My Favorite Writing Blogs

Despite my best intentions, January 2014 is slipping away from me with many of my goals unfinished. Between two stubborn seasonal viruses, holiday travel, and a demanding two-week project at my day job that devoured my free time and energy, this month will go down as a bust as far as my writing is concerned. Still, I wanted to get out at least one blog post before February arrives, so here it is.

If you follow this blog, you know I like to share free online resources for indie writers. Whereas I focus on things like tips, tools, references, resources, and the like, I stay away from actually offering any writing advice. At this stage of my career, I'm still trying to soak up as much as I can and have no intention of masquerading as an expert.

However, there are two blogs in particular that I follow regularly that focus on the nuts and bolts of improving your writing. For authors at the competency (or incompetency) level that I'm at, I think each of these blogs has a lot to offer. I've complied a massive Evernote notebook from all the gems I've found on these sites. So without trying to drive traffic from my own site, the following blogs are definitely worth a look, and provide instructional content that you won't typically find here:

Karen Woodward's blog about writing and publishing (http://blog.karenwoodward.org/) Karen is a consistent and prolific poster (by my standards) typically with multiple blog posts a week focusing on the craft of fiction writing. Her posts are well-written and informative, without a lot of fluff. Some of my favorites from her recent topics include Narrative Setting, The Anatomy of Story, Point of View (POV) and How to Create Distinct Characters. Her blog has a search function and an archive (back to 2010) to make perusing old entries easy. Karen's blog is chock-full of great information, of which I've only mentioned a fraction.

Jami Gold, Paranormal Author (http://jamigold.com/) also has an excellent blog which features posts specifically on the craft of writing. In addition, Jami blogs about other writing-related topics like e-book pricing studies and where to find beta readers. Jami's website also has an excellent collection of workshops and 'worksheets for writers' which include some tools I've began using. Jami also posts frequently and has a virtual treasure trove of information for writers on her website. Like Karen's blog, Jami's archives back to 2010 and is searchable, so finding relevant content is easy.

Author Update: I'm working on the final three chapters of Mirrors & Mist that I decided to re-write after sage input from my editor. Then the manuscript will go back to her and I'll work on finalizing the 2nd edition of Crimson & Cream. Both books are targeted for release (and re-release) this year. I also did a fun interview with RS McCoy at Big Fish Book Blog last week. Check it out here if you have a minute. And January hasn't been all bad--I took the photo below on New Year's Day:



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