Blog choices

Dr John Yeoman's blog at Writers' Village is always good value when it comes to initiating literary controversy.

The article that caught my eye this week was "Were Dan Brown's Novels Written by a Computer Program?"

Interesting take on what may be the way forward or too far-fetched to be true? What do you think?

The rate I'm writing, it may be the only way I ever get anything published at all.  :-)

Audacity

On holiday this week but I have  edits and course preparation to tie up before enjoying myself. The idea is to learn a few new skills along the way and so back to the drawing board.

This is bubbl.us, a free brainstorming tool which lets you export your design as a jpg to your computer. Here's my mini effort for the new learning I'm undertaking.

  I'll need to bold the print but at the minute this suits me as only the first level child bubbles are clear and that's as far as I've thought.

My first project will be recording with Audacity and for that I'm following the challenge and links on the edublogs teacher challenges. Sadly some of the links--notably the readings from YA novels--no longer work, I would guess because of copyright issues.

So join me this month in creating a podcast--of your blog posts for listeners, of your book excerpts  for readers, of your daily writing diary to communicate with your friends and blog subscribers.

Kindle

Wish I could write a book in three days, six days, ten days or whatever the marketers would have me believe. 

Sadly one idea leads to another, the book increases in content. I find myself absorbed by the issues of further research, cover design, formatting, marketing...
But I do have a folder on my desktop proudly labelled mybook :-)

Some day, one day. And it better be soon. 

 MuseOnlineWritersConference 2012 begins on October 8. Cut off date for registrations is September 25. Sign up--so many pitch sessions and learning opportunities not to be missed. I'm off right now to hunt down last year's username and password to be sure of registering in time.

Resources for Steady Writers

Resources to Motivate

Websites and Blogs

 Whenever life overtakes us or inspiration dries up, it is always handy to access little treats and outside motivation. Choose a cyber writing circle or a real life one in your region. But don't throw all your eggs into the basket or you may find they smash. Go cautiously to get the feel of the group. Are there writers working in your genre? 

No use choosing a highbrow literary circle whose authors have neither patience nor understanding to encourage a wannabe romance author. No use joining a website where sci-fi buffs spend their time discussing light years and g-forces when you want to know about police procedure in Alaska.


Some webcircles, like some writers' groups chat too much, others are hypercritical. Some websites over-promote their webwares without giving much helful advice in return. Shop around for one to motivate you. Let me know about your favourites and we'll list them here to help others.

e-freebies 

My  favourite Friday blog is C J Lyons' Marketing with Heart. She's wonderfully generous with her advice and help (look up the Mentoring Mondays) and the Friday freestuff always flags up something to make you smile and think. A great writer and a great lady.

Another author very generous with time, help and advice is Candy Havens. She is running a high powered writing workshop starting this weekend but also has incredible useful and thorough free writing workshops hosted by herself and guest authors throughout the year.


I'm a fan of Savvy Authors who have groups to cater for all genres and all writers from newbies to best sellers. Without their bootcamps, I'd probably get nothing at all written during the year. Even although I only managed half of this May's bootcamp, I still have 12,000 more words and some great ideas for novel two in my proposed series.


You get the chance here to pitch to publishers and more advice than you will ever be able to absorb. Good stuff.


And of course, there's everything that comes out of the Muse Online Writers' Conference. Remember to register in time for the 2011 free online conference. Invaluable for meeting like-minded writers, editors and publishers and attending workshops and live chats. 


Books and e-books

 This week  I downloaded Marg McAlister's Self Editing for Writers mini course while signing up on her new Writing4Success tipsheet link. The tipsheets are a source of intelligent recommendations on technical aspects of fiction writing and you can access them in her archives too.


 On the Evan Marshall site Write a Novel Fast    I found ten tips for writing  and publishing a romance novel and also under the Writing Resouces tab a free writing fiction ebook (My thanks to Cheryl Wright of Writer2Writer for the heads up on that one.)                                                      

 Writer2Writer   is a compendium of resources which finishes consistently in the Top Ten of Preditor and Editor's polls.



 Over To You

 So many websites, so little time. I have barely touched on the sites which have been so useful for me in the past. As the web grows exponentially year by year, catching up with everything useful becomes impossible. It's been a long time since the era when a Renaissance man could perhaps know everything.


I'd love to hear from you with your favourite and most useful writing resources and sites.


PS  How did I manage to forget Scrivener? How did I ever live without it LOL