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Just recently my critique partners returned a couple of chapters I’d submitted of my latest WIP with “POV?” marked prominently throughout.

[Deep and profound sigh] We all know what point of view is—that’s the angle or the character who’s telling about or seeing the scene. Usually I like to flatter myself that POV is something I have a handle on, more or less—as much as I have a handle on anything. But sure enough, this time I’d “head hopped” all over the place. It’s beautiful in my head. In their heads, not so much.

As a social media expert, I run into all kinds of strange behavior and tips that make me scratch my head. Social media is social, meaning it’s supposed to be an extension of how we might interact with other human beings in person. Today’s post (obviously) is tongue-and-cheek, but humor can be the best teacher even if we’ve oopsed.

Tip #1—Only Use Automation

Writing a 140 characters is SUPER time-consuming. We aren’t Jack London. Besides, people LOVE talking to robots. I know when I feel lonely, I call AT&T because I know a human being will NEVER answer…EVER. Humans can be so boring and don’t offer us the option of hitting 6 if we want to hear everything they just said all over again. 

Real Life Application: Program cell phones to call friends and family at regular intervals to ask for money. They’d dig that.

Tip #2—Make Sure All Preprogrammed…

We’ve been talking a lot about the new publishing paradigm and all the options writers have. Being the WANA Mama, I feel it’s my duty to feed you guys the grow-up stuff. So, if you want a fluffy kitten hug? This is the wrong place. There are plenty of people who offer a magic algorithm or promotion package or SEO package “guaranteed” to launch a writer to fame and fortune. Yet, these can be misleading and take our focus away from activities that have a better chance of translating into long-term success.

Hoo-Doo Voo-Doo for Sale

What many of you might not know is I sometimes help small businesses. I recently started doing some work for my brother’s company. Why did I step in? Because he (like many others) paid thousands of dollars for a Mega-PR-Expert…who then did NOTHING.

My brother hired this well-known PR expert to create his social…

On Wednesday, we talked about all the types of publishing paths and how the new paradigm is becoming increasingly flexible and author-friendly. There is no “right path” only a path that is right for you, which we will talk about in a moment.

To keep up with all the changes in The Digital Age, we created WANACon, which is a virtual conference and as close to the real thing one can get without a holo-deck. No travel, no hotel, from home, and all recordings are included so you can fit a writing conference to your schedule no matter where in the world you happen to live. Also you can listen to anything you miss or might need to revisit. Talk to agents, editors and professionals without ever stepping outside.

Over 20 presentations on craft, social media, platform-building, web design, cover design, and agents…delivered straight to YOU. No matter which publishing…

If you’ve been following Eight Ladies recently, you’ll know I’m finally finished my first draft…it’s time to revise and polish.

This is the first time I’ve done revision. On my first book.

Translation: I’ve never done this before.

(Embarrassing admission: I’m afraid of the magnitude of changes I have to make, so I’ve been procrastinating.)

When I’m faced with something I’m not sure how to tackle, or if the “something” is huge and intimidating, I procrastinate. For instance, I’ve spent a lot of time lately working on my timeline (necessary, but not required…I have plenty of scenes that I need to write that are not really timeline-dependent), I’m creating a “bible” of notes, observations, characters, settings, facts, etc. about Napoleon and the Regency to support my story (could definitely do this later), I’ve been jotting notes for the next book (um, hello? Finish the first one!), and of course I’ve…

“I’m publishing posts every day, but where are my readers?”

While there’s no exact science to successfully building a readership, you have a number of built-in tools on WordPress.com to share your work with the world. Our advice? Hook up your various social accounts to WordPress.com and let us do the rest. We want to emphasize, especially to our newest users, that no blog is an island. Clicking Publish is just the first step, and sharing your work across the internet is key to expanding your audience.

What is Publicize?

With Publicize, you can automatically push out your new posts to social networks: Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Path.

Connecting to your accounts is easy, and you can select which ones to link to your WordPress.com account. To get started, head over to Settings → Sharing. At the top of the page, you’ll see the options pictured…

We writers live in interesting times. The same digital tsunami that toppled Tower Records and collapsed Kodak has now consumed the world of publishing. The world we knew five years ago is gone. Traditional is reinventing, indie publishers are growing and self-publishing now can be a viable part of any author’s long-term career plan. This is one of the main reasons WANA has never taken sides and embraces publishing as a whole.

Granted, some authors may find a singular path that fits all their needs, but a majority of us will mix it up and venture on a hybrid path. Traditional houses are encouraging writers to self-publish prequels, short stories, or even stories involving supporting characters to keep the fan fires burning between books.

Indie houses are helping established authors breathe new life into backlists and new authors get a start under the care of professionals. Self-publishing is a fantastic…

By Tiffany Lawson Inman

Well gosh, I started to write this blog and realized I jumped the gun during Crossing Physical Barriers in Fiction Part One, when I opened these two topics:

• Emotional intensity of fictional fights
• The moment before the fight

Completely skipping the momentbefore theactual writing of the fight.  EEK! The need to prepare the writer before the fight is just as important as preparing your character!  So, please forgive me, I’ll be backing up for Part Two, to show you how to wrap wrists, grease face, and secure your writer-jock-strap before sitting down at your computer to write a fight.

So-to-speak…

For most writers crossing the Physical Barrier is a daunting task. Almost as intimidating as  Crossing the Emotional Barrier!

I said almost.

Why is it so hard?

It could be one or a few of the following fears:

• The writer has never…

Pete, a few months ago you piqued my curiosity when you mentioned female serial killers.  In the book I’m currently working on, Victims of Love, my villain, Jillian Black, is a female serial killer. Now that the holidays are over, I’m going to prevail on you yet again, because I found what you had to say very interesting and I’m curious to know if I got the female aspects of her profile down.  So where do we start?

Good question, Diane.  Maybe we start with you!

Me?  What have I done?

Well, you ARE a woman, and the last time I checked, everything about women is different than men.  And when we launch into the virtually-unknown realm of female serial killers, the first stopping off point we arrive at is just that – those differences.  Everything about men and women is different, including their thinking, their methods, and when it…

Recently, the eight ladies celebrated the completion of Justine’s first draft. Like most of us, she’d been struggling with the last third of her book. After months (well really over a year) of hard work and dead-ends, she finally had that breakthrough moment we all dream of, the moment when she discovered her perfect ending.

It’s great when a friend and sister-in-arms succeeds (congrats to Nancy, too!). Not only does she move that much closer to her ultimate goal, but her success is an inspirational battle cry for the rest of us, too. My perfect ending is out there somewhere; I just need to discover it. I already have a general idea of what happens:  Cheyenne will get her HEA (Happily Ever After) and she’ll win the conflict over the family house and land that she’s embroiled in with her Uncle Hawk, but how all of that happens is still a…

Whenever I blog about craft, I’m coming from the perspective of a long-time editor. I do understand that the creation process is vastly different from the editing process. I know this because I’ve been on both sides. But, if you want to minimize revisions and rewrites, it helps to have some basic editorial skills in your toolbox.

Since many of you might want to pursue self-publishing, you’re wise to hire an outside editor. The cleaner the text, the lower the bill. Even if you want an agent or to traditionally publish, the tighter the writing, the better the odds your work will earn positive attention.

Line-edit is important and no longer my area of expertise. I put commas everywhere and pay other editors the move them where they need to be. Typos happen even to the best of us. Right now, I’m editing my almost 100,000 word mystery-thriller and *head…