a translator's best friend

Okay, this translator's best friend, at least - I've been revising some poetry translations this morning and I need to stop long enough to sing the praises of J. I. Rodale's The Synonym Finder. (Totally unsolicited. I was compelled by its synonyms for the word "permanence," including "perpetuity, everlastingness, immortality, deathlessness, athanasia; imperishability, indestructibility," and a whole host of other words that certain uptight word processors and blogging softwares don't even think exist, phtbtbtbbbt. I love diction that eludes Microsoft Word.)

While I use it most often during translation, it lives on my desk and often comes in handy when I'm revising my own poetry, as well. If you've figured out the music you're going for in a poem or translation, this is the world's greatest resource.

After years of feverishly hunting through online dictionaries and thesauri, I recently dug out my reference books and I could not be happier. It's hard to articulate why I like them so much more as actual books - I'm not anti-e-reader. But for some reason, I'm finding physical reference books noticeably more enjoyable to work with.

So. Rodale's Synonym Finder. If you need more awesome words in your life, get it. In the meantime, I'm getting back to my translation. Peace.

(Hey, if you have a favorite dictionary or thesaurus, please tell me - I'm always on the lookout for kickass writing resources. Cheers.)

whoosh

*blows dust off*

*there is a lot of it*

Why does restarting this blog scare the crap out of me?

I've almost pulled this thing back into the light a hundred times in the past year. And then the little chattery self-editor starts up. My inner critic likes tea and conversation. She sips with self-assurance and says, "I'm sorry, wait, does this mean you started being able to do things on a regular schedule?" And, "So who do you think actually wants to hear what you have to say?"

I'm over it. Well, I'm not over it, but I'm OVER it.

In recent months I've spent a fair few sleepless nights uselessly wringing my hands over the civil rights' atrocities in Ferguson and elsewhere in the U.S. and the world; ISIS or ISIL or whatever the hell the beheading bastards are calling themselves; Ebola; Syria; the Ukraine; climate change; rape culture; the politicized & misogynist SCOTUS; and all the other tragedies & catastrophes taking place on small and large scales that call themselves to my notice. I have perhaps an excess of empathy (apparently making up for more than one Republican congressperson).

I lived in fear of the future. Then I realized that the future will remain scary and out-of-control regardless. The only thing I can control is my response to it.

So I've started doing things that are, for me, brave. Going back to grad school to push evolution in my writing skills for a career in the only work I've ever really cared about. Submitting poems and manuscripts for publication, and continuing to do so even as the rejection letters soar into my inbox. Tweeting without rewriting it 18 dozen times. Expressing my opinions adamantly instead of pacifically. Facing my parenting flaws as problems that can be solved instead of horrible deficiencies I can't help but enact.

None of this is going to change the world, perhaps. It's certainly not the kind of bravery that warrants medals or rescues someone from an oncoming train or keeps jellyfish from taking over the oceans.

But it's changing my world. So whether or not I post on a regular schedule (hint: not), and whether or not anyone remotely gives a shit, I'm coming back to blogging. Good news: for the most part, I'll be thinking about the craft of writing - especially poetry - and offering brief critiques on what I'm reading. And seriously, y'all, I have been reading some amazing books lately, so it should be fun.

Why is it the more I care about something, the more it scares the living shit out of me? How do you deal with fears of failing at things that are desperately important to you? 'Cause I'll tell you honestly, I could use some help here.

Twitzilla: or how I learned to stop worrying and love the blog.

In recent weeks, I've found myself somewhat paralyzed by a crushing attack of what I call "Twitzilla". Twitzilla is, in my corner of the universe, a monstrous behemoth formed by an aggregate of writers across the world who are blogging their fingers off on every single topic known to writing man, and doing a much better job of it than I possibly could (or so Twitzilla whispers terrifyingly, lovingly, in my ears). 

