Learning Center

I chose to address this subject because next week I begin teaching several weeks of on-line screenwriting courses for Savvy Authors. I want to emphasize to people the importance of learning all they can.

Learning is a matter of acknowledging that you do not know “enough.” Yes, some people can be recognized as “experts or gurus,” but if you truly talk with these people, they will clarify that they have simply reached a certain level of comprehension . . . and NOT that they know everything to be known on a particular subject. The wise people of the world discover the more they know, the more they realize they DON’T know. They see their life as a journey of perpetual learning and the lessons committed to memory as springboards to the NEXT level of learning in order to APPRECIATE that journey. Deep philosophy? Nope. A mature acknowledging that I don’t know everything and am hungry to continue learning.

ge·stalt´ (noun) a perceptual pattern or structure possessing qualities as a whole that cannot be described merely as a sum of its parts.

Have you ever “lost yourself in a book”? Of course you have. You might even remember the first time you were swept away so thoroughly by a novel that you forgot you were reading words on a page.

A deep and abiding love of novels is what started most of us on the path to writing our own books. We discovered we had stories inside us, and we wanted to share them with others in the same way our favorite authors share with us. The story sought physical expression. And so we grabbed a pen and a notebook (or, in my case, a fat pencil and a Big Chief tablet) and we start down the slippery slope. We write our first words of fiction.

by Beth Daniels, aka Beth Henderson, J.B. Dane

May is many things. If you live in the Northern Hemisphere as I do, it’s flowers following the rains of April. It’s Mother’s Day. It’s birthday month for my mother, my niece, my stepson, my cousin, one of my long time friends, and used to be my dad’s and my grandfather’s birthday month as well. Here in the States we end it with Memorial Day. I graduated from college with my BA and my high school in May.

May is also the start of the summer movie season, this year with THOR and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN IV.

Ever considered the manuscripts you’re pounding out as blockbusters in the way the movie studios look at their projects? Maybe you should!

One of the realities that a working writer must accept is that markets change constantly. Even within a genre, certain sub-genres will suddenly sell better and others will perform less well than they did in the past. This is because genre fiction mirrors popular culture, which is always in flux, and is changing even more rapidly now than was once the case. But the other variable here, the one that doesn’t get as much attention as changing markets, is that an individual author’s skills and interests will also change over time – which is probably also a mirroring of popular culture.

The temptation to authors in changing markets is often to jump to the area of new popularity, but this can be tricky, especially if the author hasn’t a particular interest in writing in that sub-genre. As Joseph Campbell said we need to follow our bliss. Following the money doesn’t always work out so well.

1. Product
This one is easy - your novel, in e-book format, of course. In order to sell successfully online you need a product, something that you can sell, which is in demand. As an author, you don't have to worry about the market, your readers are already there. You just need to let them know your e-book is out there, ready for downloading and devouring. So how do you convert your novel into e-book format? Well, this is fairly simple really. I find converting the Word document to PDF usually does the trick. Obviously you can't have any fancy formatting in the Word document that e-readers may not like, but essentially authors are there to write, not make a Word doc look pretty. So a simple Title page, Contents (if you're writing non-fiction) and a Copyright like you'd find in any traditional novel is all you need. Then start with Chapter 1. Once you've done, simple Save As a PDF document and you're ready for business.

Congratulations to all Savvy Authors!

Our first congratulations this week goes out to Savvy Authors member Tamara Hanson, who signed her YA Paranormal Romance with Turquoise Morning Press. This is her debut novel. Congrats on your contract, Tamara!

Heather Thurmeier sold her contemporary romance novella, Love and Lattes, to Silver Publishing. Congratulations, Heather!

In October, Rebecca L. Frencl won the "Pitch your book in 3 sentences" contest hosted by Solstice Publishing. In February, her novel, Ribbons of Moonlight, was released in eformat. Congratulations, Rebecca!

When I do readings and signings, it’s a safe bet that someone will ask where I get my ideas, and I always feel bad when my answer doesn’t seem to help them. I guess every writer gets that question, and I’ve heard lots of funny answers. The problem is that like everything else in writing, the answer is personal, so every writer has a different one.

Let’s start with the reality that every writer knows and no non-writer wants to hear. All writing is autobiographical. Fiction just tweaks the truth a little. The best plays in American Theater may be Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie, Arthur Miller’s Death of A Salesman, and Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. All three are based on the playwrights’ own families. Marsha Norman advises writers to write about their own past, particularly something that frightened them or they still think was unfair. We all do it, changing just enough to deflect the family outrage and the lawsuits.

I don't know but I've been told...

It's that time again, so polish those boots and press out your uniform! Savvy Authors Boot Camp is back and better than ever. Do you need a little motivation to finish your WIP? Dying to write something new but keep putting it off for another day? Wait no more.

These two words bring terror to every author. Any author who tells you he or she has never felt writers block is either a genius or lying. We have all experienced it at some time in some form or another. Have you ever sat down to write and find yourself staring at the screen for several minutes? Sure you have, but for most, those few seconds or minutes pass and the story continues. For those unfortunate authors where the minutes tick on to hours, days, month, it’s terrifying.

What do you do when the words just won’t come, when the story simply won’t progress, when the characters are silent?