Acckk!! Where's That List? By Chelle Cordero

Organization, or rather the extreme lack of it, is the bane of my existence. As a self-employed – and too broke to hire assistants – writer, I have to keep track of my different projects, deadlines, invoices, bills and other “I gotta do it(s)”. Organization has NEVER been my forte. I am tempted to say I thrive on chaos, but that only seems to expand the piles of papers and JUNK. sigh…

Yet to survive as a writer, or at least manage to hang on to the dream, I have to keep track of what I am doing and when it needs to be done. Sometimes it seems a bit overwhelming, but I’ve learned a few tricks.

To-do lists – very important. Not only does the list serve as a reminder of those things to be done, it also helps keep you on track. I’m sure you’ve heard the joke of the person who started out looking to address a letter, but they needed their glasses – while looking for their glasses they came across something else they meant to do, and so on until the day was over and they sat down exhausted at the table to find they never addressed or mailed the letter. I hate to admit this, but that really should be my biography, truly, that’s me.

I keep getting distracted by things I come across during my pursuit to accomplish just one thing. My to-do list helps me snap back to what I am supposed to be doing and helps me keep my focus. Besides, I leave plenty of room on the bottom of the list to write in all the things I came across to distract me so I will eventually get those done as well. And I don’t try to finish the list every day although it is nice when I’ve accomplished the bulk of it; I just copy the balance to the next day’s list.

Calendars can help keep you afloat. I carry one in my pocketbook and keep a full size one on my desk – these are regular old fashioned write on it yourself calendars. I also maintain a webmail calendar that I can set up to send me periodic email or text-to-phone reminders. Occasionally I do have to sit and coordinate each calendar to make sure I have the same info (ie: deadline dates and appointments) on each. Having a calendar at hand is a great way to make sure I am not double-booking myself or missing important dates. I also include social obligations and religious holidays since those can affect my availability. Some of my friends use the electronic calendar feature of their phones, that can work, but I prefer something I can easily look at and scribble on at will.

I keep a “project book” next to my desk. There are various methods you can use here – keep your lists individually, by date, by client (for multiple assignments) or just assign a sheet or two for each month and list an upcoming deadline appropriately. If I scheduled a blog visit, have a deadline, am hosting a blog stop, have an appointment or anything that will alter my time commitments, I list it here. This is in addition to my little note on my calendar(s). I check things off and even make a few notations about the job and or results so I can refer to it the next time I have a similar task.

When you are feeling overwhelmed with too many things to do, the stress builds and causes distractions and headaches. I work at home so my distractions may include family or neighbors, social phone calls or housework you just know has to be done. Caller ID and answering machines should be used to the fullest extent when you don’t need to be interrupted – I’ve gone so far as to turn off the ringer when I am really feeling frazzled.

As for interruptions from family, close a door or even hang a sign if there is no door saying “I am at work” and demand compliance. Plan a timed schedule for any must-do’s that you simply fee you can’t ignore and don’t devote more time than allowed. Finally, if you are really overwhelmed and stressed and reacting badly (as in you can’t seem to accomplish anything), take a break – yep, walk away from your desk and work and relax for at least fifteen minutes.

I hope you’ll find some of these helpful tips useful. For me, I am getting back to work – WHAT WAS I DOING when I thought to write this little ditty?

Chelle Cordero is a multi-published author with Vanilla Heart Publishing and a full-time freelance writer with local and national newspapers and magazines. She resides in New York’s Hudson Valley with her husband, family and three spoiled pussycats. In addition to her books and articles, Chelle pens a weekly writing course available by subscription at Amazon Kindle Blogs http://bit.ly/Wmg8W and volunteers with her local ambulance corps as an EMT. Her website is http://chellecordero.com/

Real Fiction Characters by Charmaine Gordon

Her name is Diane. She’s beautiful and she’s fat. She’s also the nurse and receptionist at my family doctor’s office. When I signed in this morning for a follow-up visit, after the usual happy exchange, Diane beckoned me to lean in close. “Please write a book about fat women. All the books have thin pretty women who attract stud-handsome men. And we,” her blue eyes filled with tears, “sorry, but why can’t we be loved for who we are?” She closed the little glass door. Intimacy shut down.

