Even Holly Lisle, who was onto a winner with her How to Think Sideways, has her share of failures in providing for the new writer market, it seems. However there are several new things of interest to wannabe writers within the Holly Lisle websites, and below I will wrap these up for you.

1. The Writing Craft : Motivation

Some time ago Holly sent out one of her regular newsletters requesting those readers to take a multi-choice survey. The survey involved copious questions driving at what type of courses or classes we might like to see being delivered.

I personally voted for quite a few, with an emphasis on revising a first draft, something I’m completely rubbish at. My choice wasn’t the most popular at that time, in fact most responders voted for courses on how to motivate ourselves into writing.

Holly spent some time coming up with a new course based on those responses. The outcome was the release early this month of ‘The Writing Craft : Motivation’. This was available as a course for $34.95 which sounds very reasonable for the content.

The content for The How To Motivate Yourself course includes:

• seven videos
• the course transcripts
• mindmaps for each section
• a course outline
• and worksheets to help you drill down to the core of what motivates you.

The course still exists on Holly’s shop online as I write this, however —

On the 15th of September Holly sent out another newsletter with the following starter paragraph -

I ended up canceling further episodes of my video series THE WRITING CRAFT because of a major lack of interest combinedwith the huge expense in time, effort, and materials of creating video courses.

This means there will be no further editions of The Writing Craft video series of courses (the second of which was to have been ‘How to Write Dialogue with Subtext’), although if you are interested in improving your motivation it may well be beneficial to take a look at that first course which remains complete and available.

2. Audio Books of Classes

In the same newsletter of the 15th, Holly mentioned that she was now trialing interest in MP3 audio books of the courses available through her shop. She enjoys listening to MP3s on her iPod whilst exercising, and thought it an interesting idea to create some for the courses offered.

The ‘How to Write Page-Turning Scenes’ course available in PDF format from Holly Lisle’s webshop has now been recorded as an audio book by Kimi Alexander.

The full package – PDF plus audio book, will be available online from September 23rd for $47. However at the moment it’s available in a trial run for an introductory price of $37. And if you already have purchased the PDF version previously, you can pick up the audio version alone for just $20.

Logging onto your Shop.HollyLisle.com account will automatically show you any discounts you may be entitled to.

Holly is currently trialling this concept out to see if the idea will take wings.

3. Coming Soon : Revising Your Novel

As the Writing Craft : Motivation course went live Holly Lisle was already working towards her next project. Obviously my choice of needing more information on how to revise was another popular option in her surveys.

Holly put out a request for two first time novels to work with their writers in revising them. Her initial thoughts were towards working with four different novels and writers, but she’s since changed her mind on this. One novel will have been written during something like NaNoWriMo, another in a different way.

The writers and novels will be worked through with Holly, and the material from that exercise used to create her newest upcoming course. Novel excerpts will be used within the course also, although Holly will change characters etc if requested.

As a note, within the successful ‘How to Think Sideways’ writer’s training program, the last month of this course is spent on revision, using a technique Holly calls her ‘One Pass’ system. For many very new writers, there has been a request to understand the structure of revision a little more before going into that type of revision process. The upshot is the current development of the new ‘How to Revise Your Novel’ course, coming our way sometime in the future.

For more on this new course, you can read Holly’s thoughts on it at her blog, or she has already opened a website specifically for the course.

4. How to Think Sideways

Holly Lisle’s popular ‘How to Think Sideways’ online course continues, although the website has had a complete refresh on the frontend since I last visited. You can keep up to date with the latest news on that front blog-style page, pick up the free module examples, or register for the course.

As a graduate of the first ever session of this course, and any grads afterwards, I still have access into the forums for this course, and in fact, can run through the full course as often as I like.

The HTTS forums now have a ‘Back to the Beginning Board’ where students who didn’t managed to complete the course can start over.

Additionally, new material continues to be added to the course, and previous grads can grab those also. One example recently is the addition of the first section of the Writing Craft : Motivation videos into the relevant motivation section of HTTS.

And although now seemingly defunct, the aside website, WriterCrashTest.com remains accessible, containing a few video productions where Holly took some passages of writing and provided some critique on them.

LinkMe : How to Think Sideways (note – affiliate link)

5. The 33 Worst Mistakes Wrters Make About Series…

This e-book series is building all the time. Available through shop.hollylisle.com, the books are written by various authors, and topics vary from -

The ‘33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make about Courtroom Law’ to ‘The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make about Construction and Construction Workers’, with Russia, Genealogy, Mother Nature, Ballet, Horses, The Celts, Hunting, Being Blind, San Francisco, Disappearing in the U.S.A, Dogs, Firearms and Camping forming the current series.

