Posts Tagged ‘ Internet ’

On first lines

Flickr CC-BY-ND welcometoalville

On the subject of pantsing and first lines, I thought I’d share an interesting literary magazine with you called The First Line.

At the start of each year, they put up on their website the first sentence of a story (a writing prompt) for each quarter and tell you to have at it, ensuring you submit your story or stories to them by each edition’s deadline on the 1st days of February, May, August and November. According to their submission guidelines, The First Line will pay for fiction and non-fiction submissions that are accepted for print.

Their Mission statement:

The purpose of The First Line is to jump start the imagination-to help writers break through the block that is the blank page. Each issue contains short stories that stem from a common first line… The First Line is an exercise in creativity for writers and a chance for readers to see how many different directions we can take when we start from the same place.

Just to make it clear in case you missed it the first time: you can become a paid and published author for simply doing well what many of us were asked to do during creative writing lessons at school. You can see why it excited me, I’m sure.

If you’re like me and want a copy of an earlier edition before submitting, you can buy individual back issues via their online shop. I have their Spring 2008 (v10n1) edition of ten stories, which cost US$3.50 plus $5 international shipping to the UK. The book is about 21x13cm and 5mm thick, which is about the dimensions of a Commando magazine, but half again as tall (or was when I read them as a boy).

There are many of these kinds of literary magazines out there, to cover every genre and style, and come in various formats from glossy magazines to online PDF delivery. If you can’t find a listing in your Writer’s Market or equivalent, I suggest trying your preferred Internet search engine.

To give you a basic idea, I spent a couple of hours a few months ago and discovered the following:

Then there are magazines your parents could probably tell you about:

And lastly special-purpose publications such as the Hope #1 and Hope #2 anthologies, which were created to raise funds for the Australian Red Cross Victorian Bushfire Appeal 2009. (I find this amazing and inspiring).

The world is your shellfish.

2009
12/29
CATEGORY
Writing
TAGS







Comments Off

Writing Forums, Colonies & Communities

Flickr CC-BY publicdomainphotos

Ever since I first connected to the Internet in 1989, the month after it first became available to the general public, I have been using it as a social medium, in addition to its other manifold uses. Back then the social aspect was limited to a text-based chat client (ytalk), Usenet client (nn), and very basic email client (Elm or Pine) — which included mailing lists and newsletters — and, of course, no spam! If you weren’t online then, think of the anticipation that Google Wave is generating today, how there’s almost nobody using it and how everyone’s uncertain of whether it’s going to explode in popularity or quietly disappear.

Over time came the graphical WWW (via Mosaic in 1993), personal websites, free personal webmail and, while the popularity of email list-servers was enormous and growing, people began creating everything for web browsers. This included converting already existing applications, protocols and concepts to use in a browser — one of these was the re-invention of the mailing list as the WWW forum. Mailing lists are still popular, but seem to be more specialised and limited to more technically-savvy Internet users. Web forums are point-and-click, and they’re everywhere.

Today, just about everyone who uses the Internet is a member of at least one forum, and they have largely taken over mailing lists and the Usenet as places to ask questions, social centres and searchable repositories of information. There is a forum for just about any topic you could possibly imagine and, if you don’t want to go to the expense of hosting your own server or paying for a hosting provider to do it for you, there are advertising-sustained forum providers who will let you create a free forum within minutes.

Regardless of how the technology is implemented, the core idea and result has always been the same: to allow people interested in a certain topic to converse on threaded topics and, with the increasing ubiquity of effective Internet-wide search engines and their software robots, allow searching within fractions of a second. The writing community is no different. While they may vary in their approach, their rules, their levels and type of access, there are writing forums out there that cater for all genres and styles of writing.

I thought I’d write this post to give a brief background of forums and to share a list of some writing forums, though I’ve not necessarily joined them (I am a member of those marked with an asterisk):

While I very much hope these are helpful to you, I would appreciate it if you would add your favourite writing forums via the Comments at the bottom of this post. If I get a good response, I’ll look at editing this post to include your recommendations, and that should make this a useful post to new writers or writers who are new to the Internet.

2009
12/14
CATEGORY
Tools
TAGS

Comments Off

Getting on(line) in business

One of the more obvious parts of my setting up a new business checklist has been to setup an online presence. By that I don’t mean getting a Hotmail account and a free webspace, putting them on my stationery and handing them out to everyone. Instead, I’m referring to what I have seen some online writers refer to as “the package”, including:

  • Domain name
  • Web hosting
  • Website software
  • Email storage
  • VOIP telephone numbers
  • Traffic monitoring
  • Associates links
  • FeedBurner (RSS)

It might seem like a strange task list, but this was done partly to avoid the mish-mash of confusing contact details we’ve all seen on brochures and trades vans, where you have something like:

Bill’s Plumbing Services
http://userpages.freewebhosting.com/~billsplumbing/index.htm
[nohide]billsplumbing@hotmail.com[/nohide]

While there’s not necessarily anything wrong with free or low-cost email and web providers — in fact, when effectively used, they can provide excellent service for next to no capital outlay — but using them as shown above is comparable to having a local carpenter and joiner create custom fitted shelving for you, then not painting or decorating it once completed.

Regardless of whether the fictitious company above spent a fortune on professional web design, anyone who has corporate awareness or more than a passing familiarity with the Internet will know that both of these addresses could have been given a sleek, unified appearance for under £10 a year:

Bill’s Plumbing Services
www.billsplumbingservices.com
[nohide]info@billsplumbingservices.com[/nohide]

Whether the company uses a free web hosting facility and free email storage is immaterial, providing that it’s possible to conceal that fact from customers. Next to the online presence faux pas described above, is showing the real website location once the customer has browsed to it, or replying “From” the free email address. Nearly all domain name providers and free email providers allow you to conceal these facts. It’s not about tricking the customer, but rather about presenting a streamlined professional experience for the customer.

This is part one of a series of articles discussing setting up an online presence. Part 2 will discuss web hosting…

2008
12/21
CATEGORY
Tools
TAGS


Comments Off

Creative Commons License

MattBruce.co.uk by Matt Bruce is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at MattBruce.co.uk.

Miscellany


Matt Bruce's profile on GoodReads

Urban Sketchers network
I'm an urban sketcher

Support the Open Rights Group