Writers in the Storm

by Jenny Hansen

Everyone is talking about Social Media and I’ve got several friends scratching their heads going, “What does that even MEAN? And why do I need so many DIFFERENT KINDS??”

There’s a simple answer to “why so many?” You want to go to where your people are. It’s as simple as that.

Maybe you want to network with dairy farmers or high school kids. It’s a pretty good bet they’re going to be hanging out over on Facebook rather than Twitter. These are two demographics that have proven to be firmly grounded on Facebook. Remember, Facebook is focused on hooking up with the people you already know.

Twitter and LinkedIn are both geared toward hooking up with the people you wantto know. (Like editors and agents…just sayin.’) If you want to build your network, you are simply going to do it faster on Twitter and LinkedIn than on Facebook.

Twitter, according to Social Media expert Kristen Lamb, is like one big cocktail party. You can “walk through” and hear snippets of all kinds of conversation. And, as long as you aren’t creepy about it, you are invited to join in. How cool is that for all us busybodies, er…I mean writers. (slinking to the next paragraph)

LinkedIn is more like attending a big conference – you’ve got people you’re scheduled to meet with, and they know people who know people. Just like a live conference, these people are more impressed with you if you dress nicely and have a creative name badge. In LinkedIn terms that means fill out your profile as fully as you can.

There are people you might meet at any event or conference that will be important in your career. It’s a really good idea in today’s world to ask these people which platform they’re on so you can find them! Better yet, get their email address. You can use it to search for them on LinkedIn, Facebook OR Twitter.

If you meet someone who says they’re on Facebook and they are your dream editor, make tracks to hook up with them over there. Ditto to Twitter and LinkedIn. It is always a good idea to follow up quickly so there’s hope that they still remember that you sat in the row in front of them during the Dean Koontz event at the Romantic Times Convention (or wherever you met them).

Note: Bob Mayer and Jenni Holbrook-Talty at Who Dares Wins Publishing have put together all their tips from their Write It Forward workshops about how to get the most out of a writer's conference and it can be found here.

Why LinkedIn?

I could give you the corporate version:
LinkedIn is a very easy passive way to build your social network with individuals that you might already know, as well as those you meet in the course of your networking events.

Bleck, bleck, bleck. Even though it’s true, it’s bland and doesn’t cover the real magic:

Through LinkedIn’s Status Updates, Reading Lists, Groups and the amazing Answer feature, you will have the opportunity to be a solution provider. Now THAT’S sexy. Every opportunity you get to be a solution provider is golden.

Every time a writer is offered a free, easy chance to establish themselves as an expert in any given field, in my humble opinion, they need to RUN to take advantage of this. LinkedIn gives you the chance to both ask questions and provide answers, and look stellar in the process. You can have your entire writing resume on display, along with recommendations of your work, even as you network and build your platform.

LinkedIn can be a Traffic Firehose

Check out this Chart of the Day from a Business Insider article that was published yesterday. That’s some impressive stuff. LinkedIn is adding features all the time that are targeted at driving traffic. Like every other social media company, they want to be your platform of choice.

(Are you salivating yet? This is BIG.)

Getting started

1. Go to http://www.linkin.com
2. Choose your LinkedIn account type

Note: Anyone can sign up for a free Basic LinkedIn account. Free accounts allow you to invite available connections, manage your own profile, join Groups and sign up for LinkedIn events. Free accounts do not allow you to send InMails (which let you send mail to anyone whether you are connected or not), see all LinkedIn contacts or organize your contacts beyond a basic name listing.

For the LinkedIn users that want to use the application more fully or for targeted tasks like job recruiting, there are several other business options available for a monthly charge.

3.  Add connections

You can allow LinkedIn to check your existing address books for your current email addresses or enter your contacts manually. It is easiest to allow LinkedIn to comb through your current address books for your various email applications. You will get a list of the people you know who are already using LinkedIn and can invite them to connect with you.

Note: If you don’t want to do this when you begin, you can return here later. This is the Import Contacts option that is located inside the People You May Know that’s that’s always available in the upper right corner of your LinkedIn home page.

