Cheating on My Own Blog...

I know I haven't posted here in a while. The reason is that I've been posting for Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers on the regular, and my blog-fu has been going to them. For those who'd like to drop by and see what I've been up to, here's a list of links to the blog posts I've done so far:

Learning from Television: The Art of Predictability

Mixing It Up--You're Doing It Wrong

Wrapping It Up--Finishing a Series

Feeding the Muse

Making a Big Deal out of It

Gadgets and Spreadsheets and Apps, Oh, My!

Spicing Up Your Stories

I hope you'll drop by and take a look. And I'll try to get a big more news coming on this blog. I have some news regarding an upcoming release, and I'm looking forward to talking about it.

Coming on Monday--a New Blogging Series at RMFW

I've taken on a regular blogging gig at Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. My first blog will appear on Monday. I'm starting out with a series called "Learning from Television," where I'll yammer about my love for TV and how you can learn important writing skills from your favorite shows. I'll be posting on the fourth Monday of each month, except for November and December when the dates will shift to earlier in the month to accommodate the holidays. I hope you'll drop by and say hi!

Why I'm Learning Russian and Why You Should Learn Urdu or Maybe Tagalog

I’ll be one of the first to admit that I can go overboard when it comes to research. I like to follow trails wherever they lead and can spend months just reading when I should probably be writing the story.

One thing I’ve done under the umbrella of book research is learn languages. Languages have always fascinated me. When I was a kid, I remember spending hours poring over my mom’s college Spanish texts and even dipping into her text of Beowulf in the original old English (I guess it runs in the family). So when I decided to write about a Russian spy, it seemed natural to come home with a stack of Russian language books from the library, including the entire CD set of Pimsleur’s Russian courses, one of the best ways to get pronunciation and syntax drilled into your brain.

So why would I need to learn a whole new language just because my hero is from another country? I gave this a lot of thought because, let’s face it, learning a language is time-consuming, and there are all kinds of ways to handwave that kind of thing in fiction.

But I decided to pursue the venture, as much as it seemed like overkill. And I discovered that, yes, learning the language made me feel more comfortable with the characters.

My heroine is American but knows Russian, so knowing how the language feels in the mouth helps me add verisimilitude when she exercises her bilingual skills. That might sound weird but give it a try. My college Spanish teachers said to smile when you speak Spanish—it helps keep the words at the front of the mouth. Irish Gaelic seems to depend a lot more on the tongue. And Russian seems to be either way in the back of the throat or about to fall right out on your chin, depending on the word.

Another issue is syntax and word choice. Without knowing something about the language, I wouldn’t have known why Russians tend to drop articles (there are no articles in Russian). I also wouldn’t know what English words are difficult for Russians to pronounce. (As far as what Russian words are difficult for English speakers to pronounce, the answer is all of them.)

Of course I could figure out a lot of this listening to Russians speaking English on YouTube. (Which, by the way, is a great reason to watch hours and hours of Evgeni Malkin and Alexander Ovechkin interviews and call it work.) But knowing the reasons why they speak like they do makes it easier to remember what my personal Evgeni will sound like when he speaks English.

There are also scenes when both characters are speaking Russian. In these cases, it’s easy to fall into a pattern where they talk as if they were both speaking English, idioms and all. But it’s more realistic to reflect some of the natural syntax and idiomatic usages of Russian. I want there to be a distinct “feel” to the dialogue based on what language is being spoken and who’s speaking it. I think it’ll add something to the story.

So I’ll keep plugging away with my Russian lessons. Maybe down the road I’ll know it well enough to follow the KHL. In the meantime, here’s a challenge—if one or more of your characters speak something other than English, see if a bit of study of their native language gives you different insights into how you write them.

Friday Links on Tuesday: Worldbuilding

It's, like, a world. Get it?

