Janice Hardy

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, Oct 5-11, 2014

/ Melanie Marttila

TED talks have invaded this week. Don’t think I’m hearing an argument, though 🙂

K.M. Weiland continues her most common writing mistakes series with repetitive dialogue. She shows you how to recognize it and how to fix it. Post and podcast.

NaNo prep from Janice Hardy’s Fiction University: Planning your novel.

Julia Munroe Martin explores the topic of gender bias on Writer Unboxed.

Nina Munteanu begins her exploration of the Hero’s Journey.

Songs that shape our writing. Veronica Sicoe. Have you seen this post yet, Roz Morris? 😀

No, I don’t want to read your self-published book. Ron Charles of the Washington Post summarizes Roger Sutton’s position on why Horn Book Magazine won’t be reviewing any self-published books.

Talking Writing: Rich writers vs. the critics—and me, by Anna Coppola. My favourite bit: “. . . I hate that. Book sales and dollar signs convey nothing about what literature is or how it changes the lives of those who read. Yet, the industry’s tacit acceptance that financial success is the only thing that matters has created a whole lot of confusion about art. Meanwhile, out-of-touch critics are no help, as they rail against the kind of writing that gets people to buy books.”

Elizabeth Gilbert on the ugly truth about following your passion. The Huffington Post’s GPS for the Soul.

Joni Mitchell on therapy and the creative mind. Brainpickings.

Mac Barnett: Why a good book is like a secret door? TED Talk.

 

Lisa Bu: How books can open you mind. TED Talk.

 

Anne Curzan: What makes a word “real”? TED Talk.

 

The three books you need to read in every major genre. LitReactor.

Things you may not have known about The Princess Bride. Zimbio.

48 things you may not have known about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. BuzzFeed.

Troll, by Shane Koyczan, from his CD and graphic novel Silence is a song I know all the words to:

 

Can we auto-correct humanity?

 

Jamila Lyiscott: Three ways to speak English. TED Talk.

 

Hope you enjoyed this week’s Writerly Goodness round up 😉

Tipsday

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, Sept 14-20, 2014

/ Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

I’ve an interesting variety this week.

How to use rewards and punishments to encourage your character to change, by K.M. Weiland.

Katie shares how she learned to write on her Wednesday vlog.

How to plot your novel with mini arcs. Janice Hardy’s Fiction University.

Marcy Kennedy guests on Fiction University, writing about ways to save money on editing.

Jamie Raintree asks, why are you really stuck on your novel? On Thinking Through our Fingers.

Roz Morris discovered that the pebble phone she conceived of for Lifeform Three, is a little closer to becoming a reality.

How Stephen King teaches writing, by Jessica Lahey for The Altantic.

Eight authors who experienced their biggest successes after 50. BookRiot. Take comfort. I did 🙂

Janna Marlies Maron shares how she used writing to heal her depression without taking drugs on Jeff Goins’s blog.

The real link between the psychopathology spectrum and the creativity spectrum. Scientific American.

How Jane Friedman recovered from three years of chronic back pain. It’s an injury that visits most authors at one point or another.

i09 shares 10 lessons from real-life lessons revolutions that fictional dystopias ignore.

Landmarks of feminism in science fiction, from The Cut.

Obsession and madness mark the best episode of Doctor Who in years. Polygon. Not sure if I agree with this assessment. I think I’m still warming up to Capaldi. Mind you, it’s the best episode so far this season.

Good words at you, my friends.

See you Thursday!

Tipsday

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, Aug 31-Sept 6, 2014

/ Melanie Marttila / 9 Comments

Egad, another month has come and gone. How in the hell did that happen?

Now that we know all about character arcs from K.M. Weiland’s various series on the topic, should every character in your novel have an arc? Hmmmm . . . That way lies madness, methinks.

On her weekly vlog, Katie cites Sunshine Cleaners as an example of how you can use your characters’ professions to make your story more interesting.

Do all of your characters have the same voice, and is that voice yours? Roz Morris shares some tips on how to recognize the problem, and how to fix it.

Donald Maass offers metaphorical writing advice by way of gems and necklaces.

Janice Hardy offers some advice on how to recognize episodic scenes and how to fix them on Fiction University.

A bit of authorial humour, from the New Yorker.

An anatomy of endings, from The New Yorker.

Jim C. Hines guests on Magical Words on the topic of despair.

Here’s to creatives who work a day job, from The Artist’s Road.

