Weekly Roundup for 2/4/13

Did you enter the contest I mentioned last week? I did. Sent it in less than two hours from the deadline. I do hope my email made it through on time. If you entered, tell me in the comments! I'd love to find out.

But you're here for some useful links. Today's post features several helpful articles all the from the same person. I became "acquainted", to a certain degree, with John Yeoman through a fantasy group I joined on Yahoo ages ago. I've posted links to his site before, but I thought I'd mention this time the quarterly writing contest he runs. It costs fifteen pounds (he lives in the UK) to enter but you get personalized feedback no matter if you win or not. Consider looking into it! Here's more information. If you don't win, this might be a helpful post.

John posts many articles on wooing readers, and this one is no exception.

Here's his take on how to write a bestseller. Don't think it has anything to do with writing just anything you like.

A while back, he ran a mini-contest for the worst sentence in a published book. Want to know the winners? They certainly are hilarious!

And finally, try downloading and reading his free ebook "21 Wicked Ways to be a Better Writer" for 20 + "recipes" for writing better.

Looking to wow an agent? Why not try branding yourself?

I hope you enjoy his posts as much as I do!

Until next time.

Weekly Roundup for 1/29/13

HUGE news today. If you're a YA or Sci-fi writer that is. And I've been quite excited because I fall squarely into one or both of those categories for my novels. Writer's Digest is currently running it's Lucky Agent contest and the focus this time is YA and Sci-fi. So, pop on over to read the rules and what to enter if you're interested. You've only got until the 31st to submit!

In other news, Janice Hardy lets us know just how much an agent or fellow writer can tell from a query.

If self-publishing, ebook or print, here's a list to help you make it look professional.

And probably my favorite find of the week, Aaron Hamburger detailing his outlining in reverse method which is highly similar to my own version of outlining after writing as the first step of editing.

However, what really convicted me this week was this article on an agent's blog about the over-utilization of character names and pronouns. I found that I'm prone to this. Oops?

Until next time!

I've been Interviewed!

I've been sitting on this happy, happy news for about two days since I had the tour to complete first, but...I've been interviewed! And by Gus Sanchez who, if you remembered, I interviewed first in my NaNoWriMo Spotlight series this month. The interview and the process was fantastic. Check it out!

Courtesy of Klo

Also, look forward to a juicy bit of news on Monday for my next Weekly Roundup post. If you follow me on twitter then you will have already seen the news/link.

The next NaNoWriMo Spotlight interview will be posted tomorrow as it couldn't be posted on the last day of the tour.

Until next time!

NaNoWriMo 2012: Linktastic Day 29

So, since I'm not reporting on my writing any more this month, I thought I'd make a stab at a normal post schedule, aka the Weekly Roundup! Here below lie all the links which have accumulated whilst I typed furiously for NaNo.

A few NaNoWriMo related posts to start us off:

Errol (of the NaNotoons and NaNomusical adventures) brags, I mean, explains how he wrote 50k in one day and didn't die. And then his equally interesting post on Quantity Begetting Quality explains the reasoning behind NaNoWriMo and why it works.

And once you've finished with your novel and are trying to make heads or tails of it in order to edit there are a few things you should check.

1) Is it told episodically? Anne R. Allen gives a few tips on how to avoid this problem while mooderino points out the difference between episodic and non-episodic on Moody Writing.

2) Is it told step by step where you tell every single detail? Amy Deardon outlines the advantages and disadvantages of this method and how to eliminate it safely.

3) Does your story have a voice? If it doesn't then the story will feel disconnected. Ash Krafton explains the importance of voice in her post on Query Tracker.

When finished editing, it's on to the agents! This is where you'll need to Learn to Love the Pitch (by Sarah Pinneo) and if that doesn't work, find out why you were rejected (by Mike Wells).

And then once it's time to start all over with a new novel, here are a few places you could start:

Dogs in Elk (the misadventures of a few dogs when introduced to an Elk carcass)

Murder or Suicide? (the curious case of a dead man)

Until next time!

