When I was doing acquisitions at an indie publisher, one of the most frustrating aspects of my job was having to write a rejection letter to a hopeful author.

Sometimes the manuscript was so full of grammar mistakes and typos, I couldn’t figure out the prose. Other times the story was inaccurate (Gustave Eiffel committed suicide by jumping off his tower – not).

But most of the time I had to write that awful letter because the prose was Just. Plain. Blah.

Have you ever gotten a rejection letter? It really hurts, doesn’t it?

It strips away your confidence, leaving you depressed and frustrated. You have no idea what you did wrong, or how you could have made the book or story better.

A Solution to Rejection

What if I could help you enliven your prose?

Show you how to summon up the author inside you and transform what you know, feel, and remember into acceptance-letter-worthy writing?

Unpack concepts and techniques – with lots of examples and fun writing exercises – that will shoot you up to the heady heights of being a “real author”?

And what if I offered all this to you at half price?

For the next 48 hours, head on over and get my 10-module, premium audio course, Wake Up Your Prose: Description Unpacked, at half price!

Here’s what former students have to say:

“This course opened my mind to new material and refreshed (with a bang) things I knew. I review the modules and exercises often. It’s hard to believe the changes I’ve made to some of my writing that have produced more concise and, certainly, more fascinating reading. Sometimes I ask myself, ‘Did I really write that?’ Thanks, Deena!”

“I really gained a lot from this course! Deena has a way of forcing you (gently!) to squeeze the creativity of your soul onto paper. I loved her ideas to jump-start a short story, as well as the practical advice sprinkled throughout the course.”

“Deena’s classes are loaded with information. We learned how to pack a punch with our words and avoid common mistakes. She gave us a lot to think and write about, as well as worksheets for future reference. Both fiction and non-fiction writers, as well as copy editors and proofreaders, have a lot to gain from Deena’s courses.”

Wake Up Your Prose: Description Unpacked

Is:

• self-paced
• a breeze to implement in your own writing
• broken up into bite-size, easy-to-understand lessons
• audio, with professionally designed slides

Comprises:

• 10 modules
• 1 bonus module
• 11 comprehensive, supplementary workbooks
• 10 hands-on, fun writing assignments designed to catapult your writing to the next level…and even higher
• ebooks, pdfs, checklists, and informative articles that will enhance your writing abilities

Course Curriculum

Module 1: Description Warm-Up. Get started right away, without a bunch of fluff and time-wasting information about me and why I’m so great. (I’ve provided a bio before Module 1; otherwise, how could you trust me?)

Module 2: Method Writing. Write about your own life and develop an arsenal of emotions and experiences to apply to your prose. (And get in the habit of writing every day.)

Module 3: Description Basics. The what, why, and how of description, and description best practices.

Module 4: The Art of Storytelling. Grab your readers from the get-go and use description tools for awesome storytelling and narrative.

Module 5: Show. Learn how to get your readers to experience, not just read, your prose.

Module 6: Tell. Report facts vividly, and move your narrative along in an interesting and masterful way.

Module 7: Analogy, Metaphor, and Simile. Use what your reader knows to convey something they don’t know.

Module 8: Putting It All Together: Description Review and Reinforcement. What did we learn? Where do we go from here? Recap the course and learn something new.

Module 9: Quick & Dirty Tips for Enhanced Description. Bonus techniques and advice from a veteran editor (me).

Module 10: The “G” Word: Grammar. A non-threatening lesson on why you have a greater chance of writing success if you care about grammar.

Bonus Module: Flash Fiction. Learn the basics of this trending genre, and try your hand at a complete story in less than 1,000 words!

Buy Now

Doors close on Friday, November 29th, at 11:59 PST.

I’m not planning to offer the course at half price again (my husband made me do it this time). Don’t miss out.

Still not convinced? Here’s the sales page.

Here’s the checkout page. (No need for coupon!)

See you inside the course!

– Deena

I recently came across two articles (this one and this one) about a janitor who won the 2018 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.

Yes, you heard that correctly: She’s on the early-morning cleaning crew at Trinity College Dublin, coincidentally the same college that gives out the prize. The Rooney is given annually to an Irish-born writer under the age of 40 “who shows great talent and ‘exceptional promise,'” and who has published only once.

The winning author’s name is Caitríona Lalley, and she received the 2018 Rooney Prize for her 2015 novel, Eggshells. In another coincidence, she’s also a 2004 graduate of Trinity.

The Rooney Prize was created by Dan and Patricia Rooney, and was given for the first time in 1976. (The late Dan Rooney is the former owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers football team.) An author cannot apply for the prize; both the candidates and the winner are chosen by a selection committee.

