Free Writing Mentors

This is for future or recent (last two years) undergrad or graduate students who want to freelance or work on publication staffs. How would you like to spend an hour talking with a mentor in the field you want to enter? How would you like it if the expenses were underwritten? Well, Ed2010, the website of seemingly infinite resources for budding journalists, offers such a service. If you're located in New York City, you might meet one-on-one. If you're outside the city, the communication would be via email or phone. To apply, copy the questions on the referenced page, answer them, and email them to ed@ed1020.com. Good luck!

Search Yourself and Career

You probably already know that it's a good idea to Google yourself (in the privacy of your own home, of course). Also Google your blog or website's name and URL, and any other word or phrase with which you might be identified on the Internet. Don't limit this activity to just the most popular search engine. Sometimes surprises pop up on Yahoo! or Ask.com and even MSN's Live Search. For example, last night I was checking some links on my info page, and discovered a new reference to an organization I'd forgotten I was once part of. The name under which most of my print credits appear shows up on the new page at least twice.

Why do I care? It's not that I'm so narcissistic that I drool over seeing my name (current or former) in print on the web or anywhere. I overcame that character flaw a long time ago, when attention shifted to seeing my name on checks. The point of regularly searching the web for information about yourself and your work is three-fold:

• to ensure that the data are accurate
• to see how much someone else can find out about you
• the references found also might come in handy some day when you're selling yourself or your services. I use such a list as a means to verify my identity as well as some of my career credits.

Some of the newer automated searchers can display garbled and misleading snippets retrieved from limited sources. I found one of those last night, too. I was thankful the website provides a method to register and correct mistakes in what is displayed. And another showed an inactive email address. I had to jump through a few hoops to get that changed, and I'm grateful for the difficulty that prevents someone else from changing the data about me.

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.

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.

Finding Famous People

Writers often need to contact celebrity and authority figures. Sometimes it's for an interview, quotes, or other content-related reasons. Other times, they're looking for a way to obtain a testimonial, blurb, or maybe a preface for a book. One method of research is to subscribe to WhoRepresents.com. Here are some tips from John Kremer's Book Marketing Tip of the Week newsletter on finding someone famous:

1. Google them. This is the simplest way. Generally you can find an address for someone famous or important simply by Googling them.

2. Use one of the phone book services on the Internet. You can Google "phone book services" to locate some of these. You may have to try more than one to find the person you are looking for. That has been my experience.

3. Ask your friends. You'd be surprised how many of your friends know people that you would also want to know. The six degrees of separation rule is an exaggeration. My experience is that if you are at all active in any group, you are probably three people away from anyone you want to reach. Ask and keep asking until the right person hears your question and answers with an introduction.

Incidentally, you can email John and sign up for his newsletter.

Microsoft + Yahoo = Writers Gain?

You might think the stock market's antics far afield from anything affecting writers. I pay attention to most everything but sports. I'd been noticing the talk of MS having lots of cash, Google's price tumbling, possible Yahoo takovers. The pieces fall into place with today's news of the MS offer to buy Yahoo. What would that do for each and how might it affect us as a writers? Search, Baby. Search for the answer.

MSN's search engine has never been any great shakes. Yahoo was once queen until Google came along with better algorithms. Yahoo tried to diversify and became scattered. (I still can't get it to create a suitable search box.) MS tried to diversify meekly and limps along. With a cash infusion, Yahoo can bolster its strengths and give the Google search (basic and variations) real competition again.

I'm not sure what's wrong with Google, outside of pissing off a lot of website owners with its SEO debacles, but I feel certain the company has overstretched its reach, tried to expand too fast, and suffers a typical business cycle flat. I hope MS and Yahoo join to force Google improvements. This could be an all-win situation as writers become more dependent on the Internet for research that often begins with basic search services.

P&E Readers Poll Results

I don't know whether to Woo! Hoo! or Boo! Hoo! A Writer's Edge tied for 14th place out of 18 writers' resource websites in this year's poll at Preditors & Editors (see Writer Resource Results for what I mean). I'm happy, because I didn't know about the competition until this year, and got off to a feeble, late start campaigning. Thank you, thank you all who voted for us! Next year, I hope I can remember that voting begins on the first of January. Then perhaps we, too, can win the coveted first place badge, which went to a website equally unknown to me: Latinidad, actually a newsletter distributed through a Yahoo! Group.

Chat With a Publicist

This Sunday at 7 p.m. EST you'll have a rare opportunity to participate or lurk in a chat with a writers' publicist, P.J. Nunn, of BreakThrough Promotions. She'll be the featured guest at the The Writer's Chatroom, providing publicity and P.R. tips as well as special free gifts for attendees. Click on "Enter Chatroom". It may take a moment to load. Type in the name you wish to be known by, and click "Login". No password needed. When you get there, tell 'em Georganna sent you!

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.

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!

Get the Skinny on Zips

ZIPskinny is the best extraction of data from the 2000 U.S. Census that I've come across. If you know the zip code of a neighborhood you'd like to research, just plug it into the search box on the first page. Alternatively, you can select the state, then a city, and the program will pull up information for the zip code of the geographic center of the city, along with a Google map of the area. Note to Zipeople: it would be great if you could make the map a display the zip code for the other areas a visitor can maneuver to, and then with a click, get the data for that different neighborhood.

