Send your trailers to ifyougiveagirl@gmail.com and we’ll post them along with your website.

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After three years of work on my first novel, I was pretty exhausted. I’d written the initial draft of WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW in third person,  then another version in the first person voices of the three main characters. The third year found me back in the third person for another round.  I was starting to resent my characters, wondering why they were taking so long to tell their story, and hoping they didn’t plan to drag it into a Michener-length piece of fiction.

My editor advised a detour from the novel to explore the backroads. She suggested I take background situations and build short stories around them. The result would be a better understanding of the characters, finished work for literary journals and contest submissions, and . . . a needed break from the tedium of the novel.

In the next six months I crafted over ten stories. Several pieces were flash fiction of between 250 & 1,000 words.  The others were in the 2,500 – 3,000 word range. They were sent to journals and contests, and because there was a variety of material, I had the ability to send out a new story if I received a positive rejection that turned down the submission but invited future work.

I went back to the novel with a renewed interest and fresh ideas about structure. Certain character traits came to light as I wrote the short pieces, leading me to approach the novel-length story from a different angle. It developed a beginning, middle, and end that made sense in under 90,000 words. I had a finished, polished manuscript within the year.

That’s the “writing life” part of the story. Now for the “marketing” part. After a few of the stories were accepted for publication, I added to my agent query, “Stories based on the lead characters have been published online and in anthologies,” giving credibility to my writing and my characters .

At a recent conference, an agent suggested that I post the unpublished stories on my website and then do promotion to drive readers to the site. She noted a recent client who did this. The traffic numbers helped to build a selling point for the publisher pitch, showing that readers were already familiar with the characters and would be inclined to buy the book for more of their story.

The first of my RITA & SYLVIE stories posted last month at www.gingerbcollins.com. It’s the initial step in a campaign that began as a detour and will hopefully serve as the path to agent representation and publication of my first novel.

BIO

Ginger B. Collins writes short fiction and creative non-fiction. Her work appears online and has been published in Freckles to Wrinkles, Silver Boomers, and the newly released Scratch Anthology of Short Fiction. She recently completed her first novel. Read excerpts at www.gingerbcollins.com.

In her blog, OFF THE TOP OF MY RED HEAD, Ginger applies a past career in sales, marketing, and PR to her new role as author, sharing links and writer resources while exploring subjects like social media, agent search, and writer platforms. All writers are invited to follow the blog and share experiences. http://coppertopcollins.blogspot.com.

Ginger and her husband, Melvin, are avid sailors, and would be content to spend life onboard, cruising coastal waters and exploring land from the shoreline in. Until then, they winter in the Southeast and summer in Atlantic Canada.

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Calling all book trailers! We know you’re out there. Email us your book trailer and website and we’ll post each entry for readers to find out more about your book.

We’ll give you the next two weeks to send in your trailer to ifyougiveagirl@gmail.com and put Book Trailer in the Subject line. They will be posted Sunday August 23rd.

No contest…no critique…just getting the word out about your novel and peaking interest in you as a writer.

Want to know what a book trailer is? Check out these:

Authoress’s trailer at the top of her blog misssnarksfirstvictim.blogspot.com.

Dark Slayer: Christine Feehan Book Trailer

Storm Of Visions: Christina Dodd Book Trailer

All these trailers are property of their owners.

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I write my novels with a partner – three with my husband and now two with a friend I have known for over 20 years. So it’s not surprising that the question most asked at my book signings is “how do you manage to write with someone else?”

First, let me say why I like to collaborate. The process of writing is intrinsically a lonely one. You have to sit down in front of a completely blank page (or computer screen) and conjure up characters who will, if you do your job right, come alive as if you’d literally given birth to them. The plot lines you create for these characters must be both imaginative and believable. That’s really hard. Being able to bounce ideas off a writing buddy is, for me, a way to expand my creativity – especially when I hit a blank wall on a plot point or some issue related to a character’s personality. It’s also a wonderful motivator. There is something about knowing you have to get words down on the page because your partner is waiting that’s a great kick in the pants. And best of all, when you are lucky enough to have your novel published and your publicist books you for speaking engagements on TV or radio appearances, there is someone to lean on should you find yourself tied up with butterflies just before going on.

Okay, so once you decide to develop a partnership, how does it work?

I have heard a few writers who collaborate liken a writing partnership to a marriage. And now that I have written with both my husband and a woman friend, I can say that that’s not a bad analogy, except for one thing – since my real life marriage of 38 years is, I believe. uniquely compatible, there were far fewer preliminary matters to deal with as there were with someone I didn’t know nearly as well. Joel (my husband) and I have practiced medicine together, written nonfiction medical articles and books together, gone to business school together and run a consulting business together. We’ve had plenty of experience working out division of labor issues, so we very naturally fell into what have become our specific roles as novelists (for example, he’s a better editor, I’m better at writing the first draft, he’s good at the story’s overview, I enjoy managing all the little details as the plot unfolds). I will admit that the first book was the hardest – we had only been married 12 years! There was some push and pull as to whose version of a scene was best. However, once we had that first book sold, we learned that the publisher’s editor takes her red pen to your prose anyway and often scenes we’d agreed on between ourselves required yet another rewrite anyway. Now the process is much smoother.

