Writing About Writers

More secrets of a successful writer revealed! Two of these resources are so valuable, I keep them hidden in my browser's bookmarks toolbar.  That also means that I use them so often, I want them right at click, which is the same as at hand. Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac, a service of American Public Media, is more than a database of poetry and authors.  Each day Keillor writes about authorial anniversaries (birthdays, publication dates and other events) providing background and details you might not know.

The Library Booklists and Bibliographies contains an enormous amount of material on books and writers.  The part that I've used the most is similar to The Writer's Almanac, and that is the section on Literary Births. The beauty of both of these resources is the additional information delivered about some of the authors.  Pick your favorite writer and search both sites to find useful material.

Finally, if I'm writing about a particular writer, or even a specific subject, I know I can always find a cogent quotation at Famous Quotes and Quotations at BrainyQuote. For example, the Quote of the Moment is "Every artist was first an amateur."  Ralph Waldo Emerson said it, and I am fond of reminding some that we were all unpublished writers when we began.  

Please, don't introduce yourself as such.  If you're a writer, you're a writer, published or not.  If being published is a criterion for something or someone, you'll discover it soon enough, so don't start out one-downing yourself. Hmm. I feel an "Inspiration" message in the making.

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Bag of Writing Tips

Here's a nicely mixed bag of tips for successful writing.  These links comprise some of the fundamental resources I've hoarded throughout this blog's life.  Before I delete them from the "Drafts" I will gather them into posts. Make note of these resources and mine them for yourself:

Ed 2010 is the place to go for, as Ed says, "your magazine dream job." The WhisperJobs is it's great feature, and now a message board is functioning. Ed's blog seems to have died out a couple of years ago, possibly around the time Ed joined Twitter as @Ed2010news. Do we see a what's what here? BLOG Twitter.

Allen & Unwin is an Australian book publisher with a very useful service called The Writing Center. I especially like the Writers on Writing section.  They currently feature a Q & A with Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Committed and Eat, Pray, Love.

Chris Gobel's Writing Help Page displays his to ten list of "no-no" hints for writing in general.  Some of the links may be outdated, but the easily- understood guidance is evergreen.  This is part of his website, HUMDINGER LITERARY E-ZINE: All kinds of writing for all kinds of readers. This site is now an archive, nay, a treasure, to be plundered systematically for all it's worth.

Another deep, deep resource is the English Usage FAQ Home Page of http://www.yaelf.com/ -- also housing the FAQ page for the old alt.usage.english Usenet group (anybody here old enough to have belonged to Usenet groups?  Waaaay back, predating the World Wide Web.) It might be easier to use this huge website via its site map.

Just as the classics become references to have at hand, while experts and authorities take up more techy methods to communicate, A Writer's Edge Blog will remain right here, while I continue on Twitter. Also available via RSS.

GLHancock 4,801 tweets

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Wordnik -- Using Words

Learn how English words are used at Wordnik. The multifunctional site is a crossing of social media with a library reference room--the kind where you are not allowed to remove any books or other material. Start keying in a word in the search window, and Wordnik drops down a menu with selections, variants, from which to choose (helpful for the spelling-challenged.)

If your word is among the four billions words of text it indexes, a result pops up, with another submenu from which you can choose to explore:  Definitions · Examples · Pronunciations · Etymologies · Related · Statistics (somewhat less useful unless you indulge in extreme Scrabble). The list of sources the service uses is impressive, including The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, The Century Dictionary, WordNet®, The GNU version of The Collaborative International Dictionary of English, derived from the 1913 Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Roget's II: The New Thesaurus and Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms.

Notice, I did not say that Wordnik tells you how words are supposed to be used, and this is a little disturbing to an editor and linguistic lover.  They say:

Here at Wordnik, we show you what people actually do with language, not what we'd like them to do. We think it's important to show real information about every word—even the ones that aren't considered standard.

They feel that you learn a word better by seeing it in context [even if it is used incorrectly?] and that some information is better than none. [same query]

Thus, if you want to use this fascinating and fun site as a quick look up for a serious piece of writing, please be sure to view the dictionary definitions and not just the "examples." I looked up since because I am editing a manuscript in which that word is used mostly incorrectly (IMHO). I found the beginning dictionary definitions congruent with my view, i.e., that the word is not a synonym for because; it has to do with the passage of time.

"Since we last went to the moon, the U.S. space program has lagged." I would hope to not imply that the program lags because we went to the moon. However, many of the examples displayed at Wordnik, use since in that way, as does the entry from Allen's, giving because as a synonym.

How annoying!

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HARO is a Mega Network

Michael Stelzner of Top Ten Blogs for Writers and writing white papers reknown, interviewed Peter Shankman, the genius who built HARO. That's the "Help a Reporter Out" site that morphed into a resource for both writers needing experts to quote and experts looking for public relations opportunities.

Stelzner examines the phenomenon from a social media viewpoint in an article on his new site, Social Media Examiner, started last summer: How ‘Help a Reporter Out’ Grew to a Mega Network.

They discuss how HARO evolved from a Facebook group to facilitate his casual match-making between reporter friends and friendly sources:

As HARO grew, more people were asking me questions and I did not have the time to fill in all the answers. That led to the Facebook group concept as just being a lot easier. I could post the queries to Facebook and then anyone could answer them. That was a very easy start.

In about six months, the requests overran Shankman's email capability, and he moved the service to a website.

He and Stelzner explore the social media aspect of the service and how to build one of your own. Shankman stresses having good content to offer people who want to receive it and enjoy using it. He also has a vision similar to the one David Siegel writes about in Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business, that we are evolving toward one network. He said, "I don’t necessarily think it’s going to be Google Wave. Right now I’m really not seeing any value in Google Wave. I think it will probably be some sort of combination of Facebook and something Google does."

I'm happy to see my feelings about the Wave echoed and that others share Siegel's predictions about our future social and business lives meshing in a single Internet network, meeting many needs as HARO does now.

