Sunday Links: July 15th, 2012 Edition

Is it really possible that the typical summer break from school here in Ohio (and, I believe, much of the rest of the United States) is essentially half-over now? We're at the mid-point of July, that's for certain! Typically, I review my goal status at mid-month; since Mondays are #writemotivation days in July, my goal check post will be up tomorrow.

I had an extremely productive writing day Saturday along with a first for me. With some of my stories beginning to come off their exclusivity periods with their first publishers, they are available for reprints. Yesterday, I made my first submissions to foreign-language markets. There are some markets which will accept English-language submissions for translation; they often pay only in copies, but for a reprint and for the chance to see my story printed in another language, I'm okay with that. Douglas Smith has a nice list of non-English markets for speculative short fiction and that is what I used for my market research.

Speaking of links, below are the writing-related links I've collected this week which I thought would be good to share with others. If you've found some interesting links this week, I hope you will share them in the comment section below!

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:

Four Things NaNoWriMo Has Taught Me (So Far)

Monday afternoon I passed the 25,000 word mark and then some on my NaNoWriMo project. So, I'm more than halfway to "winning" NaNoWriMo with 50,000 words for my work in progress. This is now by a fairly large margin the longest thing I've ever written. Before a couple of months ago, my longest ever work was a short story (more technically perhaps a novelette) of just under 10,000 words. I got about 18-20,000 words into a novel project in late-summer/early-fall before I stalled out on it for the time being.

Still, the longest completed work of mine remains that 10,000-ish word story. At this point, I'm estimating that the novel I'm working on, which I currently am calling "Adrift," will end up around 60,000 words. So by that measure I still have more than 50% of the work to go on the first draft. It's a daunting task, but I'm encouraged by the progress that I've made so far.

Thinking about the last two weeks' worth of writing, here are four things I've learned about my own creative process as a result of NaNoWriMo along with some comments on how other writers might look into the same aspects of their process.

1. I have a limit. For me, this is about 4,000 words in a writing session. Once I've gotten that much written, which probably means about 3-4 hours straight of composing (along with the occasional Twitter break and suchlike), I'm done. I feel tired, I feel unfocused, and I don't want to write another word. Even if I'm in the middle of a key scene, I have to take a break. I suspect that most writers have some similar limits, though I also know there are some who can write many more words in a session. The important lesson here for me is that trying something like "The 3 Day Novel" probably isn't even worth considering for me. I'd be miserable when I was done. The other key takeaway for me is that I can't let myself fall too far behind in NaNoWriMo this year or any other because I'd only be up to so much "catching up."
2. I work well when I have a plan. Yes, it's the famous "plotter" versus "pantser" discussion. I'm now firmly convinced that I'm a plotter. That doesn't mean that I don't end up going down paths I didn't originally expect in my writing. There have been several developments in my NaNo project that I either didn't expect or that presented themselves in an unplanned way (even if the development itself was planned). Granted, I've still got a lot further to go, but with my 2200 or so words of notes that I made in October (perfectly "legal" for NaNo) I feel much more confident about the path forward. The important thing for other writers here would be to be aware of what writing style works best for you. If you are sure you're a pantser, you probably aren't going to be happy plotting. If you're like me, and are sure you like plotting, don't go off willy-nilly into a long project and expect it to work out well.
3. Having a support group is important to me. In fairness, I had already sort of learned this before NaNoWriMo, but it's become even more obvious during these last two weeks. There are people on Twitter who I have done multiple word-sprints with throughout the month to-date. We've frequently sought each other out to see if we were available to urge each other on. I've had some very productive sessions during these word-sprints.
4. It's okay to not fill in all the blanks right away. I tend to write in a very linear fashion, starting at the beginning of the text and ending at the completion. Here, there have been several times it made sense for me to make a note about something I would want to research in more detail later and move on. These weren't things that had an impact on the plot where I would be likely to have a problem if my research led me to an unpleasant surprise, and it let me keep moving forward with the first draft. Would I advise doing this with a key plot point? No. But if it's a bit of period "texture" detail, I think it's just fine to make a note about what you want to research and move on.

Are you doing NaNoWriMo this year or have you done it in the past? What has it taught you?

Sunday Links: September 11, 2011 Edition

In addition to my usual Sunday link roundup this week, I'll be responding to some recent blog awards which have been presented to me.

Glitter Lady presented me with the Versatile Blogger award  which calls for listing 7 random facts about yourself and linking back to 15 (!) blogs.  I also received this award from Ms. Saba at Of Thoughts and Words.
Annalise Green presented me with a 2nd Liebster Award which calls for passing the award along to several other blogs.  And I just saw that Kate Lineberger also presented me a Liebster!
Finally, Daina Rustin at Mystic Treehouse tagged me to list 10 random facts and tag back five other bloggers.

Whew! OK, so to keep this something vaguely resembling simple, I'll list a total of 10 random facts and tag back a total of five bloggers.  Everyone I tag back can consider themselves recipients of both the Liebster and the Versatile Blogger award.

But first, this week's links!

Sunday Links : August 21, 2011 Edition

It's Sunday again!  I hope that everyone is feeling good about their last week of writing. If you're not, though, it's a new week and you can start with a mental clean slate!

Sunday also means that it's link day on my blog. Here are several links to articles I've read in the last week that I thought others might enjoy or learn from: