Category Archives: Helpful sites

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Favourite Helpful Writing Posts 2010

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Usually at the end of each month I do a roundup of the best helpful writing sites and blog posts I come across during the month. This month I will be doing things a little differently. For those who follow me on Twitter, or read my post from last week, you will know I have been a bit disconnected from the internet this past month due to some bad news I received early in the month. For those who don’t follow me, I found out I lost my baby early this month and I’ve been having a hard time emotionally. I’m starting to get back into the swing of things now, but as a result of my disconnectedness from the net I haven’t collected many great sites this month to share. Instead I’ve decided to do a roundup of a few of my favourite posts from throughout the year, ones I thought were so helpful I bookmarked them for future reference.

Helpful Writing Posts

Key Elements of Strong Fiction

Shennandoah Diaz writes about creating the foundation of strong fiction by establishing dynamic characters, an intriguing plot, a compelling voice, and a vibrant setting. She gives great examples to illustrate her points.

Top 8 Tips for Writing Dialogue

Ginny Wiehardt outlines eight ways you can improve your dialogue so it sounds more realistic, advances the story and fleshes out your characters.

Dialogue Tags

A great little reminder on the correct use of dialogue tags with examples of correct and incorrect usage.

Evil Overlords Lists

An excerpt from Teresa Neilsen Hayden’s lecture on ‘Stupid Plotting Tricks’ giving a look at cliches revolving around villains and the genres of science fiction and fantasy.

Counting Chickens: A Few Words About Word Counts

For anyone writing any form of kidlit (from picture books to young adult  novels), Hope Vestergaard’s post is handy to bookmark as a reminder on appropriate word counts for kidlit.

Workshop: Writing the Novel Synopsis

For any writer who dreads writing a novel synopsis or isn’t sure how to go about writing one, this workshop by Sheila Kelly shows you how to write a synopsis. She outlines the main elements you need to include and how to format it.

Helpful Writing PDFs

Book in a Month Worksheets

These worksheets are primarily geared towards planning for NaNoWriMo, but they are great planning tools for anyone thinking about starting a new novel idea. There’s a planning sheet for everything from story idea maps to character sketches to act one, two and three plot goals.

Eleven Senses – Who Knew?

I’ve mentioned this resource a few times on this blog. It outlines not only the five main senses we use, but six extra ones as well. It includes some writing exercises using the various senses and a great list of words for each sense (so you don’t always have to fall back on the same old sense words all the time, like saw and heard).

I hope everyone is enjoying their holidays and you all have a happy and safe new year!

Currently writing, Helpful sites, Just for fun, NaNoWriMo, Queries, Writing skills and techniques

Helpful Sites November 2010 edition + NaNoWriMo Results!

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I have to start this post by yelling very loudly “I DID IT!” I reached 50,000 words on the 30th November (today) at 4.10pm Australian time. I’d actually fallen behind my word goal the last few days, meaning I had to write around 2,100 words today to hit 50k. It was very exciting putting my 50,000 words into the NaNoWriMo word count evaluator and receiving my winner’s certificate. Thank-you so much to everyone who cheered me on and supported me throughout the month of November. And in case you don’t believe me, here’s my NaNoWriMo page (complete with my final word count).

Now onto the helpful websites and blog posts for the month of November. There aren’t quite as many as usual, since I’ve been writing more than scouting for sites, but there were a few good ones. I’ve even included a few at the end for those finishing up NaNoWriMo and in need of a laugh.

Resource Roundup – NaNoWriMo Edition

The bluestocking blog did a great round up of helpful and insightful posts relating to NaNoWriMo earlier in the month, but there are quite a few helpful writing links in there worth checking out even though NaNo is now over.

Plotting Your Story

Brooke Johnson, self-proclaimed panster, outlines how she still does some plotting when she writes.

7 Things Your Characters Do Too Much

I know I’m guilty of a couple of these!

The Five Elements of a Novel Query

The first post in a blog series on writing novel queries, this post outlines the five elements that should be included in your query, and follows up with some examples.

5 Ways to Make Your Novel Helplessly Addictive

Five things you should be including on every page of your book to ensure your reader keeps on reading.

