Inkygirl Golden Cupcake Award: The World According To Maggie (Stiefvater)

This week, I'm awarding the Inkygirl Golden Cupcake Award to Maggie Stiefvater for her The World According To Maggie blog.

I'm a huge fan of Maggie's books, including her Wolves Of Mercy Falls series and most recently, The Scorpio Races. Wonderful stories and characters, but I especially love this writer's voice.

Just some of the things I love about Maggie's blog:

- She talks about her writing process.

- Lots of great visuals. Not just photos but also Maggie's own drawings.

- Her wry, frank personality shines through everything she posts.

I've tweeted about Maggie's great posts frequently from @inkyelbows; her blog is one of my go-to blogs when it comes to looking for tweetable quotes. 

She also comes up with the BEST post titles, like her recent:

Why I'm A Writer & Not a Fighter Pilot

in which she answers reader questions about knowing one's goals as well as keeping true to yourself and your dreams despite other people. Do go visit her blog now! You'll be delighted, inspired and moved.

http://maggiestiefvater.blogspot.com

Established in July/2010, the  Inkygirl Golden Cupcake Award is given to blogs  or sites I find particularly inspirational to writers, especially those that may not already be well-known. Criteria is unapologetically subjective.

If you win the award, you do NOT have to display or acknowledge the award (but feel free, if so inclined). Just bask in the ephemeral, golden glory of online blog stardom and then move on, continuing to be an inspiration to the writing community. And THANK YOU for doing what you do.

Here is a list of other winners of the Inkygirl Golden Cupcake Award.

Time management and writing...and a poll

Apologies for the sporadic schedule of my blog posts lately. I'm finding it much easier to post regularly in my inkyelbows Twitter account, if you're interested in writing tweets...I usually post there at least several times a day.

Since the SCBWI Summer Conference, I've been approached by a number of publishers interested in my illustrations and/or writing. While it's wonderful to have the attention after years of trying to get publishers to notice me, I'm now scrambling to get my projects finished so I have something to send.

Which brings me to time management. There's a fine balance between working on building up a strong author platform and not spending enough time creating the content for that platform to support. But where do you draw the line? I'm still figuring that out myself.

Meanwhile, however, I'm about to send off one mss today (yay!) and aiming to finish a nonfiction book proposal to send out by the end of next week.

What about the rest of you? How do you balance social networking and blogging with your writing time?