Cheryl Cowtan on Writing

     As authors, we should know the power of words and how to use them. But sometimes, we haven't had the training, or we haven't read the works by authors who role-model literary writing through appropriately wielding literary techniques. Some influencers of writing cast a negative spin on literary skills, perhaps because they have not achieved them, do not understand the use of devices, or do not appreciate the deeper meaning literary writing can express. Whatever the reason, know that there are a multitude of writing techniques you can use to improve your reader's experience. Don't deny the power or ignore the influence you can have when drawing on literary devices. Here's one to try: Connotation and Denotation. Connotation and Denotation are two principal methods of describing the meanings of words. Connotation refers to the wide array of positive and negative associations that most words naturally carry with them, whereas denotation is the p...

I've participated in PitMad and NestPitch on Twitter, and both have provided the opportunity to pitch my manuscript to potential agents. I have also benefited from the wonderful opportunities to share my hopes, my dreams and my work with like-minded writers (who are also moms, dads, teachers, and members of communities all over the world). Currently I'm participating in PitchSlam, and I have found this pitching competition offers a new benefit--critique by professionals. The process works like this. Pitch 35 words Receive feedback for improvement Submit first 250 words Receive feedback for improvement Submit revised 35 word pitch and revised 250 words What I found is the reviewers caught some pretty obvious mistakes in my work that I did not catch after multiple reads. And once I followed the suggestions, the improvement of my pitch and first 250 is encouraging. Compare the results yourself. My first 35 word pitch: Name: Cheryl R Cowtan Genre: Adult / Dark F...

Yes, I'm still on this image promotion gig. And why? Because I see authors using all forms of graphics to promote their books: postcards (for travel themed books) excerpts partnered with a relevant image quotes from the book partnered with a symbol/image book cover side-by-side with author photo The ideas are blossoming as technology allows us to share and view images easily. I will eventually create each of the above to show you examples, but for now, here's the BookBit. The BookBit The BookBit shares a "bit" of your novel with a relevant image. How do you make one? First, select a riveting, action-packed, emotional or otherwise compelling 100-200 words of your novel, and then find a image to increase the impact you hope to have on your reader. Finding images to match your excerpt can be difficult, especially if you cannot create your own and don't know anyone who can create one for you. However, if you search on creativecommons.org you can find ...

I've been watching YouTube videos of authors, and I have to say, some videos made me feel closer to the author, some impressed me, and some made me wish I had never watched it. Presenting yourself in video can be a great way to connect to an audience. The question is, "who" do you present? Do you show them your funky, home personality, or dress up and be professional, or get quirky and align yourself with your genre? I think these questions have to be answered by the person filming themselves. Usually, I go for professional, but today I killed two hours (and cracked myself up) creating an instructional film called Don't be a You-Boob on YouTube   I believe this film might be the beginning of my author-platform evolution from words to video. Watch the film to learn and laugh about the many things (namely 10 ... or 11) that you can do to improve your YouTube production.

The Synopsis Often publishers and agents ask for a synopsis of your novel manuscript. The synopsis functions to provide the barebones information about your plot, character and the stakes of your story. It is usually no longer than one page, which is what makes writing it difficult. The synopsis includes what happens, so it's like a mini-arc of your story. We start here, this happens, we go here and then that happens and we end up there. The SynopSnip Creating a SynopSnip is much more fun, more visually stimulating and is for a different audience--the reader. Consider the SynopSnip to be a very succinct snapshop of your synopsis. It is also in a format that makes it easy to distribute on social media, such as Facebook, Twitter etc. Take a look at the one below to see what I mean. The Example: The Fergus She Novel: The Fergus She Characters: Rachel (protagonist) Scarlet (antagonist) Grafen (antagonist) Angus (love interest) Plot: Rachel is the victim of an ancien...

