Posts by WU Advertiser

FROM FREE EXPRESSIONS SEMINARS AND LITERARY SERVICES
Join us for our *new* VIRTUAL BREAKOUT NOVEL INTENSIVE with literary agent Donald Maass
October 29 – December 10, 2024
Use code EMBN50 for $50 off virtual BONI registration.

For more than twenty years, Donald Maass has partnered with Free Expressions Seminars to offer one of the industry’s most acclaimed writing workshops.

Many of our students have gone on to find agent representation, publishing—even bestselling—success, and to have their works optioned (and produced) for film and television.

This is a substantive, stimulating, and rewarding experience for writers who crave excellence and whose focus is not just on one published work but on a longtime career in publishing.

Due to the intensive nature of this course, the workshop is limited to thirty-five participants.

WORKSHOP FEATURES:

– Classes with Donald Maass, geared toward building students’ specific projects using concepts covered in his popular, Writing the Breakout Novel, Writing 21st Century Fiction, and The Emotional Craft of Fiction

– A private thirty-minute consultation with Donald Maass, who reads fifty pages (or 12,500 words) of each student’s manuscript and other supporting material

– Private consultations with editors/authors Lorin Oberweger, Brenda Windberg, and other industry pros

– Customized instruction geared toward students’ specific writing needs and questions

– A special session on micro-tension and other evening offerings

– Invitation to join the BONI Grads Facebook community

– Private message board for sharing work and asking questions

– Video resource library with a dozen+ webinars from Donald Maass and Lorin Oberweger

LEARN MORE HERE

Our mission is your publishing success.

Whether via our internationally acclaimed writing workshops, webinars, Inner Circle program, or a wide array of editorial services, we are known for our deep, thorough, and challenging approach to craft–and for helping thousands of writers reach their creative and professional goals.

FROM FREE EXPRESSIONS SEMINARS AND LITERARY SERVICES
Join us for our *new* VIRTUAL BREAKOUT NOVEL INTENSIVE with literary agent Donald Maass
October 29 – December 10, 2024

For more than twenty years, Donald Maass has partnered with Free Expressions Seminars to offer one of the industry’s most acclaimed writing workshops.

Many of our students have gone on to find agent representation, publishing—even bestselling—success, and to have their works optioned (and produced) for film and television.

This is a substantive, stimulating, and rewarding experience for writers who crave excellence and whose focus is not just on one published work but on a longtime career in publishing.

Due to the intensive nature of this course, the workshop is limited to thirty-five participants.

WORKSHOP FEATURES:

Use code EMBN50 for $50 off virtual BONI registration.

LEARN MORE HERE

Our mission is your publishing success.

Whether via our internationally acclaimed writing workshops, webinars, Inner Circle program, or a wide array of editorial services, we are known for our deep, thorough, and challenging approach to craft–and for helping thousands of writers reach their creative and professional goals.

FROM FREE EXPRESSIONS SEMINARS AND LITERARY SERVICES
Looking for high-level craft instruction, supportive compatriots,
and real, substantive feedback on your work?
Join our INNER CIRCLE program.

Limited to thirty participants, this group will work together for six months, between September 18, 2024 and March 19, 2025, to make and keep its commitment to the progress of its members. 

Our program includes:

“I love the Inner Circle so much that I’ve done it twice. The workload was marathon-like; it was manageable, but it kept me accountable and on my toes. The lessons from the weekly webinars gave me new tools and techniques to apply to the “homework” we’d submit for critique each month. The flexibility to submit whatever we wanted helped me feel in control of my progress.

The Inner Circle is a fantastic choice for writers who are constantly hungry for new ways to approach their writing, especially those who struggle to find more advanced resources. I truly believe the Inner Circle is what pushed my books from good to publishable.”
– Morgan Watchorn, author of the upcoming FIRE TO THE STARS.

NOW TAKING DEPOSITS.
MONTHLY PAYMENT OPTION AVAILABLE.
Use code WUIC50 for $50 off your registration.

CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS

Our mission is your publishing success.

Whether via our internationally acclaimed writing workshops, webinars, Inner Circle program, or a wide array of editorial services, we are known for our deep, thorough, and challenging approach to craft–and for helping thousands of writers reach their creative and professional goals.