6 and 1/2 Ways to Impress an Agent

Literary agent Tina Wexler outlines six and a half ways to impress an agent.

And now for the fun stuff (because I know after writing 50k words in a month I need some relief)…

Lemony Snicket’s Pep Talk

Anyone who is an official NaNoWriMo participant would have got this in their inbox during November, but if you’re not an official participant or you never got around to opening the e-mail you should read this. Quite funny.

So You’ve Discovered That You’re A Fictional Character

Humourously outlines all those amateur mistakes we writers make when we first start writing by speaking with a fictional character who is the result of bad writing. (I’m sure a few of our NaNoWriMo characters are still in this stage until we go back and start editing.)

So You Want To Write A Novel

Weren’t we all that naive when we first started out, before we started reading agent blogs and realising there is more to writing than just slapping words on a page? I got a good giggle from this video.

A big congratulations to everyone who particpated in NaNoWriMo this month, whether you reached 50,000 words or not.

Currently writing, Guest Post, Helpful sites, NaNoWriMo, Writing skills and techniques

Guest Post – Writing Dialogue

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Today I’d like to welcome Catherine Johnson to my blog. Catherine is a writer whom I met through Write on Con a few months ago and we have since formed a picture book critique group together (along with some other writers we met through Write on Con). Catherine is currently beta reading my MG fantasy and giving me some great feedback.

Knowing I’m in the middle of pounding out 50000 words in a month for NaNoWriMo, Catherine kindly offered to do a guest post for my blog. So without further ado, here is Catherine with her post on writing dialogue.

Thank you to Jo for letting me guest post today. I chose to talk about dialogue and share some tips and trips. It’s something I am very interested in doing better and listening and reading good dialogue can only serve to help the cause. At the bottom of this post I have listed some of my favourite quotes from movies I watch with my kids all the time. I’m sure there are many more, if I had all day 🙂 There are 8 great tips on dialogue here: http://bit.ly/UZraC They are very specific and useful to try yourself.  Everyone likes to think their character’s say things that are true to life. Have a look at the tips on this site and check the against your writing:  http://bit.ly/9Q6DxY All those of us with young children are lucky that the first few tips are already taken care of. I like the last one, I might try that with my main characters. Another useful post on the subject is here:  http://bit.ly/a7hQMH discussing expository dialogue, a common pitfall of writing dialogue.
Absorb all the dialogue you hear around (without being too nosy! coughs) especially from tv shows and films. Reading is also an obvious example. Have you ever read a picture book, for example, and only concentrated on the dialogue? Are there books in the library that seem to have more dialogue than others? Analyse it and see if it appears natural and see how it fits in with all those tips and tricks above. And now I’ll leave you with some of my favourite lines from movies I watch way too much!

The Bee Movie
Vanessa Bloom “It’s very hard to concentrate with that panicky tone in your voice.”
Bee Vincent “It’s not a tone. I’m PANICKING!”

Space Chimps
HAM “When are you going to stop worrying about me dad? Space is in my veins.”
Dad “And between your ears.”
—————
“Chimp up cannonball. You’re not in the circus anymore.”
————–
HAM “You’re not going to do that the whole trip are you?”
Friend “What?”
HAM “Use Chimps to replace real phrases.”
————-
HAM “I do this every day of the week (sky dive) except Monday. That’s my me day.” (I particularly like this one!)
“…this rug isn’t going to cut itself.”

G-Force
“Hey I’m nine inches tall,I only see the up-side.”

Catherine

Thank-you so much, Catherine, for your post. You’ve provided some great links. If anyone would like to check out Catherine’s blog, you can find it here: Kangaroobee’s Blog

P.S. A little update on my NaNoWriMo progress: I started out with a slow week, I was finding it hard to get motivated for the story I planned, even though I knew what I wanted to write. Yesterday I decided to throw that story in and started something completely new. I wrote more yesterday on the new story than I had all week on the first one. I’m feeling a great deal more motivation now.

