Trite as it sounds, books really are judged by their covers, but a fancy image is not the end-all, be-all. I know I'm oversimplifying this, but a good title goes a long way toward the success of a writing project, regardless of whether you're writing a book or a news article.

Here's an example of a bad title I read in a finance journal: "Stock Markets Increase Modestly As Anticipated." Talk about insipid journalism. Couldn't they have come up with something more exciting? Their headline boils down to: "We Made A Little Bit Of Money This Year, As We Thought We Would."

Here's another I saw in a newspaper: "Panda In Zoo Does Not Give Birth For Third Straight Day." Whoever wrote that one should be fired. The author of that article is reporting a non-issue (something that didn't happen, and because of its not happening, is irrelevant or unimportant). It's like standing in the desert and saying, "Nope, no rain today either." Well of course there won't be any rain, silly, it's the desert. Business as usual is not newsworthy.

Worse still, we don't even know if the panda is pregnant, so should we even be holding our breath?

That said, under no circumstances should you do the opposite: draft a brilliant title for a piece of writing that goes nowhere. Titles like these stink of click-bait, like: "See How Candidate Smith Can Still Win The Presidency With This Weird Trick!" The exclamation point in the title alone is a mortal sin that will land the author squarely in the third circle of literary hell (the hell of impossible deadlines and persnickety editors). But the greater sin here is writing a title that promises big while the article delivers nothing. It's the literary equivalent of promising a steak dinner and handing over a rice cake — insipid, calorie-free writing that makes you feel emptier after having consumed it.

Don't follow Stephen King's example.

Sure, he's a fine writer whose stories have terrified generations of fans. And sure, he's served as the inspiration for countless writers after him. But if he's done writers a disservice, it would be that he's spoiled authors into thinking they can use any song lyrics in their writing projects, so long they cite the songwriter.

Think back to your time in school when you used to write term papers. Your teacher might have insisted on a minimum number of research citations to back up your point of view, all of them cited in perfect MLA style with a "works cited" page at the end. Now crack open just about any of Mr. King's books, and chances are you'll find song lyrics. Inserting lyrics into his works appears to be something he loves doing, and for good reason, because lyrics can really help a story along when used properly.

Putting two and two together, you might reason that you can use anybody's lyrics so long as you provide attribution, especially since, well, if Mr. King can do it, why can't you? Nope, sorry. The reason why you can't do that is: copyright infringement. Need another reason? Try this one on for size: expensive lawsuits with you as the defendant.

Now, I'm not insinuating Mr. King has done anything untoward. Not at all — in fact, I'd wager he properly secured the legal rights to use the lyrics that appear in his books. In legalese, getting permission to do something is called "licensing." Thus, for those song lyrics to appear in Mr. King's books, he would have had to have licensed them first.

"But wait!" I hear you shouting from across the interwebs. "I only used five words from that song. That's so miniscule that I should be safe." No, sorry. There isn't any such "safety net" threshold.

"But what about fair use?" you protest. Without getting too far along this tangent, the concept of fair use is a defense to infringement. Which is to say, you'll still get sued, except now you might have some chance at defeating the lawsuit. Merely shouting "Fair use!" in court won't work. You'll have to convince the judge your use of the lyrics is "fair" by meeting certain narrow legal criteria. Weighing your options, it's far better to avoid getting sued in the first place.

Of course, you could always license the song lyrics you want, but this takes time, money, and effort. You may not want to put your writing in hold while negotiating the rights to reprint those lyrics. Also, the rights-holders can refuse to license you that song for any reason, and they'd be within their rights to do so.

There are alternatives to using copyrighted song lyrics in your writing. The first is simply: don't use them. Rarely will a particular song be so crucial to your story that it will fall apart unless those lyrics are used. Another alternative is to reference the song or artist without using any lyrics, for instance: "He strode up to the dockside bar as Jimmy Buffet blasted through the worn-out speakers." No lyrics there, and using the artist or band names will not normally draw the ire of music publishers. A third alternative is to simply make up a new song that suits your purposes. As an original creation, no one will hold the rights to it but you.