Wordle is a tool that converts a section of your text into a graphic. The graphic will feature words that are used many times in your text in large font, and words that are less often used in smaller fonts. Believe it or not, Wordle will take up to 90,000 words (and possibly more), which means, you could paste in your entire novel manuscript. Once you see your Wordle graphic, you can determine what words you might be overusing in your manuscript. For example: Is the word "back" in the same size font as your protagonist's name? Doing a quick "Edit>replace" using MS word will allow you to take out redundant words, and then recopy the text back into Wordle. However, make sure you do this on a copy of your MS and not your original. Later, you can figure out how to edit your manuscript to reduce the number of times you use those common words. With Wordle, what you're hoping to create is a mini, visual synopsis of your novel. So character names should...

I have been following the #Pitchmadness posts on Twitter and noticed that the slush readers have made a few comments about some of the #Pitchers not properly identifying their genres. So I've put together a flow chart writers or readers can use to identify the genre of their novel. In this post, I'm specifically going to be addressing genre for fiction novels. Genre is a category that novels can be placed in based on the content, the theme, the characters and other conventions in the story. Conventions are those consistent elements that we read about over and over. For example: a convention or common element in fantasy is magic. Easy right? Not really. Especially when a novel can belong to a sub-genre. Then it gets tricky. A way to avoid confusion is to think about the purpose or reason the author wrote the novel, and to think about how the reader would react to the novel. So let's put your novel to the test. When you write a novel you use a number of tricks (beyond t...

Oh sorrow! Oh my! Oh me! I just discovered PitchMAS ten days too late. And I'm going to post about it, so you and I never miss it again. PitchMAS seems to be a query-fest that occurs between December 15th and 16th during which authors can submit a 35-word pitch through email to the twitter pitch geniuses. On December 19th, the top 75 pitches will be posted on this blog   http://pitchmas.blogspot.ca/  and agents and publishers will weed through and make comments or request manuscript pages. On December 20th, everyone and anyone can tweet their 140 character pitches with the hashtag #PitchMAS. The line-up of  ready and willing publishers and agents just waiting to find that perfect twitter pitch is pretty impressive, not to mention all of the authors and other industry folk following for fun. (Check out the list here  http://pitchmas.blogspot.ca/2013/11/epic-announcement-pitchmas-2013.html ). So, it's over. How can it help us now? Easy. Read through the list...

I wasn't going to go with an agent for my novel and here are the reasons why: Agents generally take 15%  Publishers list their submission guidelines on their web pages, and I can follow those Query letter example s abound, and I can apply those Lawyers share free publishing contracts with do and don't list s, and I can read those Kindle offers online publishing , and I can learn from their format suggestions DuoTrope and Submission Grinder offer access to calls for submissions, and I can track mine I have three family members who are active in the book industry, and I can ask them And I did all that. And I submitted my novel, "The Precious Quest" to three of the biggest fantasy publishers who accept submissions from authors.  A year and a half later, and three rejections later, I have run out of big publishers who accept high fantasy and who accept from unagented authors. Still confident, I felt I could get my 90,000 word, high fantasy that took ...

I'm not going to use fear language in this post because I don't think informed writers should be afraid. An ePublishing contract should address: The platform (print, or ebook or DVD) The term (how long) The compensation (how much) The scope (territory/area) When viewing an ePublishing contract (a contract between you (the author) and a publisher who will put your work online in ebook format), you need to consider a few rights. When signing away rights, you are agreeing to give the ePublisher certain access and ownership to your material. In a contract,  you "represent and warrant" (own) all rights to your original material. But you don't own all rights to third party material (quotes, images from third parties). These rights have to be examined before signing certain rights away to the ePublisher. An "out of print reversion of rights to the author" clause must be revised for an electronic book, which will never go out of print. Make sure the...

