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5 Great Websites/Blog Posts

February 5th 2010 12:22
I've decided that every Friday I'm going to blog a list of great blog posts, websites, and/or markets. This is part of an attempt to try to regulate my writing and my blogging.

Today's list consists of three interesting blog posts and two interesting websites, in no particular order as usual.

~Archetype Writing randomly generates strange characteristics and phobias. These look like some fun things to work with and would be great to add to round out any cardboard characters.

~Truth In My Fiction is a guest post written by Megan Crewe, author of Give up the Ghost. It talks about how her life influenced her writing of this book. I interviewed Megan Crewe around the time her book came out, and you can read the interview here.

~Writer's Block Archive is a livejournal community. Each day they post a new question. You're supposed to answer these as your character-you might learn something new. You can also read through the answers of people who have answered before you.

~What I Saw at Revolution is an interesting post talking about changes in the publishing industry. It also addresses the recent removal of MacMillan books from the Amazon stores.

~A Rose By Any Other Name is a post on Magical Words that talks about naming your characters, and thinking about what a certain name means to you or to other people that you know.

I hope you enjoy these posts. I'll return to posting come Monday.
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Difficulty Focusing

February 5th 2010 02:30
For the last couple of months, I've had issues focusing on my writing for any consistent period of time. There's been a lot of stuff going on in my social life and I had a lot of catching up to do for end of semester.

I haven't been as committed to this blog or to my other writing as I should have. I've let other things that aren't, in the long run, as important influence what I do with my time. In the last two months I haven't gotten much of anything done. There will be a later post to explain some of it, but it really boils down to me worrying too much about certain friends of mine, and trying to spend as much time as I could on something before I lost it.

Most of us have difficulty focusing from time to time. I'm going to try to keep myself on track by scheduling a few hours of writing time a week-you can find this schedule along with my sort-of blogging schedule at my Google Calendar. I'm not sure how much this schedule will really help me, but I'm going to try my best to stick to it.

My goal is to write at least 10, 000 words every week. Wish me luck.

What do you do to keep yourself on track? What's your biggest challenge?
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Making A Workshop List

February 3rd 2010 12:06
As some of you already know, this year I want to do a workshop that lasts at least one week on my blog. These are meant to be intense, short workshops. In January I did a workshop on Organizing Your Novel, and this month I'll be doing a workshop on characterization. These workshops are designed to help writers with a first draft figure out what they want their story to look like in the next draft, and to help them figure their characters out as well.

I've come up with a theoretical list of workshops for the next year. I'm hoping for some input on what you think would be most useful. Take a look at my list and let me know what you think. Suggestions are welcome.

January-Organizing your novel
February-Characterization
March-Editing
April-Developing a Religion
May-Dear Diary Workshop
June-Developing Mythology
July-Developing a History
August-Increasing Your Productivity (Scheduling workshop w/prompts)
September-Short Story workshop (writing a short story)
October-Character and Plot Building month long workshop
November-Nanowrimo related workshop
December-Short Story Editing

What do you think of this list? Which workshops are you most interested in? What do you think could be better replaced by something else?
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I've decided that I'm going to cut back my goal blogging frequency to 5 posts a week, Monday-Friday. This is in an attempt to reduce the pain in my wrist so that I can work on other things more.

I love writing. I love this blog. I love a lot of the things that I've written here, a lot of the things that I've said. I love reaching out to other writers. But in the end, the writing I love the most is my fiction writing, and if I have to cut back on my blogging to be able to do so comfortably, so be it


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Ouch!

January 29th 2010 17:29
As most of you know, I've got really bad carpal tunnel. Sometime over the winter break, I lost my wrist brace. Because of that and doing a lot of work very quickly for school, I'm in quite a lot of pain.

I'm going to be taking a long weekend away from the blog in the hopes that my wrist will feel better by Monday, if only a little bit


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Publication: I Dream Of Freedom

January 28th 2010 12:57
Yesterday my poem, I Dream of Freedom, was published at Uhuru. You can find the poem here (clicky).

Uhuru's mission is to raise awareness, and to raise money to help free children who are enslaved around the world. The writers don't get paid, but it gets your work out there and it's going to a good cause


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A Reading List

January 27th 2010 12:28
I've decided that as well as making writing goals for this year, I'm going to create a list of books that I want to read this year. Of course the list is subject to change at any moment, depending on how quickly I'm reading. It also depends on things like money and what I can find in the library. Some of these books are fiction, some of them are non-fiction, and a couple of them are books about writing.

Here goes


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The Love Of Books

January 26th 2010 12:15
For the last few months, my teachers (wonderful people that they are) have been feeding me good books. Ishmael Beah was a recommendation from my English teacher for an assignment involving reading a biography or autobiography. I loved it-a terrible story, one that I wish wasn't true, but well told and showing an underside much darker than the one here in my own city.

Right now I'm reading a book called A Scientific Romance that was recommended by my geography teacher and given to me by my English teacher. (Crazy stuff.) You'll get a full book review probably at the end of this week or the beginning of the next. Suffice to say that it's one of the most interesting books I've ever read


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Link Love: Blog Posts and Websites

January 25th 2010 13:11
I've been doing a lot of writing related web wandering lately, and I've stumbled across some great reading material. So here goes...

Blog Posts
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Day Six: Outline your next draft

January 24th 2010 12:26
Today you're going to make an outline not of your novel as it is but of your novel as you feel it should be. This means making up a list of scenes, in order from storyline first to last. Include the scenes/chapters that you want to add, and the ones that you want to delete. Cross out the ones that you want to delete so that you know that they exist and need to be removed. Put stars beside the ones you know need the most work.

Once you've made your outline answer the following questions


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