Ep 201 Craft Books I Recommend

Pencils&Lipstick podcast · Oct 02, 2023

Transcript

Hello everyone, welcome to Pencils and Lipstick. This is episode 201 and this is going out on August, no, October 2nd, 2023. We are in October, this is incredible. It's one of my favorite months of the year, but it also means that the end of the year is coming. That's insane.

So speaking of Quarter 4 and this beginning part of it, I have decided to delay my Kickstarter and to delay the duology coming out until 2024. I finally took part in HB90. This is Sarah Cannon's organization for writers, like learning how to organize your whole quarter with your goals and your business and your writing goals and all that. And I have to say it's a great program if you are looking to get organized and have tried many things in the past like I have. I really, really enjoyed it. Sarah S -A -R -R -A, Cannon, HB 90. You can probably google all those things. It's a different way of doing it. I've never seen this way and it has helped me realize how very little time I have. Yeah, so that was pretty much the big decision maker. There is a little amount of time and the romance part of the duology, that book is taking a bit longer to get edited. It is finished but it's taking a bit longer to get done. So I was kind of stressed about that one and then the book cover just wasn't really coming along and I wasn't really happy with it. Now I am, I'm very happy with it, but I couldn't make a decision before and it's like once you make a decision, a lot of the stressors start, you know, like leaving, I don't know, disappearing, I guess. So I looked at my quarter four, I looked at all of the family things that we have going on, and the travel that we're going to have to do, and all the things that I want to get done, and I decided that it just wasn't really possible. This was also influenced by the fact that November and December are not great months to bring a book out in.

December's not great because it's Christmas. Unless you can have everything finished and guarantee that they will be shipped on time for Christmas. I mean, you'd really have to get it out by the beginning of December. And marketing is just competing with so many other things, right? Like everyone's advertising at that point. Everyone's inundated with all these commercials. So you're competing with a lot of stuff. And then November, we're gone for a lot for about eight days of that around Thanksgiving, just like between travel and me being with family. And I just didn't want like have to be working at that point um and since i want to do a kickstarter there's work that will always go into it and at that even now with um where the the second book is i'm not sure that it would have been finished so maybe i could have started the kickstarter in november but then you know people would probably want the product by december and i doubt that i could have guaranteed So then we're going into 2024 and January is not great because people are getting their credit card statements back. So now we're in February. This is funny. And it's weird when you look at things like that, golly, like already that's four months gone.

So I'm going to take the time as Zs Diamante talked to us about in episode 199, just about taking that time to to do my marketing and, you know, perfect my book blurb and write a couple short stories for things that people can download. I think I'm going to make a tiny little recipe book for the Kickstarter. Just have fun with the Kickstarter. I'm going to take my time building it and making the videos and telling people what a Kickstarter is and why they should support indie authors for Kickstarters and what people can get. I want to make it really fun. I want to make it just, I want to thank anyone who takes the risk on me to buy the book during the Kickstarter. And then from there we will put it out onto Amazon and Kobo and all that. I was looking at Kickstarter and from all the things that I have read, the testimonials and authors who have done Kickstarters both with success and with not very much success, I do think that time is the biggest factor and just organizing it well and getting your sales page done really well so that people understand what a Kickstarter is and what they're getting themselves into you and having the fun little side stuff for people. So if I can get to a certain point and I haven't decided that point, but it would probably be about, I mean, about 5 ,000 at least on the Kickstarter,

I could pay for the audiobooks, which I think would be fun. But that will depend on if people are really into the audiobooks. They're becoming more and more consumable, and people are liking them more and more, I think, as the years go on, but they are a lot of money to put together and put together well. So that, you know, that will sort of be an unlocking tier on the Kickstarter, which I think is, will be interesting. It'll be interesting to see that unfold. So that is a delay. If you have decided that you have to delay something, or maybe I've told you about November of December and you can go ahead and look. I'm sure if you have everything ready to go,

you could possibly have a good launch. But again, I did not have everything ready to go, and so I don't think that it would have been a good launch. If you do reconsider if you've had to delay your book launching, it's okay. We're gonna look at the pros. We're gonna look at what we can do with our time. Until then, it doesn't mean that you have to stop writing. It doesn't mean that you have to stop talking about your book. In fact, it gives you more time to talk about your book and create more hype. So let's look at the pros, let's be encouraging about these different decisions and these delays in life. Before I go on to the resources, I wanna get through these two stacks of books for y 'all. These are books on writing and the craft of writing and the business of writing that I wanna go through just so that you have some resources. I have many books, but maybe kind of the books that I use the most, and so that's what we are going to go through today. Before we do that, if you are watching on YouTube, please subscribe and like the video if you're listening on a podcast app. I would love it if you would subscribe or even give a review. We haven't had a review for a while, so I would love to get a few more reviews. And of course, share the video with any writer in your life. And this is a free resource for anyone. I to interview authors. I to interview people who create software for us authors or, you know, whether it's software or other things for us, books or whatever they are, to help us author our books better.

