|
|
E-Writer Issue #1 9 April 2004 http://www.nickdaws.co.uk E-mail: ewriter-at-nickdaws.co.uk "Hints, tips and tricks for wired-up writers" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1. Welcome! 2. Techniques: Search Engine Basics 3. Market Info: Kwickee Bitesize 4. Article: What Mr Sanders Taught Me 5. Resource: File-Saver software 1. Welcome Hi there! And thank you for subscribing to E-Writer, my brand new writers' newsletter. In case this issue was forwarded to you by someone else, I should mention that I'm Nick Daws, a UK-based freelance writer - author of the CD-based course "Write any book in Under 28 Days" (http://www.nickdaws.co.uk/writeany.htm), among various other things! If you'd like your own free subscription, just go to my homepage at http://www.nickdaws.co.uk and click on the E-Writer link. The E in E-Writer stands for two things: Entrepreneur and Electronic. Entrepreneur, because that's my angle. I work full time as a freelance writer and my number one aim is to make a (good) living from it. I'm not saying I wouldn't one day like to write the great novel, but my motives are primarily commercial, not so say financial! So in E-Writer I'll be aiming to pass on a range of ideas - some quite unusual - for turning your writing skills to profit. The E also (of course) stands for Electronic. I use the net a lot in my work, and hope to share through this newsletter a few hints and tips I have picked up along the way, and some useful resources I have discovered for "wired-up" writers. I'll also be discussing the the net as a market of growing importance for writers, and revealing ways you can get a slice of the online writing action yourself! While I will share any interesting market information I come across, E-Writer is NOT going to be a long list of magazines which might consider your work. There are other websites and ezines which do this far better than I ever could (see, for example, http://www.worldwidefreelance.com). You might like to know how often I plan to send out E-Writer. So would I! I don't want to make a rod for my own back by promising it will be weekly, fortnightly or whatever. As a busy working freelance writer I will have to fit it into my schedule when I can. I promise I shan't be deluging you with newsletters every other day, however - and equally, I will try to keep it sufficiently regular so that you don't forget who I am! And if I hear of something you might want to know about urgently, I may send you a short 'special update' (or 'heads up' as the Americans say). I'll be delighted to receive feedback on E-Writer, and any requests for topics you would like covered or queries you'd like me to answer. Please use the e-mail address at the top of this newsletter or on my website. 2. Article: Search Engine Basics Search engines are normally the first port of call for writers when researching a story or article. However, from giving talks to writers' groups I know that many are still a bit hazy about this number one resource for writers. So as this is the first issue of E-Writer, I thought it would be a good topic to kick off with. Google (http://www.google.com) is my current favourite search engine. It's quick and efficient, and if a site is currently unavailable Google keeps a cached version (a 'snapshot' of the site saved on its own server) you will usually be able to view. Other search engines I like include AllTheWeb, Lycos, MSN Search and Ask Jeeves. A good site for keeping track of the best- performing search engines is Search Engine Watch ( http://searchenginewatch.com). Most people understand the basic method of using a search engine. You enter one or more terms relevant to the topic you want to research, and the search engine then generates a list of all sites in its records which include those terms. However, many people are unaware of the many ways you can refine a search to make it more useful and precise. One example is that, with all the search engines I mentioned, you can search for a specific phrase or expression by placing it in double inverted commas. If you want material about the rock group Deep Purple, for example, putting this in inverted commas will produce a list of sites in which the phrase "Deep Purple" appears. Without the inverted commas, you will be shown a much longer list of sites which include the words deep and/or purple somewhere among them. Many of these, of course, will have nothing to do with the band. Also well worth knowing are the + (plus) and - (minus) commands, which again work with all the leading search engines. If you put a plus before any search term, only pages including the term in question will be displayed. So if you enter +Microsoft +Windows +XP +bugs in a search engine, only pages including all four of these terms will appear. This could be useful if you are researching bugs in Windows XP, but don’t want to see pages about bugs in other versions of Windows (or, indeed, insect-type bugs). Even more useful is the minus command. This allows you to exclude from the results of a search any pages containing a certain term. Suppose you’re researching the former US President Bill Clinton but don’t want to be overwhelmed by pages about the Monica Lewinsky scandal. You could enter the search terms +Clinton -Lewinsky and the search engine would list only pages including the word Clinton but excluding Lewinsky. There are other, more advanced methods you can also use, but just adding these simple techniques to your repertoire can cut the time it takes to research information on the web dramatically. 