Essay Online

There is a stigma associated with writers turning to editors for assistance with their work. Some people see outside editing as an unfair advantage, a form of literary cheating. Writers are expected to be able to objectively evaluate their own work. Interestingly, this is exactly the opposite of what one finds in other professions. Witness the famous phrase, ” A doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient.” Let’s not forget, ” A lawyer who represents herself has a fool for a client.” Writers are treated differently from these other professionals, though. Writers are somehow expected to turn in perfect drafts of novels, articles, work reports, and term papers. Their work must be edited before it is turned in. Anything less is considered unprofessional and unacceptable.

Here’s the twist in this story. Best-selling authors, magazine writers, and newspaper columnists all have editors! That’s right, perfection is only required ahead of time from students, business people, and unknown writers. Those who have “arrived” suddenly benefit from editorial guidance and second opinions on their work before it reaches its final audience.

What’s wrong with this picture? What’s a writer who is still in school or hasn’t yet been published to do? One option is to ignore the naysayers. Go right ahead and get help on writing projects before they are submitted. Ask a friend or a relative who has a firm grasp of grammar and writes well if he or she will edit or at least proofread your work. If nobody in your immediate social circle qualifies, there are many people and companies offering proofreading and editing services. If time and budget allow, take advantage of them.

What about when circumstances force a writer to tough it out alone before turning in the work? If you’re forced to take written matters into your own hands, here are the things to look for while acting as your own editor.

• Spelling &ndash Run spell check, but don’t rely on it exclusively. Look up words if you are unsure about them, even if the software approves them. Never think, “That’s close enough,” or “They won’t notice,” or “A few spelling mistakes are acceptable.” If you’ve been the victim of an educational class or system that told you that spelling doesn’t count, then whoever told you that has done you a disservice. Spelling counts!

• Grammar &ndash Many people advise that you make sure what you write matches the way you speak. That will work if you speak correctly all the time. If not, you can easily review grammar lessons online at no cost if you need a refresher.

• Punctuation &ndash Make sure you put in all the apostrophes and quotes necessary. Double check to make sure you ended interrogative questions with question marks. It’s easy to just type a period at the end of all the sentences out of habit.

• Typos &ndash Blame the gremlin that hides in your keyboard if you want to, but fix them anyway. Even though people will probably know what you meant to type, don’t make them guess.

• Clarity &ndash When a writer knows what he is saying, he sometimes overlooks other possible interpretations. “The mother checked on the baby while she was crying.” Who was crying in that sentence? It could be either one of them. “All the tabloids had to say that the Hollywood couple filed for divorce.” Does that mean that there were multiple tabloids and each and every one reported the same story or does that mean that there were no other details available and the tabloids simply had only that one fact to report?

• Consistency &ndash Verify that whenever there are two or more acceptable forms of the same word, the same form should be used every time throughout the piece. Examples to watch for are TV/television and USA/U.S.A/US of A.

• Organization &ndash Make sure your thoughts flow logically and each idea builds upon the one before it. You can’t make your point if nobody can find it!

• Word usage &ndash All forms of communication should fit their audiences. The way a person expresses herself at a Super Bowl party should be different than in a formal written report to her boss.

Scanning your work projects or term papers for these different areas will not only improve the particular assignment on which you’re working, the process sets your brain on the right path for future writing projects as well. Maybe your readers will be saying, “A writer who has himself for an editor just may be on to something.”

What’s a major deity to do when he finds himself washed up on Mt Olympus? Jupiter, once mighty Roman God has spent two millennia sulking about his defeat at the hands of Yahweh and the loss of the great Roman Empire. Jupiter and his motley assortment of gods have become complacent, even the eternal fountains have mildew on them and are in need of a good clean.

Shedding his robes in favor of an expensive Brooks Bros pin stripe three piece suit and Harvard Business School MBA in hand, the reinvented J. J. Jones is ready to reclaim his throne, the world is ripe for the picking, he rationalizes “…All the old religions are fighting each other, especially the Christians and Muslims. We can come up the middle and be everybody’s second choice.”