What do you do once you’re connected?

• Listen
  
  Listening in LinkedIn means watching the Status Updates that show on your home page each day and commenting on them. Particularly if you are in the market for an editor, agent, or new job, these updates are a treasure trove of conversation openers.
• Read
  
  In LinkedIn, there is an application to discuss and recommend what you are reading. When you use this application, it will update your home page. People will comment, and you can do the same on the books they recommend. Part of why we love books is BECAUSE they are so easy to bond over.
• Browse
  
  Be sure to look around in LinkedIn. You’ll come across the greatest stuff just poking around. Explore the LinkedIn toolbar at the top of the page to see your Connections, Update your profile, or look for Jobs. Incidentally, all the recruiters I know say they find the best talent through LinkedIn. I found my current job through LinkedIn, as a matter of fact.
• Find Groups that have other people with the same interests as you.
  
  Some people take an opposite track and join Groups with members that have knowledge that you WANT. On the right hand side of the LinkedIn toolbar, there is a search that defaults to “People.” Hit the drop-down and choose Groups. Type in your interest, whether it is writing, parenting or gardening. Trust me, you will find cool groups.

Other helpful tips:

• All the usual rules of social media apply – excessive marketing, stalking and lying are not appropriate. (Yes, I know it’s your resume – you still have to be honest.)
• You do not have to be introduced to anyone you are in a Group with.
  
  That means that you can request connection with ANYONE in any group you belong to. I’m not encouraging anyone to get their weird stalky vibe on, but this is the perfect chance to go where your target audience is and rub elbows with them. I’ve met amazing people this way.
• Browse the People You May Know section on the right side of your screen every few weeks. New people show up in there based on things like who has joined LinkedIn or which searches you’ve run. I nearly always find someone I’d been wishing to have as a connection.

There are a gajillion things I’d like to tell you about the program but Goal One is to get you signed up if you’re interested and give you time to get comfortable. You can also feel free to ask questions about the program in the comments below.

In the meantime, how many of you are on LinkedIn already? Do you like or dislike it? What do you love-love-love or hate-hate-hate about the platform? How do you like to connect with others?

REMINDER: We are in the final week of the Going To The Chapel Contest. Have we received your entry?? Finalists will be listed on our site for all the world to see. The Winner will be listed on our site for one month, have supreme bragging rights and will recieve at least three critiques from the Writers In The Storm bloggers. What could be better than that?

By Sharla Rae

We’ve all experienced brain freeze and no, I don’t mean writers’ block. Writers’ block is when you don’t know what comes next in the story or you’ve written yourself into a corner and can’t find a way out.

Think of brain freeze as a frozen lake. All the fish are still alive swimming under the ice, but the fisherman can’t get to them. In other words, you can’t for the life of you come up with the right words.

Some writers type a few Xs and return to the problem later. Not me. I’m wa-a-a-y linear. I’ll beat my head against the desk trying to excavate precious jewels, those perfect words that convey emotion, setting, image and atmosphere.

Since beating my head on the desk works about as well as chipping away at a frozen lake with a soup spoon, I developed faster methods.

I’ve used the The Word Finder by J.I. Rodale or a thesaurus, but sometimes words need to convey more than their face value. And that’s when I pull out my homemade antifreeze, that is, word and phrase menus.

My menus are on-going. Whenever I discover a common word or phrase used in an uncommon manner I add it to one of my lists according to the subject it describes. Familiar descriptions are also added because the purpose of word menus is to be a reminder, an antifreeze to melt brain freeze.

Examples:

• Aging word menu: bedridden, sedentary, calcified, stooped, tottering, Methuselah, doddering, dowager, arthritis, fossil, codger, crone, geezer, gout
• Aging Phrase menu: old and decrepit, old duffer is deaf, old fogey, banging his cane, rheumy eyes, humped over and leaning, skin like well-worn leather, crotchety and gruff, Old goat, Queen of the rocking chair
• Aging terms: Centenarian – 100 years or older; Septuagenarian – person in their 70s; Atherosclerosis – hardening of the arteries; Alzheimer’s – progressive neurodegenerative disease

Caution: When recording a phrase, NEVER use someone elses' exact words. Legal ramifications aside, it's more fun to use the connotation of the phrase and create your own idea.

