Shamelessly Plagiarizing (Plugging) Kristen Lamb

Not that she needs it…

Kristen Lamb is my new hero. I heard about her and her social marketing book for writers, We Are Not Alone (WANA) on a Bob Mayer online course I recently took (Bob is not too shabby either).

As soon as I bought the book, the buzz started. Or maybe it had already started and I just noticed it. Kristen Lamb this, Kristen Lamb that. Suddenly everyone was talking about Kristen Lamb. And it's no wonder. We Are Not Alone is awesome.

For maybe a year or two (or three) now, I've been baffled by Facebook and Twitter, wondering what I was supposed to do with them and how they could possibly help me my writing career. In WANA, Kristen explains everything I needed to know in an entertaining style that makes it painless and fun.

I was so taken by her approach to social networking, that when Tamara LeBlanc mentioned Kristen's blog, I had to stop by.

So much good stuff!

One of the funniest articles Kristen has written is called, Twitter Tuesday–Twintroverts & Twextroverts.

In this article (as elsewhere), Kristen declares herself to be an ENFP (Extroverted Intuitive Feeling Perceiver). Maybe that's why I connect with her. I am an INFP (Introverted Intuitive Feeling Perceiver). So close and yet so far.

I won't go into the NFP part, but I must say that I am most definitely a Twintorvert and have been mystwified and even twerrified of Twitter (sorry, Kristen’s post does that to you) for a long time.

Kristen claims, “The beauty of Twitter is that human interaction is on YOUR terms, and I find that often transforms the shyest introvert into a wild Twitter party animal.” I don't know about that.

Remembered the beast in the old Bugs Bunny cartoons? You know, the hairy monster that was so scary until he looked into the camera and said, "People? Awwwww!” And then he ran away and hid?

That's me. Well, I hope not the hairy monster part.

And yet, I need human interaction. Don't we all? The good part is that I've always been better at expressing myself in written form than face-to-face.

So after reading WANA, I held my breath, signed up, logged in, and began socializing with my new friends. And it wasn't that bad. In fact, it was downright fun. It's great reading about everyone's doings, giving encouragement, drooling over pictures of the cutest pets in the world.

And now? I've fallen in love with Facebook, and often get sucked into its time warp. I've even done a bit of Twittering. But I find it hard to keep up both every day, what with writing projects, contests to enter, Petit Fours and Hot Tamales (my wonderful group blog) to keep up with, etc. etc. It isn't easy to carve out the time from the little slice of time I have.

In a recent post, Bob Mayer said the number one key to self publishing success is consistency. Thanks, Bob. Well, I guess he's right. But persistence can lead to consistency, can't it?

One thing we can all be consistent about is getting back up on our horse when we fall off. Whether that's the  social networking horse, or the writing every day horse, or the exercising horse, or any other personal or professional horse, uh, goal, we may have. It doesn't matter if we blunder once in awhile as long as we keep getting back in the game.

Kristen has convinced me that reaching out to others and building a community is well worth the time and effort.

Are you with me? If you are, take the social networking pledge.
Stand up, hold your hands in front of your heart and the sign of the hash tag (#), and repeat after me.

I solemnly swear to do my best to Tweet and Facebook and blog every day without fail. And if I miss a day, I will Tweet and Facebook and blog the next day. And the next after that. And the next after that. So help me, Google.

There's no going back now. Are you ready? Then get ready, get set, network!

How to Move Columns in TweetDeck

I'm usually pretty good with software, but social networking often leaves me baffled (read: "feeling like an idiot"). You'd think I'd be used to that after over a decade in the computer field, but no.

After reading Kristen Lamb's terrific book, We Are Not Alone, I got excited and downloaded TweetDeck at the same time I first created my Twitter account.

Yikes! Talk about jumping into the deep end of the pool.

My first mistake was to simply type the word "writing" into one of the Search columns. Holy Moly there's a lot of tweeting about "writing" going on in the world! Freaked me out, so after I figured out how to delete the column, I re-read Kristen's advice and realized I should be using hashtags (#) in my Search columns.

