Thursday Writing Quote ~ Sagan

What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree, with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny, dark squiggles. But one glance at it, and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic. ~ Carl Sagan

Nuggets for April


Ideas for growing you mailing list
http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2015/01/15/fiction-email-list-subscribers/

Battle Scene are always Tricky
http://ryanlanz.com/2016/01/26/how-to-write-battle-scenes/

This deconstructs fight scenes. Good to know.
http://www.betternovelproject.com/blog/fight-scene/

We all want to sell well, but there's no magic bullet. Rosiland James tells her story, including the marketing moves she made.
http://www.rosalindjames.com/what-worked-for-me/

Facebook ads seem to be the hot topic of the moment. Here are a couple of posts that may help you figure out how to run an effective campaign.
http://nicholasrossis.me/2016/03/12/mark-gillespies-tips-for-facebook-ads/
http://nicholasrossis.me/2016/03/10/the-science-of-successful-facebook-ads/

An excellent analysis of how to make a supporting character matter
http://writerunboxed.com/2016/02/06/supporting-characters-life-and-death/
 

Thursday Writing Quotes ~ Lawson

Often I'll find clues to where the story might go by figuring out where the characters would rather not go. ~ Doug Lawson

John Cleese on Creativity

It's always interesting to see how really creative people work.

Thursday Writing Quote ~ Gaiman

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love. ~ Neil Gaiman



Thursday Writing Quote ~ Anon

I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top. ~ English Professor (Name Unknown), Ohio University