Some of my own word and phrase menu subjects include:

• Types of people: fat, skinny, babies, old people, females, males, crowds
• Emotion
• Body movements: sit, stand, lay, move from place to place, arm and hand
• Body language
• Busy cities: Sounds, smells, imagery
• Forests
• Mountains
• Bodies of water: rivers, lakes and oceans
• Weather: all types
• Lovemaking

Most of my menus are generic and not specific places. When I start a new book, I research the location and familiarize myself with the setting. Specific location menus go into a notebook compiled for the corresponding title.

The roots of my menu obsession can be traced to my high school poetry class. While the teacher belabored iambic pentameter and other poetic tools, I was more enamored with the poet’s ability to use common expressions in uncommon settings.

Poems, however beautiful, aren’t the only source for word menus. Be prepared with highlighters, paper and pen. Frequently, writers need to populate their writing with cultures and images of exotic places they’ve never visited. National Geographic Magazine works great, but state publications like Arizona Highways and vacation magazines are good too.

Don’t forget technical terms and definitions. Sometimes they can be used interchangeably. How many times have you read about sharp and piercing eyes? It may work just as well to say gimlet-eyed. Note the old age terms and definitions above as well as a few eye terms below. The eye-term menu might also include disorders and diseases.

Examples of Eye Terms:

• Goggle-eyed – bulging, rolling or staring
• Megalophthalmic – having unusually large eyes
• Moon-eyed – round eyed
• Sloe-eyed – (1) shaped like sloes, a kind of plum, slanted.  (2) soft dark bluish or purplish black eyes.
• Strabismaic – cross-eyed, walleyed
• Walleyed – eyes diverging instead of focusing simultaneously on the same point; eyes turned outward away from nose; also used to define a wild irrational staring, glare or fierce look

A quick reminder: While some technical terms are so common they no longer sound formal, others may be too formal for the story's setting. Channel the tone of the scene and ask yourself if the character would know, use or even think the technical term?

I mentioned common terms used in uncommon settings and words that convey more than their face value. As an example let’s talk about love/sex scenes. The following words are common to many subjects, but used in the context of a love scene, they take on more than their face value. Just the act of browsing a list like this, generates new ideas. This small sample comes from my 4-page list of Sensual Words.

Acute, adventurous, anchored, animal, beguiling, burn, clench, clever,
cursory, dangerous, daring, flowed, glide, haven, hazy, heady, impulse, incite, possessive,
potent, practiced, skimpy, sleepy, slender, tenacity, tender, tense etc. .

Now for the biggest and best anti-freeze tip: Look for descriptive words under the wrong subjects. Yep, you heard me – the wrong subject.

Have you ever heard a man compared to a Mack truck? Ever heard of monkey ears, pig nose, a beak, a car that purrs? Of course, you have. A sea might be dark and unfathomable -- like eyes, maybe? These are common usages that have become cliché, but I’m using them to defrost your brain and make a point.

Seeking descriptions under the wrong topics will yield amazing images, sounds, tastes and smells. Also it encourages you to think harder and before you know it, you’ve defrosted your brain freeze.

What? You don’t have time to brew homemade antifreeze? That’s okay. I know a few short cuts. 

Two Writers’ Digest books, Descriptionary, A Thematic Dictionary by Mark McCutcheon, and The Fiction Writer’s Silent Partner by Martin Roth offer excellent subject related words and phrases. Every writer needs the Random House Word Menu on their reference shelf. It’s a tome of over 800 pages containing definitions, terms, and descriptions of hundreds of subjects including military, health issues, emotions, professions, weather and more.

