happy Holidays!

‘Tis the season to stay off the copyright “naughty list,” so I’m here to share a few #PubLaw tips for avoiding copyright infringement in your holiday blogging and social media celebrations!

When celebrating online this holiday season, keep these helpful rules in mind:

SONGS (AND LYRICS) ARE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

At the holidays, it’s tempting to re-post the lyrics to favorite carols or celebratory songs, either on Facebook, on a blog, or on other social media sites. Unfortunately, lyric-sharing often violates the copyright of the lyricist or songwriter, because lyrics are protected by copyright, as are novels, short stories and poems.

Posting an excerpt (no more than 2-3 lines) is often permitted as “fair use,” especially when the quoted work runs at least 30 lines. However, there is no absolute test for fair use, and no definitive test for when you’ve used too much of a copyrighted work. The legal test is “facts and circumstances,” based on several factors (so anyone who tells you “X lines is ok, but more is not” isn’t telling you the absolute legal truth_.

If you want to share a favorite song, it’s better to quote a line or two and link to a website containing the lyrics, or to a YouTube video showing an authorized performance of the work.

RECIPES ARE NOT PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT…EXCEPT WHEN THEY ARE.

Copyright exists to protect creative expressions, and does not protect “functional items.” To the extent a recipe consists of ingredient lists and basic steps to combine them in a way that results in a specific type of food, the recipe is merely functional–and not copyrightable. Any functional element of a recipe, including the ingredient list and the basic instructions, can’t be copyrighted—which means you can share the recipe at will.
(Note: For this purpose, a “functional item” is any part of the recipe that’s mandatory to create the food itself. For example, yeast in a risen bread.)
Courts have ruled that ingredient lists – even for unusual recipes – are merely a “statement of facts,” and  not copyrightable. Courts have also ruled that the factual parts of the recipe’s directions (the instructions themselves) are not copyrightable.

However, creative portions of recipes – meaning the way the instructions are given and any anecdotes, humorous add-ins, and “tips and hints” included with the recipe – may be copyrightable. In other words: you probably can’t just reproduce a creatively-worded recipe verbatim and call it your own. However, you probably can legally post a recipe in your own words, as long as you stick to the functional elements of the original recipe and make sure any hints, tips, and “bonus material” is your own.

Remember: when sharing recipes, ethics are also important. It may be “legal” to lift and reproduce someone else’s recipe without violating copyright, but it’s not very nice to take someone else’s recipe without attributing it to the creator. If you love a recipe someone else created, it’s better to share your experiences and photos, and attribute (and even link to the source) if you can. You could also share the ingredient list and “functional” directions, and then link to the source for tips and creative content. If there is no link to the recipe, go ahead and share it and simply mention the name of the cook or chef who created the recipe (if you know who claims it!). Cooks appreciate the attribution.

PHOTOGRAPHS – OF FOOD AS WELL AS EVERYTHING ELSE – ARE SUBJECT TO COPYRIGHT. GET PERMISSION BEFORE RE-POSTING IMAGES.

It’s tempting to copy not only a tasty recipe but also the lovely photographs that accompany it. Careful! ALL photographs are subject to copyright, and like the copyright on other creative works, it belongs to the creator—in this case, the photographer who created the image. Reposting or reproducing someone else’s photographs without permission is illegal, unless you have permission from the photographer or image owner. Don’t be Copyright Infringement Elf this winter. Take your own holiday pictures or get permission from the person who owns the photo.

Don’t forget: sometimes the most disastrous photos add the most to your blogging. Anyone can offer boutique cookie photos glittering with a perfectly-spaced assortment of frosting and sprinkles. It’s the “cookies-with-faces-for-radio,” Toddler-Decorated Cupcakes, and “Pumpkin_Pie_Bonfire_101” photos that give a holiday blog real seasonal cheer.

Happy Holidays from #PubLaw – and I’ll see you all next year!

Do you have other holiday copyright "gray areas"? Do these copyright laws surprise you?

 

Susan Spann writes the Shinobi Mysteries, featuring ninja detective Hiro Hattori and his Portuguese Jesuit sidekick, Father Mateo. Her debut novel, CLAWS OF THE CAT (Minotaur Books, 2013), was a Library Journal Mystery Debut of the Month. The second Shinobi Mystery, BLADE OF THE SAMURAI, released on July 15, 2014.

Susan is also a transactional attorney whose practice focuses on publishing law and business. When not writing or practicing law, she raises seahorses and rare corals in her marine aquarium.

You can find her online at her website, http://www.SusanSpann.com, and on Twitter (@SusanSpann).