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Find News about Magazines

Magazine freelancers need to know about their markets. A good source for news on them is MediaWeek.com. The site covers multimedia, but the section on newspapers and magazines is especially handy. Scroll down the page past news articles to find white papers. Are you a specialist? Perhaps you could write a white paper for this site. MediaWeek is part of Nielsen Business Media, serving the publishing industry with multiple sites, including Editor and Publisher, another source of information for freelancers, too.

A third website you might want to hit when you make your "rounds" is FOLIO, possibly even more comprehensive in its coverage and services. I see there every technical version of ways to deliver information and breaking news. I am especially drawn to the blogs. I noticed one by Jason Fell on this week's Twitterversy #afropw about the Publishers Weekly cover shot and title because I vigorously participated in forcing the @PW senior editor Calvin Reid to apologize for his choices.

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MBR Self-Publishing Help

Thinking about self-publishing? Here's a list of books on the venerable Midwest Book Review website to help you get started:

MBR: The Publisher's Bookshelf A-L and M-Z

In his monthly newsletter, Editor Emeritus, Jim Cox, usually reviews these types of books and others to help writers and publishers in general. Another informational page on the site is Advice for Writers & Publishers, articles by various professionals.

Ordinarily I'd be telling you where to find "Georganna's Bookshelf" for October 2009, but I was tardy sending in my reviews last month. A gentle tap on the noggin by Jim informed me that I once again have a deadline: the 25th of the preceding month.

I did not know this.

November's page will be awesome!

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Finding Free Photos

How do you find out if a picture is in the public domain and therefore publishable without paying a fee? Someone needed photographs of historical figures. The long, complicated explanation involves a definition of "public domain" (you can head a podcast on the topic), paying the U.S. Copyright office or specialists to run a search for you, or confining yourself to material published before 1923. Some works that were copyrighted between 1923 and 1963 may be available, due to a lapse in copyright, but you'd need to be sure.

A much simpler solution is to begin at the other end of the process. Instead of starting with a photo or other image, search for material available under a Creative Commons license. Or pony up the minimal fee to use a stock photo from a site like istockphoto.com or the Getty Archives. Searches of those sites can usually yield what you need. Also anything produced by governmental entities are owned by "we the People". Try the national archives, Library of Congress, state historical societies for starters.

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Action Buttons

Twitter in action: chat > improvement + follower > resource. In a Twitter chat about marketing with blogs, Amy Africa suggested my site needs a "contact button", a.k.a. "Call to Action" clickable image that triggers a form or email. The same evening, Jay Eskenazi signed up to follow my Twittering, and I reciprocated because I liked the cut of his tweets. The next day that move rewarded me with a link to Strong Call to Action Button at XDXY eMarketing Tips. These free button images fill just about any site need. You can improve your site's appearance, usability and utility in furthering your writing career. Look them over and think how you could use one in a new way to build community with your site's visitors, potential clients, fans.

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Podcast Writing Zine

The British site Hi-Arts has begun The Supplement -- a podcast magazine for writers in the Highlands and Islands. Subscribe to the RSS feed or you can download what I like much better, a PDF version . Besides being in print, it lists the websites links that the subject mentions. The first issue has a

focus on writing in the digital age with author, journalist and games writer Naomi Alderman. This issue has three parts - in part one, Naomi delivers a discursive presentation in which she considers impacts and future scenarios for publishing in the digital age.

Part two deals with scenarios for how writers will find an audience and make a living in the digital future, and part three is about Alderman's own works. That name rang a bell and, sure enough, I found a mini-review I'd posted on her Orange Award-winning novel:

Disobedience, ISBN: 978-0743291569, by Naomi Alderman. Glimpses into very different lives always intrigue me, and none are more different than those of Orthodox Jews. More so, apparently, if the traditional community is set in staid Great Britain, that bastion of blancmange. The spicy religious sect hold secrets within secrets, gradually revealed as the main character, Ronit, visits the place from which she thought she had escaped her heritage. Sad and unsettling.

I have a pristine copy of this hardcover novel for sale. I'll be happy to autograph and inscribe it to the buyer. See details and other reviews of the book in my Collections.

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Comic-Con IMAX Adventure

I had the best of Comic-Con yesterday, thanks to IMAX. It was the best because I didn't have to go downtown to the convention center to see a preview of new IMAX technology in an IMAX multiplex theater. Digital 3-D IMAX films rawk! The new projection and audio technology combined with custom-designed theater geometry make for what IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond and tech EVP Brian Bonnick called a new immersion experience for theater-goers. Unavailable for home theaters, of course.

As I tweeted, Harry Potter did seem close enough to touch, and I ducked the cow-catcher on the Polar Express when it halted just inches from my nose. Whew! I skipped the Terminator battle (not a total nerd) but bawled through the birth scene in the latest Star Trek. And I think Greg Foster implied--JUST IMPLIED!--that more Star Trek movies may be in the offing. Can you tell I'm a trekkie yet?

Unlike most of the rest of the select group, I did not spend the presentation thumbing a cell phone or madly keyboarding a laptop. I watched, listened, felt and noticed my reactions. I removed and replaced the 3-D glasses, looked through one eye, then the other to appreciate fully that immersion. When viewing a portion of "Under the Sea", I melted. I love skin diving in tropical waters. If it weren't for the chill of the theater, I would have felt I was back off the Great Barrier Reef again. Oh, I did take notes with an antique pen on a pad of paper.

I can't imagine a better way for writers to receive most of the auditory and visual stimulations of the real experience without the expense and fuss of travel.

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Crime Reports by Tweets

This just in from the editors of thecrimereport.org:

Police Departments across the nation are using twitter to inform their communities about the latest homicides, robberies and accidents. Is it the Next Big Thing in fighting crime? Reporter Dena Levitz explores the unfolding Twitter universe of law enforcement for The Crime Report. Read the exclusive story at http://thecrimereport.org/2009/07/06/twitter-this/ The Crime Report focuses on the best reporting, commentary and analysis, and latest cutting-edge research taking place in the criminal justice system. It is a collaborative effort by two national organizations that focus on encouraging quality criminal justice reporting: The Center on Media, Crime and Justice, the nation's leading practice-oriented think tank on crime and justice reporting at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Criminal Justice Journalists, the nation's only membership organization of crime-beat journalists. Read breaking news daily at TheCrimeReport.org, on Facebook and Twitter.

