Thursday linkage

And with all that time on my hands, I've clicked on some links that I absolutely LOVED.

First, an interview with Michael Crichton and his editor, Bob Gottlieb, on the editing process of The Andromeda Strain, courtesy of Sarah Weinman. Priceless.

For fun, a wonderful and wonderfully weird video of a cappella singing (a group named Moosebutter) to John William's music, about Star Wars. Yes. I mean it. It's fabulous.

Last, Sharpie Art. Because why not, really.

Enjoy.

Link Festival

Some amazingly interesting stuff going on this week!

• Maggie Stiefvater's kickass YA faerie novel, Lament, comes out today!
• YA author Kelly Parra's launching her new book, Invisible Touch, with a Secret Fates Extravaganza. Go see! And watch the video.
  
• Janet Reid (okay, yes, my fabulous agent) has a blog post about the questionable decision of Northern Illinois University Press to exclude agented writers from submission. A firestorm of comments ensued. (warning: don't look unless you have lots of time!)
  
• Last but not least, Moonrat, aka Editorial Ass, is raffling off her editorial services to benefit a friend with cancer. Full of awesomeness.

Back to work!

Apparently it's a linkage Monday...

Partly because I have that floaty-head coming-down-with-a-cold feeling, and I can't manage to post my own stuff. Mostly because the Internet Wisdom is awesome today.

Read Jackson Pearce's post on the friends every writer needs.

Read this!

Later, if I can, I want to post about Child, and new lack of tooth. In the meantime, go read Jennifer Lynn Barnes' post. The woman speaks the truth. (I don't even know her, but I read the whole post and nodded all the way through! YES!)

If you're a writer, you must read this

Now. Go on.

http://libba-bray.livejournal.com/36896.html

Friday Linkage of Awesomeness

YES, Maureen Johnson! YES YES YES! There are no muses! It is WORK! I particularly adore this bit about one of your approaches to writing stalls, which I relate to more than I want to admit:

- Sending long, rambling notes to friends, saying how I have failed completely (again) and am going die of writing mange (again) and how my brain is stalled never to restart (again). This is a pleasant time-waster. Also, my friends LOVE it!

I am going out to buy a book of yours at lunch. Also love the Drunk History video muchly.

And YES Justine! Thank you for pointing me to Maureen's Death to Muses blog post, and for your own comments on said death.

Trouble is all the muse talk makes it sound like ideas and inspiration are the most important part of writing, which, sadly, is rubbish.

You are both in my Google Reader now.

And this weekend, Butte is hosting the National Folk Festival, a 3-day extravaganza of music, dancing, and booths selling ethnic food we have not seen in years. Or EVER, here. Butte is the Happening place, you see. It is the hot spot of the nation.

Friday linkage!

Melody has a last name! Poor thing. It's Ziditor.

Our family name--Dad's name--is Ziditor. It's Romanian for maker, or creator, and that's what we are. It's just my bad luck that it also sounds awfully like "zit".

--Last night we saw a wonderful TV show. I know, it's like an oxymoron, but it really was. This American Life, a PBS radio show, is now in its second season on Showtime, and we've been watching them on demand. The one we saw last night was a study of 6 men named "John Smith" at different ages: 11 weeks, 8, 23, 36, 46, 70, and 87. Wow. It was beautifully done, a real glimpse of this weird Life thing. See it if you can. Link about the show here: http://www.sho.com/site/thisamericanlife/episodes.do

--Editorial Anonymous is guest-blogging today at Editorial Ass about Rosemary Well's The Bunny Planet, one of my favorite kid's books, and about what it's really like to be a kid. Hubby and I were just talking about how you forget, as a grown-up, how little control kids have. Great post.

--And finally, THIS was in my head when I woke up this morning--we just watched the 2006 revival of COMPANY on video, and of all the songs this one stuck. {shrug} Still there, too.

Link Frenzy!

I'm finding so much stuff out there that's inspirational, interesting, and/or enlightening today that I'm going to share!

• First, if you haven't seen or read Barack Obama's "race speech", you can here. WOW. I fully supported him before, but now...maybe I'll join his campaign. :)
• Check out a touching, inspirational story from my wonderful friend A Novel Woman
• Janet Reid is talking about Nicholas Pekearo's book, released posthumously in May. I already pre-ordered my copy.
• Melissa Marr has a great post about why she writes
• Colleen Lindsay talks about the YA plots she sees too much of. Okay, that one could be depressing if you're working on one of those plots. But since I'm not... :)

Enjoy! I'm keeping my head down, as I seem to be on the downward race to the end with GG. At least I hope so!

Moving Forward

Whew.

I just updated all the side links--somehow, harder than it should have been. There are a lot of sites I've been visiting for a while in Google Reader that I just hadn't added to the list. (And oddly, considering that I had an issue with all the people entering my contest having names that begin with "J", I added 5 fellow writers to my sidebar, and 4 of them have J names. What is up? Am I drawn to J people?) Anyway, hope you enjoy. There's some wonderful stuff over there, almost daily.

In the past couple of days, I found myself drawing on a piece of advice Vicki gave me a long time ago.* It's one of those things I keep forgetting. Since it has been endlessly useful for me, I'll share it here:

Don't hold anything back for later in the book, or later in the series, or for another book. If you have a great idea, dump it in NOW. Another great idea will come in later for the next bit.

Even though I KNEW this, I was still holding onto a little tidbit, a plot direction, thinking it needed to wait for later. But I couldn't figure out what needed to happen now. And then I banged myself upside the head with this advice, threw the complication in without worrying about saving anything for later, and yup. It worked. Now I'm off on a whole new tangent, and I'm feeling the confidence again. Woo-hoo!

*See, Vicki? I gave you credit without prompting this time!