"Lonely Life" of Writing-get over that idea!

Jean Purcell

"I did it alone!" Hearty kudos and "thank you!" to you, visitor and reader of Author Support! I invite you to sign up for e-mail delivery for new posts or join this blog, if you have not already done that!

As I type this, the visit counter for Author Support moves ahead toward a speed of 10,000 visitors! Opinari Writers, another member of this blog family, moves at 20,000 VPB (Visitors Per Blog). Both are aiming to register higher VPB's in the future.

Clearly, "I did it alone!" cannot be true. I thank all of you who visit here! My love of writing and my love of giving tips to other writers, including pointing to resources, revs up my work! Whether you land on this site deliberately or stumble here and linger, read, or investigate...however you get here, my job is to share and build on my years of writing and print and digital publishing experience.

I tweak my blogs now and then, aiming for more attractive and attracting blogs. I started this in earnest a few months ago, and decided to focus specifically and more regularly on (1) writing new articles, (2) blog design (adding/ changing gadgets/widgets; colors, fonts, column sizes, and related factors), (3) writing craft: style and substance focus, (4) digital networking (Twitter-1 and Twitter-2, Facebook-FB, for example), and (5) paying regular, daily attention.

I do the same thing, in my own way, that you do or want to do, and I share my years of experience and attention to how and what to write and communicate. I love it! Have a blog you want to improve? You can do it by refocusing on these five elements:

• Better writing - improved knowledge and use of the craft of writing  
• Sharper blog design - examine blog designs you like and can adapt
• Tighter writing focus - edit, edit, edit
• Frequent digital networking - for friendly ideas, re-tweeting work by others, posting your links 
• Regular new writing - draft/edit/save, draft/edit/save, draft/edit/save...and publish. 

What writers do, they often do "alone," as "in solitude," and yet...we are connecting with others all the time! We have support from many people we may never see or meet face to face. We learn from people we know and don't know who have good ideas, technical help (including creative solutions), and motivational cues.

Thinking the writing life is a lonely life? Get over it, and may your writing move forward with even tighter and more disciplined goals. Keep learning from others! I know I learn from you...what Stat Counter tells me, post by post, that you read and come back to! I am adding spiritual growth books to my  hand-picked books online store. It's growing, too. 

We, the Audience-Builders

Follow/Join this Blog

Ken Follett's giant work The Pillars of the Earth (historical fiction) gets my attention every day now, as I plough through this complicated and fascinating story that features, among others, the character of Tom Builder. He's a master stonemason and a natural architect. Tom is poverty-stricken as to earthly goods or security and is wealthy in talent, skill, vision, and willingness to work hard. These qualities have been acquired, developed, and  built over the years, including manhood and feeding a wife and growing family in the 12th century.   

    I thought of Tom this morning when I set out to write about building an audience for a blog. Presently, this blog has a little over 8,000 readings and some much-valued followers. I want the blog to grow in interest for present and future readers. In Pillars of the Earth, Tom Builder is at early stages of restoring a ruined cathedral. That's the work he loves to do, and compared to his task, mind should look easy. Yet, it's got its own challenges. Here, I want to continue to add to the kind of support that can help authors, whether first-time book-writers or writers with one or more books already printed and released. 

     While bloggers are not building cathedrals, we are building skills, vision, and audience. As a blogger, I want to do the best I can at the time, at a particular moment and during the present month and year. Writers must keep writing. Unlike Tom, we do not have to wait for something to burn to the ground to get the attention of those who could use what we do.

     What we have to do is to give readers time to find us and, when they do, to find good quality increasingly consistent for use and enjoyment. Not all readers have equal interest in specific blog postings, or articles. Yet, we can aim to inspire any reader in some way by including what is appealing, uplifting, and interesting, whether a quote, news flash, or example. That's what we do. That's what we enjoy doing.

     Linking ways for an audience to grow and to find us more easily, we can use Twitter and Facebook and other links our readers may use, including LInkedIn, where you can also include links to articles or videos. 

     "How can I improve this blog?" We need to ask this question of our writing every day. Today, I added to the right column of this blog some information about my Twitter accounts, @OpinariPeople and @OpineBookCafe. 
     This is part of my vision about what you and I as writers are doing in our patch of the wide world. 

    

Birthdays, Candy, and Characters

Jean Purcell

Twitter @opinaripeople

WHO HAS A BIRTHDAY SOON?

Happy Birthday to Les and  others...

 

Twitter @OpineBooksCafe_NEW 

"May THIS DAY be a day of gratitude." Coming soon: 2/2012-New Book eStore and Cafe Blog with reviews, press releases, comparative book shopping. By Adazing Design, Updates here about comparative shopping and more. Hope you'll Follow @opinaripeople for writers, readers, and others, and @OpineBooksCafe (new).

__________________________________________________________________

Writer and film-maker John Hughes 
knew how 
to create and develop 

characters... like or not like us...and we got them!

