Serve

This is my post for Day 15 of the 15 Habits of Great Writers challenge.

"The challenge

Ready to be generous and serve your audience? Here are a few ideas (pick one):

1. Do a giveaway of a product or service. Find authors or organizations wanting to partner with people like you, and ask them for donations. Do this to build trust with your readers, and make sure whatever you give away clearly adds value to their lives.
2. Conduct a survey. Find out what readers (or perfect strangers) want, what they struggle with, and create something for them. This can be a blog series or an eBook or a whatever. Just make sure there’s a need for it before you make it.
3. Write something important and give it away. Publish an eBook to Amazon and distribute it through the KDP Select Program. Or offer it in exchange for people subscribing to your blog.
4. Answer all correspondence. Respond to every single email, phone call, tweet, etc. until you can’t possibly keep up. This is how tribes are formed — through accessibility."

Okay, just reading this today, I reaize that I am going to need more time to complete this part of the challenge. 

1. First of all, I need time to find someone willing to partner with me to do a donation. However, like other challenges posed within this Great Writers challenge, I have already done this by getting authors to guest post on my Chapter Book Challenge blog during the challenge and one of them gave away a free critique. I also ran a flash fiction story writing competition where the prize was a book on writing flash fiction (donated by me).

2. I will also need time to get people to fill in a survey and to fulfill the need that they wish me to fill. I have no idea what kind of questions to ask for the survey or even what need I am capable of fulfilling for others. If anyone has any ideas, I am open to suggestions!


3. This makes it sound like it is so easy to write something worth publishing as an eBook! I would love to do this and have considered it many times, but I keep failing on what, exactly, to write. Writing of any kind takes time, and I haven't even finished the books I am already working on, so I am not sure how quickly I can just whip something else out to share with others.  But I will try.

4. I do answer correspondence. I do respond to every single email, tweet (to me) and question asked on Facebook. I constantly run out of time for these things, but I do my best to keep up with it all. I try to be as accessible as possible.

As I reflect on these, I see that I am already doing some of them and working on doing others of them.  I will try and update on how I do as I get through them.




Tweet

Brand

This is my post for Day 14 of the 15 Habits of Great Writers challenge.

"The challenge

Brand yourself. There are three elements of every brand that you need to pay attention to — spend some time today tightening up each of these:

• Name. This is what you call yourself (e.g. Copyblogger or Anne Lamott). It may be your given name or a pseudonym or something else, but you need to be consistent. Make sure your website, business cards, and social media properties all say the same thing.
• Image. This can be a logo or a headshot. It’s whatever you want to use to make people recognize you and your work. If it’s a photo of you, make sure people would recognize you in real life if they’re seeing it on the Internet. Also, make sure it’s on your blog, Twitter profile, etc. Don’t use different images; make them all the same.
• Voice. This is how you sound. It’s your style and personal flair as a communicator.

I have several blogs, and I have tried to create a brand for each one of them. There is my most successful one, Skinny Dreaming.  There is this blog, Imagine! Create! Write! There is Princess Parade, both the blog and the shop. As an author, I intend to use my name, Rebecca Fyfe though, so I have started changing my user name on various sites to reflect that.

I must admit that I do use various different photos of myself, but they are all recognizable as me. It helps that I had some professional shots done by Slimming World magazine and it's photographer Paul Buller when I had a photo shoot for the magazine spread about my weight losss story. I had some great photos taken such as these:

  

As for my personal voice, I hope I am achieving that just by being honest as I write. As long as I am true to who I am, then my voice should show through. Also, I have been writing fiction for so long that I hope my voice for it has developed over time. Would I recognize my own writing if I were to read it years later? Probably.  Would someone else? I hope so.

Tweet

Publish

This is my post for Day 13 of the 15 Habits of Great Writers challenge.

"The challenge

Today, we’re going to publish something. Anything, really. Whatever you do, don’t play it safe. Go for broke. Stop hiding and start writing for real:

• The manuscript in your dresser drawer? Send it off.
• That article you’ve been thinking about writing for an A-list blog? Submit it. Let go of control; you’re ready.
• That eBook you’ve been stalling to finish? It’s good enough. Put it out there."

Okay, I understand that, for this particular challenge, the command is to do the challnge today, but I have, in some ways, been already doing this particular part of the challenge anyway, and I have nothing available that is ready to be published, and if I stupidly tried to publish something today or sent something off to a publisher today, when it wasn't ready, then I would just be harming my overall writing career.


How have I already been doing this challenge? I started writing articles for a monthly magazine publication. Because of my magazine writing job, I am already a published author. I am also having one of my flash fiction stories published in an anthology this year. But more than that, this year, I have started sending off other short stories into competitions and submitting them to anthologies for publication. I have even started writing some short stories and publishing them to my blog.


