Posts from — February 2008

Okay, you need windowshades but you aren't sure where to buy them online? Actually, you may already know where, since I posted about this wonderful site, "SelectBlinds.com," a couple of months ago. But for those of you looking to do some remodeling or fixing up around your home, I'm offering it as a "Useful Website" today in case you missed it.

I was just looking around at some of their honeycomb/cellular shades in a nice hazelnut color. You can look through a huge selection of window shades and window blind styles, along with closeup "swatches" to see what the colors and textures look like. Don't take my word for it. They have a collection of testimonials from "Extreme Makeover" and HGTV remodeling "gurus," as well as testimonials from satisfied customers.

So if you're looking for window shades and other home decor supplies, take a look around "SelectBlinds.com."

Technorati Tags: SelectBlinds.com, window shades, window blinds, remodeling, useful website, writing tips at garyspeer.com

I won't tell you in this post (though I may have in earlier posts) what my political affiliation is. I will tell you that I am generally very cynical about most politics and politicians. As far as I can tell, the sure way to know when a politician is lying is that his lips are moving. (Lame old joke, I know.)

I heard a masterful use of what I think of as "double-talk" an hour ago when I listened to Mitt Romney explain why he was dropping out of the GOP presidential race. You've probably heard about it already, maybe even saw his televised speech.

As far as I can tell -- and I read an Associated Press account of the speech, which quoted him -- Romney says he is dropping out for the good of the country in time of war. I guess that means he started the race originally because he thought he was the best person to lead the country in this time of war -- but now somehow his best leadership move in war time is to drop out of that same race??

I apologize if I'm "politicizing" this blog and drifting away from writing tips and writing-related subjects. But it seems to me that political writing and political speeches are a whole category of language use and writing which we MUST look at from time to time.

Mitt Romney certainly isn't the first politician to engage in double-talk, nor will he be the last. What we must learn, however, is that politicians and other public figures specialize in double-talk. They thrive on it. They hire many, many people to perfect it for them.

Don't be like a politician in your writing and your other uses of the language. Of course, if you're writing fiction and have characters that demand it, by all means do so. But if you're writing "non-fiction" or anything that demands clarity, think carefully about your use of language. Words mean something. Treat them carefully and with respect.

Technorati Tags: political language, double-talk, political writing, language meaning and usage, writing tips at garyspeer.com

Any of you out there outdoor or adventure writers? Are you up for a little Lehigh rafting whitewater challenge? Whitewater rafting on the Lehigh River in Pennsylvania, that is.

When I was a teenager, I dreamed of some day becoming a successful outdoors or adventure writer. I could see myself camping and hiking all over the great American West (I lived in Idaho at the time), scaling mountains, rafting through canyons, hunting for bear, the whole deal. For a variety of life's reasons, that never happened.

But I have gone rafting a couple of times. Never whitewater rafting, but rafting. This "Useful Website" offers those of you in or near Poconos of northeastern Pennsylvania the chance to give it a shot. The "Whitewater Challengers" website offers not only rafting, but kayaking and mountain biking adventures as well. Personally, I'd go for the mountain biking tours. My son, however, has vowed to own a kayak some day.

So, are you up for a little excitement and some whitewater challenges? Come on, writers, get out there and earn those adventure credits. You can write all about it later and, who knows, maybe even pay for your trip. Take a look around the "Whitewater Challengers" website. It's even got lots of beautiful pictures in a photo gallery of their adventuresome customers.

Technorati Tags: Whitewater Challengers, whitewater rafting, useful website, writing tips at garyspeer.com

I see by some of the comments we're getting that many of you reading this blog have had experience writing for the Internet and/or blogging for money. Those of you who have done so understand the points I'm making here: The "big money" is rare, and those willing to work for nearly nothing tend to ruin the market for the rest of us.

In keeping with that theme, I want to warn you about a few sites that specialize in "undercutting" decent rates for Internet writing. My purpose is not to put down anyone or any site useful for freelancers. My purpose is to caution those of you who may be starting out as professional writers -- don't expect to make much if you put most of your freelance hopes in these two websites.

I'm basing my comments on personal experience, as well as comments or "testimonials" I've gotten from other writers. I am in no way implying there is anything inherently wrong, deceptive, or unethical about these two websites. Let me restate what I said above: It has been my experience and the experience of trustworthy people I know that neither of these sites offers great opportunities for income:

1. Guru.com. I can't say for sure, but I believe guru.com has been around the longest of the two sites I'm discussing here. I haven't gone there in a couple of years because they were never useful to me. Though I checked them repeatedly, and my wife the proofreader also tried them, I never once got an offer or found an offer that even responded to me. The word I've gotten from friends who have gone there is that they have never gotten anything from them either. The comments I've heard, and which reflect my experience, are that guru.com is oriented much more toward businesses seeking freelancers than toward freelancers seeking work. I do know that their "free" services for freelancers have dwindled greatly from when they first started.

