December 2010
21 posts
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Pageturner Prize | Tibor Jones →
…the Tibor Jones Pageturner Prize hopes to uncover exciting new talent. The winner will receive representation plus £1000, and will be announced at the 2011 London Book Fair.
This is a genuinely fantastic opportunity for any of you writers who have a complete (or near-complete) and unpublished novel, and want to take the next step towards publication.
The Pageturner Prize is a new and...
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“Ambition and a little luck are good things for a writer to have going for him....”
– From ‘On Writing’ by Ray Carver, featured in Fires (Vintage Classics)
For some reason, despite having read most of his stories, I have never actually owned any of Ray Carver’s individual collections. That changed this Christmas. I’m reading them now and falling in love all...
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Things to be thankful for in publishing in 2010 →
This will be my last post until I manage to crawl out of my Christmas stupour. Thank you so much for reading and helping this blog change and grow over the past year. I really appreciate your time and support.
I leave you with this link to an article that looks back on 2010 and finds many postives for the publishing industry. So much is changing and so much progress has been made, which makes...
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Words and Wisdom | Patrick Rhone →
Very pleased to find myself included (alongside Bukowski no less) in Patrick Rhone’s ‘Words and Wisdom’ list. It’s a great idea actually, to keep a text file of interesting quotes and titbits to turn to for inspiration and encouragement. I might give it try.
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“That’s what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book,...”
– The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (via notwritenow)
This is a nice quote and, you know, kind of true, although that’s an awful lot of books you’ve got there.
You might also like to replace the word ‘book’ with ‘interesting article on the...
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“You see having a shared understanding is not really about a specific process or...”
– Building a Shared Understanding - 52 Weeks of UX
This is something I really believe in.
I’m a copywriter at a design company, but that only tells a small part of the story. The truth is, if I’m working on a website, as the person responsible for the site’s content, I’m the...
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National Short Story Day →
It’s national short story day today in the UK, but wherever you are, why not leave a 15-minute space in your day to read some marvellous short fiction?
If you’d rather listen than read, I can recommend the New Yorker fiction podcast. Or even better, some classic Carver.
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“The concept of a “book” will change under the pressure of iPad-type...”
– Publishers take note: the iPad is altering the very concept of a ‘book’ | Technology | The Observer
This is more or less what I’ve been saying on this blog for the past few months. We’re not just writing books anymore, we need to think about all the other things that the...
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Teach Parents Tech →
A very nicely executed idea from Google to help us technically-minded folks get our parents using a computer properly, especially the web.
There’s been a big push for this in the UK recently, what with 10 million of us still offline. At The Workshop, we’ve worked with clients to support the agenda and as a team we’ve all been trying to help those friends and family who...
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What Does a Copywriter Actually Do? | Fuel Your... →
The key for every copywriter, whatever the subject matter, is to find the clearest, most appropriate way to speak to their audience. That means neither hamming up nor dumbing down, but simply finding the best way possible to transfer a message.
This is a link to and quote from my first article for the rather smashing website, Fuel Your Writing.
They approached me about writing a regular...
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“In unfamiliar homes I hunt down bookshelves – Billy or bespoke. I look for hints...”
– Opinion: Ebooks may be convenient - but they don’t enrich your life
So what’s the answer if in just a few short years we’re all hypothetically going to be reading via digital devices? How do we keep this sense of… of conveying who we are through our reading?
The truth is I...
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Anne Enright reads ‘Fat’ by Raymond...
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Learn something old
How many times have you thought or said, ‘I’m going to learn something new,’ but then got so far into that learning and either given up or realised you weren’t quite cut out for it?
I think we do it all the time. And I think it’s because whenever we decide to learn something new, we think it has to be a skill that’s complete untrodden territory. That it has to...
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A primer for the punctuation of heart disease →
bobulate:
Jonathan Safran Foer:
~ Placed at the end of a sentence, the “pedal point” signifies a thought that dissolves into a suggestive silence. The pedal point is distinguished from the ellipsis and the dash in that the thought it follows is neither incomplete nor interrupted but an outstretched hand. My younger brother uses these a lot with me, probably because he, of all the members of my...
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“It’s well-known that sleep and exercise are necessary for us to function at our...”
– Rachelle Gardner, Literary Agent: Self-Care and Being Humble
I’ve had this quote holed up in Instapaper for ages, so having been in bed sick for the past few days, it seems rather appropriate to finally post it. Ironic, even.
I’m afraid I’m one of those writers who thinks they...
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“Only make something if it is both useful and needful. But if it is both useful...”
– Beautiful design for everyone - pixeldiva
This quote is actually from ‘a famous Shaker Proverb’ and used in this fantastic, incredible, superb article/presentation by Ann McMeekin Carrier.
It’s essentially about user experience and accessibility in design, but so much of it...
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iPad Doubles In E-Book Market Share | Mac|Life →
Of the people planning to purchase an e-reader in the next 90-days, 42% responded they would pick the iPad, while only 33% said they would go the Kindle route.
These statistics make for interesting reading. Perhaps the most surprising thing for me is that people are still talking about the iPad and Kindle as direct competitiors.
I own an iPad and I’ve used a Kindle. They are different...