#Hashtags for #Writers

If you’re on any form of social media, then there is zero chance that you’re managed to avoid hashtags. These are words (or phrases all mashed together) with a hash sign (or number sign - #) stuck on the front.

Hashtags are a great way of finding posts, pictures, articles, or just about anything else because they give you keywords to search on. Looking for writing prompts? Search on the #writingprompt tag, and bam, you’ll find tons of them.

But there are gazillions of hashtags out there, and finding the ones you want aren’t always easy. To help you out, here’s a list of some of the most common and useful hashtags for writers.

Writing Motivation

Looking for ways to get motivated to write? Check these out:

#1K1H – Can you write 1000 words in one hour? Of course you can!

#CampNaNoWriMo – A laid back camping retreat (all online, of course)

#MondayMotivation – Start your week off right

#NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month (November)

#sixwordstory – Write a story using six or fewer words

#StoryStarter

#TuesdayMotivation

#vss365 – Write a Very Short Story, 365 days a year

#WordAThon

#wordsprints – How many words can you cram into just a few minutes?

#WriteGoal

#WriteMotivation

#WriteTip

#writingblitz

#writingparty

#WritingPrompt – For when you can’t think of anything to write

#writingsprint

#WritingTip

Show Off Your Writing (or Someone Else’s)

Ready to share your writing with the world? Want to give a shout out to a great book you just read? Looking for ideas on what to read next? Take a look:

#99c – Buy books for only 99 cents (usually Kindle or other eBooks)

#AuthorRT

#BookBuzz

#BookGiveaway

#BookMarket

#BookMarketing

#FreeBook

#FreeDownload

#FreeReads

#FridayReads

#GreatReads

#KindleBargain

#MustRead

#Novelines

#SampleSunday

#SaturdayShoutout

#WhatToRead

Genres

Everyone has their own personal favorites when it comes to genres. Find yours here:

#Biopic

#Erotica

#FanFic

#FlashFic

#History

#Horror

#KidLitChat

#MemoirChat

#MGLit – Middle grade

#ownvoices

#Paranormal

#PBLitChat – Picture books

#poems

#Poetry

#PoetTues

#Romance

#RomanceChat

#RomanticSuspense

#SciFiChat

#Scriptchat

#SteampunkChat

#TVWriterChat

#UrbanFantasy

#WomensFiction

#YA – Young Adult

#YALitChat

#ZineChat

Writing Communities

Find other authors with the same interests as you, and get to know them in a laid back, informal setting:

#AmEditing

#amwriting

#BlackBookChat

#BookWorm

#IndieAuthor

#IndieAuthors

#KidLitChat

#KindleChat

#LitChat

#lovewriting

#RomanceWriter

#teenauthors – One of my favorites! I just wish it got used more

#WordCount

#write

#WriteChat

#writer

#writers

#writersblock

#WritersLife

#writersnetwork

#writersofinstagram

#WritersRoad

#WriterWednesday – Also #WW

#writing

#writingcommunity – This one has really exploded recently

#writinglife

#youngauthors – Another one of my favorites!

Independent and Self-Publishing

Here are some great hashtags for those who want to go the self-publishing route:

#D2D

#eBook

#EBooks

#ePubChat

#eReaders

#IndiePub (or #IndiePublishing)

#IndieThursday

#KDP

#Kindle

#Kobo

#SelfPub

#SelfPublishing

#SmashWords

Traditional Publishing

These hashtags aren’t exclusive to traditional publishing, but you’ll find a lot of professional authors, agents, and editors hanging out here:

#AskAgent

#AskAuthor

#AskEditor

#CopyWriting

#Editing

#EditorChat

#GetPublished

#MSWL – Manuscript Wish List, where agents and editors post what they want

#PromoTip

#Publishing

#PubTip

#RWA – Romance Writers of America

#SCBWI – Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators

Odds and Ends

#Books

#StoryFriday

#TeaserTues

#ThursdayThoughts

#TuesdayThoughts

#TuesdayTreat

#WednesdayWisdom

#word

#wordgasm

#wordporn

#words

This is far from a complete list of all the hashtags floating around out there for authors, but it should be plenty to get you started.

If you have any other favorite hashtags you want to add to the list, please leave a comment. I’d love to see them!

C. Wombat

6 Tips for Handling Rejection

If you’re an author, unless you’re the most brilliant author in the history of the universe (and perhaps even then), you are going to get rejected. Disappointing? Yes, but not the end of the world. Here is some advice on how to deal with it.

