Saturday Summation – 27 October 2012

I have mostly writing stuff to share today, but I will start with one that kind of falls under both reading and writing…

Reading Stuff:

Agent Sarah LaPolla took a look at the evolution of Young Adult literature… when did it begin? This is a great question as it continues to be a hugely popular genre today that continues to grow. Once upon a time there were few books in this category and we devoured them quickly before having to move on to adult books whether or not we were ready for them or even wanted them… YA: Then vs Now (BTW, I only just now noticed it was a post from over a year and a half ago…but it’s still a timely read.)

 

Writing Stuff:

There have been a bazillion posts in the past couple of weeks about BLOGGING and BUILDING A PLATFORM (see how I made that seem immensely important?). This topic has been done to death. Instead of listing links that so many would think you might care about, I’ll just give you the summation for fiction writers: blog when you want about what you want or don’t blog at all – it really doesn’t matter.

There’s lots of advice out there for what to do when you finish your first book that you want to start querying. Tamara Felsinger offers a unique bit by suggesting whipping out a super-short manuscript – perhaps a novella – before going back and sending out THE manuscript. Basically, she thinks it’s a great way to not only distance yourself from the thing you just dumped your heart and soul into, but “get your groove” back in writing for yourself – something no one will necessarily ever see. I’m not sure I’m personally up for this approach, but the idea definitely has merit.

Ploughshares Literary Magazine is doing a retrospective of their time since posting since 2009. I found this one that offers a round-up of posts that focused on the revision process. It’s nice having some potentially helpful resources in one spot… plus the last two links indicated walking as helpful tools and I’m all about that.

John Vorhaus,  a regular contributor to Writer Unboxed, wrote an entertaining post about “Verbing the Nouns” in which he starts out criticizing an NBC advertising campaign that says “We Comedy Wednesday”, but then eventually comes around (mostly) to the idea that this is what we all do – verb our nouns, noun our verbs, make up words… but let’s be careful on how we do it. The example with how his boss does not do it “correctly” is a great example. I’m pretty sure we all have examples in our lives of this, um, incorrect way. (My pet peeve is to get “certificated” in something – and what makes it especially woeful? I always heard it in the education field.)

Finally, anyone doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month – write a crap draft of a short novel in one month) next month? I’m not because I know it just isn’t a realistic goal for me, but I thought now was as good a time as anything to set a different kind of goal for myself, I figured I’d use NaNoWriMo as an excuse. My goal is to write a minimum of 30 minutes/day – to insert it as a regular part of my schedule. Preferably I’d like to do it in one shot, but I’m willing to break it down into 2, 15-minute intervals, too. I started yesterday, because that’s what I do. If you have a goal that I can help cheer (do you know, I almost wrote “cheerlead” there?) for you, let me know.

Video of the Week:

I had a different video posted for a few minutes, but I totally forgot about this awesome Ellen spot (thanks to my sister for her FB post that reminded me!)