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| Everything Changes, Including Language ☕️ ♥️
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March 18, 2022
Oakland, CA
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| | You're the captain on a sailing ship, bobbing on the high seas. Blue sky above, dark green waters all around.
You lift an eyeglass to peer through, searching for signs of land you know are out there.
Anything, a seagull, a mountain peak -- anything would be welcome.
The wind is in the sails, pushing you and your crew to the wild unknown in front of you.
Yet, behind you -- the steady chant of your crew working on the sails, the waves rocking the boat -- familiar sounds that all is well with ship and crew.
Even though the unknown is all around, you can take solace that many things work as they always do.
Yet, change is the only constant...
What we do about the change defines who we are.
Some things I learned and some steps I'll implement for next time: - Not everyone finds using Kickstarter easy. Several friends told me after the fact that they couldn't access their accounts on Kickstarter. KS doesn't make it easy because they're strict with identity protection. For next time, I'll prep some FAQs and tutorials to help people with that.
- I need to build my press kit earlier and contact my book professional buddies sooner for cross-promotions. Thank you to everyone who did share about my campaign! Word of mouth helps a lot!
- Comparing myself to others who raise more money that I did -- not helpful at all to the morale.
- I liked cross-promoting with my Kickstarter buddies and want to do more of that next time.
- New people did discover my book through Kickstarter. How cool is that! I can't do anything to help with that type of discovery but I do appreciate it!
Some fun stats over the 2-week campaign! - 49 backers
- Just under 300% over goal ($12 short -- lol)
- Over 100 books sold
If you're curious to learn how to use Kickstarter to promote your novels, my teachers are running a f.ree 5-day challenge starting soon.
While we can't control the winds of change, we can learn to navigate them better than before.
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| | | | On Language Changing LOL
One on one and in our group program for novelists, I work with writers all the time to help them make sure their words convey a powerful experience to the reader. But it's not easy, especially when what you learned in school no longer matches the way people communicate today.
So, it helps to go back to basics and re-acquaint yourself with or learn for the first time about the building blocks of the English language -- the parts of speech -- and their functions.
In this way, you can gain more skill and mastery of the English language -- our toolkit for creating beautiful and compelling novels.
Change is happening...
(FYI: This program is for writers who've written their manuscript and want support editing it -- rolling enrollment.)
Here's a list of the parts of speech: (see image just above for the functions and examples) - noun
- verb
- adjective
- adverb
- conjunction
- preposition
- interjection (Resource)
- pronoun (Resource)
You can look at your digital conversations, in chat texts, online shares and comments, to see all the ways language is changing.
Take lol (Laugh Out Loud) for example.
First classified as an interjection, it's now used in much more varied ways and seems to have taken on an adjective and adverb use and also seems to function as a transition from one idea to the next.
Linguists call LOL a discourse marker or pragmatic marker.
Why We Use “lol” So Much
"No longer simply an internet acronym that’s entered the mainstream, lol is an example of how language evolves over time, adheres to new grammatical rules, and creates community around the people that use it."
Where lol appears in a sentences seems to change its meaning too.
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Have a happy and creative week! Happy Writing!
All my best,
Beth
PS. Page Turner Awards are open for 2022!
Receiving an award for your fiction can validate your efforts, offer you recognition from strangers, and be a great feather in your cap for marketing.
I'm a sponsor of this contest (and a former winner!) and am giving away 2 prizes this year: - For published authors: the Branding for Authors course bundle, plus 3 months of one-on-one support
- For unpublished authors: Edit Your Novel course, plus 3 months of coaching and manuscript review.
Contest open until 31st of May 2022.
All the details and how to enter here:
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| I stand for peace and for freedom. I stand with the people of the Ukraine. A great great grandmother was from Odessa, a great great grandfather was from Chernivitsi, both immigrating to the United States in the 1880s. I also have a Russian Jewish great grandfather who immigrated to the US in the early 1900s. And most of my other ancestors were from other parts of Eastern Europe -- the area being most affected by the over 3 million refugees fleeing the war zone.
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| | | Recent Posts on Writer's Fun Zone blog- The Solid Ground of Fiction by LA Bourgeois
- What’s the Difference Between Copyrights and Trademarks? by Kelley Way
- Showing Off by Catharine Bramkamp
- Author Q&A with Denise Dwyer D’Errico (poetry, stories, recipes)
- Tied In Knots: Writing Tie-in Fiction by Bobby Nash
- Are Author Websites Still Necessary in 2022? by Dave Chesson
- Author Q&A with Claire Stibbe (dark, domestic suspense novels)
- Should You Become a Part-Time Proofreader as a Writer? by Thao Nguyen
- Take Time to Celebrate by Nevada McPherson
- Author Q&A with Shannon Lawrence, featuring her book The Business of Short Stories: Writing, Submitting, Publishing, and Marketing
- Author Q&A with Amanda Krill, featuring her book, Feisty & Non-Compliant
- Write The Story As You Want To, Not How Others Tell You To Write It by Janelle Riley
- The Power of No by Lisa Towles
** Write for us and gain experience and clips, and share your wisdom! ** |
| | | | | You have been reading the Creativity Sparks Newsletter!
Now in its 16th year, this newsletter is a service of my coaching and consulting business, helping genre fiction writers write, market, and publish their novels to the delight of their readers.
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| ABOUT BETH BARANY
Beth Barany is creativity coach for writers, a teacher, workshop facilitator, and speaker, who helps fiction writers experience clarity, so that they can write and polish their novels, and proudly publish them to the delight of their readers.
Beth speaks to groups locally, online, and internationally. For more details and how to book, go here.
Owner of the Barany School of Fiction, an online training hub, Beth takes great interest in how humans learn, create, and grow, and includes all her students’ life experiences, including the ancestors, into the moment.
Want a course to help you prepare to write your novel? Discover the comprehensive Plan Your Novel course here to help you vision, brainstorm, and plan your next novel. Planning for panthers, who want some structure but no too much. A road map to guide you on your way to writing your novel. By the time you're done with this course, you'll be ready to write because you know where you want to go and are excited by it.
Beth Barany is also an award-winning novelist and writes magical tales of romance, adventure, and mystery to empower women and girls to be the heroes in their own lives.
Uncover her Henrietta The Dragon Slayer series here (YA Fantasy), her Touchstone series here (Fantasy/Paranormal Romance).
beth@bethbarany.com
Barany School of Fiction
Writer's Fun Zone blog
Photo Credit: by c. 2018 Ezra Barany
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| I sit in the territory of Huichin, part of the stolen land of the Chochenyo Muwekma Ohlone, the successors of the historic and sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County. |
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