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Word 2010 Beta available free from Microsoft
http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/en/default.aspx
All the Office 2010 Beta is now available. “Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me (especially in teaching) and I'll understand.”
~ modern adaptation of "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." ~ attributed to Confucius
The Today show had a story about "Fiftysomethings taking their turns as interns." The theme: Laid-off publishing professionals forgo pay to pick up Internet skills. Pros previously making six figures in traditional print outlets but unemployed because of dislocation in the industry took on internships at wowOwow, a network for women over 40, hoping for better prospects in electronic media. Read or watch the story here. "The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all."
~ Harry S Truman
When you're figuring out what to write, ask yourself this key question: Who's your audience, and what do they need or want that you have?
“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”
~Sir Ken Robinson
"A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules.... It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness."
~ novelist Edith Wharton
"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
~ Flannery O'Connor
"The voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes but in having new eyes.'
~Marcel Proust
"There is no excellency without difficulty."
~Ovid
"Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it — whole-heartedly — and delete it before sending your manuscripts to press. Murder your darlings."
~ Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, often quoted as rephrased by William Faulkner: "Kill all your darlings"
"When a new writer defends his 'style,' the teacher smiles (or cringes) because real style isn't an artifice. Real style — voice — arrives on its own, as an extension of a writer's character. When style is done self-consciously and purposefully it becomes affectation, and as transparent as any affectation — an English accent on an old college chum from New Jersey, for example."
~ Bill Roorbach
"The ego is a primitive device installed in your brain to tell you when to flee from tigers. Unless you regularly interview tigers, it will misinform you during any interview, hectoring you with concerns about your next question or whether you dressed properly."
~ Eric Nalder, Loosening Lips
"If you think training is expensive, try ignorance."
~ Tom Peters
"We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master."
~ Ernest Hemingway
"Technique alone is never enough.You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder."
~ Raymond Chandler
"Writing freezes thought and offers it up for inspection."
~ Jack Rosenthal |
E-mail Pat (pat at patmcnees dot com)
Writers on Writing(complete archive of the NY Times series, writers exploring literary themes. Requires free membership.)
Letters of Note (fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos--that you were never expected to see)
Aha Moments (from the brilliant Mutual of Omaha campaign to record people's stories about moments of clarity, defining moments when they gained the wisdom to change their life)
TED: Ideas worth sharing Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world
Freelance National Anthem (Bill Dyszel, 4 minutes)
KeepMeOut (addicted to a website? bookmark this page and it will remind you to get back to work!)
Today's Front Pages (check out Newseum's U.S. map -- move your cursor across the map and see the front pages change)
Online Education Database150 resources to help you write better, faster, or more persuasively
Help a reporter out (HARO)(useful for reporters and for sources)
Paris Review "Writers at Work" Interviews (selections from 1953 on, a gift to the world, and with a single click you can view a manuscript page with the writer's edits)
The Onion (if the news is making you sick, try this approach)
Truth-o-meter (St. Petersburg Times, www.politifact.com)(St. Pete Times on whether, and how much, various notable people are telling the truth)
Fact Check (Annenberg sorts political truths from half-truths)
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Improving your writing, reporting, and speaking skills,
mastering multimedia,
making the most of Word and other software, equipment, and tools
· Improving your writing, reporting, and speaking skills
· Mastering multimedia
· Making the most of Word software
· Equipment, software, and other tools
Why are topics such as Toastmasters and multimedia training listed here? In today's market, you need to know not only how to write a sentence, develop a narrative, hold the reader's attention, explain complex ideas clearly in plain English, and so forth, but also how to attract people to your work, build a platform, work in multimedia, and so forth. Additional links to improving your sentence-writing craft will be found under Style, grammar, word choice, and pronunciation.
I've included a section on equipment here because for many of us new equipment, while it promises much and often delivers, almost always comes with a new learning curve and a fair degree of anxiety before the equipment is mastered. I remember that day in 1981 when I opened my first computer and burst into tears at the thought of pressing a wrong key and destroying it. There have been many computers since them, and I still get nervous!
I've listed the mentoring program of one writers' organization. Please let me know if others are good and should be mentioned.
Improving your writing, reporting, interviewing,
and speaking skills
Analytical writing for science & technology (T.M. Georges)
The Art of the Interview, Dale Keiger's presentation at the CASE Editors' Forum (3-30-09)
Associated Writing Programs
"Basic" plots in literature (Internet Library)
Bulwer-Lytton Contest (craft the worst opening line for a novel)
Choose the right way to tell your story (API)
Conferences, workshops, and other learning places
Design Makeovers (Layers Magazine)
Elizabeth Arnold on Interviewing (The Transom Review)
Joyce Carol Oates on Productivity
Layer Magazine (a how-to magazine for everything Adobe)
Math Test for Journalists (Phil Meyer, UNC-Chapel Hill)
Math Test #2 for Journalists (Stephen Doig, ASU, inspired by Phil Meyer)
Memoir, biography, and personal histories
Mentoring program of ASJA (American Society of Journalists & Authors—an organization of independent nonfiction authors & journalists)
Mind Mapping, Tony Buzan (YouTube video), useful for note-taking, creativity
My Rules of Information (Marylaine Block on how to find the information you need, which may not be on the Internet)
Narrative nonfiction
News University (NU), Poynter’s online training for journalists, inexpensive and often free, with funding from one of the Knight Foundations--check out their excellent lineup of courses!)
No train, no gain
Training for newspaper journalists
Plain English (before-and-after examples from Plain Language website)
The Power of the Opening Sentence (Alan Rinzler, The Book Deal)
Poynter Online links to articles on attribution; bylines, credit lines, authorship; corrections; credibility; fact-checking; grammar, spelling, typos; photomanipulation; plagiarism
Scared Speechless? Join Toastmasters (Washington Post story by Pat McNees)
ShawGuide to Writers Conferences and Workshops
Statistics Every Writer Should Know (Robert Niles)
The Top 100 Freelancer Blogs, many of them about improving your skills (Heather Johnson, Bootstrapper)
Thirty tools for writers (Roy Peter Clark)
Tip Sheets: Online & Media (David Shedden's useful links, Poynter Institute)
Tip Sheets: Writing and Editing extremely helpful long list of articles from the Poynter Institute, thanks to David Shedden
Toastmasters International website
Tom Robbins: "My Advice to Writers" (on Alan Rinzler's writing blog)
When This Guy Talks, NPR Listens (Paul Farhi, Washington Post, quoting media trainer David Candow about how to come across better in front of a microphone)
"Write now is good" (Kristin Gorski's remarkably eclectic blog about words, sweat, and inspiration)--plan to spend some time here!
The Writer (magazine for writers at all levels)
Writers on Writing (the New York Times series) Requires free membership
Writing with Numbers (Journalist's Toolbox links)
Writing workshops (Preditors and Editors’ list and links)
Writing Tics: Now You See Them, Now You Don't (The Subversive Copy Editor, 7-22-10, an interesting way of framing a common problem)
Ten Rules for Writing Fiction. Inspired by Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing, the Guardian asked several authors for their personal dos and don'ts. Read what Elmore Leonard, Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, and AL Kennedy (part 1)and Hilary Mantel, Michael Moorcock, Michael Morpurgo, Andrew Motion, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx, Philip Pullman, Ian Rankin, Will Self, Helen Simpson, Zadie Smith, Colm Tóibín, Rose Tremain, Sarah Waters, Jeanette Winterson (part 2) have to say.
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Mastering multimedia
Audacity training. Two helpful guides: Simple guide to editing in audacity (text with visuals, from Steeple), and, even better, Using Audacity (a multimedia presentation, one of many useful Teacher Training Videos from Russell Stannard ( http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/).
BBC Tips for Radio News (useful for anyone gathering and editing audio)
BBC training and development (free online courses)
Creative Cow (Media Pros--peer to peer support community for media production professionals)
Editing for the Web (Thom Lieb, skip ahead to basics on images and sound)
Elizabeth Arnold on Interviewing (The Transom Review)
Journalism 2.0 (a digital literacy guide for the information age, Knight Citizen News Network)
JournalismTraining.org (searchable database of journalism training that meets your needs)
Journalists' toolkit (Mindy McAdams training site for multimedia and online journalists)
Ken Stone (about Apple's Final Cut Pro editing software)
Knight Digital Media Center Multimedia Workshop (regular workshops and online tutorials)
larryjordanbiz (essential info on Mac's Final Cut Studio)
Lynda.com (self-paced hands-on learning for software such as Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Final Cut, InDesign, Photoshop, $25 a month) -- a lot of people swear by this site!
No Fear Guide to Multimedia Skills (Mindy McAdams handout for National Writers Workshop)
Photo Organizing Software Review (from TopTenReviews.com - organize, archive, re-size and publicize your digital photos)
Scanning old photos? Find info here on how to make a digital file of an old photograph: Scanning Basics 101 (Wayne Fulton's useful site), which includes pages such as Scanning and Printing Resolution Calculator.
Strobist (learn how to light your photographs
Transom.org (tools page with equipment reviews and tutorials on how to use the equipment)
2-pop (digital filmmaker's resource site, including forums)
Vermont Folklife Center Field Research Guides
Web 2.0 top tools and resources
From Paul Farhi's story about media trainer David Candow ("When This Guy Talks, NPR Listens")
In radio, "the big adjective is a verb."
A verb is an adjective?
What he means is that a single punchy verb can describe someone better than a string of flowery adjectives. For example, Candow recalls a radio story about a 105-year-old woman named Alice. The reporter told her listeners that upon their first encounter, Alice "flits" into the room. "Flits!" repeats Candow. That one verb is "more powerful than any description I can make up."
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Making the most of Microsoft Word and other software
How to find online help when your personal techie is sleeping, on vacation, or otherwise unavailable.
Word is a powerful writing program that is commonly used in publishing, but it is definitely NOT a page-layout program.
