Writers Wayside

Before blogs ever existed, Dr. Jakob Nielsen was putting commentary on the web several times a month regards the emerging Internet and usability.  I graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in Information Science back in the early 1990s, and his work was among my studies, opening my eyes to how people interact with websites. His site remains as simple as it did back in 1995, when I first started designing websites, but his advice is as relevant as ever.  I’ve added his site as a permanent link on the blogroll, and strongly suggest you browse through his archives - especially the Usability 101 and Top Ten Mistakes of Web Design.  Visit the site…

Once you’re published, one of the most important steps you can take to expand your online marketability is to build your own brand. What do you want to be known for? Granted, if you’re like myself, your interests - and subsequently, your published work - is all over the map. But brands build customers, and loyalty. Prove yourself true and reliable to your readers, and your brand will stand the test of time.

Here’s a concise, well-stated article by Lisa Barone covering five major aspects of personal branding. As Lisa says, “Remember: A personal brand is what you are, not how you act.”  Read the article…

Okay, you say, I’m not a computer whiz but I want to connect people around a passion I have for … board games. Or chocolate in the shape of animals (forget the bunnies, how about a chocolate alligator?), or literary novels set in Mississippi. After all, I collect / read / savor it, I write about it, and therefore I would like to delve into deep discussions on it. And I just can’t find a forum out there on the topic. What’s a writer to do? Enter Ning.
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Desert mud in Taos

Last summer, I attended a fiction writers workshop in Taos, New Mexico led by my cousin, novelist Sean Murphy, and his wife, journalist and fiction writer Tania Casselle. It was a lovely long weekend in the dramatic landscapes and historic sites of Taos, where I learned a lot about technique. I’ve made tentative stabs at writing novels for the past 30 years, but have never completed one. In one of our sessions, we were encouraged to jot down ideas for scenes we thought we should write. Instead of just scribbling down a few, I took it to heart and that evening, back in my hotel room, I wrote several pages of scene summaries. Now they’re my prompts. When I can’t seem to find the time or energy to work on the novel, I write more prompts (ala “Newt tries to track down the chickens that disappeared from the wreckage of the chicken coop during the storm.”) Today, I dusted one off, took it to a local coffeeshop, and proceeded to write more nine pages of the novel based on a single prompt. The idea extends to nonfiction, too. When you just can’t seem to focus on getting that assignment written, stretch your mental muscle by writing down prompts for article ideas to research and query later so your well never runs dry.