I wrote this 12 years ago. The program referred to still appears to work. It just seems old-fashioned and has several annoying pop-ups and other distractions.
Read MoreWeb 2.0
Using Twitter for creative writing (updated)
Twitter allows only 280 characters per “tweet”. That’s around 20 to 25 words on average. How can that be any use for creative writing?
Read More7 blogging questions
There are not really many hard and fast “rules” of blogging as such, but here are a few thoughts based on my experience of blogging, teaching teachers about blogging and teaching a course on blogging.
Read MoreConversing, by Terry Freedman
Blogging: to comment or not to comment, that is the question
Is it rude to comment on blog posts?
Read MoreWriting a book as a blog
It is almost a year since I suggested 7 reasons writers should blog. I’ve recently discovered another one.How to create a magazine cover
I have always liked presenting ideas in the form of a magazine cover. It can act as a stimulating writing prompt for other people, and it can also serve to help you focus on some key ideas. But most of all, it’s just enjoyable in its own right!Making use of your photographs
If, like me, you enjoy taking photographs, then why not use them in your blog posts. An easy way to do so is to open a Flickr account, upload your photos to it, and then use them when you need to.
Flickr is, to be honest, looking a bit long in the tooth, although its recent innovation of displaying very high resolution photographs by default is, shall we say, striking. But it is still a great service in my opinion, and for the writer a much better one than, say, Facebook.
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.
Blogging from Word
A really good blog editor is hard to find. But if you create your day-to-day documents in Word, why not use that as a blog editor too?
Tweeting, blogging and self-publishing ebooks
I attended a really useful seminar – well, two seminars – run by the Society of Authors. The morning session was on tweeting and blogging, and the afternoon one on ebook self-publishing.
10 attributes of professional writers -- #7: Research properly
Can there be any excuse, in this day and age, for poorly-researched material? There are books, the internet and still, even in these straitened times, public libraries with reference sections.