Writer's block

No, not that kind of block.

After writing 1,000 words today and feeling damned proud of myself, I went surfing and found some interesting sites for writers. So this post is a block of links for writers, get it?

First of all, I always recommend the Blood Red Pencil blog (http://bloodredpencil.blogspot.com/). It's full of editors telling us writers that they won't eat us alive and have our best interests (okay, our writing's best interests) at heart. Trust them, they don't bite... hard.

Alexandra Sokoloff also has a great blog for writers, or even non-writers who study how stories are told, no matter what the media. We frequently talk about movies in our attempts to dissect story arc, character development, and what makes a good hero-villain relationship. Visit the Dark Salon - I dare you.

And, of course, there's Joe (http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/). The fun part about his discourses on writing is that he manages to engage so many differing opinions. One of these days, I'm going to witness a cyber-fist fight on his blog, I'm just certain of it.

Today, I had three new posts lobbed at me. One of them came via the Echelon Authors Group (my tail still wags when I realize I'm one of the Echelon authors). It's an e-article from ForeWord Publishing by Tom Christensen about the importance of blogs (visit article here). Basically, it says, you'll get more hits if you stop talking about yourself so much and turn your focus on your reader. The really funny part of the article for me was when Tom studied several blogs to prove his point - according to his research, Penguin Books UK actually got TWENTY-THREE comments on one of their blogs. Wow. Joe Konrath's last post is still going at 56 comments. Many of the posts I read get over 20 comments with almost every post. Maybe Tom needs to branch out on his blog studies.

Next, I read an interesting, albeit old (from September) post by E.E. Knight, a science fiction and fantasy writer, on famous writing blunders he has seen. Okay, most of these pits have been pointed out to me along the way, but there were a few faux pas I'd never seen before. Thankfully, I've also never committed them, either. If you're a writer, look here for one more list to tack on your wall.

Lastly, a magnificent letter from John Steinbeck, giving advice to new writers. In one of Joe's recent posts, he was arguing about whether published authors are the best equipped to teach writers. There are two schools of thought about this, but Steinbeck's letter seems to indicate that he would not have made a good teacher. After years of writing and being successful, he sounds as if he puts the words to paper and then "a miracle happens" to make them mean anything. Read it here.

So much for a block about writers. Read and learn, padawans.