How to Choose the Perfect Pen Name

Hello. I’m Clarissa Southwick.

No, not really.

Clarissa is my pen name. My real last name inspires drunks to make crank calls in the middle of the night. So the decision to go with a nom de plume was easy for me.

Choosing a pen name was hard.

I started by gathering advice from fellow writers.

Here’s the list they gave me:

• Keep it short
  

• Aim for the front of the alphabet.

• Make it easy to spell and pronounce.

• Make it appropriate to your genre.

• Choose something which has personal meaning to you.

That sounds simple enough. I have four children. I managed to name all of them, didn’t I? I studied baby name books, expecting the perfect pen name to jump out at me. But it’s a lot harder to come up with both the first and last name.

When I got stuck, some of my writer friends suggested combining loved ones’ first names. Sabrina Adams, Marie Williams, etc. This works very well if you’re working with uncommon names. But when I googled my family names, I got lost in millions of entries from authors, porn stars and politicians. I might as well be invisible.

I played Ellis Island with my real name. I chopped off syllables, changed out parts, and rearranged the letters. Many writers have done this successfully. But somehow Alderzigera and Zeraglaider still sounded like evil villains from a manga comic book.

I needed a name for a historical romance writer.

In spite of having a last name which gets me ‘randomly selected’ at the airport 100% of the time, my father’s family has been in the United States since the 1620’s. So I dusted off those old genealogy records and looked for ancestors who would have been born at the same time as my heroines.

And there she was, Clarissa Southwick, granddaughter of George Southwick, who died in 1775 at the Battle of Lexington during the American Revolutionary War. I remember being fascinated by his monument in Peabody Square as a child. I googled Clarissa, and found nothing objectionable. Somehow the name just felt right.

Is it the perfect pen name? Well, it breaks at least two of the rules on my list. It’s far from the start of the alphabet, and it is incredibly long. It doesn’t work on twitter and my hand will break if I ever have a book signing. But it has meaning to me, and that may just be the most important rule of all.

I would love to hear your stories Tell me, why did you decide to use a pen name and how did you choose it?

Don't Drop the Ball!

Eighteen months ago, like thousands of others, I signed up with a network marketing company that promised the world. I did my due diligence. They had been in business eight years, so I signed up, to support my writing.

The result was a disaster for my writing. The company took me over; so much so, that I spent the next 15 months neglecting my writing in order to make the big money everyone else seemed to be making. How sad is that?

A publisher had bought “the book of my heart” but when it came to promoting it, the passion had gone. Not only that but I also had a book with another publisher that had to hold its own in the big, wide world because I had lost all interest in promoting it.

The reality was that I lost so much money and finally realised I had to call it quits and get a job. Then I discovered it had been a big scam all along. They’d re-branded themselves so there was no comeback.

Happily, that’s now in the past. I had a small windfall and was able to import one of the books. The moment I did that everything came back. My muse. My passion. My life. I still have the job, temporarily, but I can cope with that because I’m writing again.

And I suddenly realised that at the time, I’d had no faith in my writing, and given time, my writing could possibly have supported itself. Who knows?

Anyhoo,. I just wanted to say, don’t ever give up on your writing, no matter how tempting other offers may sound.

Believe in yourself. Believe in your writing. Don’t drop the ball and most of all, don’t ever give up on your dream.

Jean

The Citizen’s Police Academy-

I happened to be listening to an RWA tape from a few years ago about the Citizens Police Academy and how it could benefit writers. Here is a brief overview:

Imagine having the opportunity to go behind the scenes of a working police station at minimal cost, and for several hours each week.

Taking a Citizens Police Academy class gives any citizen, and in particular, a romantic suspense writer, an opportunity to work directly with police and law enforcement.

The application begins with a background check. It will be helpful to brush up on the terminology beforehand.

The charge for the course is minimal---normally $10.00 or more. Classes are usually offered one night a week for six weeks, for approximately three hours.

Participants might receive handouts, insider information---a valuable research tool, a T- shirt, coffee mug, and a special license plate for their car.

Some of the classroom experience includes a “ride along” with a police officer out on duty, a self-defense class, a trip to the firing range—to learn how to hold and shoot a gun, and a visit with the canine unit. All are excellent hands-on experiences for writers.

