web stuff 4 writers

So sad to read in the Guardian that Dina Rabinovitch died this morning.

I discovered Dina’s blog earlier this year and was touched by the honest way she talked about her experiences with cancer.  Those who read her Guardian columns and her book, Take Off Your Party Dress, were similarly impressed.  I was inspired too, by the way she used her blog and her JustGiving page to raise almost £70,000 so far for cancer research.  In a blog entry, Dina writes about how she’s raised this money from writing.

My thoughts tonight are with Dina’s family, and all who knew her.

Tags: Blogging, Finding inspiration by Natasha
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Happy Tuesday morning everyone.  Here’s this week’s writing about writing topic.

Writing about writing, Week #6

In most large bookstores, you’ll find a shelf with books that have been written about writing. Books that teach you how to write a best selling novel. Books that tell you how to write a script; to sell freelance articles; to publish your poetry.

Have read any of these books? If so, are there any that you’d recommend to others?

If you’ve answered this question in your blog, please leave a link to the entry in the comments box below.  Alternatively you can write/paste your answer directly in the comments box.

Tags: Writing about writing by Natasha
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Whether you have hired a web development team to create you a multi-page website or you are setting up a free profile on MySpace, it’s important to first consider what sort of information you’re going to make available.

You might choose to have a blog, an online forum or animated games which fit the theme of your book.  You might want to post reviews of your work or exchange links with other writers.  These features all add to the website experience and may keep your readers coming back, but they’re not, in my opinion, ’essentials’. 

These would be my essentials:

1. Information about your work

For many writers, promoting their work is a major reason for having a web presence.  Simlarly, for many readers, finding out more about the writer’s work is a major reason to visit the writer’s page. 

On Beverly Cleary’s website, for example, there’s a list of her published books.  Clicking on the cover image next to each one takes you to a page with more information about the book.  There, you can read a sample chapter online or find out where you can order that book online.

If you’re a journalist rather than a novelist, you might want to include links to online examples of your work.  If you’ve had poems or short stories published in an anthology that is not available in online book stores, you might still want to mention the title so readers can seek it out by alternative methods.

2. Information about you

There may be some who argue with this one, but I like to find out about the person behind the writing – and there’s more space on a page of a website than there is on the back cover of a book.

It’s up to you how much information you want to reveal.  Some writers include their entire life history, while others keep this section very much focussed on their writing.   On her ‘about’ page, young adult writer, Lauren Barnholdt includes both the ‘official’ biography and ‘what you really want to know.’

3. A way to get in touch

Readers may come to your website with questions.  Reviewers too.  Journalists or agents.  These people may leave frustrated if there’s no way to contact you. 

To remedy this, you could include an online contact form like the one here on web stuff 4 writers. 

An email or PO Box postal address will also serve the purpose.

Your thoughts

What features do you think are essential to writers’ websites?  Do you agree with the three I’ve listed here, or would you argue for others?

Tags: Creating websites, Promotion by Natasha
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I received an email yesterday - rather belatedly as it turns out - about the Amazon Breakthrough Novel award.  Online book retailer, Amazon.com, is calling for manuscript submissions.  Submit your novel, and you could win a publishing contract with Penguin, promotional support from Amazon and a host of other prizes.

Problem is, they’ve already reached their limit of 5,000 registered authors.  So those 5,000 have a guaranteed spot on the manuscript pile if they chose to take it up.  If they don’t there’ll be opportunities for those on the waiting list.  According to the site, this will be on a first-come-first-served basis, so if you’re interested, you might want to register here as soon as you can.

It looks like Amazon customers will have a say in which novelist gets that final publishing contract, with online voting for the semi-finalists and finalists early next year before the winner is announced on April 7.  A kind of BigBrother for manuscripts, perhaps?

Your thoughts

How do you feel about readers being involved in the publication process in this way?  What are the benefits for the participants?  Penguin?  Amazon?

