CWG Board News September 30

/0 Comments/in /by

As Vice President of the Catholic Writers Guild, it is my responsibility to share board news on the fifth Friday (whenever that occurs).

Last Friday on this blog, in sharing what the CWG Board discussed at our recent Skype meeting, Karina said, “Officer Elections are in November! We discussed it and we will stay on as your officer cadre if you wish (though Karina would like to be committee coordinator and Dave would be secretary). However, that’s if no one else wants to run. Check out the forums for a list of duties and to nominate yourself or others.”

I just want to reiterate that the CWG Board members are willing to continue as members of the Board, if no one else wishes to run. If you are interested in running, please check out the forums to nominate yourself.

One of the great things about the 21st century is that we can participate in a Skype board meeting without leaving the comfort of our homes. We begin and end each meeting with a prayer. As a member of the board, I am able to view the agenda before the meeting and add any topics I think should be discussed. During the meeting, it’s easy to follow along with the Google Wave agenda and see changes which are being recorded in the minutes.

Being part of the CWG Board has been an interesting and worthwhile experience. As Vice President, my duties are not as numerous as some of the other board members, but I enjoy working with Ann, Karina, Anne and Dave.

Ellen Gable Hrkach is the Vice President of the Catholic Writers Guild. She is the award-winning author of “In Name Only,” a Catholic romance and now an Amazon Kindle bestseller (top 100 Religious Fiction). Her new book is Stealing Jenny, which is a contemporary pro-life suspense novel. Her website is www.ellengable.com. She and her husband and five sons live in Pakenham, ON Canada.

Being a Better Blogger: Judging Your Effectiveness

/1 Comment/in /by


One step to being a better blogger is knowing the standards by which you judge yourself.

Oh, there are plenty of other people’s standards that you could go by. You could look at your traffic. You could measure number of comments and hot topics.
But all of that leaves a bad taste in my mouth and here’s why: I blog because a like it.
I’m a writer, and blogging lets me write. It’s a short and easy way to be published. It’s a way to interact with others, which is what I long for, many times.
Judging the effectiveness of your blog depends, first and foremost, on what standards you’re using. So let’s come up with some, shall we?
If you’re a writer, the writing should be good. Period.
If you need editorial help (some of us are better at self-editing than others), consider joining a group blog or a webpage where there’s an editor involved. Alternatively, you might ask someone to serve as your editor and to read/edit your stuff before you put it out there live on the internet.
Be passionate. Be interested. Be interesting.
Do people enjoy reading what you write? To some extent, this is an opinion, but there’s also a consideration here that’s worth your time.
If you are serious about writing–and since this is the Catholic Writers Guild, I gotta think you are–then it’s worth investing the time to be relevant and interesting to your audience.
Know who’s reading.
This isn’t meant to be tricky, but you should have an idea who’s reading your writing online. If you’re not sure, then compile a sample person.
Just as I do with a book proposal, I try to think of a specific person–or a couple of specific people–who I know are reading my blog. I even sometimes go so far as to name them: Sally, for example, is a sleep-deprived mom who has a baby on her hip and appreciates that I take the time to read books for her, so she doesn’t have to waste her time on them (not that I ever post a bad review, mind you), while George reads because he found my last article in the diocesan paper amusing and we both live in Ohio.
Don’t get me wrong: I write my blog for me, not for anyone else (and I know this about myself). It’s my outlet. But I still have an idea who reads. (It helps with those aforementioned book proposals, too.)
Now, I’m outta time for writing this post.

Your turn: how do you judge your effectiveness? What questions have I raised with this post?
image source: Sid’s Side
—
Sarah Reinhard is the author of Welcome Baby Jesus: Advent and Christmas Reflections for Families. You’ll find more of Sarah at her blog, SnoringScholar.com. You can also connect with her on Twitter and Facebook.

