Roll up laptop March 11, 2010

Ever since the typewriter came on the scene, it’s been more of a struggle for writers to travel with their writing instruments in their purse/murse (man purse). All that will change in the next few years because a roll up laptop is in its design stage right now.

“With the right electronics in place, the potential applications of morphing materials are huge. Download a document to your phone and then view it on this A5-sized screen you can fit in your pocket, pull out a full-sized keyboard from your PDA or view your songs on a larger but roll-up ipod screen.” ~Gemma Simpson

The product can be used as a monitor, laptop, or tablet. The central piece contains the speakers, USB ports, and power cable.

No one has given an exact date as to when this gorgeous piece of technology will be available for consumers, but I’ve been seeing four to five years as the general consensus on that.

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM

 

 

Are you really a writer? February 14, 2010

Some people write and it seems as if their words ooze from their souls like honey.

Some people write, and it sounds as if every word is being ripped from their gut.

Some people write and then delete every word.

All of these people are writers. All of these people are like you.
                                                                                    
Maybe you’ve never been published.
Maybe your plot sucks so much your novel will never be read.
Maybe every other writer’s words seem better than yours.
Maybe you think you can’t write.

Thing is, though, if you love to write, you are still a writer, regardless of what you think of yourself or your talent. Don’t let how others respond affect your passion.

Just write.
                                                                                                                                  

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM

 

 

Be prepared for blogging interruptions January 23, 2010

And down the hill we head for the last challenge on the bloggiesta hosted by Maw Books.

Jenn from Jenn’s Bookshelves challenges us to come up with ten ideas for future posts. This can be a real life saver down the road. Interruptions to the daily grind happen all the time, and the Girl Scout motto, “Be prepared,” was not a random idea for Lady Baden Powell.

Jenn’s method of storming the brain cells is to draw circles and fill them in with ideas that branch off from older blog posts. Then go a step further and branch off those ideas.

Once that’s done, write up some draft posts so you have the basic ideas developed a little.

And this darling photo is in this post, because when I looked for pics of circles I found this one irresistible. I really don’t like cats, so the rug could be a pleasant substitute under my feet.

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM

 

 

Copyright your blog posts and speed things up January 17, 2010

Maw Books’ second Bloggiesta challenge has passed, but I approve wholeheartedly of the slow and steady method of starting/finishing the race (mostly because I forgot about it). I encourage you all to complete everything on the challenge list because it just makes sense.

Danielle from There’s a Book challenges us to create a blogging cheat sheet.
This list could include:
URLs you use repeatedly,
blog post templates,
links to royalty-free photos,
author interview templates,
book review templates.
                                                                                                                   
A great idea, posted by some of Pam’s readers, was to put the completed cheat sheet into Google documents so it could be accessed it from anywhere. Danielle has posted her mock sheet here.

Pam from Bookalicio.us helps everyone to keep ahead of copyright issues by giving advice in how to:
update the homepage,
pay the fee for copyright registration,
check to see if people are posting your work as their own,
add an automatic copyright to your feeds.

Pam also suggests a WordPress plugin to help your SEO.

I used a different widget that works with WordPress.com. I’ve added it to my cheat template, and you can check it out at the bottom of this post.

Comment here when you have completed both mini-challenges so I can give you a high five.

Sally

P.S. Don’t forget to keep posting your five comments a day on other blogs.

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM

 

 

Writers’ goals for 2010 January 14, 2010

Despire going AWOL last week, thus missing the bloggiesta weekend, I am still committed to doing everything suggested on Maw Books’ second bloggiesta challenge.

The first mini challenge is by The Book Lady. She asks a lot of questions I didn’t really want to answer, but here are some of them:

How’s your routine working for you?

How would you like to see your blog grow in 2010?

What are you going to do to get there?

Set goals related to the topic of your blog.

Identify a way to reward yourself or celebrate each increment. This was the easiest to answer easy—Starbucks and chocolate.

Pam from Mother Reader challenges everyone to “comment on at least five book blogs a day.” This would entail commenting for twenty days. She also challenges you to “leave your first ten comments on blogs new to you.” Part of the challenge is to write comments that actually show you have read the post, so no bland spam-like comments count!

