Archive for the ‘Free Writing Resources’ Category

What to Look For in a Quality Writing Service

quality writing serviceA lot of people set up blogs with the best of intentions but after a while, it just becomes far too hard.

It becomes too hard to write consistent quality posts and also too hard to maintain a regular writing schedule (especially if you have a day job). But if they are relying on the blog’s advertising to bring in some money, they may be reluctant to close down the site. That may be where a quality writing service comes in handy.

A writing service is someone who offers you articles for a fee. They will listen to your requests and them come up with an article that closely resembles what you asked for. There are many of these services all over the net, many credible but many not, but you have to check off certain criteria before parting with your hard earned cash.

As the editor of a well established blog, and someone who hires and fires writers on a regular basis, here are four things that I would look for when considering whether or not to employ a writer.

1. Make sure you hold exclusive copyright – A lot of these writing services rely on getting articles out quickly to maximise their profit. This means that if two parties ask for the same subject, the writing service may just be tempted to sell the exact same article to both parties. This is bad because a) both sites will end up publishing duplicate content which affects your reputation as readers realise you didn’t write the post yourself and b) you end up losing any search engine benefits for your post because of duplicate content issues. So try and get a promise out of the writing service that you and only you will have that article and at no point will the article be sold to someone else. Of course there is nothing you can do if they break their word. If they do, don’t ever use them again and make sure others know about your experiences.
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5 Ways That a Writer Can Successfully Work From Home Online

work from home ideasOne of the most successful careers available, if you want to work from home, is becoming a freelance writer. All you need is a computer with Internet access, a desk and a chair, and bingo, you have it in you to become the next Ernest Hemingway.

But while you’re waiting for that big publishing deal to come through, you can pay your bills by taking on other forms of writing work, which may be less interesting but still brings in cold hard cash to put food on the table and pay for your Internet connection. Plus, it fattens up your resume a bit, which is always a good thing.

Here are some work from home ideas that you can do to keep your writing skills sharpened and your bank account looking rosy.

1. Write for blogs – When you read your favourite sites in the morning, do you ever ponder for a moment how those blogs are written and put together? No, the words didn’t magically fly onto the page - they were written by a hard working team of writers – and that writing team may have an open vacancy that could be just perfect for you. So go to your favourite sites, find a “contact us” or “write for us” link and see if anything is available. Or advertise on your Twitter stream or Facebook account that you are looking for work. Someone somewhere may see it and offer you something.
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4 Important Things to Remember When Writing Poetry

writing poetryWriting poetry is a pure and personal way to satisfy creative urges. No one can say that a person’s poem is written in the “wrong” way, but there are a few tips that could help one to write stronger poetry.

Many people write poetry for themselves and not for a greater audience, in which case the following suggestions may not matter. However, for those who would like to write stronger poems, these four writing poetry tips may be kept in mind.

1. Grammar and Punctuation: Grammar and punctuation do not have to be followed as closely as in other modes of writing—much freedom is allowed in poetry. Also, poems can consist of stanzas, or not (like paragraphs, but not indented). While the rules are not strict, one must be consistent. The number of lines in each stanza, capitalizing lines (or not), rhyming (or not) should be uniform throughout.

Example:

“The free bird leaps
on the back of the win
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.”

-From: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
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Create a Mobile Version of Your Blog

mobile1 This weekend, as I was searching for a cool article to write for MakeUseOf, I came across a very cool free service that you can use to quickly offer a mobile version of your blog for absolutely free.

The trend of the Internet is quickly going mobile - everyone is checking Facebook, email and their blogs from mobile phones. The best way to access this growing audience is by offering your blog content in mobile format.

The solution I found is called WINKsite. I’ll be covering the setup and doing a review of this service on MakeUseOf in a few weeks from now, but suffice to say the service only took me about 20 minutes to set up the way that I wanted.

The cool thing about this service is that there are so many freebies. You an create all sorts of channels on your mobile site where you can offer content like surveys, forums, and even a chat room. Enable or disable advertising if you like - it’s completely up to you!

The only catch is that the free service limits you to having 5 mobile blogs. However, if you only have one blog or website that you want to “mobilize” - then this really isn’t a limited service at all. As you can see in the image here, the layout is perfect for a mobile phone. All topics are listed top to bottom as clickable links. The layout was created with every mobile user in mind - anyone from the most advanced PDA owners to mobile users who own cheapo phones with web access. Everyone can see your content when you use this service.

I highly recommend WINKsite, especially if you don’t have the skills and/or the time to code your own mobile feed. Just sign up for this service, enable it to publish the feed from your regular blog, and then you never have to think about it again - you’re automatically submitting content to your mobile site every time you click “submit” on your regular blog. Simple - just the way it should be.

Top 5 Most Common Writing Mistakes

onfloorAs noted in their “20 Most Common Errors,” found on EasyWriter (Bedford St. Martins) and the FAME website, the following are the top 5.

Along with being the most common mistakes, they are also among the easiest mistakes to catch as you are editing your work. Remember, the best way to correct your own writing is to read it aloud.