Don't get me wrong: I adore Twitter and all the resources it provides. In fact, it ranks right up there with chocolate on the list of kickass things that make me happy. It's possibly the greatest thing that ever happened to writers, from the blog posts to the book promotions to the endless cups of tea and pictures of people's cats and seven-hundred-eleventy-three gabillion other ways we all get to know that, by god, we are not alone. Best of all, we don't have to actually see each other or talk to anyone face to face; we can hunch over our laptops in the wee hours of the night and read and write to our solitary hearts' content. 

But there's a whole lot of must-haves that can be a little soul-crushing intimidating as well. You must have a blog! You must have a platform! You must write interestingly and usefully and other-such-adverb-ly so that you can have many, many followers, or no one will ever want to publish you! 

To quote that immortal hero, Bill the Cat: ACK. 

I'm a writer, for crying out loud. I just want to write. (And edit, and read, and occasionally nap on the sofa curled up with a blanket and a book... but I digress.) And while I'll spare you the litany of other responsibilities all  screaming for attention throughout the day, believe me: there are a lot of them. It takes a concerted effort to make time to write every day. 

So the thought of coming up with blog posts on writing and editing techniques that are witty and useful and informative and all those other brilliant things is a little scary. I've spent many a happy hour reading other people's witty, useful, informative, brilliant blog posts on these topics, and you know what?

It's all pretty much covered. Yep. That's it, guys, time to call it a day and go read each other poetry over a tasty microbrew! (Hey, a girl can dream.) 

Coming up with new twists on blog posts on writing and editing techniques now seems to take ingenious acts of creativity that I always assumed I should put towards, y'know, story ideas and incredible poetic images and razor-sharp dialogue that advances the plot. Silly things like that. It seemed like any time I did come up with an idea, I would immediately see the link to someone else's blog post in which they ran with it and, yep, did a fantastic job.

You can imagine my relief when it recently occurred to me that I don't need to be intimidated after all. Something finally sunk in, which is that everyone is just sharing their own experiences (insert platitude about snowflakes here).  I can leash up Twitzilla and take that bad boy for a walk. If I just do my thing, somewhere out there in the magical interwebs it'll mean something to someone else. 

So, to make a short story long (and I do apologize - you might have noticed by now that I have a slight tendency to ramble), I intend to post on a regular basis now. I'm starting with once a week. I can't promise anything earth-shattering, but I can promise you - and myself - that I'll be posting about my experiences with writing and editing, in the sincere hope that some of it will prove useful to you. And by the way, thank you, in advance, for reading.

Also, I'm curious: what writing blog topics do you find endlessly fascinating? Let me know - I'd love some food for Twitzilla thought.

Creak, creak

If this blog were a box, it would be made of smooth-sanded hardwood and inlaid gold, and I'd be lovingly wiping away a thick layer of dust right now, having rediscovered it among a jumbled pile of loved but forgotten possessions.

Last posted on November 30th, 2009, upon finishing the second draft of my WIP. What's happened during the 16-month ellipsis? Well, most significantly, my 14-month-old daughter happened, who is now snoozing next to me. Almost no actual writing has happened on the WIP; it was reviewed and comment on in detail by an absolutely incredible crit reader, but the only work I've done in response to her comments has taken place in my head. I've read a lot of blog posts lately about moms who started (or went back to) working on a novel the same day their child was born. Kudos to them - it did not happen for me. I think I did write a poem for her the next day, and have written sporadic poems since her birth, but in no way did my writing life possess anything resembling discipline until a week or two ago.

In all honesty, that was due as much to a dormant period in my writing as it was to arrival of The Teensy One. Let me be clear: I'm not making excuses. It's been more than a few years since I realized my creativity goes through periods of dormancy. It used to freak me out, but once I figured out that the times of silence are always followed by outpourings of creative energy, I stopped worrying about it. Nowadays when the muse goes silent, I let her rest for a while, although I listen with a keen ear for her to speak again.