      

John Hughes' movie Uncle Buck (rated #5 on list of 10), a John Candy-arranged birthday fete, got this high-five:

     "...In the John Candy classic, Uncle Buck, this well meaning uncle gives 

little Miles the best birthday he can pull off. The celebration includes 

giant pancakes, lack luster guests, and a hysterical confrontation 

with a boozed up clown... reminds me of how funny 

John Candy was and what a great birthday moment 

he has provided movie goers with!"

Writers know that good stories involve balance, and we can count on a John Hughes film, like Uncle Buck, for pathos and slapstick, easy and intriguing to watch, not easy to do so well.  

Somewhere deep within ourselves... we love this, and this is a big reason for reading wonderful books, watching talented movies!

Jean Purcell

Opine eStore and Book Cafe

Follow @OpineBooksCafe
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Bulding Character from Life: what happened when Steve Jobs spoke at Stanford in 2005

Image via Wikipedia Hoover Tower, Stanford, campus where Steve Jobs spoke

Jean Purcell

Twitter @opinaripeople

Twitter @OpineBooksCafe_NEW 

_______________________________

Fiction writers must create and develop believable characters. The protagonist, especially, must have flaws, weaknesses, fears...to form identification by the reader.

      
Steve Jobs, who died after a long illness, created Apple, the high-tech business known all over the world. He was not afraid to tell about a tough time in his life. Speaking about a time of apparent failure, Steve Jobs told Stanford University graduates: "Sometime,  life is going to throw a brick at you."

The line was followed--oddly, I thought--by laughter. You can find that speech on YouTube and listen for the laughter rippling over the audience after that line.

Surely some of those students knew exactly what Steve Jobs meant; they had already had to dodge or recover from a few "bricks" that had come their way. Maybe some who laughed like dark humor, after the fact. When we get out of the dark, we can look back and laugh sometimes. 

Fiction writers know that good stories involve some "bricks" being thrown, usually at main characters. Protagonists cannot be shown as jumping to the right conclusions all the time. They cannot have all the answers, do the right thing always, or never fail to make the correct or anticipated responses.

Some authors are able to bring the release of tears to our eyes, making words swim on pages before us. That, we know, means the story is moving us somewhere deep within ourselves. 

I hope that if a brick has already come your way in this New Year 2012 that you know you will somehow recover. You can even be stronger for refusing to give up, to allow that brick to destroy you. Just listen on YouTube to what Steve Jobs said. Whatever his beliefs, he was given ability, in this life, to push forward and give to graduates who were about to learn more about life outside than inside the university.  

That is no joke.

Tweet this


Follow @OpineCafeBlog

Best First Lines and Chapters_the Novel

Image at right is from Wikipedia -- "Dostoevsky's notes for chapter 5 of The Brothers Karamazov"_note the planning and detail!

HAPPY NEW YEAR GREETINGS!

Jean Purcell

Twitter @opinaripeople
Opine eStore and Book Cafe
Twitter @OpineBooksCafe

"May THIS DAY OF THE NEW YEAR be a day of thanks continuing for you!"

"In the beginning, God..." of Genesis 1 is the best first line ever. That is the first expression of the written Truth of God. It is not intended as a writing lesson. Most of the world knows that divine beginning because of its inspired expression and its meanings, from scientific mysteries to the Creator's plan for all of heaven and earth contained in the first and following chapters of Genesis.    

We do non-scriptural writing, yet we aim to write as succinctly as those who wrote the inspired scriptures. Also, we learn from each other. We are readers, too, and highly critical. 
Is there a novel, for example, by a little-known author that drew you in due to an
intriguing first line or chapter? 

Like a new gate someone discovers and stands, deciding whether or not to enter (who will be there? what will be the tone of the place? will it be worth the time?), a novel's first chapter must invite, even draw, the reader to enter. The author  and everyone helping the book in publication want readers to decide, and quickly, to enter the story. Therefore, hints whether soft of jolting of the lives, experiences, meanings, and insights must appear at the gate of the first lines of the first chapter, and all the way through to the satisfying end.

First impressions count in writing. 

Happy, Harmonious New Year 2012 to you! 

Jean Purcell
Opine eStore and Book Cafe

Copyright (c) 2011 Author Support blog

Think, Reason, Believe...Pray

(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

prayer.. (Photo credit: aronki)

Jean Purcell

Follow on Twitter @opinaripeople
and @OpineBookCafe

The Latin word opinari means "to think, to reason, to believe." It is the root of the English word "opine," a favorite of Sherlock Holmes. Opine is the word my husband and I chose to name a place we once had, where we went to reflect, read, and discuss..."Little Opine." At Little Opine we mainly worked on the overgrown land, made repairs and trips there to take trash-bins-on-wheels to the end of the drive for pickup days.

We visited Little Opine on weekends for a couple of years. In winters, we made wood fires in its little alpine stove. Little Opine is where I started to plan for the first book of our start-up publishing company, named Opine Publishing. Exhausted Rapunzel by Deirdre Reilly became our first full-length book, a humor book by a newspaper columnist we know very well.* 

Opinari, being the root of our name and ideas, continues to resonate with us. Think, reason, believe. Those words lead me to think pray. Writers of books for thinking readers need a life of prayer. The Psalms are a good start for those not yet practicing this.

