Have I mentioned lately how much I enjoy Chuck Wendig's take on writing and relating to an audience? Because I really enjoy it. He respects his audience, something that I think a lot of creative types tend to overlook. His 25 Ways To Earn Your Audience this week offered up ways you, as an author, can encourage your audience to be--and continue to be--your audience.
I have had a problem with over-editing in the past. Greta van der Rol posted this week about taking care when you "murder your darlings," something I think all writers should read. New writers are bombarded with so many rules to follow and told to never, ever break them. I think there's danger in becoming a serial killer of your darlings. You could lose your voice and eliminate all beauty from your work.
A Chick Who Reads reviewed Harlequin title Not Just Friends. (Her review makes me want to get the book, but that's not the point of this entry in today's post.) This is an excellent example of the usefulness of reviewing blogs to writers. You see how she mentions not trusting skinny pastry chefs and lamenting the lack of "real" women who are sexy in romance novels? This is useable. And it makes me glad I went through the extra trouble of finding a cover for Cass Gets Her Kicks that featured a woman with a little bit extra in the "wrong" places. Women generally read romance novels to escape their everyday life. Why not give them an extra touch of reality to really pull them in?
For her Tips on Thursday, Girl Who Reads wrote about the sound bite. If you review books at all, absorb the information she's giving. If you summarize your own work, or swap reviews with fellow authors, or just want to make your blog or book a little more accessible, that's a post worth reading.
James Killick favors the "treatment." Don't know what it is? Check out his post. The trouble with treatments, in my experience, is that they can be so much fun you don't get around to writing the actual story. If you do manage to get past them and start the story itself, they're incredibly useful. At least, they are to me. It's nice to have a reference in case I get lost.
One could argue that this post from Seeking the Write Life could just as easily be titled Top Ten Reasons You Need to Learn to Better Self-Edit, but that's just me. While I do agree that editors can be great things, there's really no replacement for learning to self-edit and for learning to actually think about what you're writing down.
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