He does however realize that the path to glory is not an easy one, the world is a considerably different place in the 21st century than ancient Rome. Also his fellow Gods are going to need a makeover, not only in their appearances but in their attitudes as well, if they are going to fit in.

J. J. realizes that what he needs is a management consultant! Enter Alex Webster. Alex and his sometime girlfriend Victoria take on the daunting task of removing 2000 years of stagnation, of course there are some bumps along the road. Old habits die hard, and it is not long before Carmen Cupido (Cupid) gets the nickname of Dr. Love in a local night club where he has been practicing the art of matchmaking, and coming to the attention of the local police as the likely purveyor of date rape drugs.

J. J’s scheme for ‘world domination’ is to ease into it slowly by becoming the CEO of a global company. To facilitate this he engineers a scheme to merge two companies and become the head. What he doesn’t realize is how much resistance he is going to encounter from a mere mortal. Gerry Shilling CEO of Pharmaglobe has no intentions of stepping aside gently, and sees this merger as a stepping stone for himself!

I found Alex Webster And The Gods to be a thoroughly enjoyable romp. David Dent’s style of writing reminded me a lot of the late Douglas Adams, another master of putting characters in the most unlikely and bizarre situations. The humor is mostly dark and very well executed. Juno for example likens her marriage to Jupiter, to that of Bill and Hillary, and because Jupiter is off chasing every bit of skirt in the universe, “we only have sex every hundred years”.

Every chapter starts with a little quote, some words of wisdom, from Carl Sagen, to Yoda, everyone gets their say, but my personal favorite is from William S. Burroughs “Sometimes paranoia’s just having all the facts”.

If I have a criticism of the book, it is that it is too short. The ending is very cute, and certainly paves the way for a second book, and I’ll bet J.J.’s Brooks Bros suit that David Dent is typing away as you read this. All in all, I give this book very high marks, it is a fabulously crafted concept and one that would transition well into the big screen, or a TV series. The characters are larger than life, the plotlines outrageous, this is what I class as great entertainment.

Although it is officially classified as Science Fiction, it should appeal to everyone that enjoys a light and funny read.

Review by Simon Barrett

zzsimonb.blogspot.com

Article marketing is an ideal way to improve your website traffic without expending too much energy. All you need do is to write a few decent articles, and your traffic will increase significantly.

The writing must be relevant to the topic or niche of your website, or at least the page that you intend to direct traffic towards. That is one tremendous advantage that article marketing has over most other traffic building programs: you can direct the traffic to whatever page on your site you wish.

This is done by means of your author’s resource box, that is an area set aside by most article directories for a few words about yourself and a link or two back to your website. That link need not be only to your home page, but can be to any page on your site that you choose. The page you choose, however, must be relevant to the article you have written. You don’t send a reader to a page on octopi if you have just written an article about giant squid or turtles.

One mistake that many authors make is to fail to understand what is allowed in the resource box, sometimes called a bio. Some allow HTML and others don’t. Some allow links and others don’t. If you are not allowed a link to your site then there is little point in providing a directory with a free article. Don’t use these sites, and there are several of those that I have come across. Some directories do not provide a resource box, but allow you to add a few words with your url at the end of the article.

It doesn’t matter, as long as you are allowed to provide a link back to your website. You then get a one way link to your site, but even better in many cases, you also get traffic from people that like your writing and click on your link to visit your website for more information. Depending on the topic of your article, and how you submit it, that can be a massive short-term jump, or a steady stream over a longer period. The ideal is a combination of each, but that depends on your submission strategy and how many versions of your article you submit.

The versions matter, because if you can produce a few versions and submit different versions to different groups of directories, then you will get better results. That is because after a while, the search engines will begin to detect that a number of article directories, and other websites, have the same content (your article). They will then begin to drop some of these from their listings as being less relevant, and this will continue theoretically until there is only one directory or site with your article on it.

So make the best of it and submit it to as many article directories as possible for a quick burst of traffic, then write others to keep it going. Rather than write four versions of your article for four sets of different search engines, you are better writing four articles, each to be sent to all the search engines. That works better because I have tested it.

Article marketing can be used to increase your website traffic, but you can maximise that increase if you use the directories and your articles intelligently.

