Here is another series of great links I’ve come across this week to inspire, instruct, and instigate you into writing success…

As writers, our job is to make stuff up.  Cassandra Jade addresses the need to keep it real as you do so.  You have to have that nugget of realism from which your fantasy will grow; otherwise, your reader won’t follow you or trust you very far into your story.  Like Cassandra, I also have to be careful about the naming of creatures or things in my fantasy stories.  A pitfall that I run into is that I’ll have a very strange name that just “looks” right on paper, and sort of “sounds” right in my head; but when reading my story out loud, I find that it is unpronounceable. 

Susie at “Writing. About Writing.” offers some excellent solutions to your potting problems.  They’re primarily geared for novels, but are equally applicable to planning shorter fiction as well.  I’m not a good planner…I tend to have a basic premise with some sort of ending in mind and then write by the seat of my pants to make point A lead to point Z.  These points can help you gain some structure, even if you’re not an outline fiend…

Cat at “Words from the Woods” offers some great exercises to stretch those atrophied editing muscles.  Now I just need to produce some work worth editing…

In the course of gathering information about writing to make my own scribbles more coherent, I am always amazed at the stories of newbie writers (and even some veterans that should know better) just being horse’s asses to their peers on the web.  Be it bone-headedly egotistical rebuttals to rejection letters or furious critiques of other people’s work, Wheaton’s Law isn’t being as embraced as often you’d think out in the Interwebs.  This guest blog on Mur Lafferty’s “I Should Be Writing” by Dave Thompson expresses the golden rule for writers quite well.

Steven Brust is one of my all-time favorite writers.  This brief interlude at his website (“The Dream Cafe”) reminds us that everything and everyone has a story that can be told…

When creating a character, it’s often useful to throw in small details that set him or her apart from others.  It can be a distinctive vocal style or oft-repeated phrase (“don’t ya know…”).  She can have a distinguishing feature (“kohl-rimmed eyes”). Cassandra Jade provides some mannerisms to give your characters distinction.

I’m still a struggling writer.  I struggle to get published.  I struggle to understand my craft.  I struggle to simply sit in front of a monitor (my palette of choice) and write something.  I struggle, and (especially after I get yet another rejection), I sometimes despair and want to cease my thrashing about…which brings more despair.  Mur Lafferty reminds us that writers are like sharks; movement is essential to life.  Indecision can kill your momentum and leave your writing career dead in the water.  Keep moving, keep struggling.  Keep trying.  Just keep swimming…