First Word

Hello First Word Friend-Os! We are on the "eve" of New Year's Eve. Can you believe another year has passed? I'm not sure if time is speeding up or slowing down. At the end of the year I always like to do a roundup of things that have happened that amuse me. This year though I think I'm going to end the year by helping you get prepared to conquer 2016 Friend-O style.   Here are some tips and tricks to get your new year off to an effective start. Since my newsletter readership is a mix of authors and business people, these tips apply to your business and your efforts to promote and help your book succeed in a competitive marketplace.   Strategic planning - time to do what most executives and managers do, which is plan for the New Year. Most managers though will do the strategic plan and start the year off with gusto and quickly abandon the document in favor of "wing-it" management. The idea of planning is to plan and execute not fa...

Smudges on my glasses ... don't you just hate it when you smudge your glasses and they don't seem to come clean. Smudges on my contact lenses are annoying too. Phone calls before 8 a.m. ... that one is just obvious. Unless you're from the East Coast (I'm on the West Coast) you have no excuse. Phone calls after 9 p.m . ... unless your lover or best friend that is simply too late at night for me. Running out of coffee in the morning ... that one is just scream-worthy. I must have my coffee. And it always seems like the moment I realize I am out of it, it's while wearing a purple bathrobe and socks. So no way a trip to the local Starbuck's is on the agenda. Running out of Half-n-Half ... that one is synonymous to running out of coffee. Either problem holds the same "annoyance value".  People who keep calling and not leaving a voice message ... how hard is it to just leave a message? Quit calling and not leaving me a message; it's pointl...

I've coached and worked with writers for years. All facets of talent have come across my desk. So today what I want to share are the top three things I see writers do to sabotage their own success. Giving up -- yes, giving up is no. #1. At the first sign of low sales or reviews not kicking off enough sales (in the author's mind), some author will give up. They won't feel the project is either successful or successful enough . And to discuss the "enough" word. What is your idea of success anyway? Becoming a no. 1 best-seller? Or is it possible that your book touched and changed one life. Your book made someone's vacation perfect. Your prose made someone happy. We have this view of success in society based on monetary rewards, and don't get me wrong money is important. I just hate to see an author feel like a failure because they only sold 500 copies, which is actually a lot. Speaking of quantity of copies ... here is the next thing authors do get in th...

You may wonder what is the difference between a writing coach and an editor. A writing coach is an editor, but his/her process is different than just editing. Why would you use a writing coach? Accountability -- some writers (and people for that matter) benefit from the accountability of having someone to answer to about their projects. An effective writing coach is there to ask, "Hey, when do I see the next chapter?" Many people achieve goals more effectively when they have someone to push the process. Professional and Personal Guidance -- a writing coach will analyze and critique your work. It's different than attending a class. Your coach is exclusively focused on your work. An involved coach will sit down and explain the changes or suggestions made for your manuscript. They will go over it with you. You get the benefit of that one-on-one attention to help create a publishable piece of work. Editing -- your coach is really an editor packaged differently. An e...

After meeting with a new writer about her work of fiction, I had some comments to help her develop her book and its characters. Since her story is a romance I thought I would pick out some of the tips I gave her to help others. Building sexual tension between characters requires patience . This young writer had her lovers roll in the proverbial hay too fast. Their aggressive pursuit of each other sparked and happened within pages. Instant gratification either needs to be a part of the story somehow or it should be delayed to keep readers turning pages to find out and discover. The "hurry-up-and-get-there" weakness . I see writers do this all of the time. They want to finish their stories and they want to get to the "hot" stuff way too fast. It's like being a reader who can't wait and flips to the end. Problem is when the author rushes to write the story all of those in-between pages suddenly don't exist. Writing takes patience in the author too. Deve...

My partner Scott D. Roberts and I do book coaching as part of our services at 3L Publishing (www.3LPublishing.com). An interesting weakness we often see in writers is the inability or skill to pace their books. Here are three tips about pacing: #1 -- Using Too Much Exposition . A big no-no is too much exposition in the narrative that bogs down the writing. You have to keep your eye on what you're trying to accomplish on each page. Each scene, each moment needs to move the story forward or have a purpose in the story. We often see new writers who mistake a great description as building a colorful setting. Your description should only feature that which does the following: #2 . Helps define the scene so the reader understands the place . For example, if you have a scene in an office you need just enough exposition to convey the nature of the office and that's all. This gives the reader an idea of it so they can picture it in their minds. For example, a lawyer's office ...

When I do manuscript coaching and editing for new and emerging writers, I get a front-row seat on common new-writer mistakes. Here are some of those common errors that can bog down what otherwise would be a perfectly good story. Redundancy -- the repeating of words or phrases within the same paragraph or even page. Keeping your writing fresh and interesting means you need to abandon your own commonly used words. It can be challenging. Even when we speak we have certain expressions we use a lot. I was working on a book the other day in which the writer used the word "okay" no less than 10 times on a single page of copy. If you can't think of a new way to say something use a Thesaurus, which is my opinion is an irreplaceable tool when your mind is getting tired. Useless details that bog down the pace of the story . What I try to teach writers is to use the setting as part of the storytelling process. For example, if you've got a character's hometown don't s...

Similar to such recent hits as Gone Girl, Body in the Trunk takes readers backward and forward in time as true crime writer Tess teams up with Detective Phil Harris to solve the murder of a young woman whose body winds up in the trunk of a Toyota Camry. As the team unravels the story behind the murder, the reader discovers through a parallel back story the real crime that involves a passionate affair and love-gone-wrong between neglected wife Mia and a stranger who shows up in her life named Evan. On Sale for $10.99 at http://3lpublishing.flyingcart.com/?p=detail&pid=65&cat_id= .