Leah Kate Write Newsletter!

Hey guys! We've just created a newsletter so that we can keep you up-to-date with all the latest news, exclusive content, and a chance to win free stuff! Sign up now and share with your friends because one week today we will be sending out the first chapter of our debut novel JANE UNWRAPPED!

We hope to send you e-mails once or twice a month. We want to include exclusive stuff from our books plus writing tips and tricks.

What sort of things do you like in a newsletter? Let us know in the comments below!

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Five Ways to Generate Writing Ideas

If you’ve never had a bout of writer’s block, you haven’t been writing for long enough. Whether you love to outline and don’t know what happens next, or if your plot is lacking some pizazz, you may just need a little helping pumping your author juices. Here are our go-to solutions when we need a little inspiration!

1. Go for a walk with someone: Being co-authors, Leah and I have an advantage by having two minds to brainstorm, but mostly it’s just sprouting ideas back and forth that really gets us the best idea. Having a sounding board, whether it be your mom, best friend, critique partner, or even your dog, is helpful because it gets you spewing out ideas and hearing them out loud. Plus, grabbing some fresh air and getting your blood pumping is great to rejuvenate a foggy brain!

2. Take a nap: Don’t get too excited; you have to stay awake! But one of the most fun ways to work out the plot is to make a playlist of music that inspires you or fits your story and just daydream. If you find yourself replaying the same scenario in your head, you’ll know you have an enticing scene to write. I find this idea also works great in the shower or on a bus, too!

3. Play a game: This is something Leah and I do not only to generate ideas but for fun as well! We write the names of all our characters of our current project and put them in a bowl. Then, we write a bunch of settings, such as “On a bridge” or “In the rain” or “In jail” and put those in a bowl. Finally, we write down a bunch of verbs, such as “Kissing” or “Fighting”, and put those in a bowl. We draw one setting, two verbs and two characters, then put a ten-minute timer on. We both write a random scenario using our drawn cards! Even if this doesn’t generate a plausible plot solution, it’s a great way to get your writing juices flowing, get into character, and practice your voice! Plus, some of the stories come out HILARIOUS.

4. Experiment with a different medium: Sometimes it helps to put your story on a different kind of page; Leah loves to draw scenarios or characters from our current project, and often finds this helps her discover something new about the plot or character. If drawing isn’t for you, modify it. If you like making music, try writing a theme song for your book. Even a vision board on Pinterest helps you visualize your creations and can spark new ideas!

5. Make it history: One of the absolutely best ways to iron out plot snags or get ideas is to borrow from history. Our world and the people in it are fascinating and history has inspired many epic books. For example, Tolkien is famously inspired by Anglo-Saxon folklore, and George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice is a fantastical take on the War of Roses. Leah’s and my book Jane Unwrapped (Entangled Teen Crave) was so fun and exciting to plot because the Egyptian history of the time was dramatic enough for a book without our help making up new ideas!

If you have any secrets to generating ideas, let me know in the comments!

WE'RE GETTING PUBLISHED

Hey guys, so we have some pretty crazy and exciting news!

Our novel, Jane Unwrapped, is going to be published by Entangled Teen Crave!

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

So this is exciting for plenty of reasons, including:

1.)  We have been working on Jane since 2012. That’s three years of focus on one story.

2.)  Entangled is a SUPER COOL publisher, with tons of books we love, and is totally right up our alley as far as future projects go

3.)  This means that someone will read Jane who we’re not forcing/begging/paying!

If you haven’t heard about our novel yet, Jane Unwrapped is a young adult mythological fantasy. Dying and being turned into a mummy is not the kind of experiment teen scientist Jane thought she would be conducting; especially now she’s trapped in the Egyptian underworld. If that’s not bad enough, the snarky (but outrageously handsome) god Anubis is sworn to devour her heartless soul. When Jane discovers her only ticket out of the underworld is to go back in time and steal the heart of King Tutankhamen, she poses as a priestess and befriends the young pharaoh. Between trying to murder her new friend and being stalked by Anubis, who can’t seem to decide if he’s going to kiss her or kill her, Jane has to make a choice: do the logical thing and steal the heart of the pharaoh, or listen to her (metaphorical) heart and find a way to save herself and Tut…even if it means rebelling against the gods of Egypt in the process.

If you'd like to learn more, we also made a vlog announcement! We’re going to be updating with lots of blogs and vlogs about the process of getting published/publishing, so please stay tuned for lots more information! As always, don’t forget to follow us to keep in the loop :)

5 Things Writers can Learn from Game of Thrones

1. Deal Your Characters the Worst Hand — and watch how they bloom (or buckle!) under the pressure. Common writing advice is to never give our characters a break, but how many of us actually do it? It’s time to take out your frustration and make your characters the punching bag. Think about the very worst thing that could happen to your characters and do it. Jaime Lannister got his sword-hand chopped off, Sansa Stark was forced to marry into the family that killed her parents, Jon Snow had to live with the Wildlings to save the wall. Figure out what your character’s greatest fear is and exploit.

2. Say Goodbye in the Most Permanent Way — G.R.R. Martin is notoriously known as the Character-Killer, and he does it will pizazz. But don’t go lobbing off your character’s heads off willy-nilly. There has to be a reason that moves the story forward. Ned Stark’s death was one of the most brutal and mind-blowing in the series, but his death was a catalyst for the rest of the series.

3. Repetition Rocks — Catchphrases and repeated prose are a great way to help create the world and give your book a tone that’s uniquely yours. Repeated phrases can not be used to create an important motif in the book, but they can also be a way to tie your reader into the world. Winter is coming, the night is dark and full of terrors, a Lannister always pays his debts: these are all GOT signatures that are not only important to the story, but are also fun to say at parties!

4. Environment Can be a Character — The Song of Fire and Ice books are rich in detailed descriptions of setting and environment. From the cold of Winterfell, to the stifling city of King’s Landing, to even objects such as the Wall: these environments have description and backstory which make them seem like a character all of their own. This makes Westeros feel alive.




5. There’s No Such Thing as Heroes and Villains — One of the most amazing things about A Song of Ice and Fire is your never truly sure who you’re rooting for…the characters are so distinctly fleshed out that it’s hard to name one as truly heroic and truly villainous. Sure, there’s the consistently valiant Jon Snow, and the insane Joffrey, but name any other character, from Tyrion to the Hound to Arya Stark, and you’ll find a long list of noble and despicable things on their resumes. By making your characters flawed and morally-struggling, it can help the reader relate to them, and make your antagonist a more varied and realistic character.

6. BONUS: Sometimes a prologue can work. Martin does a prologue right. He adds a completely different layer to the first chapter, as well as sets up a plot line for the entire series.

When the Branch Breaks: A Post about Rejection

The last year and a half has been pretty awesome. I’ve entered a program in school I’m really excited about, Leah’s on the adventure of a lifetime in Australia, and we’ve written a new novel that we’re in love with.

However, there was one big thing we focused on the last year: acquiring an agent to represent our young adult novel, JANE UNWRAPPED. But we weren’t querying, entering Twitter contests, or doing any other typical things an aspiring-author might be doing. Since the fall of 2013, we had been engaged in a review and revise with a certain agent, and throughout the year, focused only on these revisions.

This agent turned the book from a gigantic pile of word garbage to a fast-paced epic. We were flabbergasted at how she knew the story better than us, and we were so excited about every new draft. The notes she provided were extensive and detailed, and although we hadn’t signed, in the back of our minds, we thought there was no way she would spend so much of her time and energy on our manuscript without intention to sign.

But then, we didn’t hear from her for almost fives months.

It’s submission season, we said. Then: it’s the holidays, no one works during the holidays! Then: it’s after the holidays, so she must be catching up on other stuff. A week after sending our second nudge, we received a reply.

The agent replied that her client list had grown too large and she no longer had the time to dedicate to our novel.

Reading the email was like a blow to the stomach. I’ve never had an issue with rejections—in fact, they’re something Leah and I collect like badges of honour, laughing at each new one. But this was different. We had dedicated a year and a half to this one person’s vision of our book, and in our minds, we already considered ourselves a team.

It felt like I had been climbing a tree, clambering up the branches, and finally, I could see the top. I was still a few branches away, but the sunlight was streaming through, and I was reaching, reaching, reaching, just about to grab that last branch—

And then someone sawed off the branches I was holding onto, and I tumbled down towards the earth, collapsing on the ground. And all I could do was look up at how far there is to climb…

My significant other—a musician, so no stranger to creative rejection himself—said to me, after I gave him my tree-climbing analogy: “Turns out the branch snapped because the tree was rotting and you couldn’t tell that from the bottom. So now you can go find a new, healthy tree to climb, and you’re like five times better at climbing.”

As much as I want to dwell in my sadness, anger, frustration, and disappointment, it won’t make the agent change her mind. The book is miles better than it was this time last year, and the waiting time gave us the opportunity to write our new novel, which we’re super stoked about.

So what happened when I received that rejection? I sat and stared at it for a while, and then I cried that powerful, ugly kind-of cry that you save for only the worst occasions, and then I dried my face and sat down at my computer and wrote a new query letter.

