Jessica Ferguson

Author, Writing Coach, Speaker

IWSG: HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!

By Leave a Comment

JOIN HERE

Today (Wednesday) is IWSG day and it’s the two year anniversary! Founder Alex Cavanaugh has a really big announcement today, something that will take this group to the next level so you might want to skip on over there to learn what it is. IWSG is over three hundred strong. I haven’t been a member for the entire two years, but I’ve loved and benefited from the months I’ve been involved. Thanks, Alex, for having a giving heart and a heart for all writers.

If you’d like to sign up for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group so you can learn from and encourage others, just click on Join Here beneath the IWSG badge. But read my post first!

I collect writer’s groups like I collect newspaper clippings, books, magazines and the other treasures that clutter my house. Just can’t seem to pass up an interesting something. I still think about the hour glass sand timer I spotted in Target in Yukon, OK, and didn’t purchase. It was an interesting something. I still want it. I keep wondering how many pages I could type in three or five minutes. Yeah, I have a timer … but not an hour glass timer.

Guess you’ve pegged me as a procrastinating hoarder. Yep, that’s me. I love, love, love collecting all sorts of little treasures … and groups… and classes. And they take up my time.

Recently I’ve joined the new Women’s Fiction Writers Association. I’ve learned a lot from their discussions on the temporary yahoo site. I have two WF novels in need of revision and the WFWA group will be teaching a course later this month on what to do with the middle of the book. That’s usually my downfall–the middle. So in 2014, I want to devote some time to these two books and their middles.

I also belong to Romance Writers of America and several of the RWA chapters; Sisters In Crime and its chapter called Guppies, and some unknown free sites that I hardly visit anymore. At the end of the year, I plan to weed out a lot of these groups. They distract me.

I’ve always been distracted in my writing–only focusing and concentrating when I absolutely have a deadline. If I don’t have a deadline, I may outline a novel one day then start playing around with short stories for Woman’s World the next day, instead of starting chapter one of the novel I outlined the day before.

So…am I A.D.D. or something? Or just unfocused? Or lazy? Why can’t I focus on mysteries or romance or women’s fiction? We all know successful writers don’t hop, skip and jump from one genre to another, never mastering any of them.

Tell me, do you have trouble focusing? What do you do to keep yourself on track? What carrot do you dangle? Has the Internet done this to us? Or do I just need professional help? Am I a sicko?

Please share your tips for staying on track because “like sands of the hour glass, these are the days of our lives.”

Book Release – TODAY!

By Leave a Comment

Today my book is up on Amazon. I didn’t schedule any blog tours, and in fact, I haven’t even announced it on Facebook yet. I have trouble promoting myself. Maybe I should pretend this book belongs to someone else. I can always sing someone else’s praises.

If you haven’t read Alex Cavanaugh’s guest post on maintaining momentum, scroll down to the previous post and read it. My problem is … I don’t have a lot of momentum to maintain!

So I’m telling my followers here … if you purchase The Last Daughter, I hope you’ll review it on Amazon, tweet about it, talk about it on GoodReads. Even if you don’t like it, I hope you’ll review it. It’s the silence that’s the killer–not the bad reviews.

This is an exciting day. Very different from holding a print book in my hands, but fun just the same. Celebrate with me.

MEET ALEX J. CAVANAUGH

By Leave a Comment

Alex Cavanaugh is one of my writing heroes. He is founder of the Insecure Writers Support Group, and almost every blog I visit, I see an encouraging comment from him. He does a great job of promoting others too. During the month of September, Alex starts a challenging blog tour promoting his new book, and he’ll participate in his first twitter party. Get dates and details HERE. Alex knows his blog subject well; he maintains momentum!


Maintaining Author Momentum
by Alex J. Cavanaugh
 
Building an author platform takes time. Looking back, I now understand why my publisher wanted me online a year before the release of my first book. It took me a while to network, make friends, and build momentum.
 
Most authors grasp the efforts required before and during a book release. They do blog tours, appearances, interviews, giveaways, and start planning the next book. When the dust settles, they retreat back into the writing cave and out of the spotlight.
 
Call me clueless, but I missed that last part!
 
I slowed down while writing and ventured online just a little bit less, but I never ground to a halt. Hey, it took me a year to build that momentum! If I lost it, I’d have to do it all over again. I was determined that wouldn’t happen. (I’m ambitiously lazy.)
 
Now some writers maintain momentum by producing a lot of books in a short amount of time. I’m a slow writer though, so I knew that plan wouldn’t work for me. I had to keep promoting, which meant maintaining my online presence.
 
