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Why you should 'Giveaway' your book, by Natasha Woodcraft

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Many of us are allergic to the idea of giving our book away. I poured my blood, sweat and tears into this book. It cost me £xk to release it. Those paperback copies cost a fortune to buy!  etc… Even so, I was thrilled to see the huge numbers of ACW books donated to Joanne’s collection at the Autumn Gathering. ACW members also regularly donate books to good causes. Aside from being decent humans, somewhere deep inside, we know there are excellent reasons to give our books away. In this blog, I’m going to chat about two of them.  Firstly: Giveaways increase your book’s reach Let’s consider some examples: 1. Promotions There are several promotional opportunities that will highlight your book to new readers. They cost money, and obviously, as you’re doing a giveaway, you will not get royalties from sales. On the plus side, we’re usually talking ebooks, so the actual books don’t cost anything. Last year I did a Hello Books promotion. It cost $30 to schedule the promotion. I set my book to f
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Waiting Patiently

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  Having a busy September and October, I take a huge breath to focus on my writing again. The “Hopefully Devoted” group is a great blessing and full of encouragement. We’ve now reached the stage where we are placing newly interested people on a waiting list, while the group settles having had five new members in a short time. The blog is from my co-leader of that group, Linda Ottewell, who before retirement was an editor at Kevin Mayhew. Linda Ottewell and Rosalie Weller co-leaders of "Hopefully Devoted"   Waiting patiently   Friends tell me that I come across as calm and patient but today, as I compose this blog, it’s a struggle to wait patiently for two separate phone calls. The first is an update on my car’s performance in its MOT exam. (Last year it failed spectacularly and the bill was eye-watering.) The second is to inform me exactly when a plumber will arrive to fix what I hope is a relatively small problem with the downstairs toilet. Hardly headline-grabbing eve
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Shifting Horizons

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       The path led along the side of a field, autumn was taking it’s hold, the green growth of summer now dry and brown. In front of me was a sea of brittle thistles, tangled weeds and faded grasses. Taking a step back and raising my eyes brought a very different scene into perspective, green fields and habitation under a blue cloudy sky, the brown grasses & weeds now the soft foreground of a bigger story. It reminds me of my writing at times. If I keep my head down and just stick to what I usually write and what I prefer to read, then I can miss out. I can find myself stuck, unable to see growth and needing fresh input. I know the Autumn Gathering has been mentioned a few times, but I’d like to give it a shout out too. It is the first ‘in person’ ACW event I have been to and I found that for me, it was a perspective shifter in a number of areas. Here are three - 1)        It enabled me to meet other writers, all so unique and gifted in different ways, I could appreciate them
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When the going gets tough...we get writing? by Jane on behalf of Green Pastures Christian Writers

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The 17th of the month sees members of Green Pastures Christian Writers taking turns at blogging. So far they have relished the opportunity to have a guaranteed, if small, audience for their vulnerably-offered ideas.  This month, however, I hit a problem. Dear Lady A, due to write for November, found herself even more incapacitated than usual. She urged me to seek God (which I did) and ask someone else (ditto). Dear Lady B was thrilled to be asked but was in the mires of all kinds of life’s torridness and could barely string an email together, never mind come up with a blog. Could I please ask someone else? I went back to Lady A. We chatted on the phone, honestly, as friends can, discussing how hard life can be. It became obvious that the vague idea I’d had – to explore how jolly hard it is to write when life is horrible – was one worth pursuing. I am, therefore, writing on behalf of at least 3 of my group’s members and, perhaps, for you. Lady A is, in fact Rachel, whom many of you will
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The Art Of Communication

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  “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” – George Bernard Shaw.   I cannot for the life of me find where or when GBS uttered or wrote these words, but as writers I imagine that we probably agree on his point.   Whether we write fiction, non-fiction, poetry or prose, devotionals or descriptions, a shopping list or an obituary, we each have something to communicate with our words and may, after many hours of head-scratching and grafting, think we’ve done a fantastic job (not quite so necessary for the shopping lists, of course).   It might even be so. However, that can only truly be confirmed by the reader or, if we’re very fortunate and prepared to listen carefully, by our editor and/or beta readers before our words hit the street, as it were. While we wrestle to put our words together in coherent sentences we can over-explain, under-explain or simply muddy the waters leaving our reader(s) floundering.   To illustrate, let me share a few m
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Blessed not stressed

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I long for an organised mind - one that decides what to do and follow it through in a planned, ordered  fashion. This would be especially useful on a day when there is too much to do for the time I can stay awake in 24 hours. Take today, well yesterday as I’m writing this on the 14th. My main focus was to sort out my website which has disappeared completely leaving a ghost of a recently renewed domain name in its wake. All attempts to revive it have failed so I am hunting down the most magnificent, no suitable, site that I can afford which will let me use my present domain name for little or no charge.  I was moderately focused this morning apart from needing a great deal of coffee, having a pile of washing which had to be done, walking the dog around the garden a few times and being distracted by other important tasks. Some of them even more urgent than the website. Like this blog and preparing for a meeting tomorrow plus getting keys and instructions to feed my neighbours’ cat while
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The Noble Art of Editing: Using the comma by Jane Walters

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Since August, I have devoted my monthly MTW slot to the topic of editing. I’ll return to its broader applications soon, but for now I shall continue with my guide to punctuation. This month, it’s the turn of the comma. Literally the wrong kind of comma (photo courtesy of Pixabay) We have already observed that punctuation divides the words visually on the page, so we’re not out-faced by a tsunami of black letters. Further, when reading out loud (best practice for our own writing), punctuation lets us know when we might pause, or take a breath, or go and pop the kettle on. Because we have all read for so long, we instinctively know how to follow the nudges of the given punctuation. So why is it so hard to get it right when we’re writing? I recently edited a manuscript for a delightful lady. We haven’t met, but I can guess how she speaks. How? Because she used more commas than ever inhabited a page before, and I suspect she popped one in every time she paused to think. Don’t do that! Thin
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