2. Elance.com. Elance is oriented more toward web coders, programmers, and graphics people than toward writers. It does target writers, however, and I've known writers who've gone there. The biggest knock I'm aware of for finding writing gigs through Elance is that the businesses and individuals who use them are even more eager to get dirt cheap workers than guru.com.

So what would I recommend? Frankly, I have yet to find a good source of freelance work through the Internet. A couple of months ago, I recommended writing articles to promote an affiliate marketing site and/or doing blog posts for money. I would love to hear any tips you, Good Readers, might wish to share with us. Or, for that matter, any particular sites you want to warn us to avoid. Enlighten us all.

Technorati Tags: Internet writing, writing as a business, poor freelance writing opportunities, writing for money, writing tips at garyspeer.com

My wife mentioned to me a couple of days ago that we only have about six more payments to make and our little Ford Contour will be all ours. (My number one word of advice about car purchases: Never buy a used Ford from a dead guy. But that's a whole different story for another time, perhaps.) Assuming the old jalopy lasts another six months, that's a good thing.

How are you fixed for auto loans? Are you good for now? Or are you perhaps in the market now or soon for another car? Assuming you're like most of us, buying a car means getting a car loan -- and the "Creditloan" website people may have just what you're looking for. They offer a wealth of loans in addition to car loans, and a good amount of free financial and credit information.

Whether you need a car loan, a personal loan, or help with shaky credit and credit problems in general, "Creditloan" is worth a close look.

Technorati Tags: Creditloan.com, auto loans, credit help, writing tips at garyspeer.com

All right, today's the big day. I'm offering you some information to work with and inviting you to write a short story. When you're done, put it on your blog or web site and link to it with a comment here. Or if you don't want to post a short story and link to it, simply write a comment here and include the opening sentence or paragraph to your completed story for us to read.

So, here we go. You're welcome to use any of the character sketch information I've put here under the "Short Stories" category. You're welcome to use the "hook" sentence I posted yesterday under "Short Stories." And I'll give you one more hook you're welcome to use if you'd like. Here it is:

""I didn't see that," she said softly. The stars were rising all around her and she was amazed that she'd missed such an obvious solution.

Focus your story on a single character, a single event, and a good hook. Keep it within our discussed length guidelines, 1,500-5,000 words. Remember, I said "focus" on short and sweet, but you can have secondary characters and some background incidents/information -- but keep the focus of the story on a single character and a single action or event.

I honestly have no prize I can offer you as incentive. Except this: I will be happy to read the complete story and offer a suggestion or two for the one I deem "the best" or "the winner."

Give it a shot. And, as I said before, you're welcome to use this exercise to write and sell a short story, using any of the characters, suggestions, hooks, anything else I've written about under this "Short Stories" category.

Let us see what you can do.

Technorati Tags: short story writing tips, short story hooks, writing tips at garyspeer.com

A few months ago I took a job doing outsourced customer service work. In my case, it was working for a company which ran a call center doing help desk work for a major U.S. computer manufacturer. (I won't name the computer maker, but the company initials are HP.) My job, and that of about 500 other people, existed because the computer maker had discovered they couldn't adequately handle all their customer service needs -- it was cheaper and better to outsource.

Sales Outsourcing has become big business, and if you have a sales company looking to expand and grow, the "Lease a Sales Rep" website offers a wide range of useful outsourcing services. They offer some attractive assistance with outside sales, inside sales, tele-sales, appointment setting, and even bilingual Spanish language services.

Based on my recent call center experience, I thought it would be interesting to see what sort of call center services the company offers. They offer everything you would need to handle inbound sales and customer service, including training reps to do just what your company needs, adjusting their hours to your company's needs, and the ability to quickly edit and change calling scripts to meet your specific and changing needs.

So if you're in sales and want to boost your business, Lease a Sales Rep would be a good place to start.

Technorati Tags: Lease a Sales Rep, sales outsourcing, useful website, writing tips at garyspeer.com

I know it sounds obvious: The "hook" is the opening sentence or paragraph of your story and it is supposed to draw your reader's interest, get them reading and, hopefully, keep them reading.

Novel openings, or "hooks," might be a paragraph or two long and involve setting a scene and/or setting up the background to the story. But short stories are -- remember? -- SHORT, and have little time, space, or patience for lengthy scene setting or background information.

Here's an example of a short-story hook:

"She licked the sweat that was beading on his upper lip. He smiled again. It was another one of those days."

I'm not asking for feedback on this hook. But, as always, I welcome feedback on anything I writer here, or on comments anyone makes here. I simply offer that to let you think about what might be going on, what you might do with the two characters there, and how you would develop this into a story.

