Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Reviews

I had entered my novel, From my Mother, into the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award and made it into the second round in which 2,000 out of a total 10,000 entries over five fiction categories were chosen based on the pitch for the manuscript. Mine was entered into General Fiction.

While my manuscript did not advance to the next round, the quarter finals for which 500 out of those 2,000 were selected based on an excerpt consisting of the first 5,000 words, I did receive the Amazon reviewers' feedback.

Here's what they (names are not disclosed) said:   

ABNA Expert Reviewer 1

What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?
You somehow made me care about running which is something I have NO interest in. I liked the way you worked in bits and pieces from the past both the past of the grandmother and for Nadia.

What aspect needs the most work?
I wasn’t really taken with the pitch. If that’s all I’d had to read I’m not sure if it would prompt me to read the excerpt or book. It was by no means terrible just a bit lackluster. The thing that caught my attention the most is the mention of WWII Europe. This will sound to minute but your use of the word ‘lore’ piqued my interest especially in referring to this family. It made me want to settle in for a good story.

I was a little confused about where Nadia lived. At first I assumed because of where she was racing that she lived in Canada but later it seemed she lived in Australia.

What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?
As I said the story was doled out nicely. I loved being inside Nadia’s head while she worked on her here and now race and her family’s legacy and how that impacts her and better yet what the mystery is and what that will mean. You build great word pictures of both these women. Oma hiding from the Nazi’s is suspenseful and scary. I just knew nothing good would come from that. I loved her stubbornness and how it’s reflected in her granddaughter. The illustrative story of Christmas in the church and the contest of wills for winning the prized pew seat told volumes about Oma’s character and world outlook. She was not going to be taken advantage of again!

All the while I read many questions came to me. Did the Nazi kill or take the child, rape grandma and the child she had was Nadia’s true mother? Was this why she seemed estranged from her daughter and her son in law? Why is Nadia so obsessed with running? What is she trying to get away from or to?

I know you’re writing general fiction but you’ve built a wonderful level of suspense into this excerpt!

The use of WWII seems very timely since so much is being written about it today. Personally I can’t get enough of fiction and nonfiction about that era and hope the personal stories and the re-analysis continue your book included.

ABNA Expert Reviewer 2

What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?
What a very haunting, and engaging beginning to this excerpt. We learn a lot about Nadia’s character by the way she approaches her running. The scene of the race is so well-written that I feel as though I am right there with Nadia. Oma is a feisty and endearing character; the scene of her pushing the other woman out of her seat in church is hilarious. Oma’s history is fascinating, and her relationship with Nadia is appealing and sweet. The rich history of the family, and the hint that there are many parts of the family story that Nadia does not yet know, generate strong engagement in the story.

What aspect needs the most work?
While the portions about running are interesting, they may be a bit lengthy and technical so early in the excerpt, and risk some readers, particularly those who may not be interested in running, becoming disengaged.

What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?
This excerpt captivated me from the start with compelling, well-developed characters and a rich tapestry of family history. The focus on the more technical aspects of running may have been a little overdone for so early in the story, and could risk losing the interest of readers who are not interested in the sport; more early focus on the relationship between Nadia and Oma may help to prevent this from becoming a risk. Overall, however, this was very compelling, and something I would like to read more of.

A personal (blog) record in paperback

Tim created this blog for me more than five years ago, He also wrote the first post on April 15, 2007 about the personal best of 3:08:48 I had just run in the Canberra marathon, improving on the 3:13:01 in the 2006 Gold Coast marathon. When he wrote that post, neither one of us realized then I had also won my age group -- a first at the marathon distance.

The title I initially used for this blog was The Happiness of the Long Distance Runner; while the title has changed several times since, the first one by and large still captures this blog's essence.

I was hesitant at first, writing only the odd post. There was one in May 2007, followed by another in July, and the next came in August. Then there was a gap until January 2008 -- by then Tim and I had swapped Sydney, Australia -- our home of seven years -- for Canada's West Coast.

The number of posts have steadily increased since and keeping this blog has also helped me keep tabs on my running, writing and, in a way, life in general. It helps motivate me to start and finish a thought, or at least explore it, in writing in a way that I am comfortable publishing. It's been especially helpful in the times I feel the work on the next book is lacking in progress.