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Writer Resource Roundup

If you're a freelancer in Canada or one who works for Canadian clients, you may be confused about what to charge or what pay to expect. The writers.ca • find a professional writer in canada site can help you out. It offers useful information for all freelancers, including sections on professional practices and copyrights.

Have a book for sale on Amazon.com? Are you participating in whatever they call their authors' blogs--a good marketing move. Another, more hidden, bonus is the Amazon Vine™ Program, which "enables a select group of Amazon customers to post opinions about new and pre-release items to help their fellow customers make educated purchase decisions. Customers are invited to become Amazon Vine™ Voices based on the trust they have earned in the Amazon community for writing accurate and insightful reviews."

Who doesn't need more pictures to choose from? Shareapic - The pic sharing site that gives back! is a newer resource. I intend to join because of the front page tease (ignoring all the exclamation points):

We pay $0.22 per 1000 pic views.. that's more than some major ad networks pay their publishers!
- We allow you to add your Bidvertiser © code to your image and gallery pages.
- We pay out within 30 days!
- One click posting to Facebook, Myspace, Blogger, Orkut, and more!

Now, it's back to the cat race.

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What Good is Twitter?

And other social media? Before I grudgingly dragged myself over to sign up with Twitter, I kept reading about how useful it is. But no one offered any details. Everyone said things like "you'll find out how to use it for yourself." Big help, huh?

As with LinkedIn, I'm sorry I waited so long to jump into these turbulent waters. For an early adopter of technology, I'm surely slow with the social aspects.

I consider Twitter as the world's biggest chatroom. If you're in business, you need to have a Twitter account--and to use it and monitor messages to it. It's the 911 for instant communication, research, connections for any kind of writer.

Here's how Twitter has saved my bacon a few times:

One place my book reviews appear is on the Blogcritics.org. New software on the site was giving me a fit. The Help was no help. Editors were unavailable. I was ready to scream. Then I thought: Twitter? Although still unfamiliar with all it's workings, I searched on the website's name and found an account for it, direct mailed it and lo, the Big Man himself intervened. In a few minutes. (A day later an editor responded.)

Another day I was about to publish a post recommending a new service at another website. All I had was the base URL to the site. Thought I'd better check out the special part myself. After many minutes (waiting to upload the post to my blog, mind you) I could find nothing, no link, no mention, no part of a site map that correlated. And the plug was plugged in! A "Top Priority" email to the PR person brought no response (ever!). Once again I consulted Twitter, found an account for the correct company and shot off a question. While I worked on a couple of other posts, someone at the company noticed they were about to lose out on possibly valuable free advertising unless they responded to a Twitter chirp. They did, and the post went up touting a new source of reading material for tech-type readers.

In both cases, I was pleased with speedy dependable research results. They enabled me to multitask, keep on working on a particular critical piece, and do my "job" in a timely fashion. And this is just one little example of what Twitter does for me.

When communicating with a friend, client, colleague, source, supplier, or representative, the messaging often flows back and forth between and among Twitter and email. Throw in the third party applications I've accumulated thusfar and I can carry on multiple conversations simultaneously with TweetGrid or monitor just one input stream; or work in my blogging program and get TweetFox instant messages in the lower right corner of the screen, and once a week go to a big meeting of editors in a TweetChat room.

All this has only to do with business communication. I'm beginning to think I could write a book about the handy uses for Twitter and other social media for issues other than socializing.

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Sites to Help Writers on Web 2.0

Visionary Blogging: Helping you use blogs and social media more intelligently -- a must read blog for anyone intent on using the Internet to promote careers, products, services.

SpringWidgets : Widgets, MySpace Profile Gadgets, Social Network Countdown Badges & RSS Feed Readers: You can create an RSS reader with multiple feeds; badges for your profile on social networks such as MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo; countdown application widgets and other cool gadgets for your blog -- services galore for the blogger and more!

Tweeple, We Hardly Knew You: users with a bio have 8 times the number of followers than those without a bio. Profiles with web links had 7.5 times the number of followers compared to those without links -- article on using social media for career promotion/book sales/contracts/contacts with suggestions for the bare minimum of what to include in Twitter (and other) profiles.

Effective Internet Presence guru Ted Demopoulos gives away an eBook of his wisdom on the subject: If you don't exist on the Web or the search engines can't find you, you basically don't exist! -- available soon from A Writer's Edge.

Excuse me, I need to build an AWE badge and write something a little more intelligent and effective for my Twitter profile @GLHancock

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Learn from Agents Blogs

A list of literary agents who blog about what they do and what they want from writers who query them might be a handy educational tool, right? I compiled one and thought I blogged about it or added it as a free article, but I can't find it now. Here's a handy similar reference in a simple web page with hotlinks to the agents' blogs, courtesy LitMatch.net. As usual, I recommend beginning with Nathan Bransford's post on Anatomy of a Good Query Letter.

I love his query formula:

[Agent name], [genre], [personalized tidbit about agent], [title], [word count], [protagonist name], [description of protagonist], [setting], [complicating incident], [verb], [villain], [protagonist's quest], [protagonist's goal], [author's credits (optional)], [your name]

This is from his Query Letter Mad Lib post. It applies only to novels, of course.

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Find Free Photos in the Morgue

Always looking out for graphics resources. The morguefile.com Where photo reference lives has finally finished reconstructing itself, so now I can suggest it as a place to find free photos. They explain:

The morguefile free photo reference archive provides the public and creative community with a repository of free raw photo materials. These images can be used in your commercial or private projects. If you have any questions, read the FAQs, if you can't find your answer or are having technical difficulties, submit a trouble ticket to the help desk Search or browse the archive below. If you would like to contribute photos, please register first. Please be sure to consult the terms and conditions of the site.