All things considered, this primer is by no means an comprehensive guide to music licensing, and it might not even apply to the copyright scheme in the country where you live. Also, all kidding aside, Mr. King is a great writer and a pretty decent human being, so I'm told.

Now get back to writing. May the words come easy and your coffee pot never be empty.

So you just finished your writing project. Good job, but this is no time to put your pen down, as there's still more writing to be done. And if you think writing a 90,000 word project is tough, try condensing that work into ten sentences. Yes, you read that right: ten sentences. Technical types call this tight little brick of text the "book description", but most others call it the "blurb". 

You can think of a hook as either of the following: an instrument to catch fish, or a sweeping punch to the jaw. Regardless of the definition, a hook is something that quickly gets someone's attention.

The hook is the single most important element. No matter how captivatingly brilliant your work may be, no one will read it if you fail to snag potential readers at first blush. It should be one of the first -- if not the first -- things the reader sees. Thus, you'd better make it a great one.

A well-written hook does more than demand attention. It reaches out and shakes the reader by the collar of his shirt. It's probably also the hardest element on which to offer advice. It helps to have a firm understanding of your work and other books in your genre when writing a compelling hook. Ultimately, your hook needs to pique the reader's interest.

It is not possible, nor is it a good idea, to give away your whole story in the blurb. You need to ask yourself: "What are the most important parts of my work?" It helps to liken your blurb to the preview for a Hollywood movie. If you were a film editor, your task would be to parse out your movie's most salient moments and then splice them together into a clip that encapsulates your work. Movies nowadays run for about two hours, and you've got to distill yours down to a filmstrip of about thirty seconds. Your work as a writer is tougher even than that, because your blurb should take no longer than fifteen seconds to read

As an aside, you may get those fifteen seconds if your hook was effective. You won't get anywhere near that if it's not.

You must clearly identify your book's genre, theme, and salient plot points. Give your readers a taste of what to expect, but don't give it all away. There's something to be said about about suspense, and Alfred Hitchcock said it best: "There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it."

Don't be so quick to pull that trigger. Your readers will want to do that all on their own. You'd be doing them a disservice if you didn't let them.

Let's get something clear: your blurb is not a summary. It is not an outline. It is not a synopsis. These three tools will not substitute for a blurb. The blurb helps you sell your story. Your readers expect your story to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, as much as fast-food connoisseurs would expect a certain double cheeseburger to have "two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce..." well, you know the drill.

On the other hand, a blurb is expected to be open-ended. But, like your opening, make sure you leave a hook at the tail end. Why two hooks? Any angler will tell you there's a reason why fishing jigs often come with more than one hook -- you've a better chance of catching fish that way.

Below I've reproduced the blurb for The Gullwing Odyssey, along with comments to illustrate the steps outlined above.

There's your hook. The blurb starts by describing Marco's mundane life, then foreshadows a sudden 180-degree twist.

There's what the book is about -- a simple guy who gets wrapped up in a giant mess not of his making, and his struggle just to get by. The genre is fantasy with comedic elements. Things to expect: pirates, politics, and deadly hummingbirds. 

"But wait, there's more!" you can almost hear the television pitchman say. Well, there's a whole lot more, in fact, without saying as much, and if your readers want to find out what happens next they'll have to buy your book. Note the last line -- there's your closing hook. And if you're feeling persnickety you can count my sentences. There are eight. I've successfully boiled an 88,000 word novel down to its core in under ten sentences. It wasn't easy, I assure you, but it was worth it.

Take it from me, the last thing I'd want to do after wrapping up a long project is write the blurb, but the fact is that you can't sell even your first book without a good one. Hook your reader. Get to the point. Make it interesting. That's a lot of chainsaws to juggle at once, and although you only have two hands, juggle you must.

