Purge

Flickr photo by jgodsey of sicpress.com

Well,

I have this blog which I don't seem to use much.
It appears to have lost it's way (should that apostrophe be there?).

I'm in the throes of a deletion of all things not writing related today/tomorrow.
I will use Tumblr for that kind of stuff in future I think.

This blog started out as a journal for my NAWE adventures.
I was lucky enough to secure a place on their Taking The Plunge mentoring scheme.
I enjoyed it a great deal and recorded that which I needed to here on the journal.

From now on it should all be writing related.

Mark

Vacana 67

Whatever one thinks about and ponders over often,
one's mind gets a leaning in that way.

I don't recall where I saw this, but, it struck a chord.
In relation to writing, I think it applies to the area of characterisation.
If you live your characters whilst writing them, surely you get to leaning that way?

Ideas>Photos>Yoga

Hmm.
When I am driving, I cannot write ideas down.
Sometimes I stop and perform a braindump before it, the idea, vapourises into nothingness.
Sometimes this means making an audio note on my mobile phone, other times it means my writing it on whatever is to hand.
This morning it meant dictating it to J, who was in the back of the car en route to school.





This afternoon saw the previously mentioned photoshoot occurring at the local art gallery.
The purpose being to promote the creative writing project that I will be running soon.
Hopefully the article will get some local people to come forward who knew Helen Bradley.
It'd be a great help.




20.12.07
Originally uploaded by Boczkowski

Barker>Gallery>Photo

Received a call from a local newspaper.



In response to a mass email I did about a creative writing project I will be running locally.



In a school not too far from me.



Enabling New Writing that is inspired by the life and/or work of Helen Bradley.



18.12.07
Originally uploaded by Boczkowski

plus or minus

Whether you write an email, a manuscript, a query letter or a book proposal, never forget the positive or negative impact of your words.


This, I kind of agree with, but, surely before you write, you should have in mind what effect your words are going to have, shouldn't you?
Otherwise you're just writing with no plan.
Again.

By all means write just for the sake of it, for the fun of it, to try things out, to experiment, to test yourself, stretch yourself, just to see what it look like on the damn page. But. Keep that for yourself. Don't release that unpolished stuff into the world. Especially if it is a letter or an email.

Get a roadmap. Use it.

Every writing project competes in the marketplace.

Every writing project competes in the marketplace. It's important to know your competition.

I think it is also important to know your marketplace. Most people I've come across are just writing without paying any attention whatsoever to who might actually read their output, assuming of course that they want someone to read their output! The trouble with markets is that the consumer (hate that word) has far too much choice in this, our 21st, century. The marketplace is global. It's in peoples phones, computers and televisions. They can consume 24-7, but how are they to discern? Write for your ideal reader and you won't go far wrong. It is important to have someone in mind when you put pen to paper, otherwise you may as well, to a great extent, be writing in your diary.

Organise your writing to flow in an easy-to-digest manner

Organise your writing to flow in an easy-to-digest manner.


Right - what does this writing 'tip' actually mean?
Does any writer who knows what they are trying to achieve actually set out to make the prose difficult to read? Really? Do they? I know some academics try to make their essays/books hard to read to 'keep the riff raff out', no really, they do, but the honest to goodness fiction writer? I don't think so. Obviously class, time you were born, how you were schooled, where you were schooled, whether or not you're writing in your first language amongst many, many other things, come into this.

My tip? Cull the adverbs and keep it as honest as it needs to be. No unnecessary words!

Authors@Google: from the Official Google Blog

Subscribe to Book Mark here

I have been reading The Official Google Blog for a couple of months now. I subscribed to it shortly after starting to use their personalised homepage and email services. A rather interesting post on Friday 27th April seems worthy of mention here as it is about authors.


Google invite some of the worlds leading authors to speak about their recently published books at Google's offices in the US and have expanded this programme to other offices throughout the Googlesphere. Imagine going to work and Martin Amis or Max Barry is speaking at lunch time! Fantastic huh?


