The long and short of book review lengths, or why I decided to start writing thumbnail sketch book reviews instead of full length ones.
Read MoreShould book reviews be detailed or concise?
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Reviews
You could let Grammarly take some of the strain of proofreading. Photo by Pink Sherbert Photography https://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/
Review of Grammarly -- and a competition
in News & views, Reference, Reviews
Read about a great proofreading tool, and maybe win a year's subscription!
Read MoreReview of Help! for Writers
Writers' block is just one of many writerly ills. In this book, Roy Peter Clark offers over 200 practical tips.
Read MoreReview of Discoverability
How can a self-published author get noticed these days? Kristine Kathryn Rusch has some surprising answers.
Read MoreReview of 30 Day Blogging Challenge by Nikki Pilkington
If you're looking for a handy, no frills book of suggestions for blogging, this book should meet your requirements. Having been designed as an email course, 30 Day Blogging Challenge, written by Nikki Pilkington, consists mainly of 30 very short articles on different aspects of blogging. Being able to buy the whole lot in the form of a book is excellent for those of us for whom deferred gratification is an alien concept.Review of Polish Your Fiction
Polish Your Fiction is another title in Jessica Bell’s “in a nutshell” series. It is subtitled “A quick and easy self-editing guide”, which is a very apt description.Reflections on the London Book Fair 2015
Well, the London Book Fair has been and gone. Is it only a week ago that I was trudging home with publishers’ catalogues and notes from the various sessions I attended?
I found it really useful: three days’-worth of excellent talks and discussions, for the princely sum of £35.
Review of Business for Authors: How to be an author entrepreneur, by Joanna Penn
There are lots of books about writing – so many, in fact, that you could comfortably avoid doing any writing at all simply by setting out to read them all. There does come a point where you need to actually sit down and write. But if there is one book that is worth taking time out to read, and use as a reference, it's Business for Authors.Review of the History and Art of Comic Books
The History and Art of Comic Books is a course at the City Lit college in London. There are several courses on graphic design, and even one for learning how to create cartoons and comics. This one, however, is not so much hands on, but a romp through several decades of comic book art in four weeks.Current reading: Books for Authors
in Reviews
In this article I look briefly at the Indie Author Powerpack and Business for Authors
Read MoreReview of Your Creative Writing Masterclass
I love books that you can dip into, and I am always interested in what writers have to say about their craft. Jurgen Wolff’s Your Creative Writing Masterclass has proved to be highly rewarding on both counts.4 ways that Spark London is good for writers
If you listen to blues songs, you will discover that amongst the angst, the stories of “my baby done packed her suitcase and caught the midnight train” (they must have amazing rail services in the USA because all the trains seem to depart at midnight), and being down and out, there are some real glimpses of a deeper Truth, with a capital “T”.Discovering Sherman Alexie
in News & views, Reviews
I always try to follow my intuition. Thus it was that a couple of weeks ago, with deadlines pressing on me, and pressure from all sides, I decided to ignore my intellectual protestations and listen to my inner voice.
That voice whispered to me:
You haven’t looked at The Atlantic for a while, have you? Go check it out.”
So I did, and I came across an interview with a writer I’d never heard of, Sherman Alexie.
Alexie is a Native American writer, which is why I suppose I’d never come across his work. Interestingly, he refers to himself as “Indian”, which we are told is politically incorrect. I think I’d rather take Alexie’s word for that. But anyway….
The biggest bookshop in England
in Reviews
Heaven for me is being ensconced in a bookshop, later followed by my supping a latté while exploring my new-found gems. Second-hand bookshops are by far the best kind, because you never know what you might come across that you would almost certainly not happen upon in a new bookshop or on Amazon. After all, it was in a second-hand bookshop that I came across a copy of a writers’ magazine published in 1937 – and it didn’t cost me the earth either!A writer’s word processor
I’ve been playing around with a word processor called Jarte. It isn’t specifically intended for use by writers as such (as far as I know), but it does have some features which many writers will find useful.A brief review of Word Hippo
I recently heard about Word Hippo, from a school pupil at Victoria Park Academy in the West Midlands, England. It’s an online dictionary, thesaurus and general all-round word helper.
I’m used to using the Oxford English dictionary and similar reference works, to which I have access through my library membership, so I wasn't feeling tremendously optimistic when I approached
Blogging software
I've recently been having a few problems with Windows Live Writer and Squarespace. Well, one problem actually: they refused to work together any longer. Each time I clicked on "Send to blog", an error message popped up saying "We can't find it", or words to that effect.
That's all fixed now, thanks to the good folk at Squarespace, but in the meantime I thought I'd check out some of the alternatives.
From Paper to Computer
It’s confession time again. When I said that I like to work on paper, for instance when drafting an outline for an article, I omitted to mention one important fact. Apart from when I jot things down in a notebook I carry around in my inside jacket pocket, all the notes I write the old-fashioned way are converted into a digital form as soon as possible afterwards.
There are two main reasons for this, both of them pragmatic.
Review of FocusWriter
in Reviews
Just before starting this article I thought I ought to check my email. Then I checked the FocusWriter website to see if there was an update, or a UK English dictionary. Then I had a quick look at my TwitterFeed when something popped up in the corner of my eye. Then...
Well, anyway, when I finally got round to actually putting FocusWriter through its paces, I could see it was designed for people just like me
Keeping track of time
They say that time is money, and this is certainly true for the professional writer. If you’re billing a client according to the amount of time spent on the project, you’ll need to keep an accurate record of that. You could use a spreadsheet, which certainly has its advantages, but the beauty of Taskcoach is that it will actually record the precise amount of time you clock up – as long as you remember to set it going when you start work!