The galleries move by swiftly enough, if the thumbnails are a little too small, but I couldn't get the hang of the search engine yet. Maybe you have to be registered.

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Writing Services

Tripping through the fields on the Web, these tricks treats services caught my writer's eyes:

Kelley Sonora over at MatchaCollege.com just alerted me to a great resource on this page of free courses for writers. What a useful listing of free classes you can take to improve your hobby or craft. I can't vouch for the quality of the instruction offered, of course. You'll have to check out each of them for yourself.

Although I don't approve of wikis as an information source for researching subjects for articles, Wikipedia's new Wiktionary can be useful for a quick look up, especially when you just want the gist of a word. The incredible part that makes it so much fun are the 105 languages (at last check) that you can use in the main search engine. To try it out, I slammed in "schlemiel", one of my fave Yiddish words, and this service brought right up an understandable explanation.

Last, but not least, a fee service, eSpindle builds custom-designed English vocabulary and spelling sessions from a database of 100,000 words. This would be great for English language learners (ESL) of any age, although it seems to be designed for children using advanced technology. Let's hear it for Ed Tech! The home page contains a long list of questions you can get answered just by clicking on them. A variety of subscription plans as well as a free trial are available.

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Continuing Education

If you prefer the convenience of online learning, check out the wide selection of classes and courses from the Poynter Institute's News University: Journalism Training. Online Courses Anytime. Anywhere. Some could help fiction writers.

THIS JUST IN:

LitMatch members who are ready to take their writing to a new level can receive a $50 discount off the regular tuition when they enroll in their first 10-week writing workshop offered online or in NYC.

To receive the discount, writers must provide promotion code LM50D08 when registering online or by phone. Offer is valid only for writers new to Gotham who are enrolling in a 10-week workshop and may not be combined with any other discounts. Expires January 30, 2009. More info at WritingClasses.com or call toll-free 1-877-WRITERS.

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Writing with Holly Lisle

Holly Lisle's eponymous website is a great resource for creative writers. I've blogged about her several times. And she offers a great deal of free material. In addition to the useful Plot Outline, you can also get 40 free sample pages of the second version of Create A Plot Clinic book. And she says, "Version 2 is a free download for anyone who purchased the beta version or Version 1.(x) How to create a plot from scratch, or fix a broken plot, from first idea to final revision." What a deal! I've always appreciated Holly's famous Mugging the Muse and the classic One Pass Manuscript Revision. You can read what I wrote about the muse ebook and the article on revision.

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Writing About the U.S.

Setting a novel in the United States often requires some research into history. Similarly, a nonfiction piece may need comparative data from a previous era. Everyone knows the U.S. Library of Congress (LOC) is probably the largest repository of such information. But not everyone can travel to Washington, D.C., to perform the necessary research. Fortunately the digital age rescues us -- and we don't even need a special membership or password to access the LOC collections.

Visiting the electronic version of the library can be as daunting as paying it a visit in person. Where to go? What to ask for? Fortunately intermediaries, like the Digital Library Federation maintain a registry of the digitized collections in the LOC. This isn't just a list of names, however. Clicking on the Full Description link takes you to a page of information about the collection that will help you determine if it's likely to contain the data you are seeking. Additionally, the description page contains sections on associated projects and related collections. In some cases, alternative access URLs are provided, handy if the main link is down for any reason.

You can also search A Writer's Edge for other posts on research.

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New Literary Locales for Writing

The last time I wrote about Literary Locales was in November 2007. It has been mostly off line since that time. It was riddled with dead links, now cleaned out or replaced, and quite a few new ones were added (there are now about 1,160 sites). Site manager, Scott Rice, also wrote to say:

Thank you for plugging "Literary Locales." ...The more that people are aware of pictorial sites devoted to literary figures, the more likely that some may get out their cameras and create their own. I have long been amazed, for example, that no one has tried to do anything for the great American regional writer, William Faulkner. You would think that someone in or around Oxford, Mississippi, would be so inspired. In any event, if you or any of your contacts have suggested improvements, please let me know. I regard Web sites as collaborative affairs.

All right, Faulkner fans and Oxford Mississippians, the gauntlet is thrown down! Literary Locales is a fun, easy resource.

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Writing Fiction About Family

For writers, one great side-effect of studying family history or genealogy is the mystery element: those unidentified photos in the old albums, family members for whom you have only the bare facts, and the ones you know an interesting little story about--and nothing else.

Consider my great-great-Grandpa Fred Fox. I'm lucky in that I have a picture of him, I've seen his fascinating tombstone, and I remember a story my grandmother told. Grandpa Fox is a goldmine! When I view his faded photo, all in shades of brown, his visage and stance all shout to me "Indian fighter"! Part of our family's land includes an ancient Indian burial mound. Although fighting Indians wasn't much of a feature in southwestern Ohio, Grandpa Fox could have gone off to the west and had an adventure, then returned home.

His tombstone features a life-size carving of a small-breed dog. At least, that's the way it looks to me. The legend is that when old Fred fell off his horse, the little dog ran all the way back to the farmhouse and alerted the family. Alas, Fred drowned in a rain-filled hoof print (another story), but everyone was so impressed with the dog's loyalty that they honored him on Fox's grave marker.

Finally, there's the story about the origin of another family member. My grandmother said that one day an Indian woman deposited her papoose with one of our aunts, promising to pick up the child later. Perhaps she was an itinerant come to help harvest the potato or tobacco crop. The mother never returned, so aunt Leola raised the black-haired beauty as one of her own. When I look carefully at the woman's face, I see Grandpa Fox's mouth and eyes set in dark skin and hair. All these relatives lived contemporaneously along Pennyroyal Hill Road, on land once inhabited by Miami Indians.

The creative part of my mind could easily string all these incidents together in a story. With the photos and personal knowledge of the setting, "all" I'd need to do is come up with a poignant plot. Yes, my family tree is ripe with such tidbits, "story plums" about to drop into my lap. How about yours? Interview the oldest members of your family before the interesting memories disappear and storylines are lost forever.

