Sunday Links: July 1st, 2012 Edition

The link that's nearest and dearest to me this week is for "Write Every Day: Hints & Tips Towards a Daily Writing Routine." This is the non-fiction project I had been working on periodically during the first half of this year. I'm very pleased at the initial response it's received, with two five-star reviews on Amazon and multiple other nice sets of comments about it from readers. It also showed up on three different Amazon Top 100 best-seller lists around the time of its launch. It's since fallen off those, but it was pleasing to see it make a (small) splash like that.

A close second is "Unidentified Funny Objects" -- the pro-paying speculative fiction humor anthology I'm assisting with. Submissions are officially open to the public now, so if you've been waiting to submit, now is the time.

As I mentioned last week, I'm no longer including #storyeachnight and #poemeachnight information in this weekly links rounding. My tweets about these daily reading projects should still be available to review on Twitter for those who are curious.

So, for now, let's head to the links:

"Power Positions" (Fran Wilde) - Fran's post passes along some wisdom from Nancy Kress about the importance of endings, not just for a story itself but at every step along the way.

"Fight Through the Fear" (Beth Cato at Catch a Star as It Falls) - This is a good post about the ways that writers can talk themselves out of trying something which they fear. Beth relates a very good experience she had writing a story which was initially outside her comfort zone.

"Really, Your Outline Does Not Have to Be Perfect" (Mary Robinette Kowal) - Mary's post talks about different types and levels of outlining. One of the topics she touches on is that an outline which is to be used as a selling tool may need to be constructed differently than an outline which you are using for your own purposes in writing.

"Checklist for Dialogue" (Nicole Zoltack) - I love good dialogue; it's often one of my favorite parts of a story. Nicole has a quick to-the-point list of things to consider when writing and revising your own dialogue.

"Overcome Writers' Block: Setting Goals, Writing to Win" (Beth Barany) - A chapter from Beth's book on beating writer's block, I especially liked the section where she talked about drilling down from a very long-term goal down to your goal for tomorrow.

"3 Tips for Writing Heavy Emotional Scenes" (Jami Gold) - Jami goes through several ways that you can craft key emotional scenes for your fiction in a way that readers will respond to.

"Perfection" (Kristine Kathryn Rusch) - A very insightful blog post about striving for perfection and why there is no such thing. Aim to do your best, that's all anyone can do, but realize that not everyone will react to your story the same way.

After how busy last week was on my blog, this most recent week was quite calm in comparison.

"Write Every Day is Live on Amazon.com" - Monday's post had a small excerpt from Chapter 1 of Write Every Day and provided links to the book and the supplemental blog site for Write Every Day.

"June Goal Wrap-Up and July Goal Setting" - On Thursday, with June turning to July, I reviewed my goals for the month which was ending and set my goals for the first month of the second half of the year.