There Are No Rules - Best Tweets for Writers (week ending 12/18/09)

I watch Twitter, so you don't have to. Visit each Sunday for the week's best Tweets. If I missed a great Tweet, leave it in the Comments. Always welcome your suggestions on improving this weekly feature.

Best of Best

8 Ways of Seeing People that Can Sabotage Your Writing by @dahveed_miller
@mystorywriter

Big writing secret: what "show, don't tell" really means and why it's important
@Kid_Lit

What writers should know about Writing Contests
@NathanBransford

Why new writers shouldn't start with a trilogy
@inkyelbows

Stand Alone

Fiction always has a plot. Something to unify it. If it doesn't have a plot, then it's an essay.
@DocumentDriven

Writers: The magic really is in the revisions.
@MarleneStringer

People that know you are not good evaluators of whether a book is marketable, for a host of reasons.
@EpsteinLiterary

Just a helpful hint: don't spend more words in your query describing yourself than you do on your novel.
@DaphneUn

We agents who request sample MS pages in the query are aware of formatting issues - don't stress about it.
@rachellegardner

#ebooksummit @DanCosta asks what writers can do to survive. Matt Shatz: "Write code."
@glecharles

#ebooksummit Tech fetishists overlook the power of a direct relationship with customers. That's Amazon's real advantage. (Apple's, too.)
@glecharles

#ebooksummit Kindle beat Sony Reader primarily because they had the direct consumer connection and trust. One-click. Done.
@glecharles

Getting Published, Agents/Editors

A big advance isn't always a good thing. Other tips for authors on negotiating by @bookendsJessica
@inkyelbows

Little, Brown's list of what makes a good children's book
@upstartcrowlit

Be wary of unqualified people giving pub advice by @RachelleGardner
@inkyelbows

Publishing veteran says publishers are desperate for great debut novels
@ElizabethSCraig

5 tips for authors before signing with a small publisher
@IndeDebut2010

6 Key Characteristics of Effective Book Titles
@rogercparker

Craft & Technique

When To Stop Revising by @amy7a
@CafeNirvana

The formula for a story and why stories exist
@RichardMabry

Today's post is a dialogue masterclass
@Kid_Lit

How to Mock-up a Picture Book: Tips from Darcy Pattison
@inkyelbows

Publishing Biz, Trends, Future of Publishing

Another brilliant post by @MikeShatzkin. Publishers' survival won't be distribution, it's amassing eyeballs
@NathanBransford

Pogue in NYT - Should e-Books Be Copy Protected? His book was pirated to the skies but sales did not fall
@dbschlosser

7 Habits of Highly Profitable Authors
[Covey's direct deal with Amazon on e-book]
@selfpubreview

At eBook Summit: agreement that $9.99 price not enough to support content creation & distribution; is advertising next?
@draccah

Why ebooks don't cost that much less 2 produce than p-books
@victoriastrauss

Twitter, Blogs & Social Media

Does twitter kill the author mystique? Or does it sell books?
@mitaliperkins

Lessons learned from a year on Twitter
@MichelleRafter

This piece by @hrheingold is probably the best "why use twitter" piece I've seen
@jamesoreilly

Self-Publishing & E-Publishing

3 Steps to Help You Choose a Topic for an E-Book
@problogger

How a Self-Published Book Became a Best-seller
@PublishingGuru

Being Practical: Publishing Vs. Self-Publishing:
Part 1 & Part 2
@BackwordBooks

Finding a printer by @dmargulis
@selfpubreview

The Writing Life

Are You Making the All-Or-Nothing Mistake? by @ProcrastWriter
@mystorywriter

The Golden Rule of Writing by @onviolence on @WritetoDone
@mystorywriter

The converse of Gates's law would be @timoreilly 's law: create more value than you capture.
@KevinCoates

Free for personal use--> Printer-ready 5x7 "Gift of Time" certificate for writers
@inkyelbows