Start on these two mini challenges and see how you do.

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM

 

 

Your life in six words January 10, 2010

I am shamelessly stealing this idea from Kate Ward’s post on Shelf Life.

Post your life (so far) in a summary of six words.

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM

 

 

Write to free Christmas music December 13, 2009

A quick poll at our house revealed that three out of four PC users prefer to listen to music while they amuse themselves/work/avoid housework at their PC. I am the odd one out, as I need silence when I am trying to think. Keeping that in mind, I downloaded this week’s free download from iTunes for the times when thinking is not important.

I was surprised at the great mix of Christmas music on this album, and especially at how much I enjoyed David Archuleta’s voice and Meaghan Smith’s song “It Snowed.”                                                                 

Amazon is also feeling musically generous. Called “The Twenty-Five Days of Christmas,” Amazon is giving away one free download of Christmas music per day.

For those of you who love to support new artists, Free Christmas Music also has a list of twenty-six songs you can download legally.

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM

 

 

Make a simple flyer with Word. December 8, 2009

There comes a time for most writers when they wish they could do simple design work. A simple flyer, a brochure—couldn’t be too hard . . . could it?

If you want to do graphic work, you must have graphic software, and most writers only have Microsoft Word 2003. So what can you do? Use Microsoft Word.

Directions for making a simple flyer
Open a new Word page.
Write the text you would like for your flyer.
Block your text from beginning to end with the mouse.
Click on “Format” in the top line of buttons on your screen.
Click on “Borders and Shading.”

Those tabs
Borders is for a border around the text you block.
Page border puts a border around the entire Word page.
Shading shades in the space you have blocked.

Borders and page border
The left column helps you decide on the type of border you’d like.
The middle/style column helps you to pick out the border width, color, line thickness.
The right column asks you if you want a border around all of the text or just one side of it.

Shading
Click on the color you would like your box to be filled with. There are more than the colors you see to choose from—click on “More colors.”
The “style” button is for choosing how solid or see-through you’d like the color to be.

You can use your new image in your documents. So far, I have not been able to save it as a useable image with any other program, but I know it has something to do with saving the image as a PDF first.

Keep in mind that this flyer will only be a low-quality printed work, but knowing how to do this can give you the confidence to break into higher-tech learning in the future.

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM

 

 

7 tips to finding paid writing work December 4, 2009

                                                                 
Over the last few days I have continued on my quest. To be honest, I feel like Don Quixote with Sancho Panza on my shoulder. Nevertheless . . .
                                                                                                                                
More things you can do to get in line for paid writing.

• DON”T follow all the bunny trails leading to articles on SEO optimization, blog analytics, etc. You end up with too many questions seeming to ask you if you really can reach your goal of finding paid work.

• Sign up for HARO (Help a Reporter Out). You can sign up as a writer/reporter and as a possible source for reporters’ questions. This will help your platform and help you discover a wealth of helpful information for your own articles.

• Take a look at AppBank. You can write quizzes for them and earn some income when people use them.

• Don’t automatically assume that you can’t blog for companies. Despite the fact that you may not know a whole lot about real estate or kitchen cabinets, the internet is now your knowledge source. Just be sure to verify the information you read. Look for blogging jobs on ProBlogger.

• If you have any technical writing skills, Your Writing Department might be interested in helping you break through the gates into bigger and better jobs.

• Subscribe to “About Freelance Writing.” Anne posts a list of freelance writing jobs 2-3 times a week, and not all of the jobs are for writers with ten years of experience behind them.

• Check Freelance Job Openings daily.

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM

 

 

How to write academic sentences November 20, 2009

For those of you who like to sound as if you are from an elite group of academia, here is a handy-dandy tool to help you out.

                                                               
                                                               
Make you own academic sentence.

Simply choose from four drop-down boxes to create your next sentence of genius.

If you don’t like the way it sounds, you can change it or edit it, or simply start over.

If you’d like to learn more about how to sound boring smart, you can teach yourself here.
                                                               
                                                               

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM