I love reviewing the blog posts I’ve starred in Google Reader or sent to Instapaper to create my weekly list of favorites posts for the Friday Rerun so I thought compiling a list of what I thought were the best posts of 2009 would be a breeze – but it wasn’t easy! It took me three days to share my favorite posts from this year – about the writing life, the craft of writing and what it means to be creative – and here they are, compiled into a single post. Thank you to the writers who encouraged, inspired and taught me something this past year. 

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It’s time to rewind through some of the best blog posts of the week related to writing, books, creativity – and sometimes just some other fun but random stuff. Each Friday I link to my favorite posts of the week so you have another chance to catch an interesting post you might have missed or discover a new blogger.

Today I have the third and final part of my favorite posts of 2009 series – about the writing life, the craft of writing and what it means to be creative.

Today I've got part 2 of my favorite posts of 2009 – about the writing life, the craft of writing and what it means to be creative.

I love reviewing the blog posts I’ve starred in Google Reader or sent to Instapaper to create my weekly list of favorites posts for the Friday Rerun so I thought compiling a list of what I thought were the best posts of 2009 would be a breeze – but it wasn’t easy! So instead over the next three days I’ll be sharing my favorite posts from this year – about the writing life, the craft of writing and what it means to be creative.

It’s time to rewind through some of the best blog posts of the week related to writing, books, creativity – and sometimes just some other fun but random stuff. Each Friday I link to my favorite posts of the week so you have another chance to catch an interesting post you might have missed or discover a new blogger.

It seems that almost as soon as the clock struck midnight on November 30 and this year’s NaNoWriMo was declared over, the talk online turned to a single topic: Revision. There were so many posts that I compiled everything here into this Special Weekend Rerun post dedicated to revising, editing, and polishing that manuscript. A special thank you to Debbie Ridpath Ohi (@inkyelbows on Twitter) who tweeted some great revision posts this past week.

It’s time to rewind through some of the best blog posts of the week related to writing, books, creativity – and sometimes just some other fun but random stuff. Each Friday I link to my favorite posts of the week so you have another chance to catch an interesting post you might have missed or discover a new blogger.

The details of the first Procrastinating Writers essay contest were announced this week. The topic: "How I Overcame My Procrastination This Year."

The following post is based on a workshop Joe Finder presented at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Conference this past September about the 14 biggest mistakes even best-selling writers make.

It’s time to rewind through some of the best blog posts of the week related to writing, books, creativity – and sometimes just some other fun but random stuff. Each Friday I link to my favorite posts of the week so you have another chance to catch an interesting post you might have missed or discover a new blogger.

I wrote my first guest post for Deborah Riley-Magnus and it appears today on her blog, Writeaholic. She even created a new category: Tools with Balls. So check out Software for Serious Writers.

Whether it's music, pets, kids or our own racing minds, it's not easy to concentrate in this crazy world that's so full of distractions.

I’m posting a special Rerun today because as I was putting together the posts for the Friday Rerun, I realized just how many articles and blog posts I had that were about characters. From creating characters and giving your characters life to character arcs and characters who drink. So today’s Rerun is dedicated to characters, characters, characters.

It’s time to rewind through some of the best blog posts of the week related to writing, books, creativity – and sometimes just some other fun but random stuff. Each Friday I link to my favorite posts of the week so you have another chance to catch an interesting post you might have missed or discover a new blogger.

Unfortunately I couldn’t make last night’s reading with John Irving at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver. I’ve met him before and have heard him speak but it’s still disappointing not to be able to again hear a writer whose work I adore, so instead I took advantage of the internet and created my own “faux reading” by watching and listening to the many recent interviews Irving has given to promote his new novel: Last Night in Twisted River. I hope you'll join me. 

I first learned of the existence of tropes from Scott Myers. In a post on his blog, Go Into the Story, he wrote about the site TVtropes.org. I’d never even heard of a “trope” but I checked it out and was fascinated. A trope is a device and/or a convention that a writer can rely on as being present in the audience members’ (or in our case, readers’) minds and expectations. But a trope is not a cliché. It’s not supposed to be trite or a stereotype, but there’s no denying the existence of tropes in every movie, TV show or story. You can consider the trope in the same way you think about the plot structure of the Hero’s Journey or character archetypes.

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I’m posting a special edition of the Rerun today. With NaNoWriMo kicking off this past week, I was expecting a kind of “radio silence” on Twitter and the blogs of those writers participating in National Novel Writing Month. I was very wrong. If anything, there’s been even more tweeting and blog writing – and a lot of talk about starting to write that first draft. So today’s special post is an ode to just that – here’s to the first draft.

It’s time to rewind through some of the best blog posts of the week related to writing, books, creativity – and sometimes just some other fun but random stuff. Each Friday I link to my favorite posts of the week so you have another chance to catch an interesting post you might have missed or discover a new blogger.

In my last post, I wrote about Lorrie Moore’s reading and radio interview I attended as part of The Lighthouse Writers Writer’s Studio program. Today I’m going to write about Moore’s “Non-Crafty Craft Talk” held at The Tattered Cover.

When Lorrie Moore came to Denver a weekend ago as part of the Lighthouse Writers Writer’s Studio program, I was lucky enough to attend both the reading and radio interview on Saturday evening and her “Non-Crafty Craft Talk” on Sunday at The Tattered Cover. She was informative, inspiring and very, very funny.

It’s time to rewind through some of the best blog posts of the week related to writing, books, creativity – and sometimes just some other fun but random stuff. Each Friday I link to my favorite posts of the week so you have another chance to catch an interesting post you might have missed or discover a new blogger.

In case you missed a post or want to re-read the whole series again, here are the links to all of the post from the 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel  series of posts on the My Story Writer blog this month.

The second winner for the giveway of My Story Writer writing software is...

Over the past four weeks, I’ve shared with you the highlights of each chapter of 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel by Jane Smiley. It’s a book that came into my life when I needed it and has become an invaluable resource to me in both my writing and my reading of novels.