Got a great opportunity for you to take advantage of… tonight.

Holly Lisle has created a new course… How to Think Sideways: Career Survival School for Writers. It’s a six-month course with weekly lessons that will show you how to break out of the pack to sell YOUR novel.

You’ll discover:

• How to Break the Four “Thinking” Barriers to Your Success
• How to Discover Your Writing “Sweet Spot”
• How to Generate Ideas on a Deadline
• How to Recognize and Build on Good Ideas
• How to Define Your Project’s Needs
• How to Discover (Or Create) Your Project’s Market
• How to Plan Your Project While NOT Killing Your Story
• How to Write From Inside Your Story
• How to “Plan” Surprises That Surprise Even You
• How To Design Compelling Queries, Proposals, And Sample Chapters
• How to Create, Complicate, And Solve Problems
• How to Fall In Love With Your Project a Second Time aka “Can’t I Just Kill Them All?”
• How to Find and Use Your “Planned” Surprises
• How To “Hire” Spies, And Why Your Project Needs Them
• How To Assess Your Progress And Make Mid-Course Corrections
• How To Use Story Gravity To Get To Your Ending
• How to Find the RIGHT Ending
• “What if the Book is Wrecked?”
• How To Write The Ending That Sells The Next Book
• How To Work With Editors, Agents, Marketing Departments, And Artists, And NOT Wreck Your Project
• How to Plan Your Revision
• How To NOT Fix What Ain’t Broken (While Still Fixing What Is)
• How To Deliver What You Promised And What They Want On Deadline
• How To NOT Be A One-Book Wonder: Learn to Produce Repeatable Results

More Course Materials

Along with the lessons each week, you get

• a monthly movie to get you started with each month’s topic
• copies of some of her manuscripts in multiple drafts so you can see how a pro writes and revises
• full access to her private writing community where you can meet with fellow students and course graduates
• access to a private workgroup where you can securely post and discuss your writing problems and triumphs with a small group of classmates
• discounts on other courses at the Student Bookstore

Graduate Bonus

You also get the Graduate Bonus - a three-week mini-course with video, MP3s, and transcripts on How NOT to Write a Series… And Why You Don’t Want To. I’m very interested in writing series novels, so this bonus is exceedingly attractive to me. I want to know how to do it right, so I actually get my novels published.

Charter Member Bonus

Holly’s offering charter memberships in the Think Sideways course until midnight Eastern time TODAY, so you have to hurry. If you DO sign up before midnight tonight, you also get the Charter Member Bonus. It’s a live-interaction writing workshop called Graduate Novel. In this workshop, Holly writes a novel and details the process of writing it. Graduates write their novels and go through the process of writing them, and together, Holly and the graduates work through the course a second time, discussing problems and progress.

You could pay hundreds of dollars for an opportunity like the Graduate Novel workshop and most “gurus” would happily charge you that much to dispense their wisdom and knowledge. And Holly’s giving it away as a FREE bonus to her Charter Members. If you’re serious about your writing, and I know you are, you don’t want to miss out on this incredible opportunity.

Money’s tight these days with all the bad news about the economy, so I know you’re probably worried about what it will cost. Holly has two payment options available:

Option 1
$47 today, plus $47 monthly for five months. Lessons delivered via your secure student page every week for 25 weeks.

Option 2
$25 today, plus $25 a month for eleven months. Lessons delivered via your secure student page every other week for 50 weeks.

$47 a month for six months seems like an awful lot of money, I know. But think of it this way…

That amounts to:

• 1 medium pizza a week OR
• 2 McDonald’s meals a week OR
• 1 and a half new paperback books a week OR
• movie tickets for you and your honey once a week OR
• four Starbucks coffees a week

For me, getting my novel written and done right is way more important to me than pizza, McDonald’s or even books, right now. And I know it is for you, too.

If you decide to take Option 2, the cost is even less each week and very affordable.

I’ve been buying and using Holly’s books on writing for years and she gives incredible value for the money in everything she produces. Check out the amazing things that Holly will show you in the course and sign up for it tonight. You don’t want to miss out on a great opportunity to learn from one of the pros in writing.

I’m signed up and taking the course myself. Come join me, but do it before midnight Eastern tonight!

This week, February 23-27, is Read Me Week. Read Me Week highlights the importance and fun of reading. It’s the creation of Book’em, an organization that seeks to inspire a love of books and reading in all children.

It’s probably safe to say that most writers are also avid readers. Our love of the written word drives us to enjoy other people’s words as much as our own.

