Think like a Pro Writer Series

Want to be published? Do you start stories but never complete them?  Do you wait on your muse while she hides behind trees and in caves? Do you know how to write, but the mountainous novel seems insurmountable, with too many words and too few days? Do you keep telling yourself "Carpe Diem", but days speed by before you grab several hours to write? Time to change "Seize the Day" into "Seize the Dream."  If you answered "yes" to these questions, you're not thinking like a professional writer. The problem's not the writing;  it's your mindset about the writing.  When you want to be published, writing can't be a hobby.  For success, you need to Think/Pro. Think like a Pro guides your growth through 7 lessons.  From deadlines to multi-tasking, Think like a Pro gives advice, tips, and tricks. The # 1 lesson for success A mantra to keep bum in chair Choosing a plot Essentials for characters Conquering Writer's Block Sparking Creativity Healthy Habits for projects, for yourself, and for the money you earn Stop procrastinating, and achieve your dream.  Like the writer M.A. Lee, in three short years you can become a published writer of more than 12 novels. As a daily companion and goals-tracker, look for Think / Pro, a Planner for Writers, only in a paperback form.  With an undated layout, you can start anytime and skip any vacation weeks.  The two-page weekly spread offers progress meters, word count trackers, healthy habits monitors, and monthly, seasonal, & yearly reviews and previews.  The planner and the book Think like a Pro encourage your transformation from hobbyist to professional writer.

What kind of writer are you? Planner or Plotter? Pantster? Puzzler? Muse Muffin? Whether you use the mosaic method or a chronological one, whether you outline every scene or let the words flow, the method does not matter. What matters is the end goal. So, what's the end goal with your writing? To write? To publish? Fame and fortune? Plenty of frittery flutter-bys write and write and go nowhere. As for fame and fortune, those can't be guaranteed. However, when your goal is publication, Discovering Your Novel is the guidebook to help you overcome the Sisyphean task of first word to publication. With the goal of completing a novel in 52 weeks, this guidebook can be self-paced or tracked week by week for persistent success. From hatching idea to character sketches and story plan, the Foundations and Visioning sections will guide your start. If you have a half-completed manuscript that you're lost in, use the Visioning and Analysis sections to work your way out of the labyrinth. Like a long ball of string, multiple charts will keep track of progress. Track your progress with daily word counts recorded on the charts. All charts are available for free at the website address provided in the guidebook When you complete the manuscript, what do you do next?  The sections on Harvesting and Finishing answer these questions as they guide you to creating a professional career as a writer. Learn the devices and definitions that pro writers have swirling in their heads. Maintain the discipline and preparation that keeps pro writers at work, no matter the interruptions. Writer M.A. Lee meandered along a mucky road of unfinished manuscripts for many years before she decided to drive to her own destiny. If you're tired of gatekeepers and you're eager to jump on the self-publishing juggernaut, then Discovering Your Novel will give the guidance you need. M.A. Lee's self-publishing journey began in 2015. Since then, under her various pen names, she's published close to 50 titles of fiction and nonfiction. 

What do these have in common? >>> Atonement. I, Robot. The 13th Warrior. The Hobbit. Jurassic Park, in all its iterations. >>> Harry Potter. Ironman. Perseus. Dudley Dooright. Macbeth. >>> 5 Stages of the Hero and the Monster. Blood tragedies. The scariest woman in all literature. Hubris. These oddly-matched items all have origins in the ancient Greeks and Romans. The first storytellers discovered many ways to intrigue and thrill their audiences.  They laid strong foundations for what worked and what didn't work. Their techniques are still used, re-packaged as exclusive insights, glittery infographics, three-point seminars, and Wham-Pow webinars urging modern writers to Buy Now! Old Geeky Greeks: Write Stories with Ancient Techniques presents these techniques in a clear, organized method for writers. Chapters in OGG cover understanding characters, plot requirements and the oldest plot formula (the Blood or Revenge Tragedy), and such concepts as in medias res and dulce et utile and more, all to solve the sticky problem of audience expectations. The bright minds of Classical Antiquity first explored that problem, and the answers that they developed are applicable in this age of the internet, special effects, and infographics. Save yourself the hours spent at seminars and in webinars or scanning social media. Spend that time writing—and study the Old Geeky Greeks at your leisure. Whether writing novels or plays, blogs or non-fiction, poems and songs, this guidebook offers information to improve your writing. Old Geeky Greeks is a seminar in book form, 28,000 words of time-proven techniques. Writer M.A. Lee has published 25-plus titles under various pen names since she began self-publishing in 2015. She has over 30 years of experience in guiding college and high school students as they examined, analyzed, and applied these techniques.