The series, although predominantly US focussed, makes an excellent reference item for budding writers, and points out where much more experienced and even successful novelists have made some huge errors in their published novels before.

6. Write a Book With Me

Back to Holly now, with her writing blog, Pocket Full of Words. Within her normal update blog she now has a category called “Write a Book With Me” or WABWM for short.

In this category she adds her own progress on her current writing project, and others can share their own progress in the comments field of each entry. On one recent entry of Holly’s there were forty comments, so the category and challenge is quite popular.

There are some minor rules – you should shoot for a minimum of 250 words a day, five days a week for instance, and the important – It has to be fun rule.

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LinkMes :

• The Muse Online Writers Conference
• The Muse Online Writers Conference Forums for 2009 (Conference Cooler)
• Muse Blog with details
• 2009 Agenda online

The Agenda is available to download from a yahoo group setup for the conference. Participants have until September 20th to register for workshops or pitch sessions. If you are interested and still haven’t registered for the conference itself, you can do that from the Muse Online website (top link above).For more details on the workshops, publishers and chat sessions, the 2009 Agenda is online now also (fourth link above).

Pitch Sessions at 2009 Muse

The pitch sessions include going up in front of a publisher for a 2 minute pitch on your book idea, within a chat room online. So you have to be prepared for those crucial 100 words or so to glean their interest.

The Workshop agenda document available to download gives some tips on preparing the pitch also, and each publisher provides a link to submission guidelines. Additionally there are two workshops available already for How-tos on Online Pitching. Register for the conference quickly to allow the attendance of these – the first is scheduled as a chat session for September 11th (tomorrow!) and the second on September 24th.

Pitches are available to the following Publishers -

• Crescent Moon Press – Romantic science fiction, fantasy and paranormal
• Freya’s Bower – erotic and romance
• Wild Child Publishing – mainstream
• Breathless Press – romance or erotic
• 4RV Publishing – mystery, romance, mainstream, historical, Christian, sci-fi, fantasy, action/adventure, Nonfiction, Young Adult, Juvenile, Childrens
• Samhain Publishing – romance and erotica, fantasy, urban fantasy, sci-fi with romance
• Red Rose Publishing – romance, mystery-fantasy, dark fiction, chick lit, interracial.
• Larsen Pomada Literary Agency – fiction and nonfiction (must check guidelines provided).
• Lyrical Press – electronic format and print on demand for selected titles over 70,000 words
• Eternal Press – 10-40K words fiction – Romance, Erotica, Cont.fiction, paranormal, sci-fi, mystery, horror. Interested in erotica and paranormal.
• Andrea Brown Literary Agency – childrens, young adult, fiction and nonfiction, chapter books, picture books.
• The MacGregor Literary Agency
• White Rose Publishing – romance
• Damnation Books – dark – horror, fantasy, thrillers etc
• Morrigan Books – dark fiction

Week Long Forums / Workshops

These forums are set up for private access. Once you enter the forum (any time zone) you can enter workshop rooms, read questions and answers, read presenters lesson plans, and post questions and exercise answers.

There is a large range of these All Week Forums to register for, from meeting with publishers and editors, to workshops on finding your writing voice, writing personal stories, writing teachers guides to accompany your children’s book, pet writing, using social media, horror writing, world building, writing for atmosphere, creating characters, steps before copy editing, or how not to kill your editor. As well as those there are workshops on promotion, dialogue, article marketing, some mental courses, writing love scenes, creative block busting, and visual storytelling.

And I’ve missed out 50% of the many workshops available.

Chats Only

Many of the workshops or presenters of those workshops are also available in chat only sessions. You can attend chat sessions with the presenters on topics as varied as world building, online pitching, plotting, and chat with several of the publishers or editors participating in pitch sessions also.

My Problem Now…

…is obviously culling down my own choice in what I can participate in. When scanning over the Workshop agendas I was like a child in a sweetshop, with my toungue hanging out. For me, Muse Conference allows my first participation in a real-life (given it’s virtual) writers conference, as I’ve not been able to attend any from my small country village location.

Although I want to register for all of them, I will have to cut down to only a few, and I’ve made the decision to not enter the pitching realm or any workshops / chat sessions which are to do with post-writing such as promotional work etc. I feel that personally I’m not mentally prepared to make that step from beginner writer to somebody trying to sell their works as yet. So I’m sure that you’ll probably see me around some of those world building sessions, and some more intriguing ones based on the psychology of characters.

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My dream now leaves me ready (within half an hour) to world build as I go. On-the-fly worldbuilding – with a structure behind it. That’s what I’ll share for you today, with my resources used to build the structure.

