Got Author Picture?

When I speak or do writing workshops, I often use PowerPoint slides with pictures as well as bullet points. I almost always put in one of my current head shots, and as a side piece of advice I'll say, "Get a good author picture taken."

Authors who create a head shot by cropping themselves from a snapshot, or get their kid to shoot one, almost always get a result that screams, "Cheapskate amateur!"

You'll use your head shot not just on the jacket of any book you write, but for your web site, social media pages, promo for readings and other gigs, etc. You want one that makes you look professional, therefore

you need professional help. [Photo by Thomas Bender.]

Take my advice:

1) Look into local photographers. Check out their work, ask questions. For my most recent shots, I chose a friend who's a professional news photographer.

2) Pick a day well in advance, and book the photographer for just after lunchtime.

3) Book a hair appointment and a makeup appointment for that morning. I asked my makeup artist for a natural look, and after about an hour of intense effort, he achieved it. Guys too should consider a professional makeup job, to even out their skin tones.

4) For girls, buy a tube of the same lipstick your makeup artist uses, so you can refresh your lips after drinking or eating. For guys, unless your artist puts lip color on you, use Chap Stick or such to keep your lips from looking dry.

My photographer came to my house with portable lights and reflectors. We tried different settings—dining-room table, chair in the living room, outdoors. The key to being a good subject is to relax. At times I tried to conjure feelings of amusement, love, and enthusiasm, and that seemed to work.

What to wear? Simple is best. Remember your picture might be viewed in a small online format, so gorpy stuff won't scan. Light colors help bring out your face and your hair color. A dark shirt or top can, when viewed in a thumbnail on line, just look like a dark blob or shadow.

Today's digital photography is a godsend compared to olden times, when you pretty much had to sit for a studio portrait. The guy would take six exposures, and you'd look stiff in all of them. You'd pick the least-horrible one and live with it.

A good photographer today will make dozens, if not hundreds, of exposures, shooting rapidly at times to capture the nuances of their subject's fleeting expressions. I'm not naturally photogenic, so it was great to have hundreds of shots to choose from. I tell audiences that of the 400 shots the photographer took, in 396 of them I look like Norman Bates's mother. Always good for a laugh. But we caught lightning in a bottle a few times. My agent, upon seeing the shots I chose, exclaimed, "You actually look warm and professional!"

Tell us what you think! To post your ideas / comments, all of which I read and try to respond to, click below where it says, 'No Comments,' or '2 Comments,' or whatever.

If you'd like to receive this blog automatically as an email, look to the right, above my bio, and subscribe there. Thanks for looking in.

The Zen Challenge for Writers

The first time I read, as a child, Rudyard Kipling's poem 'If—' I loved it, but didn't fully understand it. Sure, some critics dismiss the poem as middle-brow corn, but not me. I admire stoicism and generosity of spirit, and the poem celebrates those things. But the real meaning of the lines, "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two impostors just the same" eluded me. Who the hell could ever equate triumph and disaster? Must be some metaphor in there that I'm missing.

When I learned that those two lines are inscribed above the players' entrance to Centre Court at Wimbledon, I thought, there must be more to it than I think.

It was only after I studied Zen and other spiritual texts that I realized those lines of the poem are meant to be taken literally. Everything changes; everything passes. Therefore everything is the same; therefore everything is sublime.

It's a great lesson for writers, who tend to live and die by the opinions of others. You know:

Good review = happiness

Bad review = despair

Same holds for remarks from writing-group buddies. Same holds for rejection by an agent or an editor.

The more you write, the more material you put out there, the more you hear from critics. The Zen challenge of being a writer is to treat the one-stars and the five-stars just the same.

For real. For true freedom as a writer.

Tell me what you think! To post your ideas / comments, all of which I read and try to respond to, click below where it says, 'No Comments,' or '2 Comments,' or whatever.

If you'd like to receive this blog automatically as an email, look to the right, above my bio, and subscribe there. Thanks for looking in.

[photo of arguably beautiful ruined building by ES]

Ripped From the Headlines

"Where do you get your ideas?"

"How do you get your juices flowing?"

Common questions for a professional writer, and they have a million answers.

Last weekend I led a writing-prompt session at a conference. I decided to use the morning paper as my theme, hoping it would yield enough material to keep a group of writers busy for an hour. Busy, that is, expanding their creativity and learning just how painless it is to find good story material.

I picked up coffee and a paper on my way to the conference, then spent a half hour skimming through it and making notes. I'd never done this before, and was happy to find how ridiculously easy it was to come up with prompts.

BTW, a writing prompt is simply a little story opening or scenario, to use as a jumping-off place for a writing session. The point is, you don't have to fight to write.

In the spirit of turning swords into ploughshares, I ripped out a few pieces of dispassionate news and turned them into compelling prompts using my stormwriting cues of 'Yes, and—' and 'What if?'

There was an article in the sports pages about a local skating pair who was competing at the U.S. Olympic trials. What if, I thought, they're a married couple, and what if the man is having an affair with their coach? Yes, and just as they're about to take the ice, he asks for a divorce. (So yes, coming up with writing prompts is a creative endeavor in and of itself.)

That was the first scenario I prompted my little group of writers with, suggesting they too use 'Yes, and—' and 'What if?' to take it away. When it came time to share aloud (never mandatory) I was amazed at how varied their ideas were.