5 Most Common Writing Mistakes

1. Missing comma after an introductory element: A missing comma after an introductory element can be heard as a pause as you are reading a sentence. For instance, read this sentence aloud and you will hear this element in structure.

2. Vague pronoun reference: A vague pronoun reference will leave the reader confused as to who is being discussed. For example, “The boy and the man fished as he drove the boat.”—who, exactly, is he?

3. Missing comma in a compound sentence (using and, but, so, yet, nor, or for): You want to be sure not to miss the comma separating the two (or more) separate ideas in a compound sentence. These parts of the sentence are joined by a coordinating conjunction (and, but, so, yet, or, nor or for).

4. Wrong word (using homonyms, words that sound alike, or words with a wrong meaning): Using a wrong word in a sentence may be hard to catch because the two words sound the same. For instance, “The girls put there letters in the mailbox.” There sounds right, but the correct word is actually their. Correcting this mistake takes a very close eye.

5. Missing comma(s) with a nonrestrictive element: Missing comma(s) with a nonrestrictive element can be caught as you are reading a sentence aloud. A nonrestrictive element is part of a sentence that is not necessary to its meaning. In the sentence, “The dog, who was very friendly, sat and waited for his dinner,” the nonrestrictive element tells us more about the dog.

For more common writing mistakes and explanations, visit the following websites:
http://www.oln.org/ILT/ada/Fame/cw/f4_48_463.html
http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/easywriter3e/20errors/

Tips to Edit Your Articles for an Online Audience

closeupkeysWhen I started writing for an online audience, I soon learned one big rule – that writing for the internet is completely different to any other kind of writing.

As a former journalist working for newspapers, this was something that took some time getting used to. My former newspaper style wasn’t going to cut it with my online audience so I had no choice but to re-invent my whole style of writing.

Over the years as the editor of MakeUseOf.com, I have learnt the following :

- The attention span of an online audience is extremely short. Therefore you need to get to the point rather quickly, preferably within the first two paragraphs. If you don’t show people what the point of your article is by then, then you can forget it. They will already have moved onto other websites.

- Audiences like bullet lists! Instead of piling one big heap of text onto the page, split it up into nice short bulleted lists (like this one). Those short attention spans will love you for it as it allows readers to digest huge chunks of information quickly.

- Grammar bloopers & spelling mistakes will hurt your reputation! – you might not think it’s a big deal if you misplace an apostrophe or say “peice” instead of “piece”. But trust me, your audience will think it’s a big deal and they won’t hesitate to unleash their grammar police upon you in the comments. It doesn’t help your reputation either as you will come across as slapdash and careless. Buy a good style guide and refer to it often. Yahoo has a good one - http://styleguide.yahoo.com .

- Readers love articles with good pictures – the old adage of “a picture paints a thousand words” is especially true on the internet. A page full of text is not enticing to that short attention span. On the other hand, text with some interesting, attention-grabbing photos will make them want to stay on the page a few minutes longer. Remember to credit all photos to their proper owners.

This is How Easy it is to Post from ScribeFire

I’m currently writing an article for MakeUseOf that shows how efficient (and awesome) the Firefox addon ScribeFire is. In this example, I’m demonstrating how easy it is to highlight text from an online article or news story, and then quickly “Blog this page” - ScribeFire opens up a new post entry for you and inserts the title and blockquote exactly how you defined it in the options template. It really doesn’t get a whole lot easier than this!

ScribeFire vs DeepestSender: One Blogging Addon to Rule Them All!

“The tabs on the right offer broad support for WordPress’ other post-writing features, including categories, tags, timestamp, trackbacks, and ping options. You can even scroll through older entires and make changes to them on the fly. Is there anything this addon can’t do?”

Video and Audio Blogging With Your Mobile Phone

I’m working on a review of a very cool application called Qik, which lets you both distribute a live video stream directly from your mobile phone, or you can record and share video snippets - like a video podcast of sorts. Just copy and paste the embed code into your favorite website, and your done. Better-yet, you can configure Qik to auto-post to Twitter or Facebook, not how cool is that.

The video below is a 20 second shot I did with my Motorola Droid - this is our pathetically bad-looking pug. She’s ugly - but she really does have a great personality.



And then there’s iPadio, which lets you embed audio blog posts to your blog - awesome!



Articles on Technology or Science

One of the problems with having such a broad range of interests is that there’s not enough time in the day to thoroughly explore and expand upon those interests. For example, over at TopSecretWriters, I write a fair number of articles on technology or science. Additionally, we cover a lot of scientific claims related to to Ufology and the Paranormal over at RealityUncovered.net.

More recently, I wrote an article titled Top 5 Websites To Research Weird Science Claims over at MakeUseOf. When it comes to looking for accurate and sane articles on technology or science, especially in the realm of fringe scientific claims - the websites mentioned in that article are the absolute first places anyone should go.

articles on technology or science

The label “skeptic” has always had very negative connotations. It has been a field dominated by atheists and outright non-believers. However, the term no longer applies to only stringent non-believers. A new “type” of skeptic is emerging - the “open-minded” skeptic.

