One thing that I’ve done lately has been to go back and reread some books that are currently in the genre in which I am writing. Each time I’ve reread the books, I have made sure to pay attention to specific details. My first pass at a series was to see the connections among each book within the series. Another pass was to pay attention to setting. Another pass was on dialogue.

Reading, along with your writing, can provide you with the tools that you need to write better. Not only will it enhance your vocabulary, but reading will keep the creative juices flowing.

The post Tip Tuesday: Read as much as you write appeared first on Martha L. Thurston.

If you’ve worked hard on your book, you may want the perfect professional book cover. However, sometimes that is a price that is way out of your budget.

When I first started out, I had to learn how to utilize Adobe Photoshop to my advantage. It wasn’t exactly perfection, but I did learn over time how to turn photos I found on the internet or those I took myself, into what I envisioned for my book cover.

For example, for Operation: Containment I used a picture I took of my son when we were traveling in the mountains. He was the inspiration for my character, after all. I superimposed that over the top of a picture I took on my front porch of the moon. It took me 5 nights to get the right picture and I still had to add in extra cloud cover. It was a lot of work. But that was the perfect book cover. It fit the mood of the book.

Even then it was a lot of work.

Now a days, there are a lot of places to go to when choosing royalty free pictures, because I don’t always have the perfect picture in my camera roll. My favorite website is Unsplash. You can do a search to find your pictures. Just note that there is a limit unless you join their plus program. I never needed the plus program because I never went over my limit and gave credit to the photographer in my book.

Pair your picture with Canva’s templates for book covers and you have an easy solution to creating a book cover for your self-published book. Canva has many different types of templates that you can use. I do recommend their pro version, only because you have access to many of their illustrations and pictures as well. Plus, you will have a wider selection of fonts.

Book covers don’t have to be difficult or something that you need to hire out. I strongly suggest giving Canva a chance. If you don’t enjoy it, you don’t have to use it, but you never know. I didn’t think I’d enjoy the creative process of it as much as I did until I started.

The post Tuesday Tip: Book Covers appeared first on Martha L. Thurston.

And for some reason, I keep getting these reading app ads on my Facebook with snippets from the werewolf romance genre. I think it is because I watched through one of the ads for the Reel Short episodes for “Fated to my Forbidden Alpha,” and now that’s all that seems to pop up.

There is an upside and a downside to this. The upside is that I’ve run across some really good writing. The downside is that I’ve run across some horrible writing. Misspellings, poorly phrased sentences, and some of it looks like it was written by a child. No description. No imagery. Lots of missing words.

What I want to know is do they sell any of that trash?

The post What I’ve been reading lately appeared first on Martha L. Thurston.

As for my writing routines, I decided to focus on those blogs that generate the most traffic and ad revenue. Once I grow those up to where I want them, I should be able to start to hire a team to assist. At this point, I’m not even close. Think of my traffic currently in the lower double digits. We’re talking another year or more before I reach that stage of growth. If then.

All of these changes means that I can now choose a day to focus just on writing, a day to focus on scheduling social media, and the rest will be for sewing or creating. I don’t have to worry about what I can and can’t do. I don’t have to worry about if I have time. I don’t have to pick and choose. It’s a lot to think about when you are trying to deal with 10 websites. It’s less when it is 8. Now, it’s better with 6.

The post New Writing Routines appeared first on Martha L. Thurston.

This week I decided it was time to change my routine. I gave every day (including weekends) a designated work assignment. I would alternate between writing and sewing. On days where it was a writing day, if writing ended or I was unable to write for eight hours, I could stop and do a sewing related activity. That seemed like a winner, right? I would still be working on a business activity either way.

The biggest problem is not the day designation. The problem is I enjoy sewing. I’ll find any excuse to go sew. At least on days where my depression doesn’t seep in and cause me to be listless while my anxiety re-examines every awkward incident and event in my life.

So today is a writing day. If I can manage to find my thumbdrive (I don’t know why it isn’t where it is supposed to be) I may actually have time to work on my novel. That’s another reason why I needed writing days. I have much to write and finish this summer. My goal is to have my book finished by the end of July. I’m certain I can do it as long as I can stay focused.

The post WIP: Changing Routines appeared first on Martha L. Thurston.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve sat down with students and discussed their writing just to reveal to them that they have no real story. It seems real to them. They gave details. However, at the end of their story, there is no great resolve or relief. It is simply words on paper detailing boring points that lead nowhere.

Conflict must happen. Action begins with the first conflict that leads to the next and the next and the next… until the character reaches a turning point. They get what they want or they don’t. They live or they die. Something big is about to happen, and once that something happens, all excitement falls to a resolution that feels natural. No more cliffhangers leaving us on the edge of our seat. As a reader, we may want more of that character, but we are left feeling satisfied with the ending.

Conflict, depending on the genre, can come in many varying degrees. Misunderstandings in a romance. Who is the killer in a mystery. Maybe the conflict is much deeper and they are battling themselves and their own insecurities. Or perhaps, they are battling against the chains of society that keeps holding them back because of race or economic reasons.

When planning out your novel, think about that main conflict and all of the conflicts in between. How can you show those conflicts? Plan it out clearly. Include it in your outline. Then write it out.

The post Tip Tuesday: Conflict appeared first on Martha L. Thurston.

Point of view in a story is very similar. Out of your characters, the story will be told differently based on who is telling it. A first person point of view told through the eyes of one character will see their world based on what they can observe. It can be biased depending on the situation, but the fact will remain that the view point will be limited. The same thing goes for a 3rd person limited omniscience. While an omniscient narrator has a larger view point, it is still only limited to that one character, unlike a 3rd person omniscient narrator who knows all the ins-and-outs of everything that is happening in the story.

