The dreaded query letter. No one wants to write this yet it is a very important part of the writing process. I wanted to get a specific definition for a query so I thought what better way to find it than by doing a Google search and here is what I found: "A query letter is a formal letter sent to magazine editors, literary agents and sometimes publishing houses or companies. Writers write query letters to propose writing ideas." A query is basically your first step in the door. That all … [Read more...]
P is for Pseudonym #atozchallenge
A pseudonym. How many writers out there today have them? I know several people within ACFW use them for different purposes. One writer that comes to mind that uses pseudonyms is Nora Roberts. She was actually born Eleanor Marie Robertson. She uses the Nora Roberts name for her romances. She uses J.D. Robb for her suspense stuff. She's also written under Jill March and in the UK she writes under Sarah Hardesty. A pseudonym can keep you private life separate from your writing life or … [Read more...]
O is for Outline
Or as I like to call it: Plotter. In writing a novel you have what we writers like to call either Pantsers or Plotters or somewhere in between. A pantser is someone who writes their novel, as they say, by the seat of their pants. In other words, there is absolutely no plotting of the novel whatsoever. They write their novel as it comes to them. However, with a plotter, it 180 degrees in the opposite direction where they outline everything before they write a single word for their … [Read more...]
K is for Kindle Matchbook
How many of shop on Amazon today for a new book or whatever else it is we might be looking for? I have a feeling the majority of us go to this cyber giant for whatever it is we plan to read next. Are you one who still like to read the old school way of either a hardback or paperback book? I used to be like that up until about a little over a year ago when I needed to walk on my treadmill to help with hip pain issues I'd been having. However, either walking with a book in hand or even trying … [Read more...]
I is for ISBN (International Standard Book Number)
As I sat here thinking toward the end of March what I'd do for each letter of the alphabet over the month of April, one of those letters that's hard to find a word for is the letter 'I'. I wanted to keep my theme going with either literary terms or something writing related and the only thing I could come up with was ISBN. When you're a writer and one day your book gets published, that little number is huge. It's almost like a fingerprint in that an ISBN is unique to each book published. It … [Read more...]
F is for FictionFinder.com
I thought I'd share a site with you that maybe you're not aware of. Ever want to find a really great Christian book and don't want to go to some place like Amazon to find it? You can go to this website FictionFinder.com. Fiction finder has almost every Christian author you can think of as well as every genre. You can search by title, author, ISBN, publication date, genre, social issue, or even by the type of content in the book such as how much mystery you want in a book, romance, conflict, … [Read more...]
E is for Ebook
Have you noticed the amount of ebooks now available for us to purchase today. They are so prevalent. There are so many authors going the indie route as they have more control over how their book is published, or for that matter, getting it published at all. Twenty years ago, if you wanted to see your book in print, you had to go to one of the big New York publishers and hope, that by some small miracle, they'd publish your book. Today you can go to a place like CreateSpace and publish your … [Read more...]
The Journey with Elizabeth Kitchens
Please welcome this weeks guest Elizabeth Kitchens for The Journey. She answers the question: How have you seen God work in your writing journey? As a writer of fairy tales, it’s fitting that I am under a curse. Not a curse to prick my finger on a spinning wheel’s spindle or to be a beast, but to write. But if writing is a curse, then I’ll happily live with it. Actually, what my father was referring to when he called writing “the family curse” was the frustration that happens when you’re a … [Read more...]
C is for Character Sketch
When I began to write the fiction novel I'm working on I had no clue how to really do it. There was so much I needed to learn. My true growth started after I became a member of ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) and joined the large critique group they have. Over that first month in that group it was amazing how much I had learned. Yet, I had so much more to learn and am still doing so now. I came to realize that I'm a plotter. One day I had an idea to write a quick and concise outline … [Read more...]
The Journey with H. L. Wegley
Please welcome this weeks guest H. L. Wegley for The Journey. He answers the question: How have you seen God work in your writing journey? As a meteorologist and a research scientist, for many years I wrote scientific reports, journal articles, and books. But my writing journey outside my daily work started out years later as a “noble quest”—at least that’s how I pictured it. I was determined to write the next great text for teaching Christian apologetics and then, perhaps, expand it to … [Read more...]