Last month, partly motivated by finding a way to safeguard all the writing I have done for it in the past five years and partly because of wanting a physical copy as a personal record, I looked for, and found, a way to download the entire blog's text with Blog2Print.com into a PDF-file. It only costs $7.95, well worth it to me.

Next I turned the PDF into a text file, getting rid of all the images, and discovered I had written more than 200,000 words. I spent a couple of weeks quick-editing the file for errors and layout so I could turn into a paperback, a printed record of everything I have written on this blog between April 2007 and May 2012.

It's turned into a tome of 496 pages. I designed a simple cover for which I chose to use an image taken at about 15K into the 2011 Bellingham Bay Marathon as it's relaxed and happy.

Today I received the proof copy of this paperback. My only plans with it for now are to clean the interior file up further with another edit and to improve the layout for my own personal record, that of The Happiness of one Long Distance Runner.

Latest review for my ultrarunning novel

The Paperback Pursuer's Allizabeth Collins read and reviewed my novel From my Mother. Here's her verdict:

"I was quite taken back by how much this book actually moved me. It is a very touching and genuine story of love and survival from one generation to the next. I wasn't too crazy about the running aspect, but I quickly got over it, because the story-lines, (ultrarun and grandma Oma), meshed and flowed so well. I may not be a fan of running, but I felt like the two topics crossed-over and worked nicely together.

"The technical runner's language didn't distract from the stories of the two women, but made it stronger. Margreet Dietz is talented with words, and her experience with ultrarunning makes this a must-read for runners/athletes of all levels. It is a very motivational book, full of emotion - a marathon of words - that take the reader through the highs and lows of a family's past and present."

Find her review on The Paperback Pursuer, Goodreads and Amazon.

Jack Canfield on being a successful author

On Wednesday I tuned in to a conference call with Jack Canfield one of the editors of my book A Hundred Reasons to Run 100km had pointed out to me. The creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, Canfield was set to speak for more than hour on the topic "How To Get To Where You Want To Be As An Author/Speaker". He was interviewed by Steve Harrison.

Canfield has sold more than 115 million books in 41 countries, not bad after his first manuscript was rejected by 144 publishers. He's now a sought-after speaker and the conference call was well worth listening to. Much of the advice he shared applies to other goals than just becoming a successful author or speaker. As Canfield pointed out, there are various measures of success and you decide your own.

Canfield's journey began when he was a teacher and found his class completely unmotivated to learn, with poor marks as a result. He researched ways to encourage them and his newfound teaching techniques made such a difference to his pupils' motivation and self-esteem, and their grades, that he was soon asked to explain them to his fellow teachers. And it wasn't long before he became a teacher of teachers.

Among the notes I took where these:

- Unless you let people know about your book, no one is going to buy it.
- We make our own luck. We attract luck. Canfield's wife calls it synchromystical.
- Think differently and visualize.
- You have to believe that the work you are doing is extremely valuable. You deprive others by not telling them about your book (work).
- I have a solution to a problem you have, even if it is "just entertainment".
- If you want to be successful you have to do the work.

He highlighted a few key points:
1. Decide that .. you deserve to succeed, you deserve to feel satisfied and you deserve to be supersuccesful.

2. Expect ... to succeed.

3. Visualize ... yourself achieving what you want. Canfield said he has 10 to 15 images that he visualizes each morning for a total of about 8-9 minutes.

4. Dream ... BIG. Dreaming big takes as much time as dreaming small.

5. Act. Get into action—do it now. People have good ideas all the time, you must start acting on them.
Canfield has created a screensaver with all his goals. When you begin to believe, you subconsciously start looking for and seeing solutions. 

6. Affirm ... your goals.

Canfield also said:

1. Be a Giver, rather than a Taker, especially when it comes to speaking: "If you are not willing to give it away for free, you are not passionate."
2. Authorship (if you want to sell books) is 10% writing, 90% marketing.
3. Get on the phone, t a l k to people.
4. Do radio, tons of radio.
5. Practice by-pass marketing, i.e. seek places for your books beyond the traditional bookstores.
6. (Almost) last but not least, write a great book!
7. Learn more to earn more. Canfield stressed the importance of being a student and accumulating knowledge (on marketing).
8. Be persistent. "Most people give up too soon."