Here are links to some of my short and flash fiction stories:

Lise & Nat: A Story of Forbidden Love Between a Fairy of the Sun and a Creature of the Night


A Siren's Tears


Wood Sprite



Mother Lioness



Call of the Siren

The Guardian


Modern Day Warrior Princess


The Faeries' Dance


Thinning of the Veil: The Escape


If I get enough of these flash fiction and short fiction stories written, I may just publish them all in an anthology of my own someday.


Tweet

Declutter

This is my post for Day 11 of the 15 Habits of Great Writers challenge.

The challenge

So let’s declutter today, shall we? In every sense of the word. I want you to do two things:

1. Clean up your space. Spend some time (at least five minutes, but no more than 30) doing the following: clear off the desk, sharpen your pencils, put your files in order, take out the trash, wash the dishes, whatever. Do what you need to do to feel better about the place where you do your work.
2. Cut your writing down to its purest essence. Turn a 500-word article into 250 words. If you’re brave, convert 1000 words into 300. Take away everything but exactly what you want to say. Eliminate weak, lazy words like “that” and “things” and anything you don’t absolutely need. Then say what you have to say and be done with it.

I would love to clean up my writing space, but I don't have a writing space. I use my laptop, in my lap, while sitting on the couch. That's where I write. Most of my house, I will admit, is very cluttered. But my couch isn't. I keep most of my notes on the computer, and I have already "cleaned" those notes up into folders. I am debating using a program like Scrivener to keep my notes for each writing project in a more easily searchable place. If anyone reading this uses Scrivener (or another program), I would love to hear what you think of it and in what ways it has helped you organize, if it has helped.


Cutting my writing down to its purest essence was something I used to really struggle with in the past. But then I started entering flash fiction contests. Believe me, when you have to write a story, with a beginning, middle and end, within 300 words, you learn very quickly how to clean up any unnecessary clutter from your writing! Finding a way to write a complete story in 300 words or 500 words while still making it something gripping and magical to the reader is not easy but well worth the time, as it is an invaluable means for practice in writing clean.


Tweet

Share

This is my post for Day 10 of the 15 Habits of Great Writers challenge.

The challenge

Find someone whose message we need to hear and share it on your blog or via Twitter or Facebook. Wherever people are listening to you (even just a few), use that opportunity to talk about someone else.

This is another challenge that I already do regularly. When I find a blog post with a strong message that I feel should be shared, or when one of my friends writes and publishes another book, I share it on Facebook and Twitter and sometimes blog about it too.


One of those friends is Barbara Mack (also known as Barbara Rose).  I met Barbara many years ago when we were both on-line shopkeepers and designers with a print-on-demand company. (We both still are on-line shopkeepers and designers.) She has been a faithful friend and I am constantly amazed by her intelligence, her writing ability and her generous heart. She has cookbooks, historical romance novels, a vampire novel and a YA novel available on Amazon.

A newer friend of mine is Jo Michaels. Jo and I met through the Author Blog Challenge. She is one of those giving people who has been commenting on not just all of my blog posts during the challenge, but other blog posts by me not related to the challenge and others' blog posts for the challenge as well. She has written a children's chapter book called The Abigale Chronicles. She has also written a historical fiction novel called Yassa.


I have several friends who have recently seen their way into publication. Justin Bogdonovitch (aka Justin Bog) has published his collection of short stories called Sandcastle and Other Stories.  Not only is he a terrific writer, but he is also a generous soul who always has kind things to say about everyone. He has the most gorgeous dogs, and you can see more of them and other posts by Justin on his blog.


Tonya Cannariato recently published her book Dust to Blood. She is also a blogger and I love reading her posts. She reviews books and she has a really funny sense of humor. I recommend having a read through her blog. She's also a generous soul who is willing to help out her friends and never ask for anything in return. (There's a theme to my friends in that way; they are all clever, talented and kind-hearted.)


I know this is getting a little long-winded for a blog post. I have so many friends who are talented, creative, clever and sweet. (Lucky me, right?) So I will just briefly name a few more. There's Jane Isaac and her book An Unfamiliar Murder. There's Nicole Cook who is constantly tantalizing me with delicious recipes on her blog The Daily Dish Recipes. There's Erica Lucke Dean who is blogging her book Tales of the DayWalkers. There's Kelly Stone Gamble who is writing her historical novels, The Hoover Dam Trilogy. There's Dionne Lister and her novel Shadows of the Realm. There's Kriss Morton who has recently had her short story published in an anthology, and shares awesome recipes (usually involving bacon), Alaskan photography and book reviews. There's also Jeff Bennington who does Kindle Book Reviews and has many books to his name already.


Believe it or not, I could go on with even more friends to list who are just as talented, intelligent and wonderful as the ones I have already listed, but I know this blog post is already getting too long. So I may just have to share the rest at a later date. Please do go and check out all of these people and their books and blogs. They are all so talented that I promise it will be worth your time.


