A Writer's Edge Changes

Happy New Year's Eve!

Beginning in January, I plan to use the time I usually spend blogging so much for another major project. Posts will appear less often, but at least twice a week. In an experiment to bring back a PageRank, the Reciprocity list will temporarily relocate to another page, as the Directories links did. I hope to do the same with the Archives list, now growing too long after 42 months.

The whole blog may relocate to a sub directory on the website. You'll always be able to find it by clicking on the menu link "Blog" near the top of every page, and the feed link will be updated if necessary (http://feeds.feedburner.com/writers-edge/EElx). If neither of these work, you should always be able to reach the archive pages with URLs like: http://www.writers-edge.info/2007_12_01_archive.htm -- one for January would be: http://www.writers-edge.info/2008_01_01_archive.htm -- see?

Please be patient as I attempt a transition into a new layout tomorrow. Undoubtedly glitches will occur and the main page maybe unavailable from time to time.

Stay tuned and have a fabulous new year! And for friends across the International Date Line:

Happy New Year!

Can Your Book Heal the World?

It is true that much of my advice about writing and getting published is practical, intellectual and market-oriented. In the interest of providing a balance, I direct your attention to Naomi Rose's recent article at the Creativity Portal. In Your Book Can Heal the World: Looking in the Mirror of Our True Nature, she makes a good case for authenticity in writing, despite the industry's apparent fixations on what she calls the 3 P's of "Promotion, Profitability, and Platform."

The healing aspect comes in when you bring your deeper Self into the telling. And you do this by:
1. learning how to listen to what’s inside your heart,
2. trusting its (often initially nonverbal) ways of making its message known to you, and
3. learning how to translate that inner sensing into written language that
* carries out the deeper Self’s intention, and also
* naturally rises into metaphor and poetry

Just for Lady Writers

Single men tend to just live somewhere. All women are homemakers. Men are notoriously single-minded, while women think along complex lines. They're born multi-taskers. I think it is a biological necessity for motherhood. However, I've written elsewhere on how to write like a man, and this is an extension of those thoughts.

Recently I read in another writing blog that the way to commit yourself to your writing goals is to begin the new year by running around cleaning your house and picking up the mess. Aaaaanh! Not so. The way to commit yourself to writing is to sit down and write. Leave the mess. Trust me, it will be there when you finish writing. Something always needs to be cleaned up. As quickly as you wash the dishes, more are used. People shed dirty clothes as fast as you wash them.

Real writers write. They don't just talk about it, make plans, take classes, read books. You're not fully committed to being a writer if you aren't writing. In my book there's no such animal as a partial commitment, either. That would be similar to partial pregnancy. Either you're going to deliver a poem, an article, a book--or not.

Google Crap Continues

According to the SmartPage ranking and evaluation service, as of a few minutes ago:

Website Value

The estimated value of www.writers-edge.info is: $20,043

This value is represents the approximate value of the website entered. Of course, this value does NOT include the worth of the company behind the website but rather is an estimated value of the website itself. Some of these valuation factors include: PageRank, traffic, backlinks, age of the domain, directory listings, and other items not shown in the summary above.

I've watched this value rise steadily since I began using the service a few weeks ago. It rises along with the number of viewers. Still Google doesn't restore the PageRank on any page in this website! I suspect that people who use Google to search for writing help or an editor don't find A Writer's Edge listed toward the top of the returns, either, as it used to be.What a slap in the face of someone who has promoted Google and it's various features for several years.

What's really telling is the dramatic drop in the number of backlinks Google lists compared to Yahoo's figures:

The total number of pages that contain links to:
writers-edge.info www.writers-edge.info
449 Google: 449
35,800 Yahoo: 35,700
85 AltaVista: 33,000
84 AllTheWeb: 32,200

There's not much I can do except encourage readers to boycott Google and all its products and perhaps complain, if you can find a place to do so. Here's their address:

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
Phone: +1 650-253-0000
Fax: +1 650-253-0001

I know A Writer's Edge is not alone in being unfairly demoted and punished by Google. How about deluging them with complaints by phone and especially fax.

