I happen to know there are more than a handful of writers who read this blog.
Which makes me so happy. It’s said that writing life is isolating, but I don’t find it so. One of the most satisfying things about being a writer is connecting with — and learning from — other writers.
So here’s a few writing related things I hope you’ll find useful and interesting.
Writing Groups Might be Terrible
Here’s an article written by my dear friend Anne Hawley. She’s a writer, an editor and (lucky for me) a member of my writing/editing group. She and I founded it together, in fact. And then she wrote an article about how we set up it so it would actually be amazingly helpful (and not terrible).
How to Write a Heroine’s Journey
This is a free course I’m taking and really enjoying. It’s put together by a lovely and fierce woman named Heather Jo Flores. It’s for writers who find the hero’s journey a bit, well, violent and patriarchy-reinforcing. Flores makes the point that whereas the hero’s journey is launched because a character wants to conquer something, a heroine’s journey begins with a desire to answer a question about a new way to live. (I’m thinking my next kids book needs to be a heroine’s journey — start ’em young!) Flores also offers a yearlong manuscript workshop for this type of story which I’m considering taking.
How to Grow Your Author Platform While Doing NaNoWriMo
I wrote this article one with my book marketer’s hat on. If you’re doing NaNoWriMo this year, it only makes sense to use the experience to grow your author platform simultaneously. (And no, it’s not smarmy to think this way as long as you use Tim Grahl’s definition of marketing: building long-lasting connections with readers.)
5 Writing Tips: Barbara Kingsolver
My ears tend to perk up when an experienced writer is willing to dish up advice. Publisher’s Weekly just put out this listicle from veteran novelist (and biologist, who knew?) Barbara Kingsolver. Never mind that her number 3 item totally conflicts with what I just said about not feeling lonely as a writer. But then again I’m not an introvert, so maybe I make it more sociable than it needs to be.
I LOVED this nugget in number 5:
“Readers come to books for many reasons, but ultimately they’re looking for wisdom. That’s something writers can offer only after we’ve accrued it, like scar tissue, usually by surviving things we didn’t want to deal with—a process otherwise known as aging.”
I probably love this because I was a bit of a late bloomer when it came to actually getting my writing done — even though I wanted to be a writer since second grade.