Category Archives: News & Contests

News, announcements and contests from Jordan McCollum

News & Contests

Contest coming—get ready!

That’s right, I’m hosting a contest—and soon. Why not now? Because this is the kind of contest you have to get ready for.

I want to share our best writing lessons, no matter where that lesson came from. It could be an insight you received from revising your own work, advice from a critique partner, an enlightening conference/presentation/class, a great writing book—anything. It could be an outlook, a technique, a strategy, or (again) anything.

I’m still hammering out the details for the contest, so I’m open to suggestions, and the information below is subject to change. (This post will always be updated with the latest information on the contest.)

What do you have to do to enter?

Submit a guest blog post, 300-1000 words in length, on the best writing lesson you’ve learned. Tell us how you discovered (or accepted!) your lesson, how you changed your writing because of that lesson, and most of all, how we can apply the same lesson to our writing.

Feel free to include links and a short biography, as well as pictures (this will work best if you upload them to Flickr first—as always, be cognizant of copyrights!). More than 2-3 links to your own blog within the post is a bit much, don’t you think?

To be eligible, entries must be received by 1 June 2010 in my mailbox at contest AT jordanmccollum.com . That’s two weeks to look over your writing life and come up with a couple pages. Not hard, right?

The winner

Here’s how it’ll work: All blog posts that meet the guidelines will be posted, one per day, in the order I receive them. Each post will have two weeks to receive comments. The finalists will be the posts with the most comments (excluding comments by the author of the post). The number of finalists will depend on the number of entries.

The top commented articles will then go to a panel of judges (who, um, have yet to be determined).

The prizes!

Um…. I’m not totally sure what the prizes will be. I’m thinking a writing book would be most appropriate. I’d like to be able to give the finalists as well as the grand prize winner. So this is one area I’ll be taking suggestions on!

How to win

Write an engaging, thoughtful post. Try to encourage discussion with a prompt or question at the end of your post. (Please, do not bribe people to comment with giveaways!)

Promote your post. Email your writing friends about it. Tweet about it. Share it on Facebook. Take the URL with you to critique group.

Participate in the discussion. Although your comments won’t count toward your total, it won’t hurt you to interact with the people who do comment. In fact, it’s a great way to fuel a discussion. (But as always, be civil.)

Suggestions?

I’m still open to suggestions for fine-tuning this contest. Should I not reveal who the authors of each entry are until after their two weeks are up? What would be a good finalist/grand prize? Who should I have judge?

Photo by terren in Virginia

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News & Contests

Guest posting today

I have a guest post today at Jagi Lamplighter’s blog. I’m writing about using something that doesn’t even matter to increase the suspense in your story.

Suspense on a story level and tension on a scene level are both vital to creating a readable story. Tension compels readers to read a scene, while suspense keeps them hooked until the next scene. There are many things we can do to heighten and highlight the tension in our writing. One technique that has been used to great effect is to use something that doesn’t matter at all, something that the reader doesn’t care about.

Click on over to read more!

And welcome to any visitors clicking through from Jagi’s blog! To read more about tension and suspense, check out the blog series. And tomorrow, we’ll be back to our current blog series on backstory.

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News & Contests

We interrupt (well, delay) this series…

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I know I promised a series on backstory, but something came up this weekend.

I don’t make a secret of it—I hate writing contests. And this is because I have never gotten useful (or even non-contradictory!) advice from them. That may be a reflection on the organization sponsoring the contests I’ve entered, of course, because after my first contest through another organization, I’m quickly beginning to change my mind.

This last weekend, I went to a writing conference. Despite my past experiences and with more than a little trepidation (and very low expectations), I entered the conference’s first chapter contest a month ago. I was really hoping to place, of course, but I didn’t expect to do well.

Nevertheless, every time I happened to see the Saturday lunch hour in the conference schedule (“First chapter contest winners announced”), my hearing dulled, my heart pounded and my stomach shriveled. Just thinking about that day put me through the first stages of a panic attack.

(This made planning my conference schedule very stressful 😉 .)

Finally, lunch rolled around. About halfway through, the conference coordinator got up, and the pulled up the PowerPoint that would announce the winners on the two 20′ screens in the hall. To all 450 attendees.

They received almost 200 entries. They printed over 900 critiques which would be returned to each entrant after lunch. And then they started on the winners. I almost hoped they’d start with my category, just so I could have my disappointment and work to move on. But no—first came third place, non fiction: title, author. Second place. First place.

They moved on to General Fiction. And another category. And another.

And then my category, Mystery/Suspense. Third place. Not me. Hey, maybe this wasn’t so bad.

Second place. Not me. Oh. There was no way I took first place—so I had my answer. It wasn’t me. That’s okay, I know how much these things are the luck of the draw—get one judge who doesn’t love your chapter and you’re hosed. And not everybody loves everything I’ll ever write. That’s okay.

Seriously, this felt like the longest pause of the ceremonies. Despite my best efforts at consoling myself, I could hear the contest coordinator’s voice saying the title of my story over and over again.

Stop, I told myself. Don’t torment yourself.

“First place, Mystery/Suspense: Saints and Spies.” This time it wasn’t in my head. “By Jordan McCollum.”

So that little announcement is why we’re not starting a new series today. Tomorrow for sure.

This came at a time I really needed it. Many thanks to all those who helped me prepare the chapter. Thanks for a great conference, to all those who worked so hard to put it on. I also want to congratulate so many of my friends who also placed!

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News & Contests

Upcoming series: Backstory

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I’m planning my next series (starting next Monday!), and once again, I need your help. I need your questions, musings and and topics.

What do you want to know about backstory? What it is? How to tell it from the “real” story? How to work it in? Whether you need it?

As always, guest bloggers are welcome (check out my guest blogging guidelines here, but of course, the topic will be different this time around—you know, backstory?).

What do you want to know (or write!) about backstory?

Photo credits: question—Svilen Mushkatov

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News & Contests

Call for guest posts

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I’m gearing up for another series—this time on writing resources. One thing I totally forgot to do was ask for guest posts in my last series, so this time I don’t want to repeat that mistake. Today I’m asking for guest bloggers to help with my next series (because we’re all tired of listening to just me, right 😉 ?).

Here’s a bit more on what I’m looking for:

  • For this series, posts on:
    • Writing craft books that really helped you
    • Writing classes or teachers that made a big difference
    • Workshops or conferences that made an impact
    • Writing friends or critique groups that affected your writing (for the positive!)
    • Posts that focus on both the experience of reading/participating as well as the actual lessons learned.
  • Posts between 300 and 800 words in length (though I’m flexible on the long end).
  • A short bio (up to three sentences) of the author (ie you) with up to three links. (Links are allowed in the post itself, too, but if I get too much of a sense of self-promotion I may edit them.)

If you’re up to the challenge, send the post in the body of an email (if you can code in HTML, I’ll love you forever; if not, just include the URL of the links) to contact at jordanmccollum.com . I’ll probably only have room for the first three posts, and I’d need them by Friday, March 19. If that’s too little notice, don’t worry, I’ll have another call for guest bloggers at the end of May (if not before).

But for future reference, if ever you’d like to do a guest post here, go for it! I may not always post them—but don’t worry, I don’t do the whole no-response-means-no thing, so you’ll be free to use a post somewhere else. If you’re not familiar with guest blogging, check out my article on maximizing your guest blogging, as well as this more recent post on guest blogging from Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.

Questions, comments and suggestions for future series welcome!

Photo by Andrea

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News & Contests

Happy New Year!

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Happy New Year! I got to finish out my year with a much-needed pat on the back from one of the fantastic members of our community:

top 9 of 2009_thumb[2]

Andrew named this blog as one of his top 9 writing blogs of 2009 for content, community and the “it” factor—you know, me 😉 . Aside from including me, I can vouch for the quality of his list: I already read more than half of those ranked, and have learned so much from them this last year.

As kind of a post-script to our series on bad advice, I also want to point out a little good advice, such as highlighted on Romance University this week.

We’ll talk about setting goals on Monday. For now, just enjoy the novelty of the year and the long weekend! Feel free to share the best writing advice you’ve received—but I have big plans for that topic later in the year.

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Marketing, News & Contests

How many websites do you need?

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This entry is part 4 of 5 in the series Aspiring author websites

A few reminders today: we’re almost done with our website review series—just two reviews left. Several people have asked about getting on the list. We took volunteers back in July—but Kathleen and I are both surprised at how well-received this series has been. We’re planning to do this again, but it probably won’t be for a couple months. (So subscribe to make sure you don’t miss this call for volunteers!)

Another reminder: don’t forget to vote for the writing craft book club book. Don’t make me just choose one!

How many websites should you have?

frustrateA writing blog. An in-world children’s picture book website. A website for your steamy romance ebooks. A site for your nonfiction aspirations. A personal blog. How many websites can one person have?

The answer, of course, is as personal as your websites should be—you can have as many websites as you can handle (and please, no more! A neglected website is sometimes worse than no site at all.). But how many do you really need?

I’m of the opinion that you should try for as few sites as possible. At its simplest, this would be one website, with a blog as part of that website (if you truly feel you can maintain a blog).

However, in some situations, you will need separate or nearly separate sites. These situations might include:

  • Genres that are completely incompatible—where writing in one genre could permanently alienate readers in another genre (like the above example of picture books and hot romance).
  • Writing under different names—especially in conjunction with the above example.

Note that I also said “nearly separate” sites—rather than completely separate sites, you could try doing “minisites.” For example, if you’re writing in very different genres but under the same name, you could have Mystery.YourDomain.com and UrbanFantasy.YourDomain.com . The sites would have at least one or two links to one another, and to your main site, but would remain mostly separate.

a-novel-characterAnd then there’s the question of personal stuff: does it have a place on your professional site(s)? That also depends on your genre, the tone of your personal stuff, and your audience. If you have a “lifestyle” blog before you get published, then it’s fine to keep that and maintain the personal tone and the insights into your personal life.

However, if that’s not the kind of site and community you’ve already built, be cautious about sharing personal stuff. Introducing too much information, unprofessional presentation, or flat-out boring content can hurt your brand.

On the other hand, sharing some information about yourself—on a limited, interesting, professional basis—can help to make your website more personable and appealing. It’s a fine balance—and sometimes it takes some practice.

What do you think? How have you shared personal information in a way that appealed to your visitors? How many sites do you want/need?

Image credits: frustrated—John De Boer; character—Svilen Mushkatov

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