Ms. Lalley, who is married with one daughter, was 39 years old when she won the Rooney – the very last year she was qualified to be in the running. Her day begins at Trinity College, scrubbing rooms from 6:00 to 9:30 am, after which she comes home to care for her daughter and to write.

What we can learn from Caitríona

I found Lalley’s story inspiring for many reasons.

She never gave up

Lalley comes across as a typical Humanities graduate who couldn’t seem to find a “real” job right after graduation. However, in her case, there was a difference:

She stuck with the writing, both when she had a job and when she didn’t.

While bouncing from one job to another, Lalley also experienced serious chunks of unemployment. In 2011, she spent a year pounding the Dublin pavement looking for any type of low-level job. She was rejected time and time again. But here’s how her experiences helped when writing and promoting her novel:

1. It gave her the idea for a social misfit protagonist who spends her days walking around Dublin looking for symbols and meaning in everyday objects. This is classic Method Writing, because Lalley used her own daily walks around Dublin only as the jumping-off point for her character; that’s where the similarities end.

It’s obvious that the author herself is not a social misfit, nor was she looking for deeper symbolic meaning in city structures like her protagonist. No doubt she was able to summon the authentic feelings engendered by spending the better part of her day essentially alone and searching, and apply them to the fictional character.

2. Surviving her job rejections enabled her to survive the many rejections from agents and publishers. As quoted in one of the articles, “There were many, many rejections, but after hundreds of [them], I think I’d gotten used to being told “no.'”

Lalley believed in herself and in her book. She wasn’t too proud to clean classrooms, dormitories, and bathrooms. Her writing wasn’t just a passing fancy, an “I want to maybe write a book some day” attitude. She took herself and her dream seriously. She wrote employed and unemployed. Her personal and economic status had nothing to do with the discipline of writing.

One day, Lalley submitted her novel to a contest whose prize was a day of pitching agents and publishers. And she won. And then she pitched. And then she got published.

She has a “day job”

Lalley’s janitorial job is perfect for her “job” as a mother, she says, and is a great fit for writing. She’s finishing up a second novel – and not planning on giving up her morning work:

It works well with my writing life. I’ve had paid copywriting jobs before, but it was hard to motivate myself to sit down at the computer and write my novel once my paid work was done.

I love this! I’ve heard from both other writers and my own subscribers that after a day of writing in their paid positions, they find it difficult to sit down and write what they want. And I, too, find it difficult to write after a day of editing other people’s work.

Granted, not all of us have the “luxury” of a job that doesn’t require us to think, reason, and solve problems. Nevertheless, I’d like to put Lalley’s idea out there. It’s something worth considering for anyone who’s looking for work.

You don’t have to be a janitor, but a job that’s totally different from writing can give you more head space to sit down after work and get your write your own stuff. It reminds me of when I was writing my senior thesis in university (a hundred years ago), and I took a computer science course as a diversion from all the right-brain stuff.

She’s working on her 2nd novel

Lalley was already almost done with her second novel when she won the Rooney Prize for her first one. This is how a true author behaves, and I admire her. After all, writers write, whether what they write will be read or not.

Lest we think Lalley is outputting thousands of words per day, one of the articles pointed out that although she had struggled with her second book, she had nevertheless plugged away at it every day.

Consistency trumps all.

She’s not rich

Lalley used her prize money to pay her bills, provide day care for her daughter, and buy a water tank for her attic. It sounds as if she scrambles like most of us. And this brings us to what should be every author’s bottom line:

Writing doesn’t always pay, but we do it anyway.

Every day, over and over again, whether we’re tired, energetic, sad, happy, hot, cold, under the weather or fit as a fiddle: it’s what we do, and I feel that this is where Caitríona Lalley can have the biggest impact on us.

Caitríona’s advice

Lalley’s advice for anyone who wants to write a book? Have a paid job that is not stressful. To quote one of the articles:

It’s very hard to write if you’re emotionally drained after work, or have a job that you dread. I know that cleaning is some people’s vision of hell, but it works for me. The bills must be paid, and until that six-figure sum comes a-knocking, everyone needs a day job.

I would add three other things that I consider good advice from Lalley:

• Consistency.
• Process, not product.
• No expectations other than just getting the words down day after day after day.

***

Let’s hear from you now! Do you agree with Lalley’s advice about day jobs? Does she inspire you or discourage you? Let me know in the Comments. And, as always,

Happy writing!
Deena

Deena Nataf
www.BulletproofWriting.com
Deena@BulletproofWriting.com

We have the power and the choice to write – and rewrite – our own life stories.

