When You’re Not a Writer – Yet

I believe all writing is good practice for a writer.

While my kids were growing up, I put aside “being a writer” for day jobs. However, many of those day jobs involved writing. For example, I’ve written stacks of court reports. Did that build any skills for my fiction writing? Absolutely.

1. I had to interview people and present their position accurately – to do that I listened carefully and checked for understanding. Even the few villains I encountered had what they believed were good reasons for their actions. So I avoid cardboard characters in my fiction. I know each of my characters from the inside out. Each has a distinct voice.

2. I had to pay attention to details. Small details, buried amidst non-essential information, often clarified an issue or sequence of events. The same holds true in fiction – the details often decide the course of events.

3. I had to take the facts I’d gathered and present them in a logical order that helped the judge make sense of the situation – which was often quite complicated. The same skill is necessary in fiction. If you confuse the reader by putting a conclusion before the facts that lead to it, you will probably lose them altogether.

4. I couldn’t include every single piece of information I collected. I had to decide which facts were necessary and which were superfluous. When writing fiction, I always know more backstory than my readers – they’d be bored if I included all of it. I have to choose what they need to know when. It’s the same skill, repurposed.

5. I also had to decide when to quote an interviewed person directly and when to paraphrase. When writing fiction, I need to decide where to describe interactions and where to use dialogue. The elements that make each effective are remarkably similar whether a court report or a novel.

What about jobs that don’t involve much writing? It’s all experience. Most writers have had a series of jobs before they start making a living (or at least part of one) writing.

If you find a complete job history of an author and then read all of that author’s work, you will probably find characters and settings that use non-writing jobs.

www.sherimcguinn.com www.amazon.com/author/sherimcguinn

Press release:

Sheri McGuinn at Gold Country Writers Six-Author Event! Official release.

Event date: Sunday, March 25, 2018 – 1:00pm to 4:00pm Event address: FACE IN A BOOK, 4359 Town Center Blvd #113, El Dorado Hills, CA 95762

http://www.getyourfaceinabook.com/event/gold-country-writers-six-author-event

#writingnovels #genre #voices #backstory #audience #novels #writingprocess #novelwriting #material #tryingtobeawriter #fiction #inspiration #Writing

Profession or Hobby?

You’re writing a book. Are you approaching this as a profession or is it a hobby?

Given how difficult it is to be successful, it might be healthier to approach writing and self-publishing as a hobby, something you do for fun.  However, are you approaching it seriously enough you don’t harm others?

Self-publishing is gaining respect because of writers who are approaching writing and publishing professionally. They make sure their books are edited. They pay attention to genre and industry standards for formatting. The hobbyist who publishes a rough draft rife with errors and formatted poorly hurts every serious self-publisher, not only by putting a dent in the self-publishing image, but by making it that much harder for a reader to find the good books.

You can approach writing and self-publishing as a hobby and still produce a well-written, professionally-produced book. It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money.

A good critique group can help you polish the writing. Your library, book clubs, and English teachers at a local college may be able to suggest good editors and proof-readers. When it comes to formatting, you can buy templates or do it yourself using your word processor—if you know how to use styles, show all formatting marks, paragraphing, and other tools. If you don’t, head back to the library and local college and ask for a word processing guru. In any case, make sure you have copies of traditionally published books in the same genre to use as examples of how it should look. Pay attention to details.

This takes more time and effort than throwing up a rough draft, but friends who buy it may actually read it, and you won’t be hurting other writers.

www.sherimcguinn.com www.amazon.com/author/sherimcguinn

#professionorhobby #genre #selfpublishing #editing #formatting #critique #Writing

Read Your Genre

I recently had an artist/writer ask me to review her book.

She’d made water colors based on photographs she took on a journey to Thailand when she was young, then rendered them in colored pencil to mock up a picture book aimed at young children, including short lines of text for each picture. She’d taken it to a critique group and they’d advised her to write more for each picture, giving much more of her story as a teen. She came up with the alternate text, but didn’t think it met her original purpose. She was right.

Her pictures were appropriate for young children, and most picture books have very few words accompanying each picture. Her original mock-up was perfect for that audience. The alternate text was more appropriate for older kids—maybe even teens—and her original photos might work better for them, rather than the paintings she’d made with little children in mind.

The members of her critique group were good writers, but they were accustomed to writing for older audiences. Fortunately, she had looked at enough picture books to question their judgment. She only came to me for affirmation.

Mysteries, thrillers, romance novels, young adult, middle school, picture books—each genre has its own audience, and the audience develops expectations whether they realize it or not. You can try to learn these forms by reading about them, but your best bet is to read the genre—lots of what fans are reading now.

www.sherimcguinn.com

Amazon Author Page

#genre #picturebooks #Writing #writingpicturebooks