With the advent of NaNoWriMo 2011 my tiny Link Love/Blogroll has grown to epic proportions. Since I’m trying to make the list useful as well as epic, I’ve decided to pay a little more attention to the folks I’m linking to this time around.
Since I’m still behind on giving some love to the folks I’ve already linked to, I’m squishing the love together in nice bite-sized pieces. At some point I’ll go back and do proper ‘why I read this blog’ posts, but for now you get the Cliff Notes™ version.
I’ve taken the first twenty-five links on the list (sorted alphabetically by name) and am doing a quick rundown about who they are and why they’re here.
Other Topics
43 Folders
“43 Folders is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.” I don’t go to this blog for recent posts, since those are few and far between, but for the archives. There is a treasure trove of posts here, back to 2004 on various hacks and productivity tweaks. Good rainy day reading or for when you need a quick kick in the pants.
Writing
750words.com
250 words is one page, 750 words is three pages. Write three pages a day and you can rack up some nifty badges (depending on how much you write, when you write, how fast, etc)! The website tracks how fast you type, how many breaks you take, and lots of other data as well. Your writing is 100% private, per the site, but you can always replace the text using a word scrambler if you prefer.
Alexandra Sokoloff
This one is written by Alexandra Sokoloff, if the title didn’t give it away, and is a fascinating look at writing through a screenwriter’s eyes. I have learned an incredible amount about screenwriting from this blog, patterns and storytelling techniques from TV and film that I never would have noticed. I’m still working my way through the archives, but I’d highly recommended this blog to anyone looking to tighten up their story’s underpinnings.
Model Horses
Bluebird Studio
This is the sculpting blog of Karen Grigson an Australian artist who posts fascinating in-progress pics of her resculpts. I love watching her horses come together and since she starts from Breyer bodies it makes my fingers itch to rummage through my own body box! She only posts a few times a month (3-9), but it’s worth it to hop on over and check her out!
World of Warcraft
Be Imba!
I used to live on this website back when I was playing my Feral Druid main (Ashella). I was trying my best to get geared for the random dungeons, since I knew the chances of me ever getting up to raiding snuff were pretty much a pipe dream (situational awareness, I do not haz it). This website gives you a way to audit your character and see what you can do to tweak your gear, gems, enchants, etc. in order to find that perfect sweet spot. I used this along with RAWR and was making slow, but positive improvements—and then Cata hit and everything started over from scratch. *headdesk*
Blog Azeroth Buddies
Amerence Love WoW
Amerence is a priest who has been playing since 2006 and after a short hiatus is once again back in the swing of the raiding. They participate in the Blog Azeroth shared topics on a pretty consistent basis, which is how I found the blog. I love the glimpses into the raiding life—although it’s not something I think I’d ever be able to do myself.
Azerothian Life
Dragonray has been playing since 2005 (another old timer!) and another window into the raiding world, this time on the Fire Mage side of things. Raid posts are fascinating to me, since I can get a view of the same raid from different classes, guilds, and experience levels. Who knows, after a few years I might be brave enough to try it myself! …Or not. *grin* Dragonray is another fellow Blog Azeroth buddy and one of the more active posters.
NaNoWriMo 2011
These are some of my fellow 2011 NaNoers, the links gathered from the various blog sharing threads. Want to be added? Just drop a line in the comments!
The blubs for these are gathered from the About pages, since I don’t know any of them well enough to blurb yet. Some of these may move into the Writing section if they turn out to be interesting enough to keep following after NaNo. *pokes list*
A Bad Habit of Writing – Zithee Baron, Budding teenage writer aspiring to literary abandon and great success…or headaches and poverty. Doctor Who fanatic, Slenderman enthusiast, part-time ghost hunter, time traveler, anime fan, and lover of chocolate soy milk.
a bend in the road – Sara, Just your average small-town American girl, trying to make it through life with a little help from a fabulous man at my side.
A Write Couple of Twits – Jess is the one who is fleeing the maternal home; Kev is her boyfriend, who quite fancied clawing himself out of the black hole known commonly as Preston. They met a few months ago through the medium of Twitter (hence ‘twits’) and have decided to move together to the buzzing metropolis that is Manchester, in the North West of England. Both of them would rather like to be writers.
