Link Salad

The Smart

At SFNovelists S.C. Butler, author and all around good guy, talks about writing the next book as the best possible use of an author's time.

Also at SFNovelists Kate Elliot talking about field of vision, and breaking into the publishing biz. I think that she's right that this is important, especially for newbies, though I have to admit that I don't do it nearly as much as used to our ought.

I recently discovered that Lilith Saintcrow is a terribly smart writer, especially on the subject of writing, so I've been slowly digging through her blog and will be posting smart bits as I find them. Here's the latest batch:

Hidden hinges or plot pivots.

Writing in the scary places—I'm not going to be very good at describing this one because it's simply not how I approach writing and I flat don't agree that it's true for every writer, but it's certainly true for some. She's talking about emotionally grounding the story in the things that really matter to the writer (which I do agree with) in a way which is often painful for the writer (which is where we part company). I'm firmly of the opinion that you don't have to bleed to write good stuff. Which is not to say that I never do, just that I don't think it's necessarily and always a good idea.

On writer priorities. A fabulous post on making a writing a priority and how that balances with the rest of your life. It was inspired by this fabulous post by Keri Arthur on achieving the dream.

The Important

Jim McDonald at Making Light talks about "Robert M. Fletcher, Literary Scammer" parts I and II. Part II is the more interesting read and is not dependent on having read part I.

Another exciting episode of read the guidelines and check your agency info to make sure that...oh, the agency hasn't moved. This one from Kristin Nelson.

The Cool

My google alerts twigged me to this one. A site that does literature maps showing who an author is close to in reader space. This one is for me and I haven't played around with the system at all, but I imagine it can be made to work for any writer you're interested in mapping.