Flash Fiction Blogfest 2011

Cherie Reich of Surrounded by Books is holding her first Flash Fiction Blogfest on May 6. Come join in the fun and/or support your fellow writers. It's sure to be a blast. Refreshments, live music, and prizes. Okay, no drinks or singers, but there are Prizes. Visit the site for more information on how to enter and what you can win.

eTreasures Publishing

eTreasures Publishing once focused on romance novels, but times are changing. The company now offers a wide variety of fiction. A few of their more well-known authors are Pepper O’Neal, Lea Schizas, and Jamieson Wolf.

eTreasures Publishing is open to taking on new writers. If you have a manuscript ready to go, visit their submissions page for guidelines. Become a part of the eTreasures Publishing family.

Make Writing a Habit

If you have a writing habit, you’ve got a great foundation as a writer.

If you struggle to find the time to write, keep putting it off, or can’t seem to write when planned, you need a writing habit.

Forming a habit, at least a good one, isn’t something that happens overnight. It takes time and persistence to create a new habit. But as anyone with a bad habit knows, once you have the habit it’s hard to break it.

How long does it take to form a habit? Some say a week, 21 days, 28 days. Go with 30 days. By the end of a month, the habit should be fixed.

How do you create a habit?

• Focus – Do not try to create more than one habit at once. Focus will keep you on track and moving forward.

• A trigger – Every habit has a trigger. A smoker smokes when they wake up, after meals, during times of stress. Find a trigger to set off you habit.

• Same time every day – To form a habit, this is very important. If you are lenient with this, you may find it easier to skip a day or two. You ran out of time. This is more important. Excuses are made. But if you have a certain time set up, writing will be the Focus, and the Trigger will set it off.

• Start small – Begin with thirty minutes a day. This can be increased over the thirty days, but start out small. You don’t want to overwhelm yourself.

• No exceptions – Don’t make excuses to skip one day here, two days there. If you do skip two days in a role, start over. If the house blows up, sure skip a day, but get right back on it the next.

• A log – After each day’s writing, note the amount of words you cranked out. (This is optional, as some will see this as a second goal, but it seems to me to be part of the goal and can provide motivation as you see the numbers rise.

• Don’t edit – Writing is the habit you are shooting for. Focus on the writing. (Some writers edit as they go. If this is the case, you are the exception to the rule.) If you are a new writer, Focus on the writing. You can create the habit of editing next month.

What counts as writing? Anything can, but you will have to decide what’s important. I write every day, blog posts, emails, various articles, but procrastinate when it comes to my novel or short stories. So, the habit I have to create is fiction writing. Determine your goals. If you want to write a novel, your Focus should be on the novel. For thirty minutes a day, for thirty days, write your novel. By the end of the month, you’ll have a short novella, or the bulk of a novel written, depending on your writing speed.

And remember, with practice, you will be writing more on day thirty than you did on day one. In thirty days, you will be an active writer.

Let’s go form a writing habit. Good luck!

Adding a Contact Form on Blogger

Sometimes your readers want to contact you outside of your blog. Your email address may not be enough. A quick solution is to add a contact form to your contact page. With Google forms, this can be easy and quick to do.

• Go to http://doc.google.com/

• Click Create new and pick template from the drop down menu. (If you’d like to create your own, choose form from the drop down menu.

• Search for contact form and choose a suitable template, click use this template. Make appropriate changes to the title and summary.

• Click on More Actions and choose embedded from the drop down menu. This supplies you with the information you need to put the form onto your blog. Copy this information. Leave the edit page open, you will need to come back.

• Now go to your blog. Create a new page. Insert coding into page, along whatever else you’d like on the page. Publish. If you’d like to change the size of the form, simply look for: height=”680″ and width=”450″ in the code and change the numbers to the size you wish.

• You need to know when someone comments. On the Google page, go to “see responses”, and click on spreadsheet from the menu. Click on “Share”, and then set up notifications. Set rules as required.

You're all set for your readers to make a personal connection with you.