Friday Fridge Clean-Out: June 11th Edition

► Novelist, small press publisher, and dynamic personality Kelly Link has some excellent, nitty-gritty advice about writing, reading and publishing over at Anna’s Book Blog. I’ve heard Kelly speak several times, and although I don’t think I’ll ever write anything in her genre (paranormal and fantasy fiction), I always walk away with fresh insights and a desire to hear more.

► The name of this blog says it all: White Readers Meet Black Authors. It’s a good one.

► This exhaustive list of ways to jump-start, restart, and fire up your writing and writing process has something for every type of writer, at every skill level.

► My final link to one of those “writers over/under X age” lists: 40+ writers over 40. Enough said.

► Two book giveaways still active here on the blog: An essay collection, Why We Ride: Women Writers on the Horses in Their Lives (my story is on page 111; must enter by 6/13); and a novel about the south and so much more, Ghost Swamp Blues, by Laraine Herring (enter by 6/19).

Have a great weekend

Gold in Them There Notebooks, Part 2

As I explained yesterday, I'm randomly leafing through all the notebooks I filled during the two years I spent in an MFA program, and posting what I find.

Here, a few gems, in no particular order, from a faculty presentation.

•When writing dialogue, leave out anything the reader can intuit from previous dialogue. Stop before the reader is really ready to leave the scene.
•Change pace.
•Alternate sentence structure.
•Please leave out all the boring details and descriptions of everyday activities, such as "she got into bed," "he got in the car."
•Don't try so hard to explain things. When the writing is good, the reader will be engaged.
•Incongruity is more interesting than symmetry.

– Kelly Link, author of the short story collections, Magic for Beginners and Stranger Things Happen, and winner of Nebula, Hugo, and Small Fantasy Awards