The primary reason these classes are offered to the community is so that citizens will understand why police do what they do and how they do it. It promotes good will and a better-educated citizen.

These details-are priceless in writing any type of police or detective story.

You can come up with conflicts for your hero and heroine. You will learn the correct jargon, and not offend your knowledgeable reader.

For more information, contact the police department in your area.

Please note: Police academies may not be offered in your area. Fees are an estimate, and class schedules, etc. may vary.

Positive Energy For The Muse

By Dawn Marie Hamilton

You know it's a bad day when the page in front of you remains blank. The more you try to think, the more your head pounds, the more frustrated you get. The thought of cleaning the bathroom all of a sudden seems like a fun thing to do.

What do you do when your muse refuses to whisper to you?

Chocolate? Helps for a short while. Take a walk? Gets you through the rest of the day.

When I'm really stressed, and the words won't flow onto the page, I need to get away and clear my mind.

Where to go? So many choices to choose from. How about an escape to nature, a hike to a waterfall? Perfect.

I'm not sure what it is about waterfalls that refresh the spirit. All I can say is when I hear the roar through the trees as I approach, I tingle with excitement and when the cooling mist teases my skin, I feel eased.

Some of my favorite falls are near the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. Where are yours?

Dark Hollow Falls, Lewis Falls, Rose River Falls are within a hike from the Byrd Visitor Center and Big Meadows. The trailhead for Whiteoak Canyon Falls is located near Skyline Lodge. These are but a few options.

On weekends during the peak of the season, Shenandoah's trails can be crowded, especially the most popular falls trails. When I visit, I try to stay for a few days. Though there are lodges and cabins, my husband and I like to camp. We wake to chirping birds. Eat a camp breakfast while butterflies flutter by. And if we are lucky, we might catch a glimpse of a bear and her cubs as they lumber through nearby woods.

When I return home, my muse is energized, and I'm ready to write the next scene.

The park will celebrate its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2011. To learn more about the waterfalls within Shenandoah National Park visit Shenandoah Online.

Bite Sized Fiction

JACK'S GARDEN
When I first started writing, all my ideas ran on for hundreds of pages. That changed when I woke up one morning a few years ago with a complete short story in my head. The two thousand words only took me two hours to write and polish. As I was used to slogging over the computer for months, it was a wonderful feeling to complete a story so fast. My critique partners loved the story, so I decided it was worth submitting to a magazine in the hope they loved it as well. I chose My Weekly in the UK, as I knew the magazine published romances with a touch of supernatural or fantasy.

The editor at My Weekly did love the story and bought it (much to my amazement). Not only was this satisfying in itself, I realised what a useful promotional tool short stories could be. The magazine allowed the author to include a short bio with the story, which gave the opportunity to mention published novels and include a website address.

Short stories also provide the ideal format to try different techniques. I’ve often thought of writing a book in first person, but not wanted to risk all the time and effort involved in writing a long novel in first person, only to discover it doesn’t work for me. But I’m quite happy to take an hour or two to write one or two thousand words in first person, or present tense, to see how it sounds.

Some of the magazines also encourage trying unusual techniques, such as all dialogue. The short form is the ideal place to try all those techniques you’d like to try but never get around to. It’s also so much fun! I have many ideas swimming around inside my head and instead of having to finish 80,000 words or more before I can start a new story, I can write a new one every day if each is only a few thousand words.

Try bite-sized fiction. It’s instant gratification for writers.

The first short fantasy romance I wrote, Jack’s Garden, is now available as a free read on the Dorchester Website. Find the page by following the link on my website at www.helenscotttaylor.com or from my author page on www.dorchesterpub.com.

For more details of my contemporary fantasy romance series and to read book excerpts go to www.helenscotttaylor.com.

Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff

It’s been a wild and crazy week at my house, which comes on the tail of a wild and crazy four months. All of this wildness and craziness has amounted to no writing time. So I spent the last few days trying to decide what to blog about. My first chance to write something in months…precious beyond words…or perhaps not since here I am putting this down in words. Well, I woke this morning still uncertain what to write about and then I re-read Morgan’s spot-on contest post from yesterday and inspiration struck.