As I waited and began writing a story noodling around in my head, I wrote, “the woman laid her built-for-action body on the beach towel.” I reread my words, pictured Diane’s lovely face—her words, “Why can’t we be loved for who we are. . .” I drew a line through built-for-action and wrote built-for-comfort.

The question is why not? How come every character has to be the stereotype. Heroine-at least pretty with a great shape, Hero-at least attractive, tall, built well and so on. What about the greater population who make up our world; people in wheelchairs, ones who need walkers or braces on legs or arms. Most of us have redeeming features, if not on our facades, then inside.

I will write a story about an overweight woman. She’ll be feisty, funny, smart, and sometimes sad. Maybe a guy will trip over her as she dozes on the beach, half buried by heavy wet sand by a band of little kids who wanted to cover the sleeping lady.

The dance of life continues with all steps forward-no slip sliding as in the past. I am excited,over-joyed,ecstatic. Get the picture? This author is one happy woman. To Be Continued, my first book with Vanilla Heart Publishing, has gotten good reviews. Women write that they cheer when the straying husband gets what's coming to him. My latest novel, Starting Over, romance/suspense will be released in print in just a few days. Both books are also available in ebook format, Kindle, and Nook.

This is where you can find me: http://AuthorCharmaineGordon.xanga.com
Vanilla Heart Publishing Author Page

Four Reasons to Go Independent by Smoky Trudeau

You’ve written a book. Congratulations! It’s a big job; most writers give up on their novels about the time they reach chapter seven. Sticking it out to the end is an accomplishment to be proud of.

Now what do you do?

Writers are often shocked to realize writing the words THE END doesn’t mean their work is done. There are still things they need to do in order to make their dream of being published authors a reality. And there is a right way and a wrong way to do these things.

Here is where many writers flounder. Blame Hollywood—television and the movies glamorize the writing life. On film, Joe Writer finishes his novel, submits it to Major Publishing Company, gets offered a $50,000 cash advance, and is flown to New York to meet with his editor and polish the book. Once the book actually is released, he gets sent on a whirlwind book tour around the country, with stops at The Today Show and Oprah.

Reality check: the majority of new books published each year are published by small independent presses, not the major publishing houses. And small presses don’t normally have the resources to offer any cash advance at all, let alone one in the tens of thousands of dollars. Editing services are limited, once again due to budgetary constraints, and while many small presses are happy to help their authors find venues to do a book tour, you’ll have to foot the travel expenses yourself.

So why bother publishing with a small press? What’s in it for you, the author?

(1) First and foremost, you stand a much better chance of getting your book published. Major publishers rarely take a chance on unknown authors. For independents, unknown writers are their bread and butter.

(2) Independent presses are more personal. You’ll get to know your publisher, and they’ll get to know you.

(3) Many indies are reluctant to work with agents, so that cuts out the middleman—and the 15 percent of your royalties they’ll take before you ever see a check. No agent means you get to keep 100 percent of your hard earned royalties.

(4) Because they are small, an independent press is much more likely to work with you to get exposure for your books. One book fails for a major press and it’s not a big deal. One book fails for an independent, and it is sorely felt on their bottom line.

In my next post, I’ll talk about etiquette for authors: the right way—and the wrong way—to query a publisher.


Smoky Trudeau is the author of the newly released Observations of an Earth Mage, a collection of photos, essays, and poems celebrating our beautiful planet earth. She is also the author of two novels, Redeeming Grace and The Cabin, as well as two books for writers, Front-Word, Back-Word, Insight Out: Lessons on Writing the Novel Lurking Inside Your From Start to Finish, and Left Brained, Write Brained: 366 Writing Prompts and Exercises, all from Vanilla Heart Publishing. You can learn more about Smoky at www.smokytrudeau.com, or at her blog on Xanga, http://authorsmokytrudeau.xanga.com. You can also look her up on Facebook.

A Writer’s Life: Living Amongst “the Others” by Chelle Cordero

~~~Every now and then I feel like an alien living in my home. Often misunderstood, mostly tolerated and usually hidden away. When family members are asked what I do, their voices tend to lower, they avert their eyes and finally, after shuffling their feet, whisper in a clandestine tone – “She’s a writer”. Their words are spoken in the same clandestine tone you might whisper of the black sheep of the family who is currently serving time in prison.

