Sunday Links: January 1, 2012 Edition

Well, another end-of-year holiday season has come and gone. And I've survived. Huzzah!

We had a gaggle of teenagers over here last night for New Year's Eve. They were all well-behaved, but typically energetic. It made for an interesting several hours. As always, it's a little funny watching them and thinking "Gosh, I was like that not that long ago." Well, sort of not that long ago...  :)

Before I get to this week's links, I wanted to point you all to my newest publication "Credit Where Credit Is Due." This is the story that was chosen as part of Kazka Press' December "Who the hell is Santa?" flash fiction prompt contest. I hope that you enjoy the story!

Without any further ado (or shilling), here are this week's links...

"7 Steps to Taming Your NaNoWriMo Manuscript" (Mercia Dragonslayer at Write It Sideways) - One of my January goals/tasks is going to be to get back to the novel I wrote a first draft of back in November. This is a good list of things to do to move forward with it.

"Four Ways to Kill Narrative Drive" (James Killick's Blog) - The quickest way to not sell a story (to an editor or to a reader) is to bore them, right? James talks about four things that you can do which will bore or frustrate someone reading your story. So don't do them. (I know, I make it sound so easy...)

"How To Drive Yourself Crazy As a Writer" (Jody Hedlund) - Again, this is the stuff you don't want to do! And these are all great tips, whether you're writing novels or short stories or whatever. Especially this time of year when we're all feeling excited about our new shiny goals. It shouldn't be a buzzkill to be reminded that we all need "time to grow" as writers when we're starting out. And it can help us keep from getting frustrated while we're still in that growth process.

"Favorite Writerly Advice" (Christine Fonseca) - I guess it's just list week here, since this is a "Top 10" type list. A bunch of good tips here that it's very easy to lose sight of when you're down in the weeds of your own writing.

Additionally, here's a recap of the posts from the last two weeks on my blog:

"The Life of a Story: Idea to Publication" - In response to some questions in comments on prior posts I put up a LONG post about how I go through the process of writing and submitting a short story. And even though I wrote 2000+ words on this topic, it would be easy to have added another few thousand words. It really is that big of a topic!.

"Blog Miscellancy - Contest, Award, & More" - A couple of Wednesdays ago I ran a quick contest for a free eBook of Emily Casey's new novel The Fairy Tale Trap. I also did some "blog award" type stuff and made a few other general bloggish notes.

"Dealing With Regrets" - The end of the year had me in a very introspective mood as this post and the next one show. Here I talked about my own feelings about having stayed away from writing for so long and what I do to try to best use those feelings.

"Play It Again" - Video game arcades, life, and how it all ties together. All about using your time and resources wisely.

Alright. Play time's over. Back to work everyone! Have a great start to 2012.