Sunday Links: October 28, 2012 Edition

A surprising warm spell passed through here earlier this week but is well and truly gone now. There are hints that snow might show its face in the upcoming few days. I think it's safe to say that we're now well in the grip of Autumn here in Ohio with Winter not too far behind.

Monday will be my last blog post for October, so it will include my wrap-up of results on my October goals as well as a look-ahead to November. Thursday will most likely bring the second of my 2013 goal planning posts.

Below are this week's writing-related links as well as links to my own blog posts from this week.

"8 Sure-Fire Ways to Improve Your Book" (Ruth Harris) - Ruth is both an editor and an author. She presents a list of eight things that I would mostly consider "tune-up" type tips for making your prose both easy and expressive to read. There are a couple of more broad-based tips, but the focus is definitely on these more detailed items.

"Surprising Emotions: How Will Your Characters React?" (David Farland guest-posting at The Bookshelf Muse) - David discusses the most-impactful times to bring characters' emotional states into our fiction. The general point is that presenting expected emotions can have minimal impact; presenting unexpected emotional reactions can both intrigue the reader and help define your characters.

"Altering the Quality of Time in Your Novel" (C. S. Lakin at Live Write Thrive) - This post talks not just about pacing but about ways to make your characters' experience of a moment or brief period in time seem more clear to the reader.

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

"2013 Goal #1: Reformulate My Blog Strategy" - Monday I introduced a new series of posts where I'm sort of "first-draft"ing my goals for 2013. The first of these draft goals is around coming up with a new blog strategy. I appear to have hit some real blog burnout and so I can try to utilize my overall writing hours more productively, I want to look at things I might do differently with my blog.

"How Do Writers Measure Success?" - Thursday's post dealt with the nature of success in the world of fiction writing. There are so many different ways that success could be defined; making sure that the definition you choose for yourself is appropriate both for your own personal goals and your stage in your writing career is essential.

Stay warm, everyone! And to those of you starting NaNoWriMo here in just a few days, best of luck with your journey into novel writing!