NEW! Book on fastest women in Ironman

Sub Nine by Timothy Moore

For the past year or so, Tim has been working on a great manuscript about the fastest women in Ironman ever. The result is Sub Nine: History's Fastest Ironwomen which will be available later this month.

While I can hardly be considered objective as both Tim's partner and editor of this 134-page paperback that chronicles the stories of the 22 women who have finished an Ironman in less than 9 hours, I feel confident in saying that any endurance athlete will love this read:

NEW BOOK - NEWS RELEASE 

Chrissie Wellington’s dominating win in South Africa last weekend marked the sixth consecutive time in which she’s finished an Iron-distance race in less than nine hours.

In just a few short years, Wellington has ushered in a new era in the sport. She’s made Sub Nine performances seem commonplace—yet they are far from that.

A Sub Nine performance puts a woman among the elite of the elite. Membership in this exclusive group numbers just 22; half of those have been earned in the last three seasons. The first woman to stop the clock with an ‘eight’ in front of it was Thea Sybesma of the Netherlands in 1991.

“I wanted to know more about these women, both those racing now and those who came earlier,” says Timothy Moore, author of Sub Nine: History’s Fastest Ironwomen. “I also wanted there to be a historical record of what they have achieved.”

Read the rest of the news release here

Preparing for author talk

Tonight I am presenting my third book A Work in Progress: Exercises in Writing to the Squamish Writers Group because one of its members, poet Jude Goodwin, invited me after reading about my book in the Chief newspaper. (Read the article here)

Incidentally Jude and I met on Saturday at the gala of the Whistler Readers & Writers festival, an absolutely superb event with 10 authors, including some very award-winning ones, reading from their latest work.

The night hosted the 2009 Governor General Award winning author for fiction, Kate Pullinger (The Mistress of Nothing), two-time Governor General nominee, Patricia Young (An Autoerotic History of Swings), the 2009 winner of the Writers Trust of Canada Non-Fiction prize and the BC Booksellers’ Choice Award, Brian Brett (Trauma Farm), award winning author, Russell Wangersky (The Glass Harmonica), City of Victoria Butler Book Prize winning author, Terence Young, (The End of the Ice Age), short-story author Jenn Farrell (The Devil You Know), writing couple and former Whistler writers in residence, Merilyn Simonds and Wayne Grady (Breakfast at the Exit Café: travels through America),  Kathy Page (The Find), and two-time Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize winning author Caroline Adderson. Local writer Stephen Vogler was a great and entertaining MC. (Details courtesy of the festival's website.)

While I enjoyed each reading, the short story by Terence Young was my favourite.

As for tonight, I am very much looking forward to this author talk/reading, my first.

Write a novel in November - NaNoWriMo

I had heard of the National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, event before, and understood the gist of it. I had not thought of participating until reading this post listing five reasons to do so.

Having learned much in the past years from writing my three non-fiction books and a collection of poems, the latter published only two days ago, I realized that trying to write a novel might be exactly what I need.

I have tried before. In recent posts I began publishing the first draft of the initial 13,000 words of a manuscript for a novel that I wrote in 2005, with the working title Ironwoman, though have yet to finish. (Read more here)

As a longtime journalist I am more comfortable with writing non-fiction. Besides, the truth is often stranger than fiction. Most of what I read is non-fiction, in recent years especially, including the book I am enjoying now, Walden; or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau.

However, crafting fiction is a mystery I would like to resume exploring after my initial and abandoned effort with Ironwoman. The word Novel alone is beautiful and enticing enough motivation to begin working on one.

My third book A Work in Progress: Exercises in Writing, of which I wrote the first 20,000-word draft in eight days straight, is very much about the process of writing quantity before focusing on quality; I have experienced the value of writing fast, with abandon, in the first draft.

Writing 50,000 words in 30 days means producing less than 2,000 words a day. If you focus on writing, and let go of your internal editor and critic, that could be done in less than an hour, or two at most.