That worked out better. Now I've got a column for #amwriting and #amediting, and of course, #MyWANA. But I still didn't like the way my columns were organized. TweetDeck came with stuff I didn't want in my line of vision when I opened it up. But today while scrutinizing my TweetDeck columns, I came across this link: Patrick Thunstrom's TweetDeck Learning Guide. There's some great stuff in there. Wish I'd started with that!

After reading a few of Patrick's terrific posts, I was emboldened to look around and discovered this neat little icon on the bottom of each column.

See the arrow that points to the left? Just click it and it will move the column over to the left. Voila!


And now my TweetDeck looks like this:

I don't know if anyone else has the TweetDeck issues I've had, but just in case, I thought I'd share. If your TweetDeck columns aren't where you want them, try it out.

If you have any other TweetDeck advice you'd like to share, please leave it in a comment. And check out Patrick's Guide!

Love to All and Happy Networking!

Linsey

Kindles, and eBooks, and Indies, oh my!

Everywhere I look these days, I hear something new about "The Digital Revolution." "Embrace it with excitement, not fear," Suzanne Brockmann advised at a recent GRW meeting where she was a guest speaker (and a fabulous one, I have to add.) I agree.

Since my last update on Smashwords, Barry Eisler has turned down a $500K advance to self-publish, Amanda Hocking has an offer for a $2 million contact with St. Martin's Press and movie rights, to boot, and J A Konrath is probably giggling to himself, saying "I told you so."

Me? Well, I haven't self-pubbed anything but my four FREE short stories on Smashwords. Right now, I'm working on a third book in The Clever Detective series, which will be longer, and delve into Stacey's character and background more. I'm thinking of pricing it at 99 cents.

Anyone have any thoughts on that? I'd love to hear what you think.

To give you an idea, here are my download numbers from last year, compared to now:

Downloads as of October 30, 2010

The West Wind Blows
Price: FREE
Downloads: 519

Careful What You Wish For
Price: FREE
Downloads: 311

The Clever Detective
Price: FREE
Downloads: 260

Downloads as of April 4, 2011

The West Wind Blows
4 stars
Price: FREE
Downloads: 1,269

Careful What You Wish For
3.33 stars
Price: FREE
Downloads: 629

The Clever Detective
4.5 stars
Price: FREE
Downloads: 1,399

Clever is as Clever Does
4.5 stars
Price: FREE
Downloads: 1,058

I'm not in Barry's or Amanda's class (yet!), but I'm just getting started. So far, I'm excited.

How do you feel about the digital revolution?

Smashwords Update

by Linsey Lanier

I thought I'd let everyone know how my shorts are doing on Smashwords. (If you missed my first post on the subject, you can check it out here.)

Since Labor Day, here's how many downloads I've had as of right now:

The West Wind Blows
Price: FREE
Downloads: 519

Careful What You Wish For
Price: FREE
Downloads: 311

The Clever Detective
Price: FREE
Downloads: 260

I put my latest short work: Clever is as Clever Does out about a week ago. It got 47 downloads the first day and is now at 133.

This is a total of 1,223 downloads. I don't know about you, but I think this is exciting. It won't pay the bills. Okay, with Free, it won't pay ANY bills, but it's fun and it gets your name out there.

Have any of you had any Smashwords adventures? Tell me about them.

Clever is as Clever Does

by Linsey Lanier

Hi there! You may have arrived here from my link on Petit Fours and Hot Tamales, for the 2010 October Treasure Hunt.

This story, "Clever is as Clever Does," is no longer here. But don't fear. You can get it for free in a variety of formats on Smashwords.

I have several short stories there and will be publishing more good reads in the future. Hope you enjoy them.

Linsey's Excellent Smashwords Adventure

I've been wanting to experiment with a bit of self-publishing for some time now. So this Labor Day weekend, I decided to take the plunge and do something on Smashwords.

Smashwords? What's that?

I've heard the name "Smashwords" bandied about for some time, but I wasn't exactly sure what it was until I looked into it.

