April 25, 2017
by Neelima
0 comments
1.Bana Alabed, seven-year-old Syrian peace campaigner, to publish memoir
2.Revolutionary ereader Canute hopes to boost Braille literacy
3.Nobel Prize Winner Malala Yousafzai’s picture book to be published
4.Alec Baldwin accuses HarperCollins of sloppy editing on his memoir
5.Self-published author offers £10k prize to crack his book’s code
April 24, 2017
by Neelima
0 comments
Goodreads was acquired by Amazon in 2013. It’s a social cataloging and a community of literature lovers website that was launched in January 2007 by Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler. Most of you must have an account at Goodreads. You can search their database for books, annotations, reviews and reviewers. If you don’t have an account there yet, one good reason to register would be that there are 20 million book lovers on board.
Another reason is the Goodreads Author Program. If you’ve written a book, you can create a profile page, promote your book and connect with your fans. Your profile page can have your profile pic, bio, link to blog and book listings.
You can promote your books by advertising, which is affordable, or doing a giveaway. You can also answer questions fans ask their authors. You can vote for your favorite book and improve its ranking too. You can also interact with book groups and increase your readership.
Check these links to figure out how Goodreads works:
https://www.goodreads.com/about/how_it_works
https://www.goodreads.com/author/program
April 21, 2017
by Neelima
0 comments
<div style="text-align: center; margin: auto;"><ahref="https://i0.wp.com/instascribe.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/nationalpoetry-01.jpg?resize=760%2C1024&ssl=1"/>By InstaScribe</a></div>April 20, 2017
by Neelima
0 comments
Russell Smith deconstructs the idea of the app behind the book. He’s talking about an app called Prolifiko that Wyl Menmuir used to write his book, something we mentioned in our Link Wanderlust series here. The app is a productivity tracker, so it measures how productive you are though it can not keep track of where your ideas come from. Such an app is good, argues Smith, if you have the time. But if you don’t….
Smith doesn’t get the writing everyday magic formula. He thinks what’s more important is the outline. If you know what will happen in the story, you are more likely to finish it. Smith has a different take on much of the advice that is doled out to writers. Read his essay here.
Another essay I discovered was about speed reading apps in the market.
Fun Fact:
The idea of speed reading was invented by an American schoolteacher named Evelyn Wood, whose search for a way to improve the lives of troubled teenagers in Salt Lake County, Utah, by teaching them to read effortlessly, led her to the belief that she herself could read at the rate of 2,700 words a minute, 10 times faster than the average educated reader. And further, that the techniques that allowed her to do so could be taught and sold.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/08/speed-reading-apps-can-you-really-read-novel-in-your-lunch-hour?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Speed reading is a fad that has institutes dedicated to the cause. There are techniques that help you speed read like running your finger down in the middle of the page and looking at print as blocks, rather than words and sentences. Check out Spreeder and Accelread …
Read the essay here.
April 18, 2017
by Neelima
0 comments
1.Colson Whitehead and Hisham Matar win Pulitzer Prizes
2.X-Men illustrator faces backlash over alleged anti-Christian messages
3.The Microsoft eBookstore Launches in The United States
4.Macmillan offers Joe and Jill Biden $60 million book contract
5.Unseen Sylvia Plath letters claim domestic abuse by Ted Hughes
April 17, 2017
by Neelima
0 comments
April is National Poetry Writing Month, so instead of NaNoWriMo, you have NaPoWriMo. The idea is to write a poem every day throughout April. The NaPoWrMo website is the brainchild of Maureen Thorson, a poet who lives in Washington, DC. She started blogging a poem a day in April back in 2003 and she began linking to other writers who followed suit.
To write a poem it is not necessary that the lines of your poems rhyme. You can adhere to a form like the sonnet or the haiku or villanelle but this is not necessary. It is important to have read a couple of form poems before you embark on creating your own. A Petrarchan sonnet, for instance, is different from an Elizabethan sonnet.
It’s one thing rhyming words naturally and quite another to force rhyme. So if rhyming is not your forte, you could write more experimental poems or what is called free verse where the rhyme is more internal and rhythmic for a poem is like a song; the only thing that matters is word rhythm. This is the more popular form of writing poetry today, though it must be said that having a sound idea of the different forms and kinds of rhyme of poetry makes you a better poet.
Where do you get ideas to write poems on a daily basis? There are many sites with poetry prompts, there are prompt generators and then there are the things around you. Many times the things that matter the most to you will be the fodder of your poetry and prose.
Some writing prompt sites for you:
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/library/Mayer-Bernadette_Experiments.html
https://www.pw.org/writing-prompts-exercises
http://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/
Watch this video to understand how to write poetry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U00ybFDTRU and watch this one if you have an ear for slam poetry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxGWGohIXiw.
April 14, 2017 by Neelima | 0 comments
<div style="text-align: center; margin: auto;"><ahref="https://i2.wp.com/instascribe.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/writerswishlist-01.jpg?w=516&ssl=1"/>By InstaScribe</a></div>April 13, 2017
by Neelima
0 comments
Has it happened to you? You’ve written a book about a vampire and when someone meets you, they are a bit disappointed that you don’t exactly look like one? Jami Attenberg March talks about her experience with invasive publicity.
Writers do tend to get judged by the kind of themes they choose. If the character is obese, then shouldn’t the writer be? If the character is divorced, then you can assume that the writer is. Sometimes the reader is more interested in the fiction of the author’s life than the fiction that the author makes up. Some writers heartily disagree that autobiography tends to crop in their work, while others are more accepting of this. The story does come from a writer’s heart but we should read the author for the work’s sake and not the author’s life. We have enough of a life of our own.
Read Stop Reading My Fiction as the Story of My Life.
April 11, 2017
by Neelima
0 comments
1.World’s biggest prize for children’s books goes to ‘caring visionary’
2. Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Russian poet who memorialized Babi Yar, dies aged 84
3.Will.I.Am Is Publishing A YA Novel That’s Being Described As ‘The Terminator’ Meets Harry Potter
4.HBO, Rai to Adapt Elena Ferrante’s ‘My Brilliant Friend’ as Drama Series
5.Kobo Acquires Print-Digital Bundling Startup Shelfie
April 10, 2017
by Neelima
0 comments
Some writers have an uncanny ability to tell the future. You might be familiar with Jules Vernes’ prediction of the 1969 moon landing in his book From the Earth to the Moon, Arthur C. Clarke’s reference to digital media and satellite communications, Ray Bradbury’s divination of headphones, Orwell’s Big Brother in 1984 and E.M. Foster’s reference to skype-like calling device. Many other writers have been able to write with an eye on the future, and they are all not just sci-fi writers. There is an argument that sci-fi is not about futurism, but that’s a different debate altogether. Writers seem to be in deep connection with time and so have their pulse on what may occur.
There are many other predictions that haven’t seen the light of day, so you could argue that the idea of predictions are far-fetched and could be nothing but the result of in-depth knowledge and intelligence and of course, pure chance.
Are they any books that you have read that you think have their pulse on the future. Share.
References:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/18/sci-fi-books-future_n_4117268.html&gws_rd=cr&ei=Ls_hWMfcMIv-vASSy4CwAw
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/sunday-review/novelists-predict-future-with-eerie-accuracy.html
http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/books/books-that-predicted-the-future
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z9p4cwx