Late-December Link Listing

I'm having another one of those "you're not getting an actual blog entry out of me" days.  Nothing too bad, just lots of work stress and me feeling glum about damn near everything.  -_-

So I thought I'd try to do something helpful.  The following is a short list of writing resources that I've found to be useful in one way or another.

Writing Excuses: yes, it's the podcast that did the writing workshop/cruise I went on earlier this year.  Yes, I'm linking to it again, because it's both full of good advice and constantly entertaining.  Plus, the fact that each episode is only 15-20 minutes long means you can either listen to it when you've just got a few minutes or binge on it when you have plenty of time.  I still have half a year's worth of episodes that I need to listen to, some of which I was present for, so... yeah.  Binging for me.

The 2016 Sanderson Lectures: I know I talk about Brandon Sanderson's work a lot here, and it's for good reason.  He's not only really damn good, but tremendously successful, so listening to him share his knowledge about writing seems like a very good idea.  I haven't made the time to listen to these myself, but I plan to change that during my upcoming vacation, since I aim to do a lot of writing work anyway.

Story Structure 101: Super Basic Shit: the start of a simple but well-done series of story structure mini-lessons.  Coming up with a bunch of cool stuff but being unable to turn it into an actual story is still an issue for me, so I go back to these every once in a while to attempt to put things into a working order.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but there's something to be said for basic guidelines.

Manuscript Wish List: for when you're done with the actual story and want to find someone who loves it as much as you do, here's a boatload of agents saying what they're looking for.  I noted down one agent here for STARWIND because they specifically said they wanted something like Guardians of the Galaxy.  So the site is definitely worth searching, whether it works for me or not.

How to Write a 1-Page Synopsis: something I'll be making use of soon.  I hate the idea of trying to condense an entire book into a single page.  But this?  This is a brilliant guide that not only makes it look easy but uses an example that most (if not all) of my readers will know, thus making it clear just how the whole thing is supposed to work.  I was incredibly happy to find this and I hope it helps someone.

Next week: 2016 in review.  ...just for me personally in regards to writing, not the year in general, because damn, that would be depressing.  O_o