Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, Jan 24-30, 2016

And guess what? I lied last Saturday when I said I’d be back with more convention reportage. It’s actually Next Chapter time! So, I’ll be back on Saturday with that.

Thoughty Thursday

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, August 30-September 5, 2015

September 8, 2015 / Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

W00t! This past week was all about the writerly goodness!

K.M. Weiland explains how to write a sequel that’s even better than the first book.

Are your plot and theme working together? Helping writers become authors.

Katie gives us a virtual tour of her writing space.

Why you should look into the psychology of writing and the cognitive science of the perfect writing routine. Brainpickings.

In the wake of his post on the mistakes of inexperienced writers, Chuck Wendig wrote on the subject of your discouragement.

How to be a successful writer: stop comparing yourself to everyone else. The Write Life.

Vaughan Roycroft explored how to rekindle your motivation on Writer Unboxed.

Then, Kristan Hoffman wrote about getting over the hump. Writer Unboxed.

Gabriela Pereira shares her mindfulness manifesto on the DIYMFA podcast.

Mike Swift writes about the singularity of voice for Writer Unboxed.

Joanna Penn points out five problems you should avoid in your first novel.

Chris Winkle lists 44 words to seek and destroy in your draft. Mythcreants.

Ginger Moran shares the four S’s of sustained creativity on Tim Grahl’s blog.

Steven Pressfield writes about resistance and hooks. In this context, hooks refer to the provocative comments readers make for and against you and/or your book.

Christine Frazier deconstructs back cover copy to help you writer your blurb. The Better Novel Project.

Bonnie Randall offers her book signing cheat sheet to those who wish to stay sane while everyone ignores them. Janice Hardy’s Fiction University.

Agent Carly Watters offers writing diversity campaigns, resources, terms, and tells you how to read between your lines.

Writers talk about the complexity of race. The Guardian.

Neil Gaiman: my parents didn’t have any . . . rules about what I couldn’t read. The Guardian.

J.R.R. Tolkien expounds on fairy tales, language, the psychology of fantasy, and why there’s no such thing as writing for children. Brainpickings.

The fun stuff: brain fart, bants, and fur baby added to the Oxford online dictionary. Writers Write.

Quirk Books found these ten music videos based on literature.

I hope something here helps to support your creative life.

I’ll be back on Thursday with a teeny tiny bit of thoughty.

See you then!

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, August 16-22, 2015

September 1, 2015 / Melanie Marttila

Blissfully back to normal!

And Mom’s surgery went wonderfully, thanks.

Now, on to the Writerly Goodness:

Are you protagonist and your main character the same person? K.M. Weiland explains how the answer could transform your story.

The Pixar way to think about conflict in your story. Katie’s weekly vlog.

Chuck Wendig shares his writing process and invites us to share ours. Terribleminds.

He also smells our rookie moves . . . and tells us how we can avoid them.

Marcy Kennedy guest posts on Jami Gold’s blog on the topic of internal dialogue and three story problems it can help us address.

How to become a bestselling, full-time novelist—it’s so easy! Dan Blank takes a facetious look at becoming an overnight success as an author on Writer Unboxed.

Stephen Kings asks, can a novelist be too productive? The New York Times.

Jeff Bollow’s how to write FAST. By the way, that’s an acronym. It’s not about speed or productivity.

Leta Blake highlights diversity in the LGBTQ community for Writer Unboxed.

The Rabbit Box: a strange and wonderful storybook for grownups. Brainpickings.

Neil Gaiman explains why our future depends on libraries, reading, and daydreaming. The Guardian.

Dylan Landis shares her experience with grief and how it affected her. The New York Times.

The BBC talks to Verlyn Flieger, who helped to bring J.R.R. Tolkein’s Kullervo to print.

R.F. Foster on Yeats, faeries, and the Irish occult tradition:

Flavorwire shares this list of 50 books for 50 classes—a curriculum on your bookshelf.

Who won the Hugos and why it matters. Wired.

Noah Berlatsky chimes in with this take on women authors in SF and the Hugo controversy for Playboy.

Gary K. Wolfe writes about it in the Chicago Tribune, as well.

Takeaway of the week: It doesn’t matter whether your write fast or slow, full-time or part-time, only that you write. Don’t go comparing your work or process to anyone else’s. You are you and your novel is something only you could have created. Value yourself and your time.

So get writing.

And we’ll see you in two days.

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, July 26-August 1, 2015

August 4, 2015 / Melanie Marttila / 4 Comments

Tipsday is back, full force. Feel the Writerly Goodness 😉

K.M. Weiland shares four ways to write a likeable protagonist at the beginning of the character arc. Helping writers become authors.

Related: Chris Winkle asks (and answers), do characters need to be likeable? Mythcreants.

Here are two ways to make the most of your climactic setting, Katie’s Wednesday vlog.

Writer Unboxed continues its Diversity series with Gabriel Valjan: Import foreign cultures into your fiction.

Jami Gold shines a light on diversity issues.

Kim Bullock gets confessional on Writer Unboxed: The elephant in my living room.

How to write a novel in the dark, by Siobhan Adcock. The Daily Beast.

This is crazy-awesome Writingeekery. MJ Bush decided to live blog her 24 hour write-a-thon to draft her next book.

More Writer Unboxed: Jo Eberhardt shares a personal story about the power of fiction. [Mel’s note: Mary Brown’s The Unlikely Ones was one of the books I latched onto in my university years. Wonderful.]

Jeff Gerke guest posts on C.S. Lakin’s Live, Write, Thrive blog about hacking your reader’s brain.

Callie Oettinger revisits a past post on Steven Pressfield’s blog: Lay a little heavy on the business side.

Your second life starts when life cracks you open. Justine Musk on stepping into the bigger story.

