“There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.”
-Charles Dickens; Oliver Twist
So, everyone says not to judge a book by its cover, and that can be true, but other times, it’s just not.
The other day, someone posted a cover mock-up of their book on a facebook group and someone immediately commented that the woman on the cover was a Mary Sue. My initial response to that was, why is every female character automatically a Mary Sue when we know absolutely nothing about her?
Yes, I decided to do another giveaway for a copy of my new book, Chasing the Sunrise. You can enter a number of ways! Just visit my FACEBOOK Page for all the details!
As always, Chasing the Sunrise is also available for purchase at the following locations:
“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
So said Douglas Adams, and so say many people. Deadlines, however, can be a great incentive to actually getting things done. In college, everyone procrastinates their paper until the night before it’s due, but it gets done one way or another. Without that deadline, it would never get done.
When it comes to writing, however, a lot of us don’t have deadlines. The desire to write a novel is cancelled out by the effort it would take to actually accomplish this goal, and so we keep saying we want to and years pass and no novel gets written. I said in high school that I wanted to write the “next great American novel” but of course, that never came to pass back then. Why? Because I had no reason to write it, no deadline pressing in on me.
Luckily, there are programs like NaNoWriMo, or currently, Camp NaNo, to help us put deadlines on things. Deadlines are great for anything in life, really, anything that you need to get done. Why do deadlines work? Well, usually there’s a consequence if you don’t meet them. Give yourself those consequences such as taking away something you like if you don’t. Having self-discipline is an important part of being a writer, and it’s not always easy for everyone to do it.
Even for short-term goals, using deadlines can help. I particularly like writeordie.com for that. It forces you to write or else there are consequences! Useful and to the point.
In the end, it’s all up to you to determine the best way for you to work and actually write those novels you talk about. Use deadlines or something else, but do what works for you and don’t procrastinate!
Genres are those things you learned about in middle school that somehow categorize large numbers of books into one neat pile. Aside from being hard for middle schoolers to pronounce (it’s French for “type” or “kind”), there about a million genres out there and each can be mixed and matched to refer to a specific type of book.
I am probably one of the biggest avoiders of this rule. Given the choice, I would stay at my computer most of the hours of the day, whether surfing the internet, writing, or watching television. In fact, some days I do.
As a freelance writer, most of my work takes place on the computer and on the internet, so I do spend a vast chunk of time with my laptop open. Some people seem to think that’s not healthy, but what do they know, eh? Actually, they’re probably right, and anyway, getting away from technology can actually give a much-needed boost of energy and creativity.
