I had fun making a wordle yesterday. No, that’s not a typo. 🙂 A wordle is a picture of a group of words – most often called a word cloud. Making a word cloud is good activity to do when you need to take a break from writing, but still want to get something accomplished on your story.
It can be used as a marketing tool. You can design one in photoshop or illustrator like the logo for the Meso Foundation’s 2011 conference:
In case you missed it, I did a blog interview with St. Louis author Susan McBride over at the Missouri Writers’ Guild Conference Blog last Thursday. Susan will be one of the speakers at the Guild’s 2012 “Write Time! Write Place! Write Now!” Conference.
With that interview, Susan graciously donated a copy of her most recent book LITTLE BLACK DRESS to give away to one lucky commenter. Commenting closes tonight, so you still have a chance to win.
Sarah’s Note: Today, I’m featuring a guest post from Christine Kane, my favorite motivational speaker who helps primarily women get motivated about “up-leveling” their lives, as she calls it. Procrastination is something I struggle with on a regular basis, so this article really spoke to me, and I hope by sharing it with you, it will help you overcome your own procrastination fears.
Nine Simple Solutions for Procrastinators
My life – as a writer – has been overtaken by clutter, research and mail. When you live in one space for a long time, it’s easy for misc items that spark your interest to build up. Then when it comes time to clean the paper mountains on your desk, or that random end table or even the bookshelf, it can feel overwhelming.
Instead of cleaning up that clutter, I used to cheat. Once I’d reached a point of critical mass, I’d push everything into a box – throw out a teeny bit – and then shove the box in a walk in closet.
This gallery contains 3 photos.
I’m pleased to bring you my first author interview. Chris DiGiuseppi is the co-author, along with Mike Force, of The Light Bringer, a supernatural crime suspense novel that debuted earlier this month. Since then, it has been selling like crazy on Amazon.com and BN.com. Continue reading
Yesterday, I gave a presentation on the basics of Social Media during the St. Louis Writers’ Guild monthly workshop. Two other authors presented along with me, Cole Gibsen and Shawntelle Madison. The audience was great, and everyone asked a lot of good questions.
Before a year ago, I refused to make a Twitter account. My attitude was: I’m too busy to manage another social networking site. Facebook, LinkedIn & this website are plenty. I’d like to have a life, please!
A year ago, that changed. I landed a job as a communications associate at a national law firm. After a few days my new boss informed me that my job description included managing the firm’s Facebook Page & Twitter account. (Yikes!)
Parents are always a sticky problem for young adult writers. Your protagonist can’t have exciting adventures if her parents are continuously blocking her fun – a feeling, I’m sure, many kids relate to. However, sitting in time out doesn’t make for a good story. Unless that story is based at a detention camp where your protagonist has to dig Holes all day. But even, in Louis Sachar’s story Holes, his main character’s parents are MIA for all but the first and final chapters of the book.
The problem with parents as characters is that most parents in real life are buying the book for their children. Most parents don’t like buying books, especially for younger readers, that don’t display parents in a good light. Figuring out how to develop characters that are acceptable to parents, librarians, teachers and other adult figures AND their children and students can be a daunting task.
So I came across a fascinating post this morning by marketing blogger Jason Skol. He wrote about how business can affect people’s behaviors through games. Re: McDonalds Monopoly, Farmville, and Foursquare. Check out his post here, but if you are short on time. Watch how Volkswagen applied this theory and got people to take the stairs over the escalator.
Parents have begun pressing their kindergartners and first graders stop reading picture books in favor of more text-heavy chapter books, according to an article in today’s New York Times.
“They (children) are 4 years old, and their parents are getting them ‘Stuart Little,’” One bookstore owner told the reporter. “I see children pick up picture books, and then the parents say, ‘You can do better than this, you can do more than this.’”