"Writer's porn"

I've ordered this book because I'm at this point with my YA novel where...well, frankly, I'm not actively writing it, but I'm ready to. I'm excited about the story and wishing i hadn't gone to California in January so I could take a week and go to some magical place and write. That I might do next year, but this year, I am stuck with the constraints of real life, which means fitting writing in to a full-time job, part-time blogging, freelancing, dating, family, social life, etc. Not easy when you're a natural procrastinator. But I could and do come up with zillions of excuses not to work and none of them are good ones. Ultimately, if you want to do something, you will do it. I know that very, very well.

I read novelist Justine Musk's blog Tribal Writer for inspiration to work, and she writes of Alan Watts' The 90-Day Novel:

I like to think of writing fiction as a difficult and intricate kind of magic.
Magic = skills + art.

You need to learn a rather stunning array of skills, whether it’s the rules of decent grammar or the principles of storytelling, and then you need to transform them into something your own. The dancer becomes the dance. You don’t see the plot points, you only experience story.

So I love to read books and articles about how to write fiction. I think of it as writer’s porn.

So I guess we'll see. My goal is to be done with my novel by Labor Day. I hope this book can guide me in the right direction of how to pull off these characters who are less than half my age and live in an age of technology I couldn't have imaged as a teenager, and barely can now (it's a contemporary, but technology plays a huge role).

You can also check out the90daynovel.com

Novels and short stories in mental health and running terms according to John McCaffrey

From Bang the Keys author Jill Dearman's interview with John McCaffrey at the Barnes & Noble site - found via Jill's site bangthekeys.com:

JD: How is writing a novel different from writing a short story?

JM: I also work in the mental health field, and I often think that writing a novel is like being in long-term therapy, where you lay on the couch twice a week and sob about the time your mother made you wear a bib to school (not that that happened to me). Short story writing, on the other hand, is like being in crisis counseling – you just need a few sessions to get through a tough period. I’ll spin another analogy - I feel you must approach the writing of a novel with the determination of a marathon runner, prepare for it with diligence, and then once the gun sounds fight to the finish line. A short story is more a sprint, and a good sprinter runs on nerve just as much as legs. I also think that unlike a short story you can meander in a novel, take more sidetracks, since the reader has made a commitment to a longer work, and thus will conceivable go with you in your fictional travels – as long as you invite them nicely.

How to get published in my erotica anthologies

Some erotica writing advice in my latest column - also, I think I forgot it in the latest round of writing guidelines, but DON'T send more than one version of the same story. Send your BEST work, not your worst or an unfinished draft (sounds obvious but happens all the time and people don't realize that I'm reading and making a draft of the manuscript as I go, so you waste my time, I don't appreciate it at all).