Jill Elizabeth posted this on June 21st, 2012
http://blog.jill-elizabeth.com/2012/06/21/guest-post-book-reviews-self-published-authors-by-tamera-lawrence/
Today’s post is a guest piece by author Tamera Lawrence, offering her thoughts on the perils – and rewards – of performing book reviews for (and providing feedback to) self-published authors. This is a subject near and dear to my own heart for a few reasons. First, I too am a reviewer who more than occasionally has found herself contacted by a self-published author seeking reviews and publicity. Second, because I’m hoping to be an author seeking reviewers at some point in the not-too-distant future. While I’m still not sure if I will go the self-publishing route (it’s not my first choice – I still suffer from the snobbishness of a girl who longs to feel the warm glow of validation that only a New York big publishing house can provide), I’m not ruling it out. Despite the aforementioned snobbishness, I want my books out in the world too – and if I try and no one wants to publish them for me, well, then I’ll just have to man-up and do it myself.
If you’ve gone that route, or even if you’re just curious about the process of book reviewing, Tamera’s piece should be a good read for you. Enjoy – and thanks again Tamera for sharing your thoughts and experience!
Book Reviews – Self Published Authors
by Tamera Lawrence
As a Book Reviewer, I have read all kinds of books by many wonderful writers. Many are traditional books. But many are by self-published authors. Without the benefit of an editor, a self-published author can be alone with the editing process. A really great story can get bogged down with unnecessary wording. There is also the dreaded dangling modifier.Although writing is fun, it’s also a lot of work. Sometimes an author is too close to their story. The writer forgets that a reader needs to see what the writer wants them to see. Feel what they want them to feel. The setting, time period and characters and plot need to stand out early on so that a reader gets hooked right from the beginning. A reader needs to care about the outcome – grab onto a character and stay hooked.
Recently, I had to create a few really tough book reviews. I always try to find something good in the writing. Writers can be so sensitive. I certainly don’t want to discourage anyone. And everyone can learn. Improve. I am always learning. I find that the talent is usually there, but the stories are all over the map. I often have to re-read areas to figure out what is going on. Dig. Dig. Dig. Sometimes I will have to search through the manuscript just to find out the time period. An abundance of characters can also leave me looking to grasp onto someone, anyone. The other issue is that often writers tell a story instead of showing it through their character’s points of view. This dulls the story. The reader can’t connect with the characters.
I would suggest that a writer latch onto the many resources available for writers. If you can’t afford an editor, find a trusted friend to read your book – someone who will be honest with you. Reading groups can also be helpful. Sometimes putting your book aside for a few days or weeks can help a writer look at their manuscript with fresh eyes – often finding mistakes or areas that are questionable. You will now be able to see what your reader can’t if rushing through this process. And if you can’t see it then set the book aside again until you can. There is also Natural Reader, which will read your manuscript back to you. The Internet has great resources for writers – critique groups.
Every word should count.
As a book reviewer, I love to experience the wonderful array of books that I have had the privilege to review. Each writer is special and unique. There is so much undiscovered talent. The competition is fierce. So make your efforts count.
As writer I can benefit from my own advice. I deal with the same issues and always working to improve my craft. I have some great mentors and trusted allies. This support helps me to stay focused and to grow.
Don’t ever get discouraged. Get a backbone. And whatever you do – keep writing!
***
About Tamera Lawrence
As a child, I had a vivid imagination and many imaginary playmates. I read anything I could get my hands on and wanted to write books like Laura Ingalls.
In high school, I aspired to become a writer. But life for me took a different turn. I married young and had 2 small boys before I could blink an eye and began helping my husband achieve his own goals. So writing took a back seat as I concentrated on running an excavating business. Along the way, we had four more children, making us a family of 8.
Whew! Still, I wrote in my spare time, writing mostly poetry. As my children grew, I wrote my first novel. It was 150 pages long. I sent a sample to an agent, who remarkedly called me and told me I had talent. He said my book needed to be about 350 pages and that I needed to learn to polish my material. I was thrilled.
So… I took some writing courses, learned how to write, edit and polish. I met a teacher and author, who took me under her wing and showed me how to use POV as well as keep a story flowing. Her influence has greatly helped me in the way a college never could. “THE POND” was half written when I began my schooling and I finished the book in 2007.
