Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, September 6-12, 2015

September 15, 2015 / Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

May I present your Writerly Goodness for the week:

K.M. Weiland continues her most common writing mistakes series with part 44: too many participle phrases.

Katie encourages writers to let Toy Story show you the key to subtle character development.

Vaughan Roycroft has series aspirations and looks at Robin Hobbs’ Assassin series in this post: Drawn to the long arc.

Porter Anderson refers to Roz Morris and Joanna Penn’s posts in this piece for Writer Unboxed: Looking for truth in the time of hype.

Writing begins with forgiveness: Why one of the most common pieces of writing advice is wrong. Daniel José Older for Seven Scribes.

The creative life interviews: Laura Belgray and talking shrimp. Anna Lovind.

New Zealand bans award-winning teen novel after outcry from Christian group. Really, Kiwis? I thought we were past this kind of stuff. The Guardian.

Then again . . . Henrietta Lacks biographer, Rebecca Skloot, responds to concerned parent about ‘porn’ allegation. The Guardian.

A new Author’s Guild survey reveals that the majority of authors are earning below the poverty line. Publishers Weekly.

Mike Hernandez writes about constructing cultural taboos in this helpful worldbuilding post for Mythcreants.

Helen Maslin presents her top ten literary castles and country houses. The Guardian.

Hope the week started off well.

I’ll see you with a load of thoughty videos on 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, August 9-15, 2015

August 25, 2015 / Melanie Marttila / 1 Comment

Last Tipsday from London (Ontario)!

Enjoy!

The good, the bad, and the ugly of NaNoWriMo. Roz Morris responds to a reader’s concerns.

Ooh! Shiny! Are new story ideas distracting you from your current project? K.M. Weiland has some suggestions for you.

How to keep your readers riveted by having your characters face the worst your story has to offer. Katie’s weekly vlog.

Katie shares a day in her writing life. I love this process-y stuff 🙂

How Joanna Penn addresses repetitive stress injury.

Jim C. Hines: 9 days to the quittening.

David Villalva visits Christine Frazier’s The Better Novel Project to help us create remarkable villains.

Creating aliens: Veronica Sicoe participates in her first podcast on the Resolute Writer.

Victoria Namkung: Ten things I’ve learned from being a debut novelist. The Huffington Post.

Writing advice from The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Let authors take the quiet road. The Independant.

What would you like to do if money was no object? by Alan Watts.

What ten books were almost called. Mental Floss.

Buzzfeed presents the 51 fantasy series we should all read.

Coming up: Thoughty Thursday, a return to Saturday posting, and, of course, Tipsday again, next Tuesday!

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, August 9-15, 2015

August 18, 2015 / Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

Four methods to invigorate your prose with surprising sentences. K.M. Weiland.

Moar Katie: How not to waste your story setting’s full potential.

The love that dare not appear in print. David Corbett for Writer Unboxed.

The socially awkward writer. Sarah Callender for Writer Unboxed.

Roz Morris guest posts for Romance University on what you need to do for your NaNoWriMo preparation.

Harry Connolly shares what keeps him writing full time. Jim C. Hines.

The five things productive writers do differently. Joe Bunting guests posts on Tim Grahl’s blog.

Kristen Lamb explains what went wrong with True Detective, season 2.

To the lab! Veronica Sicoe writes about creating alien species in three steps.

Joanna Penn and Guy Windsor discuss the difficulties of writing good sword fights.

Just call her our lady of dark grace. Silvia Moreno-Garcia responds to commenters who call her a “little bitch” for daring to publish an anthology of Lovecraftian tales written by women.

Why do people say that the novel is dead? The New York Times.

Deborah Malcom was inspired by Neil Gaiman to create Meh, her wordless picture book that helps kids understand mental health issues. The Big Issue.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s first fantasy story to be published. Aaaannd, it’s from the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic poem. The Guardian.

Hear Shakespeare’s plays in Renaissance English. Open Culture.

Cannabis found in Shakespeare’s pipes (!). As a friend said, this explains The Tempest! The Telegraph.

Russell Smith offers six tips to help you write and publish your first novel. The Globe and Mail.

Five Room writers talk about their favourite writing tools.

Being a medieval librarian was hard work. Medieval books.

New images from the set of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Entertainment Weekly.

More Tipsday coming up next week, but in the meantime, swing back for some thoughty on Thursday 😉

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, August 2-8, 2015

August 11, 2015 / Melanie Marttila

This was the big controversy this week: Homme de Plume (now in convenient hashtag #hommedeplume). One woman author queries using a male name and gets more requests for partials and fulls than when using her name.

