Terry Freedman’s Books Bulletin is short and sweet, and free. The new issue is going to come out tomorrow, 24 December 2021.
Read MoreBooks (cartooned) by Terry Freedman
On this day: Getting paid is nice too
in On this day
One of the occupational hazards of trying to earn money from writing (or any other "creative" pursuit) is that many people display a marked disinclination to pay for the service they require.
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Christmas at Selfridges, by Terry Freedman
Christmas message from Writers' Know-how
in Oulipo
Unfortunately, my end-of-year message got a bit mangled, but I’m posting it here anyway. See if you can figure out what it is supposed to say.
Read MoreUsing 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 MoreUsing art for inspiration
in News & views, Archives
I’ve come across lots of books, apps and websites with writing prompts. I don’t think any of them have mentioned looking at paintings. I find that to be quite inspirational, in the sense of inspiring me to write reviews (which I don’t always publish).
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Write! Official Issue #1 out soon!
The next issue of the free newsletter Write! will be sent out today, Thursday 16th December 2021. This is officially the first issue — the previously distributed one was a sample product. This is what the issue contains….
Read MoreReview: American Short Stories course
in Reviews
For many years I’ve liked American nonfiction writing in periodicals such as Harpers, The Atlantic and The New Yorker, and it’s been interesting (for me at any rate) to learn that I also enjoy American fiction.
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Film, by Dean Shareski Some rights reserved
Review: A Taste of Film
in Reviews
Yesterday I spent a very interesting three hours on a course called A Taste of Film.
Read MoreFake news and media literacy
in News & views
Much of the narrative about fake news seems to take the view that fake news is peddled by outlets other than mainstream media, that if mainstream media do produce fake news it’s either accidental or because the “journalism” is rubbish, and that basically it’s up to the rest of us to make sure we’re not fooled.
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Filler text, by Terry Freedman
Creating filler text
in Technology
You can, of course, create text for use as filler text, or recycle an existing document. A better approach, because it’s faster, is to use a random text generator. The remainder of this document looks at a few options available to you.
Read MoreA randomly created short story
She walked over to the window and reflected on her deprived surroundings. She had always loved urban Truro with its plain, pong parks. It was a place that encouraged her tendency to feel worried.
Read MoreWhy are positive reviews so boring?
It’s a sad fact of life that the most entertaining reviews are the ones that are highly critical of the thing being reviewed.
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Question marks, by Terry Freedman
Categories or tags? Or both?
in Handy hints
It was hard enough to pluck up the courage to start your own blog, and now all of a sudden you have discovered there are things called categories and tags. What are they?
Read MoreBooks Unseen: All of the Marvels
Apparently, the author of this book took on the gargantuan task of reading through 27,000 Marvel comics (which sounds exactly like the sort of job I’ve been looking for!).
Read MoreBooks Unseen: Gothic: An Illustrated History
in Books Unseen
I should think this book provides some interesting background to reading and viewing anything in the gothic genre.
Read MoreOn this day: My non-writing writing day
in Archives, On this day
The value of having days when you don’t write, but when you do stuff in the service of writing.
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Click to see this on Amazon
Quick look: The 12 Week Year for Writers
in Bookshelf, Quick looks, Reviews
This is a book about strategy and meeting objectives rather than a how-to-write guide.
Read MoreThe best length of a blog post
in News & views
Which of the following broad categories “should” your blog posts fall into?
Read MoreShort-form writing (book review)
When your word count is restricted, you have to make every word count.
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.
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