I have 2 more books that I am currently working on. I would have to say that my writing a novel comes second nature to me and the challenge now is writing the perfect query letter. It’s amazing how I can write 400 pages of a novel and yet struggle with that one single letter.
But I’m finally figuring it out. OR so I think!
Anyway…God bless all writers.
For more information on Tamera and her work, check out her blog.
Friday, June 22, 2012
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Guest Blog Post By Jill Elizabeth - The Importance of Shiny Things
Jill Elizabeth posted this on May 21st, 2012
http://blog.jill-elizabeth.com/2012/05/21/the-importance-of-shiny-things/
The Husband is constantly accusing me of being too easily distracted by shiny things. You know, those things that catch your eye and pull you away from the conversation or task at hand. I admit – I am highly susceptible to distractions. Highly. Susceptible. I have conversations that must be nearly impossible to follow if you don’t know me/how my mind works. I’ve have, on occasion, had to stop and track my own conversational connections backward, to try to figure out how I made my way to the place I ended up. (Incidentally, it’s very fun for me to do this, because I like to see how my brain connects things. It does not appear so fun for other people though – they mostly just shake their heads and/or look at me strangely.)
I can only imagine how frustrating it must be at times to try to talk to me – I really do have the most ridiculous tendency to wander off, intellectually and verbally. I like to think it’s a sign of a furiously working mind that can’t keep up with itself and constantly reaches out for more. But maybe it’s just a sign of a short attention span. Who knows. A friend once told me about a show, either BBC or PBS, that was all about the bizarre interconnectedness of things – I always meant to look it up, but never did. See what I mean? Either working too fast or not working at all. Sigh. Plus, nice tangent there, on TV, huh? Because you know that five seconds after I wrote that I had to go to Google and try to figure out what the show was…*
Anyway, I have a point here, and I’m getting to it now, promise.
So all this talking about distractability and the role of shiny things in attention-getting (and -keeping) got me to thinking about titles and covers – which are, basically, the shiny things about books. (Nice segue, eh? Admit it – you had no idea where I was going with this post, did you? Teehee.) Let me track this one back for you. I was at a celebratory post-dance-recital dinner with The Husband, The Step-Daughter, and The Step-Daughter’s Best Friend the other night and a random giggle-inducing event led The Husband to lean over and say “that’d be a great title for a story” about a particular phrase (which I won’t repeat because I agree with him and want to develop the story before I give the title away). That got my brain thinking about – in order – my own writing (truth be told, most things do these days), my farthest along Work in Progress (which has a great title that I think is perfectly shiny), my other Works in Progress that have good titles (there are a couple), my other Works in Progress that do NOT have good titles (there are an unfortunate lot of them), how hard it is to come up with a good title, books I love that have great titles, books I have that have great titles, books I love that have terrible titles, how awful it’d be to not have people read your book because of a terrible title, how good titles are occasionally paired with terrible covers, how terrible titles and terrible covers keep me from ever picking up a book, how many of those terribly-titled and terribly-covered books are actually very good and how I’ll never know because I’ve never picked them up… By the end, well, I had a post idea AND I was mentally exhausted.
If you’re a reader at all you know what I mean though. Titles and covers are key. Sure, the blurb is important too, as is the first sentence. Without a good blurb/first sentence, I won’t buy your book. But without a good title/cover, I won’t even pick it up to see if the blurb/first sentence have potential. What a tremendous amount of pressure and importance to place on something that is (a) probably only a handful of words long and (b) designed/crafted by someone who is not you (because most of the authors I know aren’t also artists – graphic or otherwise). But let’s face it – we live in a world of snap-decisions and judgments based on few words and even fewer pictures. A world, in short, of shiny things.
But how do you know what the right shiny thing is going to be for your book? Because the grab-factor of shiny things is a moving target – it depends on the state of the world, positioning in the store, current events, and the mood of the people shopping. Shiny things are why I will never love online books/bookstores as much as real books/bookstores. When everything is two-dimensional and flat on my computer screen, I lose the all-important (to me) element of tactility (a Jillism, meaning the tactile nature of things) – it’s harder for a book to grab my attention because all the icons are the same size, the same weight, the same depth. It’s also much more difficult to browse online. When I’m in a bookstore, I wander the aisles (always starting with new releases in the categories I like – bestsellers (to see what has been labeled such, not because those are what I usually buy), new to paperback, sci-fi, fiction, mystery in that order), my eyes skimming over all the titles/covers/spines until something catches my attention. Until, that is, the shiny thing pops. That’s harder to do online – and nowhere near as much fun. Scrolling is just not the same as trolling, you know?
