Even if [the yeast of intelligence] operates in vain, it remains evolution’s peak. . .: something to enjoy and foster as much as possible; something not to betray by succumbing to despair, however deep the many pits of darkness.
—Diana Athill, Stet: an editor’s life

1. Whenever my cats object
   . . .to my prescribed determination of their fates—and sometimes just random flexing of my right to boss them around—I think of my own helplessness at the whims of of the gods. And sometimes I find myself wishing in real anguish I had some magical ability to create a portrait of that link between their world and mine so I’d feel less crippled by everything I simply can’t do anything about.
   
   Then I remember: I do have that ability. I have words, and I have the techniques of fiction. I just need to practice them until I know how to handle them deftly enough, and I can create something vivid and tangible, something I can hold in my hands and revisit again and again, something that truly helps make my life less of a private assault and more of a resonance echoing throughout the experience of all humanity.
   
   Something that might even help others, like me, caught in this mortal coil.
2. Whenever I’m washed-up
   . . .in an airport terminal or doctor’s waiting room or endless meeting I remember the strict injunction I gave myself when I was still a teen: “A writer has no business ever being bored.” And I remember that as long as I have words and five senses and something—anything—to write on, my job is to stop feeling sorry for myself and practice my craft.
3. Whenever I’m suffering
   . . .the reverberating shock of a really bad injury to my heart—walking into my grandmother’s bedroom to see them wheeling out the life support, coming home from sending a get-well card to a beloved uncle and my husband saying, “Your mother called. Peet died last night,” holding my grandfather’s hand as his face contorts through the horrible B-movie grimaces of dying—I remember that I have something to do with that beyond simply being destroyed by it.
   
   I have words. And I have the techniques of fiction. And I have a deep, immovable longing that has never left me, no matter what I’ve been through in all my fifty years on this planet—a longing to make it all have been worthwhile.

The Art & Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual
by Victoria Mixon













TOP 10 BLOGGERS FOR WRITERS—GUEST POSTING:
This week I’m trading guest posts with Ollin Morales of {Courage to Create}.

See us chatting about peer critiquing on Twitter this morning. (For those of you unfamiliar with Twitter, scroll as far as you can to the bottom—giving it time to catch up with you as you go—and start reading the earliest stuff first.)

Today’s just a quick post to let you know two things:

1. Frequent commenter Shane Arthur of Editing Hacks interviewed me for his series on editors. Thank you, Shane! Now you all must hie yourselves on over there and make sure I’m telling the truth (not you clients, though—you guys’ll out me).
2. And Helen Gallagher of Blogcritics.com has reviewed The Art & Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual, which review was picked up by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and appears as well on Helen’s page on OpenSalon.com. Thank you, Helen! And you were so patient, too.
   
   (True story: Helen contacted me last spring when we first published the ebook of The Art & Craft of Fiction, wrote her review right away, and then had to wait for us to get an Amazon link before she could post it on BlogCritics. As you probably know, that only took us seven months. For crying out loud.)

Now I’m suddenly a half-a-century old, people, so I consider myself officially entitled to be completely crusty, random, and inexplicable from here on out. Yes, even more than before. So consider this fair warning.

Back to our regular programming Monday!

I’m not here this week—I’m busy getting old elsewhere—so instead of a new post I’m going to point you guys toward my four most inspirational posts of the past year:

5 Things to Celebrate About Finishing Your First Draft

21 Things You Writers Know That Non-Writers Don’t

7 Reasons To Be Grateful You’re a Writer

107 Things You Should Know About Being Published

By the time you hear from me again, I will be covered in new wisdom and insight.

Hallelujah!

The Art & Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual
by Victoria Mixon

In keeping with Formichelli Week, I’ve got a post up today on Linda’s site, The Renegade Writer Blog.

You guys procrastinate—I know you do.

For how long?

Join us today for Making the Most of Procrastination.

It’s Formichelli Week on A. Victoria Mixon, Editor, with a guest post from Linda Formichelli of the Renegade Writer Blog. I first met Linda two years ago when I was a member of an online critique group (scoping out the current state of peer critiquing among fiction writers—ye gods!) and she joined as research for an article on writing forums for Writer’s Digest. Since then I’ve seen her crop up regularly in the online writing community, most recently as one of the Top 10 Blogs for Writers. She is the co-author of The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing Success.

And she’s not afraid of drinking blue things.

