Today, an article - How To Write Character Arcs.
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Ever wondered where a word comes from? Here's a handy Online Etymology Dictionary so you can look it up.
A little late posting, since it's now 5th May, but I signed up for the May story a day challenge over at storyaday.org.
It's bringing home to me how out of practice I am. One of the first posts suggested starting small - no more than 1200 words a story at the beginning of the month. My immediate reaction was I'd struggle to manage even that in a day. I used to be able to do it in an hour and a half. These days I find it really difficult to go from a standing start. Not engaging with the prompts is a problem. Show me a picture of a baby elephant trying to rescue a kitten from a river and I'm more likely to think it's twee, and that I hate anthropomorphic animal stories, than wonder how an elephant and cat become best buddies, if they're in league with each other, or what that cat is doing in the river in the first place. However, even when I was writing from prompts before I was usually supplementing with other prompts. It's when the random connections happen in the brain that the magic starts. So, for anyone else in need of prompting, here are some of my favourite prompt sites: Seventh Sanctum, which has prompts for pretty much everything (random creatures, equipment, names) on top of a dedicated writing section that comes up with plots, symbolism, themes etc. Mangle posts the last 25 images uploaded to Livejournal. Sometimes what you'll get is awful (yes, sometimes that's porn - the site is very NSFW), but sometimes you'll get a gem. Also for images there's deviantART, which posts up it's most recently popular images on the front page. The Random Proverb Generator which smooshes up proverbs and serves them back in a new form. Loading it up to get the link just netted me "Absence makes the heart grow words". There might be a story in that. Here's a link I saw today, for an awesome post by Jenna Black on being responsible for your own writing career.
It's been a while since I've done one of these, so this is my collection from the beginning of the year:
"Where Characters Come From" by Cory Doctorow. Douglas Smith's Foreign Market List - a useful site for those who want to widen their audience, or just make those reprints earn their keep. Hilary Mantel's Rules for Writers. Interview with Susan Cooper. The #1 Rule of Everything - a great blog post by Steven R. Stewart on writing and depression. Interview with Philip Kenney about writers and depression. The Disturbing Origins of 10 Fairy Tales by Emily Temple. A fascinating article on fairy tales at Rookie Mag. And for a bit of fun - Pulp-o-mizer, the pulp magazine cover generator. And an awesome Les Mis flashmob. Probably the last one of the year, although there'll be a proper blog post after Christmas.
The Duotrope Conundrum - why writer Alex Shvatsman thinks Duotrope's new payment plan is unsustainable. (Hint: most writers I know, including past donators, won't be staying.) 12 Letters That Didn't Make the Alphabet. Blog post by Della Galton on Writing a Serial. Religion in Fantasy World-Building at Genreality. 9 Signs That You Might Be an Introvert. Daily Words with Debie Ridpath Ohi. The Weekend Book Marketing Makeover by Shannon O'Neil and Toni Tesori (I haven't read it yet, but it's downloaded and waiting for me to get to it). Another bunch of writing links I've linked from the last week:
Writing for Women's Magazines Five Ways to Write When You Really Don't Want To The Business of Writing: Turn Your Income Stream into a River and Terry Pratchett interview: Sex, Death and Nature That's pretty much it. I'm behind on my novella, but did manage to get the flash challenge done over at Liberty Hall last night. I updated all the links in the Bibliography section on Saturday, and found a few that are no longer working. That's the reason for putting the stories out in e-books. I should think about doing another one soon, but I think it might be May before enough rights have reverted to me to make it worth doing. Once again I've been a bit lazy on the internetting this last week. Although that's not necessarily a bad thing. There's an interview with me over at Anaea Lay's website today - Telling Lies for Fun and Profit. Some of the answers may seem a little odd: the clue's in the title. My story "The Message" went up at Kazka Press last week. And my copies of Cucurbital 3 arrived as well. 
And my one and only "Link I Like" collected last week was: Three Signs You're Renovating a Condemned Novel. Only two this week, I've been a little distracted.
Promoting Your Books By Getting Articles in Magazines - Autumn Barlow at Top Hat Books. I'm going to print this out an keep it on my noticeboard. Copyright - Words and Images, Not Ideas, Titles, or Cats - Nicola Morgan |
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