What’s Up, CWG? (September 2011)

/0 Comments/in /by

After a break for the summer (though we did meet), the officers are up and Skyping again, catching up on the past and prepping for the future. First thing we want you to know:

Officer Elections are in November! We discussed it and we will stay on as your officer cadre if you wish (though Karina would like to be committee coordinator and Dave would be secretary). However, that’s if no one else wants to run. Check out the forums for a list of duties and to nominate yourself or others.

We only have a couple more days to get registrants for the retreat. We have 12 so far. Register by September 26 (Monday). This is a terrific opportunity and a great price. All members and CWG website guests got an e-mail about this Wednesday; for anyone else interested, check out the press release on the homepage, https://catholicwritersguild.com

Ann Lewis, our intrepid Madame President, met with our advisors at the Archdiocese of Indianapolis about how they want to be involved. They’ll attend our annual board meeting and keep an eye on our doings via the minutes. Monsignor Schaedel also wants to help out with the Seal of Approval and blog once a month. What a treat! They’ll also send out notices of CWG events to the Catholic education heads in the diocese.

We have about $950 for the website–half our goal–and have sent out the spec documents, and will let you know more about the website rebuild as the bids come in.

We have hired a new treasurer. Diane Guay was a great help to us for the first six months of incorporation, but she’s moving on, and we are hiring Mark Rhodes of Indiana. He came recommended by the Archdiocese and has already given us some great advice on simplifying the accounting–a real relief for us non-financial types!

We’re gearing up for the online conference! Anne McNesby will be working to get our awesome presenters, and Laura Lowder our much-needed and appreciated volunteers. More on this later!

We may be changing the date and location of the live conference. The Catholic Marketing Network gives us the conference space, so we follow them, and they are looking at Dallas and later in August. Thanks to those who took the survey on the dates. (We have no input on place, though we recommended Indianapolis.) We’ll let you know.

Our publicity committee has been doing an awesome job. Thanks.

We have a new Sunday Chats Coordinator. Susi Pittman is taking over this month and will be working to line up some terrific folks to chat with us. We have a guest chat once a month; the rest are open chats. Theresa Henderson and Lisa Mladinich will stay on to help. Welcome, Susi!

Sarah Reinhard has a new right hand for the Seal of Approval. Welcome Carol Ann Chybrowski, and thanks for stepping up!

Michelle Buckman will take over the Catholic Arts and Letters Awards Committee. We still need more volunteers to help with this, but thanks to Sharon Pickrel, Carol Ann, and Bobbi Sheahan for volunteering!

We toyed with the idea of a facebook group, but decided to stay as a fan page.

We are moving slowly with the CWG essay contest. Maria Rivera now had two volunteers to help (Joan Kelly and Ann Costa), and needs to coordinate with them on everything from rules to judging. We had a pro-life group offer to help judge and had suggestions for a couple of others, so stay tuned for further details!

Karina has at long last gotten all the minutes loaded onto the member forums, so if you are a member and deathly curious about the minutia of an officer’s meeting, check them out.

That’s the highlights of the summer. Thanks to all who are pitching in to make the Guild a terrific organization. We can’t do it without you!

Blessings,
Karina Fabian
Secretary

Being a Better Blogger: One Thing at a Time

/5 Comments/in /by


Last week, we talked about being a better blogger through focus. This week, let’s talk about something that I’m struggling with even as I type: doing one thing at a time.

It’s no surprise that as I was looking for an image to go with this post, the word “multitasking” seemed synonymous with “stress.”

There’s a reason for that, and if I sit down for more than two minutes at a time, it’s clear why: I can’t get anything done when I’m multitasking!

Yeah, yeah, I know. Juggling is part of my vocation and part of who we are as a people. What I’m talking about here is a certain kind of multitasking, the kind that forgets my core purpose and reason.

I posit, though, that in our blogging, we need to concentrate on one thing at a time. You can drive yourself batty trying to build a perfect and complete blog all in one hour, one day, or one week.

Here are some of the “one things” I’ve considered over time on my blog:
– quality of writing
– guest posts
– linking to others
– design
– ease of use
– interacting with readers

Is it more important to do them all, or to do them well? It is a quality vs. quantity question, and both answers are correct.

