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For writers looking to improve their blogs quickly, Darren Rowse’s “31 Days to Build a Better Blog” program might be just the thing. Rowse runs Problogger, one of the top blogs on the Internet and the place to go for information about making a living as a blogger. For the next […]
In my series on Word 2007, I discussed how to use Word’s Master Documents feature. In a nutshell, Master Documents allows you to put a long document like a book together from chapters or parts created as separate documents.
Creating a Master Document isn’t all that hard, but it’s a little fiddly – you have […]
This week, we’ve talked about how to create copies of your work so that the actual loss of a file or even a computer doesn’t derail your whole career. But what about other acts of stupidity, like accidentally deleting a big section of text from your work in progress without noticing it? What if you […]
Though blogs and RSS feeds are the hot thing right now, there are still lots of people who prefer good old-fashioned email newsletter. Newsletters have a number of qualities that make them preferable to blogging for some purposes, such as:
They’re “push” technology: Instead of waiting for a reader to visit your blog, or check their […]
One piece of advice that’s floated around a lot to help people stay on track with their big projects is to set a deadline. In my experience, and probably yours, this doesn’t work very well because there are no consequences for not meeting your “pretend” deadline — allowing you the fudge room to keep procrastinating.
Stikk has come […]
If you’ve been reading this site for a while, you’ve probably noticed a gap in the software I cover and recommend. For the most part, the software, online services, and other material (like e-books) I’ve recommended have been free. There are plenty of exceptions, of course — next week I’m gearing up to do a series on […]
You know your word count. But how do you know if your words count?
Words Count is an online readability analyzer, offering you more information about your prose than you could possibly imagine. Cut and paste in any sample of text (up to 20 pages) and Words Count will give you back the percentage of your […]
Protagonize is a collaborative fiction-writing community that allows writers to author stories separately or together, build new branches off of other writer’s stories, and rate each other’s work. The twist is, the stories are interactive, like the Choose Your Own Adventure Stories of yore. The folks at Protagonize call them “addventure” stories, with each author […]
When I write articles, I use a process I call “Outline Expand Expand Done” — I write an outline, expand it a bit, expand it some more (paying attention to how pieces fit together), and repeat until I’m done.
I’ll use a word processor — usually Buzzword — for shorter (<1500 words) pieces, but for longer, more complex pieces, I prefer to […]
PlotBot is a new free web application geared towards screenwriters. Because it’s on the web, you can log in and work on your screenplay anywhere you have access to a computer.
Better yet, PlotBot allows you and any number of collaborators to log in and work on the same screenplay at the same time. You […]
