Angela Booth's Writing Blog

Giggle of the day: Pop Quiz: Atomic Poker

I'm wiping away tears (of laughter). Read Pave France's Pop Quiz: Atomic Poker post:

>>>
As the leader of the world's sole acknowledged super-power you are entrusted with the world's security, much to the chagrin of some lesser petty nations and bad guys with the nuclear itch. A whacked rogue state is caught building nuclear weapons. This rogue state, with a history of providing terrorist organizations with financing and conventional weapons and breaking its word to sucker diplomats, has already made several uniequivocal pronouncements about its intended mischief.

What do you do?

A) Call France. Leave a message for Jack asking him to please return your call at his earliest convenience. Give your cell number.

B) Call the UN. Make an appointment for elevenses with Kofi Annan sometime in the upcoming week. Purchase a pound of assorted tea cakes and stare at the nice Whitehall wall calendar.

>>>

(You'll need to scroll down the page, there's no direct link.)

Copywriting Promotions Tips: #1 Write Articles

Write articles for promotional purposes. Your aim should always be to get paid for your articles, of course.

Consider writing articles for:

* your local and statewide newspapers (the business section and magazines);

* Web sites. Check out the sites aimed at your target audiences. For example, much of my business writing is for the construction and heavy equipment industries. When I check out the Web sites of most of the companies, I see that most are simply lists of equipment, with specifications.

I could spend ten minutes asking myself what these company sites need. They need: a company overview, an interview with the CEO, customer testimonials, press releases, and articles on training. I could write to these companies, offering to do the above writing projects. I would get paid for these projects, and I would ask them to list me as their copywriter with my contact details somewhere on the site.

In the past, I've suggested that you should write free articles for Web sites for promotional purposes, and you can do that. However, please look at ways to get paid for your writing efforts first, even if you're writing for promotion. If you have any time to spare, you can write for free.

Yet another blogger sells his services on eBay

(See previous post below.)

It's too early to call this a trend, but it's fun.

Darren Barefoot's top bid is $500; which is what he started the auction at. Eight days to go on a ten-day listing.

He says:

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What's the Big Idea?

I'm indebted to Jeremy Wright for the idea of auctioning off my blogging services. He originally thought of the idea, and started his auction. I thought it was fantastic thinking, so I asked if he minded if I start one too. He generously agreed--competition, we figure, is a tide that raises all ships--and I posted this auction.
>>>

Blogger sells blogging services on eBay

Why not get paid to blog? Why not indeed. Some blogs accept ads, other blogs review products, and now blogger Jeremy Wright's selling his services on eBay:

The eBay item is ---

Blogger for Hire - Start or Improve Your Blog
No Reserve! - Hire a Succesful [sic]Blogger for your Company

In the item description, Jeremy says:

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Jeremy Wright writes the popular Ensight business and technical blog, which is read by more than 60,000 readers a month. In addition, he writes for other blogs, several magazines, newspapers and websites with a total audience of 3.2 MILLION readers.
>>>

Interesting. The auction has four days to run, and the current top bid is $650. Bidding started at $100.

The next issue of Your EveryDay Write

The next issue of Your EveryDay Write, our free writing-prompt and tip ezine, will be out on the 30th.

Subscription is free to all. However, the extensive archives of YEW are only available to Pro Write members.

Here's an excerpt from the new issue:

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Your writing is YOU. Just as silkworms spin silk from mulberry leaves, you spin writing from your life's experiences. The more you know and understand yourself, the more you will know and understand the world, and the more you'll have to write about.

I'm a believer in the "black box" theory of personality. That is, you know someone (and yourself), by their actions -- by what they do -- NOT by what they say, or by what they think.

This theory comes in handy when you're writing fiction. :-) The curse of the neophyte novelist is the thinking and talking head. If you decide that your characters have to DO stuff, you'll find that your fiction is suddenly much more interesting.
>>>

Why write with fountain pens?

Because they're elegant.

Here's what Richard Binder says:

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It doesn't take me any longer to write something with a fountain pen than it would to write it with a rollerball or a ballpoint, but it feels different. It feels better somehow. For a long time, the pen I carried most of the time was a Bexley Fifth Anniversary, a limited-edition 1998 model that harks back to designs of the World War I era. (I eventually sold it as the focus of my collection shifted toward vintage pens.) That pen was as convenient as a rollerball, it was smoother than any rollerball I've ever used - like a fingertip on a sheet of buttered glass - and it gave my writing expression - character - a richness of stroke that a ballpoint or rollerball just can't duplicate.
>>>

Also because:

* You get a break from the computer screen. And if you have RSI like I do, anything that gives your tapping fingers and carpal tunnel a break is Good.

* It's relaxing, and this makes you more creative. It's hard to get good ideas or to muse about a plotline when your shoulders are hunched towards your ears.

* If you collect vintage pens, you get a history lesson with each pen. You can sit and wonder about all the hands that held the pen before you did, and all the events that happened around it;

* Inks. Glorious inks.

* I'm a fan of mind maps. I love big, bold messy ones. By drawing my mind maps with fountain pens, I can use ten colours, on thick, smooth paper. My maps have symbols and doodles and connecting swirls and lines - often I write on the paper, around the mind map, capturing ideas that are generated.

* Most of all, because fountain pens are romantic and FUN to write with. :-)

Fountain pen writing tip: paper towels make great blotting paper.

Image copyright Stylophiles.

Giggle of the day: can you spare a latte?

Apparently US liberals are fleeing to Canada.

They've even got their own people smugglers.

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Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals Near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons, drive them across the border and leave them to fend for themselves.

