Finish Your Book First

I have no ideas for a post today so I'm directing you over to Mary Kole's post about why you need to finish your book before you query.

I know most of you already know this, but like Mary says, there's always newbies who are just starting out on their hunt for information on the publishing world and we all know how hard it is to wait until you're done to get feedback on your first ms!

She also has some great info on exceptions to the rule and info on dummies for those of you who write picture books.

Ways to Up Your Productivity

One of my favorite writing quotes is "Writers WRITE." I know for me, the simplest part, can be the hardest. I actually have some writing time and yet I can find so many ways to distract myself from actually writing.

Here are a few of the things I've found helpful in keeping my focus on writing.

LeechBlock - This may be one of the best things on the internet! LeechBlock is a Firefox add-on that allows you to block certain sites during the days and times you choose. I set mine to block me from the sites that suck away the most of my time, (Amazon, Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter) starting at 10:30am Monday - Friday. What's great is that even if I'm on Twitter at 10:29am, when the clock hits 10:30, LeechBlock shuts it down and tells me to come back later when I'm allowed. I can't tell you how much random surfing it's stopped.

Write or Die - Write or Die is this awesome little application that allows you to set a time and word goal, and then MAKES you keep it! Depending on your settings, if you pause for too long while typing Write or Die will make annoying noises, or ERASE YOUR TEXT until you start typing again. I had been using this online for a while (it's free!) but during NaNoWriMo I sprang for the desktop edition ($10 - works on Mac and PC) which lets you choose your noises, and things like the color of your background and text. I usually set mine at 1000 words in 40 minutes and because of the way it blinks red at me before the sounds start, I usually finish my 1000 words about 10-15 minutes early! It's a really great tool for getting out that first draft because it forces you to stop overthinking and just keep writing.

ORGANIZERS
There are also a couple of great organizers that allow you to keep all the parts of your novel (notes, images, scenes that don't have a place yet) together in one place. These can be a great timesaver because you don't have to go searching for things, or move into another program for something. This can be especially helpful during revisions.

Their websites can do a much better job telling you about them than I can, so check them out! I have Liquid Story Binder XE but haven't had a chance to play around with it. I'm planning to really dive into it when I start revising next week.

For Mac
Scrivener

For PC
Liquid Story Binder XE

What are your favorite time-savers?

The use of ellipses...

I post on Thursday, and this post will say I published it on Wednesday, but it was close enough to midnight! I won't be online much tomorrow and I didn't want to miss my day again!

What is an ellipsis? To be honest, I was going to come up with something quirky, but I am angry with my sister right now. So angry, in fact, that I....

See what I did there? Ha! And that was unintentional. I was really going to tell you that I am so angry with her that I actually had a dream last night in which I was yelling at her. But instead of finishing my sentence, I trailed off with an ellipsis. You will noticed I used four periods. An ellipsis is a series of three dots, but because I ended the sentence with it, I still have to add the period to signify the close of the sentence.

The most common usage of an ellipsis, is during dialog. In fiction writing, (in non fiction, an ellipsis indicates the omission of a word or words) we all know how important it is that our characters are individuals. A big part of characterization, especially in writing YA, is dialog. I've seen some writers using an ellipsis to signify an interruption, or to separate a clause, and this is incorrect. In such cases, you should use and em dash.

Em dash from Dictionary.reference.com:

em·dash or em dash (ěm'dāsh') n. A symbol ( — ) used in writing and printing to indicate a break in thought or sentence structure, to introduce a phrase added for emphasis, definition, or explanation, or to separate two clauses.

Just so we're clear, I'm going to give an example of each.

Em Dash:

"James, I dunno what to tell you. I think--"

"Don't think. Just don't."

James interrupted the first speaker. He cut off her sentence so we used an em dash.

Ellipsis:

"James, I think...I dunno what I think."

The speaker did not complete her thought, so I used an ellipsis to signify that.

I realize these are both poor examples, but you get the idea.

Ellipsis can be wonderful tools in writing dialog, but over use can make your writing hard to read, choppy and just down right poor. If your sentence ends in a full thought, one dot will do.