As writers, we can change our life and literary narrative simultaneously by expanding our writing and publishing options. I’d like to challenge you to think and write outside the box.

If you’ve read my blog for any amount of time, or have bought my course, Wake Up Your Prose: Description Unpacked, you will know that I am not a fan of Harlequin Romances. In fact, it’s my favorite publishing house to make fun of.

However, I recently came across this article in Writer’s Digest, and it gave me a whole new perspective on the infamous publisher.

I learned that Harlequin has several extremely diverse imprints – which means several new opportunities for getting published! Aaaand… they welcome both established and beginning writers! Furthermore, the Harlequin folks promise that they read every single manuscript submitted to them.

Here’s what Harlequin has to say:

We are committed to publishing for our diverse global readership, and are actively seeking to acquire underrepresented authors, as well as stories which explore underrepresented perspectives on popular time periods.

I hear opportunity knocking.

Harlequin Series

Harlequin has 12 imprints that accept un-agented manuscripts, called “Harlequin Series.” This is great news for all of us. The bad news: They’re all in the Romance category – but there’s a range with regard to how rangy the books can be. These imprints publish only series books (which means you get to write more than one!). The names are hilarious, and some of the plots are way over the top and a bit embarrassing – to say nothing of the covers. But on the other hand, the enterprising Bulletproof Writing devotee might not want to write them off completely. (And you can always use a pseudonym.)

Here are the 12 categories in the Harlequin Series:

• Dare
  
• Desire
  
• Heartwarming
  
• Historical
  
• Intrigue
  
• Medical Romance
  
• Harlequin Presents (M&B True Love)
  
• M&B Modern
  
• Romantic Suspense
  
• Special Edition
  
• Love Inspired
  
• Love Inspired Suspense

Don’t ask me what “M&B” means; I couldn’t even get Google to give me a straight answer.

These twelve imprints range from super-explicit sex to Christian themes with no sex. And everything in between. But the bottom line is that Romance needs to be the leitmotif of each and every book.

According to the article in Writer’s Digest, Harlequin “provides very detailed ‘key elements’ they wish to see in books for each series, including word count, how explicit to get with the romance, whether the hero should be a billionaire alpha male, and other very specific details (while leaving room for creativity).”

So glad they leave room for creativity.

In any case, let’s explore a couple of these, from the raciest to the tamest.

Dare

“The heat level is explicit and described in straightforward, non-euphemistic language.”

Desire

“Passionate, dramatic and intense—a window into the world of the American elite, where the yearning of powerful men and dynamic women heightens as the drama unfolds!”

Heartwarming

This category comprises “clean, sweet, feel-good stories that readers can share with friends and family of all ages…with a focus on family and community.” Heroes are everyday types with traditional values. Although it can’t be Harlequin without romance, just make sure it’s clean romance.

Harlequin Historical

This imprint is actively looking to accept manuscripts from authors who belong to “underrepresented” communities. They would also like to publish more novels whose characters come from underrepresented communities. They want heroes to be alpha males, and their heroine needs to “emotionally challenge the hero, and inspire reader sympathy.”

You can get the rest of the scoop about each specific category by clicking here. Scroll all the way down the page to get information on Harlequin Series imprints.

Other Harlequin options

In addition to the Harlequin Series, there is one other imprint that accepts un-agented submissions: Carina Press.

Harlequin also has several imprints that must be submitted by agents, and from my research they seem to be a bit more conservative. Their covers are much less racy, too. Many of the books I explored on the Harlequin Website have been showcased by Amazon, so they’re a bit more mainstream.

Here are the imprints that require agents. Explore each one’s list, and see if you have a book idea that would fit their vision:

• Park Row Books (their literary fiction imprint)
• Graydon House (women’s commercial fiction)
• Inkyard Press (young adult in a variety of genres)
  
• HQN Books (romance, various genres)
  
• MIRA books (“binge-worthy reads”)
  
• Hanover Square Press (“fascinating stories of our world that readers can’t wait to talk about”)
  

***

The point of this article is to show you that there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Even the one publishing house everyone loves to hate might just be your ticket to publishing fame.

Think outside the box. Research a variety of publishing opportunities, and keep an open mind. Most important: Start mapping out your next writing project!

You might just find yourself the recipient of that golden acceptance letter.

Much luck to you, and

Happy writing!
Deena

Deena Nataf
www.BulletproofWriting.com
Deena@BulletproofWriting.com

My premium video course, Wake Up Your Prose: Description Unpacked, is going bye-bye on Friday, August 2nd, at 11:59 pm PST! Don’t be left out in the cold on non-descriptive writing. You can go here to find out more – or to purchase it!