On an unrelated note, that part about juggling dangerous gas-powered tools was a figure of speech, so please don't attempt to juggle chainsaws.

Have fun (and be safe) writing!

Everyone has his or her own measure of success. For some that measure is the number of cars in the garage. For others it's the number of push-ups they can do under a minute. But how do you measure the success of an artist? The easy answer is to count the number of zeroes in their bank balances, but that doesn't help us much because it applies as easily to the writer as to the welder. If the purpose of art is to get others to feel, then the degree of success is whether, and how well, the artist achieves this effect.

In the same vein I'd like to share with you something that really touched me and made me feel proud. On March 22, K. T. Bowes of New Zealand reviewed my novel, The Gullwing Odyssey, on Amazon. Ms. Bowes is a bestselling author on Amazon, with ten books to her name. While it's always a thrill to receive praise from others who've been at it longer than you have, what really moved me was this:

These are the moments that make the task of writing (even editing -- ugh!) worthwhile, when someone else says, "That part was really funny," or "I really relate to this character." But rare and special is the instance where someone says, "I was going through a tough time, and your book made me smile."

That, to me, is the measure of a writer's success. That, for me, is why I do what I do.

I would like to extend a heartfelt and sincere thank-you to Ms. Bowes, and wish her and her family strength during their difficult times.

Check out K. T. Bowes's books now available on Amazon, and be sure to visit her blog, The Library Corner, for more great reads. Her latest, Demons On Her Shoulder, published this past Sunday, is a novel of restitution and hope, demonstrating that unique and powerful human ability to build a life from the ashes of destruction, a life without emotional demons.

Writer's block is like Bigfoot -- depending on who you ask, it either exists or it doesn't.

Talk to a motivational speaker and he'll tell you writer's block doesn't exist, that it's just apathy, or lethargy, or laziness. But what does he know? He's paid to speak, not to write. Now, if you were to ask me, I'd tell you from experience that it does exist. Oh, does it ever. And just to beat a dead horse here, how would I know writer's block exists? Because I've got it.

It's irritating since I'm under deadlines to produce. I've got my regular contributions to Darkwater Syndicate and some other writing projects -- not least of which is  the Gullwing sequel. On that topic, the frustrating thing is that I get ideas all the time. I'm never at a loss for good scenes to include in the novel, the hard part is putting them together in a way that makes sense. It's like putting together a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle without knowing what the finished puzzle is supposed to look like -- or knowing whether you've got all the pieces to begin with.

Bear with me, this'll pass. All traffic lights turn green eventually. Except maybe for those ones that constantly flash yellow. Even so, occasionally people roll through those when nobody's around -- not that I'm condoning that, of course.

Just saying.

Everybody's got a story to tell and no stories are born bad -- they're just written that way. More often than not, what makes a story bad is its execution. With some of polishing up, even "bad" stories can be made into what they really were all along -- good stories.

The advice below comes courtesy of the good people at Darkwater Syndicate. In the Syndicate's own words, this primer is "faster than a college course and a heck of a lot cheaper."

Brace yourself, though, as those Syndicate guys pull no punches.
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Learn
The grim truth is that just because you are fluent in a language does not automatically make you a writer. Nor does having a story to tell. Even a great story can be hobbled by poor execution. The manner of execution is what makes writing an art.

If you want to call yourself a writer, you'd better learn how to use words. Words are a writer's tools. While most might use a hammer just to drive a nail in a wall to hang a painting, in the hands of a craftsman that hammer can do much more. The difference does not lie in the tool itself but how it is used.

By the same token, you need to learn how not to use words. While a hammer may suffice to drive a screw into a wall, a better tool may be a screwdriver. Or a power drill. Or a jackhammer. 

Master grammar and parts of speech, develop a good vocabulary, and then get to work.

Write
It goes without saying that you can't be a writer unless you write. While there are as many aspiring writers as there are excuses not to write, all these excuses all boil down to either: "I just don't feel like it," or "I can't find the time."

