Posts I loved this week

A ton of excellent post this week as we say goodbye to Summer and hello to Fall. Check out the beauties below!

If you’re looking to submit to a literary agent, check out this post from one of them with her best tips on Romance University. Then stick around the site to enjoy this great post by K.M. Weiland on tips to make your love story an epic love story.

Avoiding the dreaded info-dump is crucial for a good story. Here are three essential questions for a better backstory on The Write Practice. And this fantastic one on writing villains.

Joe Bunting promises that this exercise will get you unstuck every time you try to write and can’t. I have to say I tried it and it worked–at least for me.

If Mondays get you down, go over to DBCII for some inspiration. Starting next week, he’ll post writing prompts from books he has. Check out this great idea here.

When I don’t write, I worry about my book and when I write, I worry about making mistakes, so I worry about my book! This post on the Tiny Buddha on how to relax was just what I needed to read.

Sooo excited because I was certain we might not get it but Outlander is coming to Canada. A huge thank you to Penny Dreadful for letting me know and for reviewing it!

If you’re into Westerns, check out this post by Amy Alessio with seven fantastic Western romance reads for you to check out on Romance University.

Five ways to increase your productivity while you’re not writing by Chuck Sambuchino from Writer’s Digest.

Just for fun, this post had me in stitches. So funny by Suzie81 Speaks.

This one has great inspiration with quotes by those who’ve achieved great things on Jen Owenby.

If you’re writing a query letter, check out this post on how to write a killer blurb on Writer’s Relief.

Here come the categories. Again, keep in mind they’re just for fun.

* Best Achievement of the Week – To D. Emery Bunn for completing his book Darkness Concealed.

* Best Short Piece of the Week – A definite gem, this one‘s by Mishka Jenkins.

* Best Rant of the Week – to Infinitefreetime, for this one.

* Best movie Review – to The Hunger Games: Catching Fire by Natacha Guyot.

* Most Unusual Tips for Writers – This one needs a word of warning. Some tips are truly…disturbing, from the Thought Catalog.

* Best find of the Week – Very cool. You type in three words and it generates 5 blog topics for you. Check it out here at HubSpot.

* Funniest Post of the Week – What not to say to a mom with a Colicky Baby by Outmanned. Never had a baby colicky or otherwise, but I still laughed out loud.

Posts I loved this week

A fantastic week for blogs everywhere. I was a little worried about the size of this post (again). Then, just to add to the madness, I created a group of nonsensical categories and added more posts!

This is an awesome post on how to get deeper into your characters by finding out who they blame. Is it others or themselves? Locus of control is key. Writerology is such an awesome blog!

The Positive Writer has this great post on beating burnout with 4 great ideas. Loved it!

If you’re trying to get published and have written some short fiction, check out this post on how to get that fiction published in a Literary Magazine by Suzannah Windsor Freeman at Writer Unboxed.

Cute and informative, Winter Bayne tipped me onto this great post about punctuation from an editor in Zen/Xen.

Here are Molly Greene‘s 15 Must-have essentials for your website. A fantastic post! And, while you’re at the site, check out this other post on how to write a great blog title.

Interesting and touching, 5 Things I’ve learned since Publishing had me at the title by Skye Callahan.

The Write Practice is smoking with great posts! Check out this one on how long a post should be and how that affects its goals. And this other great post on 5 elements for writing the ‘perfect post’. Both by Joe Bunting!

If you’re writing the blurb for your book, this one is for you. It has explanations and examples of duds and great blurbs by Becca Puglisi in Writers Helping Writers.

I’m always interested in checking out what other programs there are out there that will help me become a better writer. This post has several productivity tools described and explained on Live to Write – Write to Live.

If you write science fiction, fantasy or paranormal, check out this post on world-building with great tips and steps by Catherine Spangler in Writers in the Storm.

From guest blogging to secrets to writing, this post has 51 resources to help you get there. An great post by Bryan Hutchinson on the Positive Writer.

There are six archetypes every novel needs and this post tells you who they are and why you need them. It’s by Bill Ferris from Writer Unboxed. A great post and reference.

Check out the new Just Gene’O. With a new, easy-to-navigate layout, amazing photographs, great resources and new blogs to check out, this is a blog I followed instantly. Don’t miss it.

For bloggers, check out this post on 10 blog content ideas on The Bookbaby Blog.

For those looking for an agent, Author Zone has 12 Query-Writing Resources that are not to be missed.

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In an effort to entertain, I made up the following categories. Please keep in mind this is just for fun. There is no award for getting one of these.

Best Writer’s Rant: My choice for Best Rant of the Week has to go to Infinitefreetime for this post.

Funniest Movie Review: Goes to Yours in Storytelling and his hilarious review of Noah (and happy birthday!).

Kindest Post of the Week: Goes to Callum McLaughlin for this wonderful post in support of Indie authors.