I've addressed worldbuilding before (very briefly--it's in Item 3 on the linked post) over on Notes on Vellum, but here I'd like to talk about some more specific ways to use worldbuilding to build your backlist as well as to add depth to your current projects. The links below offer some hints and suggestions about using the world of your story to build more stories, draw readers in, find your way into series books, and, of course, profit...

David Farland's Daily Kick in the Pants: Your Setting as a Petri Dish. This is a neat article talking about how you can use one setting to kick off a bajillion stories and ideas. I'm in the middle of something like this right now--three separate series ideas (or is it four? I forget) all set in the same universe. It's fun and crazy and kind of overwhelming. I was glad to discover I'm not the only person who comes up with this kind of nuttiness.

Another from Dave Farland: How Real do you want Your World to Be? This is fiction, right? So why does it have to be real? Farland talks about grounding fantasy settings in reality to increase reader engagement and how to balance all your story elements to support your decisions about how far you want to go with the fantasticalness.

Nathan Bransford: Expanding the World of your Novel. This could be seen as a companion piece to the Petri Dish article above. Bransford talks about adding companion pieces to expand the universe, including novellas focused on a single character and book trailers to bring the world to life. This is a bit about marketing and a bit about just having fun with your created world.

Writer's Digest: Writing a Stand-alone Book (With Series Potential). If you're writing genre, Standalone with Series Potential is the magic word. This article gives some practical tips on how to think of your story as a series pilot and lay in numerous elements that can help jumpstart further books in the series. (Do people actually have trouble thinking of forty zillion sequels to a book? Or is my brain just insane? Don't answer that.)

Jane Friedman: It’s OK to Leave Stuff Out. In Fact, It’s Better. Tips on building your world without turning your book into the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Also? Superdog is AWESOME.

Worldbuilding is a complex subject. It's also hard, and hella fun. I'd love to hear any thoughts you might have about your own worldbuilding processes, how you add to your created universe, or different ideas you've had for nourishing that Petri dish. (No pictures of yucky mold, please.)

Friday Links: Deepening Your Writing

Starting next week, I'm going to switch my links posts to Tuesday and just post once a week for a while. Instead of just posting a list of links, though, I'm going to have them all focused on a theme, and I'll try to add some additional thoughts regarding that theme (appearance of additional thoughts dependent upon amount of caffeine consumed that day and number of afternoon naps indulged in).

Today's links are focused on pushing your writing that extra step--adding layers, making it more real, and taking advantage of all the senses you can put into play to draw your readers in.

Jody Hedlund: 7 Setting Basics That Can Bring a Story to Life. Adding detail and meaning to your story's setting.

Wordplay: How to Create Distinctive Character Voices. Ways to make your characters stand out from each other.

Writers in the Storm, guest post by Janice Hardy: 5 Ways to Bring Your Descriptions to Life. Looking at how descriptions will be written differently depending upon the POV.

Glimmertrain: Prompts to Deepen Character Development. Get to know your characters without having to buy them dinner.

Writania: 3 Steps to Writing a Novel With Unforgettable Characters. Making your characters balanced and real.

On your next pass through your WIP, take a look at some of these ideas and you'll add depth to your story that wasn't there before. These are also great steps to look at while you're doing revisions on a completed manuscript. Any personal tricks or tips you use when you're working on adding layers and depth? Please share in the comments below. I can use all the help I can get. :-)

Friday Links for Friday--The Business of Writing

Today's batch of links is focused on the overall business of writing. Goalsetting, how to ensure quality, seeing yourself as an entrepreneur, etc. This is the hard stuff we have to do instead of sitting around scribbling in notebooks all day. (In a perfect world, I'd be scribbling in notebooks ALL THE TIME. While drinking coffee and watching hockey or ogling band boys. Alas, this is not a perfect world.)

Jane Friedman--guest post by John Warner--How “Literary” and “Entrepreneur” Are Becoming Intertwined

Chiseled in Rock (Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers)--post by Tamelah Buhrke--Is Micro-publishing the Game Changer?