Although this latest cycle of creativity started a couple of weeks ago, the arrival of National Poetry Month helped me get back into a disciplined routine, which feels oh, so good - like a bird on wing. There are a couple of sites I've been using for daily prompts, both of which I found thanks to that perennial friend-of-writers, Twitter.

The first is @robertleebrewer's Poetic Asides blog, which he writes for Writer's Digest: http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/. Some good prompts here - some reliable and familiar stand-bys, and some creative prompts that provide good nudges to the brain to approach a poem with a fresh perspective.

The second, Instapoem, is a collaboration between @inkyelbows (Debbie Ridpath Ohi) and Rand Bellavia: http://instapoem.blogspot.com/. This blog features a series of one-word prompts, one for each day of the month, and the rule is to write it within five minutes of seeing the prompt. It's a great concept, although there are days when the word of the day just doesn't strike me; on those days, I just use a word from a different day.

Oddly, a lot of the poetry I've written since I got back into the swing of things has rhymed. I have nothing against rhyming or free verse, but I tend more towards free verse, generally. Not lately, though - it's a little disconcerting to have all these rhymes popping up, but I'm rolling with it and focusing on using them to challenge myself rather than as crutches for simplicity.

Today's prompt from Poetic Asides is to write a "what if" poem. Here's mine:

Songs for Abigail XV

The freight train howls its lonesome song
Cloud upon cloud piles white upon grey
The heron tucks its head under wing
What if you were alive today?


Well, now that the dust is cleaned away, I'm hoping to post semi-regularly on here. No promises, though; some days I'm lucky to get five minutes to myself for a quick writing exercise. Hey, a girl's gotta have her priorities. Cheers.

Reaching the Goal

I'm thrilled to announce that I met my November writing goal today, completing the second draft of my current work-in-progress. I must say, the experience taught me a lot, since I've never revised a novel before. In case it proves helpful to others struggling with revising an unwieldy first draft, here are the key lessons I learned:

Know thyself. I am a terrible procrastinator, I'll admit it right now. (Or maybe later.) I set myself a deadline to complete this revision during the month of November. I got through a little more than half the novel and hit a big fat brick wall. The wall didn't move for a good two weeks or more. On Black Friday, after stuffing myself with leftover pumpkin pie, it occurred to me that I had three days left in the month and few other demands on my time. I figured out that if I averaged seven chapters a day, I could still meet the goal; this seemed entirely feasible. I got re-energized (why else do we procrastinate, except that we love the mad dash towards the finish line?) and made it happen.

We all have our strengths and weaknesses as writers. If you're honest with yourself about what they are, you can leverage the former against the latter to avoid your own pitfalls.

Don't give up. Churchill said it best - doesn't he always? "If you are going through hell, keep going." I think he was probably referring to WWII, or possibly the Boer War, but regardless, the adage works here too. While it's not quite as traumatic as war, revising your writing tends to be hellish more often than not. Difficult choices present themselves. I want the work to be phenomenal, but am I going the right way to get there? This is the question.

That big fat brick wall I hit? In the first draft, I'd written some chapters in first person and some in third person. I had to make a narrative choice and stick with it. Guess who deeply questioned that choice just over halfway through the second draft? I agonized for a good two weeks before deciding, "What the hell," and telling myself to just get on with it. If the end result sucked, well, I'd just proved to myself I could take massive amounts of writing and make titchy subject & verb tense changes throughout it. I could always do it again, but I wanted to finish this draft first, maybe to see how it went, maybe just because I'm stubborn, maybe a little of both. By the end of the revision, I felt like I'd made the right choice after all, and even developed cogent-sounding arguments as to why my narrative choice better supported the story. (At least, I'd like to think they sound cogent.)

It's rough, no doubt. When you care this much about something, a bad roadblock can make you question the entire project, and it's tempting to walk away and start anew. I think the key is to not give up midway through your decision; carry it through to the end before you determine if it's unworthy. It's dangerous to try and judge only part of the picture.

