Sunday Links: August 19, 2012 Edition

It's almost back-to-school time here in Ohio. Our kids have one more week of break but my wife starts up her classes this coming week. A busy time and a reminder that I've been writing seriously for over a year now. In fact, in less than two weeks I'll hit the one year mark of writing every day. I've got something special planned to mark that occasion, so watch for an announcement in the next couple of weeks along those lines.

Also, around the end of August and beginning of September I'm going to take a short blogging hiatus for a week to ten days. I haven't worked out the timing exactly, but I'll publish dates for the hiatus both here and on my Write Every Day blog. I'll still be writing, but I'll be spending that time focused on my fiction. I also expect that I'll be doing a fair amount of work relating to the Unidentified Funny Objects anthology at that point in time since it will be the end of our submission period which presumably will mean a flood of submissions and also the need to have final discussions within the editorial team on which of the stories that have been held over for possible inclusion will make the cut.

Look for official hiatus dates to show up in my Sunday post a week from today.

Below are the links I've found relating to writing which I want to share with my readers. If you have come across any interesting links recently, I'd certainly be interested in knowing about those as well!

"How to Write a Novel When You Don't Have the Time" (Alison Wells) - Alison presents a solid list of ways to help yourself find time in your schedule for writing. She covers both small-scale (within a day) and large-scale (spanning weeks or months) techniques here.

"Ordinary Characters Can Be Extraordinary" (C. S. Lakin at Live, Write, Thrive) - An examination of the way characters can be developed and how everyday people can be intriguing characters.

"Mixing Genres? In-Depth Worldbuilding? How to Manage Reader Expectations" (Jami Gold guest posting on Melinda S. Collins' "Muse, Rant, Rave" blog) - Jami explores the way that genre labels and worldbuilding shape readers' expectations of what is to come. Since an easy way to have dissatisfied readers is to give them something other than what they are expecting, this is a useful topic for writers to consider.

"Three Things Writers Tell Ourselves. Only One of Them is True" (Valerie Parv) - Valerie talks about some of the things that writers try to make themselves believe and how believing the wrong thing can hurt your progress.

Along with those links, here are the items I posted on my blog this week.

"August Mid-Month Goal Check" - Monday, I looked at where I stand relative to my writing goals for the month. Answer: only fair. I've got a lot of work to do in the next two weeks if I'm going to make a decent showing.

"Why I'm So Keen on Discipline" - Thursday, I talked about why sticking to routines (and, to me, announcing a specific hiatus period for something like blogging is indeed an aspect of having a routine) is so important to me.

Have a great week everyone!