Jody Hedlund--Walls on the Way to Publication: A Necessity or a Nuisance.  A little of both? I think her approach to setting up your own walls to determine your readiness for publication are not a bad idea. It's easy to rush stuff out. It's harder to be sure it's really good.

Passive Voice Blog--It's the Rare Writer Who Actually has Ambitions. This post has excerpts from and links to a full post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Long but worth a read.

The Creative Penn--Writing for Life: 5 Practical Goals for Writers. Guest post by C. S. Lakin. Great advice.

Deanna Knippling--How Much Is Your Writing Worth? Wow, that was depressing. Also--warning--white on black. I suggest using Readability. (Via The Passive Voice.)

Mystery Writing is Murder--Promoting a Pen Name. I have... way too many. *collapses in exhausted heap*

Michael R. Hicks--Adjusting to Being a Full-Time Author. Part 1 and Part 2. Really good, meaty, sensible advice I wish I had known, oh, sometime mid 2011. (Oh, and there's about 5 parts now. Go read them all. They're linked at the bottom.) Again, black on white. Don't have Readability yet? Go fetch it.

David Farland--Marketing Before You Write. Writing for a specific audience. Interesting thoughts. Pretty sure this approach would work best if you make sure you're still writing what you love.

And that's it for today. Hope you found something useful, and have a great weekend!

Friday Links

More bits and pieces that have wandered my way through Twitter or elsewhere.

Jane Friedman--How do you Know if Your Agent is Any Good? You know, if you have one...

The Write Practice--The Fool. (Via The Passive Voice.) Craft--interesting breakdown of the Fool archetype.

Stephen Pressfield--Work Over Your Head. Ways to challenge yourself.

Jody Hedlund--Making Friends Without Making Them Feel Used. How not to abuse your fanbase.

Ghostwriter Dad--10 Grammar Rules you Can (and Should!) Ignore. I could add like five more to that list. And by five I mean nine zillion. (I have a love/hate relationship with Proper Grammar.)

HuffPo--Why Some Authors Fail. Some interesting analysis of the industry. I still maintain that most authors who "fail" fail because they quit. Being stupidly stubborn is an underrated quality in the artistic soul.

Penny C. Wrede--Keeping Track. Craft. How to keep track of all your plots and subplots and sub-sub-plots and still remember what color eyes Annoying Guy to the Right of the Hero in Scene Twelve has.

The Domino Project--Rejecting the New York Times Bestseller List. I reject thee, NYT! I reject thee!

The Passive Voice--Some Things That Were True About Publishing For Decades Aren't True Anymore. Read the original article if you like--I was more interested in Passive Guy's analysis.

Grammar Girl--May vs. Might. This came up while I was editing, and I realized I differentiate solely by gut instinct. Actually I parse most grammar by gut instinct. Which might explain my love/hate relationship with Proper Grammar.

So there you have it. Hope something was helpful, and have a great weekend!

Friday Linkage--KK Gets Herself in Gear (Hopefully) Edition

So, now that the taxes are turned in and all I'm stressed over is nine million deadlines, back to Friday linkage!

Roni Loren: Fiction Groupie--Authors Interacting with Readers Online. Possible drawbacks to interacting with your readers online. Probably not what you think...

Jane Friedman--Where to Find Free Market Listings.

Barnes and Noble Book Review--Kind Reader--Despair and William James. Reasons to NOT despair if you're not wildly famous yet.

Patricia C. Wrede--Weaving Plot Threads. Structure and craft.

Passive Income Author--The Uncommon Truth About Marketing Your Books. Marketing vs. you know, yutzing around.

Dean Wesley Smith--Shifting Goals in This New World. Goalsetting in the Brave Freaky New World of Publishing.

More Intelligent Life--Writing is the Greatest Invention. Well, duh.

Sunset. Anne Lamott on Finding Time. Read it. 'Cause it's Anne Lamott, ferpetesake.