GUEST POST BY LINDA FORMICHELLI

Several years ago I wrote an article for a newsstand health magazine on how to turn your typical fatty BBQ into a healthful meal. My lede for the article was, “It’s summertime, and the living is greasy.”

When the article was published, I excitedly flipped to the right page, started reading—and was horrified. An editor had changed my lede to, “In summer, the living can sometimes be greasy.”

Okay, maybe the editor was 20 years old and had never heard of the (famous!) song that my lede was playing off of. But still, couldn’t she at least have changed it to something that made sense? I worried that readers would think that I actually wrote that clunker of a sentence.

Then I remembered my motto: “As long as you spell my name right on the check, I don’t care what you do to the copy.”Okay, I’m being facetious—of course I care. But once the magazine editor has my article, it’s out of my hands. I can’t control what happens to my writing, so it doesn’t make sense to get my panties all in a twist when an editor tweaks my prose, no matter how badly (in my opinion) it turns out.

I know what you’re thinking: “Sure, but you’re a magazine writer. . .you write articles like ‘10 Minutes to Thin Thighs’ for—ugh—money. I create art. I couldn’t stand to have someone change the words I’ve sweated over.” But any published fiction writer (and every bestselling author) will tell you that editors will edit your writing, sometimes in ways you don’t like—and you can either be a diva or be a professional about it. (Guess which one will get you published again?)

Here are three ways to divorce yourself from your work enough that you won’t suffer a cardiac infarction every time an editor suggests a change.

1. Throw out your baby.

This is a writing term that means to get rid of apiece of prose that you’re especially wedded to. For example, you may have slaved over the perfect prologue that explains the background details readers will need to know to understand your plot. What if you throw it out and weave the background information into the story itself? It will hurt—after all, you spent days crafting that prologue—but your story will likely be stronger in the end. The same can be said for many article ledes: most of them are mere throat clearing, and the real article starts on paragraph two. Throwing out your baby shows you that changing your story, even in ways that are painful at first, can improve your work.

2. Trust the boss.

When an editor changes my article beyond recognition I tell myself that the editor knows her magazine’s readers better than I do. The same can be said for the professional editing your novel or short story. She’s reworked plenty of writers’ words and has a good sense of what works for readers and what doesn’t. Let go and trust.

3. Put it aside.

When you’re pounding the keyboard for days in a caffeine-fueled haze, it’s hard to get distance from your work. Everything is perfect and you wouldn’t change a thing! But try putting your work aside for a few days and then coming back to it with fresh eyes. Hmmmm. . .you never noticed before how clunky that transition was. And did you really think that humorous aside was a good idea? Now you can see that your first iteration of a work isn’t necessarily perfect—and neither is your second or your third, as you’ll see if you keep giving yourself breathing room in between drafts. An editor gives you yet another fresh perspective and can help you tighten your writing even more.

Of course, you’re welcome to ignore an independent editor’s suggestions and even to try to talk a magazine editor out of a change—if you do it with professionalism and understand that the magazine editor has the final say. But remember that it’s easy to lose perspective when you get too close to your own work, and that can lead to inferior writing, not to mention freakouts of major proportion.

Maintain the professional mindset: editing exists to help your work shine.

Linda Formichelli is a full-time freelancer who’s written for more than 130 magazines, from Pizza Today to Woman’s Day. She’s the co-author of The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing Success. Linda runs the Renegade Writer Blog, where she dishes out advice and offers an e-course on breaking into magazines, phone mentoring for freelance writers, and a free packet of 10 sample query letters. She can also be found on Twitter.

That’s what love is: learning to love what your lover loves.
—Greg Brown

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! This is going to be fast & furious so I can go spend Valentine’s Day with my lovable family.

So, with no further ado, here are fourteen tried and true ways to love what your manuscript loves:

1. Blatantly
   
   Manuscripts, honestly, are even shyer than their notoriously shy authors. Your ms does not necessarily want to be talked about to your friends. However, it does want you to carve out time for it and to make sure nobody interrupts you or stops you from pursuing it.
   
   So be a dragon. Stand guard over your manuscript’s tender little personal space.
2. Under a spotlight
   
   Manuscripts are secretive, so you have to turn the limelight on them and make them dance. Personally, I always hated the idea of going on-stage, until I won a minor poetry award in college and had to go up behind the mic to read my poem. Suddenly I loved it! I could have stayed all night! Maybe they’d like me to read something else while I was there—say, Moby Dick?
   
   This is your manuscript in front of the footlights. Throw the switch.
3. In conversation
   
   Manuscripts are inveterate eavesdroppers. Speakers are utterly fascinating to them in conversation. No matter how dull or pointless or rambling the conversation, your ms wants to record it all and then mull it over in privacy. Why did she say that? What was he doing while he wasn’t answering? Where would this have all gone if they hadn’t been interrupted? And how did that interruption catapult them into further complications between them?
   
   Be your manuscript’s ears out among the madding crowds, and it will reward you with great riches.
4. Publicly
   
   Manuscripts are also unscrupulous spies. They want to know absolutely everything everybody does. They want to be constantly holding things up to themselves like clothes in front of a mirror: Would this fit? Would that work? What if I went over there and did the other thing? How would it turn out if I made this happen and reacted to it that different way?
   
   Be your manuscript’s eyes in the world, and it will reward you with gold in abundance.
5. Falling asleep
   
   Manuscripts are also wicked imps of satan and love to disturb your sleep. This is because they get the most freedom when you’re too tired to fight back.
   
   There is a magic space when you have quit caring about the responsibilities of the day but have not yet succumbed to the wayward randomness of dreams—Proust introduced his entire ouvre, Remembrance of Things Past, with a nearly endless soliloquy on that very tiny space. Guess from whence those seven classic volumes sprang?
   
   Be that magic space.
6. In a bad mood
   
   Manuscripts have no shame. Your ms likes you no matter how awful you are. In fact, it likes you best when you’re at your wit’s end.
   
   It especially likes leaning over your shoulder pointing out exactly how you move and speak and think when you’re least likely to appreciate such solicitude. It is your overbearing siblings at their very worse.
   
   Fight it off! It just gives it that much more material. And the more you try to ignore it, the more powerfully present is its note-taking. That means the greater detail you will recall later, with a cooler head, when you are done throwing your tantrum and are ready to sit down and convert it into the internal conflict from which all great protagonists suffer like the blazes.
7. During inappropriate activities
   
   Manuscripts like to imagine themselves chronicling what has never been chronicled before. This doesn’t mean you are going to chronicle those things. But your ms wants to know what it would be like if it did.
   
   So pay a little attention. Just the tiniest details, the most fundamentally true elements dropped into references in your scenes can snap a story around and reveal the underlying tension of which your characters refuse to speak. Notice what nobody else has ever mentioned. Ask yourself, “How is this moment, right now, changing me permanently? How will I be different from now on forever?”
   
   Don’t tell your partner.
8. With a microscope
   
   Manuscripts are so extraordinarily complex and multifaceted that nobody, in truth, ever tells the complete story exactly perfectly. There is always stuff that falls by the wayside.
   
   But is it the right stuff?
   
   Your ms doesn’t want to let go of any tiny spec of information about itself without a thorough review, and you shouldn’t either. Those tiny specs are what create three-dimensional worlds in which your characters seduce your readers into their eternal clutches.
   
   Sondra Day once advised treating emotional baggage as garbage and throwing it out as fast as possible without stopping to sort it. But she wasn’t a storyteller.
   
   Sit down with your ms and meticulously sort your garbage.
9. With a bullhorn
   
   Manuscripts also like to whisper and look the other way just when things get hairy. They long to be drawn out. And you’re going to have to be the one to do it.
   
   You know that moment in Nancy Horan’s disastrous novel, Loving Frank, when the protagonist leaves her husband for Frank Lloyd Wright, only Horan doesn’t show the protagonist actually doing it? She skips right over it and goes on her merry way?
   
   Whip out your bullhorn whenever you come to such pivotal, life-altering, load-bearing scenes in your story and yell through them, “She looked at her husband! ‘I’m leaving you for Frank,’ she said!“
10. Before it matters
    
    Manuscripts are not born on the page. They are born in the deep, dark roots of your past, somewhere years ago when somebody said that thing to someone else that one time.
    
    Always be paying attention to the manuscripts you have not yet conceived. Collect details, data, trivia, facts, impressions, faces, names, gestures, ideas. Let them burble around in your subconscious, stewing in their juices. Let them take from each other, give to each other, trade meanings and references. Let them alter each others’ chemical make-up.
    
    Someday you’re going to need all that stuff in a form you cannot yet imagine.
11. After the fact
    
    Manuscripts don’t stop needing love and affection when you think they do. Believe me when I say this. I see dozens and dozens of manuscripts, every single one of them polished to the full extent their writers think they can possibly be polished. And not one of them is finished.
    
    When you have done everything you possibly can for your ms in this incarnation, set it kindly aside and go on to other things. Raise your kids. Start another ms. Go on vacation. Finish building your house.
    
    Your ms is still living and growing in the back of your mind, all the time you’re doing other things, and that life and growth are essential to its publishable version.
12. When you have exhausted all other options
    
    Manuscripts are an endless dump of everything you don’t know what else to do with, the infinite acceptance of all you are that makes no sense. Your ms loves being that for you. Go ahead. Let it be.
    
    When you have no resources left, when you have been sucked dry and thrown aside, when you are but a shell of the persona you fondly believe yourself to be. . .go back to your manuscript. Sink into your fictional dream. This is why you write—this bond between your story and you.
13. On your knees
    
    Then get down off your pedestal or high horse or wherever you’ve been hanging out, lay both palms on the ground, and be intensely grateful it is there. The planet on which you live is the source of everything good and bad and creative and fictional coming your way.
    
    Know your source.
14. With your arms thrown open
    
    And finally stand up and throw your arms wide to the sky and the sun and the rain and the wind and the stars. You will never get it all down in words. You will never triumph over the unknowable.
    
    And this is your saving grace. Know thy grace.

But what exactly is it that your manuscript loves? This magical thing you’re struggling to love in fourteen different ways?

Oh, that one’s easy. It’s always after the same eternal, ephemeral thing: the Truth.

The Art & Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual
by Victoria Mixon

TOP 10 BLOGGERS FOR WRITERS—GUEST POSTING:
This week I’m trading guest posts with Linda Formichelli of the Renegade Writer.

In keeping with Penn Week, today I’m going to send you all on over to my guest post on Joanna’s site, The Creative Penn.

You all read The 4 Most Common Mistakes Fiction Editors See, yes?

Well, today learn the mistakes we see even from the pros:

Beyond the Most Common Fiction Mistakes

It’s Penn Week at A. Victoria Mixon, Editor, with Joanna Penn from TheCreativePenn: Adventures in Writing, Publishing and Book Marketing, one of the Top 10 Blogs for Writers. Joanna is the author and self-marketer of her self-published thriller, Pentacost.

GUEST POST BY JOANNA PENN

Writing and publishing your book is just one part of the author journey. Once it’s out there in the world you need readers, and whether you are traditionally published or independent you can benefit from knowing the basics of online marketing.

1) Create your online home

You may have a book sales page on your publisher’s site or Amazon, but the best place to start marketing is your own home on the web. A static website is a good start—a blog is even better, as you can easily customize it to fit your personality. Decide on a theme that suits your subject matter and genre.

The first thing to add is a link to buy your book. Use a ‘Buy the Book’ page so readers can easily buy from all online sites or use Amazon embed code to put a widget on your sidebar. Make it perfectly clear how to buy and also how to connect with you.

2) Produce regular quality content

Search engines love updated, keyword-rich sites, and the best way to get regular attention is through blogging. The most important aspects are first choosing your niche carefully, then being consistent, useful and interesting in your articles. When you provide value, readers develop the habit of coming to your site to learn and enjoy. This is the core principle of content marketing.

3) Go where the market is

You can’t just stay on your own site if you want to attract attention to your book sales page. You need to find your readers. Research other blogs in your niche and offer them guest posts. Check out Goodreads and Shelfari and join in reviews and conversations on other books in your genre. Readers will click through to see your page soon enough.

Submit your book for review to many of the book review blogs within your niche. They can be a bit hard to find, but a simple Google search for “book review” and your genre works—nothing high-tech. Personally, I host Mystery Thriller, reviews of thrillers and mystery novels. Research review sites well, and make sure your book fits their standards. There’s no point sending horror to a romance review blog!

You may even consider paid advertising on a monetized review site like Kindle Nation, if you have a budget for marketing. I target Kindle-specific websites for my novel, Pentacost, as well as giving my blog readers free copies in exchange for reviews on Goodreads and Amazon, where book buyers are.

4) Develop relationships

This takes time but is incredibly rewarding. Use your blog to promote other authors and blogs within your niche. Comment on others’ sites and join discussions, connecting on social networks. Once you have made an initial connection, you can email and suggest a mutually-beneficial article exchange or review of each others’ books.

There is an etiquette around these types of online relationships, so make sure you start developing them well in advance of your book promotion. The relationship is not all about the marketing. Make it a real connection.

5) Be sociable

Social networking sites are a huge source of attention for book sales pages, as readers recommend books to friends, sharing reviews and author interviews. Join at least one of the sites, like Facebook or Twitter, so you can engage with other writers and readers. Focus your time on joining conversations and providing useful and entertaining resources readers can pass on.

