On “Going Commercial” – And Loving It.

I’ve just been invited by Amazon Canada to be an Amazon Influencer. This means that I get my own website at Amazon.ca to display all of my books (finally!) and I can recommend products to you there as well. As one reader put it, “You’re going commercial?”

You bet I am, but I’m not doing anything differently with my online presence than I have been for many years. It’s just that a large corporation finally noticed that what I have to say (of my own volition) to my followers may be useful to them. If that’s what some call “going commercial,” I say bring it on, bring it big or go home broke. I’m not doing anything I’m not proud of; in fact, I’m really excited about this, because I’d already been plugging books and products in my Instagram/ on Twitter and YouTube for two years without even realizing it. Now I’ll just be earning a small percentage per purchase when I point readers to books and products that I already use and love.

I’ve always been a writer for the love of writing, and if I can find ways to do what I’m passionate about every day, stick to my morals, and still make a decent living in the 21st century as an author? Then “going commercial” is something I’m darn proud of.

The best part is, this is one more way that I can prove to those of you who aspire to become authors that, yes, Virginia, we CAN be wealthy writers! Very few can make a living that will sustain a whole family simply by writing books (especially if you don’t have over ten published books out yet). We can, however, make a decent salary for ourselves as writers if we think outside the box and do more than just write books. We have to consider selling those books as ebooks, paperbacks, audiobooks; selling the rights to adapt those books into films; speak about our lives as writers and get paid for that, and use social media to gain more interested readers, which gives us leverage in making business deals with corporations and organizations that we respect.

I started out as a poet, first published at age five, and decided to become a writer then and there. At the time, I didn’t realize I was headed into a profession that would pay me very little (even as a trained journalist) for coming up with fresh ideas and stories out of thin air. It didn’t make sense to me: why are writers so undervalued, when people who catch footballs and run with them earn $5-20M a year?

Reality sunk in quite quickly in my twenties when I began sending out story ideas to magazines and learned I’d be paid two to forty cents a word for my work ($1/word for the top magazines) and that the average author in Canada makes $6,000 a year. For some crazy reason, though, I kept on writing. I think the reason is called passion.

I’ve since made it my mission to be transparent with followers who tell me that they want to be authors, too. I try to remind you that it’s going to be challenging, but not impossible, to make a living doing this. I only started making a good profit at writing fiction two years ago. It started out as what I called “skate money” to buy my daughter skates, but soon my earnings became “vacation money,” and I was able to buy a $500 daybed for our backyard, several lovely vacations for our family and I paid many bills (or as my husband Bill likes to joke about it, “Pay Bill.”). While my book income continues to grow, I wouldn’t be able to handle the mortgage payments on my own, plus saving for University for our daughter, plus all of our yearly expenses, without the help of my spouse’s income. I can’t sustain my family in 2018 on my author earnings. Yet.

And that’s why I’m going commercial. Plus, I love online shopping. I love avoiding traffic and crowds and shopping in my luxurious grey robe. Now, when I’m not writing my next novel or working on getting the last one adapted into a movie, I get to buy dresses, purses and shoes and tell you what I think about them? Yes, please!

Check out my new Amazon Influencer Link and please use it whenever you want to buy one of my books or audio books. It will be much appreciated.

Thanks for taking this journey with me,
Heather

Shopping online is my second favourite way of doing it. I most love shopping at outdoor markets, buying flowers and hand-crafted decorations for our home.

Five Fast Tips for Writing Dialogue

Hey! This year, I’ve been doing weekly live Q&A videos Tuesdays at 2 on my Facebook Page, where you readers can interact and ask me questions (you can also throw out questions to me anytime on Twitter @hgracestewart and I’ll try to answer them within 24 hours). To help you narrow your questions to a topic, I’ve decided to offer mini-lectures whenever I can. Writing dialogue was my February 28th topic. You can watch the video (or videos, there are several archived at the top of the page) read the tips here, or both.

 

FIVE FAST TIPS FOR WRITING DIALOGUE

1. DON’T OVERTHINK IT. Just write, and let your thoughts flow. You can go back and edit later. The best dialogue is natural, not forced.
2. TALK IT OUT. Good dialogue reads like it would be spoken. So, after you have written at least a full page of dialogue, speak it out loud. You’ll find yourself editing lots once you realize just how many phrases don’t sound right when you speak them.
3. ACT IT OUT. Go on, no one is watching you, except maybe your pets. So, stand up and try to act out what you’ve written. Play both characters. Does your scene ring true to life? Does it flow naturally? The more you try acting out your dialogue, over time, the more you’ll find that writing dialogue becomes an easier task.
4. LOSE SOME WORDS, LOSE THE NAMES. When we speak to friends and family, we usually cut off a few words, like “went to the store,” instead of “I went to the store,” or if our spouse is calling us, we call back, “down in a sec!”  instead of “I will be there in a second.” Watch for this in the sentences you write so you can stay as true to real life speech as possible. You should also lose NAMES as much as possible in your speech. People don’t use eachother’s names very often in real speech. Have you ever thought about that? We usually only use names when we’re feeling very angry, very loving, or when we need to get a person’s attention and not very often in between.
5. AVOID ACCENTS. Dialects and accents, when done as part of a character’s entire speech, are confusing to readers and often break the flow of reading. Don’t try to chop and change English words to make someone sound Australian or German. Very few writers can do this well. Instead, drop in an actual French or Scottish or Japanese —whichever language you are trying to achieve—word or two into that person’s speech and italicize it. Be sure you fact-check several times and get it right. This is where good, professional, paid editors are vital.

Author Heather Grace Stewart with her poetry anthology CAGED during her Feb. 28, 2017 Live Q&A on Facebook. Heather will see you Tuesdays at 2 EST to discuss writing techniques and answer your questions.

I have a lot of writing to get done for my next novel, so I’m going to take a break from the social networking/videos, but I promise that I’ll be back discussing “How to find and develop your idea” on Tuesday, March 21st. I’ll be there at 2 EST, and it will be archived on the page, so if you miss it live, you can still  watch it later that day or that week. Of course, I’ll write a summary here for you, too.

Happy dialogue writing!
Love,
Heather