The Creative Penn--Technical Aspects of Creating a Non-traditional Ebook. Yeah, this made me want to go out and do all kinds of crazy stuff. *eyes to-do list* STOP IT, BRAIN!

The Business Rusch--Writers: Will Work for Cheap. Kind of appalling, really...

So... there's another Friday of Linky Linkage. Hope you found something useful!

Friday Links--Mayan Apocalypse Edition

A new batch of links to help you with your authorial and editorial goals, plans and thinky thoughts about writing, editing, and the Mayan Apocalypse.

Publishing Perspectives--US Bookseller Experiments With Online Handselling. An interesting new business model.

Children's Publishing--A Writer's Preflight Checklist. Great questions to ask about your story before you send it out the door.

Terrible Minds--25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing. Bad language, good advice. (You realize I only put the bad language warnings in for my mom, right?

Writer Beware--Guest Post--How Deliberate Practice can Make You an Excellent Writer.

Jane Friedman--7 Ways Meditation Increases Creativity.

Write it Forward--Goal Setting for Writers for 2012. No mention of preparation for the Mayan Apocalypse.

Jody Hedlund--What Will Writers Need in 2012 to Survive and Succeed? No mention of preparation for the Mayan Apocalypse.

Illustrating You--Creating Your Masterpiece in 2012. STILL no mention of preparation for the Mayan Apocalypse, wtf?

Gigaom--Why 2012 Will be Year of the Artist Entrepreneur. And apparently NOT the year of the Mayan apocalypse. Also I thought it was the Year of the Dragon.

Passive Income Author--The Uncommon Truth About Marketing Your Books. Apparently making stupid jokes about the Mayan Apocalypse is not an approved method.

(And just to clarify the whole Mayan Apocalypse thing: What You Should Know About 2012, from Psychology Today.)

Organizing Ideas—The Door

We’ve already talked about generating and capturing ideas. Now I’d like to chat a bit about organizing those ideas.

For a long time—like all the way back into my teen years—I kept my story ideas in loose-leaf notebooks. I put dividers in them and put any and all information into the appropriate section. I still have all those notebooks, and every once in a while I go digging through them for nuggets of inspiration. This isn’t a bad method of organization. It keeps things together in one spot, and you can keep adding bits and pieces to the individual sections until you get the urge to break the idea out and write it. (When you get enough collected that an idea needs its own notebook, it might be time to seriously consider writing an actual book.)

Karen Wiesner, in her book First Draft in 30 Days , outlines a method similar to this. She uses a file cabinet and folders instead of loose-leaf notebooks. I’ve used an expandable file folder as well, to keep track of quickie ideas or articles I find online that I print and toss in the file. (Evernote is great for this too, and I’m using it more and more instead of printing things out.)

One problem I had with this method, though, was that it doesn’t keep the story ideas right in front of my face. I’ll have a perfectly viable idea, or a sequel to something I’ve already written, worked out in the notebook, and I’ll forget all about it to go chase after some other crazy notion. (Squirrel! No, vampire squirrel!) I ended up writing lists, to-do’s, “what I’m going to write this year,” etc. But even that doesn’t seem to keep my crazy brain on point.

Then one day I was sitting in my office staring into space. It’s a relatively new office in an addition to my house that the previous owner used as a walk-in closet. (She had a lot of clothes.) Anyway. I was staring at the door and had a sudden urge to write all my WIPs, gestating ideas, bits of thoughts and wayward titles on sticky notes and stick them all over the door.

Why? my brain asked. What possible use could that be? So I didn’t do it right away.

Later that day when I was on IM with my best friend, I told her about this insane urge.

“Do it,” she said.