When a bookstore can't sell copies of your novel, the books get sent back to the publisher, who marks them with a dash, slash or smash and then off they go to a remainder bookstore like BookCloseOuts.com . Gloria Ferris signing  Cheat the Hangman As the author, you'll never see a penny from the remainder sales. However, if you offer to sign all copies at a bookstore, they will think you're wonderful, and your books may never be sent to remainder heaven, because publishers usually don't take signed books. Dianne J. Ferris signing The Purple Doll

If you're a writer without an agent, you're probably spending way too much time searching for potential publishers. I search on google, I log on MS Excel. I have the skills to do it myself, but I have not been writing all summer. Why? Because I'm juggling the submissions of 1 novel, 3 short stories, multiple poems and a novella. It doesn't seem like much, but when you factor in the searching, the rejections and re-submissions, it can become quite time consuming. The second issue with google searches is the results are saturated with outdated calls for submissions. I read, I get excited and then buried somewhere in the text is the end date of the call. I have seen some that are five years old. I need to write - not spend so much time submitting. So the question is: Should I try an agent who will take approximately 14% of my royalties and might not even search and submit for me (not all agents perform those tasks)?  Or should I move to a query database online to ...

Internet saturation of your name and your profile is key to creating a strong author presence. Agents and publishers prefer authors who have already established themselves online--even before they have been published. You know the common drill: Author Website Author page on Facebook Goodreads Tumblr, Blogger, Twitter, Wordpress Group membership All of the above take some effort and take you away from your writing. Well here is a new way to promote yourself, to build relationships with publishers, get some free reading materials and become a recognized "professional reader" . NetGalley connects you to publishers who want you to review books that are soon-to-be-published.  Why would you do this? Free reading material It's a good way to get your name and possibly your Web site or blogger links out there Your blog or group will get reviews of great books before they hit the press (timely) You may be able to build relationships with publishers You get...

As a new Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) author, I have learned a few formatting points that I would like to pass onto you. KDP requests that your manuscript be formatted in MS Word or HTML. If you are writing or revising your content in Word, like I did, you need to know the following: INDENTS: Don't use spaces or tabs. Use the "Paragraph" feature and "Indent" "First Line" by 0.5" or 1.27cm. Paragraph returns may not hold. Instead go into "Paragraph" again and set "After" "Spacing" to 10. Insert "Page Breaks" between chapters or text may run together on Kindle. Insert "Pictures". Don't cut and paste. Don't use Headers and Footers, or page numbers in either. Do use "Header" font formatting for your chapter titles as Kindle will turn this into easy-to-use navigation. Do insert a "Book Mark" at your Table of Contents and nam...

Figment is a personal space that allows you to promote and showcase your writing, in groups, on the site and on your blog. The layout is very user friendly and easy to understand. I signed up yesterday.  I create a profile, joined some groups containing potential readers of my favourite genre for writing and then I posted a flash fiction. For you writers out there who are dying to get some feedback on your writing, there are a few things you can do. Have a friend read it. Or, post a synopsis on your Web site and hopefully receive some responses to your upcoming work. I did that at my Web site and I did receive some nice feedback. See how it looks using WIX gallery.  Another way, is to create some writing that showcases your style and talent and post it on Figment.  The Figment writing tool allows you to create a cover, choose limited styles of text and layout and then make it available to the many readers on the site. See my example below. Notice how many respo...

I self-published The "OpenYar Mouth" Health Care Lottery picture book in 2006. Today, I'm going to republish it as a Kindle book. I will blog as I go, and provide all the steps below. I’ve never done this before, so let's see how long it takes. 3:00 p.m.   Start! Go to Amazon.com or .ca and sign in Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the menu link ""independently publish with us" This takes you to the "Take Control of Independent Publishing" page which features three publishing options: Kindle, print and audio. For this adventure, I'm choosing Kindle. Read and (if you want) accept the terms. Update your contact information including your phone number (3:15 p.m.) Provide bank account information for the deposit of royalties (excited yet?) Once you save your bank account info, your publisher code will be showing at the left. Capture that and keep it somewhere.  Here is...