Wednesday links: Backstory and giving up

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. What We’ve Been Taught About Backstory…And Why It’s Wrong, from Writer Unboxed: Oh, backstory. It’s a very important part of your story, and yet you may not actually talk about it in your story. Excerpt: “We humans make every decision based on our own subjective backstory, aka our past experience. Our brain is wired to instantly rip through our mental Rolodex (remember those?) in order to figure out the one thing we’re all striving for every minute of every day: what to do in order to survive.”
2. When should I give up?, from QueryTracker Blog: I think every writer feels a bit discouraged at some point. And while you often want to work past that discouragement, it can sometimes be good to listen to it. Excerpt: “What happens if you’ve got a manuscript you love and the agents just don’t love it the same way you do? How many queries do you send and get rejected (or get nothing but silence) before you stand down?”