Character Chart for Fiction Writing

I know that at least once previously I have pointed readers to a resource for charting the characteristics of novel players, but the people at Epi.com have the most comprehensive one I've yet seen. Take a look at the Fiction Writer's Character Chart. To have a copy, you could save a copy of the web page and print it out, but the nice people at Epi also make it available in .PDF, .RTF and .DOC (MS Word) formats. Download one of those versions, and you can print out sheets for each of your characters, or assemble a folder of separate files for each on your computer. I would encourage even short story writers to use a character chart. Just studying the blank chart may give you insights into or ideas about characterization. I love the details the designers suggest like a person's arrest record, darkest secret, goals and fears. Even if these aspects aren't used in your writing, they add weight to your characters to make them more authentic. And, of course, you can use as much or as little of the chart suggestions as you wish.

Writer's Block of Garbage

Some folks experience a variation of Writer's Block in which they can't write anything worthwhile. No, really. Instead of being stuck at nothing, they're rooted to the groove of writing, well, garbage. You know you're stuck in this rut when you start on a story, writing several pages, only to discover it goes nowhere. The characters are flat. Dialog doesn't sparkle. You have no story. Or you've written an article, let it rest a while, and come back to find it's just not as good as previous ones. You're moving in the wrong direction with your writing development. And the harder you try, the worse it gets.

STOP!

Stop what you're doing immediately. You don't want to make this type of writing a habit. Nor the behavior and/or the mindset that comes with it. Begin by taking a break from the trying to write well. This can take three forms:

1. Let your writing be lousy for a while. Let it be O.K. that you are out of touch with your source, your muse, your inspiration. Don't beat yourself up about this situation, because that will only make it worse. You'll descend into a spiral of feeling worse about yourself and consequently writing worse. And so on. Instead, just let it go. Meditate if you must to achieve this state of acceptance that this is only a temporary condition.


2. Write differently. Shake up your routine. Change the way you approach writing or how you develop a story/article. If you are strict about outlining first, start a new piece and just "let it flow". If you're the opposite type of writer, usually loose, tighten up and do more planning first.
   


3. Get away from writing, if you can get away with it. Stimulate other senses with a concert, an art or craft show, or better yet, participate in other types of creativity. It doesn't matter if you're all thumbs or a rank amateur, the idea is to use alternative methods to refresh the well with no performance pressure. Go it alone, if that helps.

I can just hear the staff writers and freelancers with deadlines shouting to the rafters, "we must write!" This is true, especially for those in the news media. See #1, consider #2. Maybe you have a virus and aren't even aware of it. You're entitled to be off your game once in a while. Do a quick self-check to be sure you aren't feeling physically bad. If not, chances are that this is a passing problem that will correct itself quickly, and your editor might not even notice.

Writer, Cat, Poetry Live

Just can't get away from those cats this week. Frank Key of Hooting Yard noted an old post that mentioned a portion of Christopher Smart's poem, Jubilante Agno, about his cat, Jeoffry. Key was kind enough to advise us that:

As an antidote to the usual Christmas fare, ResonanceFM is broadcasting a complete reading of Christopher Smart's "Jubilate Agno" on Thursday 27th December at 12 noon GMT.

Written between 1758 and 1763 when Smart was incarcerated in Mr Potter's private asylum in Bethnal Green, "Jubilate Agno" remained unpublished until 1939. A further edition in 1954 edited by W H Bond led to its recognition as one of the great eccentric masterpieces of English literature. The part of the poem beginning "For I will consider my cat Jeoffry" has been widely anthologised, but the work as a whole is less familiar.

The Resonance broadcast, all three hours of it, is a newly-recorded reading by Frank Key of the acclaimed Hooting Yard website and radio show, and by the unique spoken word performer Germander Speedwell.

The broadcast takes place at noon, UK time. You'll have to figure out the time difference for yourselves. I hope they make a recording available in an archive, because my grasp of time zones is quite slippery.