Tweet

Connect

This is my post for Day 9 of the 15 Habits of Great Writers challenge.

"The challenge

Find a potential fan, friend, and patron (one of each) and reach out to them. Today. Don’t ask for anything but this person’s time. Don’t say no for them or apologize. Just ask. Make it an invitation to coffee (if a local connection) or to Skype. Do it and do it now before you lose the desire.

Then tell us how it went."


I am finding that sometimes these challenges are difficult for me, not because they are outside of the norm for me but because they are things I am already doing. I already make an effort to connect with others through Twitter, Facebook, within my community and in other ways. I have "fans" (although Facebook has now changed those to "likes." I have friends who share their thoughts with me and spend time with me, who listen to me and who I listen to. I also have friends who are not only successful authors, but generous authors willing to help with beta reading, with advice and just generally with their time. (Does that qualify them as patrons, since Jeff Goins described patrons as "These people — leaders and influencers in your industry — will help you grow your platform and get your message heard.") 

I am a member of two groups of writers on Triberr; most of my colleagues on Triberr are published authors. All of them are willing to help out with growing my platform and getting my message heard; that's kind of what Triberr is all about. Through those groups, my on-line reach has expanded by tens of thousands of people.


I've even reached out to writers in my locality by starting a Facebook group for writers in my county. It started by an idea formed when I became a minicipal liaison for my region on NaNoWriMo. Since then, my co-ML started a critique group for those of us in our region, and we meet once a month.


So I can safely say that I am already doing this challenge, and I don't feel the need to go do it extra just for the challenge. Seriously, I think I do pretty well at getting myself known, at socializing and meeting the right people. I find it easy as people, both on-line and off-line, are usually easy to like and more than helpful to a friend. I naturally help my friends out too, sometimes taking on more than I should, because I care about them. It's a mutual exchange and it works.


I find this whole concept of "connecting" to be a fairly simple and natural thing to do. The biggest challenge, for me, is to complete my books and get them published. I still haven't decided whether the traditional publishing method appeals to me or the indie publishing route appeals more to me. I guess (and hope) I'll figure it out by the time I have completed my manuscripts.


Tweet

Build

This is my post for Day 8 of the 15 Habits of Great Writers challenge.

"The challenge:

So let’s build something. You don’t need to start another project you’ll never finish. You already probably have enough of those. Instead, I want you to do something truly creative:

I want you to finish something. Anything, really. Just pick a project — an essay, a blog post, maybe even a book — and finish it. Not tomorrow. Today.

It should never take longer than 30 minutes to finish anything. If it does, you’re not breaking the project up into enough chunks. Which will lead to stalling, your worst enemy."

I just completed a blog post for the Author Blog Challenge, so I started and finished something today already. I start and finish writing goals every day, really. I blog frequently. I write short stories. I write chapters of my books. If I set out to write three chapters of whichever book I am currently working on, I will manage to finish those three chapters.

If I set my mind to do something, I get it done. I just need to be setting my mind towards writing more frequently when it come to my novels and my non-fiction book. Between this challenge and the Author Blog Challenge, along with the occasional short story I write, I am writing between 500 to 2,000 words a day. When these challenges are over, I am going to set my writing goal to write a minimum of 500 words a day and see where that takes me,

Tweet

Believing

This is my post for Day 2 of the 15 Habits of Great Writers challenge.

 

The Day 2 challenge for the 15 Habits of Great Writers (Day 2) is to get up 2 hours earlier so I can spend the extra time writing. That's completely impractical for me, because I get up when my children do, which tends to be around 5:00am, but ion the rare occasions that I wake up before the children, the very instant they hear me up and about, they get up too. In fact, it doesn't matter how quiet I am as I step out of my room, my youngest seems to have a built-in sensor that alerts him the moment my eyes have opened.

 

So I've decided on a compromise. I rarely get time away from the children to write, and the whole point of getting up 2 hours earlier than normal would be to give me uninterrupted writing time. So, with that in mind, I am taking my eldest daughter's offer and letting her take me out to Starbuck's for coffee and a marathoin writing session. (She's participating in Camp NaNoWriMo right now.)


I'm sure I will be able to carve out two hours of quiet and concentrated writing time from this.


The thing is, I already believe in myself as a writer. Yes, I have moments of weakness and self-doubt, but even when I doubt myself, I know that, as long as I keep at it, I will eventually achieve my writing goals. So I have been regularly carving time out from each day to spend writing.


Sometimes, my children interrupt me. Sometimes my husband starts to feel left out because I spend my free time writing. Usually, my housework doesn't get completed. But I have a goal and I know, from the experience of losing over 145 pounds of excess fat, that as long as I keep working at my goal and keep it as a priority, I will succeed.


So yes, I believe.


Do you?

Tweet