Friday Finds for Writers

Treasure ChestWriting-related resources, news, and reflections to read over the weekend.

  • Just discovered (and have added to the blogroll) Essay Daily, “a space for ongoing conversation about essays & essayists of note, contemporary and not-so-much.” (h/t Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog)
  • Terrific piece by Daniel Nester, “Notes on a Mentor,” which is also a tribute to poet Afaa M. Weaver.
  • Ran across two items this week that together seemed to reflect the ambivalence I sometimes sense about my own situation as a writer with a day job: Amy Gutman’s “The Day Job is Having Its Moment” and Laura Maylene Walter’s “Security” (be sure to take note of the excerpt Walter includes from Heather Sharfeddin’s equally relevant post).
  • Carol Tice shares her “best book marketing tip for creating maximum buzz.”
  • It’s not that I’m glad that these writers didn’t attend my class at the Whidbey Writers Workshop low-res MFA program a couple of weeks back; it’s just that I’m delighted with the product of the session they chose to attend instead: recording a radio broadcast featuring their work. (Excellent weekend listening for you!)
  • Happy weekend, everyone!

    3 thoughts on “Friday Finds for Writers

    1. Thank you, Erika..
      perfectly wonderful marketing tip…love that it worked..love that you included it in today’s blog..

      huge hugs from the great green prairie..
      annielaural

    2. Ann-Louise Truschel says:

      Carol Tice’s “best book marketing tip” is actually one of the worst book marketing tips. I’ve seen a number of such posts on LinkedIn masquerading as “Discussions” when they are really promotions. I find the practice to be an insult to my intelligence. I flag such posts as “Promotion” when I see them. There are a few moderators who have begun to tell their users to post appropriately – Don’t post jobs or promotions under “Discussion.” LinkedIn is not Facebook.

    3. Erika Dreifus says:

      Thanks for your comments, Annielaural and Ann-Louise. I have to say that I didn’t read Carol’s post as recommending that authors post something “masquerading as ‘Discussions'” within a LinkedIn Group. As I read her suggestion, the idea is to seek advice from one’s network connections via individual messages (albeit messages sent to many/all people in one’s network). Isn’t that different from posting within a group? (I tend to be pretty strict about my LinkedIn connections, too–I only connect with people I really have interacted with, so my sense is that those first-degree connections might actually be willing to read such a message from me.)

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