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May 15

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How to use rejection to improve your craft

Rejection is how we writers grow thick skins, but we can also use it to better our craft. When I first started sending out my memoir, my husband suggested I send it to fifty or so agents right away. Since acceptance can be a numbers game, I understood his logic, but I felt it was better for me to start out slowly. And I’m glad I did. I received excellent, positive feedback early on that made me rethink my story and take my memoir in a new, more exciting direction. Now, I have a book I feel proud of as I begin to send it out again.

But what if you don’t receive helpful rejection letters? What if you get rejection after rejection and aren’t sure where you’ve gone wrong? Jessica Page Morrell, editor, author and writing teacher, has some good tips in her post, “25 Reasons Why Manuscripts are Rejected.”

You can also read my earlier post, “Six Guidelines for Turning Rejection into Success,” for tips on turning those rejections around.

And, if you want to really put rejection in perspective, try the rejection generator.

Do you have any rejection stories you’d like to share?

May 14

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Writing a freelance assignment? Gather the facts

Besides being a newspaper reporter early in my career, I’ve worked in the corporate trenches writing everything from news and feature stories for customer magazines and newsletters, to sales and fundraising letters. I’ve also spent a fair amount of time as a ghostwriter.

After all these years, my work style is second nature, from how I prepare for an assignment to how I interview sources and get into the writing itself.

But I often run into people who are eager to break into copywriting or freelance writing and they want to know how to go about it, so I decided to analyze and share some of my personal best practices.

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May 11

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A poem from my son in honor of Mother’s Day

 

One of the benefits of our recent remodel has been finding treasures as I put the house back together. Below is a poem I found that my son wrote when he was seven years old. He liked to create little booklets of poems and give them to me for special occasions–Mother’s Day or my birthday.

Books have been a part of my life since I was a young girl sitting on my mother’s lap, lulled by the stories she read to me. I, in turn, cherished reading books to my son when he was young. I guess you can say we have “book love” in our family. See for yourself:

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May 10

A letter to writers from John Steinbeck

Does starting a story scare you? Maybe you put off putting pen to paper because of fear. John Steinbeck felt the same way.

In a letter to writers, Steinbeck wrote:

“It is not so very hard to judge a story after it is written, but, after many years, to start a story still scares me to death. I will go so far as to say that the writer who is not scared is happily unaware of the remote and tantalizing majesty of the medium.” Read more

May 9

Creating high-concept story ideas, part 2

In my last post, I described what makes a high-concept story idea: one that grabs our attention or is a twist on the usual story.

In this post, I’ll share some places to find those high-concept ideas:

1. Your local newspaper. Whenever I find an unusual article, I file it away for possible use later. Example: Years ago, I read a story in the Seattle paper about an elderly couple who’d gone on an outing to the library and then simply disappeared for three days. Both had dementia and they drove around for days, trying to find their way back home. Wow! That, in itself, is pretty unusual. I could write a poem or short story about this or base a character in a book on this story. Read more

May 8

Are you a panster or plotter?

May 7

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Creating high-concept story ideas, part I

Recently, at our local Field’s End Writing Conference, author Shelia Roberts spoke about high-concept novels. Whenever I hear the term “high-concept,” it always brings images of espionage thrillers like John le Carre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy or a complex, multi-charactered story like Stephen King’s The Stand.

But what I learned from Roberts was that “high-concept” doesn’t necessarily mean exceedingly complex. A high-concept idea is one that is unique, unusual, or stands out in some way. Roberts describes it as, “stepping outside the box.” Read more

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