Writer Resources

As you celebrate Memorial Day this weekend, take some time to remember all our soldiers stationed overseas.

If you want to help these men and women far away from home, we’ve collected five different ways you can share books with our troops. For instance, E-Books for Troops will help you send an eReader to our troops overseas.

Here’s more from one volunteer: “Last week I prepared 26 donated Kindles for shipment to U.S. military units in Afghanistan … I make sure the wireless connection is turned off and the Kindle is deregistered, so it can be registered by the Soldier who will be using it once it arrives. I also load a PDF document with a greeting from E-Books for Troops, stating who donated the Kindle and, if a personal greeting was entered in the Donation Form, I include that greeting in the PDF as well.”

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Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

Literary critic Stanley Fish stirred up the publishing world this week, dismissing the need for spoiler alerts when writing about fiction or film. He used a specific example: “If The Hunger Games is so shallow that it can be spoiled by a plot revelation, the alert doesn’t save much. If The Hunger Games is a serious accomplishment, no plot revelation can spoil it.”

Over Mulholland Books, great writers like Lawrence Block and Joe R. Lansdale have responded to his essay today–we’ve collected some of their commentary below. Follow this link to read more essays from Megan Abbott, Nick Santora, Mischa Hiller and Marcia Clark as they are released.

Lansdale wrote: This is the silliest defense for spoiling stories for those of us who don’t want them spoiled that I have ever heard. I have spoiled, accidently, a film and I was almost lynched. They were right. If it’s done to me, I feel the same … There may be those who read the last page of a book, or like the previews for films to be so precise it lets them know how it’s going to turn out, but surprise has a great place, and most of us prefer it, and if we prefer not to have things spoiled for us, a spoiler alert is a nice warning to us who would prefer not to know.  Bad journalist. Bad, dog.”

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Journalists, novelists, screenwriters, bloggers and all other kinds of writers have one thing in common: we spend way, way, way too much time hunched in front of a computer.

A recent study in Australia discovered that sitting for long periods of time can actually kill you, even if you regularly exercise. The Washington Post had more: “In people 45 years and older, sitting for 11 or more hours a day led to an increased risk of death (from all causes) by about 40 percent over four years, compared to the risk of death in people who sat just four to eight hours a day, the study found. People plopped on their behinds for eight to 11 hours daily had about a 15 percent increase in risk of death.”

To help our readers fight this health problem, we rounded up Five Free Fitness & Workout Apps for your Android or Apple smartphone. Using these simple tools, you can schedule daily alerts to move, stretch and even have a short workout in your office.

When All American Blogger Duane Lester discovered that a Missouri newspaper had allegedly plagiarized one of his blog posts, he drafted a letter and visited the newspaper with a video camera.

You can watch his entire confrontation in the video embedded above–an educational moment for all writers. Ethics Alarms called the video “the perfect and ethical way to handle a confrontation.” Follow this link to read Lester’s original article, a long piece about an audit of the Sheriff’s Office in Holt County, Missouri.

Below, we’ve embedded a copy of the letter that Lester used to assert his copyright. Writers can use his template to confront plagiarists in other corners of the Internet. Have you ever confronted a plagiarist? (Via Reddit & Ethical Alarms)

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Want to finish your book this summer? From July 16 through August 1, 2012, Mediabistro will host its first Literary Festival & Workshops.

Among our long list of guests, Rebecca Skloot (pictured) will share some Unconventional Publicity tips and Constance Hale will offer Five Secrets for Wicked Good Prose. More details about the event follow below…

Check it out: “This is an innovative online conference and workshop that bridges the best of conferences and online learning: Keynote speeches by world-class authors, with interactive Q&A sessions. Practical how-to sessions from agents, editors, and writers that show you how to put big ideas into immediate practice. Writing workshops with authors and peers. Get feedback on your writing project. Peer interaction: Make connections with other writers from across the globe and participate in our summer reading group.”

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The digital publishing start-up The Atavist has landed a $1.5 million investment from a prominent slate of Silicon Valley investors.

According to The New York Times, the digital publisher will soon release a free version of its publishing app: “people who sign up can begin building children’s books or travelogues or whatever else they fancy, some of which will become part of its online marketplace. Using the so-called freemium model, The Atavist may charge people fees for additional features — like the ability to create an app that could be sold by Apple — and will be making money by taking a cut of sales.”

Currently, Atavist stories are available through iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch Atavist app; through through Amazon’s new Kindle Singles collection; and on the Nook.

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At a commencement address at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, author and comic book writer Neil Gaiman shared some “secret freelancer knowledge” that all kinds of writers, editors and freelance workers can use.

We’ve embedded a video of his speech above–it also contains the best advice he ever received, delivered by the great novelist Stephen King. Here is Gaiman’s secret freelancer knowledge:

You get work however you get work, but keep people keep working in a freelance world (and more and more of today’s world is freelance), because their work is good, because they are easy to get along with and because they deliver the work on time. And you don’t even need all three! Two out of three is fine. People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. People will forgive the lateness of your work if it is good and they like you. And you don’t have to be as good as everyone else if you’re on time and it’s always a pleasure to hear from you.

On the Sword & Laser book club this week, hosts Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt interviewed nearly all of the c0-authors of the epic book, The Mongoliad. Novelist Neal Stephenson joined the interview while working out on his treadmill.

Check it out: “Tom and Veronica sat down with 6 of the 7 authors of the Mongoliad, including Erik Bear, Joseph Brassey, E.D deBirmingham, Cooper Moo, Neal Stephenson, and Mark Teppo.”

The used Google+ Hangouts (video embedded above) to host and record the interview. Find out more about the new tool in our AppNewser feature: How to record & share video interviews on Google+.

Kyle MacDonald–the writer who bartered his way from one red paperclip to a new house–is selling a “dewritten book” for $345.67 on Etsy.

Inspired by the newspaper blackout poetry of Austin Kleon, MacDonald created a new book by cutting, scribbling and drawing on a copy of Be Excellent at Anything: The Four Keys To Transforming the Way We Work and Live by Tony Schwartz, Jean Gomes & Catherine McCarthy.

Check it out: “The process was largely therapeutic. It was far more interesting to ‘write’ things than simply read the pre-existing book! … Anyhow, after 3 weeks, 5 felt pens and 100 hours of work later, I eventually finished de-writing the entire 352 page book, which I’ve renamed “Be Anything” … As it stands, the original book is a completely unique one-off artifact consisting of more than 350 unique drawings and phrases.” (Via Reddit)

House of Leaves novelist Mark Z. Danielewski shared a 30-second bit of writing advice over at the Knopf Doubleday YouTube page. It is a deceptively simple tip and chance to meet the author.

The video series includes nearly 28 brief and useful interviews other writers, including: Wild author Cheryl Strayed, Gods Without Men novelist Hari Kunzru and The Vanishers author Heidi Julavits.

Who would you like to see interviewed next? (Via Reddit Lit Video)