3. Market Info - Kwickee Bitesize Here's a new market open to everyone. Kwickee Bitesize is a new, UK-based venture founded by author and publisher Julian Fisher. They aim to provide short 'bite-sized'articles (up to 800 words) to be delivered to users via their mobile phones and the internet. Articles will include reference, fiction, adult and topical material. Articles will be both written and edited by freelances, and payment will be in the form of a royalty each time someone downloads an article you have written or edited. The opportunity is open to anyone in the world, though non-UK writers and editors will have to accept payment via Paypal ( http://www.paypal.com). The service will be launched to the public shortly, but you can register as a contributor and even start submitting articles now at their website http://www.kwickee.com. Would-be editors will be sent a short test to assess their editing and proofreading skills. See also their other website at http://www.kwickee.info for more background information on the company and their requirements for freelances. LATE UPDATE - I went to a meeting about Kwickee Bitesize in Birmingham (UK) yesterday. Much of this simply recapitulated the info above and on the websites. However, it did clarify a few points for me. * Kwickee Bitesize is an open-access platform. Anyone can submit work and, as long as it meets the editorial guidelines, it will be published. * This means that (a) you don't have to send in a proposal and have it accepted before submitting an article, and (b) more than one article may appear on the same topic. * The initial price for Bitesizes has been set as 1.50 UKP (around $2.50). Authors will receive a royalty of around 40p (70c) for each Bitesize sold at this price. * Editors will be paid on a different basis from writers. For each Bitesize edited they get a percentage from a monthly 'pool' for editors. This is to ensure that editors of less popular topics do not lose out to people editing more popular subjects. * Non-UK residents can become writers or sub-editors for Kwickee Bitesize, but group editors (the most senior editors who must finally approve or reject submissions) must be UK-based. * You can use Bitesizes to promote your own work, e.g. publish extracts of your book as Bitesizes, with info about the book and where people can buy it. * Kwickee Bitesize could be a good potential market for fiction writers, especially short story writers. 'Adult' short stories are expected to sell particularly well. My own feeling is that Kwickee Bitesize is worth getting involved with, though you should be aware that no payments are guaranteed until people start buying. Kwickee Bitesize are planning a big UK advertising campaign, but it remains to be seen how enthusiastically the public will take up the service. Still, those involved with the company now will be well placed to benefit if the service really does take off in a big way. 4. Article: What Mr Sanders Taught Me My schooldays are a rather distant memory now, but one of the teachers in particular sticks in my mind. Mr Sanders, otherwise known as "Sam", was my English teacher for several years, and an eccentric even by comparison with the other oddballs who inhabited the institution where I spent my formative years. Sam was especially known for the range of punishments he inflicted on boys (it was an all-male school). Notable among these was the tweak, where he took a length of hair above the boy's ear and jerked upwards. Tweaking was an artform as far as Sam was concerned, and his repertoire included the single tweak, double tweak, reverse tweak, and even the Magic Roundabout and Dambusters tweaks (performed to a musical accompaniment). I mean, could you ever forget a teacher like that?! Even so, Sam WAS a good teacher, and some of the things he taught me about English I have found useful ever since. One of these was his rule about where to place the apostrophe in possessives, e.g. the boy's room. Sam taught us to rewrite the expression using the word 'of'. The apostrophe would then go after the final letter in the rewritten version. So if you were talking about one boy, the rewritten version would be 'The room of the boy'. The final letter is a 'y', so the test shows that the expression should be written the boy's room. But if you are talking about two or more boys, the rewritten version is 'The room of the boys' - so in this case the apostrophe should go after the 's' in the shortened version. I have never seen this rule written down anywhere, but as far as I know it works 100% of the time, even with unusual plurals such as children (e.g. the children's hospital, women's clothes). Anyway, I thought I'd share it with you. Drink a toast to Sam if you find his rule useful! 5. Resource: File-Saver Here are two things that happened to me recently. First, I got an urgent e-mail from my friend Iain, who edits several printed newsletters for major mail order publishers. He was in a panic because he had accidentally deleted a large file he was working on, and erased it from the Windows Recycle Bin as well. Did I know any way to retrieve it and save him many hours of work? Second, I attended a talk/workshop at my local writers group on erotic writing. It was run by American author Mitzi Szereto. In the Q&A at the end, one young woman (who incidentally produced by far the best story in the writing exercise) asked what was the best way to erase any trace of research materials you might have viewed on the web while engaging in this type of writing. In fact, as I'll explain in a moment, both these questions have a similar answer. Files which are deleted from the Recycle Bin cannot be recovered with the standard set of Windows tools, but they remain on your hard disk until eventually they are written over. To view such files and retrieve them, you need third-party software. The program I use, and which I recommended to my colleague, is File-Saver. Coincidentally, this is published by WCCL, who also publish my CD-based course 'Write Any Book In Under 28 Days' ( http://www.nickdaws.co.uk/writeany.htm). The File-Saver program instantly displays hundreds of deleted files from any drive on your computer. It provides details about each file, including their name, type, size and last modified date. You can then restore any files you want to the location of your choice by clicking on the 'Restore by Copying' button. In addition, File-Saver allows you to quickly erase all confidential data from your computer's hard disk by wiping out any trace of files you wish to stay deleted. The price of File-Saver varies according to any special offers they are running, but at the time of writing it is available for just $11.95 (around 6.50 UKP). You can see more information, and order if you wish, by clicking on http://tinyurl.com/2tdgl. Return to E-Writer Archive Page |