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

Novel Writing

What Makes a Great Book? A Voracious Reader Shares her Insights. Nina Sankovitch read a book a day for a year and wrote about the experience on her blog Read All Day. Christine Baker Kline adapts her insights on her own blog, A Writing Life.

How do you know when you're done editing? A. Victoria Mixon, Editor explains the long process professional writers (i.e. published authors) do it, as well as an alternative: finding a really great editor in her post: Being in the Right Place at the Right Time.

Jane Friedman at There are No Rules shares A Big Mistake to Avoid in Story Openings.

Querying Agents

Should you send your query out to agents during the holidays? Some agents are taking a query hiatus: Rachelle Gardner at WordServe Literary (December 15th-January 14th) and Nelson Literary Agency is closed over the holidays (from December 18th until the new year). Five other agents weigh in on Holidays and Queries to Agents over at the Guide to Literary Agents blog.

Query Ninja joins the Query Shark in critiquing query letters.  This time, Kate Steps Up to the Plate with her query letter for a young adult novel.

C. Patrick Schulze offers some help in writing the dreaded synopsis with his post: 11 Elements of a Successful Synopsis.

The Social Side of Writing

Nathan Bransford, Literary Agent has updated his blog, which now includes discussion forums. His blog has always been a great source of information of all things writing (and probably more than you need to know about the show The Bachelor), but now it's even better.

Jane Friedman at There Are No Rules again brings you the week's Best Tweets for Writers which include the 14 bigggest mistakes even the best-selling writers make and a self-editing checklist.

Why should you go to conferences, tweet and blog? Janet Reid, Literary Agent tells you in her post 10 Things Crime Writers Can Learn From Paris Hilton.

Dreams and Writing

Are Your Dreams Trying to Tell You Something? Jeanie Franz Ransom at Storytellers Unplugged thinks so . . . and I think a couple members of our group might agree!

Member Blogs

Diane Bator had a busy blogging week despite being sick with pneumonia and hosting an art show. Check out her post about A Romantic Life for a bit of inspiration.

Weekly Laugh

Courtesy of the blog of Janet Reid, Literary Agent, this terrific parody of The 12 Days of Christmas, just for
writers: The Twelve Tips on Queries.