Get Free Books

Here's a holiday season gift for the readers via the Frugal Panda: 17 resources of free reading! The Panda clause:

You can never have too many books, so we are delighted to share with you some ways to get them for free. From children’s books to technical books, there are numerous links to resources that offer literature for free. Some of the following sites offer actual printed books, while others feature electronic books (aka "ebooks").

Not only does the Frugal Panda list the sources, but also comments on the kinds of books available and tips on uses of the sites.

Among those mentioned: WOWIO, Memoware, and socialbib and others I'd never heard of.

Writers Learn From Cats

From the continuing series of writers and cats: the All I Need to Know I Learned From My Cat (And Then Some) quiz (scroll down and click).

Writers Tackle TMIS

Right now my "To Do" list reads:

Write a memoir
Resume watercolor painting
Redesign A Writer's Edge website
Start a book on cooking
Secure a paid blogging gig
Sell excess junk in house
Advertise for more editing jobs
Edit or create a new blog on cooking

Abmitious? Yes. Ridiculous? Yes! I printed the list in large text and taped it to the front of my printer where it is in view every time I sit to compute. Result: I futz around going from one project to another, accomplishing little. It's too much to do to reach ta daa!

That's why I was delighted to find Leigh Anne Jasheway-Bryant's article on Creativity: Overcoming Too Many Ideas Syndrome. Skip the lengthy introduction and ignore the cutsy subtitles and you'll find nine suggestions for coping with TMIS, including to talk about the ideas with other writers, use mental imagery to manage the mess and evaluate all the ideas to find the best one on which to focus. Some of the notions she recommends are conflicting, so it's up to you to find what works best in your situation. This could be a goal for your new year: get your ideas organized.

Blog Readability Test

What level of education is required to understand A Writer's Edge?

D'oh!

Google Capitulates on Blogger Comments

Straight from the Blogger Buzz:

You Blog, We Listen
December 20, 2007 — permalink
Two fixes just went live, before we sign off for a brief holiday break:

* Unregistered commenters can once again provide an auto-linked URL

Yay? Does this help, previously irked commenters?

Holiday Gifts for Writers

If you have writers on your holiday gift list (or want to drop hints to others)-- how about a present that will further careers? Be a Successful Writer and the two volumes on Effective Websites for Writers will provide useful information and show how much you care!

Find Data on the Internet

So often I see questions in chats, forums and message boards asking, "Where can I find information on ... ?" Fill in the blank with whatever is puzzling you. My flippant response is "Did you Google it?" I realize what follows can be a tedious process, unless you know how to craft specific searches and use Google's special features. It would help to know where to find information on the Internet from more direct sources. That's where Robert Niles come in. The Pasadena journalist's statistics page has long been my favorite resource to recommend for understanding and using numbers, especially from research reports. Now he also has a page on Finding Data on the Internet. (Data is the more academic term for information.)

Rather than presenting a course on how to do Internet research, Niles has gathered a list of the most credible sources of information from Agriculture to Safety, with "Other" and "Basics" categories thrown in, covering more general resources. These will get you started in the right direction.

Is Your Writing Published or Not?

Frequently people ask if they can submit a piece of writing to a contest or a magazine, publisher, agent if it had already appeared on a web page, in a blog, at a critique site. I advocate playing it safe, because appearance on any web page fulfills the definition of being published. A web page is anything that will appear on your computer monitor's screen. As quickly as it appears, a search engine robot may be "spidering" that website and capturing an image of the page for the search engine's index. There the page becomes part of an archive.

The definition of "published and first rights used" depends on the potential buying publisher, contest holder, agent. Some dismiss appearances on critique sites, some don't count blogs, some will even waive self-publishing (with minimal distribution). Jordan E. Rosenfeld explores the vague and shifting boundaries in a Writer's Digest article, Shades of Gray:

Here's his quick list to determine if your piece counts as "previously published."

It was published if...

• you gave up your first North American serial rights

• it went through an editorial process

• it appeared in an online journal, even a defunct one

• it appeared in a print publication with a small print run

• it appeared in a literary anthology

It's unpublished if...

