Blog Roll-Up: Best of the Week's Writing Blogs

Stop Making Excuses
Christine Baker Kline's blog, A Writing Life has a couple guest posts this week about making kids your excuse for not writing. Louise DeSalvo's on Why Having Kids is No Excuse and Lisa Romeo Adds Her Two Cents to the Writer-as-Parent Manifesto. Are you choosing.to rake leaves rather than write?

Social Networking
Jane Friedman of There Are No Rules posts her weekly Best Tweets for Writers. Most of these are links to some great online articles and blog posts.

Are you on LinkedIn? Freelance Folder explains why you might want to be in The Freelancer's Guide to Getting Started on LinkedIn.

Fiction Writing
On QueryTracker.net, Elana Johnson offer tips for finding your voice in Don't Use that Voice With Me!


Rachelle Gardner, Literary Agent, talks about Giving Your Characters Life.Their own life, not yours.


Query Letters
Nathan Bransford, Literary Agent, suggests you Get the Big Stuff Right. He swears that agents won't reject you at the first hint of a typo.


Over at BookEnds, LLC, Jessica Faust helps you get one of the big things right: An Author's Credentials. What do you put in your author bio, especially if you don't have much to add? The good news is: it's all good news.



Just to be on the safe side, A Victoria Mixon, Editor, talks about Getting Credentials that will impress potential agents.


Book Review
On Writing Forward, Melissa Donovan discusses A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver.

Member Blogs
What Colour is Your Palette? Diane has been at a painting all this week and shares her experience over at Pens, Paints and Paper. The Ringmaster of the Three-Ring Circus has been busy writing and posts about NaNoWriMo Success.



Weekly Laugh
And finally, The Rejectionist presents the winners of the best rejection letter contest: Author-friends, We Have a Winner.

Blog Roll-Up: Best of the Week's Writing Blogs

I don't make it to our meetings very often, and sometimes I even feel like I'm doing okay on my own. And then I come across a post like this, One is a Lonely Number--Why You Need a Writing Mentor on Write to Done, and I'm reminded of not just what the group can do for me, but what I can do for the group.

Do you Tweet? Do you blog (and if you do, let me know so we can add you to our blog roll)? Should you? The Guide to Literary Agents blog answers these questions with another post from the South Carolina Writer's Conference: Literary Agents Talk Blogging, Twitter and More. If you need more incentive to check out Twitter, then head on over to Freelance-Zone.com for an explanation of how TweetMyJobs Changes the Game and Freelance Folder sends out a Call to All Freelancers to get included on a Freelance Folder.

Also, make sure you head over to There Are No Rules by Writers Digest's Jane Freidman for her list of Best Tweets for Writers. There are tweets about craft and technique, getting published, self-publishing and marketing and promotion--and more!

Are you looking for new markets for your work? Are you trying to break out as a freelance writer, or even as a short story writer? The Freelance Writing Jobs Network offers 15 Places for Freelance Writers to Find Magazine Markets (note: you can use these for fiction markets as well) and 10 Ways to Get Your Freelance Writing Foot in the Door. The Renegade Writer is offering a New FREE Teleclass: Breaking into Food Writing.

Men With Pens is hosting a special fiction writing week with posts about Creating Character Flaws and Creating a Setting. Be sure to check out the full week's posts!

If dialogue is your weak point, C. Patrick Schulze brings you a couple of posts that should help: The Hidden Secret to Dialogue and How to Punctuate Dialogue.

Rachelle Gardner has some suggestions for Writing a First Draft in honour of NaNoWriMo, and The Three-Ring Circus posts this week offer tips for writing that draft quickly. Diane, our prolific writer updates us on the progress of her work, and the Brian Henry workshop over at Pens, Paints and Paper.

Finally, if you need a little inspiration, head over to Jennifer Lawler's Finding Your Voice blog for a quick lesson in The Power of Yet. And if you prefer your inspiration in laughter, definitely check out The Official Rejectionist's Death Match of Wittery, a tongue-in-cheek contest to find the best rejection letter. Scroll down to the comments to find them.