I start climbing.

Seven Steps to Mostly Painless Editing

 
I can definitely relate to the image here! I had always thought that writing the first draft was the longest and most time-consuming step of writing a novel - did Eternal ever prove me wrong! Here are my tips on doing a thorough editing job:

1. Create a detailed outline.
I know there are a lot of "pantsers" out there who just like to start writing and see where it takes them, but I am certainly not one of these people. I strongly believe the more work you put into your outline, the easier the whole process is - for me, at least. If you work hard on a sturdy, thorough outline, it'll save you tons of headaches in the future when it comes to plot holes and pacing. I learned this the hard way.

2. For the first draft, just type.
If I ever make it big, I'm putting the inventor of Write or Die in my acknowledgements. It's a website that you write in, has no spell or grammar checker, records how long you've been writing for and how many words you've written...oh yeah, and punishes you if you stop writing. First drafts are supposed to be raw and gritty and full of gems buried beneath poor grammar and awkward sentences. It's all about getting the characters out of your brain and walking around on their own.

3. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.
Once I have my first draft down, I rewrite the entire book. Okay, maybe retype is a better word for it. But essentially, I rewrite the book into a new word document, smoothing out sentences, changing around scenes, and adding or cutting things in order to improve the plot. Some scenes remain similar, and others are unrecognizably.

4. Print it out.
There's something about staring at a piece of paper compared to a computer screen that changes the way you think. Step 4 is my favourite part of the revision process: I print the entire book out and read it out loud. I mark typos, inconsistencies, scenes that don't work, and awkward dialogue. Reading your own work out loud is eye-opening: things that sounded good in your head just don't make sense once given breath. I find this step fun and rewarding: you finally get to see a complete manuscript that is more-or-else complete. All your hard-work is beginning to pay-off!

5. Implement the changes.
This is where I go back to my word document and make all the changes I had written on paper. If certain scenes need to be completely re-written, I'll go back to Step 3.

6. Final readthrough.
Are you sick of your book yet? In this step, I read the whole thing on the computer again, just double checking to make sure the manuscript is as strong as possible.

7. Share your work!
Whoo, this step is fun, exciting, nerve-wracking, and frustrating! Here's where you bug your mom, your dad, your friends, your critique partner, your writing group, whoever you want, to read your book. There's nothing like talking about your book with someone who just finished reading it. There's no feeling like someone generally enjoying the journey you took them on.

Well there you go: my Seven Steps to Mostly Painless Editing! Of course, you may need to do these seven steps several times, but this will definitely get your book in tip-top shape. If you'd like to see a condensed version, check out our video for some more editing tips!

 How do you guys do your editing?

The Five Stages of NaNoWriMo (Star Wars Style)

Hey guys, Kate here! Sorry for my absence, but I’m sure as many of you can relate, it has been a crazy month trying to keep on top of NaNo! I’m a little ashamed to admit that I am behind—between school and work, I’ve had a hard time getting in my daily word count. Nevertheless, I’m a fairly good sprinter, and I just got to keep utilizing my tips and tricks, so I know I’ll just have to put in some crazy days towards the end of the month!

Although this is my first year participating in NaNo, I have written over 50, 000 words in a month and witnessed Leah’s various NaNo wins, so I felt pretty comfortable writing this blog. We’re just over halfway through the month, so let me know if you’ve gone/are going through these various stages.

You don't know what you're getting yourself into, young one

1.) The Eager Padawan (Nov 1st-5th): you’re freshly plucked off the barren desert planet where you haven’t written anything recently, or been stuck editing, or just been working on the same thing. You see a new horizon: a huge challenge that you are SO ready for. You got your lightsaber…er, pen, at your side and you are ready to kick some butt!


2.) The Disgruntled Jedi Knight (Nov 6th-15th): Okay, maybe this Jedi thing is a little harder than you thought. Maybe you’ve fallen behind, or are just barely making your word-count. You’ve stared at a blank page for longer than you’ve been writing, and your fingers are starting to cramp when you first wake up. And the rest of the month looms like a desert full of Tusken Raiders ahead.

3.) The Desperate Dark Apprentice (Nov 16th-25th): Calling it “overwhelmed” is saying the least. You’ll do anything to make the first half of the month worth all the hard work, even join the dark side. You hate this book, this month, the world. Now, the rest of your life starts to slip away as you realize your daily word count is only getting bigger and bigger. And yet, a dark pride rises in you. As the dishes start to pile up, the book is the only thing that matters,

4.) The Dark Sith Lord (Nov 26th-29th): Sun…what…what is that? You’ll do anything to complete your word count, even kill younglings if you need to! You’ve truly given yourself to the power of the NaNo. There’s so much writing that needs to be done, and yet life wants to get in the way. Sweat pours down your neck at every moment, for every second away from your laptop is a second wasted. Your eyes are bloodshot, your hands tremble, and the end gets closer and closer.