A writer’s guide to Canadian Literary Magazines and Journals, from the Magazine Awards blog.

Haruki Murakami lists three essential qualities all novelists and runners share. Open Culture.

The Press Enterprise reports: UC Riverside’s science fiction collection gets a 3.5 million gift.

It’s a bit brief this week, but that’s all that tickled my fancy.

Be back on Thoughty Thursday!

Good words at ya, until then.

Tipsday

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, Aug 3-9, 2014

/ Melanie Marttila / 3 Comments

Anne R. Allen explores the good and bad of critique groups.

What’s the most important relationship in your story? K.M. Weiland explores how focusing on this aspect of your story could improve it.

Then Katie continued her blog tour on Janice Hardy’s Fiction University, on finding your character’s breaking point.

And then she continued the tour on Procrastiwriter with, What Jane Eyre can teach us about mind-blowing heroines.

Opening lines (and scenes) are some of the most difficult to write. K.M. Weiland has some suggestions for you in her post about Most Common Writing Mistakes: Boring opening lines. Podcast link included.

SF author Veronica Sicoe writes about opening line madness. See, everyone struggles.

MJ Bush guests on Writers Helping Writers (Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi) on the problem of overly self-aware protagonists.

Then she posted about inner conflict on WritingGeekery.

Casting your novel may seem like frivolous fun, but Fantasy Faction offers five ways it can help improve your story.

Stuck on a scene? Janice Hardy gamifies the work of sorting through scene outcomes on Fiction University.

QueryQuagmire (on Tumblr) offers ten things writers should keep in mind before diving into revisions.

Porter Anderson shares Hugh Howey’s ten counterintuitive tips for self-publishers on Publishing Perspectives.

The Canada Council has denied operational funding to On Spec. Susan MacGregor, On Spec editor and author, explains the situation and offers some options to help. On Spec is a Canadian institution in speculative fiction, and the quality of their fiction, editing, and production, is excellent.

I know this first hand. My SF short story “Downtime” will be appearing in the fall 2014 issue, and Barb Galler-Smith, the editor with whom I worked, was very professional. That the magazine is excellent is not just my opinion, though. On Spec is an award nominated, and award winning publication.

Their Patreon account has now been set up. Go to the On Spec web site for more information.

Why Fifty Shades of Grey has bondage all wrong. Tickld.

Forgotten Dr. Seuss stories and other news from Poets & Writers.

Mashable offers up their list of 22 summer reads.

Ten SF novels that will make you more passionate about science, from io9.

Ursula K. LeGuin talks to Michael Cunningham about genre, gender, and broadening fiction on ElectricLit.

Billy Collins shares two dog poems in this brief TED talk.

 

Wow! That’s a lot of Writerly Goodness.

Enjoy, folks 🙂

Tipsday

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, July 20-26, 2014

/ Melanie Marttila / 5 Comments

Angela Ackerman details her encounter with copyright infringement on Writers Helping Writers. This is serious stuff.

I’ve had other writerly friends who’ve noticed their books have been pirated and if you’ve been following Angela on FB, you probably know that she’s encountered that too.

There’s a mode of thought on the interwebz that says pirating is not your enemy. If people like your book so much they steal it, then it will likely convert to more readers.

I think that argument is fundamentally flawed. Chuck Wendig spoke to this quite eloquently a few months ago, here, here, and here.

What if people are stealing your work and trying to make money off it illegally by selling it and pocketing the profits? For a self-published author, the book is her livelihood. Even for the traditionally published, what money he might have seen from a legitimate sale, disappears. It’s wrong.

And the readers who buy these pirated copies may not even know that their money is not going to the author. That’s doubly wrong. Theft, deceit, and fraud? That’s jail time people.

But as Chuck said, it’s not just about the money. An author (or authors) slaved over that book for months, if not years. It’s their intellectual property (IP). It’s their blood, sweat, and tears.

Don’t pirate books. Don’t do it.

<end rant>

Onward, to more light-hearted material.

M.M. Finck posts on Women Writers, Women’s Books about the querying process and why it’s not just about the query. Thanks to Jamie Raintree (see below) for bringing this to my attention.

Anthony Metivier guest-blogged about how to mine your dreams for story gold on Writers Helping Writers.

Bringing a strong vision to your fiction, by Laura K. Cowan, for Writer Unboxed.

