Writing
Julian Dobbins
My Geri Halliwell Story
My Geri Halliwell Story
Writing
Helen Price
Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction
Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction
IndustryNews, Writing
John Potter
The Mislaid Art of Storytelling
The Mislaid Art of Storytelling
Writing
Pam Pheasant
Fiction Therapy
Fiction Therapy
GroupNews, Writing
John Potter
Proof Reading - From Word to Mobi to Kindle
Proof Reading - From Word to Mobi to Kindle

GroupNews

This March in Writing

Each month at Wordwatchers we gather at someone's house. We sit down and chat and then we start with the confessional. This is one of my favourite parts of the monthly meet. It is where we tell everyone in the group how much writing we have done, or what we have achieved during the month against what we said we would. I love the confessional because it is one of the few times in my life that I'm routinely out geeked. There are some serious writing geeks at Wordwatchers and it is wonderful company to share.Typically when it comes around to me I've been so hooked into what everyone else has been saying, my carefully rehearsed list of achievements through the month go out the window. I'll remember about three things I actually did. I'll go off on tangents, vaguely mention a word count and where I am with the work in-progress, and then off I go again, talking about some random concept I'm currently excited about.To try and establish some kind of order I've decided to use the Wordwatchers blog as a platform to briefly detail what I did each month, so when I'm sat in someone's house and all eyes turn to me, I can calmly reel off the key detail from this blog. Well not this one. We already had our April meeting. I'm writing this now just to get my hand in. Some great things happened in March 2012 and I'd like to tell you about them.We start with Handyman - my current novel. I'm a third of the way through the first draft. I dreamed up the concept two years ago and the character has steadily evolved as I edited and published Chasing Innocence. I'm introducing some very exciting elements into Handyman, not just to the story but to how it plays in the reader's mind. The trouble is, it has been four years since I actually started a book and I have been struggling to get going. I wrote about the struggle in two blogs during march; In the Absence of Daydreams and That Eureka Moment. It was in embracing both that I had a real epiphany that galvanised the characterisation of Handyman in my mind. As March came to a close I was for the first time closing the laptop and feeling I could write more. I spent most of the month struggling with two chapters, the first of which will unlikely appear in the book, but needed to be written as it explained the characters to me. The other chapter launches the rest of the book. It has been tough because it's less than 2,000 words but has to justify the beginning of Marcus' transition from ordinary to the extraordinary. Important is the belief in the reader's mind that he is capable and they want him to take the journey. Both chapters are as finished as they can be in the first draft. The exciting bit is what comes next.Additionally I wrote two blogs for the Wordwatchers site. One discussed this lonely business of writing and the need for collaboration. The other explained how to use URL's to promote your website's content in search engines.Then we move onto the small matter of promoting Chasing Innocence. Getting your creatively imagined and thrilling novel onto Amazon is only part of the journey for an indie author. Getting it into the hands of readers is another adventure completely. I wrote posts for my johnpotter.info blog detailing the separate journey for publishing the paperback and Kindle editions, and more importantly the lessons I have learned.In trying to promote Chasing Innocence I have entered it into three competitions. The two key ones for me are the Writer's Digest Self Published awards 2012 and the Kindle Book Review's Best Indie Book of 2012.Finally, I have started and will continue through April, to proof read my good friend Donald Stilwell's new manuscript. This is a huge honour. I loved his first book and am hoping the second will be even better.That's about it. See you next month.JP

Who the URL are you?

