Interview with Author Sarah Elliston

Below is an interview I had the pleasure of doing with author Sarah Elliston.

1. Give a brief synopsis of your book, Lessons From a Difficult Person?

Sarah Elliston never realized she was "a difficult person." She wasn't intentionally mean-spirited. She was just trying to do what she thought was RIGHT!

A kind boss brought her problem to her attention with great compassion and strength. This began a transformation journey towards the woman teaching others how to deal with difficult people. The book describes her experience and offers readers an opportunity to explore their relationship with a difficult person. She offers exercises in how to awaken the challenging personality and improve the relationship.

2. What got you into writing?

I have always loved to write and did well in school and in my professional reports. I have always journaled and when all else fails, I find writing clears my mind.

3. What genres do you like to read?

My favorite books are about fictional crime solving, and mysteries. I like historical fiction and I enjoy poetry. I find poetry challenging to write but I love to read something where the exact word paints a picture for the senses.

4. What made you decide to write this particular book?

I wrote this particular book because I was teaching workshops on Dealing with Difficult People and wanted to share my concepts of healing with more people. Participants wanted a level two workshop and I thought having the book would help them remember the concepts as well as take time to really do the suggested exercises.

5. How much time and effort do you put into marketing?

Not very much. I like talking about the content but I find it difficult to just throw it out at people.

6. Do you have any works in mind that you've not yet written?

If so, what are they? Well, one title is "Everything I needed to know about relationships I learned by being a volunteer coordinator." And the other one is another Lessons From a Difficult Person book, it is about how people change, how I changed, and again, what others can do to help us change.

7. If there is one thing that stands out about your writing, what is it?

I am willing to be vulnerable, to share my personal thoughts, feelings, and experience. My writing is literal and concrete. I explain things well and I always throw in some humor. People aren't usually confused about what I am saying.

8. What inspired you to write your book?

I went to a weekend workshop where I was told I could write a book in 4 days. I got so involved in it that I couldn't stop. I am very personally invested in the content.

9. Where can potential readers find your work?

My website, http://www.SarahElliston.com 

10. Where can readers connect with you socially online?

Yes, I have a Facebook author page, Sarah Elliston Author and my twitter handle is @mainesam (because I went to school there) and I am on LinkedIn as Sarah H. Elliston. The best way to contact me is through the website.

Linda Barnett-Johnson is a Virtual Assistant for authors and enjoys writing poetry, short stories, articles about writing and making up quotes. Many of her articles and poetry have been published. She’s a former editor, former assistant editor of Long Story Short ezine, former administrative director of Long Story Short School of Writing. You can locate her website here: www.lindabarnett-johnson.com She also posts new books, writing articles and author interviews on her blog: http://lindabarnett-johnson.blogspot.com/ Always looking for guest bloggers that would post writing tips, articles and anything to do with writing.

Aim for Writing Success

Writing success can mean different things to different writers.

Some writers may simply want to get a book or article published; others may want to be on the New York Times Best Sellers List; still others may want to make a living writing; and there are those who may be seeking wealth and fame.

The key here is to dig down and really know what your perception of writing success is.

Once you are certain what you’re aiming for, take the necessary steps to become the writing success you dream of.

Sounds easy, right? Well, we all know it’s not, if it were, there would be no struggling writers.

The first problem you may run into is actually realizing how you perceive success, or what you want from your writing efforts.

According to Jack Canfield, co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul, the number one reason for being stuck and not realizing your potential or goals is the lack of clarity.

So, how do you fix this problem?

Step One: You Must Define Your Goals and Your Perception of Success

It’s not sufficient to state you want to be a published writer; you need to proclaim the specifics.

You want to be a self-help nonfiction author of published books and magazine articles earning an income of $100,000 per year. You can even get much more specific than that—the more specific your goals and intentions are the more likely you will attain them.

Step Two: Prepare a Plan

When you finally have a break through and know exactly what you want from your writing efforts, you need to prepare a detailed plan. Your plan, just like your goals, needs to be very specific.

Think of a recipe: You plan on baking a cake, but you’ll need more than just the ingredients, you’ll need the exact amount of each ingredient, the proper procedure for mixing them together, the baking temperature, how long to bake it, how long to cool it before removing it from the pan . . . you get the idea.

Now you’re on your way . . . you have specific goals . . . a detailed plan . . . but . . . you’re still not achieving success.