You know what it’s like: you carve out time to write, sit down at your desk with your favorite notebook or software and…your mind draws a blank.

Or perhaps you’re a swirling vortex of story ideas, plot problems, anxiety about whether your writing will be ‘good enough’. So you put off writing until you’ve completed all those suddenly-important tasks you’ve been avoiding for days.

(Surely you’ll be able to focus after you’ve cleaned your desk and emptied the trash and, oh look, here’s an odd sock that ought to be in the laundry…)

Then, if you do get started, you write around a topic or a few paragraphs, realize you have no idea where you’re going with this piece, and come to a screeching stop.

You’re left feeling exhausted and discouraged. Wasn’t writing supposed to be fun?

Trust me, you’re not alone. And it doesn’t mean you’re ‘not meant to be a writer’.

It just means your writing life could use a little support. And that’s why I created the StoryADay Challenge Handbook.

More Support For Your Writing

Every May since 2010 I have encouraged writers to write a StoryADay in May to boost their creativity and add a little urgency to their writing day.

It has helped thousands of writers, but there were still too many writers I wasn’t helping: people who need a little more structure to help them get to the fun part of writing, where the words flow and characters come alive.

(Don’t want to write a story a day for a month? I hear you.)

So this year, I’ve created the StoryADay Challenge Handbook – a digital resource  writers like you can use during the challenge or at your own pace to propel yourself into your writing day and stay on track, create satisfying writing sessions and really feel yourself making progress.

Your Ideal Writing Day

Imagine sitting down to write a five-minute warm up that helps your flow, without using up all your writing time on ‘morning pages’ or journal entries that start to feel repetitive.

Next, you turn to a brainstorming exercise that encourages you to free-write about important story and character questions to set you up for your writing day.

Now, your brain is bursting with ideas, and all that inspiration is focused on creating specific stories and scenes, instead of being an unstructured riot of creativity knotting up your chest.

At this point you can’t resist picking a writing prompt and creating a new short story, or getting to work on a scene in your work-in-progress.

What’s In The Handbook?

In the StoryADay Handbook, five themed sections help you work on writing skills that make up the whole writing life:

Plus you’ll find a bonus resource section with extras like the Point of View Cheat Sheet, the Short Story […]

So, you’ve put the finishing touches on the latest draft of your novel. It’s already had the stamp of approval from your partner/mom/best friend/family pet, but you’re wondering how to get more objective feedback to ensure it’s the best it can possibly be before embarking on your journey towards publication. Enter beta readers!

Beta readers shouldn’t be friends and family, as normally this feedback will be filtered and probably a little biased. Nor should they be other writers in a critique group, as they may not be readers of your particular genre, and their feedback is likely to come from a fellow writer’s perspective, which is not what you’re looking for here. These two sources of feedback should definitely have their place in your writing process, but beta readers offer something different and specific: the chance to get feedback from real, genuine readers of your book’s genre – your natural target audience.

The problem is finding these readers and persuading them to read your book, especially if you haven’t got a large existing audience. You could search on social media – Facebook groups and the like – but then you have to worry about trust and reliability. If you share your story with people you don’t know, will they actually read it and get back to you within a reasonable timeframe, or will you never hear from them again? Or will you be worried that they might share your story without permission once they have it? These are common problems facing writers hoping to get feedback from real readers, and they’re enough to put many off from even trying, to the detriment of their stories.

The Niche Reader has a solution to this. We run a beta reader service for writers like you who are looking for feedback from real readers in your target audience. We’ve spent years bringing together a large group of trustworthy, reliable readers who love nothing more than to provide our clients with useful, objective feedback on their stories. We have a list of 15,000 readers to select from, and we tailor each group of readers to the specific genre and subgenre of your novel to get the right match.

We ensure reliability and trust by barring readers who don’t consistently, and promptly, provide quality feedback, and we protect your book from piracy by adding unique visible and invisible digital watermarks, enabling us to trace every copy back to the reader who downloaded it. This means you’ll get quality feedback with peace of mind.

Learn more about our service on our website here.

You can also take a look at our new blog for authors and join our email list for useful content and special offers.

The Niche Reader is a trusted partner member of the Alliance of Independent Authors and adheres to their code of standards. We have two sister brands, The History Quill and Fabled Planet, that cater to historical fiction and fantasy/science fiction writers in particular. The Niche Reader serves all major genres.

