Wednesday links: Writing achievements, #MSWL and leaving an agent

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. Keeping Track of Your Writing Achievements, from Books & Such Literary Management: Do you have a writing resume? I kind of do, but I’ll admit that I don’t keep it as up to date as I should. Excerpt: “If you don’t keep track of what is going on in your writing career right when it happens, back-tracking will be very difficult. Having an up-to-date resume will help you put together proposals, show the strength of your platform, and may also help you get speaking/teaching engagements.”
2. Using #MSWL to Personalize Your Query, from Pub Crawl: #MSWL can be a really valuable resource for writers; it’s a great way to figure out which agent may be a match for you. If you’re going to use it in your query, though, you’ll have to go about it the right way. Excerpt: “Today, in honor of #MSWL Day (head over to twitter for a running feed of what agents are looking for), I’d like to talk about some do’s and don’ts of using Manuscript Wishlist (#MSWL) to personalize your query.”
3. Is It Time, Dear Writer, To Ditch Your Literary Agent?, from Terrible Minds: Leaving your agent isn’t an easy decision. If you’ve been considering it, Chuck Wendig has a bit of advice for you. Excerpt: “It used to happen once every couple of months. Then once every month, now I’m up to about once a week. What I’m talking about is, authors emailing me to see if it’s time to leave their agents.”