In high school, my English Teacher insisted we learn to write without using too much passive voice. I remember questioning her methods and thinking her ideas were pointless.

I WAS wrong. When you are writing in first person past tense it’s difficult not to write with a passive voice, and the story moves so much better if you don’t do it.

So, go through and check your manuscript for the passive stuff. Now, don’t get me wrong. Don’t get rid of every ‘was, is, are, were, am, etc.’ in your book, but trim it down.

A wise man once said to me: If you can replace WAS with a better verb and make your story say the same thing– why wouldn’t you?

If you are having trouble understanding passive voice, I have compiled a few resources for you to check out below:

Passive Voice Handout

The Passive Voice

Grammar Girl

Just for fun…. I invite you to go through the first chapter and highlight the word was. How many times did you use it?

I used WAS four times in the first chapter of my book that has been edited several times, and in my unedited work I used it eight times.

What about you?

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So, you’ve written a book… and now you need people to look at it.  What now?

This is a tough one. You don’t want to show your book to your friends yet, because it isn’t finished, and your significant other will look it over, but chances are… he’s not your target audience.

So, now you have to find Beta Readers and critique groups.  You can check out forums like Absolute Write to search for Beta Readers. Or you can find a group of trusted writing friends to share work with.  Both of these are great in their own respect.  It’s tough when you find a brand new person to read your work, just because it means that they won’t personally know you, or what hurts your feelings.  Your friends, on the other hand… will work extra hard to find the stuff they love in your story mixed in with the stuff they hate.  (If they don’t do that… then you need new friends.)

So, now that you’ve found your preferred type of reading group… you need to know how to get together.  There are several different ways.  The first is just with emails and chats.  You need to use a good group chatting program so you can get together and talk about your stuff.  I recommend Yahoo Messenger or Aol Instant Messenger for this. Both of these programs are top notch, and make group chatting a breeze.  Google Talk is okay, but it’s just not as well designed as the other two are.

If you are feeling extra technological, you can start up a private Yahoo Group what’s cool about this is that you can upload files, keep databases with everyone’s contact information, and manage most of the stuff through email.  Then you and your friends have a small message board type place to talk freely about each other’s work without saying the same things over and over again.  This is my favorite option.  But make SURE you set your settings to private!  This is very important so you don’t accidentally make all your work public to the world.

So, if you have a critique group just starting out, give Yahoo Groups a whirl and let me know how it works out for you.  If you have questions about how to set it up, let me know in the comments below!

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We are proud to announce our brand new home!

http://giveagirlapen.com

You will probably have to resubscribe to our feed, and refollow. But we are very excited about our new home! Thank you so much for reading the blog. We hope to have many more writing adventures with you at our new and improved address!

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So, last week we all set up our twitter accounts. I saw a few of you tweeting! Way to go guys! That makes me very happy!

Now, the question posed to me is, how do we make twitter work for us as writers?

Well, the thing is this… with social networking sites like twitter, facebook, etc. you only get out of them as much as you put in. If you aren’t actively following people, participating in twitter convos and checking your tweets daily, then you aren’t using twitter to its fullest potential.

The first thing you need to do is stop using the twitter webpage to manage your tweets. Instead, download a program to tweet with. I like twitterfox, but a lot of people swear by tweetdeck. I won’t go into the specifics of how to use these programs here, because there are loads and loads of websites out there dedicated to just that, so instead I will get to the point! (Wow, it’s just like my first draft, I spent half the article setting you up for the juicy part!)

You need people to follow, and there are some great people to follow out there. I started with this list: 25 Good People to Follow.

You now have a way to tweet, and fun people to follow. The only thing left is what you should be tweeting. Start out simple, ask questions to people about the writing process, ask them about query letters, agents will answer your tweets all the time, and they love to answer them via twitter because it gives them a chance to answer mundane things that people ask all the time, but to a large audience.

The other day I told an agent I felt a little guilty asking them up on twitter, their answer:

Now, this isn’t your free license to just annoy every agent/writer/publiser on twitter. Look at their tweets, find a common interest, and try to make a friend. It will be obvious if you are fake. But, if you are genuine, and you are really looking for people that share your love for writing, then twitter will work for you.

Take some time this week tweeting up people, and look through their twitter pages… see who THEY are talking to, and follow those people that are talking back and forth with them about writing. Ask the questions you were scared to ask, and listen listen listen. You will learn so much from these people 140 characters at a time!

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Okay, so I told you that I would help you out next week with who to follow and all that with your new and improved twitter accounts, but right now, something way cool is going on over there that all writers should be following! It’s something called #queryfail. Basically, a bunch of agents that twitter are telling us all about the Queries they are rejecting in real time, right as they reject them! So, if you have your twitter account set up, you should click here and check out what they are saying! It’s fabulous information!

For more info on query fail, and one of my favorite twittering agents check out her blog.

Hope this helps you guys out who are just starting the twitter fun!

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Okay, I got some great feedback from my post about how we were going to set up social networking, and I think the one I heard the most about was Twitter, so we are going to start there!

Basically twitter is a micro blogging tool… what’s a micro blogging tool you ask? Well, it means that you update your twitter page with little snippets of your life and goings on throughout the day.

We are going to start simple today. We will get a twitter account and start updating it. I am not going to give you the awesome list of agents, editors and publishers using twitter just yet, because I don’t want you to add them yet! Instead, I want you to wait and just add fris, family, and of course the girls with pens! This way, you will have time to establish your twitter account and not look like spam, and maybe those awesome agents will follow you back!

So, we start by going to the twitter home page and clicking on the big green join button.

Now, you are on the sign up page… pretty self explanatory… just remember to pick a cool username, because that’s the name everyone is going to call you!

So, it’s official… you’re a member of the Twitteratti! Now, let twitter do the work for you and see if any of your friends are Tweeting! Just fill in your email address and password, and twitter will check to see if your friends are on Twitter! Follow them, because they will help you learn how to use this crazy new service!

Now, for the important part. You absolutely, hands down, without a doubt have to have an avatar. So, go into your profile and add a photo, most of the people on twitter use a picture of themselves, because, twitter is about personal acquaintances. So, find an adorable pic of you that you love and load her up! (for the purpose of this tutorial, I will just use a random image since I am not actually creating a personal account)

Play around in the Profile, and check out the different twitter designs! They have some great ones, and are easy to customize, so have fun with that! But make sure to fill out the Bio and Location (your location can be very general, like say The United States if you are worried about giving too much info away). Just make sure to fill these our, because people want to know about the person they are talking to!

You are officially ready to start tweeting! Click on the ‘home’ on the top right hand of the screen, and tell everyone what you are doing!

Want to follow more people that are interested in the same things as you are?
Check out Twitter Search and type in different stuff to see what people are talking about!

Okay, so you probably need a few people to follow, so here are a just a couple!

There’s me: http://twitter.com/jamieharrington
Another Girl with a Pen, Sarah Jensen: http://twitter.com/sarahjen
And everyone’s favorite anonymous author: http://twitter.com/authoressanon

Remember, start small… tweet a lot, if you find something interesting on the internet! Tell everyone about it!

Now, next week, we will look at a few tools for using twitter and if you promise to tweet, I will hook you up with that list of super cool people in the publishing world that twitter

Good Luck and Happy Tweeting!

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