Most of all, I want you to see a couple of things about "the hook" and how to use it.

1. Some action or person involved paints an immediate picture. In this case, I intended to grab your interest with the verbs: licked and smiled. What pictures do those actions raise in your mind? What would you expect to happen next?

2. That immediate mental picture should be strong enough to stimulate the reader to further mental pictures. When you reader reaches the point of wondering what happens next, he will continue reading and your hook has worked.

3. The hook is ambiguous enough to allow for more than one story line. For example:

Story One: There is sexual tension in the scene and it turns into something about the relationship between the man and woman.

Story Two: The man is being held captive by the woman and the two turn out to be mortal enemies.

Story Three: The man is holding the woman captive and the two turn out to be mortal enemies.

Story Four: The two of them are actors in a school play. The man has hidden feelings for the woman which develop as the story goes on. It's sort of a romantic comedy.

Really, though, all that's pretty much off the cuff, so my ideas haven't really developed. But you get the picture: The hook grabs your reader without giving away anything, really, about the nature and purpose of the story.

One last thought about hooks: Finding the "real" hook for your story can be frustrating. One little trick I've used successfully is to try for my best "hook" sentence or paragraph, and write as tightly as possible a gripping, "grabber" scene or two. Then I pick the point of greatest action or tension in the scene, rewrite as necessary, and make THAT the opening sentence or paragraph of my story. Very often, starting your story in the middle of a scene or middle of the action, gives you the best hook.

Technorati Tags: short story writing tips, finding and using "hooks" in your story, writing tips at garyspeer.com

This is a plea for the little words in our language -- prepositions. Don't leave them out, please.

I just spent some time roaming around the Internet looking for discussions about prepositions, those little words in the language that indicate relationships between words and phrases. You know, of course, the words I mean: "at," "by," "of," "about," "from," "for," "with," etc.

Most native English speakers have few problems understanding prepositions and preposition usage. But I discovered several forums for English as a Second Language (ESL) students, and you'd be amazed how difficult it is for non-native speakers of English to keep preposition usage straight.

Let me give you a simple exercise to illustrate how important it can be to use the correct preposition in a phrase. Take the phrase "land for sale Branson" as an example. (I live near Branson, Missouri, that country music mecca which now vies with Nashville, Tennessee as the cultural universe of country music. I was posting about Branson on another blog, so it came to mind.)

What preposition would you use in that phrase? How would different prepositions change the meaning of the phrase? For example: "land for sale IN Branson" means something entirely different than "land for sale BY Branson" or "land for sale FROM Branson." In the first instance, you're selling land located in Branson. In the second instance, you're speaking of land being sold by the City of Branson. And in the third instance, you're telling us someone located in Branson is offering land for sale but the land itself isn't necessarily located in Branson.

The moral to that story is plain: Be careful to use prepositions when you need them, and please be careful to use the RIGHT preposition when you use one.

As for any ESL students out there reading this -- good luck, my friends. English can be a tricky and mysterious language to learn.

Technorati Tags: prepositions, preposition usage, English as a Second Language, ESL, writing tips at garyspeer.com

The people at the Direct Student Loans website may have some valuable information for you.

Okay, I realize that sounds like one of the hundreds of mailings, emails, and phone calls I've received over the years, but this is a very useful website if you or someone you know is in the market for some help with student loans.

As I mentioned in a post a couple of months ago, I've been the student loan route not too many years ago when I was trying my hand at graduate school. This would have been a very helpful site for me at the time (yes, the Internet had been invented; no, I hadn't found out nearly enough information before I got into student loans). As the name of the site suggests, they focus on tips and assistance with federal student loans, specifically direct loans. They offer content on their site to give you options for both undergraduate and graduate student loans.

The DirectStudentLoans.com website is extremely well organized. They have easy to navigate links to help you find both information and direct access to online student loan programs. They have a good FAQ section to answer your questions, as well as a contact page with specific FAQ links and an easy email link. If that's not enough, they have links to an extensive network of student loan and student aid websites to which they belong.

Go take a look around. If you need information about or access links for direct student loans, you'll find what you're looking for at this useful website.

Technorati Tags: Direct Student Loans, student loan information, student loan access, useful website, writing tips at garyspeer.com

Jill is 21 years old, just over 5' 3" tall, 130 pounds, short blond hair, blue eyes, lopsided smile which she compensates for by leaning her head slightly to the right when she smiles. It's a pretty smile, made even more charming by a very slight but noticeable gap in her two front teeth. She was born with a club foot condition on her right foot, and is very self-conscious about the limp it gives her and the harassment she went through when she was a child. One week previously, she was brutally dumped by Andrew, a 23-year-old she was certain she would be marrying. He was extremely cruel and let her know that he'd been intimate with Jill's best friend for the six months or so before the dumping.

