Writer's Web: blogging with voice

I don't have Obi-Wan Kenobi to teach me the way of the Force, but way of the blog I am slowly learning.

Here's a few things I learned from wandering the writers' web this past week:

1) We know we have to write our stories/novels with a strong voice. Check out stiryourtea.blogspot.com to see a strong voice that makes these daily blog posts fun to read. I betcha her strong voice is probably is the reason why this girl writer who is only 22 years old already has an agent for her book. Gasp.

2) Writers' blogs are *mostly* about writing, but I'm discovering the ones I enjoy the most mix in a lot of other fun stuff too. Like lisa-laura.blogspot.com - this team recently posted a list of things you wish you could tell your teenage self.

3) Blogfests. I keep seeing this term pop up and wondered what the heck it is - couldn't even google a definition. But by my superior deductive reasoning powers (ha!) I have determined they are someone's invitation to blog on a particular subject, you sign up with a link to your blog, and then everyone reads everyone else's post and comments. So I signed up for a blogfest at fictiongroupie.blogspot.com (for sharing snippets of dialogue). I was #47. I am not sure how I will find time to read 46 other blogs (no wait, by the time the blogfest starts in May there may be 100). What have I got myself into???

4) Blogs that have a bit of mixed media are very interesting. Okay we all know that adding photos or images to our blog does more than just add a bit of color. But some people have that extra creative touch, like the writer who also sketches at Suffering from Writer's Blog. It's not the quality of her sketches that garners attention, it's how she uses them to spice up her blog. Here is a fun example of how she combines her sketches with book cover art to do an amazing marketing job for the Fablehaven series.

5) The blogger at The Quintessentially Questionable Query Experiment has a fixation with alliteration, or possibly practiced Peter Piper too much when he was little. However, he has a good thing going because he gets writers to post their query letters and their agent's responses and that's some darn useful info.

What great web-sites have you discovered that you just can't resist sharing with me?