Virginia Woolf believed that the best mind is an androgynous mind. Brainpickings.

Janis Joplin speaks about creativity and rejection in her final, lost interview, rediscovered and animated. Fabulous. Brainpickings.

Portland Monthly features home grown author Ursula K. le Guin. Amazing read.

Ever thought, ‘gee, I’d like to ask Ursula K. le Guin about writing’? Well, now you can! The Book View Cafe.

Neil Gaiman talks in his sleep. His wife, Amanda Palmer, found a forgotten recording of one of their nocturnal conversations and created this whimsical animated short. Brainpickings. [Mel’s note: I take a strange kind of comfort in the fact that I talk in my sleep, too. Phil doesn’t record our conversations, though.]

Fantasy writer N.K. Jemesin upends the racist and sexist status quo. The Guardian.

Haruki Murakami shares the moment he knew he’d be a writer. The Telegraph.

Jill Soloway calls for a matriarchal revolution in film. The Vulture.

How changing your reading habits can improve your health. Fast Company.

Charlie Jane Anders of i09 writes about ten books we pretend to have read and why we really should. For the record, I’ve only read one of these, Dune.

Foz Meadows writes about Sens8 for Tor.com. Just for the record, Phil and I loved the shite out of this Netflix Original.

CBC is now producing webseries: The Riftworld Chronicles. Tamoh Penikett stars 🙂

Buzzfeed presents seventeen (gif) faces that every grammar nerd will relate to.

Authors tweet #tenthingsnottosaytoawriter. Entertainment Weekly.

Interesting stuff coming up on thoughty Thursday, See you then!

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, July 19-25, 2015

July 28, 2015 / Melanie Marttila

As I post this, I am MELTING. Today it was 36 degrees Celsius (with humidex, it was over 40). For my American friends, that’s about 100 Fahrenheit. We have no air conditioning. This is not a complaint, just a statement of fact. We haven’t had weather like this in the Sudz for a number of years.

Now the sun has set, we have all the windows open and all the fans on.

And now, back to your regular programming.

This is just . . . read it and beware of strangers bearing option deals! Tess Gerritsen explains why she dropped her Gravity lawsuit and now advocates for authors in Hollywood. The Mary Sue.

Who should you be writing for, your readers, or yourself? Helping writers become authors. K.M. Weiland.

Katie shares the key to writing good action scenes in her Wednesday vlog.

Writer Unboxed begins a new series on diverse voices in writing and publishing. Their first guest was Grace Wynters: Why diversity in publishing matters.

Steven Pressfield makes the distinction between the craft of writing, and your craft of writing.

How to write with confidence. MythicScribes.

The anatomy of a page turner with Barbara Kyle.

This is incredible fun: Atlas Obscura presents their obsessively detailed map of American literature’s most epic road trips.

Here’s a lovely Tumblr: Where do you write, my lovely? They just featured my friend Kim Fahner and her wonderful writing space 🙂

Buzzfeed offers their list of 51 books for animal lovers.

Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land is one of my favourite classic SF novels. So, of course I was attracted to this post on MentalFloss on 15 things you might not know about the Heinlein classic.

Buzzfeed shares 29 pictures that only booklovers will relate to. Regarding #20: I can do this just fine, thankyouverymuch.

If you’re of the techie persuasion, Bustle presents seven gadgets for booklovers.

Isaac Asimov predicted social media and knowledge bases. Fusion.

Here’s a fun interview with Sam Heughan: My acting teacher once told me I couldn’t act. My Fox LA.

TV After Dark shares their chat with the Outlander cast and crew about season two from San Diego Comic Con.

Just for fun, here’s Kirby Krackle’s “Villain Song.”

See you Thursday!

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, March 1-7, 2015

March 12, 2015 / Melanie Marttila / 5 Comments

How gardening, and specifically the microbes in soil, can make you happy. Gardening Know-How.

How healthy gut flora (bacteria) can also have an antidepressant effect. Scientific American.

Empathy might lead to social anxiety. Spirit Science and Metaphysics.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACE) affect your health. Includes an informative self-test. NPR.

More about your ACE score and a resilience quiz (as a bonus). ACES too high news.

And a supporting article from IFLS: childhood trauma affects the brain.

Surrender doesn’t mean defeat. OM Times shares the seven habits of surrendered people. It’s related to resilience.

How physicians and psychiatrists are medicating women rather than treating the underlying issues. Some of us don’t need prescriptions. Or we don’t need the prescriptions they think we do . . . The New York Times.

For the other side of the story, Emily Landau states that she has been helped immeasurably by prescription medications and that she doesn’t believe they’ve affected her adversely. CBC.

Eleven things introverts want you to know. Elephant Journal.

Last week, I shared the Desiderata text. For those of you who were curious, here’s the version set to music by Les Crane:

Stop procrastination by asking one question and considering the answer for three minutes. Inc.

Most consistently successful creative people say ‘NO.’ Business Insider.

The strange world of felt presences links Shackleton, sleep paralysis, and hearing voices. The Guardian.

Did the human alliance with dogs drive the Neanderthals to extinction? National Geographic.

New human fossil offers more detail for our family tree. National Geographic.

Here’s what scientists think methane-based life might look like (if they find it on Titan). From Quarks to Quasars.

Ancient Mars may have had an ocean. The New York Times.

Scientists have discovered another earth-like planet. Higher Perspective.

More on what’s coming up for Neil deGrasse Tyson. The Wall Street Journal.

Cats see things that are invisible to humans. Higher Perspective.

I’ve shared posts or videos about the rabbit island and the fox village in the past, now The Atlantic features some great pictures from a Japanese cat island.

I love crows and ravens and so this story about crows gifting the girl who’s fed them since she was four made me #furiouslyhappy.

This video shares an important message about equality and diversity.