Identify the issues before you start fixing things. Granted, things will pop up along the way, and you should address some of those too. But you already know what huge, glaring plot holes you blithely skipped over on that first go-round, or that you were going to have to do some serious web-surfing to write accurately about raising goats in Greece, or what have you. Hopefully, you had at least two or three readers provide you with feedback, and you've read it through yourself (resisting the urge to launch into revision right then, which is so hard, isn't it?). I actually made a list of the issues I wanted to fix and the questions I had to face, so I could approach them more effectively. I'm definitely more of a pantser when it comes to the first draft, but I think the more structured & organized approach to the second draft is what got me through it.

Plan on a next draft. We tend to put a lot of pressure on ourselves when we write. (Go ahead, call me Captain Obvious.) You don't have to make it perfect right now, just better. Knowing this helped me a lot. I confess I took refuge in focusing on the technicalities for much of this draft, except for changing and dropping a couple parts of the plot that just didn't feel right - and that I felt capable of fixing there and then. If I ran into something that was still too overwhelming to tackle, I left it for the third draft without even a twinge of guilt. I stayed plenty busy fixing other massive problems, the ones I'd planned on dealing with. Like my mom says, "Eat the elephant one bite at a time."

somewhere between a sigh and a growl

I'm not sure what that noise would sound like, but it's what I'm making right now. Or rather, I keep alternating between sighing and growling, because like I said, I don't quite know how to combine the two. Suggestions?

There are several reasons for my frustration and crankiness, most of which I won't go into here, but one thing that's been bugging the hell out of me is my internal struggle over 1st vs. 3rd person POV in my current WIP.

When I wrote the first draft, I was just focused on getting the words on paper (or the computer screen, whatever) and I wrote some chapters in first person, some in third, as the mood struck me. There was not a lot of thought involved; I just wrote instinctively.

So one of the questions that's preoccupied me for the last year, since I wrote the first draft, is which POV to use. I felt like the story needed a consistent narrative approach. I ended up going with first person, largely because the protagonist undergoes such an emotional/mental journey as she goes through the plot conflicts. She transitions from anti-hero to hero, and during her journey, she makes some choices that most people would probably respond to with a well-deserved "WTF?" So I felt like the first person would heighten the reader's sympathy with her while supporting the tension between her (at times admittedly unreliable) perspective and the rest of the world.

Then, yesterday, I reached the halfway point in my first round of revision. I finished 25 of the 50 chapters (yay!), and felt great about how the story was going. I decided to take a little break, do some stuff around the house, and then read a bunch of articles about writing/revising/character/plot/POV.

That last bit was, I realize now, perhaps a mistake. Okay, definitely a mistake. I read some articles discussing 1st & 3rd-person narration, and the debate I thought I'd settled for myself just raged right up again. Except at this point, I'm halfway through making the novel a consistent POV, and nearly 30,000 words in is really not when one wants to be questioning one's narrative choice.

So, y'know. Little irritated. Part of my frustration is that it seems a lot of writers consider first person to be an "immature" choice of narration, which made me question myself and get all insecure about my writing abilities. But as Nathan Bransford says (not in the linked post, but often), if it works, it works, and I think as long as I'm aware of the possible pitfalls of 1st-person narration - and, even better, avoiding them - it may still be the right choice for this story.

So I'm going to press on with the 1st-person narration, finish the revision, and then go back and reread it carefully and critically. Hell, if I really feel the need, I can always go back and revise the entire book with 3rd-person instead (and won't that be a treat). It could be a useful exercise, and really, it's not like I'm on a particular deadline. I just hoped to get the novel in query-worthy shape sooner rather than later.

But ultimately, the important thing is that the story's told right, and told as well as possible. So if it takes an extra draft, I'm sure the extra work would only improve it. (Sigh. Do I sound constructive? I feel... tired. But I'm trying to convince myself to think positive anyway.) I was already planning to put it through at least two more rounds of revision, so an extra, massively long exercise in POV might not be too much of a detour. We shall see.