I have no idea what I’d put on the cover of my favoritely-titled (yes, another Jillism – although seriously, shouldn’t “favoritely” be a real word??) WIP. I can’t take a word/theme/image and develop a graphic representation – if I could, I’d be an artist, not a writer (or not JUST a writer). I am not a visualizer – it’s not at all a strength of mine. I also can’t explain or quantify why some fonts, words, images capture my attention (i.e., why some things are shiny and others are not). And yes, I’m a dork, I’ve tried. So I’ll have to rely on the publisher (god-willing) and/or agent (ditto) to come up with ideas – and I’m sure they’ll have their own opinions based on market research, and I’m equally sure that market research won’t actually be any more of a guarantee of my cover’s shininess than my much-less-documented walking-through-the-aisles-paying-attention-to-what-I-pick-up method, because I’ve done market research in previous incarnations of my professional life and I know all too well what it entails (and what it’s limitations are).
Who knows, anyway. Maybe it’s all just serendipity… Maybe the connection between people and shiny things is purely random, experiential, in-the-moment-ness. It’s possible that’s the case with me, because I know I’ve passed by books on some visits to the bookstore and then picked them up on others – I must have, because I don’t always buy the newest books. It’s still interesting to think about what makes the shiny connection click though. Maybe if I can figure it out in the book cover/title context, I can figure it out in my conversational life too. Otherwise I run the risk of constantly losing myself (and others) every time I see something new.
Sigh.
SQUIRREL!!**
*It was, in fact, called Connections
– and it aired on BBC. There is also a quiz show – Only Connect – where you have to connect seemingly unrelated/random things. I would have cleaned up on that show. I always wanted to go on a game show – how cool would that be, to be able to use the random collection of facts sitting around in your head for something other than cocktail party conversation or marginalia? I used to think Jeopardy, but now I think this one would be much… UGH. See what I mean redux?!
**If you don’t get the movie reference, I’m happy to fill you in. If you do, well, you’re giggling already, so point made AND objective achieved.
http://blog.jill-elizabeth.com/2012/05/21/the-importance-of-shiny-things/
The Husband is constantly accusing me of being too easily distracted by shiny things. You know, those things that catch your eye and pull you away from the conversation or task at hand. I admit – I am highly susceptible to distractions. Highly. Susceptible. I have conversations that must be nearly impossible to follow if you don’t know me/how my mind works. I’ve have, on occasion, had to stop and track my own conversational connections backward, to try to figure out how I made my way to the place I ended up. (Incidentally, it’s very fun for me to do this, because I like to see how my brain connects things. It does not appear so fun for other people though – they mostly just shake their heads and/or look at me strangely.)
I can only imagine how frustrating it must be at times to try to talk to me – I really do have the most ridiculous tendency to wander off, intellectually and verbally. I like to think it’s a sign of a furiously working mind that can’t keep up with itself and constantly reaches out for more. But maybe it’s just a sign of a short attention span. Who knows. A friend once told me about a show, either BBC or PBS, that was all about the bizarre interconnectedness of things – I always meant to look it up, but never did. See what I mean? Either working too fast or not working at all. Sigh. Plus, nice tangent there, on TV, huh? Because you know that five seconds after I wrote that I had to go to Google and try to figure out what the show was…*
Anyway, I have a point here, and I’m getting to it now, promise.