If you've ever considered, even for the shortest fleeting moment, writing a novel ... why don't you join too?

Oregon public library acquires my books

The Driftwood Public Library in Lincoln City, Oregon, has agreed to acquire Running Shoes Are a Girl's Best Friend and A Work in Progress: Exercises in Writing for its collections. With that, my books will soon be in public library collections in five countries. 

Driftwood has a great collection of books on writing and I am thrilled to see my book added to that, as well as knowing that my book on female runners will soon inspire local women to begin or keep running those beautiful wild beaches that are a treat for humans and dogs alike.

Article about my book A Work in Progress

Dawn Green (Special to The Chief)

Every writer hears the term “writer’s block” and shudders. It seems every person who loves to write will sooner or later find themselves at a point of intense frustration where the words they are searching for simply dry up.

Enter local author Margreet Dietz and her book A Work in Progress. Her new publication is designed to cleverly take readers on the writing journey and to inspire them to move forward on their own projects.

Read more: Local author helps writers find their groove | Arts & Entertainment | Squamish Chief, Squamish, BC

My 3 titles headed for Okanagan Regional Library

The Okanagan Regional Library will include my three books Running Shoes Are a Girl's Best Friend, Powered From Within: Stories About Running & Triathlon and A Work in Progress: Exercises in Writing in its collections.

Not only is that superb news, but in the process I also found out about a system called BookManager. 

According to the website, TBM BookManager Ltd. was created in 1986 in Vancouver, BC by Michael Neill, then co-owner of a family run chain of bookstores. Today, BookManager is located in Kelowna... We have well over 400 stores that consider BookManager to be an important asset to their business. There are also about 50 stores who simply subscribe to our bibliographic services, TitleLink and PubStock.

A great resource by the looks of it and I was very pleased to see my three books included in the system.

Inclusion in anthology of verse

Today I received a letter from the Poetry Institute of Canada that one of my poems has been selected for an anthology of verse titled Island Mists, scheduled to be published in 2011. 

The poem is among those in my book Sunshine on a wooden floor, which I will publish later this year or early next.

Gabriele Rico's Writing the Natural Way

Another book I first read five years ago was Gabriele Rico's Writing the Natural Way. This writing/reference book is aimed at "using right-brain techniques to release your expressive powers."

Gabriele Rico, a professor of English and Creative Arts at San Jose State University, promises to "release creative inhibition, end writer’s block, find an authentic voice and discover patterns of meaning."

And she delivers with her solution, developed in her doctoral dissertation at Stanford, called clustering and the central idea behind this book.

"Clustering is a nonlinear brainstorming process akin to free association. A nucleus word or short phrase acts as the stimulus for recording all the associations that spring to mind in a very brief period of time," Rico writes.

"Clustering acknowledges that it’s okay to start writing not knowing exactly what, where, who, when and how."

The technique of clustering helps us return to the time when we were all natural poets before the left part of our brain took over between the ages of nine and twelve.

After finishing this book and its exercises, you will be the author of at least two full A4-sized notepads. I guarantee that you will be surprised at the quality of your own work. This book is also a great read jam-packed with philosophical and inspiring quotes and examples of fabulous writing.

Rico tells us that Nobel Laureate "Roger Sperry noted that an actual physiological harmony – resonance – occurs as the brain’s diverse strengths work together. The reward for this cooperation is a psychological sense of wholeness. Our yearning for such wholeness can be satisfied through creative arts."

Rico certainly gives the reader the tools to fulfil this yearning.

Stephen King's On Writing

It's been five years since I read this book, and it might be time to read it again. As I went through some of my files on the laptop I have had since late 2004, I came across this note I wrote about King's book on Sept. 29, 2005:

Stephen King books never attracted my attention —until two teachers (at a writing course and publishing/editing course respectively) highly recommended his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

 It is part autobiography, part writing manual. It is certainly funny. Wondering whether I should sign up for another writing course, I read his advice on this with particular interest.

King describes a writing retreat in the woods. During the day writers write by themselves. At night, those writers meet around a camp fire, toast marshmallows and critique the stories written during the day. While King likes the sound of the retreat, he isn’t so convinced of the value of the critiques.