• it won a prize but was not printed

• it was workshopped in an online writing workshop

• it appeared on your blog or someone else's (though this is changing, so tread carefully)

Another Blogger Award

Not quite certain what to make of this Best Friends award, but it sure is cute. I discovered it on Colin Richards' Life. Then it popped up at Blue Ribbon Bloggers, where I've yet to post. Such a slacker! Good thing I have best friends I don't even know in cyberspace, putting up with my lacks and idiosyncrasies. Oh, that's what best friends are all about, aren't they?

Fair Use and Copyright Infringement

Sarah Bird claims to be an attorney (I think--if that's what being a "former litigator" means). At the SEOmoz.org website, she offers a lengthy article on What's Fair About Fair Use? Defending a Copyright Infringement Claim. Fair use, of course, is kind of the flip side of copyright protection, and it's a most controversial part of the law. This is mainly because the law is vague (in my opinion) concerning what constitutes an allowable reproduction of copyrighted materials. Instead of citing a specific amount of material that can be used, the law requires certain conditions be met. Again, they are open to interpretation, usually by lawyers:

⇒ There are four factors to consider when determining whether you are illegally infringing someone’s copyright or merely employing fair use of the material:
→ The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is nor nonprofit educational purposes;
→ The nature of the copyrighted work.
→ The amount and substantially of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
→ The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The purpose of Bird's article, however, is not to help you protect your writing, but rather to help you with the "fair use" defense. If you recycle someone else's work, as we bloggers often do, and the author feels you've infringed on the copyright, understanding the fair use section of the Copyright Act may help you. Seems to me that a comprehensive understanding would benefit all writers, no matter on which side of the fence of fair use they sit.

Facing Fear of Writer's Block

Let's look at the fear aspect of Writer's Block. First are those people for whom fearing creative constipation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. They've heard of Writer's Block. They want to be a writer. They are afraid they will get blocked, especially because in the beginning the most common perplexity is, "What shall I write about?" followed quickly by, "How do I [whatever you're struggling with]?"

Educating yourself about writing structure and processes takes care of the latter question. Listing ideas and/or instituting a goal system handles the former. But what about the basic being so afraid you'll "catch" Writer's Block that you build a block for yourself?

I had to haul out my old 12-step handbook to find the scribbled aphorism for fear:

F = false
E = education
A = appearing
R = real

Fear is false education appearing real. Yes! It simply isn't true that all writers experience temporary interruptions in the creative flow or that it happens frequently or every time writing is attempted. You may have a long and full career and never once feel truly blocked. So don't believe in false information so strongly that you stop yourself before you even get started. How do I face fears? Another aphorism springs to mind: courage is being afraid and doing it anyway.

Fear is an emotion--one of the basic big four that humans experience. You are more than your feelings. You're also a thinking individual. Don't allow fears to derail your desires and railroad your resolve to write. Identify the fear you feel and act on that knowledge. Part of your action can be to write about it. Then keep on writing.

Bloggers Unite in Kindness

Another Bloggers Unite opportunity arises tomorrow. Remember that once popular saying that advocated "random acts of kindness". It always made me bristle, because kindness shouldn't be random, it should be deliberate and institutionalized. What am I going to do? I thought about hugging a stranger or feeding the hungry. I think I'll feed a stranger by donating a grocery bag of nutrition to a pick up point at a neighboring grocery store. I like that concept: taking food to the grocery to feed someone else. Yeah. Here's our chance to start a new, good habit. Hear what others plan:

Scan Your Fingers

You know how Google is trying to become a repository for the universe's knowledge? Take a look at how Book scans reveal Google's handiwork at Stuff.co.nz.

GIVING THE FINGER: Google's book scanning project has inadvertantly captured the fingers of people scanning the books.

Google Screws With Blogger

Can you just imagine what their offspring would look like? Oh, sorry, wrong joke--Google already owns Blogger. Today I automatically logged into my account, noting the confusing notice about Blogger instituting use of OpenID for commenting, acknowledging some snafu about URLs and generally wreaking havoc in my little brain.

