Angela Ackerman

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, July 20-26, 2014

/ Melanie Marttila / 5 Comments

Angela Ackerman details her encounter with copyright infringement on Writers Helping Writers. This is serious stuff.

I’ve had other writerly friends who’ve noticed their books have been pirated and if you’ve been following Angela on FB, you probably know that she’s encountered that too.

There’s a mode of thought on the interwebz that says pirating is not your enemy. If people like your book so much they steal it, then it will likely convert to more readers.

I think that argument is fundamentally flawed. Chuck Wendig spoke to this quite eloquently a few months ago, here, here, and here.

What if people are stealing your work and trying to make money off it illegally by selling it and pocketing the profits? For a self-published author, the book is her livelihood. Even for the traditionally published, what money he might have seen from a legitimate sale, disappears. It’s wrong.

And the readers who buy these pirated copies may not even know that their money is not going to the author. That’s doubly wrong. Theft, deceit, and fraud? That’s jail time people.

But as Chuck said, it’s not just about the money. An author (or authors) slaved over that book for months, if not years. It’s their intellectual property (IP). It’s their blood, sweat, and tears.

Don’t pirate books. Don’t do it.

<end rant>

Onward, to more light-hearted material.

M.M. Finck posts on Women Writers, Women’s Books about the querying process and why it’s not just about the query. Thanks to Jamie Raintree (see below) for bringing this to my attention.

Anthony Metivier guest-blogged about how to mine your dreams for story gold on Writers Helping Writers.

Bringing a strong vision to your fiction, by Laura K. Cowan, for Writer Unboxed.

Jamie Raintree asks, how far do we follow our dreams? Since we’ve become acquainted, Jamie’s acquired an agent and is now working on a second novel. I love watching her journey unfold.

Here’s Janice Hardy’s guest post for Anne R. Allen’s blog about how not to start a novel.

Veronica Sicoe follows up last week’s post on how she structures her novels with this one on how she brainstorms an idea into a working concept.

K.M. Weiland continues her negative character arc series with part 2: The negative character arc in the second act.

Whether you’re considering hiring a ghost writer, or becoming one, this post by Roz Morris will answer your questions.

Four reasons to use dramatic irony from Writers Write.

Chuck Wendig gets a mention again for sharing this i09 post about Snowpiercer and its fascinating influence. Yes, it’s a South Korean movie based on a French graphic novel, but it’s still great storytelling.

Xia Jia shares her thoughts on what makes Chinese science fiction, Chinese on Tor.com. Translated by Ken Liu. It’s interesting socio-political stuff.

And if your to-be-read (TBR) pile isn’t big enough yet, here is some recommended reading from TED.

Flavorwire presents the 35 writers who run the literary internet.

As a follow-up to my last week’s posting of the CanLit song, here’s every Canadian novel ever. It’s kind of true. And funny. The Toast.

And that’s it for this week, folks.

Thanks for following, sharing, and all the good stuff you do.

Tipsday

My first virtual conference #WANAcon Feb 2014

/ Melanie Marttila / 4 Comments

This has been a week of firsts here at Writerly Goodness.

Yesterday, I posted about my first twitterview experience. Today it’s #WANAcon.

WANAcon

Over the last couple of years, I have attended several excellent online courses through WANA International, Kristen Lamb’s online writer’s university. Each course has been reasonable on the plastic, and I’ve invariably received great value for the money.

So, I thought, for the price of three or four individual courses, I could have the benefit of twelve, plus (!) It was a no-brainer, really.

Also, if I want, I have access to all the alternate sessions that I didn’t attend. Everything’s recorded, and I can view any of them any time I want (for a defined period of time).

I’m not going to give away any of the content, except to say that I recommend #WANAcon to anyone who wants an inexpensive alternative to a traditional conference. No travel, no hotel, no days-on-end of eating out, no time away from family or work. It really is a fabulous deal.

There were even pitch sessions, though I didn’t opt into them.

So here’s a quick rundown of the sessions I attended:

  1. Branding for authors – Kristen Lamb
  2. Self-editing for fiction writers – Marcy Kennedy
  3. OneNote: The solution to organizing your work – Jenny Hansen
  4. Writing effective inner dialogue – Lisa Hall-Wilson
  5. World-building 101 – Kristen Lamb
  6. An introvert’s guide to Twitter – Jami Gold
  7. Backstory: How your hero’s past shapes his future – Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi
  8. Creating compelling, unforgettable characters – Shirley Jump
  9. Build an author website without getting burned – Laird Sapir
  10. 7 steps to a stronger love story – Gabriela Pereira
  11. Rock your revisions – Gabriela Pereira and Julie Duffy
  12. Blogging for authors – Kristen Lamb

As you can see, there was a smorgasbord of Writerly Goodness to take in. Added bonus: You can do it all in your PJs 🙂

I’m feeling pleasantly buzzed.