As King writes, without mincing his words, in On Writing:

“And what about those critiques, by the way? How valuable are they? Not very, in my experience, sorry. A lot of them are vague. I love the feeling of Peter’s story, someone may say. It had something . . . a sense of I don’t know . . . there’s a loving kind of you know . . . I can’t exactly describe it . . .

“Other writing-seminar gemmies include I felt like the tone thing was just kind of you know; The character of Polly seemed pretty much stereotypical; I loved the imagery because I could see what he was talking about more or less perfectly.

"And, instead of pelting those babbling idiots with their own freshly toasted marshmallows, everyone else sitting around the fire is often nodding and smiling and looking solemnly thoughtful. In too many cases the teachers and writers in residence are nodding, smiling, and looking solemnly thoughtful right along with them. 

"It seems to occur to few of the attendees that if you have a feeling you just can’t describe, you might just be, I don’t know, kind of, my sense of it is, maybe in the wrong f*****g class.”

Even if you aren’t interested in his take on the craft of writing, you’d probably enjoy reading his autobiography in the first part of the book.

Formatting your ebook for Amazon's Kindle

My book Running Shoes Are a Girl's Best Friend is soon ready in Kindle format through Amazon, just like Powered From Within: Stories About Running & Triathlon and A Work in Progress: Exercises in Writing.

Once you know how to format your ebook properly for Amazon's Digital Text Platform, which is where you submit your ebook data and files so it can be sold and/or read on the Kindle, it is a very easy process. 

Once you have signed up for to Amazon's DTP program, you can do so here. You add a new title, and fill out all the required details. This is very straightforward (if you have any questions, don't hesitate to email me). You upload the cover photo of your book.

Then it is time to upload your book's content file. This is simple - once you know how to do it. It took me a while to figure it out and, as described in an earlier post, a website called CJ's Easy as Pie, helped a lot.

I used first Microsoft Word and then Mobipocket to convert my book's content file. (Do I need to remind you to back up those files before we get started?)

Your book's file in MS Word needs to be cleared of all formatting. (To do this select the entire file with CTRL A, then go to Formatting, then Styles and Formatting, and then Clear Formatting.)

Once that's done, there are two things that you can/must do to format your book for the Kindle: add page breaks and apply styles to the book's title, and all chapters - this process also allows you to create a clickable contents table.

As you know, page breaks are inserted via Insert, then Break, then Page Break, or CTRL Enter.

To apply styles to your book's chapters, select the text that you want, then go to Format, then Styles and Formatting, and choose a style from the right-hand page that opens up (or scroll up and down until you see Heading 1 etc.

For example, this is what I did with the 54 chapters of Running Shoes Are a Girl's Best Friend:
 
CHAPTER 1
That great sense of accomplishment is available to anyone
"It's really important to enjoy the journey rather than feel like it is something you have to do."

CHAPTER 1 - I applied Heading 1 to that.

That great sense of accomplishment is available to anyone - I applied Heading 3 to that line

"It's really important to enjoy the journey rather than feel like it is something you have to do." I applied Heading 8 to this line because it allowed me to have italics in the layout at the start of each chapter - I didn't want each pull-out quote of the beginning of each chapter to show up in the Table of Contents because it would too unruly.

If you like, you change the set-up of each Heading style by right-clicking on it and then choose Modify in the drop-down menu.

You need to go through your entire document, and apply the Heading styles, and insert Page Breaks between each chapter.

You can use the View, Reading layout to check it looks OK.

I applied the heading Title to the book's title and my name, though I later remove it from the table of Contents (see below).

Once you have done that, it's time to create your table of Contents. Put your cursor on the spot where you'd like the Contents to appear. Then choose Insert, then Reference, then Index and Tables.

Once you are here, click the Table of Contents tab and choose how many Heading levels you'd like to show. With Running Shoes Are a Girl's Best Friend I applied three Headings (1, 3 and 8) but only wanted the text of Headings 1 and 3 to show up in the Contents table. So I chose under Show Levels 2, so only the first two levels are shown.

Make sure the Show Page Numbers box is NOT ticked for your ebook. Then click OK.