Best Find: Inside the Life of Moi, hilarious and with great posts. Check this post on The Good Wife: Expectations vs. Reality.

Funniest Post of the Week: I had to give it to this one by Outmanned. OMG.

Wacko Post of the Week: Goes to this hilarious post on Penny Dreadful pondering Chewbacca’s dating qualities.

Ranting about perfection

I’ve always been driven. Even as a kid, I always tried harder. The problem isn’t that I need to try harder, the problem is that I want perfection. I stare at the scene I’ve written and shake my head in despair. Absolute garbage! Delete button, here I go.

I found this article by Joe Bunting titled The Myth of Perfection on The Write Practice. It was actually really helpful because he starts by saying: you’re never going to be perfect. For me, that was great news because it set me free. I can accept it and try to do a good job, not a perfect job.

When I look forward, I get overwhelmed. I think of the odds against me and they seem insurmountable. It helps if I look back. Once, I didn’t speak English. I wrote and didn’t believe I’d ever get published. I’ve written a book, I have another on the works.

Maybe I need to embrace Good Enough and kick Perfection in the butt.

Blogging: Quality or quantity?

When I started blogging, I researched on line to find out what to do and I read that the trick to finding ‘traffic’ was to blog every day. The subject didn’t really matter. I just had to post something on a daily basis. It was all about quantity, not quality.

I’ve been blogging for a bit now but I’m still not certain about that piece of advice. Is it really about frequency of posts? If a blogger posts twice a day do they really get twice the traffic? What about three times a day? What about four? Ten? Wouldn’t there be a point when their followers would get annoyed?

And what about the topic? Does that matter at all? What if I wrote a post about elephant foot-fungus? Would my readers devour the post with glee? Or would they wonder what was wrong with my medication today and scamper off?

Joe Bunting argues for quantity in this post. He not only claims that it’s easier to blog everyday, he adds that your blog will get more ‘love from Google’ if you do.

Jeff Goins goes even further with his post “What you write about doesn’t matter as much as you think”. His position is you have to find your ‘voice’, the rest is inconsequential. Hard to argue with a guy who has as much success as he does.

On a completely different note, does anyone know if elephants even get foot fungus?

Conflict

I’m editing and I keep wondering, is there enough conflict in my story? Though I could do without it in real life, it’s different in my story. In a book, conflict is key. It’s so important.

So, I did a bit of searching and found some sites on conflict. If you’re like me and wondering if you have enough of it, these might help.

http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/2013/11/double-storys-conflict-seconds.html–How to double your conflict in seconds. Thanks to K.M. Weiland. 

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2009/03/on-conflict.html–Nathan Bransford weighs in on conflict and why you need it.

http://blog.janicehardy.com/2012/11/guest-author-cj-redwine-how-to-escalate.html–10 ways to escalate conflict in your story.

http://blog.janicehardy.com/2010/11/find-your-plot-fridays-forcing-issue.html–By Janice Hardy again. Another great post on how to add conflict to scenes.

http://thewritepractice.com/creating-conflict/–by Joe Bunting on how to create conflict.

http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/2012/09/why-your-storys-conflict-isnt-working.html–A very important point about adding valid conflict by K.M. Weiland.

And finally, a cute and funny test by Janice Hardy to see if you’re too nice to your characters. http://blog.janicehardy.com/2010/12/do-you-suffer-from-nws-living-with-nice.html

P.S. Yes, I did take the test and, no, I don’t want to talk about how I did.

Great posts for writers

These are all posts by writers for writers. Great, inspirational and interesting, I couldn’t but share them.

This one is a neat post on how the World’s most brilliant people spend their days. Pretty cool because they have graphs comparing their sleep and work hours. Kevin Short explains strange little facts about them as well, like how Victor Hugo used to wake up by gunshot (what?) and have a cold bath on his roof. Obviously, he didn’t live in Canada.

Another beautifully written post is this one by Julianna Baggott. It talks about the need writers have to write and she explains it beautifully. I read it and sighed. It’s that good.

Joanna Penn wrote a powerful post on how to use fear and pain to drive your story forward. I don’t know about you, but I try to avoid both fear and pain but, after reading her post, I’m thinking they might have some value after all.

Now I’m self-published but, if you’re trying to find an agent, here‘s a great post on how to write a query letter. It’s never easy or fun but Cody Wagner has a great guide with examples on how to do a great job. A big thanks to Joe Bunting for the tip!

Just found this amazing site and couldn’t help but recommend this post. It’s by Victoria Grefer and I simply loved it. How to humanize a villain, love it. Loved the ideas too. And here‘s another one that I simply loved on magic in everyday life. Loved it too. What a great blog!

Christian Mihai couldn’t be left out of this bunch. Check out his great post on writing advice. Awesome!

Hope you enjoy them as much as I did. They certainly made my morning delicious!