Canadian author, Marie Bilodeau responds.

Kameron Hurley offers a reality check on the necessity and nature of writing with a day job.

Then Chuck Wendig posted this: Starving is a terrible condition for making art.

Most common writing mistakes, part 43: Too many exclamation points! K.M. Weiland, Helping writers become authors.

Show, don’t tell, matters in foreshadowing, too. Katie’s Wednesday vlog.

Christine Frazier looks at five kinds of societies for your novel on The Better Novel Project.

Donald Maass discusses how to write about unnameable emotions on Writer Unboxed.

Elizabeth Stephens introduces us to the #weneeddiversebooks hashtag on Writer Unboxed.

Veronica Sicoe writes about how perfectionism is murdering your muse.

Stephen King shares 22 lessons on how to be a great writer on The Business Insider.

John Scalzi shares his creative process on lifehacker.

Catherine Ryan Howard answers the question, how many drafts did you do?

Chris Winkle discusses the process of troubleshooting when you’re stuck. Mythcreants.

Can a virtuous character be interesting? The New York Times.

22 authors, including K.M. Weiland and Roz Morris, share their greatest writing challenges. Become a Writer Today.

A genre takes flight: Science Fiction. The Library Journal. The good news: epic fantasy still sells. The bad news: the dark stuff, not so much . . .

Tor.com shares 20 time travel classics.

Ten Old English insults that could be band names. Anglophenia.

Geekster Ink Shares twenty images of women in practical armour.

The Red Band Deadpool trailer is def NSFW.

Tipsday will be beck next Tuesday with more Writerly Goodness.

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!

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, July 12-18, 2015

July 21, 2015 / Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

Wow. Kind of short of writerly goodness this week. I blame it on work 😛 I do that a lot, don’t I?

K.M. Weiland shares the secret to a satisfying character arc. Read the post, listen to the podcast, or both 🙂

Katie’s Wednesday vlog covers why even positive story events should have negative consequences.

What are the five dimensions of character personality? MJ Bush knows. Writingeekery.

The novelist’s dilemma is not really a dilemma at all. Kathryn Magendie.

Porter Anderson revisits the trolling furor on the interwebz and offers a suggestion for a way forward on Writer Unboxed.

Kameron Hurley writes about her struggles as a writer with anxiety. Self care is so important.

The flipside of diversity: What’s wrong with cultural appropriation? Every Day Feminism.

Here are fourteen science fiction short movies from Adobe Inspire.

Outlander news from Comic Con. Hypable.

Well that’s all I gots for you until next week.

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, July 5-11, 2015

July 14, 2015 / Melanie Marttila / 4 Comments

Okay. Several instances of trolling and cyberbullying against writers have come to the fore in recent weeks. Here are a few posts that seek to address the issue.

Anne R. Allen outlines the issues and offers some strategies you can use to avoid or address them without becoming a target.

Chuck Wendig posted Online is IRL (in response to the #AskELJames fiasco), and then, after a narsty Twitter attack, posted In which I learn to talk less and listen more.

This made Porter Anderson’s radar and he posted this analysis of the fallout.

In other, related news, there were discussions across Facebook and Google+ regarding the above (Delilah S. Dawson was caught in the fracas), and about a libellous review posted for Roz Morris. If it had merely been a poor review, meh. This review, however, accused Roz of plagiarism. How do you respond to these kinds of accusations without chumming the waters? We really have to learn to be kinder to one another online.

Agent Sarah Negovetich offered these thoughts on safely navigating social media.

Unit sales (of print books) inched up in the first half of 2015. Publishers Weekly.

Elending won’t put a big dent in books sales. The Guardian.

Court denies class action in Author Solutions case. Publishers Weekly.

Jane Friedman explains the profit and loss statement and how publishers use it to make purchasing decisions.

What happens if your story stakes aren’t high enough? K.M. Weiland answers in part 42 of her Most Common Writing Mistakes series.

Katie looked at Jurassic Park as an example of how to compound your conflict in your story. Think perfect storm 🙂

E.C. Ambrose offered these nine ways to use point of view to strengthen your characters. Helping Writers Become Authors.

Chris Winkle writes another great post for Mythcreants: Why social justice is intrinsic to storytelling.

Roz Morris writes about the importance of names. I love names, too.

Agent Carly Watters lists seven things that writers should stop wasting their time on.

Sarah Callender explores the practice of success for Writer Unboxed.