C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

08/26/2010 • 5:13 PM 0

F Shortcuts for Writers #1

Faster keyboarding means faster production = more profitable writers. Some F shortcuts allow you to be one with the machine as you enter The Matrix:

F10 opens the Menu bar.

F6 bounces you through the elements on your screen.

F5 updates the active window.

ALT + F4 quits the active item

F4 displays the address bar list in Windows Explorer and in My Computer

Use F3 for a file search

F2 renames the selected item.

BONUS:

CONTROL + SHIFT while dragging an item creates a shortcut to that item

Filed under: getting it done, writing tips, F shortcuts, faster writing, keyboard shortcuts, write faster

08/26/2010 • 8:01 AM 0

Kurt Vonnegut from A Man Without a Country

Filed under: Writers, excerpt, Kurt Vonnegut, Man Without a Country, writer

08/26/2010 • 4:16 AM 0

It’s a New World. Join the Publishing Revolution

I just added a five-star system so you can rate posts, a Digg button so you can “like” posts and several ways to share posts (Twitter, Facebook, Print, Reddit, Email, etc.,…) Don’t be cruel to a heart that’s true.

Your rare shameless (and fun!) plug begins here:

If you like the blog, please let me and your friends and followers know! Hit the Digg button above the comment box to “like” it. Share on Facebook. Tweet on twitter. I’m above grovelling, but I am willing to ask nicely for your support.

This is the fun part: I have added these buttons in a craven attempt to spread the word about Chazz Writes. I have big plans for the blog. As we get bigger I want to include book reviews, contests for prizes and, ultimately, annex a small tropical island nation whose national drink will be hollowed out pineapples with five kinds of rum. I shall be king, of course, but benevolent in my clothing-optional palace. We’ll be nuclear-weapons free, nuclear-capable, solar and wind-friendly, and establish a very reasonable flat tax. There will be free healthcare for all. We’ll be weed-legalized, jerk-averse and twelve kinds of awesome sexy. And everybody will get a Mac. (Acers for jerks. That’ll teach ’em!) Also, clothes lines are allowed and I’ll keep the needless spending down by force of Nerf bats and exile to lesser, non-Chazz-infused nations. (All that therapy is really nipping my narcissistic megalomania in the bud, huh?) But I digress…

If you like my stuff, please let other people know. This is a relatively new publishing blog, but I’m not new to publishing. I do have a lot of information to share with writers from a writer’s and editor’s perspective. (Don’t know Chazz and wonder where he gets off talking publishing? Click here.) I just love to talk to people about their writing projects, publishing issues, and that book you’re going to publish some day. Every day I curate the best information on publishing I can find as I search the web for news about writers, interesting stories and stuff that helps writers figure out the best routes to getting published.

I also look for laughs along the way. We need it. The writer’s life can be a grim nobility. Unlike some writing blogs I detest (i.e. a few agent blogs and angry blogs that mock writers) you are not a minion here. You are a travelling companion and friend. I love books and I love the people who love them.

Return often for updates and keep an eye on that Twitter feed to your right

OR

simply follow me on Twitter @RChazzChute

AND/OR

go to the bottom right and subscribe so you won’t miss a thing!

Like the blurb says:

The publishing revolution has begun.

Join me.

Rare shameless plug ends.

Filed under: blogs & blogging, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, Social Media, Twitter, What about Chazz?, Writers, book publishing blogs, publishing, writers

08/25/2010 • 3:05 PM 0

Words to Avoid:

1. “Nice.” This is a bland nothing word. Ditto “interesting.” You can come up with better adjectives.

2. Offensive words outside of dialogue. (Unless you are making a useful point and not using a gimmick.) If you’re trying to shock me, that will wear off quickly. Then you’ll just be boring me and slowing me down. Good writing does not slow the reader.

3. Adverbs. (Example: “He shut the door firmly.” You probably don’t need that adverb (“firmly.”) If you feel you can’t lose it, (“He shut the door.”) take another look at your verb and see if you can make it stronger. (“He slammed the door.”) If you really can’t change that verb and still feel the adverb serves you, then keep it if you must. I wouldn’t.

4. Out of date words (unless you’re writing historical fiction.) If you use the word behooves, you’re either immortal or own a time machine. Go kill Hitler.

5. Jargon. You’ll lose your reader.

6. Acronyms. Ditto #5. And yeah, I know Tom Clancy uses tons of acronyms and I don’t care. Don’t do it.

7. Dialect. Writing in dialect puts such a strain on the reader his head might well explode. Mine would. Don’t do it and if you must, do so very sparingly.