Of course, I don’t like promoting my own books, so did other things instead. I just kept building my blog and Twitter following, co-hosted the A to Z Challenge, participated in blogfests, and started the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. After all, I wasn’t online just to promote my book – I was there to support and encourage others.
 
Did it work? Well, eleven months after its release, my first book hit the Amazon Best Seller chart.
 
I also wrote my next book during that time, and when it was released, it also hit the Best Seller charts. Both books eventually soared to the top of the Amazon UK charts as well. And while I’m blessed with a publisher who promotes my work, even they said my online activity had a huge impact on sales.
 
Maintaining momentum is important. So is consistency. Together it’s like a heartbeat, one that keeps your platform alive.
 
I know every author is different, but if I’d pulled back and vanished, my chances of success would’ve also vanished. No Amazon Best Sellers. No Insecure Writer’s Support Group. No blog growth or opportunity to really make a difference in this community. And it would’ve been a great loss.
 
Guess there’s something to be said about being clueless!
 
Alex J. Cavanaugh
 
Alex J. Cavanaugh has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and works in web design and graphics. He is experienced in technical editing and worked with an adult literacy program for several years. A fan of all things science fiction, his interests range from books and movies to music and games. Online he is the Ninja Captain and founder of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. The author of the Amazon bestsellers, CassaStar and CassaFire, his third book, CassaStorm, will be released September 17, 2013.

 

MEET ANNA CASTLE

By Leave a Comment

I first met Anna Castle in my Sisters In Crime/Guppy writing group and couldn’t resist asking her to prepare a guest blog for me. She’s an interesting person, as you’ll find out when you read this post. Anna recently retired from managing a digital archive at the University of Texas at Austin. Writing is now her full time job. Isn’t Anna Castle a great name? We’ll be seeing on it her book covers soon! Visit her website to learn more about her books.

The Joy of Research
by Anna Castle

The Internet is great for overviews, generating ideas and picking out clothes or cars for contemporary characters, but it can only get you so far. The library is indispensable for a writer of historical fiction like me. But the most fun can be had by getting out there and looking at the world in which your story is set.

My to-be-published-someday-soon Francis Bacon mystery series is set in Elizabethan England. I can’t travel back in time and London has changed a tad since 1585, but many wonderful old buildings have been preserved. Museums are full of intriguing furniture, tools and other things my characters might have used. Places like Kentwell Hall (http://www.kentwell.co.uk/) host Tudor-themed events where costumed re-enactors engage in traditional tasks. I found a character at Kentwell.
I do a lot of walking, a major pastime in the UK. The cities may have changed, but parts of the landscape would still be familiar to my characters. I love the English countryside and trust me, it is all kinds of different from Texas, where I live. They have rain: lots of it. They have these soft, cool breezes drifting out from under dark thickets. In Texas, thickets are full of snakes and rarely cool or soft. Descriptions from my favorite British authors make more sense now that I’ve walked where they walked when they were writing. Christopher Marlowe might have walked up this very road on his way from Canterbury to Cambridge. How cool is that?

One of the characters in my current WIP, set in Victorian London, finds herself obliged to burglarize some Mayfair houses and country estates. (Her intentions are honorable, I assure you!) My problem was getting her and her crew in and out with the goods undetected. Crime fiction lends a whole new perspective to touring the stately home!

I study these houses like a villain, not an architect. If it weren’t for those burglar bars (surely modern), could my gal get in these windows? Then how far is it to the library? Which rooms will she pass on the way? Do they have gas lamps on the landings?

To make the most of my trips, I do a lot of planning; online, of course. I look for houses in my period of interest on sites like the invaluable National Trust (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/). Wikipedia has lists of museums in most major cities with links to their websites, where you can get hours of operation and directions via many forms of transport. The Brits have lots of online resources for ramblers: favorite walks, long and short, all over the country. Everybody everywhere has lots of travel info these days. I know where my characters are from and how they spend their days, so I try to go where they would go and see whatever I can see. I hope these experiences enrich my books. And hey: nice work if you can get it!

 
Anna Castle is writing two mystery series. The Francis Bacon series is set in Elizabethan England. The first book, Murder by Misrule, will be published one way or another in 2014. The Lost Hat, Texas series is set in the present, in the hill country west of Austin, where Anna lives. Black and White and Dead All Overis under revision. Find out more at www.annacastle.com.
 

Grieving Elmore Leonard

By Leave a Comment

 
October 11, 1925 – August 20, 2013
 
Elmore Leonard said something years ago that stuck with me: When something sounds like writing, I rewrite it. 
 
I think that’s great advice for all of us–no matter what we write.
 