A couple of years ago I had the stunning realization that I had stopped reading books. As a child, I read constantly, a book always in hand. Even the newspaper or a cereal box would suffice, as long as I had something to read. My parents even forbade me to read at home for a while, because they thought all the reading was interfering with finishing my homework. Unwilling to give up my favorite pastime, I began reading in all my free periods at school – the time when I normally did my homework. Stop me from reading? No way. I went through at least a hundred books a year, probably more, which is substantial since most of them came from the school or public library and I had limited access to each.

You can imagine my surprise then when I realized that as an adult I was reading less than 10 books a year, if even that. Not a good circumstance for a writer or a happy circumstance for someone who professes to love books.

So in January 2006 I decided to fix it. My method was simple – I began to write down the title, author and date that I finished each book. A simple list to keep track of what I was reading and how many books per year.

In 2006, I read 44 books. I discovered Patricia Briggs in March and finished all of her then in-print books by the start of April. I also started reading outside my favored genres (science fiction and fantasy) to round out my reading – The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (literary), Emma by Jane Austen (literary), The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis (contemporary), A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters (mystery), The Book of the Dead by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (mystery), and The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (memoir). New genre authors discovered include Michelle Sagara, Holly Black, Marie Brennen, Kat Richardson, and Lynn Viehl.

In 2007, I read 92 books – nearly two books a week. A sampling of the numbers – May – 8, June – 11, July – 8, August – 11, September – 17, October – 11. 2007 featured several runs of book reading from the same author. June was primarily S.L. Viehl, her Stardoc series. August was Sara Douglass. September was a mix – Eileen Wilks, Karen Chance, and J.R. Ward. October and November were Sherrilyn Kenyon.

It is fascinating to look across the lists and see the patterns in the books I’ve read or find the day when I first read a particular author.

How is your reading going? If you’ve fallen behind in your fiction reading, take Read Me Week as your opportunity to commit to reading more books in 2009 to support your writing.

When you’re deep in the middle of your manuscript, the last thing you want is a writing slump. Here are four ways to prevent a slump from hitting:

1. Work the same hours every day. The routine will keep your brain primed and focused on your story.
2. Stop writing each day at a point where you know what the next sentence will be. If you already know what you’re going to write next, you’re less apt to hit a slump.
3. Read over the last few pages of what you wrote the day before to get yourself back into the swing of the story.
4. Retype the last page or two that you wrote the day before to put yourself back in the story.

What other methods do you use to keep your momentum going?

My own best advice to young writers is: follow your curiosity and passion. What fascinates you will probably fascinate others. But, even if it doesn’t, you will have devoted your life to what you love. An important corollary is that it’s no use trying to write like someone else. Discover what’s uniquely yours. ~Diane Ackerman

People love pretty much the same things best. A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all…

Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment. “The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one’s own most intimate sensitivity.” Anne Truitt, the sculptor, said this… ~The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

Have you found your passion? The subject, the theme, the characters, the element in life that you alone love? Are you writing about that?

The final step in the novel process is submitting your manuscript to agents and editors. Writers are divided on which you should start with – finding an agent or finding an editor.

Reasons to Find an Agent First

• An agent can function as your first “acceptance” of your book. If you can get an agent to like it enough to represent you, you’re one step closer to getting it published.
• An agent will sometimes work with you on changes to make your book better.
• Agents are better connected in the publishing world and can put your manuscript in front of the editors best positioned to buy it.

Reasons to Find a Publisher First

• Agents can take a long time to respond to a query or a full or partial manuscript, the same as a publisher. By going straight to a publisher, you may shorten the time to acceptance.
• Your position in approaching an agent is stronger when you’ve got a publisher already interested in your book.

Regardless of which you choose, the important thing is that you are submitting your work to somebody.

Finding a Place to Submit Your Novel

There are many places you can check to find agents or publisher to submit your novel to. Here’s a short list of places to start:

• Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market by Writer’s Digest Books
• Writer’s Market Guide to Literary Agents by Writer’s Digest Books
• Writer’s Guide to Book Editors, Publishers, and Literary Agents by Jeff Herman fromPrima Press
• Writer’s Handbook by The Writer, Inc
• Writer’s Digest Magazine
• The Writer Magazine
• Mystery Writers of America
• Science Fiction Writers of America
• Horror Writers Association
• Romance Writers of America
• Literary Market Place

February 13th is Get a Different Name Day. It was created by the folks at www.wellcat.com.

Most of us had no say in the name our parents gave us. We’re stuck with whatever they thought was cool, interesting, or appropriate at our birth. And that has resulted in some people who hate the names they were given.

Children of celebrity parents often seem to get saddled with the strangest names.

