<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	>

<channel>
	<title>Blue Zoo Writers - Online Learning Center</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.bluezoowriters.com/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.bluezoowriters.com</link>
	<description>A Place to Boost Your Writing Career. Seriously.</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Sun, 28 Apr 2013 18:24:49 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en-US</language>
	<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
	<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
	<generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1</generator>
		<item>
		<title>Discover Your Author&#8217;s Brand</title>
		<link>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/discover-your-authors-brand/</link>
		<comments>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/discover-your-authors-brand/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 28 Apr 2013 04:47:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>PhilipMartin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Branding for Writers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marketing for Writers]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.bluezoowriters.com/?p=1890</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Branding is a simple concept. For an author, in a nutshell, it&#8217;s what people expect when they hear your name attached to a book (or story). If you think of the name Mark Twain, or Stephen King, or Toni Morrison, or J.R.R. Tolkien . . . many things likely pop into your head. For me, the name Tolkien conjures up images of a professorial fellow with a pipe, the smile of a raconteur on his face, eager to spin long tales that I suspect I&#8217;d like hear, maybe sitting close by in a comfy easy chair by the fireplace in his study, sipping a little sherry and traveling to a far-off imaginary land . . . This post offers tips to help you think about your brand – how to identify it, strengthen and refine it, and present it to your adoring (right?) fans. There&#8217;s an interesting book I read some years ago that comes to mind to help you think about branding. It&#8217;s called Primal Branding, by Patrick Hanlon, a marketing guru who&#8217;s worked on famous brands like Absolut, LEGO, IBM, and others. His book equates a strong brand with a culture of belief, one that is similar in [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/discover-your-authors-brand/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>29</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Proper Persistence for Writers &#8211; Or How Long Should I Keep Trying To Get Published?</title>
		<link>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/proper-persistence-for-writers/</link>
		<comments>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/proper-persistence-for-writers/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 06 Apr 2013 22:09:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>PhilipMartin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Being a Writer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[How To Get Published]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marketing for Writers]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.bluezoowriters.com/?p=1877</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In emerging-writer discussions, I often hear versions of this question: How long do I keep trying if I&#8217;m not seeing any results in my pitches to agents or publishing houses? There are many ways to approach the answer. You can just buy into Winston Churchill&#8217;s advice to youngsters: &#8220;Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense.&#8221; Yes, there&#8217;s a part of me that appreciates that kind of bulldog stubbornness. I&#8217;d definitely want it if, say, I needed to defend Great Britain from invasion from foes. But in most cases, for writers, the answer is more nuanced. What, to follow Churchill&#8217;s words, is the point at which it makes good sense to give in, lick a few wounds, learn from mistakes, and move on? Yes, I&#8217;m familiar with the stories of writers like Madeleine L&#8217;Engle, whose wonderful novel, A Wrinkle in Time, saw dozens of rejections. Ditto for Jack London, and for others now considered authors of great literature. But honestly, that doesn&#8217;t really tell you how long you should persist. Here&#8217;s my advice, mostly in the form of questions for you [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/proper-persistence-for-writers/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Your Novel Needs a Second Story</title>
		<link>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/your-novel-needs-a-second-story/</link>
		<comments>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/your-novel-needs-a-second-story/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 12 Feb 2013 06:36:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>PhilipMartin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[How To Build a Better Story]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.bluezoowriters.com/?p=1845</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One of the keys of a successful novel is often the presence of two (sometimes more) major storylines. Unfortunately, as a book doctor/novel editor, I often see manuscripts-in-progress that are just too stingy in this regard. I recently read a review of a movie that addressed this very point. Reviewing the movie Warm Bodies, Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, &#8220;But too often [this movie] also badly needed a second big idea to move its [primary] story off the track we expect it to take from the start.&#8221; To put it bluntly, a single storyline, even if well-written from beginning to end, will be thin, predictable, and a little boring. You want the structure of your novel to be less like a one-story ranch house and more like Downton Abbey. Okay, maybe if you can&#8217;t populate it with so many storylines (after all, Julian Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey, is a brilliant and experienced writer, winner of the Academy Award for Best Screenplay, etc.). But at least try to build a functional second story, a place we can go to experience something different than we do on the first floor of your novel&#8217;s house. Why? In How [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/your-novel-needs-a-second-story/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Do You Practice Creative Contemplation?</title>
		<link>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/do-you-practice-creative-contemplation/</link>