Don’t Take It Personally

Rejection happens. It is an absolute fact of life, not only in writing but in everything we do. Nobody is going to like what you have to say or the way you say it every single time. Some people may never like it. But others will. You just have to find the right person.

One of the most difficult pieces of rejection to get is when an agent or editor tells you they liked—or even loved—your writing, but they still don’t accept it. They’ll explain that it just isn’t the right fit for them, or not what they want right now, or too similar to something else they have already accepted.

While those may seem like brush offs, chances are what they are saying is 100% percent true. Agents and editors won’t tell you they liked your story if they didn’t. They don’t have time to waste on that. A positive rejection means you are very close to success. You just have to keep trying.

Consider Criticism with an Open Mind

If you are lucky enough to receive specific criticism, don’t get offended, and don’t ignore it. The person who sent you those comments took time out of their extremely busy schedule because they felt your writing was good enough to merit it.

Look carefully at what the rejection says. Don’t take it as an attack on you or your work, but as a suggestion, just like you would from a critique partner or beta reader. Consider it with an open mind. And then decide if you agree. If you do agree, make some changes. If you don’t agree, don’t. The next editor or agent may like your story exactly the way it is now.

Take a Short Break

Take a few minutes, a few hours, even a few days to do anything other than writing, or stewing over the latest rejection. Go for a walk. Go out to dinner with friends or your family. Take in the latest moving or binge watch past episodes of your favorite show. Get out of the house for the weekend and go somewhere.

Take a little bit of time to recharge your batteries, and to let the sting of rejection fade. Then take a deep breath, and dive right back in. If the rejection included a personal note, reread it and see if it’s worth addressing. If not, move on. Identify your next set of targets, and set out another round of queries.

A short break can help a lot, but keep it short. It is far too easy for a few days off to turn into weeks, months, even years. Don’t let that happen.

Write Something New

You may think the story or book that just got rejected is the best thing you have ever written. And it may be. But that doesn’t mean it is the best thing you will ever write.

Always have another project in progress, or waiting to be started. You should already be writing something new while you’re waiting to hear back on your last set of queries anyway. Use the power and energy of creation, of crafting an even better story, to help get you past the disappointment of rejection.

Don’t be afraid to send different works out to the same agents and editors, either. The first story might not have resonated with them, but they may absolutely adore the second.

Silence Your Biggest Critic

Even the most brilliant, egotistical, bombastic blowhard harbors self-doubt. For those of us mere mortals, we live our lives surrounded by doubt on every side. Receiving a rejection is just one more excuse for us to think the least of ourselves and our abilities.

Don’t fall into that trap. Take your self-doubt, slap it around a little bit, and kick it to the wayside. It isn’t doing you any good. A rejection does not mean you are a bad writer—some of the best and most prolific writers racked up hundreds of rejections before making their first sale.

And even famous, extensively published authors get rejected. Jane Yolen, award-winning author of more than 370 books for children, still receives rejections. Here’s what she has to say about it:¹

Some rejections I curse the editor for being dense, uncaring, lying, or incompetent. Some I curse publishing in general, its emphasis on bestsellerdom, its attention to bottom line, its incapacity for surprise. Occasionally I curse myself: I’m not good enough for the idea. I was too facile. I sent it to the wrong editor. I am too demanding, not demanding enough. 

But I did the only thing possible, given a rejection. I turned right around and sent the little picture books off again, by email, to someone else.

A Rejection is a Win

It may not seem like it, but being rejected is not the worst thing that could happen to you as a writer. Not receiving rejections is.

If you never receive a rejection, it almost certainly means you never submitted your work in the first place. You never sent a query. You never even tried.

The only sure way to guarantee that you will never be published is to never try. Accept rejections for what they are: proof that you are trying, and will keep trying, until you succeed.

C. Wombat

¹ Taken from Jane Yolen’s For Writers: Frequently Asked Questions.

Are Adverbs Evil?

Writers use adverbs. From great writers to horrible writers, best sellers to those who will never be published, every writer uses adverbs.

So why do so many writers hate adverbs? Why do you so often see the advice to avoid them?

What Are Adverbs?

Hopefully you already know this one. Much like an adjective modifies a noun, an adverb is “a word or phrase that modifies or qualifies an adjective, verb, or other adverb or a word group, expressing a relation of place, time, circumstance, manner, cause, degree, etc.” A lot of folks think adverbs only modify verbs, but note that they can modify other things too, including adjectives.

For example: The dog ran quickly down the road.

Here’s, it’s obvious that quickly is an adverb. It tells us how the dog ran.

Example 2: The cat had unusually shiny fur.