Thus enabled, I whipped out a pile of sticky notes and covered the entire freaking door. There’s a method to the madness—some color coding and a flow that takes ideas from germination to partial manuscript to full manuscript being actively submitted to published work. When a piece has been published, on the day it comes out I take the sticky note off the door, tear it into pieces and throw it away. (Some people might prefer to take them off the door and put them into a commemorative notebook or something, but I get a wacky tactile satisfaction out of ripping up sticky notes. 3 x 5 cards too. I’m weird. Deal with it.)

It’s fun to track the ideas around the door, watching them move from the middle of the door (idea) to the top left corner (complete) to the top right corner (accepted) and then come off the door. I try to keep that top row full—that’s stuff that’s contracted and will soon be seeing the light of day (it's much fuller now than it was when I took this picture). I also keep possible sequels grouped by publisher, or shuffle notes around as I start thinking about where to market them.

I also stick new notes on the door whenever an idea pops into my head, or when my best friend comes up with something. She’s great for generating plot ideas. We had a conversation one night that resulted in a yellow note with “Headbump Hieroglyphics” on it being slapped onto the door. Yeah, I know what it means. Other times she’ll say something like, “Evgeni Malkin, Persian Sheikh. Put it on the door.” I’ll put it on the door and let it work itself out later.

Evgeni Malkin, Persian Sheikh

This method may or may not work for you. Maybe you don’t have a convenient door. But for me, walking past all those sticky notes on a daily basis gets me fired up. I want to write them all, clear that door right off. Now if I could just stop adding so many new ones…

The Rhythm Of The Words

For me, there is a certain rhythm to writing a book. It’s not something I can just sit down and do, word after word, sentence after sentence, progressing through a logical sequence until the story has spun itself out on my page. There are, instead, phases to the process. Some of these phases look like active artistry. Others look like pre-work or preparation. Still others look like failure.

It’s taken me a long time to learn to trust this process, and in many ways I still don’t. I look at it askance, wondering if the pieces that feel like failure really are, if this is the time that the sequence will fall apart, like a zipper that has suddenly lost a vital tooth.

Because it feels that way sometimes—no, every time—when that spot comes in the writing when all the pieces are there, but they’re scattered, some here, some there, some ends tied off neatly, others frayed and broken. They couldn’t possibly all come together to form that final, tight weave that fashions story.

But they do. Eventually, they do.

I can’t make them do this. Sometimes sitting down to write, putting pen to paper, is enough to coax the flow and bring the various bits into alignment. But other times putting pen to paper is an exercise in futility. Nothing comes, or if it does come, it’s forced and twisted, broken, or it’s like trying to weave a stick into fine linen. It just doesn’t fit.

It’s then that I have to wait. It takes such patience, such trust, to just wait. I want to dive into the story again, to find all those loose bits and make them no longer loose, but on the days that require waiting, they simply won’t fold into each other. They’re ragged and sharp and stubborn. They don’t want to be.

Waiting, though. Waiting with the words, with the pieces. Hiding from them. Letting them hide from you. Lifting them into the light and examining them, like jewels under a loupe, looking for the flaws and the perfections. Ignoring them, then examining them far too closely.

It’s this constant handling, dropping, picking up and examining that finally lets me find the pieces where a story line has gone astray, or the place where I planted a clue I didn’t even know I’d written. When I find the flaws and the ways to smooth them out, or the underlying themes I didn’t know were there. Only then, after this careful and constant, trusting search, can I finally pull all those pieces together into a unified whole.

Only with the constant, steady practice can you learn to trust those silences. Only when you’ve let the process happen time after time, watching it, exploring it, can you truly believe that the story will find its way, with you or without you.

Constancy. Practice. Diligence. Trust. When these all come together, the result is the miracle that is a completed work of written art.

Links for Your Perusal

Livia Blackburne--How to Incorporate Backstory that Hooks the Reader.

A Newbie's Guide to Publishing--Konrath's Resolutions for Writers 2012. A little late, but hey, it's still January.

Jodi Hedlund--How to Drive Yourself Crazy as a Writer. Ways to make your life a LIVING HELL!! Read the article. Avoid the practices.