So all this talking about distractability and the role of shiny things in attention-getting (and -keeping) got me to thinking about titles and covers – which are, basically, the shiny things about books. (Nice segue, eh? Admit it – you had no idea where I was going with this post, did you? Teehee.) Let me track this one back for you. I was at a celebratory post-dance-recital dinner with The Husband, The Step-Daughter, and The Step-Daughter’s Best Friend the other night and a random giggle-inducing event led The Husband to lean over and say “that’d be a great title for a story” about a particular phrase (which I won’t repeat because I agree with him and want to develop the story before I give the title away). That got my brain thinking about – in order – my own writing (truth be told, most things do these days), my farthest along Work in Progress (which has a great title that I think is perfectly shiny), my other Works in Progress that have good titles (there are a couple), my other Works in Progress that do NOT have good titles (there are an unfortunate lot of them), how hard it is to come up with a good title, books I love that have great titles, books I have that have great titles, books I love that have terrible titles, how awful it’d be to not have people read your book because of a terrible title, how good titles are occasionally paired with terrible covers, how terrible titles and terrible covers keep me from ever picking up a book, how many of those terribly-titled and terribly-covered books are actually very good and how I’ll never know because I’ve never picked them up… By the end, well, I had a post idea AND I was mentally exhausted.
If you’re a reader at all you know what I mean though. Titles and covers are key. Sure, the blurb is important too, as is the first sentence. Without a good blurb/first sentence, I won’t buy your book. But without a good title/cover, I won’t even pick it up to see if the blurb/first sentence have potential. What a tremendous amount of pressure and importance to place on something that is (a) probably only a handful of words long and (b) designed/crafted by someone who is not you (because most of the authors I know aren’t also artists – graphic or otherwise). But let’s face it – we live in a world of snap-decisions and judgments based on few words and even fewer pictures. A world, in short, of shiny things.
But how do you know what the right shiny thing is going to be for your book? Because the grab-factor of shiny things is a moving target – it depends on the state of the world, positioning in the store, current events, and the mood of the people shopping. Shiny things are why I will never love online books/bookstores as much as real books/bookstores. When everything is two-dimensional and flat on my computer screen, I lose the all-important (to me) element of tactility (a Jillism, meaning the tactile nature of things) – it’s harder for a book to grab my attention because all the icons are the same size, the same weight, the same depth. It’s also much more difficult to browse online. When I’m in a bookstore, I wander the aisles (always starting with new releases in the categories I like – bestsellers (to see what has been labeled such, not because those are what I usually buy), new to paperback, sci-fi, fiction, mystery in that order), my eyes skimming over all the titles/covers/spines until something catches my attention. Until, that is, the shiny thing pops. That’s harder to do online – and nowhere near as much fun. Scrolling is just not the same as trolling, you know?
I have no idea what I’d put on the cover of my favoritely-titled (yes, another Jillism – although seriously, shouldn’t “favoritely” be a real word??) WIP. I can’t take a word/theme/image and develop a graphic representation – if I could, I’d be an artist, not a writer (or not JUST a writer). I am not a visualizer – it’s not at all a strength of mine. I also can’t explain or quantify why some fonts, words, images capture my attention (i.e., why some things are shiny and others are not). And yes, I’m a dork, I’ve tried. So I’ll have to rely on the publisher (god-willing) and/or agent (ditto) to come up with ideas – and I’m sure they’ll have their own opinions based on market research, and I’m equally sure that market research won’t actually be any more of a guarantee of my cover’s shininess than my much-less-documented walking-through-the-aisles-paying-attention-to-what-I-pick-up method, because I’ve done market research in previous incarnations of my professional life and I know all too well what it entails (and what it’s limitations are).
Who knows, anyway. Maybe it’s all just serendipity… Maybe the connection between people and shiny things is purely random, experiential, in-the-moment-ness. It’s possible that’s the case with me, because I know I’ve passed by books on some visits to the bookstore and then picked them up on others – I must have, because I don’t always buy the newest books. It’s still interesting to think about what makes the shiny connection click though. Maybe if I can figure it out in the book cover/title context, I can figure it out in my conversational life too. Otherwise I run the risk of constantly losing myself (and others) every time I see something new.
Sigh.
SQUIRREL!!**
*It was, in fact, called Connections
– and it aired on BBC. There is also a quiz show – Only Connect – where you have to connect seemingly unrelated/random things. I would have cleaned up on that show. I always wanted to go on a game show – how cool would that be, to be able to use the random collection of facts sitting around in your head for something other than cocktail party conversation or marginalia? I used to think Jeopardy, but now I think this one would be much… UGH. See what I mean redux?! **If you don’t get the movie reference, I’m happy to fill you in. If you do, well, you’re giggling already, so point made AND objective achieved.
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