		<comments>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/do-you-practice-creative-contemplation/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Jan 2013 21:44:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>PhilipMartin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Being a Writer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[How To Build a Better Story]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[storytelling]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.bluezoowriters.com/?p=1791</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Writers, how patient are you? Do you really listen to what your stories are trying to say before you try to tell them to others? Do you give your stories enough time to grow creatively, to blossom into their fullest form? I read a lot of blogs and group chats about self-publishing. One of the biggest problems I see is the impatience of aspiring novelists to write, finish, and get published. (One of the stranger phenomena in speedy, don&#8217;t-look-back writing is NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month; it encourages writers to create a 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month. Yikes!) Especially in the fantasy field, I run into plenty of newbie authors who have written a trilogy, zooming ahead to sequels full of plot twists and further adventures . . . before having fully contemplated and completed the potential of their first (and most important, career-wise) novel. In contrast, accomplished authors recommend the importance of taking time to reflect, to work through a series of drafts, to put work aside for a time, to come back later to revise. They know that this passage of time involves actively listening to what a story is trying to say, to seek the [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/do-you-practice-creative-contemplation/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Secrets of Goblins and Good Writing</title>
		<link>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/secrets-of-goblins-and-good-writing/</link>
		<comments>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/secrets-of-goblins-and-good-writing/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Dec 2012 06:51:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>PhilipMartin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[How To Use Language Beautifully]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.bluezoowriters.com/?p=1775</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve in the middle of reading, with considerable delight, William Alexander&#8217;s debut fantasy novel Goblin Secrets. It just won a National Book Award for Young People&#8217;s literature, and it&#8217;s a wonderful piece of literary storytelling. I wanted to share one of his chapter starts, as it continues the &#8220;trick of particularity&#8221; point I made in a recent post about the writing of J.R.R. Tolkien, plus some other good writing techniques. At the start of the third chapter, the young central character, Rownie, is sent on an errand to a gear-smith&#8217;s workplace (to fetch some oil for Graba, the witch) : Broken gears and stacks of wood filled the alleyway outside Scrud&#8217;s workshop. Rownie heard shouting inside. He waited in the alley and rooted through some of the mess of gears until the shouting faded to a low mutter. Then he went in. The noise did not actually stop. It never did. Mr. Scrud was always shouting to himself. &#8220;Hello, Mr. Scrud!&#8221; Rownie called out from the doorway, hoping to be noticed now rather than later. The workshop smelled like sawdust and oil, with a rotten smell underneath. Scrud made very good mousetraps, but he never remembered to clean up the [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/secrets-of-goblins-and-good-writing/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Six Writing Tips from J.R.R. Tolkien</title>
		<link>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/six-writing-tips-from-j-r-r-tolkien/</link>
		<comments>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/six-writing-tips-from-j-r-r-tolkien/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 09 Dec 2012 00:39:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>PhilipMartin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Creativity Tips]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[How To Build a Better Story]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[famous writers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[storytelling]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[writing tips]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.bluezoowriters.com/?p=1727</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Are you a fan of The Hobbit? A Lord of the Rings geek? Perhaps you just enjoy a good story, well told. If you’re a writer, here are some tips drawn from Tolkien’s work. Even if they don’t magically transform you into a writer whose work develops a worldwide cult-like following, as did Professor Tolkien’s . . . nonetheless, attention to these principles will improve your writing. 1. Keep those scraps of ideas. A familiar story to those who follow Tolkien’s biography is that The Hobbit “began” many years before its publication in 1937 when, in a moment of odd inspiration, Tolkien jotted down an strange phrase that popped into his mind. It would become the opening line of The Hobbit: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” He scribbled it on the back of a page from a student’s exam booklet (a free source of scratch paper that Tolkien like to use). Of course, he had no idea of what a hobbit was. Nobody did. But Tolkien realized that the curious phrase held some form of delight for him. The key: Be observant. When you encounter an intriguing item, save it. Record those snippets. Cut out [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/six-writing-tips-from-j-r-r-tolkien/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>19</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Thanksgiving with a Twist &#8211; The Power of Words</title>
		<link>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/thanksgiving-with-a-twist-the-power-of-words/</link>
		<comments>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/thanksgiving-with-a-twist-the-power-of-words/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 20 Nov 2012 18:27:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>PhilipMartin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Being a Writer]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.bluezoowriters.com/?p=1716</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;Thanksgiving with a Twist,&#8221; by Moira Allen (reprint from www.Writing-World.com) It&#8217;s traditional, at this time of year, to write an article about the importance of &#8220;giving thanks.&#8221; If you searched the web or browsed the blogosphere about now, you&#8217;d probably find an endless array of articles explaining why it is so important to be thankful for what we have. (. . .) However, there&#8217;s another side to &#8220;thanks-giving&#8221; that isn&#8217;t talked about so often: The issue not of giving thanks, but of receiving them. (. . .) And while reams have been written about the importance of thanking others, very little has been said, it seems to me, about the importance of BEING the sort of person who deserves to be thanked. Yet this is an area in which writers are uniquely qualified. Writers are blessed with endless opportunities to bless others. The work of a writer isn&#8217;t simply to put words on a page. It is to aid, to support, to encourage, to instruct, to inform, to entertain, to guide, to inspire, to uplift. Writers touch lives. Writers transform lives. Writers change the world. In fact, when I decided to Google that thought, I found so many examples that [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/thanksgiving-with-a-twist-the-power-of-words/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>November Hodgepodge &#8211; Being a Writer</title>
