I was going to share these when they came out, but then I got a little distracted and posted about other things.  So, a little late, but here they are:

50 Rantypants Snidbits Of Random Writing & Storytelling Advice by Chuck Wendig

As always, you should check out the whole thing.

A few choice quotes to tempt you to click through:

“The thing that defines a writer is that the writer writes.”

“The only writer who has answers about your writing is you. Advice is just advice. It is not an equation.”

“You should ask more questions about wordsmithy and story architecture than you do about query letters or e-book formatting.”

Great advice?  Absolutely.  And I’m only up to number four on the list.  So go read it.

I stopped there (although I did want to quote #17, too…) because that ties in nicely with the other post I wanted to link to:

Meeting the author by Patricia C. Wrede.

Here’s a little taste (I had to paraphrase a bit on the first one):

“There is a word for people who spend a lot of time setting up elaborate schemes to sell something that does not exist, and it is not a nice word. Write the book, finish the book, and then worry about [the rest of it].”

“None of the publicity and marketing stuff matters until you have a manuscript to sell. None of it.”

She makes the, very valid, point that you need to focus on the craft of writing before you focus on selling your product.  The whole post is worth the read.

And now, as those two posts have reminded me, I should really do some writing myself.  I’m about a week and a half from hitting the two year mark since I started seriously trying to write and I’d like to have a few more words logged before then.

The reason I’m procrastinating a bit is it’s really time to start the next novel and that’s always a deep dive into writing.  I have four possible ideas I’m deciding between–two expansions of existing short stories, one novel I started back in January that’s at a lull, and a new idea.  Choices, choices.

And to think, before I started writing I thought finding ideas of what to write was going to be the hard part…