January 2010

  • Writing Related Videos - Stephen King

    By sparklyscotty on 1/31/10 8:52am
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    One of the world¡s greatest storytellers and best selling authors of all time, Stephen King, shares his writing advice with students at Yale University.  A few years old now, King's simple, straightforward advice is still worth a listen for any creative writer.

     

  • Writing Related Videos - Joyce Carol Oates on Characters

    By sparklyscotty on 1/23/10 9:50am
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    There is a whole host of great writing related videos to be found online, from interviews with authors, to podcast classes, to how-tos from published authors and editors.  Here,  Joyce Carol Oates shares some information about how to create realistic characters.

     

  • Writer Shout Out January 22nd

    By sparklyscotty on 1/22/10 10:20am
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    Jane Friedman gives a weekly roundup of the best writing tweets each Sunday at her blog.  These tweets include advice, quotes and links to some great writing articles and resources.  Worth a look each week.

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  • Punctuation and The Irony Mark

    By becksta on 1/21/10 2:28pm
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    The Irony MarkThe Irony MarkThe year was 199x. I was a newbie to the Internet and everything surrounding it. One of my housemates at that time had a dial-up account at 14k and was wise about the world (sort of) and was writing in ways that I had no idea about.

    He was the very first person I ever met who was strictly anti-capitals and anti-punctuation. (I know that ee cummings could be classified in the same way, but unfortunately due to geographical and time constraints, I never met the illustrious poet in person).

    “Who needs them? They’re useless.”

    I was innocent to ways of the world, sheltered in a world in which paragraphs had to be indented exactly five spaces, every “t” had to be crossed, and being anti-establishment to me meant writing my “I’s” in a different cursive style.  Obviously, I was aghast at his suggestion.


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  • How to Keep your New Years Writing Resolutions

    By sparklyscotty on 1/11/10 2:59pm
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    Have you made a writing resolution for 2010?  Have you thought about how you are going to stick to it?  Here is the best advice that I have garnered from gurus, psychology studies, several inspirational (and some not so inspirational) books and other writers over the years...

    Tell Someone

    Whatever your writing resolution you have a much higher chance of sticking it out and seeing it through if you tell someone about it.  Experts put this down to the fact that the people you have told will act as your witnesses and keep you accountable, so make sure the people you tell are good enough friends to keep nagging you about your progress! 

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  • Writers Resolutions for 2010

    By sparklyscotty on 1/10/10 12:54pm
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    Have you made a writing resolution for 2010?  Traditionally, the start of a new year provides a clean slate upon which to project all of your goals and dreams for the year to come.  Do you want to see your name in print more?  Are there new markets you want to reach?  Perhaps 2010 will be the year in which you publish your first book?  Or maybe your goals are centered more around finances, and you are determined to get higher paying clients and landjuicier assignments? 

    Other resolutions often deal with the way in which we work.  For example, I am determined this year to be more efficient in my freelance adventures. As my workload has grown steadily throughout 2009 I have seen a need to treat this writing lark with a much more professional attitude and give my writing the time, attention and focus that it requires to make it a profitable career.

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  • The Power of Brevity

    By msarko on 1/7/10 7:38pm
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    When I was a small child just first learning how to read, I asked my mother how many pages were in a chapter. It only made sense at the time, given that everything else I learned about seemed to exist in discreet units. There were 60 minutes in an hour, 5280 feet in a mile, 365 days in a year. Why shouldn't there be a set number of pages in a chapter? Instead, I found the average length of chapters increasing with my own age. The five-page chapters of kid's books gave way to the fifteen page chapters of young adult novels, then jumping up to as many as 30 to 50 pages in heavyweight literature by the time I got around to college. Then I started to discover writers who went against that particular grain, opting for extremely short chapters, or even alternatives to the concept of chapters, in their novels. Ever since then, I've been a proponent of keeping everything in fiction as brief and sharp as possible.



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