Silly grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, typo errors are few mistakes which are common in any content writing. But if they are not rectified then it brings bad name to your company. And the end result is that your potential customer is gone. That’s why foolproof editing and proofreading is an important aspect of all good content writing. This helps you to revise your article before publishing and also make sure that it is error free. Also in today’s world errors are really costly, thus it is must to have a proofreader.

Proofreader makes sure that all the quotation marks and parentheses are in place. After that comes punctuation. While proofreading any content, all the unnecessary crowding or extra spacing should be removed. Also special attention should be given to the addresses and phone numbers and it is wise to double check the addresses, phone numbers, and spellings of proper names. This helps in avoiding any future embarrassment. Furthermore, it is important to update calendar listings and check bullet placements. Photograph placement is one area which requires thorough attention. It is always said that content writing should be done by keeping content placement in mind as it helps in the correct placement. This makes sure that content is in tandem with the photograph and doesn’t give a jarring effect. Proofreading content isn’t tedious and unexciting job and neither time consuming. It’s the interesting one as by this one get know the latest information along with improvement in their vocabulary.

As per the experts the content written should be proofread just to ensure that your site has professional, organized web content especially company brochures, product information or data sheets and other publications intended for your customers as well as, reports in the public domain. By seeing the emergence of content writing, a sudden rise in proofreading is also noticed. That’s why all those companies offering content writing now also offers proofreading services. This makes one stop shop for all your requirements. Almost all the web content writing companies have expert proofreaders who do the editing and proofreading of the content that eliminates grammatical and syntax construction errors, defects in the flow of the text and smoothes out any glitches in the language.

If you already have written articles, then proofreaders in content writing companies can carefully scrutinize it for spelling mistakes, errors in usage of language, grammar, and other inconsistencies. They’ll not only mark the mistakes but also rectify them so that you get the well edited and perfect content. Apart from that they’ll also highlight the problem areas so that you don’t repeat them in the future. So if you’re hunting for a content writing services then proofreader will also be there just to assure you that you’ll be getting the edited and polished content. Moreover you don’t have any doubts when it comes to expertise and attention as these content writing companies will draw on their expertise to for each web content writing project.

If you belong to the few who like to write &ndash if you enjoy “the finest melody the words make,” the rhythm and pace of phrases and sentences, the architectural possibilities of paragraphs &ndash do not read this article. It is intended for those who don’t have such warm feelings for writing. For those who experience great anxiety and discouragement every time they have to put some words to paper.

We hate writing especially college or university written assignments for toil, anxiety they cause. We are tired of hearing severe words of ruthless criticism for being “unclear” or “vague” or “wordy” in our writings. But still we can’t escape the necessity of writing, unless you choose to turn for help to a freelance writer. Even for such people that seem “hopeless” from the first sight there is a possibility to become freelance writer. It sounds very disappointing that writing has become something intimidating and unpleasant. I don’t think it deserves such a negative attitude. Let’s have a look at the better side of writing and forget about chaotic thoughts, broken sentence structures and low marks for all our efforts. Before making a decision that a good freelance wanted writer will be a solution to your problems, consider a couple of facts. You can trust me that writing will help you to grow and develop your potential. When you write you discover whether you really understand the problem, or think you do; and the very process of writing makes you think, and think much. Your first work may not be perfect but the pride of the accomplishment will make the services of freelance job writer unnecessary. When you read works of prominent writers, you think that writing comes to them spontaneously and they generate their masterpieces quickly and with no efforts at all. In fact it is quite the opposite. Beneath the surface there is a hidden history of struggle, false starts and dead ends, incoherent and vague ideas laboriously worked into clear, lucid text. Not every person involved in freelance writing work thought that it would be the way to earn a living. Holding a freelance writing position one can generate ideas and create masterpieces, but writing requires will and burning desire not to quit a job right in the middle of the process when nothing seems to be right. Every writer is aware that freelance academic writing is not just a resource of income, but also a way to teach students and post-graduates a culture of writing by own samples.