My allegiance is to my word count, to the completion!

5.) The Redeemed Master (Nov 30th): You did it. Yes, yes, possibly at 11:59pm, you did it. You wrote your 50,000th word and finally the Force is brought into balance. A sense of relief, pride, and exhaustion hits you. It’s been a long journey, and possibly you weren’t always at your best, but you wrote like the true Jedi master you are.

Good luck NaNoing everyone! Let me know how it’s going in the comments!

5 Tips to Getting the Most Out of a Writers' Conference

Hello, friends! Kate here.

I wanted to write a follow-up post in my entry on the Surrey International Writers’ Conference. I can honestly say going to that conference was one of the most important and positive things I did as a writer. However, at the same time, it can be a tremendously overwhelming experience. Whether you’re a first-time conference attendee or just looking to get a little more out of your next conference, here are five tips to help you rock any writers’ conference!

1. Prepare, plan…and play it by ear. Take it from a couple o’ gals who tried to wing their first conference—getting your stuff together in advance will save you a whole lot of stress. Take a good look at the workshops and presenters; highlight the ones that are most important to you. Research the agents and editors attending. Know which ones represent your genre, and make note of their names and a few of their clients. And perhaps most importantly, have your work in order. Leah and I spent the night before the conference madly editing our first draft, crafting an elevator pitch, and printing out pages in the hotel lobby. Make these things part of your packing list so you’re ready to go before the conference even begins. That being said, don’t be afraid to switch up your plan. You may really connect with a certain presenter and want to switch to their workshop, or catch an opportunity to pitch your book or talk with someone important.

2. Put your party pants on and get ready to mingle. Hey, us writers are happy hermits but once a year, we gotta crawl out of our dark holes, look wistfully back at our blinking computer screens and say, “Well, manuscript, I’m going out.” I am definitely not comfortable meeting strangers or starting conversations, but getting out of your comfort zone and making new connections is so important. Connecting with other authors is a great way to build a community of people who understand you and will support you through your ups and downs. Also, you never know who you’ll end up meeting. On our last dinner at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference in 2013, an agent sat beside Leah and I. After talking with him all evening, he asked what our book was about, and ended up requesting a full! Even though he didn’t end up offering representation, he sent us a detailed letter with critiques that really helped us improve the book. Without making that personal connection, we would have never received such important feedback!


3. Pitch pitch pitch pitch pitch. Alright, this point depends on where you are in the writing process, but if you are at a conference with a fully-edited novel and you are ready to query…for goodness sakes, pitch the crap out of that book! Pitching face-to-face is a great way to judge an agent’s initial reaction to your premise as well as to catch their attention. If you have the opportunity to buddy-up with someone, have them take notes for you at the workshop so you can make the most of meeting agents and wooing them with your fantastic book! At SiWC, Leah attended the workshops so I was able to pitch as much as I could. We ended up with ten requests by the end! That’s way better than what we would have done if we just sent out good ol’ regular email queries.

4. Rest, relax, and enjoy it. It’s so easy to get over-stimulated by everything going on: pitches and workshops and fancy dinners and people to meet. Yes, you’re at a conference to promote your work, but don’t forget that this is supposed to be fun! You’re here because you love writing and it brings you joy—don’t lose that pleasure by stressing out about everything. Give yourself time to go up to the hotel room and take a nap or just rest you mind. Have a conversation with your lunch-mates about something totally un-writing related. Look around and enjoy the fact that for this one weekend, you’re not in reality. Any SiWC alumni will know the feeling when the emcee Carol puts on her dinglehoppers and all of these strangers are suddenly your friends, sharing an inside joke. Enjoy that moment.

5. Bring the magic home. When you leave a writers’ conference for the first time, I guarantee something inside you will change. You’ll suddenly be full of inspiration, hope, revelation. Don’t let that magic die out once you get back to reality. Remember why you were there and the feeling of being surrounded by your people. Remember that you are a writer.

To all those attending SiWC this year, best of luck and have a great time at the greatest writers’ conference on Earth! To anyone else attending conferences in the future, hopefully these tips help you to get the most of what I’m sure will be an amazing experience.

Let us know in the comments your tips and tricks at any writers’ conference!

