Blog is Moving to WordPress

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Hi everyone,

As promised, I’m moving the blog over to WordPress:

http://elizabethspanncraig.com/blog/  .  I’m hoping for improved commenting capability there, as well as other improved blogging functionality.

Thanks so much for following this blog—hope you’ll update your bookmarks for the new site, if you’re not automatically directed.  Thanks! (And thanks to Eldon Sarte with Blogheal for his assistance with the move.)

 

Keeping a Professional Distance From our Book

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about gaining distance from our books.  I really feel that’s vital to both editing them effectively, gaining a critical perspective of them, and learning from negative feedback.

One way to gain distance from our books is to write another book.  The authors I know who wrote one book (and were traditionally published), fell into this “only child syndrome” with their book…they helicopter-parented it and were genuinely hurt over poor reviews.  Hurt to the point where they were immobilized and couldn’t move forward with writing again.

Another way to cultivate this distance is to adopt the most businesslike attitude we can about our books. Because, if we’re sticking with publishing as a career…it is a business.  I think that’s where writers got off-track so many times in the past.  We didn’t understand our contracts, we didn’t understand the nature of the industry, we didn’t understand our responsibility to our book…which is to promote ourselves as a brand and work on the next story.

Twitterific

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Twitterific links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 23,000 free articles on writing related topics. It's the search engine for writers.

Friend and fellow mystery writer Margot Kinberg has compiled a crime fiction anthology: In a Word--Murder.  The ebook retails for $2.99 and proceeds from its sales benefit Princess Alice Hospice, in memory of Maxine Clarke, a supporter of and good friend to the crime writing community.  One of my stories is in the collection, too...my first attempt at short fiction. :) 

I'm also included in a newly-launched resource for self-publishing authors:

Wordpreneur Peeps: 107 Successful Indie Publishers. Eldon Sarte from the Wordpreneur blog has collected advice from 107 self-published authors and compiled them in this attractively-priced  November release (currently at $.99).  His blog is also a helpful resource for independent authors.

Have a great week!

7 Tips to Help you Write More: http://dld.bz/cUmdu @RinelleGrey

Preparing for a Productive Writing Day

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I’ve always been a big believer in being prepared (yes, I was a Girl Scout all those years ago).  I don’t like hectic mornings, so everything is organized the night before to make sure the mornings go smoothly.  My kids know that in the evenings before bed, they have to have all their homework done,  essays printed out, homework collected in their backpacks downstairs,  and have a handle on what they want to wear the following day.  Lunches are made the night before.  The more time we invest at night, the better and more stress-free our mornings are.

The Ability to Single-Task

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

The past few days haven’t been terrific and the fault for this lies squarely with me.

So…I dropped my phone in water.  Apparently, this is not a good thing to do to smart phones.  Not only did I drop it in water, I didn’t even realize I’d dropped it into water.  There was no quick rescue, so the phone was submerged for quite a while.  Once I discovered it, I tried sticking it into a bag of quick-rice, but boy, that thing was dead.

I have also broken a plastic container that was full of leftovers (yes, this is hard to do! But somehow…), chipped a bowl, ran into a doorjamb, and burned two things I was cooking.  Even for me, this is a long list of issues.

The interesting thing is that after my phone was destroyed (it was actually the last in the series of unfortunate events), I immediately stopped having these calamities.  I’m not going to blame my phone 100%, but it apparently was a significant contributing factor.

Developing Characters—Getting Started

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

My daughter has been horseback riding on the weekends for years now. I love that she loves it, I love the way she excels at it.  I love that it’s an outdoor activity in a digital, indoor age.  The barns are interesting places and the people who hang out in barns are very different from the people I’m ordinarily around, so that’s very stimulating.  And, of course, the horses are gorgeous.

But I really just didn’t get the whole horse thing.  My daughter would talk about the horses while we were at the barn and continue talking about them during the week.  There was lots of personification going on...in my mind, anyway.  “Dusty worries about the jumps when they’re in different locations than usual.  That’s why he kept trying to look at them as we were cantering around the ring. I had to really make sure he was looking straight ahead,” she’d say.  And I’d nod and ask more about Dusty’s proclivities and his outlook on the world, and think, “What a creative child I have!”  Because I’d look at Dusty, the largest horse in the barn, and all I got out of it was… “My Lord, what a massive animal that is.”  And hope she always stayed on the horse.