Writing is an Apprenticeship Art: 6 Strange Ideas People Have About Learning the Craft

Anyone can learn to write, but learning to write well is another matter.

Because writing is very much an art and not a science, people have a tendency to approach learning it with very strange ideas.

Strange Idea #1:

“Writers are born, not made, and words easily flow from the tip of their pens/output of their keyboard. All they write shall be as gold instantaneously and will sell like hotcakes in Siberia.”

Bull. Writers are not gods. Even if someone is born with a brain attuned to written communication and perhaps storytelling, writing is still hard.

Blogs by Writers, for Writers, Part 2

I discovered Storytellers Unplugged after I found a link to their article, The Dark Night of the Soul. This article speaks so strongly to anyone who is a writer that I immediately signed up for the RSS feed—and I have not regretted it.

These are not just writers, but also editors and publishers—30 of them. Content is posted frequently, nearly every day, all of it very good—from informative advice to crazed humor about the nuttiness that is the business of writing and publishing.

Read, subscribe, add it to your list of blogs to read daily. Wisdom on a tree, much less a website, does not grow often.

Post-ApocaValentine: Bridge of Birds

Photography: antmoose

Give me mine… bittersweet.

For a long time, there was a gap between me and the world, because I did not understand what love meant.

One night, there was a bridge of birds.

Blogs by Writers, for Writers, Part 1

Welcome to the next article in the meta-series, “I am still working on those other websites,” where I dig into the heart of my RSS subscriptions and unearth writing blog treasures to share with you.

DeepGenre is my favorite writer group blog. You may have heard of some of these people. Their works sit on the fantasy and science fiction shelves at your local bookstore.

The focus of DeepGenre is on writing, with excursions into exploring fantasy and science fiction. DeepGenre is also very much a blog that encourages discussion, with open-ended posts and questions. Indeed, one of the most popular articles, Writing My First Novel, is mostly over 500 comments from authors across the lands of genre.

I know not whether the 13-Line Critiques are still going, but the archives are instructive.

DeepGenre is not updated daily, but when it is, the content is always worth reading.

I must go now. WordPress has challenged me to a duel. There can only be one.

A Blog That Writers in the Market Should Read

Good morning. At least, it’s morning PST, which means about siesta time everywhere else. I’ve been playing around with websites and have got 98% of one done. Three in all. So every other day or so I’ll be posting up links to writer’s/writing websites that I really, really like; the other days I’ll be posting my own stuff.

I already pointed you towards Whatever this week (in fact, in the archives, I’ve probably pointed you to Whatever several times). Some of you who visited there may have discovered an announcement about a new literary agent on the block.

I’m very happy about the announcement, but only secondly because of the new literary agent thing. I am primarily happy that the blogger behind The Swivet finally got a job again in the publishing industry.

Blade off the Feather

Photography: dizznbonn

In Sweet Dreams on Auria Cortes’ blog, she talks about how her drive to fulfill her dreams went against the traditional wisdom of “balance”, yet still worked.

I admit, this is the sort of thing I like, because it’s a reminder that traditional wisdom cannot be applied straight in every case—like anything else, there are many factors involved.

Let me tell you a story.

Scalzi Talks About Money, Writing, Being Sensible, Etc.

Still working on all the websites.

But you should take a look at what John Scalzi says about writing and money. He currently makes $100K a year. I only make more than him by dint of very nice stock options. He knows things, this man. Things you need to know. Even if you don’t like them.

Sd’s Sister Sites for the Future

What I’ve been working on:

1. Move the Sherlock Holmes stuff to its own blog so I can focus it appropriately. I have material planned, but not all of it is writerly type stuff.
2. Move my Fiction off to its own blog so I can focus it appropriately, and I can feel better about updating it without drowning out the writing technique “signal” on Sd.
3. Do quite a lot of more fine-grained re-categorization of the remaining Sd material.
4. “Life” stuff will remain, in its own little category while the writing category diversifies.
5. If Reviews or Blogging really start to break the “it’s about writing” focus (and they already sort of do, a bit), I will start looking for places to guest-post or submit those particular articles.
6. As a result of the above, I should be able to refocus Spontaneous Derivation as a writer’s resource.

When all the shaking gets done… which won’t be for a couple weeks… I hope to get each site focused like a laser. That means more article series like Writing on the Stage, more resource articles like 6 Word Meters and Trackers for the Word-Count Obsessed, and more one-offs like Writing and the Mysterious, Nebulous, Fickle Audience.

And lowering the noise ratio by a LOT.

Sd's Sister Sites for the Future

What I’ve been working on:

1. Move the Sherlock Holmes stuff to its own blog so I can focus it appropriately. I have material planned, but not all of it is writerly type stuff.
2. Move my Fiction off to its own blog so I can focus it appropriately, and I can feel better about updating it without drowning out the writing technique “signal” on Sd.
3. Do quite a lot of more fine-grained re-categorization of the remaining Sd material.
4. “Life” stuff will remain, in its own little category while the writing category diversifies.
5. If Reviews or Blogging really start to break the “it’s about writing” focus (and they already sort of do, a bit), I will start looking for places to guest-post or submit those particular articles.
6. As a result of the above, I should be able to refocus Spontaneous Derivation as a writer’s resource.

When all the shaking gets done… which won’t be for a couple weeks… I hope to get each site focused like a laser. That means more article series like Writing on the Stage, more resource articles like 6 Word Meters and Trackers for the Word-Count Obsessed, and more one-offs like Writing and the Mysterious, Nebulous, Fickle Audience.

And lowering the noise ratio by a LOT.

Stumble-Upons of Late

Because I’m busy setting up extra websites, here’s what’s currently on my StumbleUpon blog. I tend to write semi-detailed reviews, and treat my StumbleUpon like a “real” blog rather than just somewhere I dump links off to (for that, there is del.icio.us).