Angela Booth's Writing Blog

Quip: Gorgeous New "Everywhere" Word Processor

From the Quip “desktop” home page of the app you can see all your current documents and check your inbox for new updates and messages. If your connection drops while you’re writing, no sweat. Quip will synchronize your documents back to the cloud when you get your connection back. Taylor says he loves how seamless this works while he commutes on San Francisco’s BART subway which has spotty mobile reception.

via techcrunch.com

I can't resist trying out new word processors. New app Quip is a gem. Once you've logged in with your Google account, you can use Quip on your desktop machine, as well as on devices.

Work on Quip documents alone, or collaborate with others. This app is a pleasure to use, and may well become my default word-wrangling app on my phone and iPad. Give it a try, the basic version's free.

Monday Madness Offering: Content Dynamite

Words are still the foundation of the new Web

Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter...

Although images, video and audio enhance content on the new Web, words are still the foundation. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but you nevertheless need words to provide context, relevance, and to inspire action -- that is, to make sales.

via articledynamite.com

Check out our Monday Madness offering which we're running in conjunction with our Web content maven theme.

Enjoy -- there's never been a better time to be a writer.

Ebooks : Becoming More Popular Than Print

Nielsen reports that they have it on good authority that fiction eBook sales will overtake print by 2014. According to their Understanding the eBook Consumer July Report, Nielsen estimates that for next year, eBook sales of fiction will amount to 47 million units, some 300,000 ahead of the paperback figure and 48% of total fiction sales.

via goodereader.com

Newsstand's Good News For Publishers

Newsstand exploits this instinct. Its dynamic icon shows what currently rests on your virtual shelves. When you first install iOS 5 or get your new iPhone or iPad, the Newsstand icon’s empty shelves sit there on your home screen, looking lonely. You tap the icon, you see the full-sized empty shelves, and then you see the “Store” button right there to help you fill them. As you fill the first shelf, another empty one appears below it, beckoning you further.

via www.poynter.org

Great news for publishers.

Evernote Interview: Your Digital Mind

Libin: We wanted to make something for ourselves. The idea was to let you remember all the information coming at you in whatever way was easiest at the time, whether it was audio, images, text, web clips, or documents. One place where you can put everything and always be able to find it. We would take a picture of the white board and search for the words in it and find it.

via www.wired.com

Excellent interview with Evernote CEO Phil Libin -- a must-read if you're an Evernote fanatic as I am.

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Novels: the Series Arc

Discworld has always been about change. Every single book involves a major change in one way or another. The very first time we step onto the flat planet, it is already experiencing a major change, in the form of the incineration of the greatest city on the Disc (at least according to them), Ankh-Morpork. Even the books about past events, such as Small Gods or Night Watch, involve huge cultural changes.

via the-artifice.com

I'm a huge fan of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. This is an excellent article, and I'm off to reread the novels I haven't read in a while.

Blogging Your Life, Even When It's Hard

For some, the antidote to that can be openness. Says Arnold, “I realized a lot of the sugar-coated, happy-happy versions of recovery didn’t resonate with me. They didn’t seem realistic.” Ultimately, she’s proud of her decision to write about her reason for needing a week off: “I really feel that presenting reality with all of its warts is more helpful than pretending relapse doesn’t happen.”

via www.salon.com

I admire bloggers who are open enough to blog about their illnesses. Being open takes courage. It helps both the blogger and his audience, and I'm in awe.

Is Marketing Your Book HARD?

Marketing your books isn’t hard. All you need to do, is do it.

Here’s a big tip. Clever authors always have a PLAN. I talk about plans for getting writing jobs here, but the principle of planning is always the same. What matters isn’t what’s on your plan, or even whether or not your plan is likely to be successful — you just need a plan, any plan at all.

via www.justwriteabook.com

For some authors, marketing their book is HARD. It can be, if you have the attitude that it is.

What if you changed your attitude, and decided that marketing is fun? Believe it or not, it is -- as soon as you have that attitude.

Think about something you learned to do -- something that people consider is difficult. Whatever that is, whether it was learning how to drive, or run marathons, or apply makeup... You learned to do it, with practice.

The more you do something, the better you get at it, and the less "hard" it is.

Do something to market your book today that takes just five minutes. Tinker with your author page on Amazon, or respond to a post on a forum for authors, or contact an author who writes similar books to yours, just to say "hi!"

Ebooks and Publishing: Confused Yet?

The world of publishing is changing. It won’t go backwards. Where does that leave you, the author?

If you’re confused, consider this. It leaves you with POWER. Authors have never had it before. What you do with that power is up to you.

via www.justwriteabook.com

Discover how to end the confusion -- take charge of your future as an author.

Stephen King On A Novel's Voice

A novel's voice is something like a singer's -- think of singers like Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan, who have no musical training but are instantly recognizable. When people pick up a Rolling Stones record, it's because they want access to that distinctive quality. They know that voice, they love that voice, and something in them connects profoundly with it. Well, it's the same way with books.

via www.theatlantic.com

It's well worth the time it takes to experiment with your voice for a novel. Once you've got the voice right, your novel will seem to "write itself."

Short Stories: Turning Your Trash Into Treasure

Convert trash into treasure

If you have a couple of novels collecting dust on your hard drive, why not turn them into short stories?

I recently helped Helga, one of my coaching students, to do this. She turned a partially completed novel into five short stories. And then — the irony — she turned one of the stories into a novel. This was huge fun for her. And the results surprised her.

via www.justwriteabook.com

If You're Not a Markdown Fan, You Should Be

Now that you’ve got that in mind, loving Markdown boils down to this: Markdown lets you think about what you’re writing instead of how it looks.

via nerdplusart.com

I ADORE Markdown. It saves me huge time, both in the writing I do for others, and also with the writing I do for myself. It's changed my life.

Have you discovered Markdown?

Famous First Words

My choice is a famous sentence, that opening of Hemingway's The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. It reads:

It was now lunch time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened.

via www.theatlantic.com

Writing Fiction? BEST Advice

The antagonist is the beating heart of the story. He/She/It creates the crisis and the crucible that forces our protagonist to become a hero. If we don’t know the endgame, we have no idea how to insert roadblocks, create misdirection, setbacks, or drama. So if you keep getting stuck? It might not be you are lazy or fearful (I wasn’t either). It might be your foundation (the antagonist/core story problem) either isn’t there or it’s weak and unable to support the bulk of 65-100,000 words.

via warriorwriters.wordpress.com

If you've got 'writer's block' -- read the above article.

The end of your novel/ short story is in the beginning. Focus on your antagonist (the bad guy.)

This makes writing much easier.

Got 5 Minutes? Write a Short Story

Index cards: perfect for collecting ideas and planning your stories

Plan your stories first, using index cards. Although I use Scrivener, which has an index card view, and the app Index Cards on my iPad, I nevertheless plan my stories and novels using paper cards.

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com

Kindle short stories are fun to write, and you can write them in your spare time.

Try this simple process. It works for me, and for my students.