Helpful sites, NaNoWriMo, Picture Books, Queries, Writing skills and techniques

Helpful Writing Sites and Blog Posts – October 2010 Edition

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For this month’s helpful writing sites post I’m going to put the links under two sections. The first section will be sites and blog posts specific to NaNoWriMo since I’ve come across a few of these in the lead up to NaNoWriMo and the other section will be for general writing sites and blog posts, so if you’re not doing NaNoWriMo you can just skip down to that section (of course quite a few the NaNoWriMo specific links have some great information for all writers, so they’re worth a look anyway).

NaNoWriMo

Official NaNoWriMo Site

This is where you sign up if you want to be an official participant in NaNoWriMo. You can set up a bio page, connect with fellow NaNoWriMoers and find out information about National Novel Writing Month. There’s also a handy link to the forums.

NaNoWriMo Forums

If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo and haven’t already checked out the forums you should. There are a multitude of groups you can join, from age specific groups to genre specific groups. If you put in your location when you signed up there should also be a subforum visible for your area where you can connect with others near you and find out about local events like write-ins. There are also many threads that will prove to be helpful once the madness of November begins.

NaNo Notebook

One NaNoWriMoer describes a great way to organise a novel notebook in preparation for NaNoWriMo. At the end of the post she also includes some links to some writing tools that can be found online.

5 Reasons You Should Do NaNoWriMo

Still undecided if you should do NaNoWriMo or not? There’s still time to join! Johanna Penn lists some great reasons why NaNoWriMo is beneficial to any writer. I agree with every one of them.

Write or Die

I used this tool last year for NaNoWriMo and I don’t think I could have got as much written as I did without it. The idea is you have to keep writing until you reach the amount of time/words you set or you get ‘punished’. The punishments range from mild (an annoying noise) to severe (it starts erasing what you’ve written!). You get one pause, but once you’ve used it you can’t use it again for that session. I would use this one a lot if I got writers block, because it forced me to just write. It is also good if you are so many words off reaching your word goal for the day, as you can set the word goal you want to reach and just keep writing until you get to that goal. Don’t forget to copy and paste into your Word doc when your session is over.

General

Know Your Female Character Stereotypes

Wondering if your female character is stereotypical or original? Try this flowchart. Start at the start and answer the questions truthfully to see where your character falls.

Three Essential Tips for Writing a Publishable Novel

This post outlines three quick tips you can apply to write a publishable novel.

12 Common Picture Book Mistakes

A list of common errors picture book writers make.

The #1 culprit of Why Pitch Paragraphs in Adult or Children’s SF&F Query Letters Miss

As well as outlining the number one culprit of rejection of science fiction and fantasy book queries, agent Kristen also includes a list of the top ten reasons why SF&F query letters get rejected.

Top 25 Reasons Your Submissions Are Rejected

A list of reasons why agents and publishers reject writers’ submissions.

Does Your Book Have Series Potential?

This post was a lead-in to a scribechat that took place in early October, so the topic of whether your book has series potential isn’t discussed in this post. It does however have a handy little list describing the different types of series that exist.

Good luck to everyone participating in NaNoWriMo this year. For me it starts tomorrow! I’ll keep you updated on my progress throughout November.

Helpful sites, Just for fun, Picture Books, Queries, Writing skills and techniques

Helpful Writing Sites and Blog Posts – September 2010 Edition

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The end of the month is here, so it’s time for my monthly round-up of helpful writing sites and blog posts.

The Writing Process

Stories That Cross Borders and Boundaries

Tips for writing multicultural fiction.

Keeping Pace: Maintaining Momentum in Fiction

This article is based on a session from Aussiecon4. An in-depth look at creating effective pacing in your novel.

Fixing Character Errors

Heather McCorkle offers a few tips and tricks for keeping track of you character details so you don’t end up with inconsistencies.

5 Ways to Make Your Novel Unforgettable

Editor A. Victoria Mixon lists the main elements of getting to the climax of your novel in an engaging and unforgettable way.

The Worst Mistake A Writer Can Make

I know this is something I’m guilty of doing. I sit hunched over at my computer for hours at a time and I wonder why I get a sore back and neck. This is a post all writers should read and remember. Some great advice for those of us who spend a lot of time writing at our computers.