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Find Writing Sources

Beginning freelancers are often stumped about how to find people to interview for an article. I just learned about a (new?) free resource operated by Peter Shankman "If I Can Help a Reporter Out". You don't have to be a reporter to use it. Several times a day, Shankman emails batches of queries to people who have signed up as sources. Often these are publicists and public relations reps, seeking placements for clients (experts for you to interview).

On the other hand, if you are an expert at something/anything or have a cause to promote and are willing to be interviewed, you can sign up as a Source.

And I don't see why you couldn't play both sides of the street at the same time. Say you want to promote one published book or product while writing a different topic, or you need fresh interviews for a sequel. Sign up for both of Shankman's services, and make the man doubly happy.

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Creating Characters Online

Some innovative methods to develop characters for your fiction, using partly free online services:

• sign up at a matchmaker like Chemistry, fill out the interminable questionnaire (save a copy of the questions and your responses) and save the resulting profile


• get a handwriting sample from someone like the character you are working with, and get an analysis from Sheila Lowe (warning: excruciatingly long questionnaire)


• visit TAAZ and play with redesigning a portrait photo for a limited idea of an appearance (works best for women)
  

Would it be unethical of you to use these services for this purpose? I don't think so, although I wouldn't encourage you to leave up the profile your create at the matchmaker's site, both for others' and your own sake.

Ladies: the TAAZ site is so fun! Made me look young and gorgeous. Did absolutely nothing for the turkey neck, however. You can see and hear more about this incredible software in a YouTube video.

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Writers' Online Research Resource

The Gale Group, people who put out useful directories and other reference materials usually found in libraries, offers an interesting online service, AccessMyLibrary - News, Research, and Information that Libraries Trust. If you have an account with a member library (only in the US, sorry), you can research topics from newspapers, magazines, newsletters, journals and other publications your library holds. MyAccess claims to cover 29,614,182 articles from A Friend Indeed to Zap2It.

When you find an article, you're presented with a snippet of the beginning, which ranges from a few lines to a couple of paragraphs. To read the full article requires selecting a library you belong to (it might even be your public school's) and entering, well, I'm not sure what. They say "bar code" but present a text box. Because the San Diego Public Library is part of a different online catalog, and that's the only library I belong to, I can't test out this part myself. I'm guessing the box wants your library card number. You can also have a password for some libraries. An alternative way to see articles is by signing up for a 30-day free trial membership.

Using this type of service rather than just doing a general search of the web ensures that the reference sources have already been vetted by authorities (librarians or information specialists). This provides you with more reliable and dependable results, especially important if you're a freelancer and need to send an editor a list of sources for an article that you write.

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Quotations for Writing

The Quotations Page claims to be "the oldest quotation site on the Web, established 1994. We have over 26,000 quotations online from over 3,100 authors, and more are added daily." That would make it probably the first on the WWW, which began about the same time. This resource also has a forum and a blog and several other features listed in the left column.

One feature interested me: My Page. If you register (free) with the site, you can automatically save quotations from any part of the website. Deletions from you personal list are also allowed at the click of a mouse. I can see how, after diligently searching out quotations on a particular subject, this would be an easier method to collect them in bulk instead of tedious individual cut-and-paste operations.

You might want to carefully read the site's disclaimer to determine if you can or cannot use the material found there in your own publication or manuscript. If not, at least this resource might point you toward a quotable primary source.

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Donate to P&E Defense

From the Preditors & Editors news page:

Unfortunately, there are those who do not like P&E or its editor because we give out information that they would prefer remain hidden from writers. Usually, they slink away, but not this time. P&E is being sued and we are asking for donations to mount a legal defense in court. Please click on the link below and give if you can to help protect P&E so it can continue to defend writers as it has for the past eleven years.

Please visit the page and scroll down to the clickable PayPal graphic to donate to defend this wonderful writers' resource.

If you distrust that method of helping, visit PayPal and send money directly to the d.l.kuzminsky[AT]att.net account. (Dave Kuzminsky runs P&E and is named in the suit.)

Preditors & Editors lists thousands of writing services with notices about scams and bad deals and recommendations for the good ones. You can research potential assistance for your writing at P&E at no charge. It is one of the best uses of the Internet that I've run across. The service is hosted by Another Realm magazine of speculative fiction.

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Free Trade for Writing

If you're getting started as a magazine freelancer or looking to supplement your income while waiting for the fiction to pay off, consider writing for the trades. Trade magazines offer decent pay and, once you become established, regular writing gigs. The editors like to keep a stable of dependable writers both to commission and ones who can find good stories to query about.

As always, however, you need to know the market before trying to break into it. With magazine writing, that means reading, no, studying several issues before querying. How to get your hands on the trade rags? Here's good news: free subscriptions are available through at least two websites:

Free Trade Magazine Source

TradePub

Both offer search services and you can sign up for email alerts when new publications are added. TradePub even offers RSS feeds by category -- a truly handy feature for those who intend to specialize in this type of business writing.

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Master English Words - VOA

When I was growing up in southwestern Ohio, way out in the country near a tiny town called Mason, a field of very tall radio towers reached toward the clouds. From far enough away, on a clear day, a viewer could see the towers were topped by large antennas. A little sign, I think, indicated they were broadcasting Voice of America programs. We were going to talk the mean Russians into submission. (It was the Cold War era.)


Eventually I learned what the Voice of America did and then thought little about the activity until I discovered the digital version, VOA News.com. Better yet, the service provides a Wordmaster section subtitled "A Weekly Analysis of American English". It features grammar, idioms, slang, regional English, topical issues and an archive of articles/programs. What a wonderful resource for American writers, as well as its intended audience overseas. And it is a virtual wellspring of more resources. Peruse the list of programs, and you'll see what I mean.

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Copyediting Terms Writers Need to Know

If you think "flush and hang" is surfing terminology, don't know a digbat from a curly quote or kerning, a quick glance at 140 copy editing terms will give you a handle on the jargon your copy editor might use.

