Saturday, March 05, 2011

Support National Reading Month

Did you know that March has been designated as National Reading Month?


Isn't that exciting? Of course, if you're already a book lover like myself then this month isn't going to be much different from any other month for you. But, it could be.

Sharing your love for reading with the greater community, especially children, can be extremely rewarding. And it can be relatively easy. You can easily join libraries, schools, community organizations, and individuals across the nation in this month long celebration of books geared towards igniting a love for reading in children. After all, isn't that when most usbegan our love affair with books? Below are some ways you can contribute to this worthwhile endeavor:

Donate new or used books to a local book drive.

Post on facebook/twitter what you're reading this month.

Take your child or a child in your family to the bookstore or library.

Support activities of libraries, schools, and bookstores.

Buy a new author's book.

Easy enough, right? Have fun and happy reading!

L.A. Jefferson

Friday, March 04, 2011

Avoid Resource OVERLOAD!!!

Deciding to embark on your writing career can be both exhilirating and scary as hell!  As most of us--book lovers turned aspiring writers/authors--are avid readers it's only natural for us to want to buy every writing resource we can get our hands on. After all, the experts do advise {taken from one of my resources, of course :)}, it's important to learn everything you can about the industry you plan to delve into it, right? Only thing is, when you combine ones thirst for knowledge with ones love for buying & reading books, it'll be no time before an excited, aspiring writer finds themselves at the overwhelming stage of RESOURCE OVERLOAD! Between the Writer's Digest book club offers and your own browsing of the book store's resource aisle, you can have everything from the basic poket/tabletop dictionary and thesaurus, grammar & style guides to every year's annual Writer's Market. Believe me when I tell you, the available titles are endless!

I wish someone had told me then what I'm about to tell you: "STOP! SAVE YOUR MONEY!"  For one thing, many of the resources regurgitate the same information. Secondly, none of these books will catapult your writing career. Only effective marketing & promoting will do that.

Now, on that point--marketing & promoting--besides a good dictionary & thesaurus, maybe a manuscript formatting guide, resources on the marketing & promoting is what you need to spend your money on, if not a good publicity coach. One such resource that I recently added to my library is  Red Hot Internet Publicity by Penni Sansevieri. For all other resource books, utilize your public library and the internet.

Hope you found this tidbit of information helpful.

Happy Writing & Publishing!
L.A. Jefferson