Friday Links: Emerging from the Writing Cave

Some weeks get away from us, one project or another eating all of our time to the point where, waking up on Friday feels akin to stepping off a roller coaster that left your knees a touch wobbly and the earth not quite solid beneath your feet. This can happen with any occupation or hobby, but for writers it might seem even more disorienting if they’ve spent that roller coaster ride involved with a fictional world. A number of this week’s links focus on the sorts of big projects that a person can sink into, emerging later with a fresh perspective. I hope they inspire you to delve deep with your own work in progress this weekend, or to lose yourself in a wonderful fat book. Happy writing!

Fast Draft Hell: 7 Lessons I Learned (Almost) Writing a Novel in 14 Days – An intriguing look at the experience of writing a really fast first draft.

12 Things I Noticed While Reading Every Short Story Published in 2014-15 – On patterns discovered and realizations made over the course of a major reading experience.

“A’ghailleann”: On Language-Learning and the Decolonisation of the Mind – Looking at the cultural significance of learning a colonized language.

The First Science Fiction Novel?: Kelly Link and John Crowley Discuss The Chemical Wedding – Regarding the project to bring out a new edition of the 17th century work.

If You Use This Font... – A fun graphic matching fonts with personalities.

Joe Hill Remembers Where He Came From (Part One) – An in-depth interview with the author. Second part linked from bottom of the first.

The Whole Spy’s Guide to the Internet: Untangling the Web – Trying to explain would just ruin this for you. Just read it. You’ll thank me.

Advice from the Trenches

Last week on Booktalk Nation, author John Scalzi interviewed author Joe Hill about writing, genre, and his new book NOS4A2. Between the two of them, these guys have written a number of books, short stories, blog posts, etc. Whether you write genre fiction or something else, you should check out the video of their chat, because much of what they have to say is just plain interesting if you have any sort of curiosity about writing and publishing, and the bulk of their advice applies to any type of writer. They’re also pretty damn amusing to watch.

Just a heads up: the interview is about an hour long, so keep that in mind before you hit the play button. Enjoy!