It has been a while since I visited About.com, which used to be a tacky and confusing website of questionable resource. What a joy it was to discover that the Grammar and Composition section is now under the watchful direction of Richard Nordquist, Ph.D. with enormous credits. The website is much less cluttered-appearing. The part under Nordquist's jurisdiction is neat and useful. I skated in, looking up the term "bastard title" in Copyediting Terms - Glossary of Copyediting Terms.

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New Pages of Good Reading

Here is what NEWPAGES.COM has to say about itself:

Good Reading Starts Here! News, information and guides to independent bookstores, independent publishers, literary magazines, alternative periodicals, independent record labels, alternative newsweeklies and more.

Especially rich is their guide to "the best" literary magazines in print right now. The full listing page for each individual magazine offers a wealth of information about the publication, including a link to its website (if available).

I'd like to see a search engine for this database, but you can get listings alphabetically on the complete list page. The alpha listing on the guide page mentioned is only to sponsors.

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Learning to Write from John Baker

British author John Baker wrote a series of 31 articles about learning creative writing in his blog. They began in June 2006 with Learning to Write I - John Baker’s Blog. At the end of that first piece are links to the other 30 articles, ending with one in June 2007. You don't absolutely need to read them in order, and I wouldn't dare to reproduce each tidbit here, but this is a handy list of the links to all the juicy parts:

Table of contents for Learning To Write from John Baker's Blog

1. Learning to Write I
2. Learning to Write II
3. Learning to Write III
4. Learning to Write IV
5. Learning to Write V
6. Learning to Write VI
7. Learning to Write VII
8. Learning to Write VIII
9. Learning to Write IX
10. Learning to Write X
11. Learning to Write XI
12. Learning to Write XII
13. Learning to Write XIII
14. Learning to Write XIV
15. Learning to Write XV
16. Learning to Write XVI
17. Learning to Write XVII
18. Learning to Write XVIII
19. Learning to Write XIX
20. Learning to Write XX
21. Learning to Write XXI
22. Learning to Write XXII
23. Learning to Write XXIII
24. Learning to Write XXIV
25. Learning to Write XXV
26. Learning to Write XXVI
27. Learning to Write XXVII
28. Learning to Write XXVIII
29. Learning to Write XXIX
30. Learning to Write XXX
31. Learning to Write XXXI

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Amazon's Best Books of 2007

At this time of year, traditional material for regular nonfiction writers are either "Top or Best ..." or "Resolutions". I try to live just one day at a time, instead of proclaiming annual resolutions . If I am in a change process, that's about as long as I can focus or handle. I do, however, believe in setting goals and offered a system for reaching them last month.

I wasn't going to give in to the "tops" tug until I ran across this page at Amazon: Amazon.com: Best of 2007: Books. It is most handy because in addition to the editors' top picks (with no explanation of the selection process), Amazon lists Customer Favorites, the "100 topselling books on Amazon.com during 2007. (Ranked according to customer orders through October. Only books published for the first time in 2007 are eligible.)" At last, a measure with a metric rather than whimsical evanescent criteria. "Top selling" I can understand, even if Amazon has contracted the words into one. There's still time for you to vote on that page for your favorite from among the top 25 best sellers of the year.

Back on the main page of Best Books of 2007, bonuses are the breakdowns of Customer Favorites into 30 "top ten" categories, (find the list in the right column). That's enough sections to enable market research for anyone considering writing a book. What's more, you can also study similar rankings for the last sevan years! (See box at the bottom of the left column.)

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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.

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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!

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Calendar for Writers

Thanks to Dorothy Piper, who posted this resource in a section of the Writer's Digest forum. I think that the Time and Date calendar is one of the most useful tools I've come across, especially for fiction writers. As Dorothy said, "This super link lets you choose any year in any country. It gives holidays and observances for the chosen country, plus moon phases. Horror writers would benefit from that, I should imagine." Great find, Dorothy. Thanks for sharing!

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Find Agents at LitMatch

There's a new free service for book writers: LitMatch - Literary Agent Database and Online Query Tracking. When I just checked, they boasted, "Listing 1680 Agents in 770 Agencies." Better yet, the site's search engine allows you to zero in on specific agent and agency details. You can search by location, many genres, whether they're currently accepting queries, have a blog, website, or membership in AAR, and whether or not the agent has updated the listing. You can also find an agent or agency by a single field, or any combination of fields. For example, I looked for agents in San Diego who handle nonfiction. I like the sort results feature that allows them to be grouped by agency (why bother the same agency by contacting different agents there about the same MS?) I haven't tried the tracking part, but owner Chris Hawkins has some interesting, relevant posts on the service's blog.

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Where Writers Complain

It is said that it's an art to get angry with the right person at the right time over the right issue. When you feel you've been treated unfairly by a publication, contest or service, don't just grouse about it in forums and chat rooms. Submit your complaints to services that can remedy the situation and/or warn others. Here's a short list:

Angela Hoy's Whispers & Warnings -- angela@writersweekly.com

Rip Off Report --http://ripoffreport.com/user.asp

The FBI Internet Crime Division -- https://complaint.ic3.gov/Default.aspx

Absolute Write's Bewares and Background Check at:
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=22

Preditors & Editors -- prededitors@att.net

Epinions -- http://www.epinions.com/register/

Writer Beware --beware@sfwa.org

WritersNet -- http://www.writers.net/forum/

Better Business Bureau -- https://odr.bbb.org/odrweb/public/GetStarted.aspx

The Chamber of Commerce and state attorney's office where the company or person does business.

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Blogs for Aspiring Writers

Bear with me for another day of conflagration crisis mode. I'm still in my home, but the threat to my community is somewhat less as the weather conditions improve a bit.

Here's another post about a compilation of resources for writers. I'm not certain who runs the Online Education Database, but I discovered A Writer's Edge listed as number four on its 150 Useful, Educational, and Inspirational Blogs for Aspiring Writers.

What do they say about this place? "Write, write correctly, write anything!". Well, thanks for the plug, OEDB folks, back atcha!