Along with search engines, social media is one of the best ways to gain attention, especially as even Google is now tweaking rankings to include realtime updates.

6) Be seen

Video is a hugely under-utilized marketing resource for authors, who are often shy and not tech-savvy. When you embrace video, you have the chance to stand out from the crowd.

Video search is growing, as bandwidth and mobile devices improve. Google, which owns YouTube, is currently investing in voice-recognition tools to improve the search engine capability of video. Well-done book trailers are a great means of attracting attention, as are video interviews and video blogs. You can buy a Flip camera cheaply or just use your webcam to get started.

Humans communicate through body language, and you can tell a lot about someone from a few seconds of watching them talk. Readers are more likely to buy from people they know, like and trust, especially if they listen to your voice for 30 minutes a week and hear you laugh or read your book aloud.

7) Be heard

Millions listen to audio programs on their commute, while exercising or during household chores. It’s a great way to be educated or entertained. Produce a podcast of your book or as an interview series, starting with a short teaser to be used in other podcast shows between segments. The software is free and easy to use, and you can submit your podcast to iTunes to reach a bigger audience. You can also submit your podcast novel to PodioBooks.com. Podcast novelists like JC Hutchins, Scott Sigler and Philippa Ballantine have gone on to print publishing success after gaining audio audiences for their books.

Even when you choose only a couple of these methods for marketing, you put yourself ahead in the game. There are millions of books for sale. How will yours stand out?

Joanna Penn is the author of Pentecost, a thriller out now on Amazon.com. She can be reached through her blog, TheCreativePenn: Adventures in Writing, Publishing and Book Marketing and Twitter.

So, I’ve been writing this blog for two years now, and I thought it was about time I shared with you all a few of the unexpected things I’ve learned during the course of it. There have been some real eye-openers! To wit:

1. Big numbers don’t always mean quality readers
   
   This is called the quantity-vs.quality debate, and online community managers already know a lot about it.
   
   Some time in early December one of my posts, 10 Things to Do to Become a Better Writer in 10 Days, suddenly and rather unexpectedly hit the StumbleUpon Big Time. I got 10,000 hits in two days, and since then I’ve gotten close to 80,000 hits on that one post alone. Now it’s finally starting to leak over into other posts, while that one is still climbing.
   
   Of those tens of thousands of readers, though, almost none either comment or subscribe. Mostly what I’ve picked up from the exposure is marketers. I get a lot more pitches to sell things like washing machines and ski equipment these days.
   
   You who are reading this right now—whether you came through StumbleUpon or elsewhere—are the quality readers I’m looking for. You guys are here because you care.
2. Readers tend to make more negative comments on blogs they never intend to re-visit
   
   I do get the occasional interesting comment through StumbleUpon, like the long, rambling, argumentative, self-promoting one from Christopher Moore that made it clear he’d only skimmed the list items and not read the post itself.
   
   As it happens, I know a little about Christopher Moore, who lived in San Luis Obispo at the same time I did back in the early ’90s. I had an intensely pretty and giggly young roommate who used to come home from her job at a coffee kiosk in a theater lobby talking about some guy who hung out there all the time hitting on her and asking people what it would take to sell a book for a million dollars. Apparently, he finally did sell a book to Disney for a million dollars, so she told me his name.
   
   “Huh,” I said. “Are you going to go out with him?”
   
   She was not.
   
   I left his argumentative comment up for awhile, but I finally removed it because pointlessly negative comments discourage other readers from making positive comments, and that brings down the tone of the whole blog. But I thought it was funny that he had nothing better to do than troll the Internet looking for places to brag about his best sellerdom. I guess my pretty young roommate pretty much had him nailed.
   
   It’s the positive comments—especially the ones sharing your own experiences—that make all us feel like this is a safe place where we belong.
3. There’s no law that says you have to accommodate trolls
   
   For a long time, there was a lot of debate about whether or not it’s okay to take down those pointlessly negative comments. Online community managers tend to wait for their communities to respond before they become draconian.
   
   But this blog isn’t a community, because you guys don’t have the capacity to contribute other than comments, so it’s my responsibility to keep the tone friendly and welcoming to everyone. Don’t like a post? That’s okay. Don’t read it! If you feel compelled to rain on our parade, though, I will feel compelled to remove your little black cloud.
   