Based on my journeys through second life (and my growing love of the steampunk culture within second life), the novel ‘idea’ or ‘sentence’ which is quickly forming in my mind has overtaken me today – through horse and cart rides, swimming pool activities, lunch out at a restaurant, and through a full on production of Mo Town classics with audience participation and a cold buffet to gorge on beforehand.

All of these things fell by the wayside today – I know I was there, but I was an automaton as I began the process of world building for this new novel. As my resources here are limited, I did a quick ‘builder’ up in my writing software, Liquid Story Binder, then decided I’d better refresh my memory of how to worldbuild so as to be ready when I need it.

For this novel, I’ll world-build as I go with the writing – my gut instinct tells me this is best. No overplanning, just in and write. But to get ready for that, I have to have a structure set out which will allow me to quickly flick over and put in the facts (or fantasies) as I write them.

To do this, I’ll share with you some resources for more information and my own quick and dirty structure. Mine will change, no doubt, but it’s already ready, and within half an hour.

Resources for World Building for the Fiction Writer

1. Holly Lisle – How to Think Sideways and Create a Culture Clinic

One of my first purchases as a noob writer were Book i and ii of the World Building series available through the HollyLisle.com shop – Create a Language and Create a Culture Clinic e-book. These large e-books take the writer through world building with a structured concept. For $9.95 each, they may be all you possibly need to begin world building.

Holly later went on to building and tutoring the How to Think Sideways writer’s course, and I signed up for the first ever session of this. This 6 month (or a year) course includes an entire week of World Building – with four different PDFs available – Time, Maps and World, Culture and Language.

On HollyLisle.com you can also read a one-page essay entitled ‘Worldbuilding – Rollicking Rules of Ecosystems’ where Holly gives you some fundamentals of what makes a world, or not. And there is the comprehensive Worldbuilding Workshop available also as a free read, entitled ‘How Much of My World Do I Build’. This workshop lists such things as Special Physics, Organized Terrain, etc, and formed the basis for the PDFs available through the How to Think Sideways course.

LinkMes:

• Holly Lisle’s Writing Clinics – purchase Create a Language and Create a Culture (or a four-pack of some excellent PDFs including Create a Plot and Create a Character)
• How to Think Sideways (affiliate link) – online writing course for 6-12 months with various payment options.
• Worldbuilding – Rollicking Rules of Ecosystems – a Holly Lisle essay.
• Worldbuilding Workshop – How Much of My World Do I Build – a comprehensive essay listing a technique for worldbuilding, and story elements to make notes of.
• How I Drew a Map and Sold Thee Books and a World – another Holly Lisle article which includes steps used in building her own world map – this map also features in the How to Think Sideways course.

2. SWFA – Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions

The series of worldbuiding pages written by Paticia C. Wrede are relatively famous, and very thorough. The pages are categorised down, with each category providing a series of questions to help the writer consider how their world might operate or exist.

LinkMe: SFWA Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions

3. Fantasy WorldBuilder Guide and 30 Days of World-Building Exercises

The Magical World Builder’s Guide by Stephanie Cottrell Bryant provides a starter  long article on some aspects of creating a fantasy world.

In 2004 the author posted a series of 15 minute exercises to that year’s NaNoWriMo which have now been published onto the www.web-wrter.net/fantasy website with a creative commons license.

The 30 Days of WorldBuilding provides 30 exercises towards world-building, indexed with a side menu. At 15 minutes per day, that’s seven and a half hours this month to come up with some ideas for a fantasy world. There is a particularly interesting discussion on deserts in the Map section (Day 5) worthy of consideration if building a large continent.

LinkMes:

• Magical World Builder’s Guide – article on world building
• 30 Days of WorldBuilding – 30 x 15 minute exercises.

3. Other Worldbuilding Resources

Below are my own chosen listings for web resources I found useful in understanding the elements needed in world-building, or in creating specifics for a new fictional world. In random order -

