Link roundup 3/22

Sorry about the delay. The internet has been out for the past couple days. Here you go!

Some of the Writer's Digest staff had an AMA on Reddit. Worth reading.

You need Open Library in your life.

"Quit This, Not That (For Writers)" was posted back in June, but it's always relevant.

And last, this girl helped inspire one of my characters, and needs more attention. Give her some, please. :)

Edit Minion!

So Dr. Wicked (who created the wonderful Write or Die) has come out with a new writing program, which is pretty brilliant. It helps you weed out adverbs, weak words, passive voice, "said" replacements, endings with prepositions, and misspelled words. It's still in beta, but it's really great! Here's a screenshot:

Full-size version
And I will stand by that "nice" and "very" to the end.

So yeah, you should check it out. :)

Friday Fragments

It is Friday, and it is the third day of absolutely gorgeous weather. I think I'm justified in sharing this song with you. It's called "Spring" by Your Heart.



It's also a free download if you absolutely must have it on your media playing devices. :)

1) Jesi Marie was kind enough to share this picture with me.

Thought the cheetah with an eyeglass was a bit random, but it's funny. :D

2) I've been showing this to everyone because it's just so funny. These people took the music video for Total Eclipse of the Heart and rewrote the lyrics so that the song fit the music video. Hilarity ensues like you wouldn't believe. Embedding has been disabled for it, but here's the link.

3) Did you hear about the Fukishima Fifty? They're these nuclear power plant workers who stayed behind at the plant to make sure that nothing worse happens, even though it greatly endangers their well-being. Now that's heroism, ladies and gentlemen.

Well, have a good weekend!

Awesome thing of the day: "I dare you all, test your strength: Open a book."

So today on this blog, Letters of Note, they posted this awesome letter from Chuck Jones encouraging reading. Here's the actual letter:

Here's the actual post.

Um... Late Afternoon Clickables?

This is honestly amazing. It's called the Nine Stages of Dating a Novel.

I think you'll enjoy it.

Because I adore The Princess Bride.

Late night clickables. I even created two new tags for this post: ...the aforementioned phrase and Books of Legend. Because if The Princess Bride isn't a Book of Legend, well, then the universe is out of whack.

Matt Mikalatos is giving away said Book of Legend. Go. Run. I mean click. CLICK. Here it is again!

http://mikalatos.blogspot.com/2010/09/books-i-love-win-copy-of-princess-bride.html

Three-Minute Fiction

This link comes to you through the grapevine... Jesi Marie heard about it from her writing group, and I heard about it from her blog. And now you're hearing it from me! Six degrees, right...?

So this morning's title will whisk you away to the Three Minute Fiction Contest. Basically what you have to do is write a story that's 600 words or less that starts with: "Some people swore that the house was haunted." and ends with: "Nothing was ever the same again after that." But the deadline is September 26th, so if you're gonna enter, write quickly!

OK. Good night, world.

Early Morning Clickables

It's a pep talk from the literary agent, Nathan Bransford. It's kinda fantastic and you should read it. Click on "Early Morning Clickables" to see.

See ya when I'm awake.

"I wanna finish last, last in the world's eyes..."

I feel a little weird titling two blog posts in a row with song lyrics, but it fits the subject.

Today Nathan Bransford talked about how our dreams as writers- or really, whatever we aspire to achieve- can become more like expectations of ourselves. It's like we define our success based on how many followers we have on Twitter, or how many hits we get on our material, and if we get X number of followers and Y number of people pay attention to our online presence, then tada! We're successful. But it shouldn't be that way.

We need to remember why we pursue our passions and our dreams. Why we do the things we do. It's gonna be different for all of us, and there's nothing wrong with that. But whatever that reason is- and I cannot stress this enough- remember it. For goodness' sake, remember it. And don't get caught up in the world's definition of success. Don't let that be your happiness.

OK. I should put the song lyrics in context now. It's called "Finish Last" by Stellar Kart.

I wanna finish last
Last in the world's eyes
No matter what I do
I will be first in Your eyes

It would be fantastic if all our dreams became real. I don't think any of us writerly types would mind someday having our own personal display at Barnes and Noble. ;) But it's fine if that doesn't happen, because at least we have something to be passionate about. To be excited about.

Do you think that anybody can do what you do? As if. And don't let other people's success get you down! They've gone through the same thing, I guarantee you.

Now get to work, wench.

(I'm a bit tired, so 'scuse me if this didn't make total sense...)