I also give you tips and we talk about writing. Last week we talked about personalities and how you can use them to develop your character arc. So if you know a writer in your life, please feel free to share this free resource. We've got a ton of episodes that I think any writer would enjoy, although this is mostly aimed at indie writers, just so that you know. So the other free resource that I have for this week is that it's back to school week with Emma Desi, Stacy Juba, and Kat Caldwell. So, starting last year, we put together a landing page in which writers who are also teachers put their free lead magnet, their best, you know, downloadable, most downloaded free magnet from other authors that they teach you something, whether it's finding your premise or how to outline your book or how to format your book or whatever it is, this free resource that they have for authors. And so we put all of those links and a little bio about the person on a landing page. All you have to do is go to that one landing page and you can see over 50 people who want to help you write and publish your book. And you can choose the person. If you download their lead magnet, you are on their newsletter and so you will get the information from them and you'll get to know them and see if they're right for you.

You can always unsubscribe, that is okay. but by going to the landing page you are not on all 50 of people's newsletters. You have to download their lead magnet to be on their newsletter. You are only on Stacey's Emma's My Newsletter by going into the lead the landing page. And again you can unsubscribe at any time even if you get the lead magnet. So that's okay. It's all right. We're good with that. We know that people need some free resources and some help. So we're happy to give it and we're happy to make a one -stop shop for you with no strings attached. So the link for that will be in the show notes below. If you're watching on YouTube, it's below. If you are on a podcast app, you're gonna have to just click into this episode and you will see the full show notes and you'll be able to click on that link. So let's go into some books that I have on my shelves that I mostly reach for. I have more than these, okay?

but we are gonna go through the ones that I reach for the most. First, if you are a writer who writes articles and nonfiction, if you want to expand your writing practice into writing for medium or even getting it published in, let's say, the New Yorker, the New York Times, USA Today, Mademoiselle, Vanity Fair. I can't think of more. you know, all of those where they're more article based, sometimes a lot of research based. I think that you should get Welcome to the Writer's Life by Paulette Perhash. She is great. This one little tiny book has, you know, how to organize your writing life, how to pitch, how would like the editor's markings mean, what vocabulary you will see and end up using in this world because it is an entirely different writing world. This is not just about you writing a book and publishing it yourself and then marketing it. This is like getting people to hear the idea behind your article and then wanting to hire you and then you writing it and then them editing it and then it finally being published. She is a great person to follow on Instagram as well, especially if you want to be in that sort of writing world. I know not all of us want to only be novelists all the time. So the other one that I love is the business of short stories. I really love writing short stories, and of course I want them published. I like to publish mine on myreamsstories .com. You can become a member there for very little, about $4 to $8, and you can read all my short stories. but I like to see if I can publish them first. And this is sort of like the one book I need to to know how to get that done. I don't know why it's not obvious, but it's not always obvious. And this even goes into how to format it properly. So I know not all of us were born in like 2001, one, me included. And the software and things are not always easy for us or, you know, just intuitive, I would say. I think if you grew up as a kid with the technology, a lot of times it's intuitive. So I like this even for like the the formatting. I work with authors in which I have to teach them formatting, but there's stuff I don't know either. So I think that's great. And it just goes through the business of it. Right. How to find places to publish, all that stuff. I got to find like a different pile here. Tell It Slant is another one on mostly creative nonfiction. And this is how to get it published as well. Creative nonfiction is a little bit different and it's a different market and there are different rules and they're not super different except that they're different enough that

you should probably inform yourself, especially the personal essay. Not everyone publishes personal essays, and if you want to write a personal essay and you want to publish, I would say get this book, Tell It Slant. It's by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola. All right, so let's get into fiction writing as far as novels. Okay, where are we going to go first? Okay, The Hero's Journey by, The Heroine's Journey by Gail Carriger. I really enjoyed this book especially because it's like the opposite of the hero's journey this really goes into a lot of plotting and how to develop a story that is following the heroine's journey and this is different because because the heroine usually brings on a group of people and it works in community with them and the hero's journey he usually works alone and there's a difference. So as you go through learning about story, understand that everyone's point of view is valid. It's just a different way of writing. And so you don't have to take everyone's way. But if you like to write about your main character sort of needing a group of people to bounce ideas around and they They solve the problem of the story or they come to the conclusion or to the climax of the story together. You're probably writing heroine's journey books and you might want to check out that book by Gail Carriger. For more on plotting, there is a three -story method and this is a really easy book to read. It's by Jay Thorne with Zach Buchanan.