1. Are you a god? Art, Writing and Worldbuilding Blog – this blog is reasonably kept up to date, with the author, Nils Jeppe, providing a sound list of worldbuilding resources, and also taking us throgh some of the processes used. I particularly have enjoyed the map buildings of late.
2. Wikipedia entry – Worldbuilding
3. The Language Construction Kit – a series of webpages designed to help you develop a fantastical language
4. Ad Hoc Writers Outlines – a series of worldbuilding facts to form a basis on which you could build a new world.
5. A Way with Worlds – Steven Savages columns on worldbuilding, held at Seventh Sanctum.
6. World-Builders.org – has an online world building course which concentrates on providing data on areas such as solar systems, ecologies etc. Free, from California State University.
7. Creating an Earthlike Planet – Geoffrey Morven runs through the scientific aspects of earth.
8. Creating a Fantasy World – Sara Douglass provides a long article on her own thoughts, based upon a workshop.
9. Memorable Limyaael’s Fantasy Rants Entries – rants on all of the pitfalls that writers or world-builders may fall into with various elements of a new world.
10. World Builder Projects – this tripod website lists lots of references. It’s slightly out of date, so there are quite a few dead links, but many are worthwhile bookmarks for the world builder.
11. Worldbuilding from the Ground Up – a transcript of a live interview with authors Dave Duncan, Dennis Jones, Anne McCaffrey and Juliet McKenna.
12. Shakespeare and Dragons – www.ImaginaryWorlds.net – this website, which is currently under renovation, contains a blog, forum and podcasts on worldbuilding. The forum and podcasts are still linked to and operational.
13. Creating Fantasy and Science Fiction Worlds – a large series of articles at FARP (Fantasy Art Resource Project) discussing everything from weather to anthropology.
14. Fantasy Worldbuilding Resources – this is a Squidoo Lens, and a very good one, listing many resources on various subjects.

My Own Down and Dirty WorldBuilding Structure

I promised to show you what I have created in note-taking form, ready for when I begin writing. This is a work in progress – the Daily Life section in particular can get quite huge, so may need to be split off into separate builder notes where necessary.

1. World Basics – a brief few paragraphs summarising the world (in this case, an alternative earth-like continent).
2. Geography and Climate – maps, topography, climate, weather patterns
3. Flora and Fauna – the plants and animals of note, both agricultural and otherwise. Also ecosystems – related to climate and geography also.
4. Peoples – races, peoples, breeds, biology, lifecycles, cultures and potential cross-pairings of these.
5. Culture and Languages – I’m not sure on culture, as it’s split up later on, but languages certainly.
6. Family and Relationships – family units, relationships, marriages / divorces / unions, sexuality
7. Calendar and Time – overall calendar(s) and time units
8. Rulers, Leaders and Government – rulers and leaders, governments and politics, crime and law, foreign relations.
9. Sociology, Customs and Beliefs – also includes religions and community
10. History – historical events and figures of note.
11. Daily Life – technology; medicine; transport; communication; food and diet; education and ; dwellings / architecture; gadgets and tools; arts, literature and entertainment; clothing and dress; etiquette / manners.
12. Magic and Magicians – rules of magic, magic and technology, magic users, social status of magicians.
13. Science and Scientists – rules of science, science and technology, scientists, social status of scientists.
14. Commerce, Trade and Economies – commerce and business; business and industries; trade and economic relations; economies, currencies / monies.

And there you have it, that’s what I’m working on right now. Well, not right now – I’m currently off to dinner and a show.

Update : well, the dinner and show did me in but the upshot was a sounder night’s sleep and a eureka moment on waking. I now have the premise of how this whole story idea and the world is meant to work. I love when muses do that to you, out of the blue.

Image Credit : seeks2dream on flikr (Creative Commons)

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Liquid Story Binder V4.31

Last week Liquid Story Binder had another upgrade for those with licensed copies. Version 4.31 is out. This holds enhancements to just about every module going, including multi-level undo levels, and some backspace enhancements to the typewriter module. Here’s a quick list of those I find important, but there are many many more -

Multi-level undo has been added to various file types.
The Listing file type has been completely re-written, now with Outline style functionality.

It is now possible to extend individual Timeline items beyond the confines of a single instance. Stretch items using the `Extend Items’ and `Shorten Items’ menu options.
Choose your own Checklist item symbols using the Checklist ‘Content’ menu. Beyond the standard double-click checkmark, there are now over 200 symbols to choose from.

The Typewriter tool now includes TAB functionality and a `Typewriter Backspace Key Editing’ preference. The Typewriter display response has been increased. Enable the ‘Formatting Options’ preference to allow the use of the BACKSPACE key.

Jesse Wall of Black Obelisk Software sent out the upgrade with a download link to members of the LSB Yahoo Group last week. However at this point, the download is not yet available on the Black Obelisk website, which is still showing version 4.21.

If you are keen to always get the latest update of this writing software, join the yahoo group from the Newsgroup menu at the Black Obelisk website.

Incidentally, the typewriter (full screen) writing functions, including the enhancements, are available in the completely free to download Momentum Typewriter which is available from Black Obelisk also. Momentum Writer 2.01 contains the enhancements LSB will do, but is already available to download from the website.

