Patricia Wrede has some seriously good advice (with clear examples) on putting words together.

Over at Romance Bandits, Loucinda McGary discusses banished words. What words have I heard too often? Not sure, but if I could add my whinge as a side issue, I hate how Facebook is twisting the meaning of “like”. It seems “like” now means “tagged” or “flagged”. If I’m interested in something on Facebook and want to remember where it is, I’m forced to “like” it. Totally annoying for a pedant.

Jane at Dear Author has an interesting post on updating books for republication. Do we or do we not want contemporaries contemporary or are we happy to read with the 1980s, 1950s or 1800s in mind? The discussion in the comments section is good, and I particularly like the idea of a foreword telling people that this is a repub and the original publication date. Although I generally check the copyright. Being a buyer of many used books, it’s become a habit.

Have you wordled yet? Wordle.net generates word clouds from your texts. So if you’re over-using a word (hello “just”), wordle will slam you with it. [With thanks to Julie Rowe and Angela James for mentioning in the Self-Editing workshop]

Tara Lain has a useful post on planning a blog tour. The bottomline? It’s a lot of work. I’d add that it’s also a lot of fun. You get to meet new people and hang out at snazzy blogs.

And if you read this blog via a feed, you may have read the following already. I had an idiot moment on Tuesday and clicked “publish post” rather than “save”. Ah well, now you know I’m collecting links that interest me through the whole week.

Thanks to evilreads.com I now know how romance conventions find their male cover models. Craigslist.

A few years ago I wrote a couple of short stories that were published with People’s Friend and My Weekly (British women’s magazines) and the editors were lovely. So I have a quiet ambition to find time to write and submit a Pocket Novel. 30,000 words, definitely sweet. If you’re curious, here’s a link from Woman Writer to an interview with their commissioning editor.

Continuing with short stories and British magazines, Womag Writer passes on the story ideas Woman’s Weekly really doesn’t want to see. I think some ideas do get tired. But then I wonder if ideas only seem tired to me (and to editors) because of reading too much. Heresy! You can never read too much.