I know these two men use a three -story method. I personally think that this is this is a really good place to start if you have always sort of watched sci -fi like kind of older sci -fi or or older fantasy a lot a lot of movies use the three -story method it is not the only thing you need to write a compelling story but J Thorne actually goes into that as well, but if you want a way to organize your thoughts and you think in like part one, part two, part three for your stories, this is a great book to get, Three Story Method. If you don't think in parts of your book, it's not a bad book to read, clearly, but I'm not sure that it will really help you organize your book. Um, it's just, it's just a difference in how we, our minds are structured. And so I really enjoyed writing, reading this book. I interviewed Jay Thorne about it. I did like how he didn't just go about the plotting, but he, he talked about the wants and needs of the character, that it's not just plotting out, you know, three acts. But my brain doesn't work like that.

So while I, I, I sort of take what I can from it and then I leave the rest. That's just, that's what I do. Okay, another easy one to read is Launchpad, the countdown to writing your book. And disclaimer, I wrote a chapter in this book, but this is by Amidasi and Grace Salmon. And what they did was got together, I think there were 12 of us and we each wrote a chapter and we each sort of had a different theme for our chapter and so it's sort of broken down you can consume the chapter really easily there are like workbook type questions at the end of each chapter they all again they're different themes so they sort of touch on almost everything that you need for the novel whether it's theme editing character plotting all of that stuff really everything so it's it's an easy book to read just because you can read it chapter by chapter and you can skip around that is launch pad the countdown to writing your book by Emma Dessy and Grace Salmon so now we're going to get into a little bit harder books to read oh this is an easy book to read one more and the trope thesaurus and I was trying to find the one that's just trope thesaurus. This is trope thesaurus romance, but Jennifer Hilt actually has one that's just basic trope thesaurus. And then she has horror romance and I'm pretty sure she's coming out with sci -fi now. And she's actually going to come

talk to us in a couple of weeks. So the trope thesaurus by Jennifer Hilt really goes through what tropes are and why you probably already write in them. But if you do it on purpose, as we talk about on this podcast a lot, it will help your writing. So it's an easy book to read if you've heard the word trope, trope, trope, and you're not really sure what that means other than like secret, baby, or like if you're in the romance world, like maybe you know the tropes that you don't like, but almost everything is a trope, and it could help you plot your books. I actually found it very helpful even though I know what a trope is, but it was just so simple and it's like, oh yeah, I already write like that. It will especially help you write your blurbs. Your book blurbs are basically pulling out the tropes, the main tropes that you want the reader to see for your story. So now we're going to go into some harder books that I find are great, but they're harder to read. The Science of Storytelling, if you like psychology, this is by will store. S -T -O -R -R. I got through it because I got on the audiobook. It's very interesting. It's not boring at all, but it's dense. It's really dense. And I think sometimes when you're reading really dense books while trying to write a book, you just sort of want people to get to the point. This is really good in audio because I love this book. I bought a copy of this book and I had somebody, a friend of mine say, oh, I couldn't get through it. and I said, get the audio book. Especially if you like psychology, it goes into the psychology of why we love story. This will especially help you if you say,

like, what is my job worth? I have writers ask me this, like, why are we even doing this? Is it even worth doing this? And it is, because the science of storytelling will tell you that it is, because we need stories. Story Fix by Larry Brooks. This is actually a Writer's Digest book. I think this is one of the oldest books that I own it's quite stained. This was before I bought all the little flags as you will see in the next one. But this really goes into if you have a book that you're not sure about that you just got feeling don't think something's working it like it's just not working somehow get this book Story Fix. Transform your novel from broken to brilliant. It really makes you go back and figure out your main character's wants, needs, conflict, motivation, but it breaks it down in a different way. And all of our brains are different and we all need a different way of learning. And so story fix might be that thing that you need if that just hasn't resonated with you ever with anyone else before. This next one, The Anatomy of a Story by John Truby is an amazing book. As you can see, I found book flags with this one. I it marked up. But this, again, is very dense. He knows a lot. He is a I think he's a consultant for for movie scripts. I think he worked in like choosing movie scripts for for big, you know, movie. What's it what are they even called?

I know people who make movies, the anatomy of stories. So 22 steps to becoming a master storyteller. So, talking about the 22 main scenes that have to be sprinkled throughout stories, not every story needs 22 of them, and he goes into that, but there are 22 main scenes or parts, I guess, to be having a full, complete, and very satisfying story. Again, it can be a little bit dense, but I find it incredibly useful and I go back all the time into this book. Another one that is great is Story Genius and actually Lisa Krohn's books, all of them are very good. Story Genius is great and oh I can't think of the other one. I tried to find it. I think I lent it out to somebody but Lisa Krohn, C -R -O -N. I would probably start with Story Genius. How to brain science to go beyond outlining and write a riveting novel. Of course, I once again have tons of flags. Sorry about that. Sorry for all you audio listeners. So, this goes through everything. This basically tell you how to go from idea to full novel. I use a lot of her tips and advice in my novels and then with clients as well. But I love that, like, this one with science of storytelling goes into how our brains work and why some novels are riveting and some are not. And I think that's important to know. And then you can always make your decision, right, properly on how you're going to write your novel. And if we make decisions on purpose, then we won't get surprised right the other thing that we want to look at is the thesauruses so this is just representing the whole series by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi let me see if they even say I think there's like 12