5 Tips to Win NaNoWriMo

Hey guys! Kate here and today I’m writing about something terrifying lurking on the horizon…

As October approaches, a small pit of anxiety grows in every writer’s belly. At the beginning of the Halloween season, it’s merely a niggling tickle at the back of your brain, but as the days pass the feeling grows stronger and stronger until it overwhelms your entire being and you finally must ask yourself that annual dreaded question: to NaNoWriMo or to not NaNoWriMo?

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, an activity that brings together writers from across the world, regardless of genre, style, or skill level. The object is write a novel in a month—in other words, complete 50,000 words in thirty days. This is an intimidating prospect for most any writer, but that’s why it builds such a tight community. Stick almost 400, 000 stressed writers in the same boat for a month, and that’s bound to build a little solidarity.

But not only does NaNoWriMo build a tight community, it’s a great way to kick-start your novel. And isn’t that why you’re here? To write that goddamn novel that’s been burning inside you? Well, it’s only 1,667 words a day, so let’s get started. Here are your five tips for winning NaNoWriMo:

1.) Get your friends and family involved. As much as we love them, our friends and family members eat up a lot of our time. Warn them you’re going to be hermiting for thirty days. Be up front: “Dudes, I’d love to get drunk tonight, but I gotta write over a thousand words today.” Get them involved so they keep you accountable; share your dreams; brainstorm ideas with them. Last year, we convinced our dad to join NaNo and hung sheets on the fridge so we could show off our daily word count. If your family and friends feel like they are a critical part of your success, they’ll be less likely to distract you and more likely to encourage you…and forgive you if you ignore them for thirty days. Worse-case scenario, you can always get drunk and then write your 1,667 words! (All words are are good words, right?)


2.) Find a process that works for you. And by that, I mean make an outline. I know what you’re thinking…I thought this was about writing, not outlining! Well, settle down there, pantser, you can feel free to do your thing, but for something like NaNoWriMo where you don’t have the luxury of writer’s block, having an outline will keep you on track. Spend a couple days before November 1st creating an outline. For some, it may be detailed, every scene fleshed out. For others, you may just want a general map that you can fill-in-the-blanks along the way. Either way, the more prep work you do, the easier it is to stay on track and keep your mind focused on the last word.


3.) Utilize your online resources. There are amazing online resources out there for us writers! The first one is the official NaNoWriMo site, which is not only chock-full of tips, but also has a community for networking and encouraging each other, as well as a way to record your word count and let you know if you’re on track. The second is my favourite website of all time: Write or Die. If I ever publish a book, the creator of this is going in the acknowledgments. The web app is just a regular text box that let’s you set a word goal and a time goal. All you do is write. And if you stop writing…well, that’s where it gets interesting. I’ll let you guys do the exploring, but it’s definitely a resource I would recommend if you find you’re constantly clicking out of your word doc to check Facebook. Our third resource worth checking out is made for the iPad, so it’s portable, easy to use, and keeps you motivated. Novel in 30 let’s you easily see your word count and, if you have a Bluetooth keyboard, let’s you write anywhere.

4.) Don’t look back. How easy is it to get so wrapped up in what you’re writing that you don’t concentrated on the real writing itself? Oh, this sucks. That doesn’t sound good. I need a new word for that. I have to research this description. Editing is important, but for the first draft, you want to forget all that. Keep your eyes on the screen, your fingers on the keyboard. Don’t care if your description is clunky or your transition is awkward—you’ll fix all that later. NaNo is all about getting the words out of your head and onto the page. Let self-doubt take a bystand because you never know if that crap you’re writing will actually turn out to be a golden turd.

5.) Make writing a priority. You may be a student, a full-time worker, a parent, or whatever else…but you’re still a writer. November gives you a reason to embrace that part of yourself that’s often kept locked away because of your commitments to everything else. Well, for one month of the year, make writing a part of your life! Schedule it in—and keep to it. You want to write a novel, don’t you? Well, then you have to put one word in front of another, day after day after day. It’s as easy—and as hard—as that.

Hopefully these five tips have given you some confidence in order to embark on this amazing journey. Don’t worry; you’re not alone! Leah has won NaNoWriMo the last two years, but I’m a newbie, just like you! I have written over 50, 000 words in a month before, but this is the first time where I’m doing it as a community, as well as being a full-time student and working full-time.

We want you to keep us accountable so follow our NaNo accounts here:

Kate

Leah

Add us as a friend and we’ll add you back! And as an incentive to keep you motivated, we’re giving you the opportunity to win an awesome writing-themed gift bag! If you win NaNo, send us your NaNo link and we’ll enter you in a draw to win an awesome prize!

Happy writings, guys! Let us know what you think your novel is going to be about in the comments below!

Watch more NaNo tips on our Vlog!