A few readers have protested the unavailability of anonymous commenting on this blog. That's fine if you object. I have my reasons, and although I don't moderate comments, I do see them almost as soon as they are posted. I can hit "delete" with the best of 'em! So, I went to enable this new system, hoping it would coax more comments, which have fallen off during their testing period. I couldn't. I couldn't do anything with my own blog that I was logged in to, unless I logged in again!

First they call my blog crap and drive away advertisers by demoting the PageRank to zero; then they don't respond to my request for explanation, re-evaluation; now they're driving participants away by screwing with the comments process.

Eventually I was able to change the comments to this new OpenID system. I have no idea what that does. Will some kind soul please use it, and tell me (in a comment, if you can) if it is good for you? So far Google Screws have not been good for me.

100 Words Writers Should Know

From abjure, abrogate, abstemious, acumen, antebellum, auspicious to vortex, winnow, wrought, xenophobe, yeoman, and ziggurat. How many of those words do you know? My Google toolbar doesn't recognize "ziggurat", but then it doesn't recognize the word "toolbar" either, so what does it know? You may have heard these words and think that you know what they mean in a context, but would you know how to use them correctly in your writing? For all my personal wordiness, a friend kindly elucidated the actual meaning of noblesse oblige for me recently. Did I ever have it backwards in my mind! The editors of American Heritage dictionaries selected 100 words that they think all high school students (and their parents) should know. See all the words in this release where the ed said:

"The words we suggest," says senior editor Steven Kleinedler, "are not meant to be exhaustive but are a benchmark against which graduates and their parents can measure themselves. If you are able to use these words correctly, you are likely to have a superior command of the language."

Set a Writing Goal System

We're coming to the time when traditionally we dream up a list of ways to fail during the coming year. They're called New Years resolutions. I've noticed that refraining from making huge commitments for an extended period is much less effective than taking it a day at a time. I say, "I make resolutions every morning. That's all I can live." When it comes to writing, we're prone to make these resolutions too large, too comprehensive and, let's face it, rather thoughtlessly.

Maybe something different will work better and allow you to feel good about yourself. Instead of the monoliths of resolutions, let's design a simple system of writing goals, rewards and evaluations.

GOALS

The goals must have the attribute of being within your sphere of control. Any goal which involves the words "get an agent" or "will be published" is automatically disqualified (unless you are a publisher). Large goals (like writing a book) need to be divided into sub-goals or mileposts. When a milepost is reached, reward yourself. And begin with a mini-goal you know you can reach to earn a mini-reward. This is setting yourself up for success. Nothing breeds success like success, so get yourself started on a positive roll! Fewer large goals are more likely to be reached within a given time frame, so be realistic.

REWARDS

If your goals are many or include many steps, set up a reward hierarchy that provides little, bitty rewards (like just one chocolate from the candy box) for the smallest successes up to a big reward for completing the major. Only you can decide rewards for yourself. Don't forget intrinsic ones like sharing and celebrating with others. A couple of 'attagirls' can light up your day. If you can tie the rewards to your writing life, so much the better. How about a magazine subscription or a book on writing for a mid-level reward? Or drive downtown to participate in a writing group--you've earned it and damn the gas price!

EVALUATIONS

Standing between working on goals and getting rewards comes the evaluation part. Two major ones begin and end this process. Yeah, it takes time and a little effort and it might provide negative feedback, but this is information you can use to improve your process or system or plan (call it what you will, they're all good words). After drawing up your initial list of goals, review them for feasibility in terms of time, resources, impact on others and potential unwanted effects. You may find yourself overextended and need to cut back or cut out. This is also the time you may discover a goal needs to be broken down into additional smaller steps. Don't forget to adjust the rewards to be compensatory with success at the mini-goal or step.