Articles on Technology or Science for Open Minded Skeptics

For a true skeptic, a glass is neither half empty or half full. The first question is whether the glass is truly even there to begin with. Skeptics question everything. And in the case of open-minded skeptics where they are willing to entertain the weird and wild areas of paranormal claims - questioning everything becomes absolutely critical.

In yet another of my blogs (which I have very little time to keep up with - but I try!) called Invisible Articles, I try to focus on many of the hauntings, possessions and ghost activity reported from around the world in a critical minded and “skeptical” way. Again, writing articles on technology or science in the paranormal field is not easy.

Self Proclaimed Skeptics

Unfortunately, many outright believers have taken to calling themselves skeptics. The label is fast becoming a positive thing within the paranormal - and people who are not at all critical thinkers or even sane are calling themselves skeptical.

I once interviewed a psychic who claimed her powers were very powerful, but that she was also a skeptic and pursued all of her predictions in a manner where she could verify them in a “scientific way.”

I didn’t ask her to elaborate what her definition of a scientific way was, because she’d already failed the litmus test of being a skeptic. She’d already drawn the conclusion that her experiences could be explained by her own psychic powers, before exploring all of the other possibilities.

Toward the end of the interview, I performed a test. I asked her to tell me about a major event in my life that had just occurred. There was a recent death in my family - a significant event that a true psychic could easily pick up on. Unfortunately she described a positive celebration - I could tell she was guessing a wedding or a birthday of some sort, proving to me that she wasn’t at all psychic (and I’ve yet to meet a true psychic yet - for that matter).

How to Write Articles on Technology or Science

If you are considering exploring the areas of science such as those that are covered by the websites I wrote about at MakeUseOf, I highly recommend a careful series of study sessions first. Take the time to read articles at each of the websites I mentioned in that article. Take time to understand the process of opening your mind to new possibilities without opening your mind to being scammed.

The careful, deliberate and analytical process exemplified by the websites that I highlighted in the MakeUseOf article are exactly what the paranormal field needs if any answers are ever going to be uncovered. If you have an interest in the Paranormal, I highly recommend doing your own research in the field with the scientific approach of the “open-minded” skeptic.

Writing Prompts for Kids

Whether you’re a classroom teacher looking for writing prompts for kids, or you’re a mom or dad looking for interesting subjects for your child to write about, writing prompts serve an important purpose in overcoming one of the largest psychological obstacles of writing for many kids. Often, coming up with an idea to write is an overwhelming task, not only because the child doesn’t have a large number of life experiences to draw from, but also because they are often very shy and afraid of being ridiculed for their ideas.

writing prompts for kids

By providing students (or your children) with writing prompts, you can spark their creativity and avoid the initial difficulty of coming up with ideas. Often, writing prompts generate some of the most amazing and insightful writing from children!

Coming Up With Writing Prompts for Kids

If you’re unsure about what writing prompts for kids that you should use, always think simple. Some people make use of longer writing prompts, actually providing a couple of sentences to start a story or an event in the child’s mind. However, doing so can limit children and create a scenario that’s too narrow. Instead, provide only one sentence or even only part of a sentence, and then watch the creative sparks fly.

The short list below comes from the writing prompt powerhouse CanTeach. I’ve selected the best writing prompts from the long list, but if you want to see them all, make sure to visit the site and browse the entire page.

The Top 25 Writing Prompts for Kids

  1. What is the best way to treat meddlesome people?
  2. What is the meaning of “He laughs best who laughs last”?
  3. What is something that really bugs you?
  4. What would happen if you could fly whenever you wanted? When would you use this ability?
  5. What would happen if there were no television? Why would this be good? bad?
  6. What if cows gave root beer instead of milk?
  7. What would happen if everyone wore the same clothes?
  8. What would happen if you threw a piece of trash on the ground? What if everyone did?
  9. What would happen if you grew taller than trees? How would this change your life?
  10. What would happen if you found gold in your backyard?
  11. What would you do if a bully bothered you on your way home?
  12. What would you do if you saw little bugs in your salad?
  13. What would you do if you woke up in another country and no one could understand you?
  14. What would you do if someone said you did something wrong and you didn’t?
  15. What do you think about ghosts?
  16. What do you think about when you can’t fall asleep?
  17. What do you think courage means?
  18. What does “Have your cake and eat it too” mean to you?
  19. What does “There are two sides to every coin” mean to you?
  20. What are you afraid of? Why?
  21. What would you invent to make life better?
  22. I wish I had a million… Then I would…
  23. I wish I had enough money to……
  24. I wish everyone had…..
  25. I wish there were no more…..

One liners are always the best writing prompts for children, and the ones above are sure to generate some of the most entertaining, interesting and intriguing writing from your kids and your students. Make sure to come back and let us know what sort of amazing stories came from these ideas in the comments section below!

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