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The Wasteline Test

I confess. I love measuring things. I don’t know if it’s a competitive streak, or it’s related to my word-meter + office supply obsession I mentioned yesterday, but ooooh how I do. I found this little “test” for writers yesterday called The Wasteline Test. It measures the overall flab of your writing by checking out your use of passive voice, abstract nouns, prepositions,...

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Logging In and Leaving Comments

Because of the way I announce blog posts on Twitter and Facebook, I often have people comment on my posts there instead of leaving a reply here. The Feedburner email subscription also means I get replies via email. I don’t really mind that, but I was wondering if people would prefer to be able to log in here using Facebook or Twitter and leave a comment that connects to those accounts? I’ve...

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Readability

On Twitter yesterday, someone posted a link yesterday to a Readability Meter. Now I’ve never paid that much attention to these tools, even though a lot of them come with Word and WordPerfect and such. As it was one of those days (you know the ones), I decided I could fritter away a little time testing some of my stuff to see what US grade reading level someone would have to have to understand my...

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Writers Market Online

Having found the Writer’s Market books very useful in the past, but don’t like the fact that they “expire” (think of the trees!) and have to be replaced every year, I thought I’d give the Writers Market subscription website a try. Access costs $6.00/month or $40/year or $55/2 years.  I figured $6 is a cheese and onion sandwich, so worth a try.  If you were to get the print...

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The Fiction of Writer’s Block

Seriously.  Just don’t believe in writer’s block.  Like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.  (I do believe in the Tooth Fairy, but that’s a long story for another article.) Yesterday I didn’t blog because my blogging time disappeared into the world of Twitter via Tweetdeck.  Tweetdeck has an interesting feature where you can follow certain phrases, so that any time someone Tweets...

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Tracking Queries

Four years ago when I was first querying agents, I kept track of to whom I’d sent what (and their replies) by using Microsoft Excel.  Not particularly sparkly, but tidy and efficient.  Anything that keeps me from being painfully confused when I come back to it a few weeks later is a good thing (This would be after I’ve forgotten what the heck I was thinking at the time). Now there are several...

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Writer’s Café – Organisation Tool for Authors

In the past, I’ve always stuck with using various documents to keep myself sorted out when it comes to character names, plot sequences, outline, etc.  Mostly MS Word.  It’s clunky, but it works. When I started a new project last year, however, I decided to check out the market and see what tools there are for this.  I tend to shop and compare, so I went to amazon UK to see what reviewers...