My Blogroll – More than just links

Let’s talk about the blog roll for a minute. That’s it, right there on the left, above the Podcast links I’ve been talking about so much.

Last night was my regular writing group critique meeting (an offshoot from the Atlanta Writers Club). As I commented on each piece read, I often referred to the writing knowledge I’ve gleaned over time from the numerous wonderful blogs I follow regularly. There are more of them than I’ve included in my Blogroll – for now, it contains only the ones I follow most religiously. But, over time, I will continue to add to it and try to comment in a new post each time I do.

For now, I present for your enjoyment some wonderful blogs on writing:

First up is Writer Unboxed. A big part of what makes this one so great is the way it’s organized. There are two founders, Kathleen Bolton and Therese Walsh, a number of monthly contributors (check out the list on the left of their site) and they also accept guest posts (not sure what the criteria is for qualifying to contribute a guest post, but I imagine Kathleen and Therese function as gatekeepers here, because the quality is always high). The result? Very frequent, high quality posts on writing. Which is great, because I know I can always go there for fantastic writing advice.

Next let’s discuss Neil Gaiman. Everybody I know lists Mr. Gaiman as one of their favorite writers, and I’m no exception. His is the very first blog I started following. At first I was following him, his work, as a reader and a fan. But I noticed he occasionally offered writing advice as well as unique insights into publishing and the writer’s life. It’s just a great blog in general, though recently he’s started posting less as Twitter has pulled him more and more into its dark clutches. Still, when he does post, I always enjoy.

My favorite part of There Are No Rules, the Writer’s Digest-affiliated site run by Jane Friedman, is the Best Tweets for Writers posts that come out every Monday. This is the place to go to link to all sorts of writing advice that came out during the past week (I’ve linked in the most recent one). Jane has a lot of other interesting things to say about social media and the future of publishing, but it’s those weekly summaries that I yearn for most. In fact, they sort of inspired my own weekly podcast update posts on this site.

Help! I Need a Publisher! is run by YA writer Nicola Morgan, from the UK. Her advice on writing is wide and varied, she runs contests, and has in general a crabbit old good time (check out her site if you don’t get crabbit).

Finally, for agent advice, nothing beats the Guide to Literary Agents, run by Chuck Sambuchino. There are lots of regular features on agents, including New Agent Alerts, Successful Queries and How I Got My Agent. Definitely check his site out if you’re at that point where you want to submit to agents and need advice.

Enjoy!