Wednesday links: Loose ends and determining if you’re publishable

I love regularly reading tips and advice articles in certain subjects — particularly writing and publishing. I don’t always need the information right then, but I know that it’ll eventually come in handy. Or at least, I hope it will.

I know there are a lot of other people out there who feel the same way I do, but sometimes it can be difficult to find every useful advice article that’s out there. So I thought I’d bring you a few.

Here are the tips and advice articles that jumped out at me the most over the past week.

1. Are the Loose Ends in Your Story Too Loose?, from Helping Writers Become Authors: One of the things you learn as a writer is that you should tie up any loose ends that are left at the end of your story. But is that really a rule you need to follow? Excerpt: “Are loose ends in your story a good thing or a bad thing? The very name seems to indicate they’re a bad thing. After all, what else do we do with loose ends but tie them up?”

2. Are You Publishable or Not? Reading the Tea Leaves, from Writer Unboxed: Getting a series of rejections when querying agents or publishers can be tough. But those rejections can be very helpful in determining whether or not the manuscript you’re sending out is actually publishable. Excerpt: “Of course, you can always take comfort in the long list of massively successful books that were initially rejected by nearly everyone who saw them. But for every brilliant book that gets rejected out of blindness or stupidity, there are thousands that get rejected because they’re just not very good.”