For your sanity, I suggest you focus on one thing at a time. You’ll get to a point in your blogging, down the road, where you’ll be doing everything at the same time and you’ll be doing them well.

What’s your first goal? Great. Do that. Do it well.

When you’ve done it, ask yourself what’s next. Do that, and do it well.

Repeat. You may find that you are going back to revisit earlier goals…and that would make you normal.

Pretty soon, the package comes together. It may take hours, or days, or weeks, or months, or, for some of us, years. With time, it gets easier to juggle more than one task in the blogosphere. At the beginning, do one thing at a time.

As you get more comfortable with blogging, you’ll find yourself revisiting things. Just like the laundry, some of these things are never really done. For example, your design might need some attention, and you work on that this week. Then you move on to focus on some categories and then on to another goal. In a few months, you find yourself revisiting your design.

So what’s the one thing you’re going to focus on this week?
image source: Kylie Makes 3

—
Sarah Reinhard is the author of Welcome Baby Jesus: Advent and Christmas Reflections for Families. You’ll find more of Sarah at her blog, SnoringScholar.com. You can also connect with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Being a Better Blogger: Focus

/4 Comments/in /by

A couple of weeks ago, I asked if you were making yourself a better blogger. In the comments, there was a resounding call for “tell us how to be better bloggers!”

So here I am. I’m not sure I’m the right person to do it, but I’ll tell you what I think. Just because I’ve lasted as a Catholic blogger for over five years and 2,400 posts doesn’t mean I know what the heck I’m doing any more than you do.

But that does make a point: you have to stick with it. For longer than a week or a month or even a year.

Let’s talk about focus.

I don’t mean picking a category or description for your blog (i.e., Mommy blog, Catholic apologist, life on a farm). I don’t mean setting aside certain days for themed posts (i.e., Mary on Monday, Wordless Wednesday, 7 Quick Takes Friday).

Those things might help you, and if they do, GREAT! DO THEM!

By focus, I mean setting your sights on the long view.

Ten years ago, when I was a newly-minted Catholic, a DRE convinced me to serve as a catechist. Then she shared this quote at the catechist meeting. I think it holds just as true for me as a blogger as it did for me as a catechist.

It helps, now and then, to take the long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.

Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings perfection.

No pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are all about.

We plant seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God’s grace to enter

and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.

Archbishop Oscar Romero


FOCUS.

It’s easy to get burned out in this new media world, especially as it gets crowded with more good stuff. It’s easy to feel discouraged by the fact that you’re putting a piece of yourself out there for people to see and they don’t comment.

Does it help you to think about who your audience is? Or does that distract you from doing what you opened that blogging window for in the first place? (That’s writing a blog post, and then writing another one, and another, and on and on.)

Do you find yourself inspired by someone else? What do they do well? How might you put their underlying practices to use?

What’s your passion? What interests you? What do you know about, or wonder about, or think about?

Want to hear what others have to say about it? I found these articles interesting, and if you’re struggling with blogging and focus, give them a read:

YOUR TURN: Let’s talk about focus.
How do you use focus?
How can you use it to help yourself grow as a blogger?
What further questions does this inspire?

I find that focus is a version of Dory from Finding Nemo, singing “Keep on posting, keep on posting…”

RELATED:

image credit: The Fordyce Letter

—
Sarah Reinhard is the author of Welcome Baby Jesus: Advent and Christmas Reflections for Families. You’ll find more of Sarah at her blog, SnoringScholar.com. You can also connect with her on Twitter and Facebook.

The Personal Approach to Marketing Your Self-Published Book

/2 Comments/in /by



Because self-published authors don’t have a publishing company to help them promote their work, it’s important to take the initiative in marketing. Connecting with your fans on a personal level is a great way to market. This can be done through attending conferences as well as interacting with them through your blog, facebook or other social networking.

Face-to-face interaction, however, is one of the most effective ways to market. If you have the budget, time and freedom to do so, I highly recommend attending conferences as a vendor and/or book seller. Readers and potential customers appreciate the opportunity to speak with an author and to have their books signed by the author herself.