Missed Part 1 of my 3-part series on Storytelling? Read it here.

Missed Part 2 of my 3-part series on Storytelling? Read it here.

This is the 3rd and final installment of my series on Storytelling.

Just to review…

For the past several days, I have been reading this ebook, and the author has some valuable insights on storytelling. These 3 points stood out for me:

• Storytelling is a necessary skill
• The ability to tell a story is critical to effective communication with your customer
• The correct sequencing of events, the correct delineation of causation, and the correct placement of emphasis, is vital to conveying a message of any sort [BTW, can you find the grammatical error in this sentence?]

I discuss the first two points in this post and in this post. Let’s go on to the 3rd and final point.

Storytelling needs sequence, causation, and emphasis

When telling your story, keep these 3 things in mind.

Sequence

• Which scenes, events, or pieces of information go where?
• What event comes at the very beginning, and how do things spread out or zero in from there?
• Will your story be linear, i.e., chronological, or will it go back and forth between the past and the present? Between characters?
• Will the background sequences be in the form of a short, one-sentence or one-paragraph backstory, or will they be entire chapters?
• What about transitions between scenes and events?
• Does your sequence of events make sense to the reader?
• Do your dialogues display logical progression, or are the characters merely talking at each other?

An outline is invaluable for sequencing your piece – even if you’re writing the computer sales page I discussed in the first post of this series. In fact, especially in content writing, you need to plan out each section (features, benefits, price, etc.), as well as the narrative (i.e., the story) that will weave itself through the piece.

The bottom line: Whether you create a formal, numbered outline or simply a list scrawled on a torn-off piece of notebook paper, it will be invaluable in ensuring you know the progression of whatever story or narrative you are writing.

Causation

How do scenes and people intertwine? Does your story or article exhibit logic between cause and effect? For example, If you discuss someone sweating from the intense heat, are you careful not to say she put on a sweater a few paragraphs later, or that it started to snow?

Moreover, is there a reason for a particular personality trait in one of your characters that can be traced to his childhood? Are the actions of your characters consistent with their personalities, and vice versa?

As I point out in Wake Up Your Prose, you must tell the truth when you write, even if it hurts and even if you’re writing fiction. This means that if the logic of your plot dictates that you kill off a character, or have something bad happen to him or her, you will need to go with the natural cause and effect you have created.

Emphasis

Getting back to our buddy Abraham Lincoln (see my previous post), do you need to spend a lot of time describing what his mother made for dinner on his sixteenth birthday? (Maybe so, if it’s relevant to your thesis.) Likewise, if you’re writing an About page for someone’s website, will you need that person’s entire history, including the vacations they took? (I actually read an About page that included this information.)

Ask yourself: “What information is relevant to my goal with this piece?” In other words, where do need to place the emphasis?

Sometimes, ostensibly trivial information will in fact be important. For example, perhaps someone’s vacation in Ireland at the age of 18 is what stimulated her to start a blog on Irish glassware. Or maybe you’d like your readers to know a bit about 19th-century American cuisine, and thus describing Lincoln’s birthday dinner is an interesting and informative way to do that.

Point of view also falls under the category of emphasis. Will you write that story from a child’s point of view or from that of her mother? Are you going to emphasize how gigantic a mansion is in order to contrast it with the heroine’s small stature and timid personality? Is the murder mystery just a whodunit, or is it a psychological study of the detective?

***

To sum up…

Keeping sequence, causation, and emphasis front and center when you are writing – and of course, when you are outlining and revising – will make your prose a pleasure to read. Readers want things to make sense, and you are doing them and yourself a great service by making your prose feel and sound realistic. It doesn’t matter whether you are writing fiction or nonfiction; it all has to make sense.

One of the most comprehensive modules in my course, Wake Up Your Prose: Description Unpacked, is on storytelling. For all there is to know about writing descriptive prose, go ahead over to the sales page and make your purchase! Doors close Friday, August 2nd, at 11:59 PST.

All the best, and

Happy writing!
Deena

Deena Nataf
www.BulletproofWriting.com
Deena@BulletproofWriting.com

Just 2 more days, and the cart closes for my video course, Wake Up Your Prose: Description Unpacked. You can go here to find out more – or to purchase it! Cart closes this Friday, August 2nd, at 11:59 pm PST.

Yesterday, I published the first installment of my 3-part series on Storytelling. Just to review, I gleaned 3 important things about storytelling from this ebook:

• Storytelling is a necessary skill
• The ability to tell a story is critical to effective communication with your customer
• The correct sequencing of events, the correct delineation of causation, and the correct placement of emphasis, is vital to conveying a message of any sort [BTW, can you find the grammatical error in this sentence?]

