NaNoWriMo

While many people are planning holiday feasts and last minute shopping, writers are silent. NaNoWriMo aka NaNo aka National Novel Writing Month is a huge event in the writing world, and writers strive to reach their daily goal of 1500 words. At the end of 30 days, if they reach their daily goals, they win…

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Scrivener

Scrivener is, at the most basic of explanation, a three-ring binder available on Windows, Mac, and iOS. It has the text capabilities of Word mixed with a corkboard, sub-folders, character descriptions, and dozens of other things like giant scrapbook, and it's all customizable to fit your style. It Adapts To You You want a different…

Retrieving Your Cover Template

For indies, we want to make our team's jobs easier, and the best way to help out our cover designers is to have the cover template available for them. IngramSpark For IngramSpark, you'll go to this link—https://myaccount.ingramspark.com/Portal/Tools/CoverTemplateGenerator Fill in the information. IngramSpark Cover Template ISBN is the ISBN. Publisher Reference Number—If you have a lot…

Online Writer Events

You may be familiar with NaNoWriMo. It shines in November as it lites up hashtags across social media, but they also have "mini camps" during the year as well. Maybe you like the accountability aspect, the social/networking aspect, or the challenge to push yourself. Did you know NaNoWriMo isn't the only writer challenges set up…

Style Guides

MLA, CMoS, AP, ACS, APA (not to be confused with AP), and countless others are thrown around from grade school through college and into the professional world. Some writers complain about the different style guides, giving little thought as to their purpose. The guidelines—aka house styles—provide uniformity by topic and intent. Some house styles are…

Why Can’t Readers Leave Reviews

You've sent out ARCs or did a giveaway, and inevitably, there are readers who can't leave reviews. Amazon does a good job laying out the guidelines, but few people take the time to read them. (https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201929730 and various subsets.) Here are the top reasons your readers can't leave reviews: They are trying to leave a…

How Much Social Media Do You Need?

From websites to social media, writers are pulled in dozens of directions. It can be confusing and time consuming. So what do I need? The answer might surprise you. If you're confident in having a social media presence the first thing you should do is make sure your username is available on all the big…

Critique Groups Away From FB

Social media has a lot of perks, but it also comes with a downside. It's a rabbit hole of information and various interests, and it's easy to get caught up in various things. To help reduce that itch to explore when you're supposed to be working on your WIPs, here are some recommended critique groups.…

5-Alarm Heat for Romance

Romance works have long been on the forefront of changes in the writing world. The readership is one of the largest by genre, and that hunger functions in books as porn has for the evolution in film. Romance books are a spectrum of heat from sweet and clean to 5-alarm and spicy. There isn't a…

Increase Counts Like A Champ

Why do writers feel like it's a competition when it comes to how many words they write in a day, a session, an hour, and every other measurable standard? Perhaps it's because we feel like we're standing still while others are accomplishing their dreams. Maybe that's not your reason. I see it every day in…