Discipline is key. Face it, writing is work. If it were easy, we wouldn't admire people who do it well.  But if you want to be a writer, or if you want to tell that story you left half-finished, you need to get to work. No one but you can (or wants to) do it for you.

As for finding time, you must make time to write. Each week, we at the Syndicate devote a block of uninterrupted time to a writing project. We meet that schedule whether we like it or not. What emerges through our efforts is a first draft so ugly that we would sooner abandon at a stranger's doorstep. Even so, it is better to have something ugly and with potential than to have nothing at all.

Edit
Invest in a box of red ink pens. You'll be surprised how quickly you'll run through them. Chances are you'll spend as much time editing as you will writing.

Most writers hate editing, and with good reason. The process is stuffy, tedious, and painful. Stuffy, because you'll need to refer back to all those parts of speech and grammar conventions we referred to earlier. Tedious, because it entails going through your manuscript with a fine-toothed comb. Painful, because you'll not do this just once. Oh no -- your writing isn't finished until you've revised it several times.

Note that we used the word painful and not painstaking. It's pretty obvious that writing is painstaking. What makes it painful is that your aim is to condense your work. That means you'll be cutting out whole sections of that manuscript you sweated over for weeks. No matter how deeply in love you are with a sentence, a paragraph, a character, even whole chapters, if they do not advance the story in any appreciable way, they get cut. It's enough to make an aspiring writer cry, but what comes next is even more daunting.

Critique
We call them beta readers. Some call them critique groups. You can call them what you like.

Writers can be their own worst enemies when it comes to critiquing. Many a writer has lost sleep over criticism, which is why writers often are hesitant to give their work to beta readers.

The fact is writers are often as protective of their own work as a mother hen is of her chicks. This overprotectiveness keeps them from seeking honest -- albeit blunt and sometimes hurtful -- advice on their project.

You need to have thick skin to be a writer. Once you finish your project, get a fresh pair of eyes to look it over, no matter how much you think it will hurt.

And it will hurt. If it doesn't, you've picked the wrong person to review your work.

Let Stand On The Windowsill For An Hour
If you've ever baked a pie, you would know you can't eat it right out of the oven. Pies need to sit for a while and cool. Your project is that tasty pie you've been working on for so long. Much as you'd like to cut yourself a slice, you'd burn yourself if you didn't first wait for it to cool. Your pie would also fall apart into a crumbly mess, so don't be too eager to dig into it once you're done.

A fresh manuscript is hot. Don't touch it. Let it stand for a while to cool off. Let your chapters solidify. You'll know it's cooled off once you've stopped thinking about it. You won't do too great a job at the next step unless your mind is fresh and ready.

Revise
Once enough time has passed to distance yourself from your work, it's time for revisions. You'll find that your mindset during the revision phase is not the same as when you were in the production (i.e., writing) phase.

Remember that character you wrote in at the last minute, without whom you felt your story would fall apart? If you've let the manuscript sit long enough, you may find that you've grown a bit detached from this character. In fact, you might not fly into a table-flipping rage if someone suggested you remove him from the story. Actually, removing him might sound like a good idea after all.

Here is where you take your beta readers' advice to heart. Rewrite or reorganize sections that work, cut out the rest.
 
Polish
Don't groan. The final touch is a do-over of the editing phase. Here is where you make sure your project is free of errors.

First, correct all grammatical and spelling mistakes. The proper number of either in your project is zero. Do not rely on your word processor's spelling and grammar checker, as it is not foolproof. Most programs will overlook a word if it is spelled correctly even if it is used incorrectly in the sentence, such as in: "I here you loud and clear."

Once you're done reading for errors, give your work another read, this time for consistency. Scenes you wrote in the production phase may no longer jive with scenes you added or removed in revisions. Keep an eye out for this. It may slip past you because, as the writer, you are so immersed in your work that it is easy to overlook details. Your audience, on the other hand, is coming in cold and will pick up on inconsistencies.