LinkMe : Black Obelisk and Liquid Story Binder

100 Essential Tips and Tools for the Writer of the Future

Amber wrote me to suggest an article might be of interest, and I agree. This article sitting at the Associate Degree website simply lists 100 numbered points for the writer, with links to the websites mentioned. From designing your own business card, to using google trends, there are many tips in amongst these 100 which I found useful for myself also.

LinkMe : 100 Essential Tips & Tools for Writers of the Future

Image Credit : Wikenden on flickr (Creative Commons)

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Now, I’m all into microblogging, but am a little uncertain about this one. The news reminded me of the fact that I have had a Tumblr blog myself for a very long time, but I’ve forgotten to use it. Tumblr allows you to post up images and quotes and links to other internet content very quickly. It has the microblogging function also, of course – where you can post up your own quick blogs, but you can do this on Twitter and the many other micro-blogging social networking systems anyway.

Tumblr, for me, felt a little like cheating. I could post up the links to graphics and sections of other people’s content, and completely not provide any original content of my own. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t used it for a long time, because if I find content out there I do like, I prefer to link to it or even respond to it, on my own blog here. As a device to share snapshots on a theme, taken from all across the web, I think that Tumblr is fantastic, kind of like a personal but shared scrapbook – of other people’s content.

As a writer, I’ve also noticed a large decrease in my own usage of tools such as Twitter and Plurk, even FriendFeed. FriendFeed still feeds in most of my lifestreams, but I find that with writing actual blog posts and fiction, I simply don’t have the time to be the huge tweeter or microblog / lifestream reader that I used to be. And I must admit, I have not missed it at all.

As the owner of a Diigo bookmarks list for writers, I am aware of the need to administer such tools also. Community members can post up any kind of content, and some of it will be inappropriate to the theme of the collection, and some, unfortunately can be abused, in either spam form or in content which is offensive to many. There are huge bonuses for me personally out of the Diigo group, in that I gain knowledge of writing links which are of interest to me, but…

I am sure that those opening up their Tumblr blogs for submissions may find the same requirement – free content submitted by other users is generically a good thing, but it’s not necessarily an easy thing – it requires administration and overlooking if the microblog is to be taken seriously.Many communities can work like that, and I’ve been witness to it on many occassions. But there’s always going to be somebody within it who sees an opportunity to “feature” their own causes or content to a ready-made audience.

I ponder if I should open up the old Tumbled for Writing tumblr blog for community submissions myself, or whether people even think about where their own content might be appearing on elsewhere. However, there are positives, to see some more content appear on Tumbled for Writing which is fed all around the interweb, that would certainly be worthwhile, and I would certainly gain some more personal writing content for my own reading privaledge.

LinkMes:

1. Mashable! post on Submissions for Tumblr
2. My own Tumbled for Writing Tumblr blog.
3. The Juiced on Writing Diigo group for sharing writing links.

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1. Preserve our memories for future generations
2. Tell our story – with scrapbooking it was via photographs and decorations, but there was a major element of writing.

I can not impound it enough, as I know of so many families who simply don’t think about this, then have a family death, and suddenly they inherit a box full of old photograph albums or unfiled snapshots, and that family member’s real memories (and their children’s for that matter) have been lost with the death.

Rather than leave it to some historian, or your great grandchild to try to piece together and most definitely make some mistakes, the world of the writer is much more open to retaining our memoirs as a legacy for future generations.

A recently discovered website called Story of My Life has given us another method of doing this.

Story of My Life allows a user to upload media including photographs, and write their life memories. It is stored on databases, and supposedly forever (we’ll not get into the storage implications of electronic data in this post). Once written, your stories can be made public, or with private access.

The website itself has one heck of a goal –

To collect the life Story of every person who has walked the face of this earth – in the past, the present and our futures; and to keep these Stories preserved and accessible forever.

Despite the lofty goal here, Story of My Life.com holds a lot of stories, and has a lot of people using it to write down their own stories. Registered users can organise their stories by chapters (chronological), categories (topics) or maintain an online journal via their SOML blog.

There is a browse story tab for finding the most popular stories, pictures and videos, and users have various functions available to them, including setting up family networks linking their stories together with others; and a top ten list feature.

Even if, as a writer, you might be reluctant to invest in Story of My Life for documenting your own memoirs or publicising these, consider the database of other’s stories which exist for the public on the Story of My Life website. Browsing through various SOML user’s stories, many can provide inspiration for your own memories, or writing. There are many sources of ideas published on the site, from stories, to vintage or current pictures, videos and many of the users of SOML appear to see the site as a very powerful outlet for their own writing.

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