Tuesdays with Alex

On Tuesdays, you'll find me posting at our team blog, Adventures in Writing. I hope you'll dash over and check us out...AND tell me what you think about it.

And since I posted today about blogging format, content, and white space, I'm truly curious about what you have to say.

Spreading the Link Love

Following the example of Interminable Writer (who evidently got it from Juiced on Writing), I'm spreading a little Link Love. "What is Link Love?" you ask. Well, it's an organized method of finding like minded people ... mainly writers who write and blog and have a life, too ... and crowing about them. Singing their praises. Bringing curious readers to their deserving pages.

Spreading the Link Love:

Step One: Explore some writerly blogs from the list below that have merit. Expand your horizons.

Step Two: Comment on their pages. Leave your calling card. (Commit to a couple new blogs per day, if you choose.)

Step Three: Copy the links below into your own post. Add your writing buddies to the list.

Step Four: Post. Continue exploring these various writers. Build a bigger network. Learn. Consider. Ruminate. Mull over. Disagree. Enlarge. Engage. Extrapolate. Join. Converse. Be.

Alex Moore All Things Good Anthony Pacheco: Hack Writer Selonus Writing Career Coach Nick Daws’ Writing Blog The Ups, Downs and Sometimes Insane World of Freelance Writing The Writer’s Roadmap Grammar Girl Cute Writing Tumblemoose The Writers Manifesto Blog Murder & Magnolias The Fictorium Writer…Interrupted Pix-N-Pens Juiced on Writing Girls Write Out Novel Journey Write Thinking Confident Writing A Life in Pages Write to Done Foxy Writer Story Hack Writing Journey Advanced Fiction Writing Scribereglyph No Excuses, Just Write Rantings and Ravings of an Insane Writer A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing Acme Authors At Home, Writing The Rejecter A Writer’s Edge Remarkable Communication Men with Pens Freelance Parent The Golden Pencil Ink in my Coffee Inkthinker All the Write Stuff BK Birch’s Writers Blog Chronicling the Novel Freelance Writing Jobs eWrite Life Miss Snark The Renegade Writer Writing White Papers Pub Rants The Well-Fed Writer Writer Beware Blogs! Gotta Write Girl PoeWar Tip Booklets 1WriteWay Enriched by Words To Breathe Underwater Annie on Writing The Interminable Writer Just Another Writing Blog Not Enough Words Paperback Writer Writing Time Writer Dad Pocket Full of Words Tech for Writers Writing with Zette The First Book Buzz Balls and Hype Big Bad Book Blog Diary of a Wordsmith Freelance Writing Tips Inky Girl The Urban Muse Mike’s Writing Workshop Write to Travel Something She Wrote Wordcount Write-From-Home Writing the Cyber Highway Write on Wednesday Writer’s Roundabout The Writer’s Technology Companion Writer Unboxed Backstory Editorial Anonymous Murder She Writes SlushPile.Net WOW - Women on Writing Rejection is My Middle Name Emerging Writers Network Writing Power Writing Hermit Write Anything Always Try a Little Harder Pecked by Ducks Bookends LLC - A Literary Agent writerjenn Daily Writing Tips Freedom from the Mundane The View from Here Out of Thin Air Shari Writes Writing for Your Wealth Into the Quiet Editorial Ass A Writer’s World Interminable Writer

Five Steps to Effective Blogging Transfers to Articles

Rather out of the blue, I decided to pen a series of articles. I have a specific audience in mind and certain magazines that I want to target. Incidentally, I know little about non-fiction writing. The few things I do know include the following: one normally queries before one writes the article, one typically has sample articles to send in, and one is usually an expert (or has interviewed experts) in the subject to be written about. I'm currently zero for three.

In thinking it over, however, it occurred to me that keeping a blog teaches a variety of skills needed in the non-fiction world. If you're self-disciplined, if you've perused other blogs to see what catches your eye then replicated the patterns on your own, and if you've read articles on effective blogging, well, then, you're already on the right track. (Disclaimer: This is not to insinuate that I know anything about effective blogging.)

Five Steps to Effective Blogging:

1. Review your own blog: look at the posts that have garnered the most comments.
2. Do you have a catchy hook, five (or three or ten) easy steps, and a conclusion?
3. Is your language clear yet lyrical or full of imagery or simply succinct?
4. Consider the layout: do you use bullets, numbering, and other format buttons effectively?
5. Do you separate long stretches of prose with spaces or pictures or lists?

Well, then, you're ready to turn your blogging skills into cold, hard cash. Or something like that. Oh, I know. You're a fiction writer. You pen fantasy or sci fi or chick lit or whatever. I understand that. I'm there with you. But peruse a call for submissions sometime. See what tickles your fancy. Most magazines pay by the word or the article. Best of all, it's a way to get your name in print, which is precisely what that last paragraph in a query requires.

The Writer Gazette is a website with a ton of resources for writers. My favorite part is the Call for Submissions page jam-packed full of magazines looking for writers of talent. I've read your blogs. I've read many of the magazines. I have zero doubt in my mind that most -- if not all -- of you on my blogroll have not only the skills but also that delightful mastery of word-smithing integral to successful writing. Just think on it...You might surprise yourself.