Lastly, give your work one final read for fun. At this stage, you're no longer reading to spot errors. Rather, you're reading to enjoy your hard work. Of course, if you should spot an error or two you missed during the first two passes, feel free to correct it.

Shoot Adverbs Dead
A final bit of advice: shoot adverbs dead. You don't need them. Adverbs are words that tell you how a thing is done, such as in: "She looked at him very angrily." That sentence contains two adverbs, "very" and "angrily." While the sentence is grammatically sound, it is devoid of substance.

Adverbs steal the action away from the sentence and replace it with dry exposition.

You're the writer, and so it is your job to be creative. Show the reader the action, don't cut corners with adverbs. Now compare our example sentence with: "Arms crossed, she glowered at him as he entered the room." This sentence is adverb-free, and better yet, paints the reader a vivid picture. Right from the start we know that whoever is walking into the room is about to get an earful.

Good luck, and happy writing.
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This article was featured in Author's Voice, a publication of the South Florida Writers Association, September 2013, Issue 9, and also at Darkwater Syndicate on September 16, 2013.

Old timers in the industry might tell you that in their day, you'd mail your manuscript to yourself and never open the packaging, so you'd have date-stamped proof that you held the copyright to your work. Those days, if ever they existed, are gone, but the misinformation lingers.

Preliminary note: I am an attorney, but the information I'm sharing with you is not legal advice and you should not construe it as such. I am merely providing a summary of general information on a broad topic of the law. That said, there's no guarantee this information is (or will remain) 100% accurate, complete, or applicable to you because of a myriad of factors I won't go into. The law is an ever-changing thing, where you live may have different copyright laws, and what's more, your circumstances may not exactly fit the facts I've assumed.

Copyright Law Protects You
Picture if you will a clown at a child's birthday party. A perennial favorite trick is the one where the clown yanks a tablecloth from a folding table without disturbing the place settings or fragile centerpiece. Now, I know I'm going out on a limb here, but here goes: copyrights are not tablecloths. Clowns can't just yank them out from under you willy-nilly.
 
Copyright law exists to protect you. With all the hard work you put into your writing, the last thing you'd want is to have someone snatch it out from under you and call it their own. Worse -- for your work to be a success and have some undeserving clown prosper from it while you get nothing. Doesn't that just make your blood boil?

Thankfully, that is the type of injustice copyright law is designed to prevent. And it's even easier than you may think to establish your rights to a work.

Establishing Copyrights To Your Work
Keep in mind that authorship is not the same as copyright. Authorship means you created the work (in technical parlance, the "creative expression"). Without getting too deep into details, copyright generally means the authority to distribute and make copies of the work. Authorship and copyright are separable from the other, and often happens.

Generally speaking, you hold the copyright to any original work you produce the moment you reduce it to a tangible form. You can't copyright an idea still in your head, but if you express that idea in the form of, say, your novel, and put it down in paper, then the novel is subject to copyright. If you have a work in progress, then, again, under most circumstances you still hold the copyright to the work, despite it being incomplete.

Regardless of whether your work is complete or not, it is a good practice to prominently display a copyright notice on your work. Write or type the word copyright, followed by the year you completed the work (or the current year if incomplete), then your name. Registering your copyright (such as with the United States Copyright Office) is a good idea also, but in general it is not necessary to establish your copyright to the work. However, in order to assert a lawsuit for infringement of copyright, generally you must first register your work.

Sleep Easy, Neurotic Writer
Rest assured that the novel you've toiled over for so long is safe. There's no need to mail reams of paper to yourself in the hopes that you'll be protected if ever anyone steals your work. You'll save a few bucks that way, and your mailman no doubt will appreciate your lightening his load some.

And as an aside: I've got nothing against clowns. In fact, I like clowns. Just not the ones that infringe hardworking authors' copyrights.