Hello! Hello!
Long time, no see! You might have noticed that I’ve been on a social media break, but here I am again. Didja miss me? 🙂 Things did not go quite the way I imagined, but then, they rarely do. My breaks are often like the cakes I make: crumbly or fallen, but they still taste good!
(I can’t actually take the credit for this cake. It goes to my daughter, who may be taking after me in that area…)
During my break I accomplished a good chunk of outlining for Kai’s novel, got wildly sidetracked by some research, read a few books, practiced the fine art of procrastination, and paid a visit to the hospital the other day for some relatively minor surgery involving my thyroid. So far, I have no real voice, but since that’s been the case for a long time, I’m not surprised. Luckily, I don’t need a voice to blog or to work on my novel, and I don’t need a voice to recommend some excellent reading:
- Can One Ordinary Woman Achieve the Extraordinary? by Amelia Loken. It’s all about putting things in perspective.
- 7 Blogging Mistakes Authors Make by Lindsay Buroker. A general guideline coming from someone who blogged for a living for seven years before turning to writing stories full-time.
- 7 Dialog Basics That Can Help Tighten Our Stories by Jody Hedlund. “If we work at smoothing out the rough spots and tightening our prose, we make it all that much easier for others to fall in love with our stories.”
- Bridging the Gap Between Author and Character by Devor at Mythic Scribes. “I write fantasy because I want to tell a story greater than what I know. In this genre, we can bend not only lives but the fabric of reality to create characters more enduring and terrifying than otherwise possible. We can give them experiences that would be inconceivable in other genres.”
After reading these, I have a brand new To-Do list, and I’m looking forward to seeing the results. Which articles are your favorites and why? Have you got some others in similar veins that you can recommend?Maybe some you’ve written yourself? Lay ’em on me!
In the meantime, be sure to follow me on Twitter and please take a moment to hit that purdy “like” button on my Facebook page. 🙂
~R
Hey Robin, thanks for stopping by my blog! Is Dragonlance a new story for you? I love the cover art. Did you do that on your own?
I am happy to stop by your blog! 🙂 You have so much great information there—I appreciate all the work you do and the experiences you share.
My story is actually "DragonL-A-C-E" (the title being a product of a friend misreading the title of the Margaret Weis/Tracy Hickman series). My husband and I collaborated on the cover. I hope you get a chance to read it!
What was wrong with your thyroid?
Aliens invaded and had to be violently evicted. 😉