Picture Books

The Top 3 Considerations and Top 3 Pitfalls of Children’s Picture Books

Although this post is primarily aimed at those self-publishing picture books, there are some valid points in this post for all picture book writers to consider.

Writing Picture Books

A great an in-depth overview on the various elements that go into writing a picture book. I love the diagram included at the end.

Word Counts for Picture Books

Casey McCormick has compiled a post on appropriate word counts for picture books based on her knowledge as an agent intern and research (she lists her sources at the end of the post if you want to check them out).

Query Shark #178

It’s nice to see some posts on writing pb queries starting to surface around the web. When I wrote my post on pb queries a while back there weren’t many posts specifically relating to pb queries at all. Thank-you Query Shark for ripping apart a pb query this month!

Picture Book Queries

Kidlit agent Mary Kole has also posted on pb queries this month. She describes how pb queries need to be simple and gives an example. (Where were these insightful posts two months ago when I was writing my pb query?)

Pitching

How to Write a Logline

A short simple post on how to craft a logline for your novel.

Writing a Logline/The One-Sentence Pitch

This post goes a little more in-depth into writing a logline. It sets out the elements of a hook line and gives examples.

Social Media

Should Writers Talk About Their Rejections

A post tackling the issue of how much a writer should share of their rejections on social media.

10 Ways to Create a Better ‘About Page’ for Your Blog

If a publisher or agent comes across your blog and checks out your ‘About Page’ you want to present yourself in the most effective way possible. This post tells you how you can do just that.

Just for Fun

How to Write a Novel

A funny (and embarrassingly true) look at the journey of a writer.

Against Promotional Author Photographs

I laughed when I read this post as I recognised all the ‘author poses’ listed. As well as being a funny look at the typical ‘author pose’, it also made me determined to make sure I come up with something original when I do my own ‘author pose’ one day!

There’s a bit of a focus on picture books this month, but hopefully there is something here for writers from all genres/stages of writing.

Contest, Helpful sites, Just for fun

Blogiversary Celebrations: Part Two – Award Ceremony

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Welcome to the first ever The Graceful Doe Blogiversary Award Ceremony! It’s nice to see everyone dressed in their finest.  Now that everyone is seated let the award ceremony begin.

Over the past year I have visited numerous sites on writing, querying, etc. Many of those sites and posts have contained lots of great information and some of those great sites and posts I have shared on my blog. The awards to be presented today go to those who I have kept returning to over and over again, who give great advice or tips to writers, and who are just all around fabulous people.

Just over a year ago I discovered how much the internet had to offer aspiring authors. At that time I had decided to get serious about writing a novel and found a lot of great sites with information just right for the helping me begin my serious writing journey. So the first award is the Best Site for New Writers award. This award goes to a site offering helpful advice to those writers who may just be starting out. A site that covers the writing basics, such as writing effective dialogue and character building, in an easy to understand approach. This award goes to…

Barry Lyga’s blog barrylyga.com

For those who don’t know, the majority of my writing falls into the category of kid lit, that is, writing aimed at children and teens. As a result, I read a lot of blogs and posts relating to kid lit. This next award is for the Best Site for Kid Lit Writers. This award is for a site that covers the various aspects of writing picture books, chapter books, middle grade and young adult, giving writers of kid lit great advice to help improve their writing and querying. This award goes to…

Mary Kole’s blog kidlit.com

Query writing is something many writers agonise over, which is why it’s great that there are so many insightful blogs and websites out there offering advice. This next award is for the Best Query Advice Site. It’s for a site dedicated to helping writers write effective queries. With her brutal honesty and dedication to helping writers get their queries right, this award goes to…

The Query Shark (aka Janet Reid) at queryshark.blogspot.com

In the past year I have come across some of the loveliest literary agents. They are willing to take time to tweet and blog about querying and writing for the benefit of writers to help them along their journey towards publication. The Best Agent Site award is for a blog or website of a literary agent that offers advice and encouragement to aspiring authors. And the award goes to…