Have you ever gotten lost in the fog of your own efforts? Words and images accumulate…research multiplies…characters refuse to stick to the premise. When uncertainty closes in and the way forward vanishes, you can feel profoundly alone. If only you could only gain clarity…

Well, WU readers, I’m Kathryn Craft, and I’m here to tell you that whether you are drafting or revising, you can gain the clarity you desire—just as it did for Your Novel Year participant Nicole C.:

“I’m so excited to finally understand my story! If it weren’t for Kathryn, I’d still be stuck going down the wrong path.”

Here’s how Cheryl R. found her path forward:

“Kathryn’s Novel Year is a fabulous experience—so great, I signed up twice, and completed one novel and revised another! The class offers all I needed for craft learnings, inspiration, and, importantly, accountability in one package. For me, it was definitely worth the investment.”

If live, online craft lessons, expert feedback on your pages, one-on-one mentoring, and social accountability sound like a dream come true, consider joining us in January. Applications are now open. Check out my brochure here.

As my Your Novel Year program heads into its 7th year, its original goal remains: to clear the novelist’s path with tools that will help them write an entertaining, emotionally engaging, and meaningful story.

And because I have a warm place in my heart for the WU community, here’s a special opportunity for you!

If your application is a good fit and you mention that you learned of this program at WU, I will give you $50 off the program fee!

I’d love to help you make 2024 Your Novel Year!

Kathryn

“Want to see your tomorrows? Might be agreeable. Might be not.”

At eighteen, my fiction writing had become meaningless, a revelation that landed like a gut punch. What I had thought deep was merely obscure, an intellectual game that had become a kind of nonsense. When had my longing to be creative morphed into self-indulgence, into pretentiousness masquerading as meaning? Had I lost the ability to write a simple narrative, a logical, coherent story?

I gave up writing fiction. And a good thing too, I suspect, though I hadn’t realised it back then. But my eighteen-year-old self had reached decision time — whether to concentrate on writing or painting. Both had been passions since childhood. But I had learned that visual art doesn’t follow linear narratives, doesn’t even have to obey little things like reality. Somehow, my eighteen-year-old brain seemed to have muddled the two art forms together, probably to the detriment of both.

Off I went to Art College. Six years of questioning and exploration, of finding where I wanted to go and how to arrive there. A few exhibitions followed, the UK mainly but also Chicago. And yet the longing to write was always inside, a hunger likely never to be satisfied, unless life intervened. And life did intervene, though not in a good way.

I needed spinal surgery, then came the life-changing news of my partner’s terminal illness. In short, no longer able to manage the strain of working on six-foot canvases, I said goodbye to a studio and spent precious time with my partner. And while life became sedate in a fashion, I had the opportunity to consider writing… again.

Fear had been a problem in the first novel — fear of becoming bored and giving up, fear of finishing but producing something boring. Make it challenging, I said to myself. Structure it in a way that keeps me engaged.

The result seemed promising, in part. Not exactly a right royal mess but in need of major re-writes. Before tackling the MS again I needed objectivity. How often had I spent all day working on a painting only to find the result horrifying after a night’s sleep? So I put the novel aside and forgot about it, tried to return to normality. But normality isn’t quite enough, so I began thinking of the next story instead. Another historical tale – an unlikely hero surrounded by dubious characters — mysterious, spooky goings-on.

This second novel became The Unfit Apprentice. And I’m proud of it, so proud I had the courage to send it to an editor, Jim Dempsey, a most agreeable editor I found through Writer Unboxed. Aside from correcting grammar outrages, he also made suggestions both excellent and sound. Fortunately, after years of creative criticism, I know its value and don’t have a problem killing ducklings or anything else. (Was that a misquote?)

So now The Unfit Apprentice is out there all alone, all trembling and shivery and waiting on folk to peek inside, to take a chance. No doubt it’s also waiting on the sequel.

The Unfit Apprentice

1602. Late Elizabethan London. Eight-year-old Sprat is a gutter rat, an abomination born of a goat and unfit to live. Or so he believes. And he’s being hunted.

But a stranger saves […]

Click HERE to sign up or learn more!