A Writer Called Wanda – Wanda Kay, I’m currently working toward my dream of becoming a published novelist. In the mean time, I’m writing and editing several books, short stories and poems. Oh, and working a 40 hour week job to pay my bills.
A Writer’s Journey – Teralyn Rose Pilgrim, I write historical fiction, and I love it! I also love adventures, my husband, trying foreign foods, dancing, babies, vivid colors, and learning new things. I’m querying my novel about a Vestal Virgin and writing a retelling of the legend of the Amazon warriors.
Adrishta – Adrishta is the story of Hema, a woman who would kill the gods themselves to save her daughter’s life.
An Innovative Pursuit of Creativity – Holly, I’m an aspiring writer, photographer, and hopeful musician. I blog about any and every thing!
Anecdota – By this, conquer. “Around the hour of the noontime sun, with the day already waning, he said that he saw with his own eyes, lying up above in heaven, a monument of the cross of the sun, formed from light, and he saw an inscription combined with the monument, saying: by this, conquer.” ~ Eusebius, Life of Constantine, 1.28.2
Arachne’s Spindle – As Arachne of old would spin her webs, I’m here to spin my stories. I love to write, its been a hobby since I was little and can’t seem to get it out of my system. At any rate, this is my place for any interesting sketches that I’ve written and want to come back to.
Ash Uncharted – Ashley, She is a connoisseur of words, coffee, and peanut butter. Currently a college student, she aspires to someday write a novel and seek out that much-anticipated fanart. That’d be the coolest thing!
Aurora’s Creative Corner – Aurora Lee lives and works in beautiful Nova Scotia Canada, an area from which she’s able to draw so much inspiration. A self-labeled Geek Girl who loves learning, history and Star Wars; she’s also an avid traveler and photographer, in addition to being a writer of fiction.
B.A.M.’s NANOWRIMO progress and stories – Beth Ann Masarik has been participating in NanoWrimo since 2008, when she wrote her first novel, The World Among Us: Prince of Darkness. While she has yet to win a NanoWrimo, her novel was picked up by a new, smallpress publisher named Otherworld Publications. The World Among Us: Prince of Darkness is a YA/Urban Fantasy that is heavily based off of greek mythology and vampires. It was released worldwide on August 19, 2011.
Bearded Lemming Pirates – Chris W. Smith, I’m a second year undergrad student at the University of British Columbia, specializing in mathematics, and also studying German and Japanese. I’m a big hockey fan, an avid fantasy reader, a member of UBC’s mahjong club, and all-around nerd. This will be my fourth year doing NaNoWriMo, and this year have decided to post my story publicly, as I write it! From previous NaNo years I have two works in progress: Painted Souls, which I have finished what I’m calling a fourth first draft of; and The Black War, name-change pending, which is an unedited first draft.
Blethering About Books – Book Reviews, Music and occasional randomness. ‘There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island’ – Walt Disney
Broken Nerves – Melissa Dominic is a writer, mapmaker, and historian of places that don’t exist. She is twenty-seven years old and lives in a retirement community just north of Miami, Florida. She likes all manners of things falling apart and decayed, blood, guts, and gore and cold city streets. She likes rampant emotions, disillusions of the future, and the sound of insects in the night. She has a horror writer for a girlfriend, who she hears is pretty good.
bursts of brilliance – I write. A lot. I’m a self-proclaimed tree-hugging-bunny-lover. I eat organics and avoid processed foods, including dairy, most meat and some grains. If “professional recycler” were a real job, then I’d be making bank right now–I can sort plastics with my eyes closed. I crave the outdoors and think the most ideal place to be is in a tent, next to a campfire, wrapped in a sleeping bag beside to my man and my kids. Sometimes, while daydreaming, I replace that last part with [Colin Firth] because I have an unreasonable attraction to British men. I think it’s the accent but I can’t be sure.
C.E. Schwilk’s Blog – C.E. Schwilk, Unpublished writer of science-fiction/fantasy, while playing backstage ninja and check-writing monkey for my straight job.
Chameleon – This year, my goals are to write 75,000 words in 30 days (2500 words a day) & to actually finish a novel next month instead of leaving it uncompleted. It’s exciting but insane, & I’m looking forward to it.