Links

More luscious links.

• I love the Alphabet Meme (writing blog posts about a subject starting with each letter, and going through, the alphabet). One of the best posts I’ve read so far is Fog City Writer’s K is for Korean Fish Market.
• P.s. Fog City Writer also has a great list of links this month.
• Going through revision? Tayari Jones has a great post on reading your editorial letter.
• Ouch. The truth hurts. Howard Junker’s blunt reply to assigned submissions.
• The Atlantic Summer Writing issue is out, with an article by Richard Bausch on “How to Write in 700 Easy Lessons.” Tongue firmly in cheek.
• Writers eat. Writers like to reward themselves with treats for chapters, revisions, word counts, submissions completed and reached. Or in my case, for no reason at all, as my novel languishes and gathers dust, awaiting my return for its revision. (Have I told you? I am REALLY SCARED and FREAKED OUT by revision. I have extended my vacation from novel revision). My apple cider doughnut craving squished, I now have a new food craving, Coconut & Lime’s dark and stormy cupcakes.
• How to lose blog readers over at Writerland.
• The old is old, and the new is new. Old/new blog rules (i.e., outdated blog rules and new rules to replace them). I hate “rules” for doing this or that, but this is a list that has a lot of common sense.
• Elizabeth Stark has an amazing video on How to Finish Writing Your Book over at Book Writing Secrets. I learned that I need a ton more support, because all I do is bash myself psychologically all day and cannot stop (maybe why revision is so daunting for me. I keep wanting to ruin myself). Sample quote:
  

  “The #1 reason people don’t finish their book is because they don’t understand their own writing process…apply your organic process to your writing.”

• I’m not here, but maybe you are. 10 questions to ask an agent before you sign.
• One of my Famous Writer professors told me in a flat and unimpressed voice (with what I remember as a fleck of pity), “That’s still a rejection” after I waved one of the famous AGNI literary rejections that say, “Please submit again. This is not our usual rejection.” Oh. That was true. Bubble popped but truth shone on me. Here’s more of the same blunt advice, as told by Betsy Lerner, literary agent. A rejection is a rejection is a rejection.
• And after my link on rejection…Just for laughs (esp funny if you have either a Korean mother, or something similar to one): A funny email from a Korean mother who’s learning to use email, who rarely writes English. (For the record, my mother, who is highly educated but educated in Korea, also writes very similar emails to me).