Turns out, Smashwords is a do-it-yourself e-publishing platform that allows you to self-publish almost anything online. Fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoirs -- you name it. Smashwords is also a distribution platform, which means they help you get your stuff "out there."

Formatting

The bad news is that you have to format your book to their specifications. Well, it's not so bad. It's just not what you're used to if you've been submitting to editors and entering contests.

Small paragraph indents. Plain fonts. Not too much space between paragraphs. This is all so your book will look good in a myriad of e-reading mechanisms like the Kindle or an iPhone. If you're thinking about going with Smashwords, I HIGHLY recommend you read their Style Guide from cover to cover. It's thorough and well-written. Follow it carefully. It helps to know Word pretty well, but the guide tells you everything you need to know.

The good news is that Smashwords converts your Word doc into a bunch of diferent formats. EPUB, MOBI, PDF, RTF, HTML, and more. I say, the more the merrier! Your friends can read you on the beach.

The First Book

So I downloaded the Smashwords Style Guide, read it, worked over my manuscript, got a cover together. At long last, I was ready. I held my breath and clicked Publish. It told me I was something like number 1384 in the queue. Guess a lot of people had decided to publish over Labor Day weekend. It took all night to do it, but the next morning, I was e-self-published. Whoohoo!

The first book was the short story I wrote for the February Challenge on Petit Fours and Hot Tamales. Here's the excerpt:

After six years as a private investigator, Stacey Alexander has the strangest day of her life when she falls down a hollow tree and meets her new client, a nutty old dude with a crown who thinks he's a king. She'd climb right out of there, except that the crazy dude wants her to find his son, the Prince. And that is one hot-looking male. She'd be crazy herself not to take this case.

I priced it at the minimum allowed, 99 cents. Too much? C'mon, that's less than a McDonald's cheeseburger on sale. When you eat out, you tip more than a buck, don't you? A writer works and sweats over a story at least as much as a waitress does over a customer, right? Okay. Enough tacky sales pressure. If you'd like a copy of The Clever Detective, you can download it here.

That felt good. Now for more books.

The first book went out into the e-world without a hitch, so I decided, why not put two more short stories I had written out there? These were very short, so I offered them for free. One is the story I wrote for last year's October Treasure Hunt. (By the way, I'm doing a sequel to The Clever Detective for this year's OTH.)

Here's the synopsis for The West Wind Blows:

Halloween. Not Danica Marshall's favorite time of year. Especially when her young son is so upset. But when an old heartache from the past returns in the flesh, she wonders what their future might hold.

While I was on a roll, I put out a new short story I wrote that no one but my beta reader has seen. It's called Careful What You Wish For.

Christina Vallente, a woman who once was one of the city's top architects, has had a very bad day at work. But after she comes home to confide in her husband, she can't imagine how much worse it's going to get.

Intrigued? Download a free copy here.

Free is Good

While the 99 cent book has only 7 downloads (no purchases) (see cheeseburger pitch above), after less than 24 hours, Careful What You Wish For has an astonishing total of 73 downloads. The West Wind Blows has 70. That's amazing. Someone even gave me a three-star review for both books.

I'm becoming convinced Smashwords is a great way to get your name out there.

What's Next?

Who knows? No Hollywood agents are lined up on my door and no editors are calling with million dollar contracts -- yet. So I guess I'll keep writing. I've fallen in love with the short format and intend to write more short stories in the future. I'll let you know when I have something new out there.

So what's your opinion of e-publishing? Self-publishing? Do you like to read longer stories or shorter ones? Which do you prefer to write? Give me your take on Smashwords.

Minimalism in Loglines - Summarizing your story in as few words as possible

I write too long. I know it. My descriptions are too lengthy, my characters talk too much and explain things that don't need to be explained. And don't even get me started on inner monologue. As Emperor Joseph II might say, "too many words!"

I'm working on it. Really, I am.

The area I've been focusing on lately is the dreaded LOGLINE (half-cousin to the dreaded synopsis, niece of the terrifying elevator speech, and ugly step-sister of the panic-inducing conference pitch).

