Tips for Writers and Workshoppers!

Open Mind, Better Workshop

Hey Emerson writers! Welcome to the first month of a new blog written just for you. Each month we’ll offer a new article filled with writing tips and workshop etiquette. This time around, we have some suggestions meant to help you get the most of your writing workshop. I believe in a few necessities that everyone should keep in mind in order to foster a positive workshop environment. The following recommendations should help make workshop experiences more satisfying and worthwhile for both you and your peers.

#1: Always go into every workshop with an open mind. Close mindedness will only dampen the experience for you. I can’t emphasize this enough: every opinion is one to be valued and appreciated, even if you don’t necessarily agree with it. And you don’t have to. But it’s important to respect the advice others are trying to give to you.

The House of Paranormal YA

Marked by Oil, Caught in Love 

Book Review on Marked by P.C. Cast and Kristen Cast

*May contain spoilers!!!

“Zoey Montgomery! Night has chosen thee; thy death will be thy birth. Night calls to thee; hearken to Her sweet voice. Your destiny awaits you at the House of Night!” He lifted one long, white finger and pointed at me” (P.C. and Kristin Cast 3).

Marked by P.C Cast and Kristen Cast is about a sixteen-year-old girl named Zoey who, on top of being a teenager, has to deal with a huge change in her life: being marked as a vampyre. After being marked, Zoey must leave her family and friends to go to a boarding school called “House of Night” where all of the marked teenage vampyres must go to be educated and trained on how to live if they survive the “change.” This change is when fledging vampyres become full, adult vampyres and unfortunately some are killed in the process.

Turning Pages, Changing Channels

Pretty Little Plot Twists

**SPOILERS**

Welcome to the first installment of “Turning Pages, Changing Channels!”  ABC Family’s hit show Pretty Little Liars follows a fourteen book series of the same name written by Sara Shepard.  In the series, a group of girls is haunted by two things: the unsolved murder of their best friend, Alison, and anonymous messages signed by the mysterious and vindictive A that reveal secrets only Alison would have known. However, fans of the books already know the identity of A, so why watch the television series?

Pub Club, Pub World

Hello, and welcome to the first installment of “Pub Club, Pub World”! This is a new section, which I will update all of you lovely blog readers about what’s going on in the world of publishing!

Here's the latest news for this month!

Amazon.com is running a new promotion this month on the mystery writer, Vincent Zandri. According to Zandri, he was promised a run of his book The Innocent in 2008 with a $250,000 advance, but that advance was taken away from him by his publishers. They claimed, as a last minute decision, that Zandri was not a famous name, and without a famous name attached to the book it wouldn’t make any money – no matter how much potential Zandri had initially shown. However, he was instead able to electronically self-publish the book through Amazon, and claims, "I made well beyond the original $250,000 advance from all those years ago, and all without any help from the big publishing houses."

So what does this mean for the publishing industry? The conversion to any eBook platform is becoming more and more appealing to writers everywhere. The print format seems to be slowly dying. If publishers continue to take away the advances from blossoming writers, it seems only logical that they’ll want to self-publish, and eBooks are the easiest format in which to do that. I'll wait while you all cringe.

Author Spotlight: kaleb (worst)

Kaleb (worst) is in his second year at Emerson as a Writing, Literature, and Publishing major. Last semester, his collection of poems, Bad Poetry, was published by Undergraduate Students for Publishing. His work has also been featured in the literary journal, Gangsters in Concrete.

When did you start taking your writing seriously?

I started taking writing seriously when I was a junior in high school. I felt like I was a writer, but I also knew that without discipline and a body of work to show for it, I was fooling myself. So I started my blog A Vicious Square with the intention of posting a poem every day. I created a serious environment for me to experiment and house my work, and it still exists today. My poetry and I have changed a lot since then.

What are you most inspired by?

The familiar cycle of the seasons. Every year Spring comes, and every year it brings a refreshing set of dreams and ideas with it. I’m a fool for nature. Her warm breath and wind fills me up with life easily as a hard winter keeps me down. But everything’s manageable when you know that this too shall pass.

Aspects of Self Publishing

A Brief History of Self-Publishing

Self-publishing has been around for thousands of years. Many of today’s classic and popular novels were self-published. The works of Ben Franklin, William Blake, Virginia Woolf, and Walt Whitman were all self-published.

While self-publishing has been around for thousands of years, it has become increasingly popular in recent years, largely thanks to companies like CreateSpace by Amazon.com, and successful self-published books like Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James. Originally, Fifty Shades was self-published by James via ebook and print on demand (where unless books are bought books are not printed) in 2011. However, due to an overwhelming Internet presence and readership in April of 2012, Fifty Shades of Grey was picked up by Vintage Books, an imprint of Random House, and rereleased to the public.

The Sassy YA Truth

Reasons Why We Love and Hate Series: From a YA and Marketing Standpoint

Winter breaks can sometimes be very productive. After reading over ten books, I came across a common trend that I’ve noticed before, but never really thought in depth about. Series. Why are they always happening? Why does publishing one book and just being done seem so taboo? I will be discussing this, mostly from a Young Adult (YA) standpoint. I’ll sandwich the good and the bad.

Reason 1:

Loving that Journey

Who doesn’t want to follow the same characters as they grow and change? While some readers search for their identity and figure out what’s right for them, the characters in series are following a similar path. It’s nice to be able to turn away from the real world and read about lovable characters. It’s worth the thousands of pages and hours of time put into the reading experience.

Also, many series have tons of action. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, of course, is an example of this. As readers, we are sadistic. We read further to see what Katniss would go through in a second Hunger Games. We follow the journey of how she volunteers as tribute and then builds her strength, overcoming death numerous times. Without all her fighting and resilience, Katniss’ story would not be as engaging. Collins throws us into a world that readers know they probably wouldn’t survive, so they continue the journey until the end of book three to see how she overcomes, or if she will even be able to.