As someone who has long been involved with the contest circuit in some facet, I have seen plenty of those red pens and axes at work. Authors tend to get hung up in the “rules” and lose sight of the big picture along the way. They start to heavily sweat the small stuff. I can testify to the fact that I belong to this “perspiring” group. For a long time, I dwelled on each element of my story; agonizing over word count and lines per page, that each comma had its place, that my margins were exactly 1” with the header space factored in, and so on and so on. And then I became published…and I sweated all the harder.

Fortunately, that particular sweating has since ceased. It hasn’t come easy, rather taken nearly three dozen tales and several editors to move past. But I now know that the small stuff is truly incidental. Basic grammar comprehension is a must, as is proofreading your work, and making sure you use a font size that is readable, both in size and type style for the sake of saving your editor’s and/or agent’s eyesight. Much of the other stuff we authors, particularly early in our careers, spend so much time worrying over is quite trivial.

It honestly doesn’t matter if your margins are 1” or 0.9 or 1.1, etc. So long as there isn’t glaring white space running around your paper with a tiny bit of text in the center, you are fine. A few typos are not going to break the publishing bank or lose you that six-figure deal, and many houses nix the majority of commas these days, so wasting time agonizing over those is futile. What matters is the story. If the story is worthy, an agent or editor is going to read it. They can fix typos, commas, subplots and even minor holes in the primary plot. Most of my editors now ask for electronic submittals, so fixing margins and type face or style is as easy as selecting all and changing the layout to what they most prefer. Computer count and manuscript count are close enough that for the longer story (over 60K), it really doesn’t matter which you use. For the shorter stories and ones that rely on publishing to a certain page length, such as novellas and category novellas, you should check the editor’s or house’s preference.

The bottomline is focus on the story, the characters, breathing life into each word and setting the scene so that the reader feels drawn into it. Then share that story with your critique partners or the contest circuit. When you get feedback, weigh it and use it at your discretion, but for those who are nitpicking at commas, margins, type style, etc., don’t waste your time worrying here. These elements should be as simple as a cursory sweep, margins should go where they feel natural, and the rest should be left up to each individual editor or house. Everyone has a different style, and so to change your style to suit anyone outside of the editor or house your story finds a home with, is just a waste of time you could be spending on crafting another masterpiece to net that next six-figure deal.

~ jodi

www.JodiLynnCopeland.com

Contests: Are They Really Helpful?

By Morgan Wyatt

Your chapter or writing group has probably hosted a contest at some time to make money. The contest theme was something that most of the members felt they could identify.

Ironically when it came time to judge almost no one wanted to—or the few who were willingly did so almost grudgingly. Sometimes the judges had to be brought in from other chapters. What gives? Why the hesitation to step up to the judge’s seat? It could be because most of the club members may have experienced a toxic contest judge encounter. Their worst fears include becoming the toxic judge.

I’ve been on both sides of the fence as a participant and a judge. As a participant, I am alternately excited and terrified about the contest. Excited because contest organizers promote the contest as a breakthrough for beginning novelist, hey, that’s me. Terrified, because I’ve heard all the horror stories from my sister writers. Judges who make Marquis de Sade look like a choir boy.

One friend has decided to stay away from contests after a judge told her it was painful to read her story. Another judge commented on her critique that she wanted the characters to die because they were so horrible. Some judges even ridiculed the names of the characters. The stories go on and every writer has her own crazed contest judge story to tell. It is no secret that many writers limp away bloody from a contest; some even swearing not only never to enter a contest, but even never to write again.

The real question is why does a judge use an axe when an Exacto knife would do the job? Before becoming a judge, I was asked to attend a judging seminar. My experience as a book reviewer got me in the judge door, that and breathing. The first thing I was taught was not to critique the book as if I were a high school English teacher. Spilling red ink all over the paper denoting fragments and run on sentences just to show the writer how worthless her work is.

The submission as a whole is how a judge should look at an entry instead of nitpicking over a misplaced comma or an awkward adverb. What the persnickety judge is really doing is rewriting the story in her own voice. Sure, she thinks it reads better with her tweaks. Does nitpicking really help a writer? Most of us can use a grammar website, grammar check or a colleague to check mechanics. We don’t need the help of sadistic grammarian.