In the meantime, once more unto the breach, dear friends. Time to tackle the second half. If you have any thoughts on the pros & cons of 1st or 3rd person, I'd love to hear them!

Revision's still, deep waters

In the last two days, I've revised eleven chapters of the novel I wrote during last year's NaNoWriMo. Technically speaking, that puts me more than 20 percent of the way through Round 2, which is a lot better than, say, zero percent of the way, or even ten percent. It's important to celebrate these milestones.

I'm starting to get a little nervous, though, because I know the real work is up ahead. It sort of feels like digging around in the yard and not quite knowing where the water line is, just that it's there. One of these days soon, I'm going to reach a certain point in the story and all this force is going to be unleashed.

So far, the revisions mostly involve making all the verb tenses consistent, tightening up sloppy or redundant writing, and smacking the occasional passive voice into action. A lot of it has centered around changing the chapters I wrote from a third-person POV into first-person. (I'm sort of glad I have no idea whether I wrote more chapters in first or third person in Round 1.)

But I worry that I'm taking refuge in technicalities. When I revise my poetry, I tend to get in there with both hands and tear it apart, move words and lines around, pull lines out and write 10-line exercises based on them to get at what I really meant, reassemble the lines and stanzas in different orders - in short, I rip my heart out, play hacky-sack with it for a while, and then put it back in place better-than-new.

Since I've spent a lot more of my life on writing and revising poetry than I have on fiction, I feel a lot safer during the poetry process than I do right now. Don't get me wrong; I go through plenty dark nights of the soul when I'm revising my poems, but y'know, they're just so much shorter than a novel. There's that stage of revision, right before it all comes together, when the entire thing turns into a royal, absolute mess. Then, like pulling the right thread in a cats-cradle, somehow it all magically ties together in a neat, ordered, beautiful way.

When we're talking about a 62,000-word rough draft, though, that absolute mess starts sounding a whole lot messier. In my imagination, it takes on downright scary, Titanic proportions. I know there are plot holes lurking like icebergs, just waiting for me to run into them. I also know I'm going to have to add some word count at some point, for this to be the length of a proper novel, and so far all I'm doing is tightening up the words.

Of course, one of the keys to good writing is for every word to matter, so I don't stress as much about adding to the story. If it's there, it'll come out; if not, it'll just be a short book. Better to be short than to have a lot of useless blather. My hope is that filling in those gaping plot holes will add to the length, too.

I keep telling myself I can make this entire first round of revision about the technicalities, if I want to, and then go through and read it more for the storyline. I can just keep segmenting down the necessary aspects of revision until they're in more manageable pieces - poem-sized, if you will.

But I've never labored for too long under the delusion that I really have control over my writing. Isn't that why we write? The words demand we write them, and we serve as their channel as best we can. Here's hoping I lose some of this control soon, and the story takes over.

of miscellaneous mind

I've got an amalgam of thoughts jostling each other for space right now.

First, as I delve further into the writing Twitterverse, I keep coming across articles on common topics. One is what-you-should-be-Tweeting or how-to-be-a-successful-Twitter-writer or whatever. Here's my opinion:

Just be yourself.

It's a lot like writing; it's important to speak with your authentic voice. There seems to be a lot of advice to advance your personal brand and be professional and useful and whatever else people want you to be. Apparently people don't want to know what I'm making for dinner or that I'm entertained by my cat snoring. Those people would be well advised not to follow me.

Granted, I do think you should learn from the things that annoy you in others, and not do them yourself. Learn from the things you admire in others, and adapt them to your own strengths.
 I like to know both the professional and personal side of people I follow on Twitter; it's much like enjoying a well-developed character in a book. If you're only showing your professional side, you come across as pretty flat. Be a real person. There's only one of you. Tell me who you are.