One wrote a scene where it turns out both skaters were having an affair with the coach; one wrote a rinkside scene in which the woman was totally relieved that this jerk is finally asking for a divorce; another constructed a quick skate-blade murder after the competition.

A classified ad for a lost camera provided fodder for another exercise: What if you find it? What if you look at the pictures on it? Yes, and then you have to decide what to do about it. Ready, go.

Every page of that paper contained stories and ideas for stories. The real lesson? Any writer can use the 

news. Simply:

1) Look

2) Look deeper

3) Identify a possible tangent

4) Write it!

Can you think of a writing prompt based on a current headline? Have you ever come across a particularly memorable prompt?

Tell us. To post your ideas / comments, all of which I read and try to respond to, click below where it says, 'No Comments,' or '2 Comments,' or whatever.

If you'd like to receive this blog automatically as an email, look to the right, above my bio, and subscribe there. Thanks for looking in.

[photo of frightening Spanish conquistador weaponry by ES]

5 Great Things About Being a Writer in Florida

#5:  You can write outdoors year-round. Sure, it's hot in the summer, but all you really need is a tank top and some shade. An iced beverage helps, but is not essential.

  

#4:  For various good reasons, Florida attracts vastly more than its demographic share of criminals, degenerates, and trashy imbeciles. Thus you need go no further than the radio, newspapers, and billboards to find terrific story fodder.

#3:  Florida levies no state income tax, useful for when you become a multi-millionaire from your writing.

#2:  Beta-testing your writing aloud is easy in Florida. Drive in any direction for five minutes and you will encounter an assisted-living facility. Walk in, find the rec room, and start reading. You will have an attentive audience. If you actually do get feedback, it'll be honest.

#1:  The state has wonderful groups and organizations for writers, especially the Florida Writers Association. The first time I went to the annual FWA conference I was a presenter—and a stranger. Afterward, I had new friends. Most of all, I was impressed by the we-are-all-cheerleaders-for-one-another spirit I found there.

Tomorrow and Saturday I'll be presenting at FWA's mini-conference in Bradenton, as will other experienced workshoppers from around the state. Gobs of aspiring writers will be there! If you stop by, I bet you'll make friends too.

[Photo of lonely beach by ES]

Tell me what you think! To post your ideas / comments, all of which I read and try to respond to, click below where it says, 'No Comments,' or '2 Comments,' or whatever.

If you'd like to receive this blog automatically as an email, look to the right, above my bio, and subscribe there. Thanks for looking in.

Training My Dragon

I'm dictating this post using the voice recognition software Dragon Naturally Speaking. I ordered this software when I started having problems with a shoulder that was preventing me from writing and typing easily. Prior to this I was using the voice recognition software that came with my Windows package on my laptop. The Windows software had a hard time understanding my speech; it garbled words and missed punctuation marks, and I found I had to go back and make way too many corrections for the exercise to be worthwhile.

Dragon is definitely a superior product. I ordered it, by the way, on Amazon for under $50. The main thing I found amazing is a feature whereby during setup, it will scan your document files and pick up unique words and phrases and constructions that you personally use. It's as if it's checking your idiosyncrasies and incorporating them into its own little brain. This is extremely useful. For instance, I'm writing a novel that features a character with the first name of Shirlene. The first time I used that name in dictation, Dragon got it right, including capitalization, having read it during its initial scan of the novel's master file.

I might add that I'm using my USB microphone headset instead of the jack-type one that came in the box, having seen reviews where this is recommended.

It certainly takes getting used to and can feel very awkward at first. There's a tutorial that helps you, of course. I find myself, while using Dragon, dictating and then correcting by hand as I go, learning more sophisticated commands along the way, and that will lessen my dependency on hand correction over time. My need for corrections is much less than with the Windows program. (Right here, another for instance, Dragon automatically capitalized Windows, sensing my 'commercial' use of it.) I find myself most annoyed by Dragon's lack of ability to understand when I want to use a contraction, such as 'I'm'. OK, I just dictated that word, I'm, again, and it got it right. I enunciated it a little bit better that time. I also just tried over-enunciating the word and it turned it into "I aim". The voice commands for using the edit functions and moving the cursor are quite user-friendly.

The real challenge for me is the very act of dictation. I'm amazed at how different the experience is from writing longhand or typing. There's a whole different neural pathway from your brain to your mouth than from your brain to your hands. I sort of knew that already, and have been looking forward to this experience. I've found that one huge key is to not look at the screen while I'm dictating, because the words appear on the screen with some measure of delay. When I look away from the screen while talking, as right now, my thoughts seem to flow much more easily.

I think I'll get best results if I do a whole bunch of dictation, as in whole pages, then go back and do corrections later. Correcting as I go is a flow-killer. This is definitely the kind of thing where repeated, constant practice yields great rewards.

So, thumbs-up on Dragon. I intend to make another post about all this after I've gotten more comfortable with the software and used it for dictating large amounts of new material; in my case that's going to be mostly fiction.

[Photo of Dragon Gate, Chinatown, San Francisco by ES.]

Tell me what you think! To post your ideas / comments, all of which I read and try to respond to, click below where it says, 'No Comments,' or '2 Comments,' or whatever.

If you'd like to receive this blog automatically as an email, look to the right, above my bio, and subscribe there. Thanks for looking in.