Maybe you’re stuck in an airport. Maybe you’re snowed in.

Maybe you’re about to blow from the 3,000 calorie feast you just sucked down.

Maybe you wish you were at work. Maybe you’re still at work.

Maybe you’ve had it up to here with your relatives and you need a break.

In the spirit of whatever holidays you celebrate or endure, here are a few links to clear the palate, focus the mind, and help you let go of that big laugh everyone had when somebody mentioned that you want to be a writer.  

• Editor Unleashed/Smashwords “Why I Write” Essay Contest
  Check out the rules and enter. $500 prize. Contest ends 12/31.
• 5 Things Books Should Learn From Magazines
  Guy Gonzalez delivers not only a good comparison, but a good template for anyone thinking about starting a magazine or magazine-like web site. (I dream about both.) Also, don’t miss this, or this.
• Author Solutions Partner With On Demand Books For EBM Access
  This didn’t get a lot of attention, but I think it deserves notice. (Mick Rooney keeps digging these things up — you should check out his site.) Author Solutions doesn’t get the big headlines, yet every time I turn around they’re making a deal with someone to expand their market. If POD is going to be a big deal, and I think it’s going to be a very big deal, AS seems to be well positioned.
• commentpress 3.1
  Do you know about CommentPress? I knew nothing about it until I clicked this link. Whether you’ll use it or not, you need to know that something like this exists.
• Catch-2009
  A great op-ed about Joseph Heller on the 10th anniversary of his death. If you haven’t read Catch-22 you need to read Catch-22. Seriously.
• Content Farms: Why Media, Blogs & Google Should Be Worried
  Richard MacManus of Read Write Web posted this interesting editorial, which drew a lot of comments and spawned multiple follow-ups on other sites. I don’t know if I agree with his conclusions, but it’s definitely something to keep an eye on. Particularly if you’re under the delusion — as I am — that quality in content actually matters.
• What Do Ebooks, Zombies, and Copyright Terms Have in Common Besides this Headline?
  An good, smart article looking at copyrights, their utility and the problem of protecting future rights when those rights are unknowns.
• Can D.I.Y. Supplant the First-Person Shooter?
  An updating of the eternal quest to make computer games that are also art. It’s something I’ve taken a whack at myself, and a subject I understand about as well as I understand anything. I applaud the new wave of people trying to solve the problem, but this problem has remained essentially unchanged for over twenty years.
• Advice to Aspiring Novelists: Don’t Shoot Yourself
  A nice, honest, low-key clip featuring author John Irving. Writers are on their own these days, and it’s important that young/new writers come to their craft with the right set of expectations. Getting published could be an expectation you shouldn’t have.
• Top 10 Blogs for Writers – The 2009/2010 Winners
  You won’t click with all of these, but there might be one or two you find to your liking.
• Why James Chartrand Wears Women’s Underpants
  The amusing backstory to one of the links in the Top 10 list above.
• The Questions We Never Answered in 2009
  The kind of link you were looking for all along. Enjoy.

– Mark Barrett