This week, I have some interesting links for you:
Dave Farland on Avoiding terrible advice. He has a weekly newsletter, and when he’s judging Writers of the Future, you’ll get a lot of insight into the slush pile.
10 Rules for Writing Fiction: This is not as bad as the title implies. It’s got lists from many different writers, including some recognizable names. But scroll down first and look at Roddy Dowell’s, and then Neil Gaiman. Take it all with a heaping of salt and a laugh.
How to Write a Novel in One Draft: A writer breaks down Dean Wesley’s Smith’s methods for producing a novel in one draft.
Are you making your writing harder than it is? I’ve heard plenty of writers talk about writing as if it were tortorous. They’re making it harde than it is.
And to finish up with a smile, The Writer’s Dog.
Linda Maye Adams 
Wow. “Break” is exactly the right word to use regarding how August Birch misrepresented DWS’s Writing into the Dark technique.
As I responded to his article (in part)
Writing “fast” isn’t a matter of being in a hurry. It’s a matter of spending time in the chair. If you write only 17 words per minute (can you come up with 17 words in a minute?) that’s 1000 words per hour. If you spend four hours in the chair, you write 4000 words per day. If you write 4000 words per day, even only 5 days per week, that’s 20,000 words per week and 80,000 words per month.
AND what you put out will be in your original voice, not something that’s polished to look like everything else in the slushpile.
Writing into the Dark does indeed require a change of mindset. It means you have to trust yourself, and it means you have to trust the characters to tell the story they (not you) are living.
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