A lot of these people are not prepared for rugged conditions," an Ontario border patrolman said. I found one carload without a drop of drinking water. They did have a nice little Napa Valley cabernet, though."
>>>

Unfortunately, I haven't heard that any Australian Labor Party or Greens voters are heading for New Zealand. It's hard to impress sheep with how trendy you are. (Note, I mean four-legged sheep! I love New Zealand and New Zealanders. :-))

Tip #4: How to thrive as a freelance writer - write a lot

Peter Mayle, the author of A Year in Provence, says "The best advice on writing I've ever received is from Henry Miller's On Writing: You have to write a million words before you find your voice as a writer."

This scares new writers, and I'm not sure why. The only conceivable reason to aim at a professional writing career is because you want to write. Writing is the job description for a writer, and the more of it you do, the better at it you will get. If you doubt this, go and find something you wrote twelve months ago. It may make you cringe. Even if it doesn't, you'll find ways to write it better now, because you've had more writing experience.

So write. :-)

Faked emails: a royal pain in the you-know-what

This week's Woody's Email Essentials has an excellent piece on faked emails.

If you're not sure how faked emails are generated, this week's issue: "WEE #2.12 - Worm Collateral Damage" gets you up to speed.

Subscribe to the ezine. It's edited by my fellow PC User contributor Rose Vines, so the info is completely reliable.

A librarian WRONG? Tsk, tsk… I'm shocked…

Dan Gillmor on the case of the Alaskan librarian:

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A well-meaning librarian in Alaska has written a tirade against blogs and other online media, saying, "The reach and power of telecommunications and computers have enabled everyone to spread evidence of their ignorance farther and faster than ever before."

Obviously this is true for those who are ignorant. Of course, it's equally true that wisdom and well-reported facts also spread more widely, something the writer fails to note.
>>>

I thought I'd let this one lie.

But I'm still shocked. If you can't depend on a librarian, who can you depend on? Another illusion shattered. ;-)

Copywriting Tip of the Day: Make your client newsworthy

From News.com.au: "World record risotto attempt":

>>>
A TEAM of celebrity chefs is attempting to cook the world's biggest risotto in Sydney today.

They started on the steaming monster dish in First Fleet Park at Circular Quay about 5am and reckon it will take several hours, using oar-sized stirring paddles.
>>>

It's a cute story, and I guarantee it will get a run in every media outlet in Sydney today.

The sponsor's pitch is in the fourth para:

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The record attempt is backed by the Ricegrowers Association of Australia to mark the International Year of Rice and raise money to fight world hunger.
>>>

Let's see how the PR thinking went on this one. "Rice Growers Association… they want people to eat more rice… Will we put out a news release saying Rice Growers Want More People to Eat More Rice… guess not." So they came up with the World Record Risotto. Elegant. :-)

However, even BEFORE that, they created the "International YEAR of Rice". I love it, it's a real PR gem. Obviously someone has been working hard for the ricegrowers.

What can you do to get more publicity for your clients today?

Love to write? You can make the money you deserve as a writer. Become a highly paid copywriter, and get paid for writing.

If you're not making enough money writing, Seven Days To Easy Money: Copywriting Success helps you to start your own copywriting services business.

Tip #3: How to thrive as a freelance writer - Be persistent

Writing is selling.

No, not marketing, selling. What's the difference between marketing and selling? Marketing involves the 4 Ps.

Marketing leads to sales, but you've got to keep your eyes on the prize, which is always sales. :-) You get your sales by being persistent. I've always thought that I had a persistence gene, but I'm a baby at real persistence.

Read "Persistence Pays Part 1" and "Persistence Pays Part 2" at Joe Kraus's entrepreneurship blog, Bnoopy, for a guide to REAL persistence.

My NaNoWriMo Day 25 wimp-out

(If you're a new reader of this blog, this post refers to NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month.

In 25 days, I've written around 38,000 of the 50,000 required to complete NaNo. Only 12K words to go, but I'm not going to push myself to write those words in the next five days.

The problem is that although I'm making great progress, I'm getting a little tangled in the storylines. I've got the primary plot, and two sub-plots. I need to untangle these, so that I can build towards the story climax, and avoid the woeful "sagging middle" of the novel.

This requires some rereading, planning and thinking. I won't have time for this if I'm forging ahead. Ergo, the wimp-out.

I'm still aiming to complete the novel's first draft of 100K words by the end of December.

You've been made redundant --- by your computer

Shock, horror --- we writers will be replaced, by computer programs. Read "Computers as Authors? Literary Luddites Unite!" by Daniel Akst and weep. (NYT, free sub required.)

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, it won't happen in our lifetime. Akst says:

>>>

When I called Steven Pinker, the Harvard University psychologist whose research focuses on language and cognition, he pointed out that the human brain consists of 100 trillion synapses that are subjected to a lifetime of real-world experience. While it is conceivable that computers will eventually write novels, Dr. Pinker says, "I doubt they'd be very good novels by human standards."

>>>

Whew. :-)

Blink: Malcolm Gladwell on rapid cognition/ intuition

More on Malcolm Gladwell, who's always worth reading (see the previous post). He's got a new book out this coming January: Blink.

He says:

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It's a book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusion. Well, "Blink" is a book about those two seconds, because I think those instant conclusions that we reach are really powerful and really important and, occasionally, really good.

>>>

His site has fascinating excerpts from the book. He describes that part of our mind "knows" before we do, so to speak: "It sends its messages through weirdly indirect channels, like the sweat glands on the palms of our hands. It's a system in which our brain reaches conclusions without immediately telling us that it's reaching conclusions."