thesauruses these days so this one representing is called the complex thesaurus and here we go they have the complex thesaurus which there two to these. This is volume one. They have the Occupation Thesaurus, the Urban Setting Thesaurus, the Rural Setting Thesaurus, the Emotion Thesaurus, the Positive Trait Thesaurus, the Negative Trait Thesaurus. And this just goes really into the add -ins that you can use to create that really engaging plot or really engaging character and what it sort of brings to the story, what you can use for it. So let's, for example, peer pressure. Let's say you want to write a YA about peer pressure. They have examples, they have some minor complications like maybe a reputation being ruined or the person's going to adopt a group's disagreeable point of view just to fit in. Then they have positive traits, negative traits that might worsen the situation. So they have two pages per conflict that you can sort of use, oh, okay, this is going to result in the emotions of being flustered or guilty or being regretful or nervous. So they really go through all this so that you can make sure, oh, okay, maybe I need a scene there where they feel shame about what happened because of what they participated in, whatever that is.

So I think all of these are great if you struggle with adding emotion to your characters, get the Emotion Thesaurus. If you maybe are somebody that doesn't live in an urban setting, but you want to understand how to create that world, get the Urban Setting Thesaurus. Honestly, I have like all these books, so I just can't bring them all up to the video so that you can see all of them. All right, and now we go into business books, but specifically for writers. So I think the number one, if you're going to get, if you're struggling at all in your business of writing, get the Reclaim Your Author Career by Claire Taylor. This is the one book you need. And yes, it goes through the Enneagram, and there is a reason for that. And I resisted the Enneagram for a long time. I like the big five traits. I just didn't want to like study another one, but I think Big 5 Trades plus the Enneagram really help you see who you are in a complete picture. And this one helps you see who you are in the complete picture under the light of Indie Authorship and what kind of world we are in. So we have a lot of people telling us, you know, kind of the magic bullet to Indie Authorship. and a lot of times what they teach is not going to work for you if you are someone who is a complete opposite on the Enneagram and you need to understand why so that you're not super frustrated, right?

So this is like the one book if you're going to get anything if you are frustrated in your career or you don't ever want to become frustrated in your career, get Reclaim Your Author Career by Claire Taylor. And then she has courses and all that as well that you guys can check out. Now, I have done courses, I have done, I've read other books. I would say I don't have a physical copy of them, but Mal Cooper's books on Facebook ads are also great, and I don't have a full copy, a physical copy either, but Newsletter Ninja by Tammy Labreck, T -A -M -M -I Labreck. Those are wonderful for why you should start your author newsletter. But the other ones that I have physical copies of are Ricardo Fayette's Amazon ads for authors and how to market a book. These are on Amazon. They're actually pretty cheap. They're hardcover, but I think they're like $12. It's very, very cheap for heart cover. I don't know why I have heart cover. Maybe they're all some

paperback. But it really breaks it down for you in a really digestible way. And while I love courses on how to market books and how to do Amazon ads, I love the courses that I have. I have self -publishing courses, the Mark Dawson course. I do love it. But sometimes I don't want to be in front of my computer anymore and I want to be on the porch with a glass of wine and I can just go back and look at Amazon ads for authors and just go back to, you know, okay, I'm gonna start again. I'm gonna start, you know, the ads. How am I gonna do that? How do I want to do this? What are some examples? Oh yeah, that's right. Because all the information that I learned doesn't always stay up here in this head. How to market a book. I think I open this every single time I'm about ready to bring a book out. Now that hasn't been for two years, but just going back to the basics really quickly, and then sort of seeing what I can do better and what I want to avoid doing.

So, and I think that they are quite, they're still really timely. They have not, you know, expired on their advice there. So these, that's, I don't know how many books that is. That's like 15 different books. I will have the links in the show notes below. That's gonna take me a good long time to get all those links there. But I want you guys to have that resource on hand. Check them out. I don't think you need all of them. Absolutely not. You don't need all of them. But they are all for somebody. Right. They are going to teach you something. And please, please, please don't use the excuse of reading books to keep you from writing. You definitely have to do your writing as well. So also don't forget about the back to school free resource. That link is in the show notes below and until next week when we will be either with a guest or it will be me. We have yet to see with time conflicts, but I will see you next week. I hope to see you here on YouTube or in your podcast app. Please share Pencils and Lipstick with all your writer friends. I thank you guys for listening.