As the year progresses, periodic "process evaluations" will help determine if you're on track and where adjustments might need to be made. Perhaps you underestimated the amount of time needed for one part of reaching a particular goal. Maybe a step needs further reduction to more manageable steps. As you fine-tune your system, it will work better and better. At the end of the year (or whatever time frame you chose), perform another evaluation and decide if this was beneficial for you. If it resulted in an effective way to manage your career, carry on. That's the best reward--to have found way to work that rewards you and leads to success.

LibraryThing Improvements

Yes, I realize this is the third time I've posted about LibraryThing | Catalog your books online. This time it is because the website's services were upgraded considerably. I waited until the bugs got all shaken out, and apparently it's smooth sailing now (LOVE all
those metaphors!) According to Tim, who posts on the site's blog, it now includes:

* detail and edit pages
* multiple authors, roles
* fields for # copies, comments
* new libraries & languages
* MARCthing improved db access

Read details in the LibraryThing Blog, which ends with this tidbit:

As Tim O'Reilly recently put it in an interview, LibraryThing is one of a number of sites that provide different, interesting takes on the "social graph." You don't get to interesting relationships around books without making the book-side as powerful and flexible as can be.

Contest for Creative Writing

The lovely people who provide answers at Answers.com are having a "creative writing" contest in which you have to use all the words below in a piece of 750 words or less:

• a lick and a promise
• ataraxia
  
• contraband
  
• halva
• mantic
  
• praxis
  
• sapid
  
• semilunar
  
• serendipity
  
• zeitgeist

I thought I'd give it a lick and a promise, seeing as how my ataraxia has abated due to contraband semilunal sapid halva received from a mantic admirer whose serendipity fits the zeitgeist.

Hurry! The deadline is December 21, 2007.

Bust the Writer's Block

From Courage and Craft: Writing Your Life into Story by Barbara Abercrombie:

To live your own true and precious life, you need to express yourself and make your inner life as important and known as your visible life. Whether you’re published or not, you need to turn the chaos and the glimpses of beauty, the questions and the search for answers, the days and months and years of your life into something meaningful on a page.

Sometimes all those bits and pieces glom together to build up a creative block. Just too much information, too many experiences, feelings, people, relationships overload our writing circuits and plug up the flow.

The good news is that out of this chaos, you can choose to own the mess and design an orderly arrangement that allows creative construction. Busting the block is deconstruction, selecting the elements on which to focus. Incorporate and discard features as you experiment with a piece of writing. If it isn't working--fix it. Don't fear experimentation. No one will penalize you for overproduction and flops. We'd never see Broadway successes if playwrights and producers didn't take repeated risks.

Each day, as you age, fragments of life add to your store of ideas, memories, experiences on which to draw. If you're the type to compartmentalize and pigeon-hole this material, you have a tidy, orderly inner castle. The downside is a tendency to rigidity that needs occasional messing up in order to play the "what if ... " game which nurtures imagination and creativity. At the other end of the continuum, if you can simply absorb what life tosses your way and let it pile up inside, a little housecleaning and organization can help you find the order necessary to make sense and make art.

Use Yahoo! Search

I've tossed the Google Search Box--at least until this site's good PageRank is restored--in favor of a Yahoo! Search Box. See the feature at the top of the page, just to the right of the header. It took a bit of finagling to force it to work correctly and in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Apparently the Yahoo! version can't be created to fit into a 150 pixels-width sidebar. This step is the second in protest of Google's unfair demotion of this site to PageRank zero. Even the "Posting Create" page in Blogger has a rank of 6! Boycott Google! Use Yahoo! Search! Avoid AdSense and AdWords!

Freelance Writers' Resource

I don't think I've mentioned WritingCareer.com as an all-round resource for writers. It is subtitled "Expert Career Advice for Writers and Freelance Writers", and it offers sections on Career Guides, Advice, Websites, Jobs (aggregator), and Workshops and Resources. Some of the latter include free articles, podcasts and ebooks. A blog, Creative Freelancing offers even more material with such provocative titles as "What is Freelance Blogging". I'd better read that one! Another section holds information on writing contests, although accessing it via http://www.freelancewriting.com/writing-contests.php is better because that page has a search engine you can set to "newest" or "deadline". This appears to be a related website with a forum I was once thrown out from because I questioned the moderator using the members email addresses to advertise her (for profit) classes. Meow!