You can find a number of articles talking about Mr. Leonard and his writing during this time, or you can visit his website. Since I never met him, there’s nothing I can add except this:
 
Awhile back, I entered a mystery writing contest and asked for a critique. One of my judges wrote the following, and it’s the best compliment I’ve ever received on my writing.
 
Voice/Writing style:
Judge 1: There’s definitely a passion in your writing about the topic. I believe you genuinely are enthusiastic about the characters, and that shines through.You have a streamlined writing style very similar to Elmore Leonard, and it’s excellent. Work on pacing and plot, and your style will carry you far.
 
Rest in Peace, Mr. Leonard.
We’ll miss you.
And you won’t be forgotten.


Dreading the Read-Through? Me too!

By Leave a Comment

Here’s the banner advertising The Twelve Days of Christmas. Things are moving so fast with the production of this book, these stories, I’m nervous. My deadline is Sept. 1 and the release of my single story is Oct. 1. I just finished it today… well, the first draft. Tomorrow I’ll read it in its entirety to see if it makes sense. If it doesn’t .. panic time!

I don’t know how writers deal with multiple deadlines. Or multiple deadlines with multiple publishers. Juggling stories and dates, characters, plotlines and settings … oh my! I don’t care how many white boards or excel sheets they have–it has to be mind-boggling and nerve wracking! What if a story won’t come? What if an author finds a major, MAJOR plot hole that changes/prevents what she’d originally planned, promised in the original pitch?

Can you tell I’m dreading reading my 8000 word story, expecting the worst? I’ve made my list of things I know I’ll have to add and flesh out. That’ll up the word count some. I’ll read a hard copy with pen in hand. After I do the final revision, I’ll send it to a reader/freelance editor who’ll do her part.

When you do a final read-through of a project, how do you approach it? What do you look for? Do you have a weakness when it comes to writing short fiction–with characterization, plotting, conflict? 
Or maybe I should ask … when you read a short story, what ruins it for you, what will make you quit reading? Share!

MEET SANDRA ORCHARD

By Leave a Comment

When Sandra Orchard wrote this post, she had no idea she was writing to, and about, me. I’m one of those writers who has trouble determining my main character’s goal. If she’d asked me what Cory’s goal is, I’d have said, to get the girl. Or I may have asked … when? before he meets Bretta or after? Before he realizes his life is about to change, or after it changes? Okay, I tend to complicate things–as you see, so Sandra’s use of the word urgent really helps. To read an excerpt of her books Fatal Inheritance and Deadly Devotion just click the titles.

WHAT’S YOUR HERO’S GOAL?
by Sandra Orchard

Your novel’s main character needs a goal.

You know this, right?

But do you really understand what it means?

At a writer’s conference I recently attended, I asked every single writer who had an appointment with me this question: What is your hero’s goal for the story?

Only one out of eight gave me a satisfactory answer. Most had a lot to say about what the hero or heroine would learn through the story, especially spiritually, since we’re talking Christian fiction, but very few of the writers I talked to had nailed down a concrete, visible, urgent story goal for their main character.

If you’re writing commercial fiction, and want to be published, your hero needs a goal.

A concrete goal.

New writers often get confused by the lingo. Writing teachers talk about long-term and short-term goals, internal goals and external goals, needs and wants, not to mention scene goals.

I find that most Christian writers don’t have a problem with the character’s long-term goal, which often tends to be abstract. It’s what the character wants (or needs) out of life in general.

Where writers run into trouble is in identifying what is often called the “short-term goal”. I prefer to call it the character’s story goal, to differentiate it from the very short-term changing goals the character has in each scene.

The character’s story goal not only needs to be concrete, it needs to be achievable within the time constraints of the story. The story is over when your main character reaches his/her goal or fails to reach it.

Now, if you’re thinking, I write romance…the hero’s goal is to win the girl, think again.

Okay, occasionally, winning the girl is the singular story goal, but it’s not enough for the goal to simply be concrete and achievable.

It needs to be urgent.

If the hero could wait until next month or next year to pursue his goal or solve the problem then there’s no urgency to propel the story forward.

We suspense writers like to call this urgency the ticking bomb. If the hero doesn’t reach the goal by a certain time, boom.

In my newest release, Fatal Inheritance, my heroine’s goal is to hang onto the century farmhouse she’s inherited from her recently deceased grandparents.

Her sister and brother-in-law are fighting the will. Land developers are vying for the land. One of them, or maybe someone else, wants her out of the house so desperately, he or she goes to great lengths to scare Becki Graw into leaving.

As for urgency…

Since the house is in a rural community, that isn’t a commutable distance from where Becki worked, she quit her job. She planned to live on her savings until she found a job nearby. However, she hadn’t counted on necessary house repair expenses, nor on the suppressed economy in the area that makes finding a job near impossible.