Write it Forward (Bob Mayer)--12 Daring Predictions from the Indie Author Trenches. Thought-provoking stuff.

Jane Friedman--Guest post by Brad King--The Design of Authorship. What does it really mean to be an author? How is technology changing that definition?

The 99 Percent--Setting the Scene for a Productive Day. Using your environment to trigger more productive work sessions.

Study Hacks--Flow is the Opiate of the Mediocre: Advice on Getting Better from an Accomplished Piano Player. Yeah, it's about piano playing, but easily adaptable to any artistic endeavor.

Justine Musk--How to Flunk Social Media.

Dean Wesley Smith--New World of Publishing: Failure is an Option. Quitting is Not. Excellent advice on goalsetting.

Writer Unboxed (Jane Friedman)--The Secret to Finding the Time to Write, Market, Promote and Still Have a Life.

Why Being Edited Is Like Getting Your Eyebrows Waxed

I only wish my eyebrows looked this good.
sxc.hu/heidijean

I have bushy, annoying eyebrows. They have a good general shape, but they develop extra growth all around the edges and sometimes decide they want to try to make a unibrow. It’s pretty annoying. I hate to pluck because it hurts, and I’m a huge wimp. I’ve tried threading, and got great results, but wow—I nearly passed out. My tattoo hurt less than that.

So my eyebrow grooming approach of choice is waxing. They let you lie down on a massage table, or sit in a comfy chair, and they put nice, warm wax on your eyebrows. Then they rip it off in one fell swoop. Yeah, it hurts, but it’s over quickly, unlike plucking and threading, where they just keep ripping stuff out in one horrifying stab of pain after another.

Oh, but then the waxers aren’t done. Because after they wax, then they pluck. They have to clean up all along the edges, get the shape just right, and get your eyebrows looking like they both belong on the same face. It’s a tricky business. And sometimes they take out too much, and you have to go to the grocery store and buy eyebrow pencils. Or they don’t take out enough, and you wonder why the heck you gave them your hard-earned $15, plus tip, just to wave the wax in the vicinity of your still-hirsute brow.

How is this like editing? If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m guessing you’ve never been diligently edited.

You start with rewrites. Not always, but often. You get a manuscript back that you thought was in pretty good shape, but it’s all annotated with bits about how you have holes in your plot, or your characterizations aren’t consistent. Scattered throughout are probably bits of detritus like spelling errors, grammar mistakes, typos, formatting issues, etc. So you grit your teeth and do the work, figuring hey, as much markup as there is here, there can’t be much more left to do after this, right?

Wrong.

The story comes back again. Move this word here or over there. Is this the right word? This sentence doesn’t quite make sense. I think a comma here would make things clearer. And maybe this happens two or three more times, until your eyes are watering from the pain and all you really want is for somebody to spread that nice lavender oil over your eyebrows so the pain will go away and everything won’t look all red and swollen.

But the tweaking is an important part of the process. It’s the fine-tuning that gives you just the right quirks so you can have entire conversations with the lift of a brow. You’re striving for—well, not necessarily perfection, but something clean and sleek that fits your style. It’s worth the pain in the end.

Beware, however, of the editor who plucks too long (and the author shouldn’t do this either). Too much tweaking, and you’re scrambling for the eyebrow pencil to get some semblance of your personality back. But perhaps worse than that is the editor who doesn’t do enough, and leaves your manuscript only partially shaped, its unibrow glaringly obvious for all to see.

Friday Links

Patricia C. Wrede--When They Don't Wanna. What to do when your characters get all recalcitrant n stuff.

Passive Income Author--5 Clever Tactics to Get More E-Book Sales per Reader. Non-hokey ways to keep your readers coming back for more.

Anne R. Allen's Blog--Guest post by Roni Loren--Why One Author Chose Traditional Publishing--and How to Decide if It's Right for You. Thoughts on the pros and cons of traditional vs. indie.