~~~Non-writers just don’t understand that a writer must write in order to breathe. This is not something we simply choose to do, this is something we must do. I will sit for hours at my desk in front of my computer screen and pummel my keyboard. If the power goes out, I emit a terrifying yowl as if someone were cutting off my fingers. My characters become as real to me as the nephew I send a birthday card to.

~~~I will find myself immersed in emotion as I put tearful words into the dialogue, I will laugh uncontrollably as I type a conversation between humorous characters, I will ponder for hours as I help a heroine through her dramatic dilemma. The words on paper, or on my computer screen, are no longer mere letters – they are thoughts, actions, deeds, misfortunes, passion, pleas and life and death deciding moments.

~~~I become fully entrenched in the lives of my fictional characters and the line between my day to day existence becomes fuzzy. Just one more thought before I get up to tend to some droll household chore – just one more thought turns to pages. I dream for my characters, I try to think like they do, I worry about them and sometimes I even become them. Other writers understand this obsession – non writers do not.

~~~The excitement over a book signing, even when the sales are disappointing, the thrill of seeing your name emblazoned on a book cover jacket and the joy of reading words you once imagined now immortalized in black and white are all things a writer can appreciate. We are willing to put hours of our lives into sitting and typing while we are never sure that the finished product will actually pay off. Offers of publication, distribution and virtual tours may seduce us out of our savings.

~~~The employee who appreciates regular bi-weekly direct deposits into their bank account doesn’t understand how we can manage on infrequent royalties, long overdue invoice payments and, shudder, occasional kill fees. The “others” wonder how we can stand to just “give it away” when we submit to free-ezines and non-paying web-logs just to get our names out there. And of course no bank will understand that a contributor copy of a magazine is indeed payment.

~~~The public image of an eccentric writer with a feather boa around her neck investing her mammoth royalty checks and being ferried to television appearances to promote the latest novel between spa visits may very well be a splendid fantasy; it sure isn’t real. And writers understand that. We know that the work just begins after we have typed “the end”. We actively search for agents and publishers, we partner with our publishers to market and promote, we maintain web-sites and solicit interviews to keep “the buzz” going.

~~~Some of us may have to work at other jobs in order to support our writing habit – some may be fortunate enough to have forty or more hours a week to put into our writing. No matter what our circumstances may be, we need to be creative when we write and we need to be pragmatic in our business. Right brain thought comes to a screeching halt in order to allow for the left brain sensibility. We cringe when our writing is called our hobby, we feel like screaming when we are asked “are you ever going to get a real job?”

~~~So we will all just muddle along writing and pouring our hearts into every word. We will get our hopes up each time we submit a query and we will stop breathing for as long as it takes to open the returned SASE. Our spouses and kids will stand at our office doors and shake their heads as we tap-tap-tap obliviously. We’ll feel accomplished when we manage to string one-hundred words together in a project that will ultimately need seventy-five-thousand. It will be an honor beyond anything else we’ve done to sign a book or to receive a fan letter.

