Weekly Scratch: Screenwriter Help, Opportunities, Thoughts

Howdy, folks!   We have a schmooze coming up -- October[Correction: September] 28 2011, 9:30 AM Critique (bring  copies) and 10 AM (meeting) at the College Station Barnes and Noble.  Bring in your brilliant ways of how to keep track of your manuscript submissions.  It's a roundtable discussion.
Our conference is also coming up folks.  Here is the link. Sign up!  It's going to be fab.  Here's the scoop:

Connections & Craft

November 12, 2011 A&M United Methodist Church
417 University Drive
College Station, TX 77840

Doris Fisher is speaking at our conference. Here is a link to her fab website.  Here is a link to an interview of Doris at Melissa Buron's blog .

Local Brazos's Writers has an upcoming event that you may wish to check out: 

BRAZOS WRITERS invites you to the Texas Reds --  Steak and Grape Festival on October 7-8, 2011. 

Texas Writers will be signing books at 202 Bryan, Avenue in the Artist’s Show Case, next door to the Our hours will be Friday: 8 pm to 10 pm and Saturday: 10 am to 10 pm. Texas authors are invited to join us in selling their books.  Fill out the form on Brazos Writers’ web site, www.brazoswriters.org.

Old Bryan Market Place.

Screenwriters Help

We can all learn a thing or two from silver screen folks. Here are some sites to explore.

Here is screenwriter Doug Eboch's blog. His blog Let's Schmooze might help you.
Try: MIchael Hauge's site-- Story Mastery. Chris Vogler's site -- Storytech Literary Consutling.  Blake Snyder's site -- Save the Cat. Here's another great screenwriting blog: Go Into the Story.

Opportunities

App publisher Meegenius! is holding a picture book contest.  The grand prize is a publishing contract and $1500.  You might want to check this out.

There is an open call from author Mitali Perkins. In her own words: I'm priviledged to be editing an anthology published by Candlewick Press tentatively called OPEN MIC, a compilation of funny short pieces written by some of today's best YA authors, people who grew up along the margins of race and culture in North America. One of my dreams has been to introduce one or two fresh, relatively unknown voices in this anthology, so I'm excited to announce that I'm calling for submissions. Check out the link here.

Thoughts

Is blogging worth it?  Here is a link to a provocative article that might get you thinking.

Think about this. Help out a good cause. Banned Book Week Auction might be something you want to check out.

One author's view on the role of her agent.  Something to think about.

The views expressed here are my own, and not necessarily those of the SCBWI.

Weekly Scratch: Books! Inspiration! Provocation! Opportunities!

Howdy, folks. Phew, this is a busy time of year for me.  School starts. Football.  The fall routine is almost set up so the weekly blog is getting back on track. We have a schmooze coming up -- 9:30 AM Critique (bring  copies) and 10 AM (meeting) at the College Station Barnes and Noble.  Bring in your brilliant ways of how to keep track of your manuscript submissions.  It's a roundtable discussion.

Our conference is also coming up folks.  Here is the link. Sign up!  It's going to be fab.  Here's the scoop:

Connections & Craft

November 12, 2011 A&M United Methodist Church
417 University Drive
College Station, TX 77840

As another tidbit.  Oh, my Brian Floca is going to be speaking at our conference!  Here is a  nice interview with Brian that you may wish to check out.
Books!

Here's what is hot at the Naperville Public Library in Illinois.  From PW.
And here is a link to this week's NY Times bestsellers.  
Here are the Amazon bestsellers. 
Here are the current INDIEBOUND bestsellers.

Inspiration!

Here is a post from literary agent Sarah Davies -- The Spirit of Normandy. This is one encouraging post.

Here's a post from Joe Konrath about How to Succeed.

Provocation!

The uphill battle for authors with original work. Definitely a provocative post.

Need some instant creativity juice, here's some weird and wonderful advice.

Opportunities!

Just a reminder. Here is a new magazine for emerging YA authors. It's called Sucker Literary Magazine. It's featured in PW. It's a place for short fiction. You may wish to check it out.
You need to be working on your story now if you plan to enter the 2012 Highlights For Children contest.   Here is the contest information link.

If you want to go to the Children's Writing Workshop at Chautauqua, you get an edge if your scholarship application is early.

Hunger Mountain is out there. This is a reminder too.

See you next time for more scratch!

Any views expressed here are my own and  not necessarily those of the SCBWI.
8:00 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.

Weekly Scratch: Manuscript Formatting, eBook Formatting, Document Maps, Love Librarians

Howdy, folks! At the last schmooze I promised to send out some of my favorite formatting links.  Don't forget to sign up for our fab conference on November 12, 2011.   Brazos Writers has a workshop for the mystery inclined on September 10, 2011.

This week we eschew all else for formatting information.

Submission Formatting

So here is Nathan Bransford's thoughts on formatting manuscripts. He's a bright guy and 'spains good.  Check out his post.

Gotta love the Purple Crayon.  Here is Harold Underdown's take on formatting.

Email Formatting

Formatting for an email submission. There is a nice discussion in this article about email submission. This is stuff to help you make it pretty and not garbled when you send it in. Courtesy of Writing World.

Remove the formatting from a Word Document.  Here's quickie advice.

Here is another little article about email formatting that may be of some use to you.

eBook Formatting

Here is an article I like about Kindle formatting.  I found some understandable advice here on how to do turn a Word document into one that can be easily read on the Kindle.

Amazon offers a page about Kindle formatting too. You might find it useful.

Here is a guru article from Aaron Shepherd.  You will certainly know a thing or two if you wade through this article on Kindle Formatting.

Document Maps

I'm a fan of the document map feature of Word for formatting my novels.

Here are some articles to help you on your way if you want to get a tech on.

This article is pretty simple and straight-forward about how to make a simple document map.   You might like it.

Here is another nifty article about creating a document map for a novel.

Well, I'm closing out this week with a "gotta love librarians" moment. Check out this article.

Check y'all next week with more chicken scratch.