Jamie Raintree asks, how far do we follow our dreams? Since we’ve become acquainted, Jamie’s acquired an agent and is now working on a second novel. I love watching her journey unfold.

Here’s Janice Hardy’s guest post for Anne R. Allen’s blog about how not to start a novel.

Veronica Sicoe follows up last week’s post on how she structures her novels with this one on how she brainstorms an idea into a working concept.

K.M. Weiland continues her negative character arc series with part 2: The negative character arc in the second act.

Whether you’re considering hiring a ghost writer, or becoming one, this post by Roz Morris will answer your questions.

Four reasons to use dramatic irony from Writers Write.

Chuck Wendig gets a mention again for sharing this i09 post about Snowpiercer and its fascinating influence. Yes, it’s a South Korean movie based on a French graphic novel, but it’s still great storytelling.

Xia Jia shares her thoughts on what makes Chinese science fiction, Chinese on Tor.com. Translated by Ken Liu. It’s interesting socio-political stuff.

And if your to-be-read (TBR) pile isn’t big enough yet, here is some recommended reading from TED.

Flavorwire presents the 35 writers who run the literary internet.

As a follow-up to my last week’s posting of the CanLit song, here’s every Canadian novel ever. It’s kind of true. And funny. The Toast.

And that’s it for this week, folks.

Thanks for following, sharing, and all the good stuff you do.

Tipsday

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz July 6-12, 2014

/ Melanie Marttila

Not a huge whack this week folks, but what there is, is all quality 🙂

Most common writing mistakes with K.M. Weiland. This week, one dimensional conflict.

Janice Hardy discusses character development.

Roz Morris demonstrates her beat sheet technique with Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

Anne R. Allen lists twelve dumb things writers do to sidetrack our success.

The ever-awesome Robin LaFevers writes about the crushing weight of expectations on Writer Unboxed.

Lisa Cron writes about how writers have the powah on Writer Unboxed.

Carly Watters reveals three signs that you’re past the form letter rejection stage.

Writer’s Relief presents the joy of gerunds.

Did you need even moar books to read? I didn’t think so. Still, here’s The Millions’ book preview for the second half of 2014.

Eight things you should know about Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series from the Barnes & Noble book blog.

A review of the two volume Robert Heinlein biography from Barnes & Noble Reviews.

Enjoy!

Tipsday

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the Interwebz May 4-17, 2014

/ Melanie Marttila

Yes, you read that date correctly. It’s a double shot of Tipsday this week (since I missed out on last week).

A writer friend actually called me the queen of curation this past week 🙂 I think that title belongs to Elizabeth Spann Craig, but I was duly flattered, nonetheless.

Part 12 and Part 13 of K.M. Weiland’s Creating Stunning Character Arcs series.

Lisa Cron’s TEDx lecture, Wired for Story:

 

I would have posted Lisa Cron’s Writer Unboxed: What kindergarten got (and still gets) really, really wrong, but WU is having some technical difficulties right now. I’ll try to keep it in mind for next week. It’s an excellent post. Heart Lisa Cron.

A little more brain science for you here. Frank Bruni encourages kids to read, kids, read.

Anne Ursu examines the phenomenon of ‘Greenlit.’ Contemporary realism in MG and YA.

Jami Gold asks the question, when should we skip a scene in our stories? And she answers it too, clever lady.

Janice Hardy makes a case for prologues: not as evil as you think.

Victoria Mixon’s three things you should know about exposition and telling.

6 tips to modernize your prose for the 21st century reader from Anne R. Allen’s blog. This one generated a few comments. Who should be more accommodating, the writer or the reader?

Roz Morris’s tips for using Amazons keywords and categories intelligently.

Joanna Penn interviews Jane Friedman on money, writing, and life.

Publishing industry news: Pay equity and gender parity are still issues. Why Jill Abramson was fired.

Carly Watters offers 5 easy steps for formatting your next query.

Laura Pepper Wu write a guest post for Catherine Ryan Howard about 11 inspiring quotes from the world’s best writers.

10 more inspiring quotes from the Procrastiwriter.

And even more inspirational quotes from Jane Friedman:

 

George Saunders on the power of kindness, animated, from Brainpickings.

You may remember I posted the Rolling Stone interview with George R.R. Martin a couple of weeks ago. Well, here are the “outtakes.”

And, I know it’s been everywhere, but I love this clip about George R.R. Martin’s secret weapon.

See you all on Thoughty Thursday!

Tipsday