For the first six years of my career as an author, most of my book sales occurred at live conferences (see photo) I attended as a vendor. (Now, Kindle sales make up 80 percent of my writing income). I typically attend four to five conferences a year. I normally sell anywhere from 30 to 100 books per conference (depending on the length and attendance of the conference.)

The goal of any author is to find those readers who will not only buy your first book, but will keep coming back for your future books. Attending conferences is a great way to have interested readers coming back for more.

For example, I have attended the Journey to the Father Youth Conference as a vendor every summer since 2005. The JTTF attendees, workers and volunteers know me and most importantly, there are many at this conference who will not only buy anything I write, they will buy excess copies.

Another approach to personal marketing is to always reply to a comment on your blog, on Facebook and/or Twitter. This develops a rapport with your readers and you can also make a lot of great friends too!

One last approach to personal marketing is to participate in Skype or teleconference calls with book clubs. This is a fairly new (and ideal) way to connect with many readers at once.

The personal approach to marketing can help to promote your books to those readers who will return time and again to purchase your books.

copyright 2011 Ellen Gable Hrkach

Ellen Gable Hrkach is the vice president of the Catholic Writers Guild. She is the award-winning author of In Name Only, a Catholic historical romance and now an Amazon Kindle bestseller (top 100 Religious Fiction). Her new book is Stealing Jenny, which is a contemporary pro-life suspense novel. She can be found blogging at Plot Line and Sinker. She and her husband and five sons live in Pakenham, ON Canada.

"Don’t Write What you Know" (huh)

/2 Comments/in /by

(A Thanks to Jean Heimann for posting the referenced essay on the CWO. Found it fascinating)

The Atlantic Magazine published an essay by Bret Johnston titled, “Don’t Write What You Know”. Mr.Johnston teaches an introductory fiction workshop at Harvard University. He passes out a bullet list to the students citing things that they should avoid. The final item on the list is the title to today’s blog. He states in the essay that after the students read this final item that “the idea panics his students because they have always been encouraged to “write what you know”.

Naturally—I panicked because I too, have heard this vicious, insidious type of encouragement –for years. I always assumed that what I wrote was somehow, in someway, coming from something I knew. I mean, if I take some words and use them to create some outlandish,  multi-colored space monkey who speaks several languages and eats yogurt instead of bananas, I assume that somewhere inside me I was, at one time or another, exposed to some strange monkey business and I have stretched it out into something that is non-existent and I do not even know that I  knew it in the first place. (Hey–it makes sense to me)

Mr. Johnston wrote, “an essential part of me dies when the student says, ‘What I wanted to do was—‘. The idea  of a writer wanting to do something in a story unhinges me—”  That sentence unhinged me. Don’t we want to do something when we write something? Do we not sense a purpose, a reason, a goal? If I get in the car to simply go for an unplanned ride I still have to know how to start the thing and guide it in different directions, right?

The point of all this is that sometimes (maybe many times) writing advice overloads me. Story structure, planned plot, flow, imagery, dialogue, how to do this and how not to do that. If I keep referencing all that stuff over and over all I learn is that I know less and less. My confidence wanes and it becomes reverse education. For me, I never actually know where I am going. My blank paper is my plot of land. My pencil/pen is my dump truck which is loaded with all the material I need to build my “dream house” from footers to finished trim and paint. I empty the dump truck on the paper and then I begin to sort everything  out and put it together. I do not think I could do it if I did not know what I know. Trust me, I will not paint the drywall until it is installed, taped and finished. There are many who will not like the color of the paint I chose. No problem, they can paint their house any color they like.

Stay in the Know

Join Our Newsletter

Members and supporters can get the latest on CWG news and events by signing up for our newsletter.

Please wait...

Thank you for signing up!

Catholic Writers Guild
P.O. Box 77
Eaton, IN 47338

About
Membership
Connect
Showcase

Blog
Contact
Terms of Use
FAQs

Pray with Us

Click Here
Prayer Request for Deceased