Mystery Writing is Murder--Inexpensive Ways to Improve Your Writing or Get Published in 2012. Need help with your professional development goals for 2012? Find some ideas here.

Publishing Perspectives--Guest post by Jane Friedman--Experimenting with Serials for Fun and Profit. Some ideas about publishing series and serial fiction as well as pros and cons of this approach.

Publetariat--5 Proofreading Techniques Every Talented Writer Should Know. Ways to break down your proofreading tasks for efficiency and effectiveness.

Kidlit.com--Big Revision. Big revisions vs. "tinkering" with the manuscript.

Jody Hedlund--Write Tight--3 Pieces of Advice I Wish I'd Known Earlier. Advice on streamlining your writing.

Indies Unlimited--Writing Exercises Return With a Twist! Fun for those who like regular writing prompts.

More Links for your Linky Perusal

Writer Unboxed: The Number 1 Overlooked Skill for Any Author. It's not what you think. Well, unless it IS what you think, in which case it's not not what you think.

StoryFix.com: Make December Your NaNoWriMo Revision Month. Tips on revising your novel, whether you wrote it in November or not.

Publetariat: About Writing (Introduction).

Jody Hedlund: 6 Tips to Make the Learning of Fiction Techniques Less Painful.

Copyblogger: Are Internet Idiots Annihilating Your Productivity?

The Creative Penn: The 12-Step Cure for Writer's Block.

Glimmertrain: Steal This List. Suggestions to help jumpstart a stalled story or improve your storylines overall.

Savvy Authors: The 7 Secrets of the Prolific. By Hillary Rettig.

The Writing Spirit (Julie Isaac): Louisa May Alcott Didn't Need a Computer. Complete with 19th century writing magazine in .pdf.

Justine Musk: Cool Quotes by Badass Women.

Friday Linkage

Social Media Examiner: 5 Tips for Creating Sharable Blog Content.

Jane Friedman: Platform and Social Media Must Not Be Your Center.

eReads.com: Publishing Confidential. Interesting information on confidentiality clauses in publication contracts.

WritingSpirit.com (Julie Isaac): 3 Powerful Book Writing Tools: Acknowledge, Allow and Appreciate.

How to Plan, Write and Develop a Book (Mary Carroll Moore): Embracing the Scary Project--Why Bravery on Demand Can Help Your Writing.

The Writer's Technology Companion: How to Set SMART Writing Goals.

The World According to Maggie (Maggie Stiefvater): Dissecting Pages for Mood.

Write it Forward (Bob Mayer): Theme and Intent--Do You Know Yours?

Time.com: The Making of a Romance Novel Cover. A very entertaining short video.

More Friday Linkification: Craft and Practice

I don't normally group links by themes, but this time around things just fell together that way. So today's links focus on the craft and practice of writing.

Write Out Loud: Self-Respect and the Writer.

Melissa Galt: 3 Fast Ways to Find Your Calm in the Midst of Chaos.

We Grow Media: Money and Time ARE NOT Your Most Precious Resources. Creative Energy Is.

Jody Hedlund: How to Prolong Your Book's Exposure. Some good ideas, although I think the "shelf life" of e-books has a different pattern.

Copyblogger: How to Master the Craft of Writing.

Savvy Authors: Picking Up the Pace: How to Write Fast and Well. By Cindi Myers.

Nathan Bransford: Do You Suffer from One of These Writing Maladies? Part One
and Part Two.

Penguin Community Blog: A Writing Exercise: Lost and Found by Laura Oliver

And for Today's Linkage....

Study Hacks: The Steve Martin Method: A Master Comedian's Advice for Becoming Famous. Not directly from Steve Martin, but still an interesting look into his career.

Seth Godin: Drip, Drip, Drip Goes the Twit. Marketing advice. Sort of a slow and steady wins the race kind of thing.