First Try

A logline is a short, one line summary of your story. I hate summaries, if you haven't guessed. But they have to be done, so I dug up one from the manuscript I'm about to market, called Chicago Cop.

It was 144 words. 3 paragraphs. Not what you'd call pithy. Sigh.

That's not a Logline

Some people say your logline should be one sentence and under 25 words. Ugh. I've never been able to do that. Until... one night recently I was searching AMC's TV schedule and I found this blurb for, of all things, The Matrix:

A computer hacker learns his world is a computer simulation.

Could you get more minimal than that? Yes, it's missing all the cool stuff. No mention of the wonderful special effects in the film, its philosophical undertones, or even how cute Keanu Reeves is. BUT it hints at a lot and that IS what the story is about at it's core. It's an anchor. And that's what I need when I write. Something to remind me what the central, core idea of my story. Something to pull in my wandering mind and make it stick to the point.

So I decided to forget all about characterization, conflict, GMC, etc. etc and just write one sentence about my story. Instead of shooting for the moon, I just kind of freewrote it. Here's what I came up with:

Chicago detective discovers the Mob is after her for revenge.

Of course, you don't know this story, but for me, this does hit the nail on the head. It's what this story is all about.

This was a very liberating process. Writing that sentence was kind of a revelation. If I'd written it beforehand, it would have kept me centered as I wrote the manuscript and might have made the book easier to write.

Good enough?

The sentence above is a terrific anchor for writing the book. But is it good enough for selling it? Probably not.

In his wonderfully entertaining book Save the Cat!, Blake Snyder contends, "A good logline is the coin of the realm in Hollywood and can be traded like currency with those who appreciate it."

In his brilliant work Emotional Structure, Peter Dunne says, "If you know your idea as if it were second nature they [the studios] will trust you to stay on point with it and deliver what they're buying. Studios will invest a lot of money in you and your idea, and having confidence in your concise thinking is critical to their comfort in making that investment."

How to spice things up?

Second Try

In her online article , How to write a logline E Hughes mentions that movie posters advertised the Matrix this way: "The fight for the future begins." (The poster is way cool. Even though it's an old movie, it gives me chill bumps).

Hughs embellishes the poster line this way:

"The fight for the future begins when a computer hacker learns the world exists in the sophisticated alternate reality of a computer program called 'The Matrix'".

Hmm. Not that far from:

A computer hacker learns his world is a computer simulation.

It's that sentence on steroids. The main punch comes from the keyword "fight." Not surprising. "Fight" equals conflict. And conflict equals story. Could I get "fight" into my logline? I gave it another try.

Chicago police detective Maggie Delaney fights an unknown killer bent on revenge.

Fight" doesn't work so well in this sentence. How about this?

Chicago police detective Maggie Delaney tracks down a Mob hit man who is after her for revenge.

Better, but it lacks urgency. Here's another try:

In Chicago Cop, police detective Maggie Delaney must track down a Mob hit man bent on revenge before he strikes again.

Okay, but it doesn't have the uniqueness of the story, especially not the way the Matrix logline does. Once more with feeling:

In Chicago Cop, police detective Maggie Delaney must track down a Mob hit man bent on revenge against her for putting away his boss.

Eureka! That's it. Chicago Cop is a detective thriller, so "tracks down" seemed to work better than "fight" in my last sentence above. And that sentence? 21 words! Now that's a logline.

To Summarize

I've learned a lot from this exercise. Writing a logline not only seems more doable, it's kind of exciting. Here's what I intend to do in the future:

1. Relax, let down my guard and freewrite my single summary sentence.
2. Then find the central conflict in my story and try to use the word "fight" in the sentence.
3. If "fight" doesn't work, use a verb that's central to the core conflict of my genre.

I hope this exploration has inspired you or at least given you some food for thought when you have to write a summary of your next story.

So how about it? Do you struggle with loglines the way I do? Do you write them at the beginning or end of your process? Do you have one you'd like to share? I'd love to see some.