HNTW Roundup – April 1st

Well, the Clarion West hunt is over and so it’s back to the grind for yours truly. I just popped open my feed reader for the first time in three weeks. And guess what? I have 10,105 unread posts! Score!

Ok, so here’s what I found:

Why Writers Need a Website – From Dustin Wax’s new site, The Writers Technology Companion. I hope Dustin is starting a series of posts on this topic.

Mark McGuinness was wrong about Twitter, and he’s given us 6 reasons why he was wrong.

Speaking of Twitter, if you know anything about it, you probably know it’s addictive as all get out. I’ve done the Twitter thing before and I couldn’t put it down. That’s why I got out!. Well, Cory Doctorow recently wrote an article for Internet Evolution called The Pleasures of Uninterrupted Communication. Makes a writer want to jack into the Net and never get out. John Scalzi’s trying it.

I picked this one up from Not a journal, who got it from Shelf Awareness (who got it from the WSJ):

Amazon has notified publishers who print books on demand that they will
have to use Amazon’s POD facilities if they want to sell their books
directly on Amazon.com.

Can you say anti-trust lawsuit?

Poets & Writers relaunched their site. Tobias Wolff is all over the front page, and bears an uncanny resemblance to Thad Carhart.

Mondays at Skimmik: 30 Years of Writers at Work premier’s on April 2nd. I hope they put it up in HD somewhere:

Ken Browne exquisitely captures the joy and the lasting bonds that emerge when people who love writing come together to share their work and help each other grow. Not only is the documentary a tribute to Jean Pedrick, the founder of this long-lived workshop, but it is a tribute to the writing process itself and to deep friendships that form when people come together to share their work and support each other “Mondays at Skimmilk” is a beautiful documentary, a joy to watch.

– Patricia Fargnoli, New Hampshire Poet Laureate

While I’m thinking about video, Jason Boog linked to a great video of Christopher Hitchens explaining why you ought to quit your dayjob if you want to be a freelance writer. He followed it up a few days later with a link to the above-mentioned John Scalzi. Go see Jason for the link. It’s worth visiting, especially if you are in the midst of a writing crisis after being rejected from a science fiction writing workshop you’ve dreamed about going to for years and finally worked up the courage to apply to only to have your hopes dashed against the cold, cruel rocks of email rejection. Oh, am I typing all this in? Whoops. 🙂

More links… There must be more links.

Leo Babauta, Write to Done, reveals Stephen King’s Greatest Writing Lesson: always walk facing oncoming traffic. No, wait, that isn’t right… Go see Leo. He knows. He also knows how to write conversationally and has 10 tips so you can also.

I finally found someone more gloomy than me! Hooray! Alright, I know that’s not fair. Besides, I like Lance.

Roger, I know I still owe you a video of me not writing, but seriously… you quit your job. I hope you are doing more writing than this. P.S. Can’t wait for the next installment!

The WOW women, or more specifically Valerie Fentress, want to know what type of ending you enjoy most. There is also a flagrant misuse of Motion-Sick Bear in the post and I am telling on her.

Has anyone read Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art? David Isaak has and he loves it. Though I can’t get behind his comments about the 300. I loves me some Spartaaaa!

Here is a quote from Pressfield’s website:

What keeps so many of us from doing what we long to do? Why is there a naysayer within? How can we avoid the roadblocks of any creative endeavor—be it starting up a dream business venture, writing a novel, or painting a masterpiece?

Well, I suppose spending too much time on the Internet, right? I mean this is one long post and you are wasting valuable writing time clicking all the links and opening new browser windows or tabs. What are you doing anyway? Shouldn’t you be writing?

In case anyone is interested, here are the books I’ve either read or happen to be currently engaged with:

John Scalzi – The Android’s Dream
Ian Ayers – Super Crunchers
Tobias Buckell – Ragamuffin
Arimasa Osawa – Shinjuku Shark
Martin Greenberg, Sarah Hoyt – Something Magic This Way Comes
Charlie Stross – Halting State
Ian McEwan – On Chesil Beach
Ian Rankin – A Question of Blood
Sam Sheridan – A Fighter’s Heart
Sue Grafton – Writing Mysteries

5 thoughts on “HNTW Roundup – April 1st

  1. Thanks for the link! I’m not doing a formal series on writing websites, but looking at my blogging schedule I have *seven* posts on building and writing a website to promote your writing and interact with your audience scheduled for April alone, so I guess that’s a series of sorts. It’s definitely one of the main themes of the site.

    Hope you like them!

  2. I think it would make a good series, perhaps even showing the building out of the site as a step-by-step guide. Maybe not so much the technical stuff but the planning and theming.

    Looking forward to the rest of your April schedule!!

  3. Well, let’s call it a series, then 🙂 — though I have actual series (serieses?) planned that fit together as a cohesive whole. There’s one coming on writing and publishing an ebook; maybe when I finish my current big project I’ll write an ebook on planning and building a writer’s site, gathering some of this pseudo-series’ posts and adding some more specific instructions.

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