For writers, writing contests are an imperative part of the process because they provide us with feedback and also help us thicken our skin. Remember, writing is a highly subjective industry, which means that we are constantly going to face rejection and conflicting opinions, whether by judges, readers, family members or even our own edits.

One way to effectively prepare for a writing contest is to have a professional edit done. If you have a crit partner that’s great. Not everyone has the time. I myself have to hire someone to do my edits because I simply don’t have the time to give the feedback to the other person. I always urge people to get a critique done first or a full edit because this is putting your professional foot forward. You wouldn’t go in to a job interview wearing jeans and likewise you don’t go in to a writing contest with a first draft.

Research some places. Writing Career Coach, of course, offers editing and I usually offer specials around the times of large writing contests. But beyond that, find either a critique partner, someone who is knowledgeable in the industry or a professional editor, to go through your writing and give you some feedback.

You can get a detailed edit where they will pick apart every little piece, or have somebody just do an assessment and give you an overview generalizing areas of strength and weakness. Either way, make sure before you go in to a writing contest that you’re taking the time to learn about the craft and build a strong showing in the contest.

Once you’ve toughened your skin and polished your writing it is time to get it out there. Find contests that have trained judges who are going to give you feedback on your work. While we always want to win writing contests in this subjective industry that won’t always happen. We need to be able to get something out of the contest no matter what. That is why feedback is so important. I’ll talk more about using the judges’ comments to improve your writing, but for now simply focus on finding good contests that provide real feedback.

If you’ve entered some good contests I’d love for you to share below. I know the Genesis Contest [unpubbed] and Carol Award [pubbed], both of which are sponsored by ACFW are good contests. The Daphne du Maurier Award from the RWA KOD chapter also has a good reputation and excellent feedback.

Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail. Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at writingcareercoach.com.

Authors call it tone.

That certain something that makes each story a little bit different.

To help you understand what this is, consider the difference between a term paper, a newspaper, and a love letter. All the words are different. The phrasing is different. Consider how the approach and the kinds of things that you talk about are different? All of these things speak to tone.

Business owners need to consider tone when writing marketing copy or hiring someone to write their marketing copy because your writing needs to appeal to different people, in different places, even within your target market.

While your target market may all be, for example, moms with toddlers, the needs of a mom with a single toddler versus the needs of a mom with twins or two young children that are a couple of years apart will be slightly different. So adjusting your tone to your target market and saying different things in different ways, restating things throughout your marketing copy, to help engage different segments of your target market, will help you to better engage your reader.

In a previous blog we talked about the senses. When you’re writing your marketing copy you’ll integrate senses here in tone using those different emotional ties incorporated with tone to appeal to each reader. This is just another way that fiction techniques help with marketing copy.
Now it’s time for all of you to sound off. Let’s try to see if we can do some writing practice. If you were going to write a 1 paragraph blurb to market my writing career coach program to someone how would you do it for an author, a business or a parent of a young aspiring writer?

 Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail. Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at writingcareercoach.com.

Today’s blog we’re going to look at the two most important parts of your story: beginning and the end.

You’ve heard the phrase in publishing, The first line of your story sells this book, the last line sells your next book.”

It’s more than that.

Your first line needs to introduce the story, introduce the character and point to the climax of the plot. The last line of your story needs to give a satisfactory resolution to that plot and also, if you can tie it back to the beginning, where your reader goes “Ah, now I understand what he meant there”. That is how you leave a great impression with your reader.

Think about ways you can do that as you’re working on your writing this week. What are the ways that the first line of your story is pointing to the climax of your book?

What is the way that the last line of your story is bringing the reader back to that very first line?

That’s your assignment for this week. If you have any ideas on how to do this we’d love to see your comments in the comments section.

Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail. Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at writingcareercoach.com.

Today I’m going to vent about a writing pet peeve I have. It’s when writers try to do more than one thing simultaneously in your writing.

Now, by this I don’t mean trying to infuse sensory details while evoking emotional responses. That’s part of good writing. What I’m talking about is having someone walk down the steps as they’re running their fingers through their hair,
or talking to their sister while they’re looking at the man across the room.
Those two words, as and while, have become words that immediately jump off the page for me when I’m editing projects for clients. They tend to point to someone trying to either tell me what is going on or someone trying to do too many things at one time.
Remember, in writing we can only see one thing at a time. That means that you have to describe one action, the implications and then move on to the next action. By trying to tell me two things are happening simultaneously you’re going to pull me out of story world. Things are going to jump out of order and it’s going to distract me as a reader.
So make sure as you’re going through your writing and your personal revisions that you look out for the words as and while. Whenever you see those make sure that you’re not trying to describe two physical actions happening simultaneously.
Instead go in and change up those words and infuse more detail. Take your reader deeper down into your character.

Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail. Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at writingcareercoach.com.

All right, so today we’re going to talk about three of my favorite little tools when I’m working on creating my story world. That is Google Earth, Dictionary.com and Wikipedia.

First, Google Earth. I like Google Earth because I can fly anywhere and see anything. If you’re not familiar with Google Earth just go to Google.com or put Google Earth in your search and you can download it. Once it’s on your system you can put in an address or a city or a landmark, and it’ll take you there. You can fly over top, you can go from the road view on most areas. But it gives you a sense of the terrain and what things look like and it really helps to add authenticity to your story.

Dictionary.com. I like this because I like words. You can get word of the day sent to you, but more than that, I like to be able to get some of those synonyms. I have my Flip Dictionary, I love my Flip Dictionary, It’s a very useful writer’s tool. But when I’m working, particularly when I’m working up at my office in town, I don’t always have my Flip Dictionary with me because that stays at my house. Dictionary.com is a great tool for me to go and get some of those synonyms.

Wikipedia. Now some people like to besmirch Wikipedia but I actually like it for a couple of reasons. One, because it is so subjective. I can go in there and find out what other people think of certain things, whether it’s accurate or not. As writers we need to understand how other people view things so that we can get inside of that point of view and help create more well-rounded characters. You can also find out interesting tidbits about some really obscure things. So while it isn’t my authoritative text for scholarly research, when I’m trying to create story world I love it.

So for today, using technology to build your writing, I would encourage you to check out Google Earth, Dictionary.com and Wikipedia during your ten-minute break and see if any of these resources will help you enrich your story world or build your writing in a new and exciting way.

I’ll see you next time when we’re going to be delving into some fiction techniques that will help you with your overall writing craft.

Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail. Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at writingcareercoach.com.

In this blog I’d like to talk briefly about using webinars to build your writing. There’s two ways that you can do this.
• Attending a webinar or
• Holding a webinar.

First, I’m going to talk about attending a webinar. Attending webinars can help your writing because they allow you to use the resources that you have to get the most out of your learning dollar. Another great feature of webinars is many webinars tend to be more interactive where you can type in questions. Many are also recorded so that you can reuse them. I strongly encourage writers to attend webinars. The great part about webinars is writers can pool their resources, so that they can receive learning far less expensively.

This takes me to the next part of writing webinars and using technology to build your writing and that is holding a webinar. When should you hold a webinar? I suggest a professional of any kind should hold a webinar if you have something that you’re frequently asked to speak on. For example, I’m asked to speak on business principles for writers and writing principles for businesses. Therefore, I have a following of a group of people who tend to come to my events and want to learn. And so having these events online allows me to reach a larger population of my clients at one time and it allows me to interact with them in a way that I can’t always do at, say, a writer’s conference or a business group. So that would be one reason why you would want to hold them

Another reason to hold a webinar would be if you have information that is of benefit to writers. Let’s say for example, your day job is nursing. You can speak on topics in nursing that would be of interest to writers. If you are a full-time writer, invite someone to come and speak on your webinar who knows something about, let’s say forensics, or a historical landmark or time period clothing. Certain facets of different industries can help you add depth and richness to your writing. That would be another time to hold a webinar.

Webinars can be great learning opportunities as well as a way to help develop your business. Explore the resources available and if you have ideas for webinars you’d like Writing Career Coach to do, put the topics in the comments section then sign up for our newsletter. We will update you on upcoming webinars.

Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail. Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at writingcareercoach.com.

We talked about this a little bit last week when we were talking about organizing your time. Now we want to think a little bit about whether you have everything you need to accomplish your goals.

I don’t mean if you have all of the necessary training or background. Writing is a growth process so you’ll never arrive there. What I mean is just simple things. When you sit down to write do you have the notes that you need?
Do you have your character sketches?
Do you have your copy of Writing The Breakout Novel?
Do you have pictures that you use to help describe your main characters?
Do you have pencils to jot down notes?
Do you have your mouse? Your keyboard? Whatever it is that you use as part of the writing process so you’re not getting up and down out of your seat constantly to get things that you might have forgotten.

Organizing your workspace, as we said in the last post, is not always a matter of eliminating distractions but it’s also including things that will keep you focused and on task.

Till next time, remember to organize your workspace as well as your time.

Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail. Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website atwritingcareercoach.com.

Last post we talked about mentally preparing to write in our writing workspace. Today we’re going to continue with that by looking at ourselves when we’re in our workspace. Think about where it is that you do your work. When I’m sitting at my home desk, as opposed to my office where I do most of my work, my home desk is full of pictures my daughters colored for me. There’s a broken toy that I took away from the dog when it ran under my desk, a necklace I wore yesterday, and an empty bottle for a prescription that needs to be refilled. All of these things remind me of other tasks that need to be done. Whether it’s picking up my clutter, putting away my jewelry or getting that prescription picked up, all of these things will pull me out of the writing zone if I allow them. That’s why it is so important to minimize the amount of things that you keep in the area where you are going to work.

