The Mouse that Writes

Normally I present new fiction books in My Writing Corner, but today I am going to make an exception and introduce you to a new book on writing.  Why? Well, quite simply, because it is MY book.

Sue Viders and I have been writing, teaching writing, critiquing each other's writing and working together on one level or another for more than ten years. We've taught a number of writing classes online and given presentations together at writing conferences. 

Over the years students have often asked us about why we don't offer books or put our lectures into books so they can buy them and use them whenever they wanted or recommend them to their friends. We had one book published, Ten Steps to Creating Memorable Characters, which eventually ended up at Random House.

But now we've decided to start offering a series of booklets on our own, based on those many classes we've taught. We love to help aspiring writers and earlier this month our new book made its debut on Amazon, Let's Write a Story -- Seven Ways to Plot.

How did we come up with Dottie, our little writing/marketing mouse?  I'll let Sue tell that part of our collaborative story. As the author of dozens of marketing books for artists she knows what she is talking about!

Sue:  But before we could go “public” with our books, we had to come up with some type of not only a format but a recognizable image and name that people would come to associate with us, Sue and Becky, the writing teachers.

First the format: Taking our lectures and turning them into readable and followable text gave us several booklets of about 50 pages each. Big deal. There are a hundred how-to write books out in the marketplace.

What would make our books stand out…look different so the beginning writer would feel comfortable reading and following our advise? An image was needed. Research was needed. Finally after looking at covers for days, we decided  on a mouse. No other book cover had a mouse on it. Oh there were pencils, pens, computers, even typewriters, but no mouse. Right. A cute mouse. And of course it had to be a female…grin.

And she would be working with a really tall number 2 yellow pencil. Eventually the mouse somehow ended up with her pencil making several dots. And the dress became full of polkadots. It was then Dottie was born.

Let’s Write a Story became our overall marketing image. It along with Dottie is on the cover of all our writing books.

The first book is on our favorite subject, one that we teach all the time all over the county. No, I take that back, all over the world as we have students from every English speaking country on the planet.

So if you need help on plotting, or on creating characters, we hope you'll watch for our new books. The next one on Creating Memorable Characters is in editing right now, and Dottie will be back with that soon.

If you'd like to contact us, please do so, as we are also setting up a new blog, devoted to answering writing questions.

Contact info

Sueviders@Comcast.net
BeckygMartinez@gmail.com

And watch for our blog:

www.letswriteastorywDottie.blogspot.com