Tags: Publishing by Natasha
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This morning, I finished Yann Martel’s novel, Life of Pi. Early this morning. It was one of those books where I woke up at 4.30, and couldn’t go back to sleep until I’d read the last 30 pages.

Life of Pi is the Guardian’s Book Club book for October, so – as is usually the case, it seems – the Guardian has published weekly articles about the book this month, as well as a podcasted interview between Yann Martell and professor of English, John Mullan.

I found it very interesting to hear Martell talk about the Life of Pi – his book about a boy and a tiger and a lifeboat – and the way he worked on creating realistic details so that he could convince the reader to suspend their disbelief. He also talked about how the writer’s impression of a book can be ‘very, very different’ from the reader’s impression, giving examples of questions he’s been asked and theories he’s been told at various literary events.

Previous Book Club interviews with authors such as Ian Rankin, Joyce Carol Oates, Ruth Rendell and DBC Pierre have also been published in mp3 format on the Guardian website, although the earliest links, to interviews with Zadie Smith and Rachel Cusk no longer seem to work.

The Guardian also publishes a whole range of book-related podcasts. More information and the feed URL can be found on their podcast page here.

Your thoughts

As a reader/writer, do you enjoy listening to other writers talk about their work? Do you think it adds anything to the experience, or would you rather let the work stand on its own?

Tags: Finding inspiration by Natasha
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In the latest issue of Mslexia, there’s an article by Marion Husband called ‘Confessions of a self-promoter’.  In it, Marion writes about different ways you can promote your new book – from offering to do readings at events to ‘gently badgering’ journalists who’ve covered your work in the past.

In her ‘use the internet’ section of this article, Marion does touch on using social networks such as MySpace and faceook, saying ‘it’s a way of getting your name out there, garnering interest and gaining new readers.’

However, what I found interesting, was that the main focus of her ‘internet’ section was using the internet to get in touch with writing groups and organisations like the University of the Third Age who might be looking for a speaker.  After all, speaking at events means selling books to attendees, as well as building your profile.

I have to admit that, in those first few weeks after Lessons to Learn was published, the majority of my internet time wasn’t spent blogging.  Although I did write a few entries on natashajudd.com, I ended up focussing more on researching where my book was being sold online, submitting the book to online databases, searching for the contact details of student magazines so I could send review copies, setting up two bookrings on Bookcrossing.com and answering emailed interview questions.

Your thoughts

Thus far, web stuff 4 writers has focused on websites, blogs and social networks as ways to promote your work online.  However, there are lots of alternative ways to use the internet.  If you’ve got any suggestions or can say what’s worked for you, please leave a comment below.

Tags: Promotion by Natasha
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With a novel draft to finish and all this talk of NaNoWriMo, I’ve been thinking a lot about word counts this week.
 
Earlier in the year, I read Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts.  I don’t normally read such long books.  I don’t think I could ever write such a long book.  But I couldn’t help but be impressed by this 900 plus page epic and it’s my inspiration for this week’s writing about writing topic.

Writing about writing, Week #5

What’s the longest piece you’ve written?  How much time did you spend on it?  Would you want to write something longer in the future?

If you’ve answered this question in your blog, please leave a link to the entry in the comments box below.  Alternatively you can write/paste your answer directly in the comments box.

Tags: Writing about writing by Natasha
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What is RSS?

RSS stands for
Really Simple Syndication.

Syndication, according to dictionary.com, means ‘to publish simultaneously, or supply for simultaneous publication, in a number of newspapers or other periodicals in different places’.

So, RSS is basically a way for a website to supply content which allows it be read from a number of different places. It’s kind of like podcasting for text.

A bit about feed readers

To read this post today, you might have typed www.webstuff4writers.com into your browser address bar. You might have clicked on a link from another website, or found it on a search engine.

Or you may not be visiting web stuff for writers at all. Instead, you may be reading my RSS feed remotely through a web service known as a feed reader.