• Atticus, son of Casey Affleck & Summer Phoenix (actors)
• Bronx Mowgli Wentz, son of Ashlee Simpson (singer) & Pete Wentz (Musician, Fall Out Boy)
• Ignatius Martin Upton, son of Cate Blanchett (actor)
• Jagger Joseph Blue Goldberg, daughter of Soleil Moon-Frye (actor)
• Taa-Jah, daughter of Sarah McLachlan (singer)
• Ptolemy John , son of Gretchen Mol (actor) & Kip Williams (director)
• Jagger Song Scallions, child of Brett Scallions (Fuel) & Abby Gennet (MTV VJ)

As writers, we share the ultimate power of parents. We are responsible for the naming of our characters.

Some great resources for finding the perfect name for your character:

Name Nerds

20,000 Names

Fantasy Name Generator

Social Security Administration

Your novel is now polished and as pefect as it can be. Congratulations! You’ve now accomplished more than 99%* of the people in the world who say they want to be a writer.

You’re ready for the final step in the process – submitting your novel to someone who will read it, love it, and agree to represent or publish it.

Compared to the other steps in the process – planning, writing, revising – this step is the easiest. All you do is locate some people to send it to and put the manuscript in the mail. That’s a lot less effort than the weeks or months it took you to write the book.

However… while submitting is the physically easiest step in the novel writing process, it’s also the most emotionally difficult for most writers. Why? Because you send your novel out to an agent or an editor and then you wait. And wait. And wait. And then wait some more. And if, by a miracle, you get an answer in a reasonable amount of time (anything less than six months), chances are it is a rejection.

You pour your heart and soul into your book and then someone says, “No thanks, not right for us.” Ack! Stabbed in the heart! Many writers experience anxiety, depression, despair, anger or sadness during the submission process because of the high rate of rejection.

The most important thing you can do for yourself on the submission step is to prepare yourself mentally and emotionally.

Yes, your novel is going to get rejected. Expect it. Prepare for it. And remember one very important thing – rejection of your novel is not a rejection of YOU. It’s not personal. How could it be? The agent or editor doesn’t know you. They have your name and your manuscript, not your life history, not a sense of who you really are.

Rejection is a rather harsh term with a lot of negative associations. It is better for a writer to think of it not as a rejection, but as a “Not right for us” message.

Imagine you’re shopping in an art store. You see a piece of modern art on the wall. A lovely piece, but your taste runs toward Impressionist art, so you pass it by. You reject it. Do you hate the artist? No. Do you feel anything personal toward the artist at all? Hardly. That piece of art just didn’t fit your needs or your tastes at the moment.

It’s the same with a writing rejection. It’s not personal, so read the rejection letter, stick it in a drawer and send the manuscript out again. Somewhere out there is the perfect agent or editor for your novel.

*All statistics are made up by me. Hey, I’m a writer, not a numbers gal.

February is National Time Management month.

For writers, Time Management is a required skill. Most of us have jobs, families, other obligations that require our time and attention, often leaving little time for writing. We have to be disciplined in how we approach our activities, so that we can accomplish our writing goals amidst everything else we have going on.

Here are some resources to help with managing your time:

Time Management for Writers by Seressia Glass

Time Is Not on Your Side: Time Management Tips for Writers by Michael Stelzner

Time Management for Writers by Randy Ingermanson

Time Management for Writers by Terescia Harvey

Time Management for Writers – Controlling Time, Without the Sci-Fi

How do you manage your time so you get your writing done?

You’ve celebrated and your novel has had a vacation. Time to get back to work on it. The next task is revision, also known as editing or rewriting.

Yes, we all want to think that we write perfect prose in our first draft, but that doesn’t happen. Your writing can always be improved. And there are many methods for doing the rewriting, but they all come down to the same basic steps.

1. Read through the manuscript and note problems.
2. Fix the problems.

Personally, I like a little more guidance than that when starting a task that can be huge. If you feel the same, here are some methods that you can use to guide you.

Revision Methods

How to Revise a Novel from Holly Lisle

One-Pass Manuscript Revision: From First Draft to Last in One Cycle from Holly Lisle

Editing by Paperback Writer

Writing Triage by Paperback Writer

Editing and Revising That Won’t Drive You Crazy by Paperback Writer

Self-Editing by Lori Handeland

Editing Made Easy by Lee Masterson

Rewriting the Beast by Lazette Gifford

In a Revision Rut? Try 52-Card Pickup by Carol J. Stephenson

Color My Revisions by Carol J. Stephenson

Autumn Leaves: A Writer’s First Novel Rewrite by Jennifer Shafer

Yes, there are a lot of links and they are only a fraction of the info available on revisions. That’s because revising your novel is a personal process just like the other aspects of writing. You need to figure out what method works for you and use it. Trying out another writer’s process let’s you see if any parts of it will work for you.

If you already have a revision process that works for you, share the details in a comment.