It’s time to rewind through some of the best blog posts of the week related to writing, books, creativity – and sometimes just some other fun but random stuff. Each Friday I link to my favorite posts of the week so you have another chance to catch an interesting post you might have missed or discover a new blogger.

I wrote my first guest post for Deborah Riley-Magnus and it appears today on her blog, Writeaholic. She even created a new category: Tools with Balls. So check out Software for Serious Writers.

Whether it's music, pets, kids or our own racing minds, it's not easy to concentrate in this crazy world that's so full of distractions.

I’m posting a special Rerun today because as I was putting together the posts for the Friday Rerun, I realized just how many articles and blog posts I had that were about characters. From creating characters and giving your characters life to character arcs and characters who drink. So today’s Rerun is dedicated to characters, characters, characters.

It’s time to rewind through some of the best blog posts of the week related to writing, books, creativity – and sometimes just some other fun but random stuff. Each Friday I link to my favorite posts of the week so you have another chance to catch an interesting post you might have missed or discover a new blogger.

Unfortunately I couldn’t make last night’s reading with John Irving at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver. I’ve met him before and have heard him speak but it’s still disappointing not to be able to again hear a writer whose work I adore, so instead I took advantage of the internet and created my own “faux reading” by watching and listening to the many recent interviews Irving has given to promote his new novel: Last Night in Twisted River. I hope you'll join me. 

I first learned of the existence of tropes from Scott Myers. In a post on his blog, Go Into the Story, he wrote about the site TVtropes.org. I’d never even heard of a “trope” but I checked it out and was fascinated. A trope is a device and/or a convention that a writer can rely on as being present in the audience members’ (or in our case, readers’) minds and expectations. But a trope is not a cliché. It’s not supposed to be trite or a stereotype, but there’s no denying the existence of tropes in every movie, TV show or story. You can consider the trope in the same way you think about the plot structure of the Hero’s Journey or character archetypes.

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I’m posting a special edition of the Rerun today. With NaNoWriMo kicking off this past week, I was expecting a kind of “radio silence” on Twitter and the blogs of those writers participating in National Novel Writing Month. I was very wrong. If anything, there’s been even more tweeting and blog writing – and a lot of talk about starting to write that first draft. So today’s special post is an ode to just that – here’s to the first draft.

It’s time to rewind through some of the best blog posts of the week related to writing, books, creativity – and sometimes just some other fun but random stuff. Each Friday I link to my favorite posts of the week so you have another chance to catch an interesting post you might have missed or discover a new blogger.

In my last post, I wrote about Lorrie Moore’s reading and radio interview I attended as part of The Lighthouse Writers Writer’s Studio program. Today I’m going to write about Moore’s “Non-Crafty Craft Talk” held at The Tattered Cover.

When Lorrie Moore came to Denver a weekend ago as part of the Lighthouse Writers Writer’s Studio program, I was lucky enough to attend both the reading and radio interview on Saturday evening and her “Non-Crafty Craft Talk” on Sunday at The Tattered Cover. She was informative, inspiring and very, very funny.