So here I am, sitting at my desk and scanning Facebook when I should be doing … well, just about anything else. My to-do list is long and only going to get longer if I don’t knock a few items off of it. Then I see the post. In big white letters on a red background is the message “Have you seen me?” Under that is a picture of a teenage girl. Below that is a line with a single word, “MISSING” screaming at me in red. A few more details (“blah, blah, blah”) are outlined after that. I start thinking: Continue reading “Missing? Don’t Market Your Book This Way”
Category: Staff Articles
Writing advice and insights from the staff of Indies Unlimited.
Indie Author Newsbreak 11-2-2018
Happy Friday once again. That means it’s time for us to break the news for you. After a short hiatus loaded with coffee, gruel, and ice cream, our benevolent staff has combed the internet so you wouldn’t have to. They’re a great group, aren’t they? Here’s what they came up with:
There are plenty of reasons why writers should self-publish, and just one of them is maintaining control of your copyright. Here’s a great case for why you shouldn’t sign your rights away, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
We’ve had quite a few articles about dialogue tags, but none recently. (Yes, I spell it the British way because I’m classy.) Here’s a refresher course on dialogue tags and how to use them in fiction writing by proofreader and copy editor Louise Harnby.
You know you’re an indie author when a meatgrinder has nothing to do with meat, a kindle is not a fire, and … well, you get the picture. But for the newbie, the lingo can be a little confusing. Here’s a guide to some self-publishing terms that you may find useful from PublishDrive. (By the way, we do have a glossary for authors here on IU… just sayin’.)
And what good would we be if we didn’t include something spooky for Halloween week? Well, of course we would still be awesome, but this just makes us awesome…er? Yeah. Awesomer. Frankly, I find all the advertisements scarier than the story, but it is an interesting tale of The Ghostly Residents of the Famed Literary Hotel Chelsea by Nancy Snyder on Book Riot.
That’s it for the news this week, unless one of those ghosts at the Chelsea tells us the winning lottery numbers. Have a good weekend.
Writing and Real Life: Juggling Your Time
I spent 20 years in the military — the U.S. Air Force. And during that time I learned a lot of things. One thing they stressed was time management. When Uncle Sam says a project needs to be done by a certain date, it better be! If you weren’t good at time management, it meant you stayed after duty hours to work on the project. If you had good skills, you went home when everyone else did. Somehow I managed to be in the latter group. Continue reading “Writing and Real Life: Juggling Your Time”
Monkeys on Typewriters: Creativity vs Grammar
Creativity walks a tightrope. If you are not creative enough, your readers will be bored. If you are too creative, your readers will be mystified.
“Oh!” says the Creative Soul. “That’s what I want. I want my reader to be mystified.”
Not this way, you don’t. I mean mystified as in “mixed up, baffled, confounded, deceived and perplexed.” None of these are particularly happy emotions, especially “deceived.”
Yes, there is a challenge in reading a piece of work that sets a puzzle you must solve in order to understand it. For many experienced readers, the joy of solving the puzzle is a great part of the pleasure of reading. Witness the popularity of Joyce’s “Ulysses.”
But… Continue reading “Monkeys on Typewriters: Creativity vs Grammar”