Because it’s been so easy with my husband, I assumed it would be equally easy with any writing partner. Not true. Although Linda and I had been colleagues and friends, it really isn’t the same as living with someone on a day-to-day basis for many years. Not only that, we were trying to write together long distance- Linda lives in LA, I live in Florida. The time difference as well as the miles between us added additional stress. Friendship is a good way to begin a writing partnership. but if you’re not careful, it can end it too. So here are a few things we wish we had discussed before we started our first book and which, I think in hindsight, would have avoided the various difficulties we encountered along the way.

It’s probably a good idea to have a written document with agreed upon items stipulated formally.  Think of it as the equivalent of a prenup – hopefully the relationship won’t break up, but if it does, you’ve clarified “who gets what” so that it doesn’t have to be acrimonious.

1. How will you share the money you make from the book? I recommend 50/50 unless it’s clear from the start that this isn’t an equal partnership. I am assuming that your novel’s copyright will be in both names.
2. How will you share any expenses that arise while you are writing (for example: new software for writing, web making, video, etc)?
3. How will you share marketing expenses above and beyond what your publisher may pay once the book is sold? These days except perhaps for the very top sellers, publishers expect authors to take on more of the marketing costs themselves
4. Who will have the final word on contract negotiations? This can be very tricky because you both want to sell your novel, but one of you may be more willing than the other to hold out for a better offer or want to negotiate better terms such as keeping certain ancillary rights. If you don’t agree to present a united front, it puts you both in a weaker bargaining position.
5. Agree that you will meet deadlines. That means finishing your assigned chapter or completing rewrites or edits when you say you will. This is a place where lots of partnerships go awry. And that’s why #6 and #7 are so critical
6. Agree that you will let your partner know if personal life issues are keeping you from meeting your obligations.
7. Agree to talk about problems. Here’s where the marriage analogy comes in. My husband and I agreed from day one that we would talk through our disagreements and that we would never go to bed angry. A writing partnership should have a similar agreement, That way you don’t let upsets simmer, so that you start resenting each other.

Finally:

1. Don’t forsake your friendship for your work relationship. Because Linda and I both had full time job and family responsibilities, we tended to communicate in work mode only, trying to get tasks related to our writing done in between the rest of our lives. Frankly it took my husband’s pointing this out to make me realize that we’d stopped talking about anything else. Now we try to make time to catch up on mutual friends and other non-writing related topics. It’s really helped to strengthen our friendship and our writing partnership. We ‘re now ready to start working on novel #3 in our new Sammy Greene thriller series.

BIO: Deborah Shlian is a physician, healthcare consultant and recruiter, as well as author of nonfiction and fiction (medical mystery thrillers). Novels co-written with her husband are: Double Illusion, Wednesday’s Child and Rabbit in the Moon. Rabbit in the Moon won this year’s Gold Medal for the Florida Book Award, the Silver Medal for ForeWord Magazine’s Mystery Book of the Year, an Indie Excellence Award and was named a National Best Books Award Finalist by USA Book News. Check all the Shlians’ writing on their website at hpttp://www.shlian.com

Novels co-written with Deborah’s friend and colleague, Linda Reid are: Dead Air which is the first in the new Sammy Greene thriller series to be released in December in hardback and eBook format and Devil Wind which is the second in the Sammy Greene series and will be released in early 2011. Check out their writing on the new website: http://www.sammygreene.com

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photo credit: h.koppdelaney

So here is what I now beleive are the most important things to have when we attempt a career in the writing industry.

1.  Patience:  Patience with the writing process.  Patience with the revising process.  Patience with the query process. Patience with the submissions process.  Patience with the submissions process after we get an agent, because it starts all over again.

2. Professionalism:  Professionalism in our query letter.  Professionalism in dealing with rejections. Professionalism when dealing with multiple submissions. Professionalism when speaking to agents and/or editors on the phone. Professionalism when critiquing the work of our colleagues.

3. Persistence:  Press on!  Keep writing.  Keep making it better.  Keep up the query.  Keep up the WIP to query if the first four novels fail to get attention.  Persist in the love of the void that you fill when you write the words that have never been strung together the way you are stringing them.  Persist inside the dream.

What about you?  What are you own personal p’s (or c’s or s’s or whatever you need to get by?)

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This post was written for small business owners and sales personnel, so why is it published on a writing website? Because that’s exactly what we need to be in order to sale ourselves to an agent, publisher, and ultimately to the public at large. Take what you can.

Thank you, Diane, for sharing your knowledge with us.

Diane earned a BS in Social Science from Michigan State University and received her coaching certification from The Coach Training Alliance.

As a certified, professional coach and president of Seize This Day Coaching, Diane works with people starting their own business, salespeople who need and want to improve their skills, and business owners who want to master challenges and realize greater success. She is also co-founder of Seize True Success, a coaching practice dedicated to helping franchisees grow and prosper.

Diane helps businesses and organizations operate more constructively and profitably. She evaluates, encourages, and guides her clients. Working with as few as one person to as many as 100+, Diane creates an environment that is cooperative and interactive.

Coupled with her business acumen are strong intuitive skills and a genuine desire to help other people realize their potential.

Diane is a COSE Mindspring editor and writer for www.examiner.com. She is also a member of the Top Sales Experts panel at www.topsalesexperts.com. Diane is also a contributing author to Chicken Soup for the Soul: Power Moms.
To learn more about her coaching practices please visit www.seizethisdaycoaching.com or www.seizetruesuccess.com

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Sarah is writer looking for an agent. She is currently working on novel # 4, editing novels 2 and 3, and querying novel # 1. For more insight to her work, visit: http://legendoftheprotectors.wordpress.com/ or http://legendoftheprotectors.blogspot.com/

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