Toni McGee Causey on writing and dreams and the question of how do you know when to quit? The short version: only when you want something more–or when you decide you aren’t up for putting in the work. (Via sarahbethdurst.)
sarazarr guest blogging on diabetes and body image, but mostly body image: “If you want to have good eating habits and work out regularly, do it because you want a long and healthy life and you want options and adventures, not because you hate your butt or are too embarrassed to show your upper arms or you’re punishing yourself for not looking like someone else.”
John Scalzi on really the only thing that has to be said about the YA thing: “Yes, how horrible it is that some of what’s being hailed as the best science fiction and fantasy written today is in a literary category designed to encourage millions of young people to read for the rest of their natural lives. Because God knows the last thing science fiction and fantasy publishing needs right now is whole generation of new and enthusiastic readers who might actually get hooked into the genre until they die. It’s a goddamn tragedy, it is.” (Well, there’s lots more that could be said–but for adults, that sums up the short version nicely.)
literaticat on what publishers really want: “Publishers are looking for something AWESOME that will KNOCK THEIR SOX OFF and SELL LOTS OF COPIES. They don’t know what that is any more than you do! So stop STOP PLEASE GOD STOP trying to write to trends. Don’t think about it that way. Just write what you want to write. Write what you love. Write what you are GOOD at writing. Make your writing and your story unforgettable. Start your own trend for crying out loud!”
msagara on — among other things — how not all readers connect with the same stories: “I had always, on some level, assumed that people didn’t love love love my books because I hadn’t quite gotten good enough … People read for different reasons, and what they love to read is often not what everyone else loves to read. I think that as readers we already know this — but while the impulse to write and create comes naturally out of what reading meant to us, we often don’t apply what we feel for books in general to what we feel for our own stories.”