The daunting subjects of online marketing and search engine optimisation have at their core two very simple principles. The first is the use of 'keywords' and the second are 'links'. Links are what I'm talking about here. They are connections, or doorways, that are used to take you to websites or content within websites. The link contains a URL, which is the address of the destination. The words Link and URL in internet speak are conjoined. I use the word URL for the main part here to refer to both, not least because this post's title wouldn't sound half as good if it were: 'Who the link are you?'URLs are important because search engines such as Google use the number of URLs pointing to your content, to rate your content in context to similar sites. The more URLs that point to your site, the higher ranked it will be when people type a keyword relevant to your site. If you type 'Chasing Innocence' to Google right now, the chances are my book will magically appear somewhere, at least once, on the first page of results. That's because there are quite a few URLs on my various sites pointing to my book, along with the keywords: chasing innocence. The interesting aspect is these URLs can exist within your single site or blog, so they not only draw people to your site but can also channel people within your site to the bits you really want them to see. In fact embedding URLs within your content is vital. URLs within a web page are doorways. A web page with no links (URLs) is like a room with no doors. Once the reader has seen all there is in the room, if there's no doors there's nowhere else for them to go. So what is a URL and how do you use them?A URL is an internet equivalent to a postal address. For example, a URL most people will be familiar with:http://www.amazon.co.ukHTTP:// - Is the language your computer will use to speak to the destination when it eventually gets there. In this case HTTP is web-browser speak.WWW - Is simply the name of the computer at the destination. It's the equivalent of speaking to someone called WWW at the destination. It does not have to be WWW, it can be almost any name within certain parameters. HTTP://KDP.AMAZON.COM means I want to speak to KDP at AMAZON.COM and I want to speak HTTP (web-browser speak) to KDP when I get there.AMAZON.CO.UK - Is the address where you can find, in this case, the computer named WWW. It's equivalent to the full postal address for a building, anywhere in the world. It can be further broken down into .COM or .CO.UK or .INFO or a number of other identifiers, but knowing the breakdown and why, is no more necessary than understanding the breakdown of a ZIP code. All you need is the ZIP code (post code).That's the detail on a basic URL. You now know how to get there, you know who to talk to and you know what language to speak. But if you're linking to content actually within the site the URL will need to contain more. For instance:http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006Z0KYEQ/DP/B006Z0KYEQ - These are specific locations or layers at the destination that WWW at the address AMAZON.CO.UK will take you to. The /DP can be equated to a room in the building and /B006Z0KYEQ, can be equated to something in that room.So, we can now look at the address again:http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006Z0KYEQWe now know this means I would like to talk HTTP to WWW at AMAZON.CO.UK and I would like WWW to take me to the room DP and to the item referenced: B006Z0KYEQIf you type the link into any web browser right now you will find /dp/B006Z0KYEQ points to Chasing Innocence on Amazon UK.Sometimes you will look at the link and see lots of symbols towards the end of the URL. This is simply extra information WWW might use to find extra content.So how do we use these URLs? Now we understand what a URL is, actually using them is simple. You add a URL to content on your site. You might have a line of text that reads: Check out John's book on Amazon. To create a doorway to John's book on Amazon you first highlight the text and then click the add link button within the application you're creating the web content. In Wordpress it's the chain icon. In Blogger you simply click on the Link button.As creating links is a core function of any internet content tool,  each will have a link creation button. Once the relevant 'Link' button is clicked you will be presented with a dialogue that requires the following:The URL - In this case: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006Z0KYEQThe Title - Which is optional. I might enter: Chasing Innocence on Amazon. Adding this might also help search engines to additionally rank the content.Open a new Window/Tab - This is quite important. Clicking a URL will take the web browser to the destination, if you want the reader to come back to the page containing your original content, you want to open a new browser window, or they might get to the destination and find a whole bunch of new doors and forget all about where they started.Once you've entered the detail you click 'Add Link' and the link will appear in your content when you publish it.So to the final and briefest stage. How do you find out what the URLs for your content are? So that you can link to it. Simples. You go to the content you want to link to on your site, then you look to the address bar at the top of your web browser. Most browsers will list the full URL. For instance if you look at the address bar right now, you will see the URL for the page you are currently reading is:http://www.wordwatchers.net/who-the-url-are-you/If you want to link to this page you highlight ALL of the URL in the address bar and (right-click) Copy it and then Paste it to a link in your content as described above.That really is it. I hope that's a little clearer than mud. If not then be sure to fire away with questions in the comment section below.

Chapter Planning - a 'means' not an 'end'

