Our new monthly feature has arrived! Each month we’ll recap some of the resources and advice that you can find every day on our Slack Writing Group.

January 2019

Resources We Loved

– “How to Write a Novel: Plot Gardening with Chris Fox” (Thanks for sharing, David Clark!)

– “Working Out Climates Using the Climate Cookbook” (A great resource for worldbuilding, thanks Ruhen Hoque!)

– “Ocean Currents: Terrestrial, Waterworld, and Tidally Locked Planets”) (Another worldbuilding resource, thanks Lyle Enright!)

– Delilah S. Dawson’s Ten Things Twitter lists (These practical lists on different topics in writing and publishing have been helping our writers navigate the waters of drafting, editing, publishing… basically everything!)

Advice We Listened To

Lyle Enright shared a great quote from his wife, Jenna: “Your stories are your babies. They need to leave the nest some time. And just like babies, if they don’t find jobs at first, they can come back home to live with us for a couple of months before we send them out to try again. They can always come home to grow up a little bit more. But if they’re still hanging out in our basement when they’re 36, then we have a problem.”

We also had a great perspective from Shannon Carpenter on the role of an editor: “To me, a good editor can point out things that I just can’t see because I’m too close to it.  And I don’t mean grammar, but story construction, character development, and yes, marketing. When I write, I rarely think of the market so much. I write because it makes me laugh.  And sometimes, that means I’ve got a lot of fluff that just crowds the story. And other times, I’m being too subtle and the story doesn’t need subtle. And other times I’m just saying to say too much.  A good editor finds those things and helps me see the focus. Yes, sometimes that means I gotta “kill the darlings” but the pieces are better for it. The book I have now is meant to tell my story as a way to help others trying to go through the same thing.  The editor pointed out that I should actually be blunter and actually help them rather than beating around the bush. And once I saw that, I couldn’t unsee it.”

And to round it off, during a discussion about openness to criticism and putting your writing out in the world, Sarah Linders gave a simple sum up: “Write the best you can where you’re at, then learn from others to get better.”

Books We Read

• FANTASY: Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames (Recommend by: Basically all of our fantasy writers)
• HORROR: NOS4A2 by Joe Hill and Night Film by Marisha Pessl (Recommend by: Nikolai Echternacht)
• FANTASY: The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (Recommended by: Lyle Enright)
• Bonus: 5 Writers Recommend Books to Read over the Holidays

Writers We Cheered On

Joel Spriggs released an audiobook of Over a God’s Dead Body.

Deck Matthews released The First of Shadows, the first story in The Riven Relm series.

Taylor Crawford published World Mover and Lila Krishna published Ticket To Ride in Story of the Week, a Medium fiction publication run by members of #tldrwriters.

Shannon Carpenter shared It’s Not a Consignment Sale, It’s A Survival Pit, published in Life of Dad.

Events

We hosted our first public Teal Deer Open Mic Night on January 10 in our Discord server, with readings by Nikolai Echternacht, Lila Krishna, Penfold, and Sarah Linders, among others.

We also began January Novel Share Month (JaNoShareMo, kudos to Joe Butler for the name!), where seven #tldrwriters swapped first draft novels to provide feedback and support.

Coming up in February: We will have a Teal Deer Open Mic Night in a European timezone-friendly  and a one-day workshop on “How to Pitch Your Work on Twitter” in mid-February! Join the #tldrwriters Slack group to learn more.

Publications

The Family Quarterly to benefit The Kempe Foundation is in its final stages of editing, due to release in March. Keep an eye on this space and our Twitter for updates!

Tune in VERY soon to find our next collection’s Call for Submissions!

In the meantime, have you checked out our library of collections?

Join In!

Want access to all the above as well as workshops, beta swaps, write-ins, and a chance to connect daily with a talented group of writers? Apply to join the #tldrwriters Slack group!