Month: March 2014

 By Margie Lawson

A big THANK YOU to Laura Drake and Fae Rowen for inviting me on WITS , and hugs to Sharla for loading it on the blog.

Do you watch NCIS?

I love giving my brain a weekly dose of NCIS. Millions of others love the show too. The stories are intriguing. The characters are deep and quirky. And Jethro Gibbs, aka Mark Harmon, has rules.

Gibbs has lots of rules. Over 50 rules.

I’m spinning-off Margie-Rules from Gibbs’ rules. My next fifteen (or fifty) blogs will feature a different Margie-Rule.

I appreciate the NCIS writers for their award-winning writing, and for giving Gibbs rules.

Gibbs’ Rule # 8: Never take anything for granted.

Today’s Blog: Margie-Rule #1: Never Take Any Word for Granted.

Writers like words. Writers like how words sound, how they look, how they roll. They select words for their connotations, their subliminal messages, their power…

Please don’t kill me.

I love to garden, but I am terrible at reading instructions, which means I am not going to read a How To book or gardening blogs, because I already have enough to read and this would steal time from my great joy…digging in the dirt. This means that, over the years, I’ve learned a lot through trial and error.

Code for : Killing Stuff

Almost five years ago, we bought our first home. We got a sweet deal on it, but it needed work. The yard was little more than mowed field. I couldn’t wait to get in and pretty it up. I slaved for hours in triple-digit Texas heat digging holes and clearing land for gardens. I’d always loved oleander and when I found them on sale at the local nursery, I was ecstatic. Normally, oleander this size were over $100 but I got each…

Writers have countless ways to spend their money — whether on a double espresso to push through a final draft or a conference that has called to us for years. We all have life expenses that we must spend our money on now, as well as more wishful things that require time and sacrifice to save up for.

Here are a few free and useful resources to help you save money while still being able to organize, edit, and shape your writing world and its characters.

 Organizing Tool

yWriter5 is free novel-writing Spacejock software (designed for Windows PCs) that helps a writer organize and keep track of scenes and chapters, characters, settings and plot elements. “It will not write your novel for you, suggest plot ideas, or perform creative tasks of any kind. It does help you keep track of your work, leaving your mind free to create.” The program was designed by…

Awhile back, I did a post at Writers in the Storm called 10 OneNote Features That Will Rock Your Writing World . I love this program so much, particularly for writers, I’ll be teaching a whole class on it next week. (More on that at the end of the post.)

I honestly didn’t think OneNote could get much better but…this week, itdid.

Microsoft just unveiled several new changes to OneNote, but here are the FIVE that will make writers dance with joy.

1. It’s now free.

Yep, a cool new app…available across all platforms and tablets…gratis. (Let the squeeing begin!) Writers are poor, so this is exceptional news.

You might also remember that I got my Hubby to take over the grocery shopping with OneNote. Now that’s power!!

2. OneNote for the Mac.

All I hear from my Mac pals is “Evernote, Evernote, Evernote” and I’ve looked at…

Image via Flickr Creative Commons, courtesy of Sally Jean

If you are anything like me, you VOW EVERY NEW YEAR’S DAY that THIS YEAR you are going to be more organized. Six months later we can’t find the Post-Its and the bag of paper clips have been sucked into the same vortex that eats half the socks. Our treasures purchased at The Container Store on January 2nd are lost (likely still in the BAG) and our cute pocket organizer hasn’t had an entry since January 15th.

*head desk*

*Note to Self: Dust Pocket Organizer*

As writers, we need to research and to be able to keep track of that research. We also have lives. Many have mates, pets and kids who’ve grown accustomed to being fed *rolls eyes*. So needy. We’re juggling so much that we actually hope a fanatical fringe group of Calgon Terrorists really will…

Over at Argh Inc last week Jenny posted a brief scene for an old book proposal and then explained why it had been turned down.  The reason came down to the lack of the dreaded “conflict lock.”  The antagonist was making things hard for the protagonist, but wasn’t  stopping her from reaching her goal.  I didn’t see the antagonist problem when I read the scene.  What I saw was two interesting, engaging characters bantering back and forth.  I would have happily kept reading – missing conflict-lock or not – because I had connected to the characters and wanted to know more about them.  Alas, the short scene was all there was.

By Lyn Horner

I’m a regular follower of the Western Romance Writers Please Post Here #2 discussion on Amazon’s Meet Our Authors forum. In late 2013, fifteen authors, including myself, agreed to put together an anthology of short stories intended to give readers a sample of each one’s writing style.

Rawhide ʼn Roses.(A Western Romance Anthology) is the result. Released a few days ago, the ebook is available on several sites, with a print version soon to follow.

I thought this project would be fun and it probably wouldn’t take much time since our stories were to be very short, from two to three thousand words. Right.

The only problem was I’d previously written only a couple short stories, flash fiction pieces that are actually part of bigger plot lines. How was I going to tell a complete romance in so few words? What had I gotten…

By Susan Spann

Today, we’ll continue the #PubLaw guest series on Copyright in the Contract with a look at copyright registration.

As I mentioned in last month’s post (you can read it HERE), copyright protection is automatic and attaches to qualifying works (like novels) at the time of creation. Formal registration is not required to create a copyright in an author’s work.

However, copyright registration does have several important benefits and should be addressed, specifically, in every publishing contract.

BENEFITS OF COPYRIGHT REGISTRATION

Authors should ensure that novels and other published works are promptly—and properly—registered with the copyright office on, or within three months after, the date of initial publication. Publishing an excerpt on your blog does not constitute “publication” for registration purposes – the term refers to the date the entire work is officially published – though if you publish your entire novel online, serially or otherwise, it…