Step Three: Take Action

Think of the first two steps as the foundation of your house. To move forward toward success, you need to build the house.

This takes action; it actually takes more than just action, it takes ongoing action and perseverance to carry you through to completion.

Step Four: Projection

You have the other steps down pat, now picture yourself attaining your goals.

According to motivational speakers, you will have a much greater chance of making it happen by projecting success. This step encompasses a number of strategies such as envisioning, projection, projection boards, and affirmations.

Take aim . . . shoot.

Originally published at: 
http://karencioffiwritingforchildren.com/2016/04/10/aim-for-writing-success/

Karen Cioffi is an award-winning children’s author and children’s ghostwriter/ rewriter. She is also the founder and editor-in-chief of Writers on the Move and author online platform instructor with WOW! Women on Writing.

If you’d like more writing tips or help with your children’s story, check out: Writing for Children with Karen Cioffi.

If you need help with your author platform, check out Karen's e-class through WOW!:
http://www.articlewritingdoctor.com/content-marketing-tools/


MORE ON WRITING

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Finding Writing Ideas
Plot or Character?

SEO for Authors Part4 - LSI Keywords

We're on to Part 4 of the SEO for Authors Series. This part goes a bit deeper into using keywords.

Okay, I can hear you mumbling, "What the heck is LSI keywords? Aren't regular keywords enough?"

Before you start to bite your nails, LSI keywords sounds complicated but it’s NOT at all.

We’ll get to that in a second though.

First, let’s discuss why you’re blogging.

If you’re a blogger or content writer, who are you writing for?

If you answered the reader. You get the jackpot.

But, even if you think you’re writing for the reader, in the back of your mind you know you need to please the search engines also.

So, which is it?

Should you be writing for the reader of the search engines?

You’ve got to write for both, because if the search engines can’t quickly find, understand, and index your content they won’t be able to use it in their search results. This means the reader won’t get a chance to see your article.

Okay, this does create a bit of a dilemma, right?

Well, not really.

You can write powerful content that’s helpful to your reader while being search engine friendly. It’s a simple matter of using basic SEO techniques.

I’m guessing most of you reading this article know about keywords. And, you know they’re an important element that allows the search engines to find and index your content. It’s keywords that online searchers use for their search queries.

While your reader is your number one concern, appeasing Google comes in a close second.

But, there’s another little problem: 

Google doesn’t like you using the same keywords throughout your content. If you do this, Google will assume you’re doing it for ranking.

This doesn’t work. In fact, you could get a ‘slap on the hand’ for unethical SEO practices.

Instead, the power-blogger uses LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords.

Yep, another marketing acronym.

LSI keywords are simply synonyms for keywords. They can also be other words or phrases that are closely related to your ‘original’ keyword.

According to Web CEO, “LSI keywords are words and phrases that are semantically related to each other. They include not only synonyms or keywords with similar meanings. They are often keywords that are commonly found together.” (1)

Suppose your keyword is “book marketing.”

There are a number of topics that may fall under that keyword, such as:

- Author platform
- Book promotion
- Selling books
- Author website
- Book reviews
- Book signings

It’s the LSI keywords in your article that will allow Google to scan your content and better understand what it’s about. This in turn makes it easier for Google to index the content and use it as the results of a relevant search query . . .  as long as Google believes your content is quality.

An example of this strategy in action is my article:
Shaun the Sheep and Marketing with Animation

Shaun the Sheep is an animated kids’ movie with no words. I used it as the basis for an article on animation and marketing. While the title might be catchy to readers, it may have been a bit confusing for search engines.

But, the article itself has lots of LSI and other terminology that is search engine friendly and gives them the information they need to know exactly what the article is about and which search queries it’s relevant to.

Next time you’re writing a blog post or web copy, think of the LSI keywords you can use.

To find LSI keywords related to your primary keyword, check out this free tool:
LSI Graph

Along with finding those LSI words, your blog posts should be easy to read, understandable, and helpful for your audience.

TO READ ALL THE ARICLES IN THE SEO FOR AUTHORS SERIES, CHECK OUT OUR WORKSHOPS PAGE:
http://www.writersonthemove.com/p/workshops.html

References:

(1) https://www.webceo.com/blog/long-tail-vs-lsi-keywords-which-do-you-need-to-increase-website-traffic/

Karen Cioffi is an award-winning children’s author and children’s ghostwriter as well as the founder and editor-in-chief of Writers on the Move. She is also an author/writer online platform instructor with WOW! Women on Writing.

