Great Stuff from the Writing Blogs, May 15, 2012

Today’s great stuff:

• Angela and Becca, the Bookshelf Muses, continue their Random Acts of Kindness project with opportunities to win a copy of the Scrivener writer’s software package (which is excellent, by the way, if you haven’t tried it; four will be given away–two for Macs, two for PCs) or a premium membership to Query Tracker. And the Random Acts will continue all this week.
• On DIY MFA, Gabriela Pereira asks Plotter or Pantser: Where Do You Stand? In other words, do you plot out your novel first, or just start writing and see where the story takes you? Or a little of both? She doesn’t say it, but I will: the “right” way is the way that works for you.
• SF Writer Michael Swanwick gives us the first two paragraphs of a forthcoming Patricia McKillip story and says, THIS is How You Start a Story. He’s right: no exposition, no backstory, all STORY.
• Dianne Christner offers tips for how to make the most of a mini-book-tour (a mini-tour for your book, that is, not a tour for a small book) in Small Pond, Big Splash on WordServe Water Cooler.
• We writers are human, aren’t we? And yet none of us–not one–has any of the 7 Bad Habits of Successful Authors that Rachelle Gardner writes about today. So why in the world would she do that? She couldn’t have been writing about us, could she? Could she? 😉
• In a nice bit of synchronicity, Darrelyn Saloom’s piece on Jane Friedman’s blog–How Do You Answer, “What Are You Working on Next?”–addresses time, that thing those other authors Rachelle must have been writing about waste.

That’s it. ‘Til tomorrow…