Check the Contents table you've just created, and remove any headings you do not want. In my case I removed the title of my book, and my name, as well as the item Also by Margreet Dietz from my Contents.

Now you're ready for Mobipocket. Download the software.

Open Mobipocket's Creator. Then upload your book's content file, as we just created, by selecting MS Word document under the Import From Existing File.

Once the content file is uploaded you will need to do two things: add a cover photo by selecting Cover Image at the left-hand side. Use Browse to find the image, upload and click Update.

Next go to Metadata (also on the left) and fill out all the required fields, then click Update.

Now you are ready to create the file you will upload to Amazon's DTP: click Build in the top of the screen. If it doesn't work, check if you have filled out all the required Metadata of your book.

Once this done, allow through the third option that shows up on your screen to see where the file with the extension .PRC is created on your computer.

Then go to Amazon, and upload this file under your book's content file. Use the Preview option to check your book looks the way it should.

Congratulations, the hardest part of this process of the DTP process is now done!

As mentioned before, CJ's Easy as Pie is a great resource, and there are plenty of others out there, either free or for sale in book form like this one. Check out self-publishing books on Amazon.

Good luck, and if you think I might be able to help you, please feel free to email me.

Promote your book on LL Book Review

LL Book Review offers authors the opportunity to review, and promote, their own books:

"We’re always open to new ideas when it comes to self-publishing, marketing, and also reviewing.  So, we have a new idea and we need your help. We’ve decided to give authors the chance to review their own books right here on LLBR.  What are the benefits of reviewing your own book, you might ask?  Well, first and foremost, it’s free publicity!  FREE!  It’s a chance to step up on the soap box and convince readers to read your book. (Read more)

Cracking the Kindle formatting code

It has taken me a while but I finally found a way to format my books for the Amazon Kindle program. At the beginning of July, late on a Sunday evening, I stumbled upon a proper formatting for my book A Work in Progress: Exercises in Writing. I'd spent quite a few hours trying to figure out how to reformat my Word file of this book so that it looked good in Amazon's DTP preview. Suddenly it did.

Without taking notes, though even then I may not have even realized how exactly I did it, I turned my attention to preparing my books for Apple's iBookstore - it took me about a week to figure out how to reformat to the epub format and do everything else required to prepare my three titles.

Then I returned to the Kindle program with the goal to prepare my other two books for it - however, I had absolutely no clue how I had done it with my first book and no matter what I tried I couldn't get a layout in the DTP preview that looked good enough.

It took me until now to crack the code (again). In hindsight it should not have taken me this long. This site was very helpful. It reminded me how to use Word properly (something I learned in the Book Editing & Publishing course I took at Macleay College in Sydney five years ago) and pointed me toward Mobipocket to finish off the process. Thanks CJ!

Powered From Within: Stories About Running & Triathlon (Kindle edition)

Reader's review of A Work in Progress

One of the most valuable things from my signing last weekend at the Hooked on Books store in Penticton, B.C., has been the positive feedback I received on my third book, A Work in Progress: Exercises in Writing (May 2010).

One of the people I met there, a fellow writer who lives in the U.S., wrote this review:

"I met the author at a bookstore in Canada last week and bought all three of her books--this compilation of exercises appealed to me because I'm working on a non-fiction manuscript and have hit a "block." The exercises she recommends are exactly what I need to jumpstart me back into the writing life. Her stories are personal, humorous and relevant to the process. I went back to the store to purchase a copy for my co-author, who is having similar issues getting focused. Highly recommended for all writers and would-be writers from someone who has been where we all are!"

A Work in Progress: Exercises in Writing is available as paperback ($19.95) and ebook ($9.99).

Paperbacks can be ordered online through my CreateSpace store, Amazon or directly from me (please contact me via email for a shipping quote).

Ebooks are available from Amazon, Apple's iBookstore and Booklocker.

So you want to write a non-fiction book

That’s awesome. I spoke with two people in the past week who told me about their plans to write a non-fiction book. They have great ideas, and solid expertise and/or experience in their respective fields. If you are among them, here are a few ideas to help kick-start your book project.

You probably have already clearly defined your topic, by way of a working title.

I imagine you have decided to write that book because you believe there is nothing like it on the market. If you haven’t already done so, create a list of comparable books available and describe how yours is going to be different.

