Ready, Set, Write: Insane November Challenge NaNoWriMo

October 31, 2018October 31, 2018 Diane Tibert Challenges and Goals #amwriting, authors, books, challenges, NaNoWriMo, novels, writing

I’m tempted to answer a challenge I’ve never had before: to write 102,000 in 30 days. That’s 52,000 words more than called for in the NaNoWriMo challenge. My personal goal had been 60,000 words in the month of November.

Regardless of the goal I choose, I will post my word count daily in the right margin, and I’ll post a weekly round up every Saturday.

Since October 17th, I’ve written a total of 28,223 words. That includes

11,827 for Project M
16,396 for Revelation Stones

That’s an average of 1,882 words a day. I need to up that to 2,000 words a day to reach 60,000 words and 3,400 words to reach 102,000 words in November.

Participating in this challenge means I won’t be able to do any other writing except that which is vital to my writing career. This means my Monday post will be on hold until December.

Good luck to everyone who is participating in NaNoWriMo. The clock starts ticking…now!

Book Review: The Girl at the Top of the Tree by Barry Corbin

October 22, 2018 Diane Tibert Book Launch, Book Review Annapolis Valley, apple farming, apples, author, Barry Corbin, book review, books, family farm, farming, Farming in the Maritimes, love story, Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia author, novels, The Valley, writer, writing

The Girl at the Top of the Tree

by Barry Corbin

Published: 2018

ISBN: 978-1775327905

Genre: Historical Fiction

Pages: 380

I enjoy local stories that take place in rural settings, so when I read The Girl at the Top of the Tree, it struct a nerve. The story takes place in rural Nova Scotia, the Annapolis Valley to be exact, or as locals call it, The Valley. It starts several generations into the past, but quickly transports readers to the 1960s.

The brief family history tugs at my genealogical nerve, and I’m wondering about the surname and if I can find it on a census record. Details about the First and Second World Wars also pique my interest. I’ve done a lot of research on both because of family members, including my father, who served in them.

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Filter Words – Who Knew? Not Me

October 15, 2018 Diane Tibert Editing, Lessons in Writing books, characters, editing, filter words, paragraphs, publishing, stories, story telling, words, writing

A week ago, I stumbled onto a YouTube video discussing filter words. Never hearing this term before, I watched, listened and learned…and discovered I was guilty of using filter words.

What are Filter Words

Although I’m relatively new to the idea, my understanding is: words that create distance between the reader and the detail the character is seeing, hearing, tasting or feeling.

In other words, we are not using one of our senses to digest the story, rather instead, we are being told through one of the character’s senses.

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Don’t Muddy Your Brand

October 1, 2018 Diane Tibert marketing, Thought for the Day, Writing Business #amwriting, algorithms, Amazon, authors, books, brand, branding, David Gaughran, Kindle, marketing, publishing, truck pulls, writing

My teen-aged son loves to attend truck pulls at exhibitions. He only has his beginners, but he’s itching to get behind the wheel and has created elaborate schemes that would see him get there before he has his full driver’s license. He has yet to successfully carry out a scheme, but his mind is always working on it.

The videos he captures at these truck pulls are mashed together and posted to his YouTube channel. After a big pull at the end of August, I told him I’d share his link on my Twitter feed, thinking I’d be helping him spread the word so he’d have more subscribers and more views.

“You can’t do that,” he said. “You’d muddy my brand.”

For a guy who has no problem getting muddy on his four-wheeler, he had a real problem with mud on ‘his brand’. He knows little about marketing – or does he?

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Two Vital Questions to Ask Yourself About Writing

September 24, 2018 Diane Tibert Challenges and Goals, Thought for the Day #amwriting, books, goals, planning, publishing, reading, stories, success, writing, writing business

We are all looking for our path to success, but our paths are drastically different. We all don’t get to success the same way, and we don’t all identify success in the same manner.

In my years of reading about marketing and writing, the same questions pop up, and by answering these two questions, it makes us better able to plan our writing careers. In fact, the answers to these two questions are vital in making important decisions in our publishing journeys.

Last week, I posed these two questions to members in my writers’ group. They have a month to think over the answers, but I’ve been thinking about my answers for much longer.

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A Hard Lesson Learned

September 10, 2018September 10, 2018 Diane Tibert Challenges and Goals, Lessons in Writing, My Indie Publishing Experience, Scattered Stones, Shadows in the Stone, Writing Business #amwriting, authors, books, ebooks, genres, hard lessons learned, indie publishing, learning, lessons, publishing, self-publishing, writers

Although it’s tough to admit it, six years ago, I made a horrible mistake in my publishing journey. After publishing the first book in my Castle Keepers fantasy series, Shadows in the Stone, I should have buckled down and completed the draft to the second book in the series, Scattered Stones.

However, feeling the pressure to get more books on my publishing shelf, I wrote a few short stories that were not in the fantasy genre. They were quick writes, quickly edited by my editor and quickly published. I soon had four books on my shelf. It looked impressive.

I was following the advice of those who believed the more books on a shelf, the more a writer gets noticed because they have a larger footprint.

However, those giving advice didn’t stress the vital fact that the books written should all be in one genre. Readers sometimes stick to one genre, so those who loved my fantasy novel might not like my contemporary stories about death, domestic abuse or a cranky neighbour.

Sigh.

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No One is Surprised: CreateSpace Closes and KDP Print Takes Over

August 28, 2018 Diane Tibert My Indie Publishing Experience, News Flash, Writing Business Amazon, books, CreateSpace, ebooks, indie publishing, KDP Print, Kindle, paperbacks, print books, print-on-demand, printed books, publishing, publishing industry, self-publishing

Between putting the laundry in the washer and hanging it on the line and while I was making pancakes for my youngest child, washing dishes and waiting for the buzzer on the oven to go to indicate the cinnamon rolls were ready for extraction, an email popped up in my inbox.

The subject told me all I wanted to know, and if Amazon thought they’d surprise me, they couldn’t have been more mistaken: CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing to become one service

I didn’t bother opening the message; I was too busy, and I knew what it was all about.

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