~~~…and a writer understands.

~~~~~~~~

Chelle Cordero is blessed to be a full-time writer and a self-proclaimed hopeless romantic. She has eight novels published with Vanilla Heart Publishing, short stories in three anthologies and numerous articles in various North American newspapers and magazines. Chelle also teaches an online writing course available through Kindle subscription.

Write Like An Earth Mage by Smoky Trudeau

My latest book, Observations of an Earth Mage, is a collection of essays, poems, and photographs on nature. I am, at heart, a nature writer.

But you don’t have to be a nature writer to need to know how to write about nature. It’s the rare novel that doesn’t at least have some element of nature in it, and writers of all genres need to know how to write about it convincingly, even writers who never get closer to nature than their local city park. Of course, there’s not enough room in a blog column to teach an entire course in nature writing, but here are some tips to make sure your scenes evoke Mother Nature in her finest light, as well as some exercises to get your creative juices flowing:

Use specific, descriptive language. Descriptive, specific language is what distinguishes beautiful prose from the mundane. While this is true for every element of fiction writing, nowhere is it more true than with setting description. Yes, I could have written the sentence, “It was foggy at the river,” as the opening to Chapter 22 of my novel, Redeeming Grace, and readers would have gotten a general idea of the setting. But I didn’t write that. I wrote, “The cool, early autumn air hugged the still-warm sandy shores of the Choptank, enveloping the river in a surreal, steamy fog. Water droplets clung to each blade of grass in the yard, dangling precariously like a precious crystal earring from a dainty lobe. The air smelled sweet, a sticky mixture of fish and pine.” Specific, descriptive language turns a bland sentence into words worth savoring and creates a three-dimensional, color picture in the reader’s mind.

Engage the senses. When you take a hike in an apple orchard in full bloom, you smell the blossoms. When you walk along the ocean shore, you hear gulls overhead and waves crashing on the beach. Make sure your readers can smell, hear, or even taste your nature descriptions. In my novel The Cabin, I could have written: “Corrine walked into the forest,” and left it at that. But I didn’t. What I wrote was, “The first thing she noticed was the smell. It was the same scent she had breathed in every time she walked in the forest, but this time, she could break down the individual essences perfuming the air: rotting rhododendron blossoms mixed with moss-covered granite and cold, crisp water. She had never noticed granite had a scent—like the air during a thunderstorm, vaguely electrical—or that water could smell cold.”

Don’t get carried away with this, of course. You don’t have to engage all five senses at once! But don’t rely only on the visual.

Use unexpected, surprising phrasing and metaphors. A good trick here is, when describing an inanimate object in nature, such as a rock, liken it to something animate. You might write something like, “The granite rock was like a gray whale in the middle of the meadow, swimming in a sea of big blue stem and purple coneflowers.” The rock is inanimate; a gray whale is animate. Doing the opposite works well, too: when describing something living, like an animal or a flower, liken it to an inanimate object: “The flock of Canada geese overhead looked like the Blue Angels doing maneuvers at an air show.” Another trick is to compare something small to something large: “When the hiker wandered too close to her babies, the mother marmot charged like a rhinoceros.”

Do your research. I recently read a lovely book that was set in what today is Turkey several thousand years BCE. The main character had a pet cockatoo. What’s wrong with that? Cockatoos are from Australia. There would have been no cockatoos in Turkey five thousand years ago. If you are writing a nature scene in a work of fiction, please remember to ensure the plants, animals, and weather phenomena you write about actually exist in the place you are writing about. Don’t have grizzly bears attacking tourists in Shenandoah National Park; don’t put triggerfish in the Great Lakes, and don’t set white Christmas stories in Sydney.

Beware of purple prose. Purple prose is prose that is so over the top, so flowery, it breaks the flow of your essay, story, or poem by drawing attention to itself. It often is exaggerated, overly sentimental, and evocative beyond the call of duty. To avoid falling into the purple prose trap, evoke only one or two senses at a time. Use only one metaphor to describe something, not five. In short, don’t get mushy.

Practice, practice, practice. Learning to write about nature (or anything else, for that matter) is no different from mastering any other art form. Picasso’s first painting probably wasn’t a masterpiece. Chopin had to learn to play a scale before he could compose and perform his piano masterpieces. Rudolph Nureyev took dance lessons before he became a world-class ballet dancer. Anything worth doing is worth learning how to do well, and that means practicing!

Ultimately, the best way to learn how to write about nature is to spend time in the woods, on the prairies, at the seashore, or in the garden. Nature is as close as your backyard or city park. Second, read nature writing. Read modern day nature anthologies, like my Observations of an Earth Mage. Read the classics, like Thoreau’s Walden or A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. Read nature poetry. Read novels where nature plays a thematic role, like Moby Dick. Then, go to your keyboard and write!

Smoky Trudeau is the author of the recently released Observations of an Earth Mage, a collection of prose, poetry, and photographs celebrating the beauty and splendor of the natural world. She is also the author of two novels, Redeeming Grace and The Cabin, as well as two books on writing, all from Vanilla Heart Publishing. An ardent outdoorswoman with a deep reverence for nature, she lives in California with her husband, daughter, and a menagerie of animals, both domestic and wild, in a ramshackle cottage in the woods overlooking the San Gabriel Valley and the mountains beyond. When she isn’t working, Smoky spends her time hiking in the mountains, camping in the Sierras, splashing in tidepools, and fighting the urge to speak in haiku.