Welcome to the October 20, 2011 edition of Carnival of Storytelling.

Thanks to everyone who submitted a link at BlogCarnival.com. And thanks to all the bloggers who posted wonderful articles that I have hand-picked for the following list. Please browse their blog posts, and share your own favorite posts from across the Internet for the next edition.

Enjoy!

Writers

Terry C. Simpson posted Author Interview: Elaine Raco Chase at Ramblings of a Fantasy Author — “First, let me welcome you to the world of contemporary romance novels…”

Art and Craft

Belinda Kroll presents Determining a Character’s Big Goal posted at Worderella Writes, saying, “A short post about how an author can determine the difference between a mundane goal and the Big Goal that motivates them throughout the story.”

Harry Bingham presents Fixing your plot problems: How to get out of the one-third slump posted at Write Edit Seek Literary Agent — A guest post by Gary Gibson, the author of six science fiction novels for Pan Macmillan, the latest of which, Final Days, was published in August. “It occurred to me during this that all those seats-of-the-pants writers were being a touch disingenuous about their writing process. Either they did plan out their stories, but kept it all in their head, or their offices were filled with a vast number of unfinished stories and manuscripts. Both, I think, are true.”

Eliza Moonchild presents How To Make Your Fan Fiction a Poplular One posted at Rainy Day Teachings, saying, “How to write a popular and high quality fan fiction.”

Writing Life

Holly Lisle (re)posted Beating the Publishing Odds at her blog — One of my favorite contemporary midlist authors, now gone indie, reposts this inspiring piece that’s not actually about publishing, “because I keep hearing despair, and this is a time for challenge, and endeavor, and effort, and triumph.”

Talina Perkins posted Novice & Seasoned Writer, Who Do You Listen To? at Bookin’ It Reviews — … But let me back up a minute and tell a small tale of how much listening to the wrong advice hurt me in my journey towards building my writing career…

Shelli Johnson posted Writing Advice ~ Overcoming Fear at her blog — One reason people don’t follow their dreams: simple fear. Fear of opposition, yes. Fear of failure, sure. But also fear of success, fear of making the wrong decision, fear of other people’s opinions.

Kenn Crawford posted Why Do Writers Have to Justify Themselves? at his blog — “… or they continue their juvenile interrogation by asking if I just do it for fun or do I actually make a living at writing.” And I (Tim King) have an even better question: Why do writers have to write a certain number of books or gain a certain degree of fame or make a certain amount of money, before they can be deemed a “real” writer? If your writing touches just one soul, then you are a real writer, and don’t let anyone tell you differently. (But that’s a different blog post.)

Fiction and True Stories

American Boy presents Memories: A Beautiful Lie posted at AdvancedScoop.com — “Living in New York, seeing the bright lights, tall building and most importantly all the BEAUTIFUL WOMEN puts a smile on my face daily. At night I sit outside on my steps and look around at where I’m at and it’s unbelievable.”

American Boy presents Letter to the Young Men: First Love posted at AdvancedScoop.com — I want to talk to every young man out there who’s experiencing their “First Love”. Right now you’re probably having feelings that you’ve never felt before. You’re probably smiling a lot more, falling asleep on the phone, texting smiley faces during class and doing all types of things you said you’d never do. It’s cool, being in a relationship can be a beautiful thing. But unfortunately I didn’t write this to pen point all the great aspects of being in love…

Publishing and Marketing

Harry Bingham presents The Elevator Pitch posted at Write Edit Seek Literary Agent — Writing is a scary old business but of all the scary things about it, perhaps the scariest is getting the concept right.

Harry Bingham presents How to Meet Literary Agents posted at Write Edit Seek Literary Agent — Loads of new writers will be frustrated by the impersonal quality of the typical agent submission procedure. You send off your stuff – spend up to eight weeks waiting to hear something – then get back a preprinted, slightly cold rejection letter. It feels so dispiriting, so unconstructive.

Jon Bard presents Does the Ad Budget Make a Bestseller? posted at Children’s Writing Web Journal — Amidst news of declining book sales, the takeover of electronic publishing, and big publishers shuttering imprints…

Resources

Liz Shaw presents A new tool for writers posted at The Writing Reader, saying, “The collaborative writing site, Libboo, I’m using it to allow alpha readers to give me feedback on my writing.”

AND That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of the Carnival of Storytelling using our carnival submission form.

If you have trouble with the Carnival of Storytelling submission form, please contact me at www.JTimothyKing.com, select the “Carnival of Storytelling” category, and include a message with the link to the post and any remarks you’d like to include with the submission.

Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.