Think you could take that information and write a short story with Jill as the central character? Would you make mention of Andrew? How about Jill's nameless best friend?

What you have here is a character. Or rather, the beginnings of a character. You know something about how she looks and some of the circumstances which have shaped her life -- but very little else. In order to write a short story with the focus on Jill, you really need to know her better -- but you might not even use all of the information you have when you write the story. Much of what you would do has to do with the last post regarding short stories: You need to have a single incident or event happening to Jill or involving Jill in order to put together a story.

You also need a "hook," an opening that captures your readers, pulling them into the story from the first word and, hopefully, making them care enough to continue reading.

So coming up, before we put all these little exercises in short story writing together, we're going to think a little bit about hooks -- what they are and how to find them.

Technorati Tags: short story writing tips, creating characters, writing tips at garyspeer.com

I haven't looked this site over thoroughly or tried using it, but if you do website surveys or polls, or perhaps polls on your blog, or myspace surveys, you might find a quick, useful resource at "Easy-Poll."

They offer the opportunity to sign up and use their resources for free to set up polls or surveys on your website, blog, or myspace page. I'm looking for just such a resource myself to offer polls and opinion surveys from time to time to find out what my blog readers here and on other blogs would like to find here -- or on my other blogs.

Go take a look around. If you're interested in visitor feedback from your websites, this would be a place to start.

Technorati Tags: Easy-Poll, myspace surveys, website polling, blog polls, useful website, writing tips at garyspeer.com

As part of the "short" in short stories, it's important to focus your story on a single action or event in a character's life. That doesn't mean you won't need background ("backfill") for your story -- it simply means making your entire story focus on one action or event and using the background material sparingly if at all.

If you know, for example, that your character happens to be partial to the color green, it may help you understand her better, or at least make her more human in your mind and therefore help you convey her "realness" to readers. In a novel, you might even find a way to make her preference for green into a significant plot twist or foreshadowing. But in a short-story, unless the tale involved something green, you probably wouldn't even tell or show your readers anything about the character's love of green.

So, focus entirely on a single circumstance, or even, or point of action when you build your short story. I'll have more to say about this in a future post.

What I'm planning to do regarding these posts on short stories is to cover a few tips -- some probably obvious, some hopefully not so obvious -- about the "how-tos" of doing short stories. Then I'm going to offer you a character or two, a situation, an opening sentence, and ask you to write an opening paragraph that you would come up with using those elements to create a short story.

Oh, and of course, you're welcome to use the results to write your own short story if you wish.

Technorati Tags: short story writing tips, focusing a short story, short story background material, writing tips at garyspeer.com

You would think, in our age of almost universal cell phones, that there isn't much of a market for calling cards">calling cards, wouldn't you? You would be wrong.

Millions of people worldwide are in the market for prepaid phone calling cards -- my son being one of them. He's never been that big on high technology and he refuses to be tied to a cell phone. But since he often takes road trips to hike and climb mountains, he's always got a prepaid phone card of some kind tucked into his jacket pocket.

If you're like my son and many others, "TheRichCom.com" deserves your attention. They offer a huge range of prices per minute, number of minutes you can buy per card, and contact with virtually every nation in the world. For example, I used their search function for fun just to see what they have for calling Afghanistan -- cards ranging in cost from $5-$120 offering rates as low as 3.6-cents per minute.

Anyway, take a look around. They have an excellent search function to help you find a good deal on a calling card to meet your specific needs. All the cards are delivered instantly online.

Technorati Tags: calling cards, prepaid phone cards, TheRichCom.com, useful website, writing tips at garyspeer.com

By definition, short stories are, well, short. Most magazine writing guidelines or anthology editors I'm acquainted with would consider a short story to be no longer than 1,500-5,000 words (that would be perhaps 5-20 manuscript pages). I have seen what I would consider to be "novellas" running to maybe 40,000-50,000 words referred to as "short stories." For our purposes I'll be discussing stories which run no more than 5,000 words.

(I've never tried it, but I've heard of online "flash fiction" markets out there which publish well-crafted, single paragraphs. That's intriguing, but I don't know whether I would spend much time on it, so I probably won't discuss it here unless you express special interest.)

The key word, as I've suggested in my title and opening sentence is "short." Short stories must by nature be extremely focused. The setting, action, conflicts, and characters demand brevity. So my number one "tip" for writing short stories is this: Focus on a single situation or story element.

By contrast, a novel lets you explore major themes in a broad way. There's a danger, of course, that you'll ramble and get "off topic" in a novel. But that can work. You have room and reason to roam in a novel.

Not in a short story. You must focus on a single point in time or event in a character's life. Put your character into the situation, show the conflict, and resolve it. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Next, I'll suggest some ways you can do that. Briefly. It's about short stories.

Technorati Tags: tips for writing short stories, brevity in writing, writing tips at garyspeer.com