Here, shiny is an adjective (it modifies the noun, fur), while unusually is an adverb that modifies the adjective (it modifies shiny, telling us more about the shininess of the fur).

Many adverbs are easy to spot because they end in -ly, but not all of them do.

Why Are They Bad?

So, if adverbs exist (and they certainly do), and every writer uses them, why do they tell you not to use them?

The answer isn’t that adverbs are evil. They are overused. In particular, they are used to shore up weak verbs or adjectives, rather than finding a stronger word to begin with.

Back to our first example. The dog ran quickly down the road.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the sentence. By itself, it’s a perfectly understandable sentence. But as authors, we’re not going just for understandable. We want to craft lyrical, amazing sentences that capture the reader’s attention and make them say, “Wow, this is an incredible story!”

So how do we do that? Use stronger, more descriptive nouns and adjectives.

The dog dashed down the road. The dog scampered down the road. The dog raced down the road.

Every one of these sentences conveys a sense of running quickly, but because speed is already built into the verbs, no adverb is needed. We don’t need to write that the dog raced quickly down the road, because it’s difficult to imagine that it raced slowly down the road.

Overused Adverbs

Here’s a short list of frequently overused (and misused) adverbs:

very

really

totally

literally

often

actually

probably

suddenly

usually

kind of

extremely

truly

hopefully

perfectly

There are many others that you might overuse yourself, but these tend to be common to many writers. And in many cases, they can be eliminated.

Adverbs Aren’t Evil

There is nothing wrong with adverbs. They exist for a reason. But if you overuse them, your writing will look sloppy and amateur. Cut as many as you can, so that the adverbs you do choose to keep enhance your writing, rather than detract from it.

One rule of thumb is no more than one adverb per 300 words of text. For a standard letter-sized page, doubled spaced, 1” margins, and 12-point font, that means about one adverb per page.

If you use a few more, you may be safe. If you use a lot more, be prepared for criticism.

But don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t use any adverbs at all. They’re part of the language, and they aren’t evil.

C. Wombat

You Have Five Senses – Use Them!

When you’re asked to describe something, what is your automatic first response? For most of us, we start talking about how it looks. We focus on light, color, texture.

Many authors are the same way. Their books are full of wonderful visual descriptions of people and places. You can almost see yourself in the picture.

But can you hear the picture? Smell it? We have five senses, and as a writer it’s up to you to use them.

Hearing

Close your eyes for a minute and listen to the world around you. Eyes open again? Good. Okay, so what did you hear?

I hear the quiet whir of my computer’s fan, muffled voices coming through the wall, a distant rumble as the furnace turns on.

What does that tell you about my setting?

Obviously, I’m not at Starbucks. I’m not out dancing, or hanging out with friends, or running for my life from a horde of zombies.

Force your characters to close their eyes and listen. Start with the loud, obvious sounds. A plane flying overhead (or a dragon). A jackhammer. Car horns. Swords crashing against shields.

Not only will your readers learn more about your setting, but your characters will, too. The quiet scuff of a foot on the carpet might be the only thing that saves them from the serial killer sneaking up on them.

Having them hear their completely non-romantic best friend whisper “I love you” can change the entire tone of your book. Be sure to listen for it.

Touch

Very often, we can guess what something feels like just by looking at it, and from past experience. A cat’s fur is usually soft and warm, fire is hot, sandpaper is coarse. We don’t need to touch them to know that.

But there are many things that are less obvious. Run your fingers along the wall-is it smooth, textured, rough, warm, cool, damp, slimy?

Is the ground under your feet hard-packed dirt or soft loam? Is the concrete rough or smooth? Does the sandy beach scorch your bare feet, or push coldly up between your toes?

Touch can be an especially strong tool when it’s unexpected. Elegant looking clothes that turn out stiff and scratchy. A metal doorknob that is burning hot because of a fire on the far side, or icy cold because of a ghost.

Smell

We often ignore our sense of smell because we don’t consider it that important. Just as often, we wish we could ignore it because something really stinks. But as a writer, you need to pay attention, especially when you want to feed your characters vital clues.

The faint whiff of gasoline warns of impending arson. The odor of decay promises that the missing camper is nearby, and not as healthy as you had hoped. The alluring scent of perfume rising from the envelope tells you this isn’t hate mail, but far from it.

Smell is also an incredibly strong provoker of memories. The right smell can send you years into your past, to the heavenly aroma of your grandmother’s kitchen whenever she baked cinnamon rolls, or to the sharp antiseptic bite of the hospital room where you held her hand as she slipped away.

Taste

Taste can be one of the hardest senses to use when building descriptions. Let’s face it, other than when we eat, we don’t rely on our sense of taste much at all. But it shouldn’t be overlooked, either.