Good writing, like any craft, is the result of training, practice, and persistence. That can be discouraging, but it should also encourage you: if you persist, if you work, if you try, you will become a better writer, a good writer, able to express your thoughts with elegance and clarity. Over the long term the best thing you can do to become a better writer is to read a lot and develop your own judgment and skill. Read stories, newspaper and magazine articles, novels, poetry, email, online stuff, magazine ads, cornflakes boxes, movie reviews, and freelance writing samples, whatever. You’ll discover lots of excellent writing and lots of revolting writing &ndash and once you have a bit of a critical eye you can learn useful lessons from everything you come across. Above all, just read, read, read. Learn to stop fussing about and just take pleasure in playing with words. Finally, write for yourself &ndash write to reflect, write to learn, and write to become a wiser and better person.

Ask any published book author about writing a book, and they will tell you it’s a monumental task. The process is long, drawn out, and grueling. Even if you enjoy writing &ndash and don’t mind writing on the same subject for an extended period — the writing process will, undoubtedly, exhaust you. Getting your book published, however, will take even more time and effort than writing the thing in the first place.

Are you thinking about writing a book? Have you already written one? Do you wonder how to get your book published? If you so, read on. Here are some hand-picked tips on how to publish your book.

WRITING YOUR BOOK

To write a successful book you need to start out with some original thought. You probably have plenty of originality, but you may have trouble creating a coherent flow of ideas and information that the public will digest. The first step is to create the skeleton (or blueprint) of your book. You need to organize your thoughts into a progression of chapters.

If you are writing a non-fiction book, start with a table of contents. Write chapter headings and sub-headings. Organize your chapters so you build each chapter upon one another. If you can brainstorm more chapter headings than you will use, you will find it easier to fill your book with a series of short articles that flow into one another.

If you are writing fiction, you will need more of a storyboard. You will need to create cause and effect as well as character sketches. To make your story coherent your characters will need to react to events. Their reactions should become predictable as your readers get into the story. You may need to create some situations for your characters to introduce their traits to the reader.

These are general guidelines on how to construct your book. The complete process will be much more involved as you move closer to finding out how to get your book published. Even after you are finished with the bulk of the content, your goal to publish your book involves a lot more work.

GETTING YOUR BOOK INTO PRINT

The next step to get your book published is finding a publisher. Both the Internet and your local library have many resources. You can tap into these resources to find the best publisher to publish your book. After a series of queries and correspondence with potential publishers, you may get an invitation to submit your manuscript. Then the work begins.

A publisher is very experienced in finding marketable books. He knows what it will take to get your book to sell. Don’t be offended when a book editor tears your writing apart, as this may be a positive sign that the publisher is interested in your book. Expect to enter into a close relationship of compromise and change with the editor as you rework what you have already painstakingly written. When you are finished, you will have a readable, clean, and correct manuscript, ready for print.

The road to getting a book published is a long one, but it is well worth the effort. Trust yourself, and trust the publisher to create a beautiful masterpiece. Don’t be discouraged if several publishers are not interested in your book. You may have to self-publish your first book, and then again, your book may eventually get accepted right away. Good luck and enjoy the process.

If you’re working in the corporate world then there are chances of hiring professional content writing services. But mind you content writing is completely different from transcription and transcription services. Transcription services are usually required in fields such as law, medicine, and education however still at some point of time you need professional content writers for writing documentations. Talking about transcription companies, they usually provide services to business, law firms, court rooms, doctor’s offices, hospitals, and universities. It doesn’t mean in these mentioned areas writing is not required. Content writing is one thing which is required in every field but mainly in the web arena.

Nowadays content writing services also include translation and interpretation services if desired. This has become a trend because sometime conferences are held that have more than one language being spoken. This makes utterly difficult for the participants to follow what is being said. Thus, an interpreter is often compulsory who can not only speak in both languages, but can also write in both languages fluently.

With the growing awareness these days various things such as court proceedings, criminal investigations, doctors notes, and business meetings are often recorded in live. Later, they are converted into written text by the content writers. Thus, professional content writing services have become necessary and should provide accurate written accounts of verbal records. Therefore it becomes obvious for the content writer to have some previous knowledge of the subject so that he or she is able to write a detailed report well.

We can only say that content writing is the end of all your tensions and worries as content writers are there for you to bail you out from the trouble waters.