Rachelle Gardner and her blog cba-ramblings.blogspot.com

And as many lovely agents as there are about, there are just as many lovely agent interns. From tweeting about the query pile to blogging helpful hints for writers, agent interns are a great resource for aspiring authors. The award for Best Agent Intern Site is for a blog offering advice to writers, including not just advice on query letters, but other aspects of writing too. This award goes to…

Cassandra Marshall’s blog www.camarshall.com

Still on the topic of agents, anyone who follows the #queries hashtag or #askagent hashtag (or any similar hashtags) on Twitter knows that there are agents and agent interns out there giving great advice to writers on Twitter. I have a long list of agents and agent interns I follow on Twitter and all of them are only too willing to help out aspiring authors. I just had to include an award for the Best Agent to Follow on Twitter. This award is for an agent on Twitter who regularly tweets valuable advice to writers. The award goes to…

Natalie Fischer @Natalie_Fischer

There are a lot of great Twitter chats for writers. There are chats to discuss the craft of writing, writing genres, querying and a multitude of other topics. I considered doing an award for the best writer chat, but then I had another idea. Instead this award is for the Friendliest Writer Chat. This award is for a chat where you are bound to meet the friendliest writers around, who are always willing to offer support to their fellow writers and are only to happy to share links and resources with each other. The award goes to the very friendly…

#pblitchat (run by two lovely ladies known on Twitter as @KarenCollum and @KatApel)

Writer forums offer great support for writers. Apart from offering a way to connect with fellow writers, these forums are places where you can have your writing or queries critiqued, find out information about the writing industry, or, if you are really lucky, even find an agent for your book. The award for Best Writer Forum goes to a site that offers all these things as well as supporting and encouraging emerging writers. The award goes to…

YA Lit Chat at yalitchat.ning.com

And now we get to a couple of more personal awards. Critique groups and critique partners help writers see plot holes, character flaws and poor word choice a writer may have overlooked. They read a manuscipt with fresh eyes, reading it how a reader would read and understand the story without the bias the writer him/herself have, yet at the same time because they are writers themselves they can also look at the manuscript and tell the writer not just that something isn’t working, but why it isn’t working. This past few months I have been swapping chapters with a critique partner and I think she is deserving of the award for Awesome Critique Partner. The award goes to…

Beth Hull (you can find her blog here)

The last award today goes to someone who I’ve been collaborating with the past couple of weeks to bring you all a 5 page critique contest, someone who is also celebrating her 1st blogiversary today. The award for Best Blogiversary Buddy goes to…

Peevish Penman (aka Carrie Bailey – find her blog here)

And that concludes The Graceful Doe’s first ever Blogiversary Award Ceremony.

More blogiversary celebrations still to come (including the winners of the blogiversary contest).

Helpful sites, Queries, Writing skills and techniques

Helpful Writing Sites and Blog Posts – August 2010 Edition

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It’s that time of the month again, time to give a round-up of all the helpful writing sites and blog posts I’ve come across in the past month. I have quite a few this month so I’ll break them up into categories.

WRITING TIPS

Bring Your Characters to Life

Some great ideas on how to really get into your character’s head and make him/her come alive.

How to Write About a Real Location if You Haven’t Been There

Joanna Penn gives some ideas on how to write a location even if you’ve never been there.

Act First, Explain Later

Twelve dos and don’ts for writing a compelling first page.

Tension

Spawned from the #storycraft chat on tension, this post talks about ‘The Knitting Exercise’. By applying this exercise to your novel you can check to see how well tension is working in your novel. You can even apply it to your outline before you start writing.

In A Series, Foreshadowing A Character

Using the Harry Potter series as an example, this post shows how characters can be foreshadowed in a series before making their major appearance.

Tips For Writing A Great Second Draft of You Novel

Five tips for those who have finished the first draft and are ready to start editing.

Make Your Characters Earn Their Keep

Author Wendy Lyn Watson offers a trick for weeding out unnecessary characters.

GETTING READY TO SUBMIT

20 Questions to Ask Before Submitting Your Work

A great checklist for making sure your writing is perfectly polished.

Top Ten Novel Writing Mistakes

Check this list to make sure your novel doesn’t contain any of these common errors.