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Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites

Last week we looked at 100 More Tools, and today it is Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites. These are a gift from PC Magazine. Some are humorous, others technical and limited to a particular system or gizzie, but many appear to have the potential for being a resource for writers, especially for researching. Now, I must admit, my favorite is I Can Has Cheezburger?, but after the harrowing time I spent yesterday on the verge of evacuation, I feel entitled to all the comic relief I can find.

About the fires? Oh. Officials say the worst may be yet to come. Stay tuned. I'm trying to hang loose. Thanks for every comment and personal email. I'm still in my home, still threatened, and there's no comfortable place to go (all hotels full).

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100 More Freelancers' Tools

Gems from the email bag:

Hi Georganna,

We recently published The 100 Tools Freelancers Can't Live Without. I figured I'd bring it to your attention in case you think your readers would find it useful.

Either way, keep up the great blogging!

Cheers,

Rich McIver

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Listen to the Writers

Like to listen to authors talk about themselves, their writing and sometimes read from their works? Then you'll love the unedited full Don Swaim recordings available at Wired for Books. Swaim worked with CBS in New York, which broadcast monthly two-minute excerpts from 1982-1993. You can also hear them at Book Beat. The Wired for Books MP3 Page: Essays, Interviews, Stories, Plays, and Poems contains priceless materials, too. It's a free service of the WOUB Center for Public Media at Ohio University.

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Strategies to Sell More Books

Scott Jeffrey of Become a Best-Selling Author offers a free eBook, 60 EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES FOR SELLING MORE BOOKS (.PDF format). Not only does he list the strategies and write about implementing them, but he also suggests tools for the processes, including creating an author's website. The 76-page eBook also contains links to other useful resources.

When I mentioned this fabulous FREE resource on the Writer's Digest Forum, I just knew it would appeal to Jeff Yeager, The Ultimate Cheapskate, as he prepares for his new book, The Ultimate Cheapskate's Road Map to True Riches, to be published in January 2008 by Random House (Broadway Books). In fact, he responded:

Thanks Geo. This is a TERRIFIC resource. So good, in fact, that I'm actually going to spring for the ink to print myself out a hard copy (ugh) [ed. note: typical Cheapskate attitude] ... much of the advice re: things authors should do is useful to all writers, whether you have a book that's already published and needs selling, or if you're just starting to write, looking for an agent, publisher, etc. Thanks again for bringing it to our attention.

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Taxes for Writers

Confused about doing your taxes as a writer? I'm specifically referring to U.S. income taxes, governed by the IRS (Internal Revenue Service). For a quick overview, see my new free article on the subject on the Writing Help page.

Here's something I just couldn't resist: run your mouse around and on the kitty (if you see him below.)

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Research Old Magazines

I was especially happy to find OldMagazineArticles.com when I read that "It is a primary source website and is designed to serve as a reference for students, educators, authors, researchers, dabblers, dilettantes, hacks and the merely curious." I seem to resemble that statement. The home page contains an index and a simple search engine, and you can also browse by subject or view recently-added articles. The articles are freely available in .PDF format, almost exactly as they originally appeared. If you register, you can receive email updates on new articles added, even by your categories of interest. The site also offers an RSS feeds by subject area.

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Let Writer's Block Flow

Facing the blank page, what do you feel? Just empty? Focus deeper, deeper still. Touch the fear, the rage, feel the sadness that is the undercurrent of an unproductive life. If you are honest with yourself, you'll acknowledge being filled, gripped by strong emotions. What you tell yourself about these feelings keeps you in paralysis, as does trying to hide from them, deny them.

A better approach is to identify your emotions and be aware that you are separate from the feelings. You are not the thoughts or the feelings or the block. They flow through you, and by identifying them, you can let them pass on, flowing out of you. The Buddhists call this "mindfulness" and practice meditation to achieve similar results.

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Build a Successful Writer's Website

When writers discover they need websites to be in competition with their contemporaries, they often try to DIY the job. For those thinking about this move, here are some characteristics of good sites for a head start:

* sensible domain name (your own, business, book title)
* rented server space to host your site
* clear ID on the first page
* simple, consistent design
* quick-loading pages
* current information
* accurate spelling, grammar, etc.
* plainly-named internal links
* compatible with most browsers

For more tips, explanations, examples and references, see the second volume of my eBook, Effective Websites for Writers. You can find it on the Writing Help page, along with other useful resources, including free articles.

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Writing Op-eds & Letters to the Editor

The media center at the Communications Consortium website has a hot page on Op-eds & Letters to the Editor. This is a popular area with which to begin a nonfiction and freelance writing career. To define:

Letters to the editor allow you to offer a short rebuttal to an article or commentary, or add a crucial missing perspective. Most letters should be 150-250 words. ...
An op-ed is a column or guest essay published in the opinion section of a newspaper (Opposite the Editorial page). Most are between 500-750 words, and most outlets will take submissions by fax, e-mail or mail.

Although the piece is geared toward organizations, the tips about keeping your writing short, factual, and on-topic apply to anyone submitting such works.

Best of all, perhaps, is a chart of details on how to submit an op-ed or letter to the editor in more than a hundred of the largest circulation papers in the U.S. In the chart are addresses; fax/phone numbers; and hot links to email addresses, editors and the papers' websites. Need I point out that many of these publications will have book review sections and accept news releases on other writing-related topics?

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Find Public Records Online

Whether you're performing research on contemporary matters or searching for historical information, Wendy Boswell has provided an invaluable guide, Technophilia: Where to find public records online. The article is part of her Technophilia series for the Lifehacker website. She explains "items like birth certificates, marriage and divorce information, obituaries and licenses on the web." Be sure to read the many comments to this piece in which readers add to the lore. Even if you're not in the market for such sleuthing at the moment, you might want to search on your own name to see what is on the record about you ... sort of like your annual credit report check-up.

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Learn About Digital Media

Ourmedia: Learning Center "is a rich educational resource for everything you wanted to know about user-created video, audio, and other forms of citizens' media." More reliable than a wiki, because it is edited. This resource is part of a larger "post your own" citizen journalism site, less silly (and predating) YouTube and the like, according to its own statement. An Open Media Directory provides information and links to free, legal music, audio, video clips and photos for your videos, podcasts and more. When I looked into all the instruction that's available for a multitude of digital media, I could see myself spending the rest of my life learning!