When your characters kiss, do they taste salty sweat, cherry lip balm, steel braces, sour unbrushed teeth? A bloody lip may taste salty and metallic. You may taste the ozone from an electrical discharge more than you smell it.

And by all means, when your characters are eating, describe how it tastes, especially if it is new, different, delicious, horrible, anything but normal.

Sight

Naturally, vision is very important, and we should never lose sight of it (pun fully intended). But be sure to look past the surface. Search for those tiny details that take your readers beyond the normal, everyday world and immerse them fully in your creation.

While you could fill a book with descriptions that are purely visual, it will be incomplete. Force your readers to experience your writing with all five of their senses, and you’ll keep them coming back for more.

C. Wombat

7 Ways to Boost Your Writing Productivity

Every once in a while, I find myself with extra time on my hands and nothing much to do.

But most of the time, I’m scrambling simply to make it through the day without letting anything important slip. Chances are, you’re in the same boat.

Between school, work, family, clubs, sports, friends, and everything else, there’s often not much time left to write. That means you need to make the most of the limited time you have.

Here are seven tips on getting the most out of your writing time.

Limit Social Media

It’s easy to spend hours on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and other social media platforms. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with social media—many successful authors are on it all the time—it can quickly consume all of your writing time. Don’t let it.

Set yourself a goal: “I can’t go on Instagram until I’ve written 500 words.”

Make sure it’s practical and achievable. If your goal is too hard to reach, you’ll ignore it. But don’t make it too easy, either.

Or instead of a goal, set a time limit. Set your phone’s timer for 15 minutes before you go online. When the timer goes off, it’s time to shut down your apps and get back to writing.

Have a Writing Spot

One of the best ways to focus on writing is to have a special writing spot. Make sure it is comfortable, well enough lit, and quiet enough that you can concentrate.

If possible, pick a spot that you use only for writing. Don’t do anything else there. No email, no texting, no social media. Don’t even read books there. Use it only for writing. By not using that spot for anything else, it can help you focus just on writing whenever you’re there.

Have a Writing Time

With our hectic schedules, it can be tough to pick out one particular time to use for writing every day. But if you can do it, it will help you focus.

It doesn’t matter what time you pick, as long as it works for you. Many writers are best first thing in the morning. Many authors write better just before bed. Right before or after supper is often a good, consistent time.

Naturally, that doesn’t mean you can’t write at other times. But having a consistent time to write ensures you fit at least some writing time into your schedule almost every day.

Take a Break

Does not writing actually make you more productive as a writer? Well, sometimes it can.

If you’re only writing for 15 or 20 minutes a day, breaks aren’t important. But if you do manage to sit down for a longer session, they can make a huge difference. Especially when you’re stuck.

Get up. Stretch. Get a drink or snack. Go for a walk. Exercise not only rejuvenates your body, it helps clear your mind. While you’re being physically active, your mind will relax and the ideas will begin to flow.

Just don’t take so many breaks that you never get any writing done.

Build a Playlist

This one depends a lot on you. Some writers work best when it’s quiet. But many others like to listen to music as they write.

Music speaks to the creative areas of your brain and may be just what you need to get those writing juices flowing.

But not all music works equally well. Your favorite songs, the ones you have to sing along with, may distract you rather than help you. Pick songs that blend into the background.

Select songs that promote a particular mood. Writing something lighthearted and funny? Pick upbeat songs. Writing a zombie apocalypse? Something darker is called for.

Experiment with volume, too. Some people write better to quiet music; others like it loud.

Keep a Journal

A journal is helpful on so many levels. Not only is it good, constant writing practice, but it’s the best place to record all of those great ideas that pop into your head at random times.

Whenever you’re stuck on a story or a scene, flip through your journal. Somewhere in there is the answer. Ideas tucked away into corners weeks, months, or even years ago will leap out at just the right time to get you back on track.

Find a Writing Buddy

Writing by its very nature is a solitary pursuit. Yes, some authors collaborate, but even then, most writing gets done separately. And because writing is solitary, it has some drawbacks.

Most of the time there’s no accountability. Unless you’ve managed to land a paid writing job, there’s no one looking over your shoulder to make sure you’re getting the job done. When you write by yourself, it’s easy to slack off, set the work aside, and not get much accomplished.

A writing buddy is someone who can pester you on a regular basis to see how your story is coming. They are someone you can bounce ideas off of. Once you have finished your story, they can give you feedback. And you do exactly the same to keep them on track, too.

Your writing time is limited. Make the most of it.