Copyblogger: How to Blog Like Bond. James Bond.
and a companion piece, Dr. Evil's 7 Tips for Achieving Worldwide Marketing Domination.

Wired: Need to Create? Get a Constraint.

Wired: 9 Equations True Geeks Should (at least pretend to) Know. Something makes me want to use these as writing prompts.

Nova Ren Suma: On Inspiration. Guest post by Alexander Chee.

Write it Forward (Bob Mayer): Kernel Idea Examples. Followup to last week's link on kernel ideas.

Editorrent: Paragraph Power...At the End. Interesting, quick post about rearranging a paragraph of dialogue for best impact.

Jody Hedlund: How to Keep Writing When the Honeymoon is Over.

Friday Links

Novel Publicity & Co: Cease & Desist--10 Bad Twitter Practices to be Stopped Immediately! I agree with all except the bad language thing... *whistles innocently*

C. Hope Clark: A Writer is Multi-talented, Multi-directional. Don't limit yourself, peoples!

The Passive Voice: Constructing the Narrative Arc.

Mediactive: Author's To-Don't List. I would add--don't make a big honkin' using the wrong word error in a Author's To-Don't List, but that's because I haven't had my coffee or my Zoloft yet this morning. Still, good advice. (Extra points if you spot the error and post it in the comments.)

Carina Press Blog: Angela James: Don't Turn Your Passion Into an Obsession. Advice on avoiding burnout.

Livia Blackburne: Showcase the Sexy, but Don't False Advertise (and other lessons I learned writing my book pitch). Self-explanatory.

The 99 Percent: Op-Ed: In the Particular Lies the Universal. About finding the power of your own gifts and voice.

OpenForum: 11 Radical Slogans that will Change Your Business.

Copyblogger: The 5 Keys to Content Marketing Mastery. Applies to any sort of writing. Or other ventures, for that matter.

Write it Forward (Bob Mayer): The Kernel Idea: The Alpha and Omega of Your Book. Aimed at NaNoWriMo-ers, but solid advice for any writing venture.

Thoughts on writing—where do ideas come from?

photo from sxc.hu by christgr

One of the first questions people tend to ask when you revealed the terrible secret that you’re a writer is, Where do you get your ideas. (After, What do you write, at which point you have to decide whether to say you’re working on the great American novel or books about vampires.) it’s an interesting question, and one I’m never sure how to answer.

I get ideas everywhere. I carry little notebooks in my purse so I can jot ideas down when they drop by. I have notebooks, folders, filing cabinets, binders full of ideas. I wake up in the middle of the night with ideas. My best friend feeds me ideas, usually as part of a nefarious plan to get me hooked on hockey.

I think most writers suffer not from a lack of ideas, but from idea overload. When I’m starting a new project, sometimes I look at the pile of ideas and have no idea where to start. Which one is the most marketable? Which one can I sell right away? Which one is most likely to land me an agent? It’s enough to paralyze the creative mind.

Capturing ideas can be tricky, too. Thus the notebooks. But how do you jot down an idea that comes as an image, or a feeling? Sometimes you can’t. Then you have to let the idea move where it will, in and out of consciousness, until it appears in a form you can easily add to your idea pool.

Or what about that idea that just gets away from you? The one that came to you at 2 a.m and you couldn’t wake up enough to write it down? If you’d written it down, it definitely would have been a bestseller, right?

Maybe, maybe not. My theory is that if it really was a good idea, and one I was meant to have, then it’ll come back. It’s like that old saying: If you love something, set it free. Some people aren’t comfortable with that idea. It used to bug me, too. Now I’m on medication.

Ideas come from everywhere, but the best ones can be elusive, or hard-won. These are the ideas that come back again and again, demanding to be written, each time with a few more layers, a bit more guidance about how the story should take shape. These are the ideas that are worth gold. When you find those, you’ll know. Capture them and let them grow.