Weekly Roundup

3 DAYS TILL NANOWRIMO! It seems like yesterday that I was logging onto the newly refreshed site at the beginning of October. Where has this month gone...

So, this will be my last regular "Weekly Roundup" until the end of December/new year. NaNo will take over this blog as usual during November and then I've got something interesting planned for my Christmas Picture Countdown in December. I'll still try to post links once in a while, but I can't promise anything.

The goal of NaNoWriMo is to teach writers to turn off their inner editors and allow themselves to write a really terrible first draft. Carolyn Kaufman over at Query Tracker gives her input about the first "Skeleton draft" in her article here.

But on the other hand, is NaNoWriMo for every writer? Jane Lebak thinks not and isn't doing it this year for herself. Hear her out and read her reasons though. You just might find yourself agreeing.

Once you have this novel done at the end of NaNo (or whenever you finish editing), what do you do with it? Pursue traditional publishing? Hang it all and self-publish? However, you might want to think ahead about the consequences of choosing the latter. Many agents, like Janet Reid (the famous query shark), aren't too happy about not having first bite at your novel. Janet explains why poor sales can sink any possibility of a second book.

Until Thursday and the beginning of NaNo!!

Weekly Roundup

17 DAYS TILL NANOWRIMO! (Yes, I'm going to keep doing this almost every post until NaNo starts. In fact, next week is the kick-off party for our little area! Which just might translate into more of the Kagerou's Journal serial being posted.)

So on the topic of NaNo, Matthew Wright is doing a countdown on his site with tips for NaNo novel writing. His first installment is all about plotting the hero journey.

I'm sure every writer has heard the "rule" "write what you know". However, isn't the intention behind this rule to encourage writers to write in areas they have emotional connections with? That emotion can drive a story as Stina Lindenblatt discusses in her post.

When writers can put emotion into a story it prompts a response from the reader. But how do you convey that emotion to the reader in the first place? In her post, Nanci Panuccio demonstrates how to create drama sentence by sentence.

In the publishing world, once again genre fiction is ignored at National Book Awards. This reality is something you, if you are a genre writer, will have to accept. Unless the top book awards stop turning up their noses at anything outside of the literary "genre".

Now for an interesting tidbit on the electronic ereader front. A german company, which produces a reading app for android OS phones, has announced an ereader which syncs with the app--for 9 euros (that's about $20). Now that is a low cost ereader!

Next week is the CSFF blog tour! I'll be reviewing The Spirit Well by Stephen Lawhead. Make sure to tune in here and check out the other participants' blogs during the tour as well!

Weekly Roundup

NANOWRIMO STARTS IN 24 DAYS!

Yes, that's the big news of the day, or rather of the month. As soon as I saw NaNoWriMo's tweet about the site relaunch I headed over there to set everything up. And I'm still hyping myself up about it. But, I digress. If you do know what NaNoWriMo is, get yourself over there to sign up/login and begin your prep. If you don't, you can find more information on the event at the main site but basically it's when several hundred thousand writers go mad and decide to write 50k of a novel in one month on top of everything else in their life.

Ok, now for the links. There are just a few today, but the last one will take you a while to completely read through (thereby hooking you in the process [insert evil laugh]). I've been in an editing mindset ever since this summer when I started digging into Adventure at Anwar for the rewrite/revision during Camp NaNoWriMo (And I'm in full rewrite mode for NaNoWriMo this year for the Across Time series/idea) so here are a few more links in that vein.

The Art of the Complete Rewrite by Jane Lebak

and

Write Tighter, Write Smarter by Ash Krafton

As for the final link, Robin McKinley's running a blog serial on her blog. In fact, she's been running it for almost 6 months now. Interested? Well, you can catch up on it here while waiting the next installment.

Until next time! (And enjoy the story. I know I have!)