What Writers Wish They’d Known Before Pitching

A list of 12 things that matter to agents and editors when being pitched by writers.

Are You Ready To Submit Your Novel?

This post covers three critical elements to knowing if your work is ready to submit.

Are We Done Yet?

How do you know if your writing is as polished as it can get and is ready to submit? This post covers ways to know it’s ready and ways to know if it’s not ready.

Write on Con Forums

Even though Write on Con is over for this year the forums are still open. If you write picture books, middle grade or young adult there are sections for each where you can get critique or connect with fellow writers.

QUERIES/SYNOPSES/AGENT ADVICE

Writing the Dreaded Synopsis

Author Ebony McKenna gives some helpful advice on writing a novel synopsis.

Some Query Mistakes

Agent intern Amie (who also does great query sessions on Twitter using the hashtag #queryslam) lists 4 big mistakes you should avoid in your writing. And even though the post is titled ‘Some Query Mistakes’, the mistakes she lists can really be applied to your writing as a whole, not just your query letter or first five pages.

16 Reasons Why Your Manuscript Got Rejected Before Page 1

A former assistant editor outlines 16 common problems found in query letters and offers some solutions.

Interview with YA Agent Mary Kole

Mary gives some insightful answers to questions ranging from what she believes are the qualities of a successful manuscript to what books she would recommend to hone your writing skills.

How to Ensure 75% of Agents Will Request Your Material

This post caused a little bit of controversy, and not everyone agrees the 75% request rate is accurate, but nonetheless Marcus Sakey makes some noteworthy points.

How To Write A Query Letter

Agent Nathan Bransford outlines how to write a query letter. This is a really good post for anyone in the process of writing a query letter as it has lots of great information on the steps involved, from researching the right agent to the most important points to include in your letter.

AUTHOR PLATFORMS

10 Things Authors Should Never Blog About

Some things authors should remember when blogging.

ENCOURAGEMENT/MOTIVATION

Don’t You Dare Give Up

I quoted this in a blog post last week, but I thought it was worth linking to it again. Agent Natalie Fischer gives some encouragement to all of us querying and facing rejection.

50 Strategies For Making Yourself Work

If anyone else is like me, procracstination and distraction can sometimes get in the way of getting writing done. This post has lots of ways you can stop the distractions and get down to writing.

Happy Potter Day

In celebration of J.K. Rowling’s birthday (and her of course Harry Potter’s birthday too) last month, Harry Potter for Writers posted some quotes from J.K. Rowling relating to her writing journey, including some on getting rejected and being persistent.

P.S. Speaking of birthdays, my blog is fast approaching its 1st birthday and to celebrate I will be announcing a contest in one week, so be sure to check back.

Conferences, Helpful sites, Queries

Write on Con Follow Up – Now It’s Over

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What a week! Any time I had a spare moment I was checking out all the newly posted topics on Write on Con or visiting the forums to critique or be critiqued. Here is a run down of some of my favourite parts of the conference:

1. The vlogs. Apart from the great opening song that played at the start of all the blogs (Song 2 by Blur), it was great to sit back and imagine I was sitting at a real conference while I listened to the experts speaking about topics ranging from querying to character collages. I especially liked the vlogs because of a night time when my eyes were getting too tired to read the words on the screen I could just listen. One of my favourite vlogs was Romance in YA by Lisa Shroeder, I loved the acronym she came up with and it will definitely be helping me inject more realistic romance into my YA writing.

2. The live chats. Although I missed most of these because I’m in Australia and the timing usually worked out to be the very early morning hours for me, I did manage to catch one in real time. And fortunately the ones I missed were still able to be accessed afterwards as transcripts or videos. In particular the agent live chats were very informative. My favourite was probably Natalie Fischer’s live chat. I didn’t get to see it in real time, but watched it afterwards. She was just lovely and answered lots of questions. It was a very informative session.

3. The critiques. I got so much fantastic critique from everyone on the queries and first five pages I posted. And best of all a few of my fellow PB writers and I are now forming a critique group together after ‘meeting’ at the conference.

