My goodness but this is going to be an intense linkfest. Are you ready?
Good.
LJ user “britpoptarts” posted an entry about Jim Butcher’s “Dresden” novels and how they transated to the television experience, and included links to entries at Mr. Butcher’s LJ which I found enlightening and even a bit inspiring. At about the same time, the roomie emailed me a link to software called yWriter which purports to make the process of writing a novel into something just a teeny bit less dreadful than normal, by virtue of turning every piece into a mobile element which one can rearrange as one sees fit. (There are many other features, but that’s the gist.) The software developer is also a published genre author who has posted some helpful articles about such things as laying out the novel’s plot (in which he highly recommends some “mind mapping” software I was looking at just last week, namely FreeMind) and actually writing the novel (in which he recommends reading someone else’s article about writing the perfect scene, which strangely echoes Jim Butcher’s advice on that particular topic).
As you can probably guess, all of this has gotten me thinking. I’m not promising anything, but I’m thinking. And taking notes. And taking a mental machete to a lifetime’s worth of worldbuilding, paring it down to just the Really Good Stuff.
Lest you wonder if I’ve taken complete leave of my senses, I do remember the lessons of NaNoWriMo: There’s a very good chance that I’m still not cut out to be a Professional Writer. I’m just about fired up enough, though, to take one more stab at telling a good story.