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Newsletter of North State Writers (NSW), a Branch of the California Writers Club
NSW promotes the art and craft of writing across genres, connecting writers, editors, illustrators, publishers, reviewers, agents, and others interested in the continual renewal of creative thought and the written word.
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North State Writer's President, Cathy Chase, has stepped down from the board for personal reasons. We will miss her in that capacity, but she has agreed to spearhead our Critique Group Zoom meetings.
We reached out to our membership; unfortunately, that effort did not result in a volunteer to take over the presidency.
Your North State Writers board had to make some difficult decisions and modifications to our meetings due to this occurrence.
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To have the group continue, I agreed to complete Cathy's term as President. This term will end in June 2021, at which time we will continue our search for a President.
I currently have many personal obligations, making it impossible to move forward with the monthly Zoom meetings. I hope that this will change by February, and we will continue our speaker program.
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The board members and I sincerely apologize for the temporary suspension of monthly meetings and we will resume them as soon as we can.
In the meantime, we will do our best to provide as much information in our newsletter that we ca0 and invite you to attend one of the Zoom meetings provided by other branches.
Linda Sue Forrister
North State Writers
President
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Member Spotlight - Hope Hill |
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Hope Hill is a former foster kid. Her writing includes poetry, speculative fiction, and anything else that catches her fancy. A self-professed 'pantser,' she usually has so many plots available that she rolls a twenty-sided die to determine which one to work on next. Given her varied interests, one thing is certain; this is one author who will alternate genres.
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This is not a fantastical tale about a woman who dances on the battlefield. It is a story of personal growth written in verse. A brutally honest look into the mind and world of a woman's personal struggles with PTSD. A frighteningly lyrical descent into madness. Prepare to cry. You've been warned.
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Most of us have heard of Grammerly software and some of you have probably wondered what exactly it does and will it really help our writing. This video from the Kindlepreneur explains
Grammerly and shows you how it works and what the advantages are along with the features available on both the free version and the premium version. Click on the title above to link to the video.
Have you been thinking about getting Scrivener writing software but need for information to make the decision? Check out this video which compares Scrivener and Word. Both software programs have a learning curve but there are training tools available for both which makes it easier. Click on the title above to link to the video.
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RHINO Founders' Prize opens for submissions on Sept 1-Oct. 15 with special guest judge, Ed Roberson. All submissions considered for publication in our next issue. We look forward to reading your work!
https://rhinopoetry.org/prizes
Chicken Soup for the Soul
BOOKS FORWARD BOOK CONTEST
NO ENTRY FEE. Deadline October 1, 2020. The giveaway is open to both traditionally- and independently-published authors, fiction or nonfiction.
ZOETROPE SHORT STORY PRIZE
$30 ENTRY FEE. Deadline October 1, 2020. First prize: $1,000. Second prize: $500. Third prize: $250. The three prizewinners and seven honorable mentions will be considered for representation by William Morris Endeavor; ICM; the Wylie Agency; Aragi, Inc.; Regal Literary; Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency; Markson Thoma Literary Agency; Inkwell Management; Sterling Lord Literistic; Aitken Alexander Associates; Barer Literary; the Gernert Company; Janklow & Nesbit Associates; and The Georges Borchardt Literary Agency. We accept all genres of literary fiction. Entries must be: unpublished; strictly 5,000 words or fewer.
SASFEST POETRY CONTEST
$15 ENTRY FEE. Deadline October 16, 2020. One grand prize of $500 and two second place prizes of $100 will be awarded. A list of the top ten finalists will be posted on our website and in our e-newsletter. Finalists will be published in the first-ever Saints and Sinners poetry Chapbook to be distributed at a special reading at the 2021 Festival. The contest is open to all LGBTQ+ writers. Authors who have published in other genres are eligible. Please submit original, unpublished work that has not won other prizes or contests. Submit two to four original, unpublished poems of any style based on our theme of LOVE, written in English, with a combined length of up to 400 lines.
JOHN STEINBECK AWARD FOR FICTION
$20 ENTRY FEE. Deadline November 1, 2020. Aesthetically, we are open to most styles and approaches, including experimental and literary. All works should be stand-alone short stories, not chapters of a longer work. Please limit prose submissions to 5,000 words. $1,000 for the winning story.
PERSONAL ESSAY AWARDS
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ENTER NOW! DEADLINE: 10/15/20 Writer’s Digest’s newest competition, the Personal Essay Awards, is now open for entries. Winners of the competition will be announced in our May/June 2021 issue of Writer's Digest.
