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.

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 case you missed a post or want to re-read the whole series again, here are the links to all of the post from the 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel  series of posts on the My Story Writer blog this month.

The second winner for the giveway of My Story Writer writing software is...

Over the past four weeks, I’ve shared with you the highlights of each chapter of 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel by Jane Smiley. It’s a book that came into my life when I needed it and has become an invaluable resource to me in both my writing and my reading of novels.

We’ve all heard (and I certainly appreciate) Anne Lamott’s advice about just going ahead and writing a “shitty rough draft.” Jane Smiley feels about the same when it comes to the first draft, but she puts a different spin on it.

It begins with words and then you move up through the pyramid of skills it takes to write a novel. Now it’s time to focus on the meat of it all: the writing of your novel.

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.

If only it were simply a matter of words and adding one word to the next to the next, anyone could write a novel. Yesterday, we started with obscure beginnings. Today I’m covering what Jane Smiley had to say about taking those words and building them up into novel of your own.

The first winner for the giveway of My Story Writer writing software is...

I couldn’t wait for the two chapters in Jane Smiley’s 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel that changed from the focus of the already-written novel to the one inside you, the one you want to write. The next four posts are dedicated to just that: A Novel of Your Own. And we’ll begin with Beginnings.

There is no such thing as a single representative novel, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that all novels are related to other forms of discourse and communication.

In this chapter of 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, Jane Smiley writes about the history of the novel. Not how the novel came to be  (check out the Origins post from last week for that), but the evolution of the novel over time.

I’m posting a special edition of the weekly Rerun post today which focuses on all the great information that’s been making the rounds out there about NaNoWriMo. The start of the National Novel Writing Month is just two weeks away and there are some fantastic resources for those writers who are getting ready to write their novel in a month – and for the writers being inspired by all this writing encouragement and excitement.

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.