If you need help getting your author platform off the ground or want to get it soaring, check out Karen’s 4-week, interactive, eclass through WOW! Women on Writing: Build Your Author/Writer Business

MORE ON BOOK MARKETING

SEO for Authors Series Part1: The Basics

Keywords and Search Engines (What Every Author Should Know)

5 Good Reasons to Secure Your Site

Barnes and Nobles and Self-Publishing

There’s now a Barnes & Noble Press (a self-publishing suite).

I guess it’s their take on Amazon's KDP.

When I first hear about it, I was thrilled, especially since Createspace is getting rid of their author services. But, I'm not quite sure if it will be similar.

With B&N,  you can upload your manuscript in a Word doc format, fill out the vendor information forms, and they will publish it into an e-book.

They say that within 72 hours or less, your e-book will be available for sale at BN.com and “all Nook reading devices and apps.”

It is a little more involved if you want a POD book in that you, as far as I can make out, will need to “prep your manuscript files, upload your interior page” as well as upload the front and back covers.

I wish they were more explicit in their promo as to whether they offer author services. They do mention a suite of tools rather than a suite of services, so I’m not sure. But, it's probably a DIY thing.

If you’d like more information on the topic, go to:

http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com/press-release/barnes-noble-announces-barnes-noble-press-enhanced-self-publishing-suite-reach-millions-barnes-noble-readers/

https://press.barnesandnoble.com/author-tools-and-tips/bn-press-path-to-publication


Karen Cioffi is an award-winning children’s author and children’s ghostwriter/ rewriter. For tips on writing for children OR if you need help with your project, contact me at Writing for Children with Karen Cioffi.

For updates on new blog posts, subscribe to the The Writing World.

Getting Published - 6 HOT Tips

There are a number of articles and posts discussing whether it’s important to have a degree in writing in order to be successful in your writing career.

The articles that I’ve read all agree that it’s NOT necessary. But, there are at least 6 essential steps you will need to take to reach the golden ring of publication.

Below is a Powtoon with those 6 HOT tips!




For a bit more details on each step, stop by:
Writing - 6 Essential Steps to Publication

Karen Cioffi is an award-winning children's author and children’s ghostwriter as well as the founder and editor-in-chief of Writers on the Move. You can find out more about writing for children and her services at: Karen Cioffi Writing for Children.






MORE ON WRITING AND MARKETING

Think Your Way to Writing Success with Daily Affirmations
Getting Rid of Tattletale Words in Your Resume
How to Write Better Endings to Your Stories

Writers: Think Outside the Blank Page

Throughout the journey of writing my first book, I’ve found sketches, pictures and notecards, have helped when composing has fallen short. Just this week as I continue to fine-tune my story—completed many months ago except for revision checks that continue to this day—I made two new sketches: How my main character has grown and How the theme is shown. But I get ahead of myself. Through much trial and error, I finally have found a process that works for me, saves time, and gives me confidence that I’ve covered all the bases.

Keep Track of the Basics in a Three-Ring Binder

• Notes: I make notes all the time on many different kinds of paper, some on small scraps by nightlight in the wee hours of the morning. These notes are stapled, taped and punched into a binder section.
• Drafts: The latest draft is punched in after the note section so when I edit, I can make sure I’ve covered the ideas on the notes, so that they can then be discarded. When the draft has too many marks, I make a new copy. Note: I go back and forth between editing on the computer and editing on paper.
• Basic information: On blank green sheets of paper, I have stapled and taped index cards that contain basic information that informs my story. This information includes, but is not limited to:

             List of characters and their descriptions: Including magazine photos and impressions of people I know who have helped form the characters.

             
            Statements: The theme, story problem, concept sentence – story description in as few words as possible, and my favorite: a longer version of what my story is about. This latter version helps me know what to say to people when they say What is your book about? I used to get tongue-tied trying to explain.

            
           Story arcs: The main story arc, an arc for each character, an arc for each important story element, such as in this story, a key, a cloud, and a deed. This is important. A dog named Star, who is important to the story, disappeared for about 35 pages. I went in and found places to add him that didn’t feel contrived, but made his presence consistent.

            Lists: Animals that appear in the story; clues and red herrings; scenes, to make sure the scenes were placed properly and also to delete any scenes that didn’t add to the story--the scene list also helped me rearrange some parts of the action that fit better; subplots; items to research for accuracy. I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but research is so important. 

