You’ll notice that today we’re blowing our minds with a certain amount of advice on screenwriting. Yes, screenwriting is a close enough cousin to fiction that the serious fiction writer can take enormous assistance from screenwriting advice, without the extra hassle of having to deal with Hollywood.
Alexandra Sokoloff uses Jaws to talk about characters’ PLANS being thwarted by PLANS. Even the shark had an evolving plan!
ChristopherR2D2 chides you about being afraid to write. I almost didn’t include this one because it’s rife with Google ads, but he’s also got a link to a good piece describing writer’s block as simply the decision not to write. (He—as so many others—is a little lost on the subject of forcing yourself to write just for the sake of writing. It may very well take ten thousand hours to learn how to do something, but ten thousand hours of writing drivel that never improves is far worse for your skills than ten years of writing once a year in a concentrated effort to learn the craft.)
Ben Bova reminds us that Donne was smarter than you’d think from the number of writers these days who can quote him. (More aggressive ads.)
And then there are our comrades, the fiction writers, leading the way through the mines for the rest of us with their lanterns aloft:
In a beautifully-written exploration of craft, Alexander Chee describes studying under Annie Dillard.
Morgan Barnhart of the Peevish Penman advises you to write your scenes when you’re possessed by them, not just when you plan to.
Jonathon Karp, editor and publisher of Twelve publishing, is interviewed in-depth in another of those wonderful Poets & Writers interviews by Jofie Ferrari-Adler.
While a new interesting publishing blogger has appeared, Bob Spears on Book Trends, a bookstore owner and book packager covering all aspects of ebooks, Print on Demand, self-publishing, even teaching children to love reading. He’s got a mighty dandy mustache, too!
Finally, you should all be aware of what’s been going on with the Price Wars between Amazon, Target, and Walmart (really, you guys, Walmart) and the American Booksellers’ Association letter to the Department of Justice asking them to step in. If you have any interest in ever being published after this last week, much less any love for independent booksellers (which you’d better), you need to know about this.