Friday, June 18, 2010

What I Learned This Week

I love blogging because it helps me feel connected to the writing community. Even better is all the stuff I learn from reading blogs. A few things I learned this week:

1) Some mistakes that get in the way of establishing a strong POV in your writing (Kathryn Craft over at the Blood-Red Pencil )

2) Tips for writing a synopsis of your story in a query letter (thanks to Meganrebekah’s blog)

3)  Different approaches agents have and how they might affect your writing career (another great post by Rachelle Gardner)

4)  A recipe for a good coconut cookie (from CakeSpy)

I also read a great article about critique groups and how they benefit writers, though it’s not new to me, because I have an awesome critique group that does all these things (guest post by Maurissa Guibord over at Adventures in Children’s Publishing).

6 comments:

  1. I love blogging for the same reason. Connection :) Can one ever have enough friends? :)

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  2. I checked out all the links (well, except for the cookie one - I'm not a fan of coconut). They were all really interesting. Thanks for passing them along! Now, if you excuse me, I gotta go see if story is being told through a filter. :-)

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  3. Thank you for the interesting links! I love getting new blog reading!

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  4. I'm glad to share. Lately, I really am finding that my learning about writing comes mostly from reading blogs. There's some great stuff out there.

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  5. Hi Andrea--congrats on getting to Chapter 18. That is excellent. Really enjoyed all your posts, and I'll definitely have to check out all the other blogs you suggested (and I agree with you on Meghan--I find her incredibly useful). And by the way, re: the onstage v. offstage things, one thing I used to grapple with is the desire to show everything, but as much as I want everything to be onstage, I've decided that maybe leaving some things offstage add to the mystery of the story, and as suggested, increases some narrative efficiency. Great posts, glad I discovered your blog.

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  6. Thanks for stopping by, Samuel! You're right about leaving some things off stage adding mystery to the novel - it's just a matter of finding out what works best off vs. on stage - but maybe that will be clear once I get the entire novel written and move on to revisions.

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