Think of Point of View like a camera angle. Our 1st person POV is going to be close to the character seeing everything through their eyes. We have more of their inner thoughts as they try to navigate the world around them. This can do one of two things. It can either bring the reader closer to the character or it cause the reader to question the character’s motives. With a 3rd person limited POV, we are above the character with a little more of a view of their life and what is happening around them. While everything is still focused on that character, we get to see them interact with everything from the inside. And the 3d person omniscient POV is where that camera can jump around from character to character and show us everything that is happening in the story.

The biggest thing to remember when it comes to POV is to choose one and stick with it. If you must follow every character in the story, choose a character per chapter. Not all over the place. Following every character in the story for every chapter can be too much. Your reader will never develop a bond with a character. The emotional bond is part of the reading experience. While we may recall a story, most of the time, it is the character that makes it memorable for us in the journey of reading.

The post Tip Tuesday: Point of View appeared first on Martha L. Thurston.

I started and launched a blog in February of this year. The content was generated using AI Writer which is a plug-in that is available in WordPress. Out of the posts on the website, I wrote only one. The rest were created using AI Writer. Most of the time, it takes a blog 6-8 months to be ranked in Google. In 4 months time, I have searches coming up in the top 10 pages of Google, and half are on page 1. That’s incredible! I have some blogs that are not even close to that with 10 times the amount of content that are more than 3 years in age. My mind is blown!

The conciseness of the writing, I believe, is key. It is formally written and lacks style. I knew that would be the case, but then I think that is a plus for the AI because it is not dealing in fluff, or side notes, or silly banter. You get the picture. It is straightforward and to the point.

The downside is that more complicated pieces or lists require you to complete. For example, I tried to create a top 5 post, and it created a post, but I have a lot to fill in the blanks for. It even created a table for me and everything. Apparently, listicles or top anything is out of its range. Mostly because the AI has no way to gather the best of anything. It can’t compare things unless it is given the parameters to follow and without a program to do so, it lacks in that department.

Overall, if you are looking to quickly generate content for a new blog and have very specific keywords or key phrases in mind, an AI bot could potentially help you fill out a new blog to get ranked quickly. However, due to the lack of programming, I wouldn’t rely solely on the AI to do all of the writing. You do want to create some authority and connection with your readers, and the AI lacks that connection.

The post The results of the AI experiment is in appeared first on Martha L. Thurston.

Traditional Publication

Traditional publication of books involves a rather lengthy and slow process. You may have to choose to find an agent who will then solicit your work to publishers on your behalf for a percentage of your pay. Going the route of an agent can be the easiest solution to finding a traditional publisher for your work. You are able to do much of the polishing while your agent solicits your work to publishers on your behalf and perhaps avoid much of that prior to publication.

Although having an agent can be ideal, you can certainly solicit publishers on your own. Just make sure that you are familiar with the types of books that they publish before soliciting your work, and make sure that you have an excellent query letter. Be prepared, though, for rejections before you are accepted. This process is a long one, and even once you are accepted, it could be another year or more before you are published. Because of this, you want to make sure that your writing is not something that is following along with the current trends as trends can and do change. In the past 5 years, I’ve seen many of my students stop reading vampire related books. When trends change, I see them reading more about challenges that everyday students face rather than something that was once trendy.

Self-publication

Self-publication is an easier route if you want your work out there and available. The only time limit to self-publishing is how fast you can write. The downfall to this is the stigma that self-publishing holds due to so many who see writing books as a way to get rich who quickly write and publish without proofreading. The books are often plagued with typos, poor grammar, and plagued with continuity errors. Even the self-help or non-fiction books are written terribly and not fact-checked.

While there can be a huge stigma related to this type of publication, there remains a glimmer of truly talented writers who can outshine those who are only in it to get rich quick. Sometimes, self-publication can lead you to becoming traditionally published, as was the case for Amanda Hocking. When she first started self-publishing her books, she was blogging at the time. The year that everyone received a kindle for Christmas, her bank account skyrocketed and she became a millionaire almost overnight. The success of her self-published books caught the eye of a publisher who immediately signed her on and took over the marketing of her books. She found success in writing, although stories like this are rare. As a YA fantasy author, she has been very successful, and I have even caught some of my students reading her books over the years!

Where to Self-Publish

There are many places to self-publish your book nowadays. You can even find some places that will help with the formatting and self-publication for a small fee. I even offer that service here.

If you are willing to do all of the work yourself, you can check out the following places to publish:

1. Amazon KDP
2. Smashwords
3. Kobo
4. Barnes and Noble

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The post Writing Tip Tuesday: Self-publishing vs. Traditional appeared first on Martha L. Thurston.

I know what it is that I am going to have to do to get myself out of this mess. I need to go back and look at my outline and make some changes. I need to figure out how to write my way out of the corner I placed myself into. I don’t think that I anticipated this, but then again, I began writing this novel without an outline. It kind of bloomed on its own. That’s why I’m suddenly stuck. I did find my handwritten notes yesterday when I began to clean out my old file cabinet that I will be chunking. Those may help me some, but I don’t know how much. As much as I don’t want to admit it, I think I had an unlikely hero rise up, and I don’t really want him to be a hero. I need him to remain helpful, but not be the rescuer. I need my heroines to rescue themselves. They need to know that they can overcome this. I don’t even want mom and dad to come to their rescue.

That’s my WIP for this Wednesday. What are you currently working on? Let me know down in the comments.

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