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For the confused author/editor: Style sheets vs Style guides
What the hell is a style sheet? Well, in computer lingo, it’s CSS or a cascading style sheet which tells you what everything on every HTML page of your website looks like design wise. It’s supposed to make it more efficient to create and design websites. But that’s not what you mean right? No, it’s not. Say you are an author (fiction, non-fiction, corporate, government, whatever) and you send a document (your precious, your boss’ precious and so on) to an editor. And the editor sends the document back and a few others, one of which is this weird combination of the alphabet and square boxes. That little document is…
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14 easy rules to simplify your workflow and life as a freelancer
It occurred to me after this post a couple of weeks ago that it might be more useful to discuss in depth the practical but psychological/thought pattern/behavioural tips that you can adopt to help you be more efficient as a freelancer. I have discussions with people all the time over the way they set up their work and the rules they tend to live by in order to run their business. It differs each time. This is how it works for me.
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Profile: Amanda Curtin and world weaving
Amanda Curtin’s book Elemental will be officially launched tomorrow in Perth. It has been available for almost an entire month and I had the pleasure of interviewing her for this profile feature piece in April when I got sent a review copy in the mail. A book from Amanda Curtin in the mailbox is always a delight and a treat.
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AWW 2013: Amanda Curtin's Inherited
Precision is what comes to my mind, first. Amanda Curtin likes to write about connections, between person to person, between person and object, person and landscape. And about how those connections make us feel. Or why they are unique to us. Why they don’t make any sense or at least a different kind of sense to others. The back cover blurb for the book tells us: Inherited brings together stories about the gifts and burdens we inherit from the world or from those we love, and what we, in turn, leave behind. Inherited is her latest collection of short stories. And every word in each story belongs…
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Kerry Greenwood's Unnatural Habits
I discovered Greenwood quite by chance somewhere around 2007. And ever since I have eagerly awaited the next installment of a Phryne Fisher or Corrinna Chapman mystery. You can just imagine how thrilled I was when ABC started airing the TV series of Phryne Fisher last year. Accordingly I was excited to find a new offering – Phryne’s 19th outing Unnatural Habits. I bought it to read on my flight overseas at the end of the year and avoided it till I was in my plane seat. Phryne is much the same, the same devil may care attitude towards social conventions that don’t make any sense, the same thrill…
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Registration for the IPEd National Editors Conference in Perth 2013 now open!
Hi everyone, One of the projects taking up my time these days is organising the 6th IPEd National Editors Conference which will be in Perth in April 2013. We have international and national writers, publishers and editors attending and it’s going to be absolutely fantastic. We opened registrations yesterday so if you are in Perth in April and are keen to attend, go book now for an early bird discount on fees AND to make sure you have a place at one of the workshops we will be running and the extra events like dinners and cocktail parties.
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Mentoring
At a Society of Editors (WA) meeting tonight, I was asked to be a mentor by an enthusiastic wannabe editor. I was both amused and flattered. She made a distinction between advice and ongoing support – someone who would show her the ropes and keep her from freaking out too much along the way. You have to admire her enthusiasm and the fact that she stepped forward and asked. It got me thinking. When I first started I desperately wanted a mentor too. I didn’t get one. These days, I blog about what I know and as I said to someone this week, I am happy to meet up one…
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Copyright issues
The lovely Janine Ripper requested the low down on copyright issues for writers. Here it is as succinctly as I can put it: 1) Anything you write whether it is recorded on paper or on disk or on the internet in a blog, as soon as you write it, is copyrighted to you. As soon as your work takes on a tangible form, it is copyrighted to you. Automatically. If you write under a pseudonym, the copyright is extended for 70 years after the moment it was first created especially if they cannot figure out the identity of the author. Otherwise, it is 70 years after the date of…
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Why you shouldn't let your muse get drunk on champagne/how to braintrain your muse
Muses and alcohol… when you need control, that’s not a healthy mix. So this came about because someone I know who requests writing advice on a regular basis, said she had a muse problem. The person she had based her muse on was going through a change of circumstances and that meant that she felt uninspired to continue writing – the change didn’t fit the story. So I thought I’d clear up some things about muses.
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The writing process, step by step
We discussed the process of writing in the last post. This post is about the steps in writing a book and getting published. So the first one was about how to get started with writing as a hobby or getting used to writing in general process wise and this is about the process of writing, editing and publishing a particular book.
