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

MASH-UP

A creative combination

or mixing of content

from different sources.

Saturday was the premier of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pen, five women authors traveling together on the long and winding road to overnight success, starring Linda Apple, Ruth Burkett Weeks, Pamela Foster, Patty Stith (aka Claire Croxton) and me, Jan Morrill.


Come by and visit our new blog at:

www.sisterhoodofthetravelingpen.wordpress.com.

Ruth, Pamela, Jan, Patty and Linda

We had a blast, sharing stories of our writerly journey complete with skipping and tripping through twists and turns on the way to the faraway land called Publication. The world has changed for writers, and I think we demonstrated it in an entertaining way. Much of the change we discussed involves the importance of a platform--even for fiction writers. And social media plays a huge role in building that platform.

Until you, too, can experience the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pen, I hope the links I share this week will help you maneuver your way through the challenges of this strange, new world.

Insatiable Booksluts has a great series called "Know Your Publisher," have provided information and links to a variety of small publishers, such as Red Lemonade and Coffee House Press.

http://insatiablebooksluts.wordpress.com/category/series-2/know-your-publisher-series/

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Once again, Kristen Lamb posts a relevant blog to help writers maneuver their way through the foggy, gloppy world of social media. In her post, "The Modern Author - A New Breed of Writer for the Digital Age of Publishing," she states "We need to be stronger, faster and smarter. We must be better trained than any writer in human history."

Don't forget, Kristen is our guest speaker at the Ozarks Writers League meeting on August 18!

http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/the-modern-author-a-new-breed-of-writer-for-the-digital-age-of-publishing/

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This week, through Twitter, I found a new blog, SEOmoz. Though it is an SEO (search engine optimization) software developer, they posted a helpful article titled "21 Tactics to increase Your Blog Traffic." Admittedly though some of these tactics are complicated and will require more study, (such as #5 and #7), most of the tactics are easy to implement.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/21-tactics-to-increase-blog-traffic-2012

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

The real voyage of discovery
consists not in seeking new landscapes
but in having new eyes.

                                --- Marcel Proust

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

MASH-UP

A creative combination

or mixing of content

from different sources.

Now that many of you have finished your Nanowrimo novels, (or for any other novel that needs some rework,) this is an excellent article on how to work through what Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird, calls the "shitty first draft." I like to think of first drafts as the seeds to a flower, eggs to a chicken, a trickling stream to the Grand Canyon. Oh, forget it. You get the picture. Three Ways to Work Through a Difficult First Draft was written by guest blogger, Christi Craig, on Suzannah Windsor Freeman's Write It Sideways.

http://writeitsideways.com/3-ways-to-work-through-a-difficult-first-draft/

Kristen Lamb's blog post, Is Your Novel a Spineless Weakling, was another good follow-up for Nanowrimo, and one of the best articles I've read on the necessity of an antagonist in your novel. In Broken Dolls, there are two antagonists -- Society, and Mama. Who is your antagonist? (Big newsleak: Watch for news of a guest appearance by Kristen Lamb at a future Ozarks Writers League meeting!)

http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/is-your-novel-a-spineless-weakling/

And, if you are having a tough time even coming up with a "shitty first draft," here are a couple of links with writing prompts:

http://www.writersdigest.com/prompts

http://creativewritingprompts.com/

http://www.creative-writing-now.com/fiction-writing-prompts.html

I'll close this week's mashup with a quote by Elmore Leonard, who defined the difficulty of editing in a deceptively simple way:

"I try to leave out the parts that people skip."

Morrill's Monday Morning Mashup - 11/21/11

Welcome to my Monday morning mashup, where I post links to information I found interesting or useful in the previous week. Below, I've listed a few appetizers to whet your writerly appetite for the coming Thanksgiving week:

KRISTEN LAMB'S BLOG

Kristen Lamb posts some of the most useful advice and information I've seen yet on social media. I recently purchased her book, We Are Not Alone - The Writer's Guide to Social Media. I am still in the process of reading it. (watch for a review!) but so far, it's full of practical, easy-to-follow information about how to establish an online presence.

The link below is on PLATFORM. According to Kristen, it's not just for non-fiction writers anymore.

http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/why-writers-need-a-platform/

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WRITEITSIDEWAYS.COM

This is a blog by author and teacher, Suzannah Windsor Freeman. I subscribe and I look forward to its emails that are always full of helpful information for writers. Here's a mashup within a mashup -- a list of 23 websites that will make your writing stronger:

http://writeitsideways.com/23-websites-that-make-your-writing-stronger/

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MYSTERY WRITING IS MURDER

This award-winning blog by Elizabeth Spann Craig regularly posts information that is useful to all writers - not only those who write in the mystery genre. I especially liked this post about what NOT to listen to in a critique. The guest blogger, Anne R. Allen, states:

"A critiquer should tell you what's right with a work as well as what's wrong."

This is something we as critiquers too often don't remember. Here's the link to the post:

http://mysterywritingismurder.blogspot.com/2011/11/9-pieces-of-bad-writing-advice-its-best.html

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Happy Thanksgiving! Unfortunately, browsing the Internet for interesting tidbits probably won't burn any calories, but I'll see you next week anyway, with a new mashup!