Chapter Plan - WhiteboardI am currently in a strange place.  Not for the first time, I admit.  And certainly it's no unique experience in the writing world.  But it's strange nonetheless.  I am hauling myself from one writing state to another, and this time around I am finding it to be a particularly interesting journey.So much so, I thought I'd share it.For the last couple of months (okay, nearer four), whenever people asked me how the novel was coming along, I was able to tell them, "It's going well.  I'm chapter planning."  At this point of the conversation, however, the more informed would observe that it was a little late to be doing that sort of thing, given I supposedly finished it last year.Yes, well...There's a big difference between getting to the end of the plot and finishing a novel.  I have seen this many times through the experiences of my published friends, many of whom are in this group; 'finished' means it's practically on the shelves, and just because your characters have achieved (or failed to achieve) all you had in mind for them and gone racing off into that wilderness that lies beyond the confines of your story, it doesn't mean you're done.The feedback I received, which brings me to the title of this blog posting, was that the plot was cross-genre, and that I needed to go back and think where I wanted the novel to sit - in crime or general fiction (and, believe me, this whole 'cross genre' thing is definitely worth a post of its own.)It was a fair point, and one I was happy to accept, but tackling something as fundamental as genre, and therefore plot, meant... I was back to chapter planning.Now, I happen to love chapter planning.  As you can see from the first photo, it starts as a very tactile thing for me, involving whiteboards and sticky notes.  I find it helps me think, much as I imagine Rolf Harris used to feel when he was hurling paint on to his bare wall, saying, "Do ya know what it is yet?"  It's a very liberating experience.  Each scene, each significant event or clue or turning point in the story is captured as a distinct entity (on its own colour-coded sticky, based on which plotline it supports) and becomes free to go wherever it needs, or indeed be cast out entirely, for the purposes of the story.Chapter Plan - DocumentIn terms of process, once the stickies and whiteboards have done their job, I capture it all in a Word document, in a series of 'swim lanes', one for each plot line, transfering all those individual stickies on to the relevant row and column.  It worked for me first time around with this novel, and has been hugely useful this time.  (In fact, this time, with the benefit of seeing what those editing types get up to on the path to publishing a book, I've added another row at the bottom of each chapter... Hook, telling me what the reader is supposed to care about at the end of the chapter, as well as what mini-hooks I have included earlier on.)So, why am I in a strange place, if it's all gone so well, and been so helpful?Because, as with anything, it's easy to get too comfortable and find that 'means' has nudged itself over into 'end'.  Fortunately, that's one of the wonderful things about Wordwatchers; the excuses soon start to burn a hole in your conscience.So, as I said at the start, I am now hauling myself out of the comfort zone of planning and into the actual hard graft of writing, of delivering my book.  And, much as I love writing (can't you tell - this was only intended to be a short piece on planning chapters :-)), making the transition from one to the other is not easy.  Especially when it involves tearing apart 100,000 words of well-loved, well-structured story in the name of rebuilding something you hope will be even better.But started I most definitely have; one chapter in and moving slowly.  Soon the old addiction will kick in, replacing the lure of the plan, and the pace will pick up.  Still hard.  Still graft.  But a much healthier writing state for me to be in. 

A lonely business

I never really understood the saying: 'Writing is a lonely business.' I suppose if you consider the physical logistics it'd be difficult if you weren't alone. As for the solitude, I'm never tapping away thinking I could do with a bit of company. It's often the opposite - solitude means longer to write. The reality is the characters of my stories exist as vivid entities with hopes and fears all of their own. Writing is about walking their journey with them, it never feels lonely at all.For some strange reason I really thought I'd be able to publish a book alone too. It has been rightly said I struggle on the control front, in that I'm not very good at letting go. It's not so much I think I'm better at doing stuff than everyone else, it's just that I struggle to imagine anyone doing what I have in my mind better than me. Of course I did eventually realise I would need help, a realisation driven by a need to do the story justice. As it happens turning my story into a book was one of the most creatively liberating experiences I've ever had. The copy editor heroically worked to give the story a consistent grammatical narrative and fixed so many typos it took me almost a day to go through them. The proof editor spotted the last few plot inconsistencies and a whole bunch of missing hyphens, and a few more typos.  A photographer took my fuzzy concept for a cover photograph and added story to the image itself. The model danced her way from shot to shot, rarely giving us the same look until we had 'the look'. A graphic designer surpassed my wildest expectations in stylising the image and creating a title that demanded attention.This wonderful collaborative experience led me late in December to give my approach to writing a serious rethink. I wondered what I might learn from other writers and what I might have to offer in return. I'd spent some time on writing sites but never interacted with living breathing people. I'm not normally a social animal. I'm an outside looking in kind of person, not someone that is the life and soul of a gathering. Back in 2005 broadening my reading scope had propelled me to a different level of writing, which gave me the platform to begin 'Chasing Innocence'. Collaborating to make the book a quality product was a real revelation to me. My experiences as an indie publisher and author have slowly pulled me towards the value of collaboration. In fact I think within the indie forum it is even more important.At the end of January I found myself nervously amongst a group of other writers. This group of writers. It was the first time I'd sat down with people with the sole intention of talking about writing. How liberating. Usually when people that don't write learn you're writing a book, they ask whether it's finished? Is it published? And cough politely and move on, while your still only half-way through your speel about the book. In this group there are writers of childrens and YA fiction, Sci-Fi and country living websites, a life coach building a website and finishing a book, and a proper published author of historical romance. Others are doing what I spent the last two years doing - trying to turn their fiction into something people might want to read. Two months down the line I have found it incredibly exciting and have learned so much from the shared knowledge and different approaches. I possibly get too excited, I'm like a kid in a candy store. And while I always love to get back to my keyboard and characters, this writing world is even less of a lonely business than it ever has been.