I am a Classic!

You're To Kill a Mockingbird!
by Harper Lee

Perceived as a revolutionary and groundbreaking person, you have changed the minds of many people. While questioning the authority around you, you've also taken a significant amount of flack. But you've had the admirable guts to persevere. There's a weird guy in the neighborhood using dubious means to protect you, but you're pretty sure it's worth it in the end. In the end, it remains unclear to you whether finches and mockingbirds get along in real life. Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

How to Write a Query Letter

One of the most comprehensive sets of advice about queries is free for the taking at Writing.com: How to Write a Query Letter. Author Kim-Merry covers queries both for magazines and books, suggesting actions in a Do/Don't format and providing examples of good and bad queries. She covers a lot of ground with explanations of her advice tidbits:

Don’t use exclamation marks, bold, or caps.
State what enclosures are attached.
Proofread your letter.
Don't tell them you're new to this.

I like the last two, especially. Even now, after decades of writing, I tend to rush off an email without checking it, other than an automatic spelling check that the software does. And I know I'm prone to writing "Thank your" instead of "Thank you"! (Exclamation mark O.K. -- this is a blog post, not a query letter.) If you are new to the biz, your writing, if not your credits, will probably reveal this fact. I reviewed a query recently for someone who claimed to be an established writer. The query had all the right elements covered, but the way the writer expressed them simply screamed "amateur". Sentences were awkward and didn't flow smoothly.

It is important to get the query process correct in the beginning, or you'll be doomed to doing freebies for online ezines. Find a critique group that includes professional writers and/or editors, get a mentor, buy (and follow) a good book on the subject. Jenna Glatzer provides an autopsy of a "killer query" on the Absolute Write website.

Writers Can Sell Themselves via Technology

Several newish marketing or promotion notions:

Stamps. Put yourself, logo or book cover on a U.S. postage stamp. Services like zazzle.com, photo.stamps.com, and yourstamps.com can do the trick (thanks to Jim Cox's Midwest Book Review newsletter).

Radio interviews. Ah, but this isn't your grandparents' radio: try the new satellite and Internet radio services like Sirius, Blogtalk, WritersFM, live and recorded MP3s.

If you have a book coming out, be sure to badger your publisher to hook it up to book clubs as suggested in Publishers Seek to Mine Book Circles - New York Times. Several new Web 2.0 social networking sites exist for reading groups.

To be or Not to be in Writing

This isn't a career or lifestyle discussion. It's about abusing forms of the verb "to be" in your writing. When I wrote Editors' Bugaboos in Writing, alert author Mary Anna Clemons asked me to elaborate on this topic. She told me it took her years to understand what the advice meant. In short, it is to avoid these words: am, is, are, was, were, will, be, being, been (and the helper verb that form conditional states of the verb to be). Don't use them unless absolutely necessary. Why? Because they are what I call "empty" verbs and using them is wasting words. Remember the call to use action verbs and the active voice. Passive sentences often use forms of to be.

Passive: The field was littered with broken columns.
Wordy: There were broken columns in the field.
Better: Broken columns littered the field.

Wordy: Susan is hit with a two-by-four.
Better: A two-by-four smacks Susan up the side of the head.

Wordy: James had been being an ass.
Better : James made an ass of himself.

Often sentences need rewriting to rid them of to be forms. This is your opportunity to strengthen the sentence with movement and more colorful writing.

Writing Memoirs and First Novels

Lives I didn't live have been on my mind for the last year. This is also a dilemma for writers trying to create a memoir. The temptation is to follow the "what ifs" and become entangled in resentments. In his excellent THE MEMOIR AND THE MEMOIRIST, Thomas Larson suggests that this is fallacious reasoning, because it doesn't consider the value of the life you did live, and that the one you didn't, the road not taken, might have lead to different disasters.

