Round tower bend, Waterford, Ireland. copyright Elissa Field.
It has been another busy writing week. New fiction. Book editing for a client. Research and academic work to finish a masters class. Digital portfolio…
My biggest writing priorities this week have been getting my novel printed for read-through, and hosting #wssprint.
On the novel: I’d made it through the 9th draft of my novel, appreciating the ability to shuffle new chapters in Scrivener. But that also means I spent an undue amount of time this week hair-pulling in order to compile the novel back out as Word document. God love Scriv — a difficult child, requiring deep digging into its Advanced custom menus to simply ask it not to reformat everything in order to print (smh). I’ll still be working through this much of today, to get the 10th draft in printed form, ready for big read-through revision.
What is #wssprint? I’ll be hosting the last of 6, all-day live writing sprints on Twitter with my writing group, Wordsmith Studio. The sprints run from 11 a.m. – 11 p.m. EST, starting at the top of each hour. It’s been a fantastic experience each week. But also requires preloading 72+ organic tweets through twitchy Hootsuite, finding or originating prompts that take novels deeper, plus manning the live event. So do come visit, if you’re reading this 4/29 — or look for periodic events in the future. (On Twitter #wssprint or blog post)
But as with any week, time writing includes time for reading… This week’s Friday Links for Writers includes advice on pitching, relevance, freelancing and more. Let us know what you find meaningful, or share your own favorite links.
Have a great writing week!
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22 of the Best Single Sentences on Writing
As Lit Reactor puts it: if good writing is succinct, shouldn’t the advice be, too? 22 single sentences with advice from Chekov, Gaiman, Oates, King and more.
Tips for Writing the Perfect Pitch
This piece by Estelle Erasmus on BlogHer is insightful as to what makes for an effective pitch — advice that resounds among my freelancing friends.
On the eve of another Twitter pitch madness event (#PitchMad or #pitchmadness), agent Julie A. Weber gave her thoughts on the process for pitching novels in these events, including do’s and don’ts.
Agent and writer Donald Maass has a way of cutting to the heart of what makes breakout fiction today, and his posts on Writer Unboxed tend to stick with me. This, on “relevance,” came to mind as I was reading a recent bestseller and could see how, without particular threads of relevance the novel would have fallen flat.
Interesting Longreads conversation between three freelancers — Josh Dean, May Jeong and Jason Fagone — about the state of freelancing and their experiences on various aspects of the business, from finding ideas to negotiating, and more.
Colin Barrett is a slick & insightful writer whose collection Young Skins is described as voice of today’s young Ireland. Irish Times shared “Ontario” as a short story — to me, it’s more depiction of how we write (and don’t write) from reality. Here or elsewhere, Barrett’s worth reading.
Half short story, half reflection on what it is to write from truth “Ontario” by Colin Barrett https://t.co/HjD1Bg3e2a @IrishTimesBooks
— Elissa Field (@elissafield) April 14, 2016
Another Hidden Message Box on Facebook
This isn’t specific to writing, yet ran wild through writers’ posts recently. So, you know there’s a message/inbox in Facebook, right? Some folks freak out to discover there’s also a second inbox (called “message requests”), catching attempts to message you by people who are not your friends. Look at the foot of that: click the link that says “see filtered requests.” That’s a third inbox — and friends have found everything from letters from readers to requests from agents in there. Thanks for the confusion, FB.
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What Are You Working On?
Chime in to share your current writing goal or link to a recent favorite read in the comments. April has been a month with friends using a range of challenges to work through writing and editing goals. A group of published friends merely start a FB post each week to keep accountable, keeping each other going. Others have used #AprWritingChallenge, Camp NaNoWriMo, Poem a Day Challenge, A to Z Blog Challenge and others to claim time to write with the camaraderie of others. In conversation (#wschat), writers traded personal strategies for finding time.
What do you do to claim time to write?
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Need Motivation?
cElissaField
Don’t forget: I’ll be on Twitter with Wordsmith Studio all day today (4/29) to host hourly writing sprints. Find me @elissafield, follow hashtag #wssprint or read more in this prior post.
Even if you’re past the live date, you can find prior sprint days (with prompts) on my Storify — and continue to follow #wssprint and Wordsmith Studio, as we offer these events periodically throughout the year (current plans for a summer and October series)
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If you like this blog, be sure to click the WordPress +follow button, or follow via email or Bloglovin options in the sidebar. You can find me on Twitter @elissafield or on Facebook.
For more Friday Links for Writers:
- Friday Links for Writers: Quirky Research Sources for Writers #3
- Scan summaries of the links shared on all Friday Links posts: hover over individual post-titles listed on the Links & Where to Find Me page
- Finishing the Novel: Daily Task of Getting it Done
- Writing in Process: Using Alternative Voice to Understand Conflict
elissa lauren field 