This week’s YA Highway Wednesday Road Trip is about Favorite Helpful Sites for writers.  I’ve decided to play along this week and share a tip I picked up from my day job where part of my time is spent supporting and configuring information search tools.  Three simple words . . .

USE. GOOGLE. READER.

I know many writers already use Google Reader as the portal for their many blog subscriptions.  It’s a great way for the information you want to come to you (Yay RSS!) so you don’t have to go looking for it.  (Of course this works for anyone, not just writers.)

But did you know you can use Google Reader as your own personalized search engine?

I won’t attempt in this post to explain the ins and outs of Google Reader.  YA Highway blogger Kate Hart has been working through this herself recently and might we willing to share her first-hand experience getting started.  :)

There is a bit of a learning curve, but it is SO worth it.

Once you’re up and running with Google Reader you can subscribe to as many blogs as you’d like then organize them according to “folders” (tags used for search indexing).  You can create as many of these folders as you wish.  You can even assign a blog to multiple folders if it fits into more than one category you’ve created.

*** WARNING!!! IT GEEK ALERT! ***

*** WARNING!!! IT GEEK ALERT! ***

*** WARNING!!! IT GEEK ALERT! ***

Here’s in a nutshell how it works.

Any RSS-enabled website writes published content to a feed.  That feed is basically a running record of all content published on that site.  When you subscribe to a feed using Google Reader, you have access to everything published on that site.  For your convenience unread content stands out while previously read content disappears.  But the content is all still there.

An example:

To illustrate how this works I’ve done a search within my Google Reader for the term ‘writing sites’.  In this example I selected my YA Highway folder, as this where I’ve organized all the YA Highway blogs I subscribe to.  (Using the dropdown menu you can search specific sites, shared items, you name it.)

Then I searched.

Looky . . . looky . . . customized search results!  And I DON’T have to cull through pages and pages of Google’s world-wide search results because the search is already limited to just the content I specified – namely my YA Highway “tagged” content.

That’s it!

The RSS feed contains ALL published information on that site so you never have to worry about losing a bookmark or deleting a subscription email again.  Looking for that post you read last month about synopsis writing?  Want to share a link with someone to the post with tips for writing a great query letter?  If you’ve subscribed to those blogs using Google Reader all you have to do is point, search and scroll!

Please take a minute to leave a comment and let me know if you found this post helpful.

Thanks!

In my previous post I suggested ending your book in the same way you would consider ending a party.  Today, I decided to continue the party analogy by looking at how to best begin your book – by being fashionably late.

The expression ‘fashionably late’ is likely familiar to most of us.  It’s is used to refer to someone who shows up at an event, such as a party, after the time the event was scheduled to begin.  This doesn’t, however, apply to those who simply got mixed up and arrived late by accident.  Being fashionably late is something done on purpose.

Okay, so why would anybody want do that?

One possibility is to create the impression you’re too busy and important with other social engagements to be anywhere on time.  However, I’d like to believe most people aren’t so self-important as all that.  The reason I’m sticking with for people to show up late is that it’s more fun.

Anyone who’s ever attended a party knows it takes a little while for the guests to loosen up.  It starts with people clustering into small groups, eyeing the refreshments, and wondering who’s going to be the first to break the ice.  While this might be a nice setting for an intimate chat with a few close friends, it doesn’t sound much like  a party.  Experienced partygoers at this stage might not even stay for the h’orderves.

Being fashionably late then means waiting to show up for the party until after the ice has broken, the music is hot, and the people aren’t just staring at the snack bar – they’re eating and drinking freely out on the dance floor.  Everybody’s already having fun!

So how does this apply to my book?   . . . Continue Reading

(This post was inspired by a recent post on Magical Words about book endings.)

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve heard when throwing a party is to end it while the guests are still having fun.  This may seem counter-intuitive, but in truth it makes a lot of sense.  If people leave the party feeling good they’ll want to come back again next time. If you milk the party until its all fun is gone, concerned your guests will miss out on something if you don’t, their last experience won’t be of fun at all.  It will be of that awkwardness that comes from trying to figure out how to politely get their coats and slip away when no one’s looking because they’ve had enough. Probably not quite the lasting impression you were hoping for when you planned the party to begin with.

The same can be said with your book. . . . Continue Reading

Anna Staniszewski posted a link to a very funny commercial on her blog today.  I’ve copied her and done the same here.  Watch it first so the rest of this post will make sense.

. . . Continue Reading

Until today, I had never heard of a manuscript style sheet.  I was introduced to this term in a post by Mary Robinette Kowal about her upcoming book: Shades of Milk and Honey (Tor, 2010).  While you’re there, why not visit the rest of Mary’s site to learn more about her and her work.

In the world of information technology a style sheet is a master file used to easily manipulate the look-and-feel of an entire graphical user interface system (e.g. a blog, website, certain software applications), but in the world of publishing the style sheet (a.k.a. “style guide”) serves as a . . . Continue Reading

I freely admit that I am terrible at remembering many of the details of my own childhood.  There are reasons for this which continue to manifest themselves in the fiction and poetry I write.  Nevertheless, I DO recall my earliest writing memories.

It was back in the early 1980’s when I middle school and the Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street slasher-style movies series were just gaining in popularity.  . . . Continue Reading

Yes, I hear voices in my head.  I like them.  In fact, I hear them on purpose!

Allow me to explain.

When I was in middle school I never much enjoyed reading textbooks.  I was, and still am, easily distracted by *shiny things* and there was nothing very exciting or interesting in most textbooks to capture my attention.  Often when faced with a large reading assignment, my attention would wander before I had completed it.  The result was I wasted a lot of time rereading the sections I’d already *read*.  Very frustrating!

One day I stumbled on a great trick for managing my distractions . . . Continue Reading

(reposted from my private blog: Tuesday, April 3, 2007 – In response to The Aliens are Out to Get You!! from the YA highway on November 13th, 2009.)

After seeing a large bird circling over my old house last night, . . . Continue Reading

Wednesdays mean ‘Roadtrip’ at YA Highway.  While the constraints of corporate life have prevented me very much lunchtime writing this week, I thought I’d squeeze in this quick post before heading into the weekend.

Click here to read this week’s YA Highway’s Roadtrip Wednesday post.

Let me begin by saying ‘My thoughts exactly!’ in response to a comment from Michelle Schusterman (YA Highway member) that it might be better to ask “how does your genre choose you?”

I’ve always felt that *trying* to write into a particular genre was a little like trying to write into a particular market.  . . . Continue Reading

Let’s face it, for any writer submitting their work for publication then rejection letters are inevitable.  However, it’s best to think of these letters as the really are – a part of the journey, not the end of the road.  With that in mind, I’d like to share an experience of my own I recently had along the way.

Back in July, I entered one of my poems, Shizaru Undone, in the New Millennium Writings summer poetry contest.  . . . Continue Reading