A similar pitfall awaits young writers in attempting first novels, books best left unread. Knowing nothing of life but the brief one they have recently lived, their novels become thinly disguised memoirs. Perhaps reaching for drama, they air injustices, real or imagined, unaware that we all had similar angst-filled childhoods. Better to wait to use this material when you are much older and able to distinguish true tragedies.

If only I'd resisted that cute sailor and fulfilled my plan to attend Standford and become a clinical psychologist, wouldn't my life have been so much better, more fulfilling? Or I might have been lured by the flower children in San Francisco and languished as a hippie poet and a Lawrence Ferlinghetti groupie.

How to Handle Content Theft

With the discovery that some $#@!&*** is displaying the RSS feeds of my entire posts, including the copyright notices, the following resource caught my attention: The 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft : The Blog Herald. Jonathan Bailey expounds on the process to catch and punish copy crooks. Let's see how my project to rid the Internet of a scummy scoundrel stacks up:

Detection (I got mine in a Google Alert)
Preserve Evidence (oops! missed that)
Contact Plagiarist (could find no id)
Contact Advertisers (check)
Contact Host (double check)
Contact Search Engine (oy, too much effort!)

Bailey offers links to resources to help you in every stage. Of course, first you have to be aware if someone uses your content. Hint: I use Google Alerts with all forms of my name, the blog name, and its URL, including those with and without the "http://" and the "www." Women have an advantage in that their names are more varied than men's. Yet another good reason to use a real name or pseudonym you want recognized on the Internet, rather than use a silly screen name.

The procedure for notifying Microsoft (the offending site is on Window Live Spaces or whatever it's called--very confusing) was so precise and complex that I'm still not sure I performed it correctly. Problem is, the person who owns the space is scraping many others' feeds, using a feed feeder service. I contacted that company, too, because redisplaying that content without permission is a violation of a term of service.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your search engines!

Don't Let Others Build Your Block

"It's a phenomenon all artists and creative thinkers must face eventually: a show down at the Small Thinkers Corral. It's not that our family or friends actually wish us harm or that they secretly have curly tails and pot bellies. It's more that when you light up with inspiration, you glow. That light can be overwhelming for some and blinding for others. If those friends, family members (or critics of any relation) lack light beams of their own, they're likely to want to turn yours down or--in some cases--just douse you with the cold, clear water of their "reality" 'til your light flame snuffs out."

So lyricized the Muse, Angi Sullins, in Pearls and Pigs--An Artist vs. Critic Phenomenon. I've mused on this topic since finding it a couple of months ago. I've received beatings about the head and body for being "rude" or "too harsh" in replies to beginners. I fit into the category of those who want others to be aware of the realities of the writing world, to help them avoid the pitfalls and mistakes I've already experienced. Have I helped build a Writer's Block for them by my apparent lack of support? I am not insensitive (Lord knows!), but perhaps too blunt, impatient and unwilling to repeatedly post long explanations couched in tender terms. [Yes, I just split an infinitive--it sounds best that way.]

One of the gems of advice you'll see most often in chats and forums is this: toughen up! You can't learn to be a better writer if you can't bear honest critiques of your writing or hear warnings when you're headed down the wrong path. Getting angry or depressed easily leads to giving up or freezing up. This isn't to say that chronic nay-sayers don't exist in your life and online, although they're usually hounded out of chats and forums.

I watched a thread wherein a guy vented his anger because he couldn't find a traditional publisher who would print his book exactly the way he wanted it (and pay him). We tried to tell him that the traditional publishing world doesn't work that way. He just argued and finally went away. Mad, I presume. Then there was the girl who had finally been published and even secured a column. She's in pain because the people who previously supported her desire to be a writer now seem uninterested in her continuing success. I was tempted to write, "And do you want egg in your beer?"

Toughen up! It's your responsibility to keep your creative light lit. Or else you'll find yourself circling a never ending block in the dark.

Be a Screenwriter

After the writers' strike is settled, think you might want to be a screenwriter? Catch a glimpse of what it's really like to work with producers at YouTube - Mitchell and Webb - Write this..or that..or maybe