Where Ideas Come From

by Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban

Where do you get your ideas? is a question every writer has been asked at one time or another.

For me, in many occasions, the idea for a story comes from a real place or person.

To illustrate this, I’m going to post every week, a picture of one of these places or people and explain why / how they made it into my books.

I’ll start with my first book: TWO MOON PRINCESS (http://goo.gl/VX0r1) and the place where this story began for me:

Arch at Playa de las Catedrales (Cathedral Beach) in Spain

Once upon a time, when I was a child, I saw a broken arch on a beach in northern Spain. In my mind, the arch was magical. It was a portal to another world, I called Xaren Ra. Later, I moved to California and Andrea, a sixteen year old princess from Xaren-Ra came with me.

In TWO MOON PRINCESS Andrea travels from her wold to California through an arch the full moon rising turns into a portal between Xaren-Ra and Earth.

After I wrote my story, I found out that, a couple of miles north of the town in California where I first lived when I moved to the States, there is an arch similar to the one in Spain.

Goat Rock, Sonoma Coast, CA

Coincidence? Perhaps.

Reviewing with Cheryl B. Klein

by Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban

 

I bought Cheryl B. Klein’s book, Second Sight. An Editor’s Talks on Writing, Revising & Publishing Books for Children and Young Adult, after attending her workshop at the SCBWI NJ conference.

A recompilation of some of her talks and blogs, this easy to read yet insightful book is just what I needed to get ready for my revision of Becquer Eternal.

I do not claim I have assimilated all her wisdom in one reading but I did learn enough to know where to start.

The most interesting piece of advice?

If you have a long section of dialogue copy it in another page and eliminate all the tags. Go back to that section some time later. If you don’t miss the tags, cut them in the final version.

So now, as soon as my current beta reader returns Becquer Eternal to me with her critique, I’ll revise it once again.

This time, I’m ready.

Archetype vs. Stereotype at the Enchanted Inkpot

 

Today Jennifer Nielsen discusses archetype vs. stereotype characters and how they impact the story at the Enchanted Inkpot.

Join us there.

http://enchantedinkpot.livejournal.com/91935.html

Not Your Typical Damsel in Distress

Tired of reading about hapless heroines in need of rescuing?

Then Bryony Pearce’s post “Subverting the Cliche: Maiden in Peril” at The Enchanted Inkpot at

http://enchantedinkpot.livejournal.com/88904.html is right for you.

Happy Birthday, Becquer!

by Carmen Ferreiro Esteban

Today is Becquer’s birthday.

Becquer, Gustavo Adolfo, was a Spanish writer, born in Sevilla in 1836. Had he been alive, he would have been 15 years short of 200, today.

Unfortunately he died young, at 34, leaving behind a too short body of work his friends published after his death, for while alive, he was mostly unknown.

Yet, Becquer, the poet, is not dead for every day, someone, somewhere, cares enough to publish a poem in her blog, to read his legends, then lie awake at night in fear of the ghosts he’s conjured with his words.

Becquer is not dead for he lives in his poems. And his poems are alive in the feverish mind of any Spanish girl whose heart has been broken yet once again.

He’s alive in my thoughts, for, as you may remember if you’ve read my previous posts, in my book, I made Becquer immortal and brought him to the New World.

And I know he’s alive because today, after weeks of struggling with a plot that seemed to go nowhere, something clicked in my mind and story and characters fit together at last, like the pieces in a game of chess aligning for checkmate.

It was that magical moment, if you’re a writer you’ll recognize, when everything falls neatly into place, the way a mighty castle forms at the bottom of a lake by the addition of just an extra grain of salt.

And being my book about Becquer and being his birthday today, how can I not believe it was his spirit’s whispers the wind that made music out of my notes?

And so it is with all my heart, I wish you, Becquer, a very Happy Birthday and a long immortal life.

Marketing for Writers. Interview with Shelli Johannes-Wells

by Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban

Today, I have invited Shelli Johannes-Wells to join me.

Shelli is a YA/MG writer who runs a wonderful marketing blog for authors “Market my Words” (www.faeriality.blogspot.com) I highly recommend.

Shelli has, kindly, agreed to answer my questions about the best strategies for authors to promote their books. Her answers were so thorough and insightful, I have decided to share them with you, my readers, in two posts, so you can digest them at leisure.

Please read on.

CFE. As an author with no previous experience on sales, I am baffled by the marketing part of the business. So I was somehow relieved when someone as knowledgeable as Alvina Ling, Executive Editor at Little Brown (Young Readers) said in answer to your question “what do you feel is most important in promoting books? What doesn’t seem to work?

“To be honest, the longer I’m in the business, the more clueless I am about what works and what doesn’t. It really seems like a crap shoot to me. I know this isn’t a great answer–but it’s the truth!”

(http://faeriality.blogspot.com/2011/01/marvelous-marketer-alvina-ling.html)

Do you agree with Ms. Ling’s answer?

SJW. I think a lot of people do not know how to organize so they do just throw stuff out there. I think you can organize your marketing so it is relevant, not too expensive and very targeted.  I’ll say this – if you don’t do anything, you can be sure it won’t work. But if you do everything and it’s just random, it’s not worth the time either. It needs to be to the point and specific.

CFE. Even if it’s hard to guess what works or not when promoting your book, what steps would you recommend to an author whose book has already being released?

SJW. First, I think every author needs a web presence. That should be first and can be done way before you get published.

