10 Great Writing Posts from 2010

If there’s anything I enjoy more than reading or writing, it’s reading about writing. Here’s 10 writing posts from 2010 that have challenged, informed, inspired, or motivated me. If you haven’t already, I’d encourage you take some time, follow the links, and ponder these helpful posts.

Thoughts on Kitsch in Fiction, Athol Dickson — “Writing a good novel is much like walking a very narrow path. A novelist can fall in one direction by ignoring the audience altogether (call this ‘elitism’), and in the other direction by pandering to the lowest common denominator in the audience (call this ‘kitschiness’)…. As with most important things in life, maintaining a good balance between these extremes is not so simple.”

How to Craft a Great Voice, Nathan Bransford — “Voice, at its most basic level, is the sensibility with which an author writes. It’s a perspective, an outlook on the world, a personality and style that is recognizable even out of context.”

The Most Effective Author Marketing Tool, Kristen Lamb — “This past week on Facebook I approved a friend request for another writer. Within MINUTES, I had four other e-mails. ‘Here is my website! Go to my blog! Look at my book! Here is a discount! Pass on to all of your friends and let me show them how to blah blah blah!’ It made me regret I’d ever befriended this person. Rather than it being like Starbucks, ‘Here is a coupon for a free Frappuccino’ (awesome), it sounded more like, ‘Me, me, me, me, me! Look at meeeeee!'”

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee, Rachelle Gardner — “There is no magic bullet, there’s no advice I can give you that is somehow different than what I tell everyone else. If you want to get in the game, you’re going to have to keep doing the work.”

Ten Ways to Know if You’re Called to Write, Mary DeMuth — “God may call a person to write, but not for publication. When folks ask me about being called to write, they are usually asking if they are called to write a book that gets published, then other people buy it in a bookstore. That’s a narrower calling than simply placing your words one after the other.”

Ten Rules for Writing Fiction, The Guardian — “You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there’s no free lunch. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you’re on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.”

The Online Art of Developing Your Author Brand Molecule Global Microbrand Thing, Tribal Writer — “When a key element to survival on the Web is authenticity, and when a key element to a successful brand is its level of engagement, can anybody else ultimately be responsible for defining (to the extent that it can be defined) and marketing (to the extent that it can be marketed) the brand of…you?”

What is Success?, Chip MacGregor — “We were all born with a desire for power, attention, and success. This is a business filled with egos. To most writers, ‘success’ is defined simply by ‘book sales.’ You sell a lot of books, you’re a success. You don’t, you’re a failure. Even for people writing in the Christian market. No, that’s not the BEST thing for a writer to focus on, but I have to be honest and say that ‘sales’ tends to outweigh ‘obedience’ when we talk about our writing careers.”

The Only Way to Know if You’ll Be a Successful Writer, Jane Friedman — “…all writers carry significant paradox and conflict inside them… What I find is that most reassurances, while offering a boost to a writer’s ego, are ultimately external, fleeting, and momentary. A writer needs an essential fire inside, or an attitude, that carries them the distance.”

The Odds of Getting Published Stink — And Why You Shouldn’t Care, The Purple Crayon Blog — “With hard work on writing, market research, creativity, and perhaps some luck (though luck can be made. . .), a writer eventually can hope to reach that ‘winner’s circle’ of publishable manuscripts. If done over and over again, which experienced writers can do, there will come a time when a writer’s manuscript is the one that’s selected. But is getting to 200-1 the best a writer can hope for?”

And though not specifically writing related, I have to include…

The Top Five Websites to Spark Your Creativity, Joel Jordon — “Where should you turn to when you need an idea to set off an entrepreneurial endeavor or escape the shackles of writer’s block? If this was the 20th Century, you might have no choice but to sit around and think for a while, hoping that something might spark your creativity and an idea will just pop into your head. But this is the 21st Century, and there are tons of websites out there that can give a much-needed spark to your creativity.”

So there’s a few of my favorites from 2010. Any other articles or posts that you would add to this list?