More great books: 

• Words At Work by Mim Harrison: Professional terms
• The Describer’s Dictionary by David Gramb: Similar to Descriptionary
• Fighting Words From War, Rebellion and Other Combative Capers by Christine Ammer: Everything from fist fights to military terms and more.
• A Sea of Words, a Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O’Brian’s Seafaring Tales by Dean King: Most of these terms are still used today. This book includes: nautical and naval terms, medical definitions, weapons, food, drink and a little on customs and culture.
• Street Wise Spanish, Dictionary/Thesaurus by Mary McVey Gill and Brenda Wegmann: includes thematic categories.
• A Dictionary of The Old West by Peter Watts: I own several western dictionaries and while this has become rather pricy, it’s still my all-round fav.
• How To Read A Person Like A Book: Body Language book with great explanations and illustrations.

On The Internet: While you may have to visit quite a few sites to find what you’re looking for, this is an inexpensive alternative.

• 
  
  The bookshelf Muse
  
  
• A Writer’s Guide to Words.
• Action verb list to improve your writing style.  Action verbs are usually descriptive in nature especially when it comes to body language. Yep, I have a body language menu as well as one on body movements such as sitting, standing and moving place to place.
• Body Language : One of the best sites I’ve found.
• National Geographic online: Find exotic places, storm descriptions, info in science articles that describe, oceans, forests etc. .

If you have helpful word menu ideas, please share them with us in the comments.  Also, I’d love to hear what kinds of antifreeze you use.

REMINDER: The Going To The Chapel contest deadline is fast approaching. Not only is this contest a great writing prompt exercise for the long weekend, the winner receives a critique from at least three Writers In the Storm bloggers!

by Fae Rowen

The joke in here at WITS is that I sit in my living room waiting for an editor to knock on my front door and ask, “Do you have a book I can buy?”  Yep, pretty passive.  Lots of backstory on why I haven’t sent out requested manuscripts, but here’s what’s going on now.

I’m fired up, busy editing my Sci Fi romance—finally.  Why?  Because I have ideas how to pump up the book and make it the best it can be.

Have you gotten feedback that your WIP is “technically perfect,” fast-paced, and—from multi-published best sellers--“Why isn’t this book in print?”  I had high hopes when I sent the book to the first editor I pitched to.  He asked for a re-write and I did it.  Then he didn’t want it.  Another editor asked for it and sent it back saying, “It just didn’t grab me like I’d hoped.”

So I sit on my book and hope it will hatch like an egg.

How do you fix what nobody can pinpoint as broken?

I spent a week-end at Margie Lawson’s with four other writers and learned deep editing techniques, rhetorical devices, and how to write visceral hooks that will keep an editor turning my pages at three a.m.

I’m going through this book that’s been line-edited forty-two thousand times.  (Well, it feels like it!)  I didn’t think I had that much work to do on it.

Heh, I’m hoping I’ll be done in three months.  But I’m fired up because I finally have tools to use and can recognize places I can infuse emotion and I know how to put the words together to move the reader on the emotional journey my characters are taking.

Funny thing is, I joined OCC-RWA years ago to learn how to write emotion.  I knew my Sci Fi characters needed to have feelings and I didn’t know how to get those feelings on the page.  I’ve learned a lot over years of writing after the day job and dealing with the necessities of life.  Enough to win contests and get heart-breakingly close to selling this book.

For me, what it took was the right class to get that adrenaline pumping and the brain rolling out new ideas to make those “perfect” scenes sizzle and sell.

I’m not a shopper, but I think it must be a little like buying that new outfit that makes you look amazing.  When that happens, I’m ready to get out there and enjoy life.

Well, I’m enjoying editing.  Really enjoying it.

Ever seen an old dog with a new toy?  Yeah.  Happy like that.

I suspect that if you take a class in what is keeping you from producing your best work, you’ll get fired up, too.  There are lots of great classes out there—online, writing chapter courses and workshops, and conferences.  You may find that new technique that not only makes writing fun again, but sells your work.

Now, where’s that red pen?

Do you have no-fail techniques that you use before submitting your manuscript? What kinds of things make you feel like you've hit a brick wall in your work? What helps you climb over the wall?