4. So many great topics! I still haven’t finished looking at all the ones I wanted to, but the ones I’ve read/listened to so far have all been so informative. Some of my favourites include: Plot and Pacing by Weronika Janczuk (particularly part 2); Writing Middle Grade by Jon Lewis (almost made me want to change my YA novel to Middle grade!); Pie-in-the-Face (how characters react to situations) by Rosemary Clement-Moore (very funny vlog); and any of Joanna Volpe’s query critiques.

And the very best part? Write on Con has given a big injection of motivation to write and keep on writing. I’ve taken so much away from the conference and I’m bursting to use all my newly gained knowledge in my writing.

I can’t wait to read the remaining topics I haven’t had a chance to look at yet. If you haven’t had a look at any of the Write on con topics yet it’s not too late, you can find them all in the August archives on the website: Write on Con

The forums have taken on a new look following the conference. All the conference sections are grouped together and some new sections have cropped up, including new critique sections and discussion areas for PB, MG and YA writers. Write on Con Forums

I can’t wait until Write on Con 2011!

Conferences, Helpful sites, Queries, Writing skills and techniques

Write On Con Starts in 12 Hours

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Write on Con – the free online conference for writers – starts in twelve hours. The first event will be posted at 6am EDT (US)/ 8pm AEST (Aus). I’m getting very excited, especially since this will be my first writers conference! You can check out the schedule here:

Write on Con Schedule of Events

There’s lots of great things happening, including some live chats with literary agents (just make sure you read the chat rules). I’ve already got my highlighter out and highlighted everything I want to attend (which is just about everything). It’s just a shame some of the live chats will be the middle of the night for me.

You can find all the general information on the Write on Con website (where everything conference related will be taking place):

Write on Con

And if you haven’t checked out the forums yet, there have been a few exciting announcements in the last few days (including an opportunity to have your query critiqued in a live blogging event with agent Natalie Fischer!). You can find the forums here:

Write on Con Forums

Only 12 hours to go…

Conferences, Helpful sites, Queries, Writing skills and techniques

Write On Con – Writer’s Conference

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My critique partner tipped me off about Write on Con and I’m so glad she did. Write on Con is an online conference for writers taking place on the 10th, 11th and 12th of August. It is completely free to attend and all you have to do to register is join the Write On Con forums. This is a fantastic opportunity for several reasons:

There Is No Need To Travel

As someone living in rural Australia (and as someone with two young children) I find it difficult to travel to my closest major city (which is four hours away) to attend writer’s conferences there, it’s just not a viable option for me. And those big awesome writer’s conferences in the US are an impossibility. Being able to attend a conference from my own home, where I can still do the mum thing at the same time, is a great opportunity.

It’s Free!

Even if I could make it to my nearest major city for a conference, the cost for me is also a problem. Our family is just not in the financial position right now to justify my attending a conference (including all the costs of travel and accomodation that would go along with it). So the fact that it’s free is an extra bonus.

Get Critique

You only have to look at the forums to see there will be some great opportunities for working on your craft. Already there is a section open for practice critiques where you can post queries/pages of your writing to be critiqued by fellow attendees. It’s all about give and take. If you put something up for critique, be sure to offer critique to others. Once the conference begins there will be specific sections for query critiques, first five pages critiques, etc. And there will be agents about who may even weigh in on the critiques.

Connect With Fellow Writers

Another section of the forums that is already open is the Introductions section. Through the introductions section and the practice critiques I’ve already met quite a few fellow writers, some of us are even discussing setting up a critique group together. You can also pop by the Twitter roll call thread and include a link to your Twitter page.

I’ve also included links to my Twitter page and my blog in my signature –  a great way to get your name out there, especially if you actively participate.

Hear What The Pros Have To Say

When the conference starts there will be a section where pros will be talking about the industry. I’m looking forward to some great insight.

Classes

In addition to the forums there is also the Write On Con website. This is where all the ‘classes’ will be posted.

I’m really excited about taking part in this conferences and am looking forward to August 10th. For now it’s a great experience posting and critiquing in the practice critique section and meeting lots of new writers.

If you would love to take part in this great opportunity too, here is a link to the forums: Write On Con forums

Hopefully I’ll see you there!