   Interestingly enough, one of the things I recommend on 10 Things to Do to Become a Better Writer in 10 Days is trolling and then apologizing. I said this rather snidely at the time, aiming to embarrass trolls by pointing the spotlight on them. But it’s true that apology is excellent for your writing skills, as well as your overall constitution.
   
   The funniest thing about the trolls is that that particular list item inspired the most indefatigable to include a disclaimer: “This isn’t following your instructions.”
   
   There is a priceless moment at which the pointlessness of a pointless cycle becomes transparently absurd.
4. Humor is a precious commodity
   
   So you know what gains me readers? Saying things that make people laugh.
   
   I’ve gotten emails for 6 Personality Types Who Will Fail as Writers about people falling on the floor laughing and crying at the same time. I got the same kind of hysterical laughter for 10 Lies Agents and Editors Tell You. And Why. And those are pretty snarky posts!
   
   Readers love seeing all our communal foibles reflected as funny rather than terrifying. It makes life in general so much easier to bear. And those who read more than one of my posts know that behind the snark is always undying compassion for all of us lunatics who elect to paddle around in this lifeboat of writing together.
   
   The blogosphere is valuable precisely because it gives readers an outlet from dreary, rote jobs alone in veal-fattening pens and a bond with others they can’t get from corporate life, where 50+ hour weeks leave almost no time for socializing and city life can be secretly mighty damn lonely. The rise of the blogosphere has brought back tribal life to millions of us conditioned over the past thirty years to simple hopelessness.
   
   And laughter is the basis of all great tribal life. Readers who laugh come back. Humor is loyalty glue.
5. Readers want to learn what they’re doing wrong
   
   You know what else gains me readers? Solid, reliable information. The plethora of writing advice out there is phenomenal—really, quite painful—and when writers know they can come here time and time again to get in-depth discussion of their concerns. . .yes, they keep coming back.
   
   Oddly, what people love most is information on what they’re doing wrong. Three posts—5 Things a Writer Always Overlooks, 8 Lessons to Learn from Screwing Up Your Manuscript, 6 Ways to Shoot Yourself in the Foot—are still getting retweeted all these months after I wrote them.
   
   Apparently there are an awful lot of aspiring writers out there in desperate need of some relief from constantly looking over their shoulders. They get all the helpful hints and timely tips they can take, but they still have the sneaking suspicion there’s something secret going on behind the scenes.
   
   “For the love of Mike, just TELL US!”
6. Writers want to pay to learn
   
   You’d think my Advice Column would be the most active part of my whole site, wouldn’t you? Freebie advice answering specific questions from specific writers about the problems they’re having with specific manuscripts?
   
   Actually—not. The more readers I get, the more work I get, but very few writers indeed make use of the freebie help.
   
   This is why I charge for the Magazine: so readers will value it. And when I do get a new subscriber, the first thing I invariably hear from them is, “Wow!” While on the subject of the similar-but-free advice column they remain rather quiet.
7. Consistent voice and topic is the lifeblood of both blogging and writing
   
   Truly, the most helpful thing to writers about blogging is that it trains you into a consistent voice. When you let go of the internal censor and learn to say what you mean to say the way you mean to say it, week in and week out, your language gets stronger and simpler, and writing just gets easier.
   
   And if there’s one thing readers of all types of writing are looking for it’s consistent voice.
   
   But the best thing about blogging is tribe. You people are friends. You’re friends to me and to each other. You’re taking turns at the oars, keeping this little lifeboat afloat, while I yell through a bullhorn from the prow and gesture wildly over my head. I can show you the way, but it’s all of you who are going to get us there.
   
   And you know you can count on this blog to be heading where you want to go. The only thing you’re ever going to get from me here is a discussion of the art and craft of writing. Everything else that goes on in my life (and it’s a pretty exciting life) is almost invisible in the blogosphere. I don’t need to tell you guys my childrearing adventures or housebuilding travails or bafflement over my own personal, idiosyncratic mental challenges. Are there actually seven of me living inside my head? Who cares?
   
   This is a blog about one thing only, and what all of us in this tribe have in common is our overwhelming love for it:
   
   WRITING.

The Art & Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual
by Victoria Mixon













TOP 10 BLOGGERS FOR WRITERS—GUEST POSTING:
This week I’m trading guest posts with Joanna Penn of the Creative Penn.

In keeping with Wieland Week, today I’m guest posting on Katie’s site, Wordplay.

Save money!

Save time!

Hoodee-hoo! Learn the very first things I look for in new client manuscripts:

The 4 Most Common Mistakes Fiction Editors See