Prem Rao : Stories from a Story Teller
Stories from a Story Teller
You may have seen my earlier post which speaks of the Blogging A to Z Challenge I await this as excitedly as I am sure many do from all over the world. When I last checked, I found that 1800 blogs/bloggers were already registered for the mega event. I use the term blogs/bloggers because some bloggers have more than one blog in the fray!
Last week, in a post titled, “ Working With Scrivener : More Tips” I had written about my progress in using Scrivener. I want to share with you this time some perspectives that I have gained from posts by others who shared their experiences in using Scrivener. I found these to be pretty useful, and I hope they will be of use to you.
Yes, it’s official. I am one of the new fans of Scrivener. In an earlier post, I have described how I finally signed on for Scrivener hoping to make it, over time, the only tool for my writing going forward. Last week, I had shared with you my first lessons in working with Scrivener. I was caught up with a lot of other work last week and honestly didn’t spend as much time on my writing as I should have. Nevertheless, I thought it might be useful to share a few more tips based on my experience in using Scrivener.
Some days ago, I posted about how I got on to Scrivener, at last! I want to build on that theme and let you know what I have been up to and how I have fared. My objective in sharing this is to help newbies (newer to Scrivener than me, which isn’t saying much anyway) with tips so that they don’t make the mistakes I did.
I entered the National Novel Writing Month ( NaNoWriMo) for the first time in 2009 and that’s when I heard fellow participants speak of Scrivener. I had no idea what it meant. Some cursory research led me to understand that it was a kind of ” content generation tool” for writers. To be honest, I didn’t explore this any further for two reasons. I feared it would be too complex for me to use and too expensive for me to afford. I was then deeply engrossed in writing my debut novel, “It Can’t Be You” anyway and my focus was more on thinking through a plot, fleshing out characters and the like. I did all of this in the only way I knew, using Microsoft Word. Continue reading “Getting to Scrivener At Last!”
I had the pleasure of reading, “Potluck” recently. This is a collection of 26 short stories published by Become Shakespeare with the contributors being members of the Critique Group. This group came together when they attended Creative Writing courses at the Xavier Institute of Communication in Mumbai. These course were conducted by Renu Balakrishnan who too has contributed a couple of stories to this collection.
Here’s some exciting news. The 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award has just been announced. If you feel your manuscript is ready, have a shot. The rules are here.
The Grand Prize Winner gets a publishing contract with an advance of $50,000 with Amazon Publishing. You could also get contracts with advances of $15,000 if you are one of the five finalists. Winning this contest, I need hardly say, can change your fortunes as a writer.
If, like me, you have been fascinated by the work done by the United States Secret Service, you will thoroughly enjoy “In The Secret Service” by Jerry Parr, the man who has, as they say these days, been there and done that. He was part of President Reagen’s Secret Service detail when in 1981 John Hinckley Jr made his attempt to assassinate the President of the United States as he left the Hilton Hotel in New York only three months after he had been sworn in as the President.
Gosh, I wish I had seen some of these earlier! I didn’t, but perhaps by sharing these someone else somewhere may gain from them. Here are a few links which I think are extremely useful to those of you who seek to get your book published through the traditional route. They are from experts who know what it takes to succeed in getting published. Continue reading “Getting Published: Useful Links for Would Be Authors”
Prem Rao : Stories from a Story Teller 