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OSU Free Books Online

Seeing the flooding in Ohio featured on NBC news this morning reminded me of the interesting reference website I found at the The Ohio State University Press. Its Open Access Initiative makes over 70 books available for download in .PDF format. The site claims:

All titles available this way, whether old or new, have gone through the exact same peer review process as our printed books. Any book that carries our imprint--no matter what medium is being used--has been approved by our Editorial Board after a thorough vetting process.

The collection spans the gamut of subjects. I'm not sayin' that this is necessarily a place to start research (although you could), but it is a resource to check for a free copy of a primary reference.

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Researching on the Web

Johns Hopkins University's Sheridan Libraries offers help for evaluating information you may run across on the web:

All information, whether in print or by byte, needs to be evaluated by readers for authority, appropriateness, and other personal criteria for value. If you find information that is "too good to be true", it probably is. Never use information that you cannot verify. Establishing and learning criteria to filter information you find on the Internet is a good beginning for becoming a critical consumer of information in all forms. "Cast a cold eye" (as Yeats wrote) on everything you read. Question it. Look for other sources that can authenticate or corroborate what you find. Learn to be skeptical and then learn to trust your instincts.

This warning/admonition is especially true for writers who search for accurate information, whether it be for background on a tale of medieval madness or an article on carbon nanotubes. The article excerpted is a good starting point if you're just learning how to use the Internet to find information for your writing projects.

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Writing Versions of a Novel

In his new blog, Guide to Literary Agents, Chuck Sambuchino explains why you might need several versions of your novel's synopsis. I've advocated having the pitch/log line, the elevator speech, and the synopsis. Sambuchino breaks it down to four versions and the manuscript, and he should know, being the editor of F+W publications' 2008 Guide to Literary Agents. Between a pitch and a full-blown synopsis, he advocates a "short synopsis" because:

Some agents will request a 1-page or 2-page synopsis. Now your challenge lies in taking your long synopsis and cutting it down as much as possible--just in case an overly particular agent wants a super-short plot summary of your work.

He says a synopsis (often more difficult to write than the book!) should be 2-12 pages in length, but "The average synopsis should be double-spaced and approximately 6-7 pages." You can read more on his ideas in the article One Story? You Need 5 Versions.

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History of English Words for Hacks

Following links and hints in others' works led to the Online Etymology Dictionary. This is not the place to go for definitions of words, but for their history, to find the earliest uses. For example, did you know that "hack writer is first recorded 1826, though hackney writer is at least 50 years earlier"? It's an overflowing treasure box for language lovers like me. This dictionary was compiled by Douglas Harper, using an impressive set of reference materials. The site has a limited search engine and an alphabetical index to get you to the area of the word you're interested in. There's also an impressive list of links to websites about various languages and etymology, some experts and diversions.

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MFA Programs for Writers

Interested in pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in writing? You can find a free listing of low residency graduate degree programs in creative writing at The Practicing Writer's Primer on Low-Residency MFA Programs. The ebook by Erika Dreifus will only be available until the first of September. After that, the author is retiring this title, but until that time, she's generously giving it away from her shop on Lulu.com. After that time, Dreifus suggests interested individuals contact Anna Mendoza's online resource.

Dr. Dreifus' website The Practicing Writer and her Practicing Writing Blog are great resources, too, for creative writers.

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Make Word Writing Easier

If you don't use Microsoft Word, you can skip this post. If you use it for any writing or editing tasks, a visit to The Editorium might make your life easier. The website was founded in 1996 by Jack M. Lyon, a book editor who got tired of working the hard way and started creating programs to automate editing tasks in Microsoft Word. Now you might be saying, "Hey, I'm not an editor. I'm a writer!" I hope you edit your own work before you try to sell it or send it to a publisher. So, you might find some help on Lyon's site. His latest additions include:

ListFixer converts automatic numbers and bullets into fixed numbers and bullets-or vice versa-for lists in the active document, all open documents, or all documents in a folder. It also applies fixed numbers and bullets to selected paragraphs, so you can number lists with real numbers in a flash. If you're tearing your hair out over automatic lists, you need ListFixer!

DEXter makes indexing in Word a snap. If you're tired of messing with XE codes and bookmarks, you need DEXter-the first truly professional indexing program for Microsoft Word documents.

Lyon also publishes a free newsletter, often mentioned in publishing circles. That was how I learned about his intriguing macro to create an "exclude" dictionary for the MS Word Spell Check facility. It allows you to also find frequently confused words to see if you've used the correct one (words like "they're" and "there" and "their").

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Write a Story Online

An interesting new (to me) online service called Our Story provides multiple possibilities for writers. You could use it as a creativity tool, design a different kind of memoir, build a feature for your website or blog, collaborate with others in creating a story. They call it a timeline, and on the surface a snapshot of it looks like this:

However, churning below the surface of this video (it scrolls to the right when it is activated) are descriptions of the events depicted on the timeline. The website offers both free and premium accounts. See the Examples page for more ways to use this feature-rich technological service.

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Writers Shop Online

My early morning routine involves steaming mugs of Bigelow's Hazelnut Vanilla tea, which I order online because local stores stopped carrying it, and waking up to the Today Show. This morning I was pleased, but not really surprised, to see our prime sponsor, BizRate.com, mentioned as a recommended shopping site. It's obvious from their ad in the top of the left column that they offer computers and other electronics. I wondered what other items useful to writers might lurk there. Right off I spotted a section on Books and Magazines and found Language Arts books. Imagine, a redneck dictionary for only $4, and Office Supplies carries everything from desks to pens. One of the warnings mentioned in the Today Show segment was to look out for shipping costs that inflate prices online. In the Special Offers section, I found a linked list of stores that offer free shipping. The site has multiple search features and even rates the stores. I noticed at the bottom of the page that it won a 2006 Circle of Excellence award.

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