Added to that, her sister’s threat to break the will cannot be ignored. She is determined to make it happen yesterday.

Then when Becki cannot be persuaded to go quietly into the night, the threats mount and her choices morph to give up the house or die. Which of course, adds urgency to the cop-next-door’s goal to catch the person behind the threats.

When choosing a goal for your main character, be sure his or her motivation is strong. He or she must have something significant enough at stake to keep pushing forward when it would be easier to just quit. But that’s a lesson for another day.

Any questions? 

 
Bio:

Sandra Orchard is a multi-award-winning Canadian author of inspirational romantic suspense/mysteries. Her summer releases include: Fatal Inheritance (Aug, Love Inspired Suspense) and Deadly Devotion (June, Revell). She is an active member in American Christian Fiction Writers, The Word Guild, and Romance Writers of America. To find out more about her novels, or read interesting bonus features, please visit www.sandraorchard.com or connect at www.Facebook.com/SandraOrchard

 

IWSG: Unwelcome Deadlines

By Leave a Comment

Today is IWSG day-the first Wednesday of each month. IWSG stands for Insecure Writers Support Group and was founded by Alex J. Cavanaugh. You can follow other IWSG members here on twitter using the hashtag #IWSG.

Our purpose is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds. Join us!

After 16 months in Oklahoma, we’re back in Louisiana. Full time. A couple of friends helped us load the truck and tie everything safely in place. Our Okie friends and church are sweet memories now. So far, I’ve received one phone call, several text messages and emails and visited on Facebook with them. They always make me smile. Hubby and I have never shared friends (as a couple), and I’ve never had many non-writing friends. I don’t know why. Oklahoma was an unusual experience. A blessing in a number of ways. 

Hubby will be officially retired on Thursday. We’ll embark on a different kind of adventure. A little scary.

I used to be very organized. I used to be able to multi-task. Since being home, I’m having trouble writing or even accomplishing more than one thing at a time. Deadlines loom and I’m having to force myself to write. Forced writing isn’t good writing. I envy those writers who can whip out a story with no trouble at all and shoot it to their editor with so much confidence they never wonder if that story is good … or even readable. I’m not that way. I struggle. I feel as though I always struggle to put one word after the other. I struggle with my characters’ motivations and strengthening the conflict. I’ll ask a question I’ve asked a hundred times: how do we know, really know a story is good, if it hangs together, is logical, plausible and ready to be sent to the editor? When we’re satisfied with it, you say? What if we’re never satisfied?

I have a Sept. 1st deadline for a  9,000 word Christmas story. I’m struggling. Any advice?

MEET JUDY ALTER

By Leave a Comment

I’m excited to introduce Judy Alter whose ebook, Death Comes Home releases this week. I spent more than an hour on her food blog called Potluck with Judy, reading about genetically altered foods. Now that’s something that’ll scare your socks off, so let’s move on to something more pleasant: do you plot or do you write like a runaway freight train? Here’s what Judy has to say:

Pantsers vs. Plotters
by Judy Alter
 
Writing habits are individual things. I have long admired people who can plot out each chapter and each scene before they ever sit down to write. Then they have a road map to follow. Some leave room for flexibility, for the inevitable changes that occur when you write, but basically they know where they’re going. And writing a synopsis? Easy peasy—it’s all there in the outline. Some writers use storyboards or whiteboards to keep track of scenes and characters as they write. Or computer programs which allow you to move scenes around and such.

I on the other hand wander blindly about in a familiar world, since I know the settings of my series novels, but with little idea of where I’m going. My publisher now requests a synopsis before accepting a proposal. But recently after I signed a contract, the manuscript began to take a different direction and ended up nowhere near what the synopsis had indicated. When I saw this developing, maybe halfway through, I wrote the managing editor who requested a new synopsis. Fortunately, it passed muster. There’s been one intervening novel since, but now I find my mind going back to the original theme of that earlier project.

The trouble, you see, is that I’m a pantser. I write by the seat of my pants. I prefer to dash off a page of rough notes, get the first sentence, and see what happens when I go from there. Sometimes what happens is magic. Events seem to unfold of their own accord, characters tell me what’s going to happen, and the plot shapes itself, often taking turns I hadn’t expected. Many seasoned authors will tell you to listen to your characters, and they will tell you what’s going to happen. The late western novelist Elmer Kelton used to talk about two of his novels in which the characters took over his typewriter or computer. One was Buffalo Soldier, which he intended to feature a newly freed slave who becomes a buffalo soldier (one of the Negro regiments on the western frontier). But a Comanche chief kept demanding equal time, and eventually the book chronicled both their stories—the buffalo soldier’s rise in life as the Comanche’s way of life disappeared. The other was The Good Old Boys, which he wrote at his dying father’s bedside and based on all the stories his father, a longtime ranch foreman, had told him. The characters, he used to say, took over like a cold-jawed horse with a bit.

