The mind of a writer: On display

This photo of an author's desk shows the leaps the mind takes in putting words together. The photo is shown with the accompanying story on the Poets & Writers site here.

How interesting to have the author, John Casey, annotate the meaning of all those ideas, notes and fragments.
(Click on image to enlarge).

NaNoWriMo makes Op-Ed page in New York Times

Hello, all you ambitious NaNoWriMo participants. You're almost half-way through the month, slogging through a sea of words. Today's New York Times has a cute op-end titled "Word After Word After Word," and since you're too busy writing to read teh newspaper, I'll delivery the salient points here:

NaNoWriMo started in 1999 with 21 participants and has grown into an enormoius non-profit helping people burst free of inhibitions and work with a common deadline. Your group has now produced almost a billion words, nearing the 2009 total of almost 2.5 billion.

Last year, slightly more than 19 percent of NaNoWriMo writers made it to the finish line.

As the Times piece says:

"This is the lovely thing about language. We all get to use it, and use it reasonably well, and words are so easily recycled. ... In NaNoWriMo, the talented and inexperienced, the experienced and  untalented, and all of the rest, can use as many words as they want, knowing that we will never run out and not one will be wasted."

Write on,

Helen

Directory of Book Reviewers

Self-published and independent authors seek resource for book reviews.

Christy Pinheiro, a colleague in another writing group put together this fabulous directory.

Go forth and get reviewed!

Book Review: The Nighttime Novelist: Finish Your Novel in Your Spare Time, by Joseph Bates

I posted this on BlogCritics yesterday -and NANOWRIMO is the perfect time to read it and get inspired to write a draft of your novel this month. Published by Writer's Digest, they were kind enough to tweet my review on their page, resulting in a huge number of Facebook updates.

And yes, the book is gorgeous, as mentioned in the original review here.   The Nighttime Novelist

Worldwide Blogs

In workshops, I always remind people that the Web is indeed Worldwide. As such, we are missing a huge market if we don't attempt to reach beyond US borders in our blogs. As a reminder, here's where the US stands in the global picture. Notice the tremendous potential you are missing if you aren't targeting our Canadian friends, with useful blog posts, links to Amazon in Canada, etc.   Make a goal for the 4th quarter of 2010 to stretch your reach:  Plan now to expand your reach in 2011.

11-10-11 NOTICE Chart has been corrected by provider:

Graph source: Technorati.com / State of the Blogosphere