What courses have you taken recently that were good value for the money? Tried anything new that turned out even better than your expectations?

Do share.

The next chapter: July 2013 update

/ Melanie Marttila / 9 Comments

Just a few words here about my writing life of late.

I am continuing to revise Initiate of Stone, but at least once a week, I can’t seem to get to it after all my other responsibilities.  Then sometimes I make a choice.  This past Tuesday, for example, I chose to go to North Bay rather than taming my daily dose of the intewebz or write.  Though it was well worth it, I still felt odd not writing.

It’s an addiction now.  Healthy, but an addiction nonetheless 😉

Acceptances

Since my last update, I’ve received some good news.  The Atomy picked up two of my poems, Enhance will be accepting one of my photographs (wow!), and most recently, Sulphur will be accepting three of my poems for its next issue.

I received my contract from On Spec and am waiting to hear from their content editor on next steps (still so excited about this!).

I’ve submitted a couple of flash fiction pieces, but they’re both fairly recent stories and may need to mature (read, to be edited) before they find a home.

Writers of the Future wasn’t fond of “The Gabriel” but I have yet to recieve my personalized response.

Still waiting to hear about a few short story submissions from April, May, and June.

Oh, and I almost forgot.  I submitted the first bit of a story to Erin Brady too, and I’m curious to find out what will come of that 🙂

Just as I was linking those publications, above, I noticed that Enhance has a call out for that flashy fiction stuff!  Go see!

Conferences

This year’s CanWrite! was a success.  I certainly hope everyone got a lot of good information out of my CanWrite! blog posts.

Since I’m now a member of the program committee, which includes responsibility for the conference and the CAA literary awards, I’ll probably have some news forthcoming about next year’s conference in the future.  Watch this space 🙂

I’ve had to make a decision about When Worlds Collide in Calgary.  Though I would love to go and the line up looks great (Patricia Briggs, Robert J. Sawyer, and Angela Ackerman will be among the guests), I just can’t afford it.

The conference fee is reasonable in the extreme, but it’s the air fare and accommodation that make the event costly.  Domestic flights are quite expensive. I had my eye set on Surrey this year, so I think I’m going to stick with that conference and go to WWC next year.  I only have enough Avion points to take 2 trips anyway and one is already spoken for (a friend’s pre-wedding party) so there you have it 🙂

There’s a writing contest associated with Surrey too, so I’ll probably aim to submit something for that as well.

It’s good to keep the creative opportunities lined up and ready to rock.

Writerly Goodness

What’s everyone working on these days?  I’d love to hear from you about your creative projects!

Sundog snippets: The learning mutt is learning :)

/ Melanie Marttila / 8 Comments

I haven’t made much progress on Khara House’s May submit-o-rama and that’s kind of pathetic given that I only signed up to submit once a week.

I do have two stories due for the 31st, but can’t see getting another story done this month.  My other two submissions will have to be poetry, if anything at all.  I may just have to concede to failing the challenge.

What’s more exciting (for me, anyway) is that I signed up for some excellent courses in the last few weeks.

First was Marcy Kennedy’s logline, tagline, and pitch webinar, through WANA International.

Initially, the webinar was to have been May 11, but had to be rescheduled due to technical difficulties.  We got to complete the webinar yesterday, May 18, and it was very worthwhile.  Marcy knows of what she speaks 🙂

Then Last Tuesday, I signed up for another WANA International webinar with Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi, authors of The Emotion Thesaurus and the minds behind The Bookshelf Muse blog.

That webinar was also very good, and focused on creative ways to show emotion in your writing.  What works and what doesn’t for modern authors.

I’d highly recommend WANA International courses.  They’re reasonably priced, and the presenters are all experts in their respective fields.  Marcy’s and Angela’s/Becca’s webinars weren’t the first WANA courses I attended.  About a month or so ago, I signed up for Jay Donovan’s internet security course.  He’s one of the techsurgeons behind the WANA site.  It too, was a good one, though I had to miss part of it.

The good thing about WANA webinars is that you get the recording on the other side 🙂

My month-long learning effort, though, is my first Margie Lawson course.  Margie Lawson is my kind of writing teacher.  Her method is deep editing and you really have to experience it to understand it.  It’s eye-opening.  She gets into rhetorical techniques and studying the writing of acknowledged masters.

The course will continue until the end of the month  and I’ll blog about it in more detail at that time, but for now, I’ll just say that you have to check out the Lawson Academy.  Once again, the courses are very reasonably priced.

I got hold of Margie through the Writers in the Storm blog.

That’s all I have for you this week, my friends.  I’ll encourage you to check out WANA International and Margie Lawson for yourselves.  They. Are. Awesome.

Until next weekend, the learning mutt is learning.