I agree with the view that when one can hardly think, reason, or pray, we still believe. Faith remains because love remains. The times when we lean intensely into prayer for strength, steadiness, and love...are the times when it is most difficult to pray. Here is also where selected psalms can help us to pray. We can read and pray anywhere, sitting or kneeling, walking, enjoying the outdoors...

Everything done through Opine Publishing has been covered in prayer. We are human and Opine is a small publishing house. The new eStore features other publishing houses' books as well as our own. "And crown our efforts with success"...the pleasures, insights, and refreshment of memorable books.    

*first daughter

Opine Publishing titles:

Refugee Was My Name by Mogama/2012

The Mourner's Comforter by C. H. Spurgeon/2007

Only Believe  by Beryl Adamsbaum/2004

Not All Roads Lead Home by Jane Bullard/USA/expanded edition/2004

Seeking God's Face by Beryl Adamsbaum/2003-04/USA and UK editions

Not All Roads Lead Home/UK/original edition/Study Guide(out of print)/2000

Not All Roads Lead Home by Jane Bullard/UK/original edition/1996 

LinkedIn Talk

Image via CrunchBaseby Jean Purcell
editor@opinebooks.com
Follow on Twitter @opinaripeople (Opinari People)

Three top professional networking places on the Internet are Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The  LinkedIn groups directory lets members find like-minded groups.
     One current favorite is the LinkedIn group Tools of Change for Publishing. Current discussion is about Amazon.com's recent move into publishing and the pros and cons for authors. You might want to take part.
     Writer or Author, if you are not a LinkedIn member, think about joining and building your network. It's a great place for resources if you spend some time there, learning the site and the kinds of groups you can try. You can move in and out of groups, as you like. 

(c)2011 Author Support blog

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Do You Have a Blog?

by Jean Purcell

Opine eStore and Book Cafe

NOOK image_bn.com

Coming soon, more blog and blogging information, with advice about LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter networking. Recent e-mail exchanges with another writer, Ken McCreless, who has a new book available digitally and soon in print, got me to thinking again about writers and blogs. 

     Every writer needs a blog, I opine. This is a theme I return to because many writers are thinking about creating their first blog and yet, they hesitate. Where to begin?

     My first tip is to create a Google account (free) and then sign up to create a Google blog through blogspot.com (all free). Start simply with a simple Template that appeals to you. The rest is a learning experience. You can begin to learn about widgets, Google ads (free to post; just don't click on the ones on your blog!), and Twitter/Facebook links, as well as LinkedIn.

     P.S. Once-Told Tales, by Ken McCreless mentioned above and cover image by Nook, is available for Barnes and Noble's Nook and Amazon.com's Kindle. . 

Copyright (c) 2011 Author Support blog and Jean Purcell

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•  
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Professional and Entrepreneur Networking for Writers and Authors

Image by johnscotthaydon via Flickr

Facebook and Traffic

by Jean Purcell
editor@opinebooks.com
Follow on Twitter @opinaripeople

Writers should think of themselves as professionals. I urge this, and also urge published writers to think of themselves as entrepreneurs or business people. Writing and publishing are professional areas that mix for every author. Most authors today need to be more than skilled, artistic, literary, knowledgeable, and creative. Conceptualizing, planning, and writing (full of multiple layers of skills) are followed by interpersonal matters, like dealing with editors, publishers, and...the public.
     Many if not most writers not only love but prefer communication via written and/or taped or videoed words. Shy or introverted writers tend to deliver the best flow and ease with words and thoughts on paper, screen/monitor, or behind a video camera...at home, of course, or in the privacy of an office...or a public podium. 
     As a mentor and publisher, I have met many interesting and talented writers through this digital world we inhabit. E-mails were the beginning, and an e-mail-delivered newsletter I started for writers and for Opine Publishing, Opinari Newsletter now known as Opinari Quarterly. Now, add blogs and text messages. 
     Writers have contacted me about works in progress, and their personalities and talents have amazed, pleased, challenged, entertained, and informed me. Their backgrounds cover a broad spectrum from parents full time, to nursing, teaching, and even astro-science (I don't even know the correct terms for those who work on U. S. space projects!). Each person leaves an indelible place in my memory, all good. It is a way to continue learning, even while helping or consulting. I love this work!

     Here are some ideas for those of you ready to think "business" regarding your book or books, whether already published or under publishers' consideration. I placed years by each, and I think all have good ideas to choose from, or at least experiment with, for your professional networking:  

Twitter.com - Sign up or add names you intend to follow; publish blog post links on Twitter


12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally (2007)


How To: Use Facebook for Professional Networking (2009)

32 Ways to Use Facebook for Business (2009)

How to Use Facebook Professionally and for Marketing (2010)

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