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A Good Read
By Brian Marshall
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With all the time we spend obsessing over the craft of writing, or how to best promote our work, we authors often forget that we all started as readers. Often the best way to tell our own stories is by gaining inspiration, learning the ropes from those who have come before us.
With this in mind, I invite you to join in a consideration of some of the more inspiring, insightful and compelling books that have surfaced in the last hundred years or so. Some shine through their narrator’s indelible presence Some are marvels at pacing and plotting. Some are reckless, rambling acts of
abandon that win us over anyway. All writing is
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patchwork, call it borrowing or stealing, so why not plunder the best? Because if we don’t, we’ll prove the old adage. Garbage in, garbage out.
But don’t worry. This won’t be homework. It shouldn’t feel like work at all. A truly great book requires no effort; it practically reads itself. And you don’t need any conscious awareness of the craft or technique employed in writing a novel for that book to weave its spell. So see you every month or so, assuming we’re still here, hanging on by our fingernails. Maybe we can’t share a meal or a handshake, but at least we can share a good read.
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HOW LONG SHOULD YOUR BOOK BE? |
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The following article is from Writer's Digest; it is my hope that our members can benefit from the information provided.
Gary Carter
Membership Chair
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NSW Membership Chair wanted to share this article with our members, we hope you gain some insight regarding word count for your writing projects.
From Chuck Sambuchino and Writer's Digest:
Word count for novels and books is something I don't think about too often until I travel to a writers' conference, and then someone asks a simple, innocent question: "How long should a book be?" With that in mind, I've tried to put together the definitive post on word count for fiction (novels, young adult, middle grade, children's books and even memoir).
The most important thing here is to realize that there are always exceptions to these rules. And man, people love to point out exceptions—and they always will. However, if there is one thing I remember from when my wife dragged me kicking and screaming to He's Just Not That Into You, it's that you cannot count on being the exception; you must count on being the rule. Aiming to be the exception is setting yourself up for disappointment. What writers fail to see is that for every successful exception to the rule (e.g., a first-time 175,000-word novel), there are at least 100 failures if not 300.
Almost always, high word count means that the writer simply did not edit their work down enough. Or—it means they have two or more books combined into one.
"But what about J.K. Rowling???" asks that man in the back of the room, putting his palms up the air. Well—remember the first Harry Potter book? It wasn't that long. After JK made the publishing house oodles and oodles of money, she could do whatever she wanted. And since most writers haven't earned oodles, they need to stick to the rules and make sure they work gets read. The other thing that will make you an exception is if your writing is absolutely brilliant. But let's face it. Most of our work does not classify as "absolutely brilliant" or we'd all have 16 novels at this point.
Between 80,000 and 89,999 words is a good range you should be aiming for. This is a 100% safe range for literary, mainstream, women's, romance, mystery, suspense, thriller and horror. Anything in this word count won't scare off any agent anywhere.
Now, speaking broadly, you can have as few as 71,000 words and as many as 109,000 words. That is the total range. When it dips below 80K, it might be perceived as too short—not giving the reader enough. It seems as though going over 100K is all right, but not by much. I suggest stopping at 109K because just the mental hurdle to jump concerning 110K is just another thing you don't want going against you. And, as agent Rachelle Gardner (Books & Such Literary) pointed out when discussing word count, over 110K is defined as "epic or saga." Chances are your cozy mystery or literary novel is not an epic. Rachelle also mentions that passing 100K in word count means it's a more expensive book to produce—hence agents' and editors' aversion to such lengths.
Between 80,000 and 89,999 words is a good range you should be aiming for. This is a 100% safe range for literary, mainstream, women's, romance, mystery, suspense, thriller and horror. Anything in this word count won't scare off any agent anywhere.
Now, speaking broadly, you can have as few as 71,000 words and as many as 109,000 words. That is the total range. When it dips below 80K, it might be perceived as too short—not giving the reader enough. It seems as though going over 100K is all right, but not by much. I suggest stopping at 109K because just the mental hurdle to jump concerning 110K is just another thing you don't want going against you. And, as agent Rachelle Gardner (Books & Such Literary) pointed out when discussing word count, over 110K is defined as "epic or saga." Chances are your cozy mystery or literary novel is not an epic. Rachelle also mentions that passing 100K in word count means it's a more expensive book to produce—hence agents' and editors' aversion to such lengths.
