Category: Staff Articles

Writing advice and insights from the staff of Indies Unlimited.

How to Come Up with a Great Book Title

ereader-best-titleLife just isn’t fair. It’s hard enough to write a book, but then you have to come up with a title for it, too.

Not long ago, as we minions reclined around the gruel pot, we got into a discussion about how we come up with titles for our books. (We were asked for our input for an article about story title secrets at ridethepen.com, which started this conversation.) As it turns out, we use a range of techniques, from market research to gut feelings to serendipity. Continue reading “How to Come Up with a Great Book Title”

A Non-Fiction Writer Switches to Fiction

pantser-foot-1744044_960_720
Nice pants!

Apparently I’m a pantser. Who knew? I certainly didn’t when I decided in a rash moment of hubris to switch from travel writing to fiction. Whenever I’d answered authorly interview questions from those kind enough to feature me on their blogs and we’d got to the plotting or pantsing bit, I was easily able to sidestep the issue. When you write what really happens, it’s no different to ending an eventful working day in the pub, each incident becomes a funny story and eventually there’s a bookful.

This would be different though. This would be ‘proper writing’. But how do you start when you don’t yet know if you are a plotter or a pantser? Obviously you start with several hours learning your way around Scrivener. Oh look, you can put notes on a cork board! And you can develop your characters in individual files. Let’s do a corkboard for the whole thing…plan out where the plot points are, space out the beats and the cliffhangers correctly… Continue reading “A Non-Fiction Writer Switches to Fiction”

How Fast Do You Write?

author writing speed stopwatch time-731110_960_720Some of you may remember my post a while back about handwriting my books. It’s a habit that has served me well, and I’ve just finished my fourth book written this way: legal pads and slant-tipped sign pens. I have no way to prove quantitatively that writing this way promotes my creativity, but it would certainly seem to. Never before have I written four books in only thirteen months. But that could be a fluke, right?

When I began this handwriting journey, as soon as I had transcribed the words from the pad to the computer, I tossed the pad into the recycle bin. The text was safely embedded in Word; I didn’t need the handwritten words any more. It was my husband’s idea that I save them. For posterity, he said. Yeah, like anyone’s going to care, I thought, but I did start saving them. Then, with my last book, I got another idea. I wrote down the date I started each pad. I had always taken casual note of how long it took me to write a book, sometimes nine months, sometimes three, but I never clocked it exactly. This time, when I finished the book, I actually figured out the word count of each pad and using the dates, calculated how many words a day I was writing. Continue reading “How Fast Do You Write?”

Writing, Book Promotion, and Life: A Personal Decision

writing-and-knitting-needle-1169606_960_720This post is a very personal one, but also one that I think will resonate with other Indie authors.

For several months, now, I’ve been in a funk and having trouble figuring out why. I even thought of giving up writing entirely. Why? I looked at my life, how I spend my time, and realized that there seemed to be no time to do many of the things I used to enjoy, like knitting, sewing, and reading. At first I wanted to chalk it up to growing older. I don’t have the energy I used to. That depressed me.

I have always been a busy person and abhor just sitting around accomplishing nothing. Those last two words were the clue to my dilemma. I felt I was spinning my wheels and not seeing results. Continue reading “Writing, Book Promotion, and Life: A Personal Decision”