FAQs on Suzanne S. Barnhill's Word Tutorial site
Making the Most of Word (Shauna Kelly)
Download Making Word Work for You: An Editor's Intro to the Tools of the Trade by Hilary Powers, $10.25, 80 pages, or order the book for slightly more.
Editorium Update (tips for publishing professionals using Microsoft Word)
The Editorium (Jack Lyon's program add-ins that make Word do a number of things it can't normally handle). For example, FileCleaner for Microsoft Word cleans up common problems in electronic manuscripts, including multiple spaces, multiple returns, unnecessary tabs, improperly typed ellipses, ells used as ones, and so on. It turns double hyphens into em dashes, and hyphens between numerals into en dashes. It can also remove directly applied font formatting (such as Times 12 point) while retaining styles (such as Heading 1) and character formatting (such as italic and bold), quickly cleaning up those messy documents imported from other word processors or CR programs. Click here for a page on Using found macros. Jack Lyon's book Microsoft Word for Publishing Professionals comes so highly recommended that I have just ordered it myself, despite the $35 price tag.
Effective Onscreen Editing: new tools for an old profession by Geoff Hart (available electronically or as book from Lulu.com)
EditTools for MicrosoftWord , with macros for achieving consistency in style, especially useful with medical citations--for correcting incorrectly abbreviated journal names or odd/incomplete/inconsistent punctuation (e.g., N. Eng. J Med. the first time and N Engl. J. Med the second, when the client wants N Engl J Med), the only limitation being the dataset. You add the incorrect form in the dataset for The Journals portion of EditTools the first time you come across it; then that incorrect form gets corrected automatically. The Journals macro highlights in green journal names that are correct, leaving only the incorrect names and those not in the dataset, says Rich Adin, whose firm released this Microsoft Word add-in. Other features: Superscript Me (changes bracketed in-text references to superscript references), Insert Queries (to the author), and a Toggle macro (change one letter or sign to another by pressing a key combination). There's a free 15-day trial period for the macros.
HP Learning Center: Microsoft Office and Adobe (free online classes, available 24/7; topics include Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint,Digital Photos, etc. Go to www.hp.com/go/learningcenter.
Tracking Changes with Word 2003
AnyCount (software that counts words or characters in any file format, and unlike Word counts footnotes and textbooks, too -- available for one-month free trial).
Count Anything (a free word-count utility for Windows in a variety of file formats)
Allen Wyatt's Word.Tips.net
Why Use InDesign Instead of MS Word? by David Blatner, InDesignSecrets.com (for those of you stubbornly and very very slowly trying to format a book in Word)
Word Processing (James Marshall's helpful articles on About.com)
Word tutorials by "most valued professionals" (as named by Word), including a tutorial on creating an exclusion dictionary (making a word that Word thinks is spelled correctly show as a spelling error).
Word Hacks: Tips & Tools for Taming Your Text by Andrew Savikas ("exposes the inner workings of Word and releases your inner hacker" for those who know how to use VBA code)
Word 2010 Beta available free from Microsoft
http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/en/default.aspx
All the Office 2010 Beta is now available.
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Equipment, software, and other tools for interviewing, writing, editing, designing, creating multimedia
(plus tutorials)
CNET product reviews (equipment in many categories) and reviews of freeware (free software downloads for Windows). Or check out reviews at Macworld.
Digital Oral History Workshop (Baylor University's online guide to principles in selecting and using digital equipment and software for recording, preserving, and disseminating oral history)
Recording phone calls, interviews. The excellent Transom Tools (for National Public Radio) offers advice non-NPR people can use. There are reviews and advice here on Analog Phone Couplers and Hybrids, Digital Hybrids, Cell Phone Taps, Skype and Computer-based Telephony, etc. Not Advice for Dummies!
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A GREAT READ
Books for book clubs
Best reads and most "discussable"
Great search links
Fact-finding, fact-checking, and news and info resources
BOOK AND MAGAZINE PUBLISHING
Acquiring, swapping, or selling books
New and used books, Amazon.com and elsewhere
Communicating and marketing online (Web 2.0)
Blogs, social media, podcasts, ezines, survey tools and online games
Marketing, publicity, promotion
Blogs, video promotion, intelligent radio programs
Self-publishing and print on demand (POD)
Indie publishing, digital publishing, POD, how-to articles
So, You Want to Write a Book!
Includes original text by Sarah Wernick
WRITERS AND CREATORS
Awards, grants, fellowships
Plus contests and other sources of funding
Corporate and technical communications
Copywriting, speechwriting, marketing, training, and the like
Fiction writing
Literary and commercial (including genre)
Mastering art and craft
Writing, reporting, multimedia, equipment, software
Media pros and other allied professionals
Translators, indexers, designers, photographers, artists, illustrators, animators, cartoonists, image professionals, composers
Specialty and niche writing
Groups for writers who specialize in animals, children's books, food, gardens, family history, resumes, sports, travel, Webwriting, and wine (etc.)
ETHICS, RIGHTS, AND OTHER ISSUES
EDITORS AND EDITING
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