Trying to Write a Novel?

There's been no news on the IILAA nor has the Brown Stain been replaced with a real website. Amazing what a little bit of noise among writers with blogs can do.

I've been tapping away every night since Nov 1 for about 2 - 3 hours a night, doing an average of 2,644.25 words per night. I've also spent some time reading some great sites about writing by writers for writers (well, one is an anonymous agent). I want to share them with you.

#1 Learn Writing With Uncle Jim - this is a novel writing course done over the course of thousands of posts and approaching its 3 year anniversary - the first post was Nov. 13, 2003. This thread contains wonderful ideas, lessons, exercises and prompts. There are line by lines of first pages of novels and discussions about everthing from formatting to grammar to publishing. It's incredible. Many of us at Absolute Write hope that Jim will get this in book form someday soon.

#2 Holly Lisle. I love her Notecard Plotting. There are other good tips and hints and ideas on her site as well - all free. Yeah, she sells stuff too (but at a really reasonable price), but there's real goodness in the freebies, not just a bait and switch or "for the rest of this lesson please send $19.95 before midnight tonight to PayPay! Hurry, this offer expires at midnight tonight" stuff. Oh, she has a cool podcast, too.

#3 A variety of posts on Making Light. Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden (and no, I didn't forget the hyphen)have collected a wonderful following of writers, editors, readers. In addition to great posts, there are huge veins of gold running through the comments sections of that site. I think most of them are mentioned in Uncle Jim's thread but one I'm particularly fond of is Slushkiller. Oh, and this one The Evil Overlord Devises a Plot

#4 Miss Snark Indescribable. May not always have the best advice in town (I can't say if it is or isn't due to my novice stature) but it sure is fun to read.

#5 The Unstrung Harp or Mr. Earbrass Writes a Novel

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