WriterSpace.net - A Blog For Writers

Contests Can Unlock Doors for Your Writing

Writing contests can be a great way for an undiscovered author to get noticed, and potentially even start their career. For example, someone I know recently won third prize in a contest from WritingRoom.com for submitting a novel. For her prize, she had her book published, and they are helping ...

Perfecting Prose Rhythm and Pacing

Past perfect tense and passive voice have their places within the structures of the English language. Generally, those places are under the stairs or in the attic, in boxes, on shelves, way behind the adverbs. Key point: The more verbs used, the higher the chance for confusion, the higher the ...

Automated Content Will Unmake Existence

Chess is one thing, but if we get to the point computers can best humans in the arts—those splendid, millennia-old expressions of the heart and soul of human existence—then why bother existing? Fortunately, computers have yet to match us in music or writing or dancing or even drawing—the lines are ...

Amazon Is the New Oprah

Every writer knows getting your book featured on Oprah (your presidential candidate, etc.) is the shortest path to bestseller. But Oprah's so last century (and so your mother's Oldsmobile). Online, an Amazon.com endorsement becomes the coveted limelight. I haven't read David Wroblewski's The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, but around 90,000 ...

Nothing New Under the Sun, Or at the Bookstore, either

In an interview posted online, Kirby Gann used the word “bildungsroman” to describe his first novel, The Barbarian Parade. You can't just go dropping that word anywhere. I had to look it up. Having done so, I can say that the word's very existence ...

A Summary of My Blogging Tips so Far

I started writing for Desperate Curiosity August of 2007. While it hasn't been such a long time, this blog has witnessed my growth as a professional blogger. My struggles in trying to learn the ropes while advising people on what I learn at the same time are all chronicled here. ...

Why Bloggers Also Need Rest

I used to blog around 12 hours per day, 7 days per week last year. My life revolved around blogging and blogging some more. My mom was concerned with the kind of life I was living -- after all, after work, I sleep, and when I wake up, it's back ...

Where to Find Original News Topics

If you own a news blog in any niche, you'd understand how hard it is when I say that finding original stories for your blog might be a bit difficult. It's so much easier to surf to other blogs and gather stories from them, but you don't always want to ...

How to Lessen the Hype and Improve on the Substance

A recent Wired article talked about an electric car company which Wired said was a "hype-machine," banking on their press releases for popularity, but falling short most of the time. This reminds me of those times when bloggers try to bring attention to their blogs through every means possible. ...

9 Basic HTML Codes a Blogger Should Know

I know you use a CMS. I bet majority of you are used to WordPress's WYSIWYG visual editor. However, that doesn't mean you should totally forego trying to learn the basics of HTML coding. Those who have their own blogs have all the time to learn by experience. But for ...