Writing Tips

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SUCKING THE LIFE OUT OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Posted by on Sep 23, 2011 in Writing Tips | 1 comment

Social Media-o-rama. Seriously, I can hardly keep up and I consider myself an internet guru of sorts. Google+ is great and all, but aren’t all of the platforms in some capacity? Why add ourselves to another?  To be frank, I’m feeling a bit stretched and Google+ put me over the edge. One too many forums, one too many buttons to learn…what’s more, it’s too much befriending of the SAME people I’m developing connections with on other platforms. So what is the point? This is what I...

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How to Secure Your Blog in the Wild West

Posted by on Sep 6, 2011 in Writing Tips | 7 comments

I was hacked. HARD CORE hacked. Somehow they managed to erase 8 months, that’s right, 8 MONTHS of material, which has disintegrated into the cyber sphere. Luckily, my tech wizard husband managed to salvage something, though I’m still crying over all of those lost guest posts, writerly links, and brillant (just go with it) articles I wrote.  (You’ll notice my last blog post dates to January.) This happened DESPITE the fact that I paid my host company an extra fee to store daily...

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Why Are Those Twitts Not Following?

Posted by on Jan 24, 2011 in Writing Tips | 11 comments

There seems to be a lot of unspoken rules about how to use Twitter.  In truth, no one has the time to explain to you the secret society Twitt-shakes.  You’re left to your own devices to figure it out #LoserNewbie  #GetaClue.   So to become a super savvy #TwitterRockStar, I’ve been doing some 007 James-Bond-style scouting these last four months since I’ve joined, and I think I’ve finally cracked the code. You won’t get followed if : 1. Too many followers, but...

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“My Writing is the Shiznit” and The Defunct Self-Esteem Movement

Posted by on Jan 17, 2011 in Writing Tips | 3 comments

Self-esteem makes for sucky grammar. As I type that, spell check is underlining away. That’s right folks, there are BUILT-IN tools for checking spelling and grammar. They’re certainly not infallible, but helpful and correct at least seventy-five percent of the time. High school students seem completely unaware of these tools. How is that possible in an era of information overload? Why are kids confusing subject pronouns with verbs and why, for the love of God, are they handing in...

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Writing Good Dialogue

Posted by on Jan 10, 2011 in Writing Tips | 2 comments

Dialogue is essential to bring characters to life and to keep the pace of a story cooking.  But writing one isn’t as easy as it looks.  It’s a skill that must be practiced, like any other.  I seldom write a perfect dialogue in the first draft, but have found that following a few rules helps me to cut unnatural, forced conversations and amp up the action.  I selected a few lines of terrible dialogue I’ve read recently to illustrate my points. 1. LISTEN TO CONVERSATIONS...

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A Decade of Pop Culture or Popular Trash?

Posted by on Dec 20, 2010 in Writing Tips | 5 comments

I admit, I’m a big fat nerd.  I have a not-so-secret love of studying popular culture trends whether they’re related to entertainment & leisure, health & diet, or geographic trends.  I greedily file tidbits of useless crapola into folders in my brain.  All the while, I just KNOW that one day, the information has to be useful for something?  I’m pretty sure it’s the language teacher in me who gets hot and bothered by patterns.  Ahhh, but I digress.  Here...

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