If you’re reading this post through a feed reader, you won’t see the links on my side bar and you won’t see the comments that people have left – but you will see the text and images that make up the post.

Examples of popular online feed readers include Google Reader, Bloglines and Rojo.

Why subscribe to RSS feeds?

Feed readers save time because they bring the content to you. You can subscribe to a number of different feeds, from a number of different blogs, and read them all in your feed reader. You don’t need to go to the individual sites and check if there have been updates. If a new article has been posted on a blog you subscribe to, then your feed reader will let you know.

You can skim over articles that don’t interest you and – in many of the feed reader programs – highlight ones you want to follow up on.

How to subscribe to feeds

It’s not only blogs that offer feeds. Some of my favourite book-related periodicals, such as the Books section of the Guardian newpaper, also offer syndication of their news online. The Problogger jobs board offers a RSS feed of the latest blogging jobs.

As RSS becomes more widespread, more and more websites are offering an RSS service. You might notice that they mention the word ‘subscribe’ or display an icon like the one shown here. Clicking on the link will either give you the raw feed (this may look disturbingly code-y but all you need to do is to copy the link into the appropriate place in your feed reader) or take you through to a page which asks you which feed reader you’d like to use to subscribe to the feed.

If you’re interested, here’s the link for the webstuff 4 writers feed.

Your thoughts

Do you subscribe to any blogs/news services through a feed reader? If so, how has it affected your web reading habits?

Tags: What is? by Natasha
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Writing resources and websites I’ve discovered over the last 10 days.

• Many writers have their pet spelling and grammar hates.  Perhaps you can’t stand seeing an apostrophe before the ’s’ of plurals.  Perhaps you get frustrated by people who write ‘you’re’ when they mean ‘your’.  The creator of this website obviously just needed a place to express his/her anger about incorrect spellings of ‘definitely’.
• Earlier this week, Caitlin emailed me a link to a Positivity Blog post where Stephen King’s Seven Tips for Becoming a Better Writer are applied to practice of blogging.
• If 50,000 words during NaNoWriMo or a blog post a day during NaBloPoMo seem a bit too scary, perhaps you could try telling a true story in a single sentence at onesentence.org.
• And if you’ve been putting off starting any form of writing this week, you might want to take a look at this 52 projects article called Simple things you can do right now to jumpstart your writing efforts.

Your thoughts

Found a new website for writers this week?  Started a new series or posted an interesting article on your own writing-related blog? Please leave a link in the comment box below.

Note: Spam links will, as always, be deleted.

Tags: Web links by Natasha
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It’s been a month now since I wrote my first post here on web stuff 4 writers. 

One month, 392 visits, 27 posts and 40 (non-spam) comments later, I’m still here and more enthusiastic about the project than ever.

I’ve learnt a lot in this month of almost-daily blogging.  I’ve learnt technical stuff such as how to insert a search box in my side-bar and how to set up a Feedburner RSS feed.  But more importantly, I’ve learnt that I need to make time each day to write.  I need to record my ideas in my notebook as I think of them.  I need to both start articles and finish them.

Here are five of my favourite posts so far

• Interview with Bianca Zander
• Finding a home for your blog
• Nothing’s permanent on the world wide web
• Interview with Faye L. Booth
• 5 must-have resources for NaNoWriMo 

I’ve got plenty more topics on that ideas page of my notebook, but if there’s anything about writing and the web that you particularly want me to cover, please let me know by leaving a comment below.

A note of thanks

Thanks so much to everyone who has commented on my entries over the past month.  One of the great things about blogging is that it connects you to a community of writers around the world.  Thanks also to those who haven’t commented, but continue to read.  Please feel free to join in the discussions if you wish to do so – or even just leave a note to say ‘hi’.

Happy one-month anniversary to all of us, and may there be many more months to come.

Tags: General by Natasha
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