Yesterday, we discussed the first statement; today we’ll discuss the second.

Storytelling is critical to effective communication with your customer reader

Now hear this: Your reader is your customer.

You are writing for your readers.

This doesn’t mean that you must look over your shoulder as you write, making sure you will impress your audience. In fact, that is the easiest way to sound pretentious. It also doesn’t mean that you need to pander to your audience’s opinions; that will make you sound wishy-washy.

The dynamic here is both to write for Ideal Reader and to stay true to your values and your writing goals. It’s a delicate balance, and it requires you to have a solid idea of what you want to say as well as why (i.e., your goal). For the how, that’s where my new course and my website come in.

We’ll return to the Why in a little bit.

Using Show and Tell to communicate

In Wake Up Your Prose, there is a module called “Show” and a module called “Tell.” One of the things that I emphasize in both modules is that you need to know which device would be the more effective way to communicate with your reader in any given sentence, paragraph, or chapter.

For example, if your goal for a particular paragraph is for your amateur-spy protagonist to go to the supermarket and buy a bottle of milk in order to get some vital information from the cashier, then you don’t need to Show your readers the protagonist’s every thought or emotion as she drives to the store. Neither do you need to Show your readers the effect of the milk purchase (e.g., her fingers were numb from holding the carton). Just Tell the reader that she went to the supermarket, and report that she received secret information from the cashier as she was paying.

Certainly, make your prose interesting! Don’t say: “Joanna went to the supermarket to buy a carton of milk. She walked to the checkout line. As she was paying, the cashier whispered something in her ear.” How about something like this:

There was a dizzying array of milk choices in the dairy section: Whole, lowfat, nonfat, and skim, and lactose-free versions of each of those. Joanna grabbed a carton with purple writing on it, and made her way to the second cashier on the right.

This short passage Tells us that Joanna didn’t need the milk (she grabbed a random carton) and that she needed to pay at a specific cashier’s station. That’s all we needed to know.

What we can learn about storytelling from Apple

One of my readers who commented on yesterday’s post added the link to a short Ted Talk about using first the Why to sell, and only then moving on to the What and the How. He used Apple Computers as an example. Here’s Apple’s Why:

“[In] everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo; we believe in thinking differently.”

Only after that does Apple tell us the How (our computers are easy to use and well-built) and then the What (we sell computers).

I propose that we should consider employing the Apple storytelling sales model to our writing:

1. Why am I writing this piece? What do I want my customers/readers to get out of it?
2. How am I going to accomplish this goal?
3. What am I going to write?

Applying the Apple model to our storytelling

Let’s take my much-used Abraham Lincoln biography example:

1. I’m writing a book because I want to inspire teenagers to reach high and work hard to attain their goals (Why).
2. I’ll do this by using little-known facts and anecdotes to tell the story of Abraham Lincoln. I’ll Show how Lincoln’s personality was formed using the following: short vignettes of Lincoln’s childhood and teenage years, made-up but realistic dialogue between Lincoln and his mentors, and examples of his challenges and triumphs during his young adulthood (How).
3. I will write a 12-chapter book for middle-schoolers, using age-appropriate language and vocabulary. I’ll try to put a bit of humor in, too (What).

You can make this as simple or as complex as you want:

1. I have a story inside me that needs to get out. I want to make my mark on the world (Why).
2. I’m going to write a novel (How).
3. It will be about a race car driver (What)

Everyone loves a story. Using storytelling – or, if you will, narrative – techniques in your writing is an outstanding way to communicate effectively with your reader. These tips should help, but if you want to go deeper, consider joining my course on descriptive writing. You have another 2 days to decide: Don’t miss out!

See you tomorrow for our 3rd and final installment on storytelling. And…

Happy writing!
Deena

Deena Nataf
www.BulletproofWriting.com
Deena@BulletproofWriting.com

Give your reader a personal vision

P.S. Here’s the link again to the sales page.

Sales continue for my new premium course, Wake Up Your Prose: Description Unpacked. And I’m so confident you will love it that I’ve decided to upload one of the modules so you can see for yourself how great it is!

Click here to listen to Module 7 of Wake Up Your Prose.

Enjoy, and I’ll see you inside the course!

Here’s a link to the sales page.

Happy listening! And…

Happy writing!
Deena

Deena Nataf
www.BulletproofWriting.com
Deena@BulletproofWriting.com

P.S. Here’s the link to the sales page again.