What we do need is someone who can see the whole picture—that’s the job of the judge. It is also the judge’s job to see what is done right and comment on it. When this happens, a writer can create something better than the original. Sometimes this does happen when a writer enters a contest. What usually happens is you get a panel of three judges consisting of the rabid grammarian, the wise judge, and a lackluster judge who manages to say almost nothing. Being human, most of us focus on the grammarian or maybe she is just someone who enjoys exerting power. Rather like the critique group newbie who goes overboard trying to prove that she can spot mistakes.

It is amazing that writers, who believe so much in their craft, willingly hand over their creation to an unknown person. What is more unbelievable we take the unknown judge’s word as the ultimate truth? This person who may or may not have an agenda can stop us in our writing tracks if we let her. This is where a circle of writing friends comes in handy; people willing to tell us if a story works in a non-bloodletting fashion.

It is a mystery that one judge can love a story, while another merely likes it and another hates it; however, is this so different than our own personal choices in reading material? My sister likes true crime; my other sister prefers biographies, while I am a romance junkie. Different judges like different genres and styles. My best advice is concentrate on the person who liked the story. She represents the reader you want to hook. Armed with the confidence that your submission has merit, then, look at the toxic judge’s comments to see if they have merit. Do contests help the writer on her career path? That’s debatable.

On one hand, I’ve been a finalist in a half dozen contests and haven’t been offered a contract yet. Then on the other hand, several published writers remarked that they never were contest finalists. Ironically, they found agents and editors to be an easier sale than most of the contest judges. With this in mind, I try to be a useful judge who notices what is done well, as opposed to just seeing flaws. Keep in mind, judging is always subjective. What I think is a flaw or a mistake may not even make another judge or an agent blink.

Next time, your baby comes back all bloody from a contest, keep in mind it’s all subjective. When your loved one has talked you out of tossing your computer out the window, then you might be able to reread the judges’ critiques. So do contests have value? Possibly, but not the breakout novel success the contest hinted. Rather contests test your resolve, rather like Pilates for the spirit. After countless rejections, a few long nights of curling into the fetal position with a blanket and a romance novel for solace, you emerge resilient ready to write again.

Kill You or Cure You

When folks find out that I write and have several Regencies and Regency romantic mysteries published, they often ask, “Why historical?”

Lots of reasons, really, including falling in love with Georgette Heyer at an early age. And the fact that gentlemen and women detectives were just as likely to solve a crime as anyone else in that period. (And you didn't need multiple, advanced degrees in forensic-related sciences to do it, either, LOL.) There was Bow Street in London, but even there, and certainly elsewhere, the local constable was generally only part time and a “real” police force didn’t come into official being in London until around 1833.

But really, if you love romances and like to write mysteries, the Regency is simply a terrific period because there’s just so much darn…scope. There are so many colorful ways to kill your unfortunate victim if you set your stories pre-WWI. In fact, it sometimes amazes me that people survived.

For example, during the Regency, you were luckier if you were poor and couldn’t afford medical treatment. The herbs your mum might be able to scrounge for you would definitely be better than any “medicine” a “medical professional” would prescribe.  If you were wealthy, you should have been scared--very scared--to request a doctor.

In fact, until about the last 100 years, most medicine was simply, well, poison. And if you managed to survive the treatment (as well as whatever was ailing you), it was frankly a miracle. It’s a wonder to me that anyone survived long enough to have children before some kind-hearted physician killed them.

So, when I agreed to write this blog, I thought, wouldn’t it be fun for my first entry to give a couple of examples of medicine you’ll be glad your doctor never prescribed?

Here goes.

These are taken, verbatim, from several medical books printed in the early years of the 19th century.



601. Infallible Remedy for stopping Bleeding of the Nose.
One ounce of sugar of lead, and half an ounce of green vitriol, to be triturated in a glass mortar; add to these half a pint of spirits of wine. Of this composition, young people, from ten to twelve years of age, are to take ten or twelve drops; patients under twenty years, fourteen or fifteen drops, and grown persons twenty drops, four times each, in a spoonful of wine or brandy. Some very interesting trials, in the most obstinate cases have been made with this mixture with the greatest success.



