This excellent list comes from WritingSucks, a writing website I just stumbled across and really enjoy.

Kurt Vonnegut's 8 Rules For Writing Fiction

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

LifeHack.org gives us 15 practical tips on becoming a better writer.

How do you write?

Last night I was on the phone with my favorite aunt, who is also a writer. She suggested to me that I write an outline for my novel so that I know where I'm going and can always come back to it without getting lost.

I am the to-do list/outlines type; they center me and help me figure things out. I was wondering, though, if my novel would work in that way. I have ideas but I don't have a plot start-to-finish, and normally, when I sit down and write, things just come. I couldn't do that if I were following a blueprint, you know?

So I was wondering how the rest of you writers work; from an outline or plan, or just from your imagination, or both?

Nu magazine, an arts and music magazine, has released its second issue on the Web before it is printed and distributed in Texas. My article, entitled "the Texastentialist," is in it! I'm very excited because I did an interview for the debut issue but the interviewee never came through on a few things and it had to be scrapped. I was pretty disappointed because, as you can see, the magazine is hot. Oscar Valdes, the man who makes it happen, is incredible with design and layout. Kudos Oscar!

The magazine is also on MySpace, if you want to friend it for updates and such.

Andi at Estella's Revenge has deemed me a Rockin' Girl Blogger! I've never been so honored.

Now, to share in turn...

*Susan at the Urban Muse.

*CP at an Oxymoron is Not an Idiot with Zits.