 
I don’t find it usually happens that easily, and sometimes I worry about what’s going to happen next. I also worry a lot if the manuscript is going to reach an acceptable word limit—I have a tendency to rush through things, so that my friend and beta reader is always telling me to slow down. He also often tells me I have too much going on in a book—which I wonder doesn’t spring from my desperate attempt to pad the length. But once I finish it, I rarely make major changes, like moving whole sections around, eliminating characters (I rejected that suggestion recently), and the like.

One trick that works for me when I settle down to write: set a goal of a thousand words a day. I wrote a novel that way earlier this year and found it worked well.

But everyone has their own methods. What’s yours?

 
Judy Alter is the author of two mysteries series—Kelly O’Connell Mysteries, including Skeleton in a Dead Space, No Neighborhood for Old Women, Trouble in a Big Box, and the just-published Danger Comes Home, and the Blue Plate Café Mysteries, which debuted this year with Murder at the Blue Plate Café, with Murder at Tremont House to come next year. Her books are available on Amazon and Smashwords. Also the author of several historical novels set in the American West, she is the recipient of Western Writers of America Owen Wister Award for  Lifetime Achievement and several other awards.

MEET JAN RIDER NEWMAN

By Leave a Comment

If there’s one thing I have trouble with in my writing, it’s setting. I have to admit, while reading I often skip lovely, long passages, jump right to the dialogue. Now that I’m beginning to get a little attention from small presses, I’ve devoted more time to studying how writer’s achieve a sense of place. My education comes late. My writer friend and SLR partner Jan Rider Newman has a fine eye for setting and her short stories prove it. Read what Jan has to share about Fitzgerald’s setting in The Great Gatsby.

Setting: The Character We Overlook
by Jan Rider Newman
 
The Great Gatsby, first published in 1925, has gained renewed attention lately because of the latest movie remake. F. Scott Fitzgerald fictionalized the North Shore of Long Island into West Egg and East Egg. Tom and Daisy Buchanan live in more fashionable East Egg. Gatsby and Nick Carraway, the narrator, live in West Egg.

Setting and sense of place is so important to a story it can be one of the characters. Consider Nick Carraway’s descriptions of West and East Egg:
I . . . rented a house . . . on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York — and where there are . . . two unusual formations of land . . . [A] pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. . . .

I lived at West Egg, the — well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard — it was . . . Gatsby’s mansion. . . . My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires — all for eighty dollars a month. 

Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water . . .
Even if you couldn’t afford one of the “palaces” or a twelve or fifteen thousand dollar “place,” wouldn’t you really enjoy living in Nick’s little house?

The home of Tom’s mistress, Myrtle Wilson, provides jolting contrast:

About half way between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes — a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke . . .

Could anything else offer more contrast or give a better idea of distinctions between and within classes than the descriptions of where the characters live? Tom and Daisy inhabit the ultimate circle—old-money fashionable. Gatsby is fabulously but newly rich, unfashionable in the Buchanan stratosphere. Though not especially rich, Nick is old-money fashionable and moves within both circles. Myrtle, in that village of ashes, lives above a garage, is poor and desperate.

Where is your story set? What does it say about your characters and their society, their passions and ambitions? If possible, go to your setting or one like it. What do you see? Don’t judge. Just look. See the people, the buildings, the sidewalks, streets/roads, animals, trees, and plants. What does the setting say to you? After you figure that out, ask what the setting says about your story. How can you condense the relevance of your setting the way Fitzgerald did, so it practically tells the story for you?

Good luck!
Jan Rider Newman has published short stories, nonfiction, poetry, and book reviews in competitions and anthologies, print and online literary journals. Her published short stories are collected in A Long Night’s Sing and other stories. She publishes and co-edits Swamp Lily Review, an online literary journal, and is webmaster for the Bayou Writers’ Group. Jan’s current WIP, a novel about the 1755 Acadian exile from Nova Scotia, is close to her heart because many of her ancestors fell victim to it. 
 
Her family, including two granddaughters, makes her world go around. They plus writing, research, genealogy, and photography keep her busy. 
A Long Night’s Sing and other stories is available for Kindle and POD. 
 
Jan blogs at Beyond Acadia:  Reading, Writing & Living Well, and her website is HERE.