Just a little weekly round up

Quite a few members of Wordwatchers already have websites and blogs of their own. So this is just a little micro-blog to pull together a summary of their work and a few other things I've found interesting on the web this week.John Potter, author of Chasing Innocence talks candidly about going from the creative stages of Push to Pull of creating a new work. If you want to find out what John means by Push and Pull, you can go here to find out: John Potter's BlogSarah White, like John Potter, is one of Wordwatchers newest members and in her most recent blog, she teases us with the cover of her latest book, The Self Confidence & Self Esteem Bible. More details can be found here: Sarah PJ White's BlogCharlotte Betts while working hard on the final edits of the soon to be released The Painter's Apprentice, still managed to time to interview Christina Courtenay (winner of the 2012 Historical Romantic Novel Award). The very lovely interview can be found here: Charlotte Betts' BlogIf you're into Crime Novels, you may be interested in this Story Competition: Bloody Scotland Competition. And, while I'd love to own a £2,000 bottle of whisky, Crime writing is definitely not a genre I have any skill in at all! (Perhaps I'll leave that to Julian and John Potter then...)Dan Banks (@DanBanks) wrote a very interesting blog about websites and "Homepages" on Jane Friedman's (@JaneFriedman) Blog. Fascinating, if, like Wordwatchers has recently, you're spending a lot of time trying to get your Shop Front just right. The Blog can be found here: Importance of Homepages BlogWell, that's it. I hope to do this again next week, unless of course, one of the other Wordwatchers members beats me too it!

Wordwatchers on Facebook

With over 800 million users, Facebook is rapidly becoming "the 'net" for approximately half of all Americans and one quarter of every body in the UK, or at least the first place they look for anything that might be of interest to them.So, while Wordwatchers is a tiny mote in a very large ocean, it would be silly of us to ignore the enormous potential of Facebook. We've had a Facebook group for a while, where members of Wordwatchers, new, current and past can keep up to date and chat (or at least the sub-set of WW which is already on Facebook), but now we have an actual Facebook page and, with a quick trawl of my friends to get them to "like" the page we acquired enough of a following to establish a top level Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Wordwatchers to be precise.Wordwatchers made a decision to embrace the relatively new phenomenon of "social media" and by Jove we're giving it a good go!If you're already on Facebook feel free to like us and keep up with us perhaps more informally than the blogs on the website.However, irrespective of how you follow us, we're very appreciative that you do!

A busy week for Wordwatchers

This week Wordwatchers went to the pub, the Lock, Stock and Barrel to be precise, to meet up with a clutch of potential new members.We met up with Chris, a journalist who has written and self-published a children's book. Also, John, who left us in awe at his dedication (and expenditure) of getting a professional looking novel to market (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chasing-Innocence-ebook/dp/B006Z0KYEQ) without going the traditional route of finding a mainstream publisher. Finally, Sarah, who amazingly has two book projects on the go at the same time (http://sarahpjwhite.com/) and is no stranger to self-publishing, something that Wordwatchers keeps circling around as an alternative idea to begging/pleading/getting lucky with an agent/editor/publisher.We also decided to "squeeze up" at the next meeting rather than face the slightly uncomfortable proposition that Wordwatchers was too big to support such a number (or at least only a few of us have enough chairs/sitting room space to host the meetings). If the popularity of the group continues to grow, we may have to face this demon again.It's also a busy week in particular for Charlotte whose first published novel The Apothecary's Daughter which has been out in Hardback and Kindle for some time, finally comes out in Paperback tomorrow (2nd). Although a quick check on Amazon (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Apothecarys-Daughter-Charlotte-Betts/dp/0749954493/) indicates that they've jumped the gun by a few hours and that it's already available for purchase.If you'd like a signed copy of the novel and would like to meet Charlotte in person then you will find her a Waterstones in Newbury on Saturday 11th February between 11am and 3pm. The rest of Wordwatchers will be dipping in and out for moral support.

