Helpful Writer's Links

Helpful links from this week:

http://alexisgrant.wordpress.com

* What’s a book club hustler? An author who markets her work to book clubs by showing up in person. Sounds fun, albeit a lot of work. On that same note, author Galen Kindley offers practical advice about how to find book clubs open to author visits and prepare for the meetings.

* Quips and Tips brings you Tips for developing your writer’s voice. How-tos like this on literary voice are hard to come by, probably because voice is difficult to explain and teach.

* Penelope Trunk on staying disciplined. More reasons why it’s important to stay focused and on track with my writing every day.

* While documenting her path to publication, writer Jody Hedlund explains the slew of committees her book has to go through before (hopefully) publisher acceptance.

* From Writer’s Digest, a post on the power of networking: That Unquantifiable Factor that Helps You Get Published and Succeed.

* A blog worth checking out: 1st Books: Stories of How Writers Get Started. It’s both inspiring and informative.

* Lastly, a post from author Janice Hardy about why you should kill your prologue. This spoke to me because I killed my prologue months ago, after realizing that I fell into her category #3, thinking that it had more oomph to grab readers than the first chapter. But that was taking the easy way out. As she writes, instead “make your first chapter sing.”