Writing

Random text messages

Yesterday I got a call from someone in Tennessee with a 423 area code. My cell phone has a 423 area code (long, convoluted story) and I sometimes get random calls from people with really thick accents. That’s okay. It happens. I politely told the person that she had the wrong number. This morning I got two text messages from the same number of the person who called me yesterday. Two threatening, poorly...

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Tonight, we write

The characters are playing. Specifically: one story, Ride Softly, is pounding to be written. I’m seven pages in, which doesn’t sound like a lot until you consider it’s the most fiction I’ve written in a year (much less in two sittings). It’s Isis’ story, with a twist. When I write her scenes, I have my eyes closed and the tears stream down my face. There are two scenes that were the hardest: when...

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Writing mentoring sale from Judith Tarr

I regularly read Judith Tarr’s Livejournal blog. This week she announced her annual sale on writing mentoring. Judith Tarr is a fantastic fantasy / historical fiction author who has authored dozens of books. (Take a look at what she has published over on Amazon and at Book View Cafe.) She is one of those authors who groks horses and gets the details right. Do you have a writing project that you could use...

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Which Fantasy author are you?

I found this meme on LiveJournal, so of course I had to take it. I think I actually have some of Tove Jansson’s books from when I was little. I’ll have to check. Pretty in depth, but the author selection at the end is kinda limited. Good quiz, though. Your result for Which fantasy writer are you?… Tove Jansson (1914-2001) 29 High-Brow, -21 Violent, 25 Experimental and -5 Cynical! Congratulations! You are High-Brow,...

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That BBC Book Meme on Facebook

I think this is based on the BBC Big Read top 100 list from 2003. Most of the books are the same. I was curious how many books on this list my English studies covered. Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? Related Images:

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Link collection for technical writing

At different times, I’ve mentored people who are interested in technical writing. I have over ten years of experience as a professional technical writer and some definite ideas about how to get started in the field. A friend of mine asked me for some suggested reading on getting started in technical writing. I collected a set of links as a starting point (see below) and realized other people might be interested in the...

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The 20 Dumbest Warning Labels Of All-Time

You know, in tech writing you find some pretty silly examples of poorly translated warning labels and paragraphs. Here are some from general products. Humor at it’s very best. This article exposes the stupidity of the manufacturers. We know, they need to cover their own asses… but can they go to this extent?? read more | digg story Related Images:

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Poem: Transfer of Owners

This poem was written in 1994 at a point when I was going through a traumatic time: financial difficulties, 8 funerals in 18 months (including my Dad), and then the worst of all… Losing my horse. I felt your breath soft on my neck myriad memories tickling my mind like whiskers falling from clippers Luminous eyes glazed with the day’s work and the field is dust flicking through the stall washed with bespeckled...

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Open Office: Using Page Styles to Create Unique Headers

A lady on a mailing list I’m on asked if it was possible to have secondary header that was not used on the first page. In Microsoft Word you can use section breaks to divide page sets. Each section break can then have it’s own header and footer text. If you remove a section break, the header and footer are removed. You create unique headers and footers in one document in Open Office...

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WEBook — Writing en mass?

Here is an interesting idea: WEBook. According to the web site, the purpose of WEBook is to: WEbook is a revolutionary online book publishing company, which does for the industry what American Idol did for music. (Modestly speaking, of course.) Welcome to the home of groundbreaking User-Generated Books. WEbook is the vision of a few occasionally erudite people who believe there are millions of talented writers whose work is ignored by the staid...

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“The Seeker” Sucks, part 2

In October, I wrote a comparison of the movie The Seeker to the book upon which it was allegedly based, The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper. My opinion? The movie sucked rocks and hurled chunks. I love the books and this movie was something abhorrent. Reading the comments on my earlier post made me wonder what I might find using a search engine. For example, what did Susan Cooper think of the...

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The Seeker: Movie vs. Book (Spoilers)

I have my copy of The Dark Is Rising (both a first edition paper back and a SF book club edition with all five volumes bound together) out and I am watching The Seeker (if you search for it, you’ll find a video of the movie on Google Video). The Seeker is a recently-released adaptation of Susan Cooper’s 1974 Newberry Award-winning book, The Dark Is Rising, the second book of five in The...

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