Granted, I think a key to this is to try and have a sense of humor about it. Whether on Twitter or in real life, genuinely self-absorbed people are just boring. But random glimpses of others' quirks remind me of the notes struck by a really good poem, when I'm grateful to realize just how universal my individual perspective really is.

So, that's my little rant about "how to act on Twitter". In other news, while the rest of the writing world is launching into NaNoWriMo with all the frenzy that writing a novel in a month deserves, I'm throwing myself into NaNoEdMo rather like a dive into an icy pond. In other words, I'm editing the novel I wrote during last year's NaNo. I attempted the same project in May, and got through five chapters in two weeks. This morning, I got through those five chapters again, and yes, through chapter 6 as well. (Hooray! Progress!) Here's hoping that being unemployed will keep me swimming through the murky waters of revision.

Since I'm working on this project, a lot of the links posted by my tweeps are serving as helpful reminders on the craft of writing. I hope they help you too. The agent/publishing/marketing-related links will come later.

My sincere thanks for links and/or writing the actual articles: @inkyelbows, @megancrewe, @motjustes, @ElizabethSCraig, @Quotes4Writers, @AdviceToWriters, @benwhiting, @mystorywriter, @david_hewson, @WritersDigest, @brianklems, @jessicastrawser, @MFAConfidential, Jon Morrow and Stephanie Perkins.

Tips from a master of writing. From @MFAConfidential: Flannery O'Connor's take on the tenets of craft. http://ow.ly/15YolZ

From psych major and YA author @megancrewe: What makes a good story? http://j.mp/3gOhzY

From Elizabeth S. Craig's excellent blog: Different characters have different perceptions. http://short.to/v7hu

From crime writer Andrew Taylor: Getting the Plot Right. http://bit.ly/10vwGX

From Jon Morrow: No one but you is an authority on your writing. http://bit.ly/r3nK3

To become a better writer: Intense, focused practice. http://bit.ly/1NpapO

He's absolutely right about the Facebook/Twitter trap. From @david_hewson: Keeping your writing alive - even when you're not writing. http://ow.ly/x71i

From @brianklems: 4 Tips for Choosing the Right Word. http://ow.ly/xmw7

I'm not quite sure how I ended up on the following blog, but I enjoy the irony of her digressions as she talks about how important it is to stay focused on your plot. Irony aside, good tips on self-editing: 
  http://naturalartificial.blogspot.com/2009/10/scarf-weather-answers-part-eleven.html

learning.

This whole large-amounts-of-free-time thing is a new and strange experience for me. The good news is that I'm learning a hell of a lot.

One thing I'm learning is that posting writing links gleaned on Twitter "once or twice a week", as I so naively posted yesterday, would either be totally insufficient or completely overwhelming. There are just too many good articles out there. I must've read at least 35 or 40 yesterday, and since waking less than two hours ago, I've read 5 or 10 more. Um... wow.

I feel a bit silly for not cluing in to this wealth of information before. I take some comfort in the fact that I was working more than 40 hours a week, and any time I made for writing took the form of cocooning myself in my own creative efforts. But what a remarkable new world to enter; it's almost like a DIY grad degree.

Still, however inspiring and useful the articles are, a too-long list of links could turn into a death-by-chocolate scenario, in which one's attempting to finish an ecstatically yummy cake, but can't quite manage the last couple bites for fear of brain explosion.

Really, it's a lot to keep up with, and a lot to take in. Frankly, my brain's kinda tired. So I'm going to tell the perfectionist side of me to feck off, keep up with the articles as best I can, and post a round-up on here when I have 10-15 links or so. Which, dear reader, would be now, among other times.

A few current trends are apparent: NaNoWriMo fever, for one; for another, massive changes are afoot in the publishing world, but the traditional process is by no means obsolete (yet); and an interesting number of articles calling writer's block is a sissy's excuse neglecting your craft. I didn't post any of that last category here, but I'll bet you dollars to donuts that a quick google search on it will give you plenty of reading.

A couple other things are also obvious: if you're a writer on Twitter, and you're not following @inkyelbows, @motjustes, and @thecreativepenn, you're seriously missing out. These folks have led me to at least 85 percent of the articles I'm posting here, and they are invaluable resources. Rock on, y'all, and thanks.

Other literary tweeps providing links or writing these excellent articles: @bhurley, @FictionMatters, @Nathan Bransford, @BookEndsJessica, @joannayoung, @Kid_Lit, @JonMorrow, @FictionCity, @ftoolan, @fastcompany, @jessicastrawser and @WritersDigest. My heartfelt thanks.

If I've left anyone out, I apologize - let me know in the comments and I'll update with appropriate credit.

On writers and the craft of writing:

@bhurley: The craft vs. the art of writing http://bit.ly/Geck2

Why good writers make bad conversationalists http://short.to/v4u5

@NathanBransford: Mainstream literary fiction is increasingly found at the intersection of quality and accessibility. http://bit.ly/4uzPbW

@BookendsJessica: Present vs past tense: which is best? http://bit.ly/1SSaRP

I really liked this article. Character and landscape http://bit.ly/1iaKwY

Another great article. @joannayoung: Confident writing tips (stop apologizing!) http://bit.ly/2r8VgO

"Good writing is rewriting." The Secret of Pixar Storytelling http://bit.ly/30PjLJ

Great roundtable discussion. Starting a new novel: http://short.to/v4uz

10 top social networks for artists & writers http://tinyurl.com/yzl5ree

On publishing:

@Kid_Lit: If you’re getting intimidated by a query letter, you’re probably overthinking it. http://j.mp/cU50V

20 Tips for Query Letters http://bit.ly/1IY0T5

@FictionCity: Finding Consistency in Query Letter Advice http://bit.ly/1bMSQ1

Mind-boggling. @ftoolan: The Day Publishing All Changed http://short.to/uwyd

@fastcompany: Forget Everything You've Heard About Book Publishing http://is.gd/4zXUt

tweedle-dee

I'm a big fan of Twitter. I know some people aren't into it; to each their own, and all that. But if you're a writer, I cannot recommend Twitter strongly enough. It's an excellent forum for connecting with other writers & bibliophiles, getting leads on potential agents, and above all, finding an almost ridiculous amount of useful articles & essays on all aspects of craft, publishing, self-marketing, etc.

So, being newly unemployed and having ample time on my hands to pursue and peruse said articles & essays, I've decided to these are just too good to not share with the rest of the non-tweeting world. Once or twice a week, I'm going to post a round-up of links to awesome writing articles or resources I've found on Twitter.

And so it begins. If you're on Twitter, check out my feed @annthewriter. Many thanks for the links (or writing the pieces themselves) to @ElizabethSCraig, @inkyelbows, @motjustes, @ColleenLindsay, @VictoriaMixon, @AlexanderChee, @justinemusk, @thecreativepenn, @rileymagnus and @ByLeavesWeLive.

On writers & the craft of writing:

LOVED this: @alexanderchee on Annie Dillard's writing class: http://bit.ly/24rvRa

Nice interview with Seamus Heaney by Alan Taylor in the Herald: http://ow.ly/wNjb

"Reading is the inhale. Writing is the exhale." @justinemusk's reader's manifesto http://bit.ly/qORT4

Booker winner Hilary Mantel on historical fiction http://j.mp/2QapdS

10 ways to write every day: http://short.to/uqnx

On publishing & marketing your work:

Making sure your cover letters don't have sleazy pick-up lines in them: http://tinyurl.com/yzblrmk

Booklife: Strategies & Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer - A different kind of guide http://bit.ly/28IC9c

Market Research for Authors http://short.to/uw23

(Incidentally, Twitter's a great resource for any craft or hobby you pursue - my feeds are largely comprised of those similarly obsessed with writing, reading, and/or craft beer. If you're into good beer, there are a hell of a lot of good breweries & cool homebrewers just tweeting away out there...)