My comment: Yeah. I’ll bet that lead poisoning is a terrific cure for nose bleeds.
And for ague…


To cure agues: as drinking great quantities of strong liquors, jumping into a river, &c. These may sometimes have the desired effect, but must always be attended with danger. Arsenic in small doses is a useful remedy… The only patient whom I remember to have lost in an intermittent fever, evidently killed himself by drinking strong liquor, which some person persuaded him would prove an infallible remedy.



My comment: Oh, yes. I would say arsenic is definitely better to cure agues than strong liquor or a brisk swim. LOL
Considering remedies such as these, the wonder is that there aren’t more mysteries set in historical times. People were just as likely to die under a physician’s care as they were from any powder released from the ring of a Borgia. I imagine there might have been quite a few downtrodden wives who were immeasurably relieved when the doctor took care of their troublesome husband for them. All quite proper and legitimate.

Which reminds me, I have another mystery I should be working on…

Distract Me - Please!

When I am in the creative phase of writing, I can tune out pretty much anything that’s going on around me. Husband using power tools. Kid listening to music. Television blaring. I can ignore it all. Our house has even been a construction zone the past month or so as we remodel our bathroom, but I can don my headphones, listen to Lady Antebellum or Boney James or Daughtry (depending on my mood and the scene I’m writing), and write hundreds if not thousands of words every day.



This weekend I’m writing synopses. Four of them to be exact. I’ve written a series of four erotic short stories I’m hoping to submit to my editor soon. But to do that, I have to write a synopsis for each story. (And since I love me some eye candy, I’m sharing the photo which inspired the entire series…)





Synopsis writing is a totally different kind of writing for me. It’s not creative, at least not in the large sense. It’s picky, it’s tedious. And I find I am easily distracted. This morning I found myself walking out on the deck with a cup of coffee to admire the blossoms on the trees. I was looking forward to the chime on the dryer telling me I have to go down to the laundry room to fold clothes. In fact, I’m writing this blog post off and on while writing the first and second synopses because, hey, I have to have this post written too!



I even talked with the hubby about having friends over tonight for some wine. Of course, the guys will end up cooking out on the grill and we'll have to have dessert and talk and laugh and stay up past my usual bedtime. That means I won’t be able to even sit at the computer this evening if I haven’t finished…darn it!


So it may take me all weekend to write a minimum of eight pages but when I’m done I will have that great feeling of accomplishment. I’ll have submissions ready to go. I’ll be able to get back to my current wip and put on the headphones and get back into that creative zone I love so much. And I’ll probably have the laundry done too.

Natasha
www.natashamoore.com

Why Romance?

Why do I write romance? First of all, before I was a romance writer, I was a romance reader. Many people can tell you where and with whom they shared their first kiss. Many people can recall their first love. Romance readers will tell you they remember their first romance novel.

Mine was called Lily of the Valley. Published by Harlequin, it was sold with perfume by Avon. That's Avon the cosmetic company, not the publishing company. My mom bought it for my 13th birthday. As a new teenager I was ready to make the leap from fairy tales to romance novels. I still got Prince Charming, damsels in distress, and the much anticipated "happily ever after".

Not every book can promise that happily ever after, but romance novels do. Even if nowadays it is just happily for now. Every romance novel, true romance novel, ends on an upbeat and satisfying conclusion.

That happily ever after is why I choose to write romance novels. Just like I experienced in my first romance novel, I want to know I can give a reader that experience of true love, vanquished villains, the rescue in the nick of time, and "happily ever after".

So, when I decided to be a writer, I knew I would be a romance writer. We write what we love. We write what we read. My first try at a romance novel was a muddled mess titled, Passion's Price. I did not know any of the rules of writing or writing a romance. My heroine was a married woman, sold into white slavery by her evil mother-in-law, who then falls in love with her captor until he is killed in an earthquake and she can escape back to her husband who married another while she was gone. Whew!! I think that is called "everything including the kitchen sink" plot.

I would like to think my writing and "plotting" has improved since then and since I joined Romance Writers of America and my chapters. But just like Lily of the Valley, I will never forget my first romance story, no matter how many dust bunnies it is keeping company with under the bed.

You can find me at my website: http://www.jilljameswrites.com/ and follow me at www.twitter.com/jill_james and www.facebook.com/jill_james