WRITERS WRITE

By notapoet - About Me - E-mail this page - Add to My Favorites - Add to Blog List - See other blogs in On Writing

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Goin’ with the flow

It’s a great ride when inspiration hits and the words seem to burst forth in a fast, continuous flow that it seems will never end. Whenever possible I recommend riding this maelstrom to the end, or at least till hunger and exhaustion force you bring it to a temporary halt. Sadly, even a brief break... Sign in to see full entry.

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Sunday, August 31, 2008

Readin’ and writin’ are still the best training for a writer.

This is just a quick reminder for those who may have lost sight of that basic principle. Those who attempt to write without reading extensively are usually doomed to failure. Just as a child learns from the example of parents, an individual wishing to write can learn from the example of those who... Sign in to see full entry.

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Monday, August 25, 2008

Amber. By Amber.

Amber and Poppa Bruce. Amber wrote her name on Poppa Bruce’s computer. Welcome to the first literary effort of my four-year old granddaughter. Amber just missed the cutoff date for kindergarten. She is bright enough to hold her own with the five-year-olds, but the school board was not willing to... Sign in to see full entry.

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Monday, August 11, 2008

Wingin' it

Sometimes circumstances dictate that it's necessary to "wing it," or write on the fly. Tonight and this morning seems to be one of those instances. It all started with me being progressively sicker for several weeks. Besides seriously cutting into my writing time, it cut into my normal drive to... Sign in to see full entry.

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Friday, August 1, 2008

Not so Wow, wowio!

A few seconds after 1:00 pm, July 31, wowio.com came back online. At first everything looked about the same, but closer investigation showed this was not true. As reported, Platinum Studios now owns Wowio. And, as rumored, Platinum provides free reading of everything on the site, but now charges for... Sign in to see full entry.

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Monday, July 28, 2008

Links, updates, etc.

Remembering two of my all-time favorite newspaper comic strips, "Alley Oop" and "L'il Abner" got me started into my side adventures in the daily and Sunday comic strips I remember so fondly from my youth. Although I would like to wax poetic about those, and other old favorites I've become... Sign in to see full entry.

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Thursday, July 10, 2008

Fairy tales, ghost stories, and comic strips

...were all vital to my early desire to learn to read, and eventually the desire to write stories myself. Not all voracious readers aspire to write, but almost all writers are voracious readers who consume many times what they could ever possibly write. This connection between writing and heavy... Sign in to see full entry.

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Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Still searchin'...

for another good source of free books that isn't too specialized in nature. I thought I'd found one that specialized in free online novels, but the compiler is revamping his site in the near future without the free book links. In addition, many of the links to the online novels are dead ends for,... Sign in to see full entry.

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Friday, June 27, 2008

Oops!

Almost as soon as I recommended Wowio as an excellent source of free books of all types, including both fiction and nonfiction, the site became temporarily unavailable due to retooling. Sorry, folks. I had no idea this was going to come about. But the link still works -- you just get a nice message... Sign in to see full entry.

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Friday, June 20, 2008

5+

Last time out I discussed wowio.com/ as a source of all types of mostly contemporary free books. Please feel free to scroll down to my previous post if you missed it, or go directly to the link if you'd rather not wade through my prose. But if you'll stay with me for a few minutes you'll also run... Sign in to see full entry.

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Monday, June 2, 2008

Wow, WOWIO!

Not inventing a word here. I'm passing on info on another excellent source of free books that really are free, as opposed to hundreds of come-ons designed to part voracious readers from their hard-earned cash. If you, like me, are a voracious reader with a great many interest, wowio.com/ is a site... Sign in to see full entry.

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Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Researchin' my ass off

Much of my non-writing time has been occupied by research into a variety of topics holding both interest and utility for me. Such research is easier than when I was coming up. I can remember a time when, outside of encyclopedias, research involved time-consuming reading in dozens of books to come up... Sign in to see full entry.

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Saturday, May 24, 2008

What's your pleasure?

Mine is reading, both for the joy and comfort a good story brings, and for the inspiration to write that reading always gives me. To me success as a writer is not measured by how much money I might make, balanced by the reality of how little I actually do make. Success would be giving someone else... Sign in to see full entry.

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Saturday, May 3, 2008

Returning from the back burner

Today is only the second time in 10 or 11 days that I've posted anything on Blogit. Blogit, my two book projects, and just about any other kind of writing I do got put on the back burner for a number of reasons. A family tragedy, a few irritating personal inconveniences, and a busy sports writing... Sign in to see full entry.

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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Excuses for not writing are legion.

I know. I've used many of them in the past. Truth be known, I still use a lot of them. The important thing is that writers, even while making excuses for why they can't write, write anyway. Yup, it's that simple. I know it seems contradictory. But I became a real, if only moderately successful,... Sign in to see full entry.

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Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Break a rule or two.

I break a lot of rules intentionally 'cause it helps give a little life to prose that could otherwise get pretty damned boring. At least I get bored when reading grammatically perfect sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, and page after page. Breaking a few rules, and bending a few... Sign in to see full entry.

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Monday, April 7, 2008

Humorous writing…

is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever attempted. I envy people who seem to be able to sit down and effortlessly crank out side-splitting anecdotes. It’s a gift that most of us do not possess. Humor is possible for the rest of us, I think. I have written a couple of things that were actually... Sign in to see full entry.

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Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Give it a rest…

when the well seems to have run dry. It happens to all of us, and it isn’t really writer’s block. Often it’s just fatigue. Once I trained myself to write regularly, I found that I rarely ran out of things to say. I might run dry on a particular piece, but never out of words altogether unless I was... Sign in to see full entry.

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Monday, March 31, 2008

Googled yourself lately?

If you haven’t, you ought to. It can be a real revelation. A few days ago I was looking for a piece of newspaper work I wanted to share with y’all that was published some time ago in a newspaper. Since that paper normally maintains only a two week archive to non-subscribers, I tried finding it... Sign in to see full entry.

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Friday, March 28, 2008

It took me seven weeks, but this morning I just did it.

I took my own advice, for a change, and returned to one of the strands left hanging in “Notapoet’s Fiction.” My last post here, a little piece I did about dream-inspired writing in “notapoet’s poetry” this morning, a book I finally read last year, and my general fascination with the idea of... Sign in to see full entry.

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Notapoet's thoughts and advice on writing, writer's block, and anything else he happens to think of whenever he's working in this category.

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