February 2011
18 posts
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“I think brand is only a dirty word when it replaces story, talent and literary...”
– Being a writer, being a brand | Write for Your Life
My marvellous co-host Manuela Boyle talking about being a writer and being a brand, our topic on this week’s Write for Your Life podcast.
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Beginning — Shawn Blanc →
This is a sentence I never thought I would publish: Beginning the first week in April I will be writing shawnblanc.net as my full-time gig.
This is fantastic news from one of my favourite web scribblers and fellow Read and Trust member, Shawn Blanc. If you’re remotely interested in technology, productivity and creativity, I recommend you pop on over and take a look.
Also, this is an...
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“Writers find it difficult to extricate themselves from their work, and sometimes...”
– Coping with Rejection | Fuel Your Writing
This is such a common problem. To be a writer, especially one who submits his or her work to a publishing place of any sort, you need to have a thick skin. And you need patience by the bucketload.
Head over and read the full article. Lots of sensible...
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Why you need better data | Enhanced Editions →
Enhanced Editions have published an extremely interesting post about metadata, apps and ebooks. I don’t know much about Facebook and metadata, but this makes sense:
In the US in December last year, Facebook saw more visits to its site than to Google for the first time. We think that how your data appears in social media is so important that we created a Facebook-specific metadata component...
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Sleep and sacrifice
Fellow Read and Trust members, Chris Bowler and Ian Hines this week wrote about their decision to sacrifice sleep and create time to get things done. I’m no stranger to this tactic. You can only write a novel while working full-time if you’re prepared to give up more than a few hours kip. At the most frantic stages of the novel writing process, I would find myself writing until two in...
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“If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children’s book, but...”
– Martin Amis: Only brain injury could make me write for children | Books | guardian.co.uk
Even if you forget the fact that what he’s saying is absolute nonsense, you still have to wonder at the thought process behind his choice of words.
A brain injury. Really? In what world is that an...
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Copywriting And Patience With Traditional... →
I interview Iain Broome from WriteForYourLife.net on copywriting and patience with traditional publishing.
Here’s the full interview I did last week for The Creative Penn. In it I talk about my novel and how I got a literary agent. Plus lots of other stuff too.
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“So often absolutely ordinary in appearance, a good library should offer escape...”
– ‘If you tolerate this …’: Nicky Wire on library closures | Books | The Guardian
Nice piece by the Manic Street Preachers’ Nicky Wire, who of course famously wrote the line, ‘Libraries gave us power, then work came and made us free.’
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Writing vs. Writing — Shawn Blanc →
There is writing, and then there is Writing. And I am amazed at how often I will shy away from the former because it doesn’t feel like the latter. There are times when I put far too much emphasis on the fine-tuned components of writing, and not nearly enough emphasis on simply getting the words down.
I know what Shawn Blanc means when he says this about his writing, because I often feel the...
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“More than any other institution in my city the public library is the most...”
– On the Public Library | James Shelley
All reasons why communities across the UK are horrified about the goverment’s proposed plans to cut funding and close a great swathe of our public libraries.
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WatchHoward Jacobson gives his top writing tips
This is a must watch for writers of any kind. Just brilliant stuff from last year’s Booker winner. I especially like the advice: ‘Look. Look at the world.’
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“Technology has created a platform for people who may have never been creative...”
– Fame vs. Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content — Shawn Blanc
Exactamundo. See my previous post.
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How much?
I don’t think out loud too often on the internet. But I’m going to now, just for a second.
In the next month or so I’m planning to launch Write for Your Life Membership, a paid email subscription that offers extra content, special offers and curated links. It’s the first time I’ve actively tried to make money through my websites.
And I’m finding it slightly...