Morrill's Monday Morning Mashup - 3/19/12

MASH-UP

A creative combination

or mixing of content

from different sources.

Writers are often bombarded with information on what we should and shouldn't be doing in our writerly lives, especially with all of the turmoil in the publishing industry today. The posts I've listed this week reminded me that right and wrong is not black and white. It's a big, foggy gray area, and it varies for each individual.

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Jenna Blum writes "The Tortured Soul: Do You Need To Be One To Be A Writer?" in a post on Grub Street Daily. In this post, she muses about the caricature of the tortured soul, but the best part of the article is where she lists qualities you actually DO need to be a writer. http://grubdaily.org/?p=4944&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GrubStreetDaily+%28Grub+Street+Daily%29

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The post "How to Write Readable -- And Retweetable -- Tweets" by Dave Copeland on ReadWriteWeb.com includes some of the best advice I've seen on tweeting, including where to place your links within your tweet. Did you know it should not be placed at the end of your tweet? Read on! http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_write_readable_-_and_retweetable_-_tweets.php

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I love the New York Times article, "My Life's Sentences," by Jhumpa Lahiri. In this post, Lahiri discusses her love of sentences, both in reading and writing them, saying, "The urge to convert experience into a group of words that are in a grammatical relation to one another is the most basic, ongoing impulse of my life." And though we're often taught that only after we complete our "shitty first draft" (Anne Lamott) should we then go through and perfect our sentences, Ms. Lahiri admits compulsion to analyze and perfect each sentence as she goes along. "All the revision I do — and this process begins immediately, accompanying the gestation — occurs on a sentence level." I felt better reading this article, because I admit, it's my natural way to write, also. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/my-lifes-sentences/?emc=eta1

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

Your assumptions are

your windows on the world.

Scrub them off every

once in a while,

or the light won't come in.

                            

                                         ~ Alan Alda 

Morrill's Monday Morning Mashup - 12/19/11

MASH-UP

A creative combination

or mixing of content

from different sources.

I hope this week's mashup will take your mind off the fact that there are only five shopping days. Oh. Sorry for reminding you of that.

Grub Street Daily posted an excellent blog called "Reaching Readers via Social Media: Hot Tips for Authors." This post is contains a good mix of things to blog about, as well as resources to help you not be a social media wallflower.

http://grubdaily.org/?p=3141&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GrubStreetDaily+%28Grub+Street+Daily%29

Anne R. Allen's blog post, "How to Blog: Beginner's Guide for Authors" is also on social media. Though she gives a lot of good "how-to" advice, I thought the most eye-opening piece of information she gave came from Oak Tree Press acquisitions editor, Sunny Frazier:

“I don't read the query (sorry aspiring writers!) I look for two things:  genre and word count. I then Google the author. I'm looking for the number of times the writer's name appears on the Internet. I'm searching for a website or any attempt to build a platform.”

http://annerallen.blogspot.com/2011/12/how-to-blog-beginners-guide-for-authors.html

ProBlogger.net is a blog solely dedicated to helping you improve your blog. I especially liked "How to Run Two Blogs in the Midst of a Busy Life." Does that not apply to all of us? Once I started using Tip #1, "Keep a clean list of post ideas and update it frequently," I rarely run out of things to blog about.

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/03/15/how-to-run-two-blogs-in-the-midst-of-a-busy-life/

And finally, I'm adding a new feature to my weekly mashup. Often, simply reading a quote will inspire me to write. Each week, I'll post a quote that inspired me, or at least made me reflect.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

"Do not wait until all the conditions are perfect for you to begin.

Beginning makes the conditions perfect."

-- Alan Cohen