Just as certain things on your desk can cause your mind to stray, you can minimize distractions by introducing things that are going to keep you focused on your writing. For example, I have the book The Elements of Style sitting next to my laptop. I have my good luck eraser that I play with whenever I’m trying to think through a scene. I have my hair clip that I always keep next to me so that I don’t have to get up if my hair starts to fall in my face, and I have my character sketches and notes for the stories that I’m currently working on.

By introducing things that I use in my writing and excluding those things that I use as a mom and wife, I am able to more focus my time and organize my space. This allows me to get the most out of my writing time.

So what is it that you are currently putting around you when you are writing? Are they things that are helping you? Or is your workspace full of distractions? Consider these questions this week and make adjustments as necessary so that you can better organize your time as a writer.

Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail. Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website atwritingcareercoach.com.

In keeping with our theme we are now going to move from organizing our time to organizing our writing workspace. There are three ways that you need to organize your workspace.
• You need to mentally organize your work space.
• You need to organize your workspace to minimize distractions and maximize efficiency.
• And you need to know what you’re going to do each day.

Today we’re going to look at the mental aspect of organizing your writing time.

Where is it that you work? This space can be a separate office or a space at your kitchen table. Wherever it is, make that place your office. Mentally prepare yourself so that is where you write. It may seem odd, but when I was in college I read a study about the brain. It said that studying in your bedroom actually can cause problems with sleeping because your brain becomes trained to study in that place. Our brain associates different spaces with different activities.

The more I learned about that, the more I recognized the truth of that. Think about when you’re heading to work, how you’re mentally shifting. When you move from work to school, school to church, or church to sports event, think about the different ways that you change physically, mentally, emotionally with each place. This same holds true as you prepare to write. Mentally you need to recognize a single spot, even if it’s the same place where you eat. You need to train your brain to be in writing mode when you are there with your writing supplies.

The next thing you need to do is warm up your mind. That means you begin to think about what you’re going to write as you get ready to go write. If you’re working on a novel, start playing scenes in your head. If your writing an article, think about the previous articles you’ve written or the interview you just did. Put your brain in the writing frame of mind instead of sitting down at your computer cold.

Whenever possible write the same things at the same time of day. When I began writing I had a newborn, a 2 year old and a 4 year old. I caught writing time between naps and diaper changes. I was able to write my first full novel in two months during that time because I worked the story through when I was feeding one of the babies or watching Barney for the 900th time.

Next time we’re going to deal with minimizing distractions, but for today take some time to determine where it is you’re going to work if you don’t already have that. If you do, look around that workspace and see what kinds of things that are currently distracting you from getting your writing work done. Is it set up in a way that’s conducive to accomplishing your goals? Then mentally prepare. And get writing.

 Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail. Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at writingcareercoach.com.

Over the last few blogs we’ve looked at ways to organize your time so that you can better accomplish your goals. Today we’re going to talk about the importance of not working.

It is important to schedule breaks to give yourself a mental letdown and also to prevent extremes in your work time.

Think about if you don’t let your kids have candy at all. What happens as soon as Halloween or Easter comes around? They are attacking the candy boxes. Or if you never let yourself have sweets. What happens if you go to a party? You overindulge. This same thing is true with breaks. Now I am very guilty of going for five or six straight hours of focus on a single project. The problem is when I run 14 hrs a day, 6 days a week for months at a time I eventually crash. That is not an effective time management tool.

What is better is a system I learned in High School. The work cycle involves focusing on a single task for  45 minutes then taking a 10-15 minute break. And that seems to be pretty consistent for most people, forty-five minutes to sixty minutes at a stretch. If you need more breaks then work on multiple projects during that 45 minutes rather than taking more breaks. If you’re working on books and articles, switching it up between projects so that you can keep your brain alert is fine.

The right kind of break
Now, what should you do during break?
• Stand up, get away from the computer. Keep your blood flowing, keep your body moving; do some stretches; move your arms. Get the blood flowing again so that your brain can become alert.
• Walk down the hall and get a drink of water. This will help your health and your mental alertness.
I drink water during my fifteen minutes, walk down the hall and then pace around my desk when I’m at my office. When I’m working from my home office I actually do away with breaks because my kids help me have breaks. [ha-ha, but working from home is a topic for another day]

To recap these last few blogs, to effectively organize your time you need to:
• you need to create office hours and respect them.
• You need to define what your daily success goals are and recognize how they play a part in your long-term writing.
• And schedule your breaks so that you can stay mentally alert.

Using these tips will help you better organize your time and become a more effective and efficient writer.
 

Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail. Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at writingcareercoach.com.