If you're interested in watching one of these talks, you can do so on YouTube by getting on over to the Googletalks video archive at YouTube. There is also an index of videos at Google.
Don't forget you can subscribe both this blog and the google talks video feeds by clicking on the appropriate button.



The 'official' Official Google Blog: Authors@Google is available by clicking on this link.




All the best

Mark

Does everything have to be just right before you can write?

Well? Does it?

Do you have to have the coffee in place, the curtains at the correct angle, the heating on/off/at exactly nineteen degrees? Some of this applies to me, I'm really bothered by extraneous noise and light that is too bright for me. So, as I know this, I prepare in advance. I have earplugs in my pocket and blinds on my windows - simple. The main thing that bothers me is, when I go somewhere else to write, like the library or University computer labs. What irks me is the fact the computer is different. It ain't set up how I like it. It has different applications, icons etc.
To combat this, I've started using google's online storage/email/documents facilities. Which is great until they fail or malfunction as they did this week. But, it is a free service, whaddyagonndo? I Personally suggest using Netvibes as well as a kind of back up (or primary) service. Yes it is a little bit of a pain setting it all up twice and remembering to copy content over as and when you add stuff, but, just how important is it to you to have that same 'feel' at every computer you log on at? Most 'writers' are quite precious (or do I mean precocious) about this kind of thing, playing the angst-y artist card about why they can't create until they've had their cranberry porridge and peppermint tea. I'm a but like this too believe it or not. That's why I've started using both services as well as carrying around a portable office and internet suite from the nice people at Portableapps.com.

I love this, I've used a portable version of Opera for some time as it has the built in mail client so I could retrieve all my mail from whichever PC I was sat at, anywhere in the world with an internet connection. Sweet 'eh?

So now there are no excuses, you can write anywhere, on any computer.
Blimey, you could even try a pen and paper

All the best

Mark www.markchambers.org.uk

Nokia memory dump - Why a writer needs a mobile phone.

I was recently diagnosed with CFS and as a result have a few issues (not problems) with memory.
I find myself searching for the correct word, that is sometimes just out of reach, quite regularly.
Similarly, I find myself wandering the supermarket wondering what I've come in for.
So I started to make lists, notes, reminders, aide memoires of all sorts.
First on bits of paper in my wallet - this became cumbersome and made my wallet very thick and uncomfortable to sit on.
Then I started buying small notebooks. Spiral bound at the top and with a piece of elastic attached to the back cover so I can fasten the thing shut. A bit like a police notebook.
From there I started using 3 x 5 index cards after reading about a thing called a Hipster pda, securing them with a big red bulldog clip I got from Staples.This was good. I liked it. But they became many, and they became dog eared and I hated that. Plus they didn't fit in my shirt or jacket pocket as easily or as snugly as my little notebook from Paperchase.
I then graduated to a real PDA. A Palm TX no less! This is good too, better even. It is much more immediate than booting up my laptop, but not quite as easy as using an index card and pen.

As a writer, I have ideas that I want to remember. On a daily basis. I wrote them down. I tapped them in. I've even phoned them home. Speech is the easiest, it simply has to be. So I've set up my Nokia 6070 as another repository of ideas. It is a great little phone. Fifty quid and has a radio and a camera with video capabilities. Not great quality but hey, it was fifty sheets. I use the camera to capture interesting images from all over the place, stuff I want to remember later or write about. If I wanted great pictures, I'd take a proper camera with me.
If I have an idea and I want to speak it, why pay to phone it home when the mobile in my pocket is a dictaphone too? I can record five minutes (I think) of continuous speech/noise/whatever into this gadget and then listen back later at my convenience. I can even beam the audio snippets into my laptop via the IR link.

Soon I won't have to think at all.

All invaluable for the writer I think.
--

All the best,

Mark

www.markchambers.org.uk