8. Ten-dollar words, long words, show-off words. Reduce. Readability is more important than what you can find in your thesaurus. I love my 1901 dictionary and yes, I do throw out weird Cool Word of the Day posts. They’re fun. They aren’t for actual use.

9. Flowery words and purple prose. You’ll come across as melodramatic and overwrought. Romance novel sex scenes are notorious for falling into long descriptions which are really long lists of unintentionally hilarious euphemisms. If you’re going to attempt those sorts of scenes, read a lot of it so you can do it well. Credible sex scenes (read: writing that doesn’t make you giggle) take a lot of skill.

10. Wrods thst you haevn’t raed oever at leats twce. Proofraed!

Filed under: writing tips

08/25/2010 • 8:02 AM 0

On the Other Hand…Why Not be a Writer?

Filed under: publishing, Rant, Writers, funny but true, On the Other Hand..., Why Not be a Writer?

08/24/2010 • 8:00 AM 0

(Top 10 Things +1) Writers Love:

1. libraries and bookstores. Look at all those dead trees! Look at all those rotten books! Your book will be so much better. Look at all those shelves for your great books. Your books will one day share shelf space with your literary heroes and you will all enter the pantheon. Libraries and bookstores are harbingers of potential, omens of destiny, and, not incidentally, where you get #2.

2. books. Your shelves creak as you add even more books. Your iPod is full. Your heaven is a place filled with books and time to enjoy them, to savor them, to devour them. You prefer books to people, though people do have their place (i.e. they can give you a good book.) A good book is sex that lasts longer.

3. life. It’s where you get your ideas. Life is the thing you absorb so you can process it, chew and hold your ideas up against it to make your fantasy seem all the more real. Life and the limited world it comes from—that’s what you’re going to change with your writing. (Yes, life is number 3 down the list. That isn’t an error. Why? Because when you write you are god. When you don’t write, you’re…well…you.)

4. good first readers. A good reader will proofread your manuscript and find the errors you didn’t and not make you feel like an idiot about it. Good readers are very hard to find. Not unicorn hard. Good readers are platypus hard.

5. an excellent agent who’s a bitch or a bastard when they’re bargaining for you but never that way in their dealings with you. Search for agents with multiple-personality disorder. Try mental hospitals. (Or decide that in any venture you will encounter individuals who are human. You may even come to like some of them. The rest will make great gossipy stories at your book launch.)

6. an editor who’s careful and considerate. There are many. No, really! They want to help you make your work the best it can be to earn a larger readership.

7. a motivated sales force. The crop is of uneven quality. If you can, give them more motivation by offering a trip to your Florida condo for the highest seller. Failing that, make a great impression at the sales conference, smile and shake every hand. I loved Amy Tan as a person, so I sold more of her books. It wasn’t a conspiracy. It was just natural when I was selling to bookstore owners. “Yeah, I met her at the conference and wow was she great etc.,…)

8. a great book cover. Publishers may “consult” you, but if you hate it and they love it, they’ll go with the cover as is. If someone else is publishing your work, that’s a factor that is out of your hands. It will gnaw at you. You will curse them. Eventually you will accept it so you might as well start accepting it now. (Also, when your book tanks you’ll have something to blame that wasn’t your story and someone to blame who isn’t you.)

9. fans. Duh. (Yes, some superstars grow to hate their fans. In the social media/TMZ-environment, they are soon called “Uh…that guy. The obnoxious prick…what was his name again? Oh yeah. Has Been.”)

10. time to write. There’s never enough time. If you don’t have an official publisher-set deadline now (read: you’re still a wannabe writing on spec) it’s a blessing not to have that hanging over your head. Just write. Sip the coffee. Recline and give that revision sober and careful thought. You have more time now than you’ll ever have. After you sign some contracts and people are clambering for your next book, you’ll feel like you never have enough time. Ev-er.

BONUS:

11. ourselves. Inside every writer is an insecure, wounded child who started worrying about death and how they don’t matter way too early. Over top of that is a thick layer of pomposity and that is the egotist we love. How else to explain our deep need to share our thoughts with strangers? We love ourselves as we see ourselves. We want to share so others will see, hear and understand our genius, agree with us and love the broken child one layer down. We write to reach out. We write to connect. We write so others will share our visions and forgive us our sins. We write to hear our voices talk and prove we matter. We write to make worlds because they who make worlds must be gods (not spineless schmoes worrying about paying the rent.) We love ourselves so much we betray family secrets and confided stories. We love ourselves beyond reason because the world is beyond reason and we think so highly of ourselves, we have such hubris, we think that through words we can impose order. We love ourselves so much we glorify our self-hatred. We write for love because the love we have for ourselves is large, but it will never be enough to fill our hearts. We write for your love. And most of you won’t give a damn.

Filed under: publishing, Rant, Writers, Love, On Writing, Top Ten Things Writers Love, writers

08/23/2010 • 6:38 PM 0

Seth Godin Quits Traditional Publishing; Readers Respond

Seth Godin Quits Traditional Publishing; Readers Respond.

Filed under: blogs & blogging, Books, ebooks, publishing, Writers

08/23/2010 • 5:05 PM 0

Publishing Links

Just added Jane Friedman and The Millions to the blog roll. Read them and you’ll see why.

Filed under: blogs & blogging, book reviews, Books, publishing, web reviews, book publishing blogs, jane friedman, the millions

08/23/2010 • 8:08 AM 0

(Top 10 Things) Writers Fear:

1. the blank page. And yet, ideas for stories are all around us. Look in newspapers, magazines, real life, fantasy, the net, your dreams and in the back of your sock drawer. Everywhere. Augusten Burroughs says if you experience writer’s block, then write about that. That will prime your pump.

2. that someone, somehow, will steal their ideas. You can’t copyright an idea, and that’s a good thing. Ideas are cheap because (see #1) ideas are everywhere. Execution and completion is what counts. Lots of people have book ideas but never type long enough to even get to the starting line. You’re the best one to take your idea through to fruition. Also, come up with an idea and pitch it to 100 people. One hundred different stories will shoot out from pulling that one trigger. (Note: I won’t steal your ideas. I’ve got plenty of ideas! I’ve got more ideas than I have life left to execute them all! …gulp.)

3. failure. Yeah? Who doesn’t? Failure is in not even trying. Nobody likes a whiner. Shut up and type.

4. success. Just kidding. Nobody really fears success. Change, sometimes, but never success. Fear of success is something somebody made up in 80s to sell self-help books. Who still believes that now?

5. criticism. You won’t join a critique group so you won’t learn (or will learn very slowly.) That’s how I learned very slowly. The truth is, not everybody is going to like you or what you write. That won’t change, so accept that and look for people who give you caring yet constructive criticism. Flush all others. As Walt Disney said, “I’m not gay.” No, no. He said, “Always move forward.”

6. rejection. People very rarely get a book deal from the first agent they approach. (See #5) Not everybody is going to like what you write. If it’s any good, eventually someone will. Then you can crow all you want about all the publishers, editors and agents who said no before you found the one genius who agrees with you. Your definition of a genius is anyone who loves your manuscript and is in a position to market it to the world.

CHAZZ DEFINITION OF GENIUS:

Anyone who agrees with Chazz.

7. revision. But your best writing is your rewriting. You know that. So go do it. Yeah, it really is that simple. That’s the same way everybody else who hates revision bulled their way through.

8. that our best friends will achieve astonishing literary success and we won’t. I guess you should start typing faster if you want to even have a horse in that race then, huh?

9. poverty. So make sure you get paid for what you write. Send out more queries. Suffer the day job until you achieve escape velocity. Keep the day job and enjoy both with a little less sleep. Be so adorable someone else will support you while you write (I am!). Launch a successful business you can escape to write. Make writing your successful business. Reality check: if you choose writing over riches, are you really going to end up in the street? Would the people who care for you really let that happen? (If so, you’re a right and proper bastard, aren’t you? You deserve homelessness. Maybe you should work on your social skills and bathe, hm?) Poverty isn’t so bad. Not writing would be worse. (If you don’t understand that equation, you aren’t a writer.)

10. anonymity. This is the worst. You fear anonymity because if no one reads your words, there goes your only shot at immortality. If you don’t achieve some success with your writing, soon it will be as if you never existed. You might as well have never existed if you can’t leave some kind of stamp of your personality, your brain and your thoughts on the careless, fickle future you’ll never see. The abyss is yawning beneath you. We are only a brief crack of light between two black infinities. If you don’t write, you can’t be published and if you aren’t published, you are forgotten. You are a helpless speck disappearing down the raging current of time. There is no return. Death waits for us all.