Of course it is already unique because you are writing it, and yours is an absolutely unique perspective. The information you choose to convey and how you decide to convey that is what will set your book apart from those already published, just like style, examples used, size, price, and so on.

More than likely much your book is already written, either figuratively or literally, through your experience and/or research. So it is likely a matter of organizing all the information, and expanding on it. That’s a challenge and may change as the first draft (and the following ones) progress. And that’s OK.

In terms of the working process, writing a book is very much like training for, say, a marathon. It’s about consistency, taking one step at a time and focusing on the big picture. Never forget that it is a learning process, too.

It very much helps to always have your eyes on the goal, i.e. what are you trying to say specifically to whom. Taking the time to define your book in one sentence is extremely valuable as having that definition will keep you focused throughout the writing process (advice I read in Jeff Bollow’s Writing FAST: How to Write Anything With Lightning Speed).

For example, for my first book Running Shoes Are a Girl’s Best Friend my definition was: Running is empowering physically, mentally and socially for any woman.

Next, and this was for me the single-most difficult thing for Running Shoes, is planning the (working) table of contents for the book. I had used a clustering technique, i.e. simply sit down and write down any and every word or sentence in a stream of consciousness that comes to mind about the topic, in my case women who run.

(I first began using clustering in a creative writing course I took in Sydney in 2005 and after reading the fabulous Writing the Natural Way by Gabriele Rico. Clustering has helped me write most of the poems in Sunshine on a wooden floor, my collection of poems which I plan to publish later this year.)

For Running Shoes Are a Girl's Best Friend, I got so many great topics through my clustering exercise aimed at structuring that title but dividing it up along those topics proved the wrong format. I ended up making things far more complicated than they needed to be. I got stuck, with tons of superb information.

After months and months of frustration in the end the format of covering all these topics that came out in the clustering process through individual profiles, organized as separate chapters, was the answer. It seems simple in hindsight but it certainly wasn’t then, until I found the solution.

In other words, keep your book’s structure simple and straightforward. While structure is important, it doesn’t need to be rigid. One chapter could be half a page (as I saw in one of the bestselling books on writing).

The biggest secret to writing a book, and finishing it, is to set aside time for it regularly and take it word by word, sentence by sentence.

Writing/editing is my profession, and has been since 1996. I consider myself a professional author, even though my book sales aren’t near sufficient to cover all my bills, and I have other writing and editing jobs.

I work on my books every single day, whether it is writing and rewriting the new ones I am working on, or by working on spreading the word about those already published.

To write your book, find at least 30 minutes in your day, preferably every day, and sit down to write. Set manageable targets, such as 200 words or a page a day. Repeat the next time, or day. Keep writing until you have a first draft of your book.

First drafts can be shitty (coined by Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird) and are there to be rewritten. Whoever said writing is rewriting was right.

My third book A Work in Progress: Exercises in Writing is very much about the process of writing with abandon and without self-critique—the latter comes later in the process after you have finished your first draft.

Before that, just write—it’s amazing how much you can get done if you simply do that. A Work in Progress is a case in point, since I wrote the lion’s share in eight consecutive days.

Of course the rewriting, revisions, proofreading and publishing, all of which I chose to do myself, with (my partner) Tim - a professional writer/editor too - proofreading at least half the chapters, took another three to four months. But by then I had a crystal-clear idea of what the end result should be. Rewriting tends to be a lot easier than staring at a blank page and expecting everything to come out perfect in one go.

Trust yourself, and write! Good luck, and I am only an email away.

Crazy? It's all relative

In the last couple of days since telling friends, via Facebook, that I signed up for a 100km road race I have had a few reactions. Those responding all are good friends so I know that support lies at the heart of their comments. Even so, "Crazy" was the word that came up a few times too.

I have to admit that last night I woke up with a brick in my stomach and panicked, just like the previous night, as my thoughts turned to the fact that I have put my money down and announced that I am going to run a 100km and would like to do so in nine hours, or less. Have I done the right thing?

