Daily Thoughts 11/28/2010 (Get Glue, Writing Tools)

First page of a miniature of Cicero's De oratore, 1400s, Northern Italy, now at the British Museum.


Daily Thoughts 11/28/2010

I've been reading more of Writing Tools this weekend. There are a lot of ideas about writing that I had not thought about before.  The author describes when to use unusual words as well as how patterns of words on the page effect stories. I learned quite a bit about things like sentence length, length of of words in series, patterns in writing, and other mechanies.  I learned about how important it is to look for unique names and find the names of even the most unimportant characters in your writing.  So far, this is an excellent book that has introduced me to many new concepts about writing.




I am still playing around with Get Glue http://getglue.com/BookCalendar/books.  It is very easy to get drawn into sites like this because they appear that you are doing something important when it is really more for frivolous enjoyment.  However, it does make you more visible if that is what you are seeking.

I went in and added a few more links to my selected links page from the last month. It is slowly growing.  I also pulled out a few more books and topics to add to Get Glue.

Daily Thoughts 11/25/2010 (Get Glue, Writing Tools, Thanksgiving)

Lithograph, Home To Thanksgiving, published by Currier and Ives., 1867


Daily Thoughts 11/25/2010


Happy Thanksgiving, hope all is well with you.  I am home today which feels very well.  Anyways, today is a day to relax.


I read some more of Writing Tools.  I spent some time going through the New York Post  crossing out words that ended with ing in them.  It was a writing exercise.  There were not a lot of them. The Post, despite its tabloid reputation, has very tight writing with very few errors in structure or grammar.  I may think there may be errors of opinion, but there are few technical errors.

I also registered with Wikipedia as a user.  I am not sure why, but there is a BookCalendar account on both Wikimedia and Wikipedia.  I have never attempted to provide any input into their database, but I have used them quite often.

In addition, I now have an account on Get Glue http://getglue.com/BookCalendar%20

Daily Thoughts 11/24/2010 (Writing That Works, Writing Tools, Layoffs)

Thanksgiving Day. Happy Thanksgiving if you are in the United States.

Daily Thoughts 11/24/2010

I had the day off today. I relaxed mainly. I finished reading Writing That Works How To Communicate Effectively In Business by Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson, Third Edition.  Both authors were executives at Ogilvy and Mather Worldwide.  The book is very concise and useful for business writing.  It gave me a better understanding of how to write to ask for money as well as to write a resume.

Reading , Writing Tools 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark.  Roy Peter Clak makes  words interesting.  I liked the statement it is as important to talk about books as it is to write and read. In one of the exercises he asks me to read the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln and "I Have A Dream" by Martin Luther King, Jr.  It is the first time that I have read "I Have A Dream."  Roy Peter Clark also recommends the esssy, "Politics of the English Language" by George Orwell which is excellent http://www.george-orwell.org/Politics_and_the_English_Language/0.html

Web Bits

New York City library systems suffer $16.5 million 'adjustment' http://bit.ly/eWN4Zr Bloomberg makes a mid-year trim.  I don't particularly like this because it helps justify trims in other library systems.  There is a kind of follow me effect.  Our budget has not been announced yet to the public.