The author needs to organize and write down 3-5 target audiences. Not just teens, schools, bookstores and libraries. But really think about who they are targeting. The niche’s their book touches.

Then I think the author needs to come up with a plan of attack for each target audience and decide what will reach them in the most effective way.

CFE. I have heard an author must have a blog. So my question is, what can the author do, in the way of advertising, to increase the traffic to his/her site?

SJW. Actually I DON’T think a blog is a must for everyone. Web site – I would say yes. But anything after that needs to be what the author feels comfortable with and it needs to be purposeful. If you start a blog and only post once a month, it’s a waste of time if networking is what you want out of it.

Now, if you do have a blog and want to increase traffic – you need to think of it as relationship building and go out and meet people. Kinda like – you wont get a date if you dont talk to guys. Does that make sense. A few easy ways to build traffic are: post regularly, visit others and comment, and have short posts that are timely. Don’t plug yourself all the time. Do it to meet others and they will come  Of course – you can always read up on SEO optimization and making sure your blogs are listed in places like STUMBLEUPON or technorati.

CFE. What is more productive in your opinion, running contests on your blog or commenting on other authors/possible readers blogs? Other suggestions.

SJW. Any of it. To me, if you are genuine and give back, people come by. Show your voice, run contests, meet your followers and your blog will grow over time. It does take time. Just like Rome, no blog was built overnight (wow am I profound or what today? :L)

To be continued…

Words for Writers to Live by

“Just write your heart out. I promise you that’s what matters. I would much, much rather find a great, unusual, distinctive book by a phobic writer covered in oozing sores who lives in a closet than a decent but not amazingly original book by the world’s best promoter. I could sell the former a lot better, too.” Elizabeth Law, Publisher, Egmont USA

as posted in the wonderful blog: http://shrinkingvioletpromotions.blogspot.com/

Fantasy writer’s use of history, legend, & myth by Jenny Moss

Please join us at The Enchanted Inkpot (http://community.livejournal.com/enchantedinkpot/80746.html#cutid1) for our Monday blog.

Today read and share your views on how fantasy writers use history, legend and myth in their stories.

Rejection Letters and Christmas

by

Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban

I received a rejection letter today.

A personal one. One of those ‘It is not you. It’s me’ kind of rejection letter.

The kind that gives you hope.

For agents are way too busy to bother to answer unless they mean what they say. And if they do write you back, I was told, you are almost there.

Or so I want to believe.

Specially because this letter was quite lovely. For a rejection letter, that is.

Dear Ms. Ferreiro, it started.

Thanks so much for your query.  Though your writing is solid, with the plight of the princess and her whipping boy vividly portrayed, I’m afraid I’m not the right agent for this project.

I wish you much luck in getting TITLE published.

All best,

Name

See? I told you it was lovely.

And she even got my name right.

What made this rejection letter even more special is that it was the second one.

No, I don’t mean the second rejection letter I’ve received–I’ve received so many, in fact, that I had lost count–but the second one from that same agent for the same submission.

Weird, I know.

And so I was thinking. You know how in English two ‘No’ means a ‘Yes’?

As in, if I say “I do not want nothing” I’m really saying “I want something”.

And remember how many times your Mother said, “No, of course, you can’t eat that cookie before dinner,” and you ate it anyway as if she had said yes?

So I wonder, could it be possible that this agent meant ‘yes’ by rejecting me twice?

She did write me an awfully nice letter.

And I’m sure she’s very busy, being Christmas and all.

So what do you think? Should I call her and ask?

For Christmas’s sake?

Why I write

by

Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban

November is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). For 30 days, thousands of people will be typing away at their computers. Their only aim: to finish a 50,000-word novel by the end of the month.

It is not quality but quantity that counts, the organizers say. And that puzzles me. What is the purpose of encouraging people to write a bad book?

To unblock creativity, I read somewhere. But I’m not convinced.

It seems I’m not alone.

“… there’s no shortage of good novels out there, there is a shortage of readers for these books,” Laura Miller reminds us in her article Why National Novel Writing Month is a waste of time and energy (http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2010/11/02/nanowrimo/index.html).

And I agree. We don’t need more writers. We need more readers. And bad writing is not going to encourage people to read.

Besides, writers don’t need encouragement to make them write, more than fish need a coach to teach them how to swim.

Fish swim and writers write. No matter what.

We, writers, write because we have a compulsion–a gift or a curse I do not know– to do so.

We write even if our spouses say as they divorce us, “You better get a real job. For I don’t plan to support your writing.”

Mine did.

We write even if our daughter thinks it’s social suicide to read our book despite the fact that said book is a Young Adult novel and that her friends couldn’t put it down.

We write even if our boy tells us, in a sentence peppered with expletives we choose to forget, he will never read our book.

We write because we can. Because we must. Because our characters speak to us, urging us to tell their stories. And because we can’t forget the broken arch we once saw at low tide emerging from the mist.

We write to remember how it felt to fall in love and to stop the pain of the betrayal. We write to fill the hollow emptiness of an empty crib.

We write to connect to others, to share what we’ve learned by living, what we wish we knew when we were young.

And even if we knew no one will ever read us, we would still write.

Because we are writers, and writing is what writers do.

Yet, I must confess a deadline is not such a bad thing, for it does force us to write when we’d rather be doing something else.

So I decided to give myself a challenge to spur my creativity.

Not the challenge of writing a novel in 30 days, but that of posting the first draft of my new novel weekly here in my blog.

And I challenge you to do the same.

Dare to try?