I've always said I wanted to focus on getting faster at the marathon distance, where my goal is to shave at least 7 minutes and 11 seconds off my best time for a 2:59:59 finish - lofty goal for sure. And now I am committed to doing my second ultra in four months? And this one is on the road? With a time goal?

Why, I wondered again last night as I worried whether the pounding of 100km on the road with an ambitious time in mind is more than my body wants to handle. But then I think about the women I have met since May.

One is 70, though you'd be very hard-pressed to guess that by looking at her, and ran the Comrades Marathon two years ago, the oldest woman to do so. She has run more than 100 marathons since she began running from scratch at the age of 37. She has also completed the Western States Endurance Run (100 miles) and competed five times at the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii. She won her age group there too.

Another who has run most of her life, though never more than a half marathon until she began training for a 50-mile ultra at the age of 51. She now runs five hours on hilly trails without batting an eyelid. In the process, she has found her attitude change from can-not-do, to yes-I-can, and not only with regards to her running.

A third began running 20 years ago to cope with stress. In fact she started by walking, and then slowly introduced short stretches of running. She raced a 10km, because her brother suggested she should, loved it and did another, then a half marathon, then a marathon, then an ultra. She this year found the courage and commitment to train for her first 100-mile race.

A fourth, in her early 30s, found an amazing joy in the first 7km run she did three years ago. A year ago, she saw an ad in a running magazine for a five-day stage race in Costa Rica. While she had yet to run a marathon, and didn't know how she was going to afford the $2000 entry fee, let alone the other costs such as travel, training, gear and so on, she desperately wanted to. And she did, selling her flat-screen TV and car to do so.

A fifth is still in her 20s. She's only recently taken up running but was immediately attracted to the endurance part of it. With a philosophy of "What's the worst that could possibly happen?", she has run the North Face 100(km) and last month, the 125km aptly-named Canadian Death Race.

And one, admittedly a pro adventure racer, who has done so many amazing races including the 135-mile Badwater Ultramarathon in Death Valley, U.S. I'd first read and heard about this race when I ran the Death Valley Trail Marathon there in 1999. While it was my second marathon, a sandstorm cut about 3km off the route, so I do not count this race among my marathon finishes. This, incidentally, is a spectacular run that follows the gorgeous Titus Canyon.

Ultra races have intrigued me for more than a decade, though I have not seriously considered running any of the 100 mile classics such as Western States, or Leadville or Hardrock. That might have changed since I ran STORMY last month and interviewed all (except one) of the above women for my next book.

The philosophies of, Let's see how far I can go, and, What's the worst that could possibly happen, and, One step at a time gets you a long way, I (try to) subscribe to, both in running and in life, and while part of me - especially at night - is scared, a larger part of my is curious and excited about trying to run 100km on the road.

A Work in Progress proves popular

During a weekend where about 2800 Ironman triathletes gathered in the B.C. town of Penticton to compete in the 28th edition of Ironman Canada, I was a little surprised that out of my three books the one on writing, A Work in Progress: Exercises in Writing, proved most popular.

I had brought fewer copies of this book, which I published in May this year, than the other two as I expected my those titles, Running Shoes Are a Girl's Best Friend and Powered From Within: Exercises in Writing, to appeal more to Ironman athletes and their friends and families.

While the latter two did well too, I have sold more copies of  A Work in Progress this past weekend. More importantly, I received amazing feedback on it from the writer I described in my previous post the day after she bought one copy of each of my three titles. I saw her waiting for her partner at the bike check-in on Saturday, where I was waiting for Tim as well, and went over to say hello.

She enthusiastically told me she was already halfway through A Work in Progress and had gone back to the bookstore to buy another copy for a fellow writer, in fact the person who will be her co-author on a book she is in the process of writing. She said she found great inspiration in A Work in Progress, on many levels, but especially for approaching her manuscript.

Her feedback means so much to me as it confirms that I accomplished what I set out to do with A Work in Progress, which is to encourage and inspire fellow writers and (budding) authors. I strongly believe in the books I have written and to receive positive feedback from readers, whether in person or through emails, is something I very much appreciate.

Hooked on Books owner Judy has said to me from the start that books on writing are very popular in the Penticton area and this has definitely proven to be the case for my title, A Work in Progress: Exercises in Writing.