One of the hardest things to do in writing is to create characters that readers will care about, that will make them have to read on. ~ Noah Luke   Discovering Characters is like investigating a house we want to buy.   No, I'm serious. Characters have an exterior façade that we comment upon as we drive past. Through the windows we catch glimpses of interior lives.   Even in cookie-cutter boxy cliques, characters have individual characteristics, just as the suburbia ranch houses have their garden plantings and the urban row houses have their painted doorways. These small touches create individual homes in neighborhoods.   Some characters enjoy the bright city lights. Some are loners, nestled against a national forest.  Characters, houses—each have individual personalities. Some are blingie, with the latest décor while others enjoy the comfort of yoga pants and old sneakers.   As writers, we capture these individual characters and save them from the cookie-cutter boxy stereotypes. We delve into interior rooms for glimpses of formative baggage. Finding their backstory is a search through attics and cellars, storage closets and garages. Characters hide their pain and fears, painting them over and adding distracting artwork.   Our job as writers is to find every detail of our characters then use snippets so our readers will see our characters as they drive through our books. We hint at the foundations while opening doors to their plans and purposes.   Discovering Characters is designed to help writers find the exteriors and interiors, public and private. We'll dig around the foundations and climb to the roof. We'll explore the open rooms and the storage closets. We'll peek into rooms inhabited by such characters as diverse as Elizabeth and Darcy, the Iron Man, Aragorn and Frodo, Travis McGee, Medea, Macbeth, and Nanny McPhee.   Five areas comprise this guidebook. Just as characters—and houses—are individual, this info is individual. You won't need every bit. Dip in and out, skim around. When you reach locked rooms, come back and explore to discover the keys to your characters. Starting Points ~ offering templates and character interviews Classifications ~ common and uncommon ways of discovering characters Relationships ~ couples, teams, allies, enemies, mentors, etc. Special Touches ~ progressions, transgressions, and transitions for character arcs Significant Lists ~ archetypal characters and much more Discovering Characters, with 44,000-plus words, is the second book in the Discovering set, part of the Think like a Pro Writer series for writers new to the game as well as those wanting to up their game.   Writer M.A. Lee has been indie-publishing fiction and non-fiction since 2015. She has over 25 books published under her pseudonyms. Visit her Writers Ink Books website to discover more information.

In the forests of words that we writers grow, blazed trails mark the way to our destination. Without those trails, without paths leading down to sun-sparkled streams, without the yellow brushstroke painted on tree after tree, we might lose our direction and our sanity.   Reading through that opening paragraph, most writers will recognize the extended hiking metaphor. Many will spot inversion and alliteration. A few will appreciate the anaphora and auxesis and zeugma, even when not familiar with those terms.   This is Sentence Craft. Controlled use creates appreciative readers. Over-blown use drives readers away.   Sentence Craft—from easy imagery to involved structures—is essential for the poet. Bloggers and other nonfiction writers will find it a marketing tool, distinguishing them from their competition. Speech writers and great broadcast journalists use these devices to make their spoken words become memorable. With fiction, writers paint expositions and settings and character tags, capturing readers who may not even recognize the sweeping stroke of the magical wand. Discovering Sentence Craft is for writers new and old. For newbies, word-tricks can be fascinating ventures into an unknown forest. These tricks can renew a veteran writer's love of words and sentences flowing onto the page.   In small offerings, of course. Too many tricks glaze our readers' eyes.   Discovering Sentence Craft covers figurative and interpretive concepts as well as the structural elements that build meaning, emphasis, and memory. Concepts I: Figurative II: Interpretive Structures III: Inversion IV: Repetition V: Opposition VI: Sequencing   Writer M.A. Lee believes writing is a skill-based craft which can be learned and practiced. Artists learn composition, perspective, depth, proportion, and shading. A baseball player learns in-field and out-field, pitching vs. throwing, batting and bunting. An electrician learns reading blueprints, voltage and current, circuits, outlets, and panels.   A writer needs much more than grammar and spelling. Reading widely and learning & practicing the concepts and structures in Discovering Sentence will help any writer improve.   Writer M.A. Lee worked as a journalist and copy writer before pursuing the challenge of teaching high school students the triumvirate of literature, composition, and grammar+. Those years of teaching meant that she continued learning herself, sticking fingers into the writing craft and twisting things around to understand them before conveying that knowledge to students. The Discovering guidebooks for writers are proof that her internal teacher keeps presenting lessons. Since beginning her self-publishing journey in 2015, M.A. Lee (under her pen names) has published more than 30 works of fiction and nonfiction.

What do writers want from plot? What do writers need from plot? Are those questions the same? Not really.   As wordsmiths, we writers know that want and need are two different words. The want is a circumstance that we writers can control. We want plot specifics to help us craft story and exceed reader expectations. The need is a circumstance of obligations from reader expectations of story. While readers may want the comfort of the genre elements (the tropes), they also wish to have their interest and curiosity piqued.   Can we writers deliver on the expectations and the surprises in order to please our readers? That's the involved question that Discovering Your Plot hopes to answer.   This guidebook covers plot structure and the necessities of genre expectations so we writers can anticipate what readers want. It is NOT a list of tropes by genre or even a list of tropes that every novel should have. It does explore the six most common plot structures. It is NOT a list of characters for plot or story. It is not a list of the "17 characters your novel needs" or the "characters used by famous authors", as listed on social media sites. It is a detailed examination of the major sections of a novel. It is NOT a word-based or page-based formula of a novel's structure. By the end of Discovering Your Plot¸ writers will have the tools to construct a story as well as diagnose problems with pacing, tension and suspense, and sequencing events.   Discovering Your Plot is Book 6 in the Think like a Pro Writer series and the second of the Discovering set of how-to guidebooks for writers at all skill levels. While the approach is for newbies, every writer can benefit from this fresh look at any novel's framework.   The Discovering set covers Characters, Plot, Author Branding, and Sentence Craft as well as completing a Novel—from the seeds of idea to publishing the manuscript.   Writers Ink Books, the umbrella for M.A. Lee and her pen names, has published over 30 titles, fiction and nonfiction, since its 2015 debut.