The information shown for a particular zip code includes demographics of race, age, and gender; a comparison chart with other nearby areas displaying several different socioeconomic factors (education, marital status, etc.); and the same for the single code with additional vertical bar charts showing six factors broken out by ranges. Two other features allow you to find the top 100 zips in the country and by state for several limited factors and a system to query for a comparison of up to 20 different codes.

I can see this working for both fiction and nonfiction writers and in two directions: either finding information about a geographic area you're writing about or finding a type of area to write about. It would take some time to search on several factors because the functionality is limited for now, but hey, it's free!

Research Shortcuts for Writers

Everybody loves shortcuts, right? Here's an interesting collection of them: StartSpot. The home page links to resources for finding information more quickly on books, movies, employment, genealogy, charities, food, government, headlines, homework, libraries, museums, people, shopping and travel. "So what?" you may say, "Any search engine does that." But this isn't a search engine, it is human-edited lists for specific purposes. They say:

Our editorial team carefully evaluates and selects the best, most relevant and most interesting online resources for a topic, then organizes the information to make it easily accessible.

Take a look at BookSpot, for example. Glancing down the menu in the left column, it appears that most anything you'd like to find is covered. When you click on a specific topic, you don't find references to everything (and have to wade your way through the dross). The editors have chosen the most useful links to present to visitors, cutting down on the time it takes to do the research.

Hope for future writers

A bright ray of hope for future generations of writers comes from the old classroom standby, Weekly Reader. Oh, Lord, how I lived for the day our little newspaper arrived, so much more interesting than text books! The smart folks who sustained me through grade school now publish Writing magazine for middle and high school students. This year, it was named as one of the top four magazines in educational publishing by the Association of Educational Publishers. The magazine contains how-to articles, author profiles and student writing. Its goal is to help students build skills in writing that apply across their curricula. Each issue is supplemented with a Teacher's Guide and a literary blog that links content to state and national standards. Students are invited to contribute to the reely kewl blog. The current issue features:

* a teen's experience with blogging for a political campaign

* encouragement from author Mary Pipher, who challenges young writers to use their words for social change

* step-by-step instructions on writing an op-ed piece

* a heart-warming essay by Gary Paulsen

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.

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.

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.

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.

Write Boring Science Lit

From: How to write Consistently Boring Scientific Literature

Table 1. Top-10 list of recommendations for writing consistently
boring publications.


Avoid focus

Avoid originality and personality

Write l o n g contributions

Remove implications and speculations

Leave out illustrations

Omit necessary steps of reasoning

Use many abbreviations and terms

Suppress humor and flowery language

Degrade biology to statistics

Quote numerous papers for trivial statements

The previous quotation is from a paper or article by Kaj Sand-Jensen of the Freshwater Biological Laboratory, Univ. of Copenhagen, Denmark. I wasn't quite sure if it is a serious academic piece or meant to be a humorous send-up of serious academic literature. It hauntingly reminded me of working on the thesis for my M.A. Otherwise, I think Sand-Jensen's points are well-taken directions for any nonfiction writing, especially anything meant to persuade others or to support a point of view (like op-ed articles, letters to the editor and personal essays).

More U.S. Copyright Fees

From the U.S. Copyright Office - Fee Adjustments: 2007:

Sometime between October 1, 2007, and January 1, 2008: The Office will charge a fee for contents titles listed on an application for a collection, for example, for the titles of songs contained on an album. The Office will include these titles in its public registration records to make them more comprehensive and more useful to those who search the records. A fee will be charged for each title: $1 for each contents title in an electronic filing: $3 for each contents title on a paper application.

So, while they've lowered the rate to register from $45 to $35 if you register electronically, they've added more fees for those who register collections. Pity the poor poets and song writers!

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?

Successful Writers Radio Interviews

Lorilyn Bailey, creator of GuestFinder, an Internet-based directory of more than 200 authors, experts, spokespersons, and entertainers who are available for radio, TV, and newspaper interviews, has posted Tips for Successful Radio Interviews. Bailey covers what to do in advance of a telephone interview, on the day of it, and during the broadcast/recording. These include:

* providing questions
* practice, practice, practice
* clear your work space
* turn off the computer
* don't say "umm"
* offer useful information

The article is so comprehensive on this subject that I think I'll add it to the Free Articles on my Writing Help page. More and more writers are filling the airwaves with interview, talks, seminars by radio, Internet broadcasting and podcasting. We all need to know how to perform at our best during these opportunities.

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.

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!

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.

Book Publishing Encyclopedia

In a recent newsletter, Dan Poynter wrote about his latest self-help for self-publishers:

Finding book resources fast. Time is money. Writers, publishers and publicists need access to resources--quickly. Whether you deal in entertainment (fiction) or information (nonfiction), you need information on the book industry.

Dan Poynter's Book Publishing Encyclopedia is the "Book Publishing Answer Book." It has thousands of tips and references in an easy-to use alphabetical encyclopedia. Each fact, figure, resource or reference, in its 222 pages, links to a specific page on a web site for more information.

Red emphasis mine, because it made me assume this is an eBook. How else could it "link" to information on his website? I hurried to Amazon and was confused to find the reference available only as a paperback. Discouraged from buying it, I wondered, what good is a link if it doesn't work? I guess saying "link" was short for "URL" or "web page address", but still, misleading. C'mon, Dan, release this in electronic format with real links.