Here are the writing-related links which I've come across this week which I wanted to share:
"Good News/Bad News: the Writer is In" (Elaine Isaak guest-posting at Beth Cato's Catch a Star as it Falls) - I've talked some before about having a writer's mindset and how, when I am in that place, more ideas come to me than I can use. Elaine's guest post does a nice job discussing this and other ways that having "Writer Brain" can effect your thought processes.
"The Evolving Published Story" (Elizabeth Spann Craig at Mystery Writing is Murder) - An interesting discussion of what ebooks mean for the ability for published works to be revised. This is fantastic for correcting typos or other actual errors. A much more gray area is around changing the story itself in some way, anything from tweaking some wording to make it punchier to removing a subplot that drew criticism as being offensive. Personally, I think there's some loss to culture as a whole when a published story can be revised in such a way that the prior version no longer exists. There was always the potential in the past for multiple versions of a story to exist: Stephen King's "The Stand" and Robert A. Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" both had prominent extended "Author's Cut" releases approximately 20 years ago. But in those cases and other similar ones, the original story still existed and those who preferred that version could read it and fans and scholars could compare the two versions. Being able to make an earlier version simply disappear makes me feel a bit uneasy. I'd like to think that I'd never make that choice. (Again, with the exception of legitimate typos, incidental factual errors, etc.)
"The Evolving Published Story" (Elizabeth Spann Craig at Mystery Writing is Murder) - An interesting discussion of what ebooks mean for the ability for published works to be revised. This is fantastic for correcting typos or other actual errors. A much more gray area is around changing the story itself in some way, anything from tweaking some wording to make it punchier to removing a subplot that drew criticism as being offensive. Personally, I think there's some loss to culture as a whole when a published story can be revised in such a way that the prior version no longer exists. There was always the potential in the past for multiple versions of a story to exist: Stephen King's "The Stand" and Robert A. Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" both had prominent extended "Author's Cut" releases approximately 20 years ago. But in those cases and other similar ones, the original story still existed and those who preferred that version could read it and fans and scholars could compare the two versions. Being able to make an earlier version simply disappear makes me feel a bit uneasy. I'd like to think that I'd never make that choice. (Again, with the exception of legitimate typos, incidental factual errors, etc.)
Along with those links, here are my blog posts for this week. They were all about goals and story sales!
"2013 Goal #4: Read 500 Short Stories" - Monday saw the fourth in my series of "first draft" goals for 2013. I'll be releasing a final list of goals for next year later this month.
"2013 Goal #5: Attend Four Conventions (And a Non-Goal. No Word Count Goal for 2013)" - Thursday I posted what will likely be the last of these first draft goals along with some thoughts on why I do NOT plan to include a word-count goal in 2013.
I've had a productive start to December and am looking forward to keeping that momentum rolling through the holidays and into the new year. I hope that writing is going well for all of the rest of you as well!
"2013 Goal #4: Read 500 Short Stories" - Monday saw the fourth in my series of "first draft" goals for 2013. I'll be releasing a final list of goals for next year later this month.
"2013 Goal #5: Attend Four Conventions (And a Non-Goal. No Word Count Goal for 2013)" - Thursday I posted what will likely be the last of these first draft goals along with some thoughts on why I do NOT plan to include a word-count goal in 2013.
I've had a productive start to December and am looking forward to keeping that momentum rolling through the holidays and into the new year. I hope that writing is going well for all of the rest of you as well!
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