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Charlotte features in Newbury Weekly News

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There's a lovely article in this week's Newbury Weekly News about Charlotte, the most recent member of Wordwatchers to have publishing success. Timed nicely to coincide with the release of the paperback edition of The Apothecary's Daughter which comes out on February 2nd (and is available, of course, from all good book shops!)There's a short article now online at NewburyToday, for those too far from Newbury to pick up a copy of the actual newspaper, available here.If you'd like to meet Charlotte in person, she's doing a book signing at Waterstones in Newbury on February 11th between 1100 and 1500.Wordwatchers are of course, hoping she'll be swamped with requests for signings, but we'll be trickling through, during the day, to keep her company and offer moral support.Note: Find The Apothecary's Daughter on Amazon here: TAD (Paperback, Hardback and Kindle editions available)

And the winner is...

...Mel!What is so particularly wonderful about this win is that Mel wrote her story about two hours before the deadline of our most recent short story competition.  Of course Mel now has absolutely no excuses for not writing as she can clearly knock out 2000 words of brilliant prose in less time than it takes to watch a film.The January meeting was possibly one of our longest ever, but we did manage to cram in a meal (Multiple "Feasts" from the Jade Cottage in Thatcham), the announcement of the winners of the aforementioned short story competition, followed by the critiques and then all the normal stuff - confessions and promises.There was also a lengthy discussion about Wordwatchers itself and what to do with our sudden and unusual position of being inundated by membership requests - we have a plan - of sorts - I think!  (Stay tuned all will be revealed once I've got it straight in my head)So once again, congratulations to the now excuse free Mel for winning as well as a big thank-you for hosting the evening.  Well done to Julian for once again taking up his bridesmaid position and to Pam for coming third (jointly, as it turns out, with me!)Also, well done to Debbie, our newest member who battled through after a 14 hour day to make it back from Windsor in time for food and the important bits of the meeting.  Also, to keep us on our toes, Debbie has also started re-writing her children's book, as per her promise, giving the rest of us the kick up the backside we sometimes need when it comes to actually fulfilling our monthly promises.Finally, with the help of the critiques I've already rewritten my short story in the hope of putting on a good show here: http://www.writersandartists.co.uk/writers/advice/stage2/competitions - it will be submitted once any additional feedback comes through from my fellow Wordwatchers.I foresee that 2012 is going to be a very exciting time for Wordwatchers.  I can't wait.

Almost time again...

Well, very unusually for Wordwatchers, our next meeting is on a Thursday.  Even more unusually, we're combining the critiques of our most recent short story competition ("Identity") with the announcement of the winner.  Normally, we'd hand in the stories, they'd be scored, we'd have a little get together, announce the winners and then, at a later meeting, critique all the stories.  Critiquing 'blind' is an interesting process since at this point I only have my suspicions of which of my fellow Wordwatchers has written which story.  I thought, with only six of us in the competition that guessing who had written which story would be accomplished with relative ease.  However, that has definitely not been the case - I knew I was doomed when I'd convinced myself that I'd definitely got Charlotte's story picked out, before realising that Charlotte wasn't even in the competition!So, I'm really looking forward to Thursday, for lots of reasons: to see my Wordwatchers friends again, to find who wrote what, to find out who won and, most importantly, to find out the rest of the group thought of my story - because it's the critique that makes you see what you didn't want to see - the mistakes, the plot holes, the dodgy grammar, and it's that, which helps hone my skills as a writer...

Time to get voting...

The latest round of WordWatchers short stories are now written, collated, bound and ready for voting on. Results will be revealed sometime in January.  Good luck everyone!Identity Competition     The WordWatchers' Short Story competition runs every six months, open to members only, with stories submitted anonymously and judged in classic Eurovision style (vote for everyone but yourself, award most points to your favourite and then continue down to 1 for your least favourite).  Top 3 stories get called out.This year we've chosen a theme that's also being run in a national competition so we'll be submitting in time for this one too.  Let's see how we get on.