		<link>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/november-hodgepodge-being-a-writer/</link>
		<comments>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/november-hodgepodge-being-a-writer/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 11 Nov 2012 16:23:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>PhilipMartin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Being a Writer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Daily Discipline]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Literary Hodgepodge]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[famous writers]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.bluezoowriters.com/?p=1693</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Don&#8217;t, please, get precious about your working methods. . . . The more you humor your inadequacies by compensating with phony environment, the tougher your work will become. You have to be in a mood. I grant that. But if you haven&#8217;t the understanding of yourself to be in any mood when you wish – then don&#8217;t fool around with the mood business. Be an automobile salesman. I would like you to be able to write as well as you can with pen, pencil, and typewriter, in tree houses, boiler factories, and on subway trains. I insist you must be able to write as well as you can with a stomach-ache, a crying baby, a paving drill going – and on a typewriter that has a non-functioning &#8220;e&#8221; and an inoperable backspace. If you want and need to. Then – for your regular surroundings – any moderately quiet, well-ventilated room with an ordinary typewriter table and chair will be paradisiacal. – Philip Wylie (1902–1971), co-author of When Worlds Collide (1932) I can&#8217;t decide for you whether or not you have got to write, but if anything in the world, war, or pestilence, or famine, or private hunger, or anything, can [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/november-hodgepodge-being-a-writer/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Cat Sat on the Mat &#8211; John le Carré on Plotting</title>
		<link>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/the-cat-sat-on-the-mat-john-le-carre-on-plotting/</link>
		<comments>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/the-cat-sat-on-the-mat-john-le-carre-on-plotting/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 10 Nov 2012 16:50:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>PhilipMartin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[How To Build a Better Story]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[How To Develop Strong Characters]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[famous writers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[plotting a novel]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.bluezoowriters.com/?p=1682</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[John le Carré is the pen name of David John Moore Cornwell, the British author of espionage novels, including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Russia House; The Tailor of Panama; The Constant Gardener, and many others. He worked briefly for British intelligence, MI5 and MI6, in the 1950s and 1960s. As he tells on his website: &#8220;In the old days it was convenient to bill me as a spy turned writer. I was nothing of the kind. I am a writer who, when I was very young, spent a few ineffectual but extremely formative years in British Intelligence.” From a 1997 interview with Cornwell in the Paris Review with George Plimpton, the author said that after teaching (at Eton): In all I don’t suppose that I spooked around for more than seven or eight years . . . but that was my little university for the purposes that I needed later to write. I think that if I’d gone to sea at that time I would have written about the sea. If I’d gone into advertising or stockbroking, that would have been my stuff. It was from there that I began abstracting [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/the-cat-sat-on-the-mat-john-le-carre-on-plotting/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Alert to Writers Using Facebook for Marketing</title>
		<link>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/alert-to-writers-using-facebook-for-marketing/</link>
		<comments>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/alert-to-writers-using-facebook-for-marketing/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 06 Nov 2012 20:38:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>PhilipMartin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Marketing for Writers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social media for writers]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.bluezoowriters.com/?p=1648</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Facebook is no longer as free and open as you may think. Did you know that the average post you do on Facebook now reaches only 12%–14% of your friends? The FB marketing director defended this, saying, &#8220;There are pieces of content you create that are interesting, and there’s some that are not.” Per their Oct. 3 announcement: Facebook will now &#8220;allow&#8221; users to pay $7 to make their posts &#8220;more visible&#8221; in friends’ News Feeds. (Later in this post, I&#8217;ll note several things you can do to deal with this.) It&#8217;s true. As of October, Facebook is offering you the &#8220;opportunity&#8221; to &#8220;Promote&#8221; any given post. What this means: per post . . . you pay $7, and they&#8217;ll push that specific post higher in your Friends news feeds. The dark underbelly: to make this more compelling, they are cutting off, through a magical algorithm called EdgeRank, many of our friends&#8217; posts, so they never appear in our News Feed! How bad is it now? For instance, a page I run for Crickhollow Books has 452 Likes. But a recent post (announcing a new book just released) was seen by only 7 people. (That&#8217;s less than 2%.) The Facebook [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.bluezoowriters.com/alert-to-writers-using-facebook-for-marketing/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>