Recently, I discovered that I had my character wishing on Sirius, the Dog Star, during the summer in Virginia. Oops, Sirius can only be seen in the Northern Hemisphere during the winter; during the summer Sirius is only visible in the Southern Hemisphere. Did you know the colors of hard hats depict certain jobs? How small buildings vs large buildings are demolished?

Work Out the Plot on Post-it Paper

Plotting began with long, single-spaced outlines which became defunct as soon as I started writing. Next I tried an outline-sketch, which worked better. The sketch was a mere skeleton that propped up the story. Still, the writing invariably changed the outline-sketch beyond recognition. 

Finally, I settled on writing plot-points on post-it paper and sticking the post-its on a large poster. Not only does this method work for me, but I love the process, so important, for our writing needs to be fun and joyful, not tedious. This method has many pluses.

• Your ideas don't have to be in order. They can simply be jotted down and stuck on your poster board, to be arranged in order when you're ready.
• Deleting is easy--throw unnecessary post-its away.
• Adding is easy--stick additions where they fit best.
• There is lots of room for contemplation--This is a fun part. You can stare at your creation as long as you like. Then it seems like magic: your hand reaches for your pencil and off you go, creating and having a ball.
• Arranging and rearranging--Oh boy, my favorite part! That's when your story comes alive and your ideas flow, making your story better and better.
• When you're done, it's time to write!

Work Out Character Growth and Theme on Blank Paper

Recently, I decided to chart how my character grew throughout the story. I wanted to make sure I'd shown a gradual change.

• Start with a list: The handwritten list of my main character's growth took up three lined sheets of paper. 
•  Chart the list on blank paper: I split the paper in half. On one side I briefly listed how my character began: as a little girl. On the other side I jotted down how I showed this: she jumped up and down in her seat as her grandpa races his car up and down hills. This briefer list continued to the Turning Point, when her old ways changed to a bolder, more self-confident girl who, at the end, made new friends, solved the mystery, and is ready to go home and get to know her new baby brother.

The same process was used to show the theme. There are, no doubt, more elements that can be tracked in this way, elements which need to be mentioned consistently and accurately. One-of-these-dayz, though, I must stop editing and offer up my book for publication!

Clipart courtesy of: PD4PIC Clipart; laoblogger.com/paper-drawing-clipart.html#

Linda Wilson, a former elementary teacher and ICL graduate, has published over 100 articles for adults and children, and six short stories for children. Recently, she has completed her first book, a mystery/ghost story for children 7-11 years old, and is hard at work on Book Two in the series.  Follow Linda at www.lindawilsonauthor.com.

Finding Writing Ideas

Writers are a wealth of ideas for posts, articles, and story. Many enjoy brainstorming and kicking around notions.  I think it’s always useful to have a topic list for generating ideas. Your journal is a great place to keep & grow your theme ideas.



Twelve topic tips to keep readership interest by promoting a personal connection:
•    What is the hardest thing about being a writer?
•    Who inspired you to start writing?
•    Describe how you establish goals.
•    List the podcasts you value and offer links to those sites.
•    Discuss the hurdles you experience with the craft of writing, and how you worked to overcome weaknesses. (grammar, style, structure, logic)
•    Post your favored writing routine: most productive time(s) of day, scheduling issues, best plan.
•    What was the topmost writing advice you’ve received? Share it.
•    Write about your current project and the progress you are making.
•    How do you research a topic? Discuss your practice and tips.
•    Write a review for a book you have enjoyed or in which you’ve found value.
•    Generate questions for readership participation.
•    Foster a sense of adventure and curiosity as you create and grow a “clipping file” with articles, posts, and newspaper articles that spark your interest and imagination. Share some.

For something more on this topic pick up a copy of “Where Do You Get Your Ideas? A Writer’s Guide to Transforming Notions into Narratives” by Fred White, for fiction and non-fiction.

Deborah Lyn Stanley: blog https://lynstanleyart.com/writers-blog/
Facebook at: Deborah Lyn Stanley (you must sign in to FB first)  https://www.facebook.com/deborah.stanley.393  

Deborah Lyn Stanley is a writer, artist, and editor.  She is a retired project manager who now devotes her time to writing, art and caring for mentally impaired seniors. Deborah writes articles, essays and stories.

 Visit her web-blog: Deborah Lyn Stanley : MyWriter's Life . 

“Write your best, in your voice, your way!”