Great Stuff on the Writers’ Blogs, July 3, 2012

I’ve discovered a purpose for Mondays: so bloggers can put together great stuff that they then post on Tuesdays! To wit: a Tuesday full of terrific stuff. We’ll start with the one negative thing and then get to the positives.

• Kathleen Pickering (@KatPickering) writes in Identity Theft:Cloud Files and Urgent Phone Calls about a recent encounter she had with an aggressive phone scammer, her reactions to him, and her actions since. I have no opinion plus or minus on the specific anti-identity theft tools/services she recommends but her 6 specific action recommendations are things we all can do easily and at little or no cost.

• Moving on to a more positive and interesting, but perhaps still a little scary subject, we go to Hugh McGuire’s (@hughmcguire) short (13 minute) TEDx Montreal talk, discovered via Porter Anderson (@Porter_Anderson) via Jane Friedman (@JaneFriedman), in which he asks, eBooks Gone in 5 Years? One reason why I don’t own an e-book reader isn’t because I’m a Luddite (I’m writing a blog, after all, on a computer), but because I see them as transitional devices. As tablets like the iPad and Microsoft Surface get more and more powerful, not to mention smart phones, I see e-book reader software migrating away from single-purpose devices like the Kindle to similarly-sized multi-purpose devices like the tablets. McGuire’s take is a little different–that the future of e-books is in a much more interconnected, interactive, hyperlinked, format which retains and even improves on the quality of the content now associated more with printed books than the internet. Scary for some writers, maybe, but fascinating and exciting for those of us willing to explore this terra incognita.

• The next logical stop on today’s tour, I guess, is Victoria Strauss’ (@victoriastrauss) repost of something she first put up on Writer Beware (R) Blogs! a couple years ago: Rights vs. Copyright. This is a good summary of the difference between literary rights and copyright, a difference every writer needs to understand.

• Going back yet farther into the writing process, we find Therese Walsh’s (@ThereseWalsh) A Study in Opposites on Writer Unboxed, in which she describes how she used some time spent with  thesaurus.com before she began writing a story. She started with two words with opposite meanings and connotations, then created lists of synonyms and antonyms via the thesaurus as a way to develop ideas for characters, plot events, etc. To my personal tastes, this feels too much like a writing exercise, which I generally don’t like, but you might find it interesting or helpful, so pop on over to her post to get the full, um, story.

• I’ve saved the best for last today: Rachelle Gardner’s (@RachelleGardner) 6 Things To Learn From Hemingway. Rather than take a literary-criticism approach to the subject, Rachelle looks at different aspects Papa H’s process, from what other writers he read to what he did with a “completed” work before it was truly done. Professionalism, every step of the way. And things we can all do.

Great stuff, I think you’ll agree.