WORD COUNT FOR SCI-FI AND FANTASY NOVELS
Science fiction and fantasy are the big exceptions because these categories tend to run long. It has to do with all the descriptions and world-building in the writing.
With these genres, I would say 100,000 - 115,000 is an excellent range. It's six-figures long, but not real long. The thing is: Writers tend to know that these categories run long so they make them run really long and hurt their chances. There's nothing wrong with keeping it short (say, 105K) in these areas. It shows that you can whittle your work down.
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Outside of that, I would say 90K-100K is most likely all right, and 115-124K is probably all right, too. That said, try to keep it in the ideal range.
WORD COUNT FOR MIDDLE GRADE FICTION
Middle grade is from 20,000 - 55,000, depending on the subject matter and age range, and the word count of these books has been trending up in recent years. When writing a longer book that is aimed at 12-year-olds (and could maybe be considered "tween"), using the term "upper middle grade" is advisable. With upper middle grade, you can aim for 40,000 - 55,000 words. These are books that resemble young adult in matter and storytelling, but still tend to stick to MG themes and avoid hot-button, YA-acceptable themes such as sex, drugs and rock & roll. You can stray a little over here but not much.
With a simpler middle grade idea (Football Hero, or Jenny Jones and the Cupcake Mystery), aim lower. Shoot for 20,000 - 35,000 words.
WORD COUNT FOR YOUNG ADULT FICTION
Perhaps more than any other, YA is the one category where word count is very flexible.
For starters, 55,000 - 79,999 is a great range.
The word round the agent blogosphere is that these books tend to be trending longer, saying that you can top in the 80Ks. However, this progression is still in motion and, personally, I'm not sure about this. I would say you're playing with fire the higher you go. When it gets into the 80s, you may be all right—but you have to have a reason for going that high. Again, higher word counts usually mean that the writer does not know how to edit themselves.
A good reason to have a longer YA novel that tops out at the high end of the scale is if it's science fiction or fantasy. Once again, these categories are expected to be a little longer because of the world-building.
Concerning the low end, below 55K could be all right but I wouldn't drop much below about 47K.
WORD COUNT FOR PICTURE BOOKS
The standard is text for 32 pages. That might mean one line per page, or more. 500-600 words is a good number to aim for. When it gets closer to 1,000, editors and agents may shy away.
WORD COUNT FOR WESTERNS
I remember reading some Westerns in high school and, if I recall correctly, they weren't terribly long. There wasn't a whole about this on agent and editor sites, but from what I found, these can be anywhere from 50K to 80K. 65,000 is a solid number to aim for.
MEMOIR WORD COUNT
Memoir is the same as a novel and that means you're aiming for 80,000-89,999. However, keep in mind when we talked about how people don't know how to edit their work. This is specially true in memoir, I've found, because people tend to write everything about their life—because it all really happened.
Coming in a bit low (70-79K) is not a terrible thing, as it shows you know how to focus on the most interesting parts of your life and avoid a Bill-Clinton-esque tome-length book. At the same time, you may want to consider the high end of memoir at 99,999. Again, it's a mental thing seeing a six-figure length memoir.
SOME THOUGHTS
You have agents like Nathan Bransford (now formerly an agent) and Kristin Nelson who say that you shouldn't think about word count, but rather you should think about pacing and telling the best story possible—and don't worry about the length. Yes, they're right, but the fact is: Not every agent feels that way and is willing to give a 139,000-word debut novel a shot. Agents have so many queries that they are looking for reasons to say no. They are looking for mistakes, chinks in the armor, to cut their query stack down by one. And if you adopt the mentality that your book has to be long, then you are giving them ammunition to reject you. Take your chances and hope that excellent writing will see your baby through no matter (and I hope it does indeed break through).
But I believe that we cannot count on being the exception; we must count on being the rule. That's the best way to give yourself your best shot at succeeding.
Click here to see this article and more on the Writer's Digest website. They have many helpful articles, tools and classes available to writers.
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Do you have something funny you would like to share? Send it to [email protected] using "Newsletter" in the subject line.
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President: Linda Sue Forrister
Vice-President: Brian Marshall
Secretary: Joan Goodreau
Treasurer: Nick Hanson
Director of Membership: Gary Carter
Newsletter Editor: Linda Sue Forrister
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Central Board Rep: Linda Sue Forrister
NorCal Group Rep: Linda Sue Forrister
Events Coordinator: Brian Marshall
Social Media: Aislinn Hanson
Publicity: Kathi Hiatt
Critique Group: Cathy Chase
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