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Monday, 19 October, 2009
- Rant 'o The Week
- School News
- Featured Courses
- Essay: Trees and Ted Turner
- Web Links
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RANT 'O THE WEEK:
by WritersCollege.com Director Steve Morrill
Well, last week I complained about our horrible October here in Florida, with record-breaking high temperatures accompanied by summer-like humidity which, around here, makes using a snorkel seem attractive. I considered blaming all the weather on Barack Obama, not because I really thought he personally created a mass of hot air over Florida (we have the Florida Legislature to do that) but because everyone blames everything on Barack Obama. I suppose I would then have to blame George Bush fils with personally arranging the hurricanes that flattened New Orleans the same year we had four major storms crisscross Florida. One of those actually went across north Florida from Gulf to Atlantic and then turned around and recrossed the state, the meteorological equivalent of a hit-and-run driver stopping and then backing up to see what he hit.
So, OK, the government did something about the weather this week. They made it cold, a record-breaking overnight low in the 40s. Good idea, poor implementation, typical government plan. My cat is now sleeping on a hot pad because I refuse in the winter to turn on the heat (in fact, I'm still wearing shorts as I type this, I can be very stubborn). I will soon replace all the light bulbs, swapping out the low-heat-generating compact florescents for the old-fashioned incandescents. That's usually all I need to do in the winter and, unlike the central heat, I can flip on lights only in rooms I am using.
SCHOOL
NEWS: We have a new course to announce. Check them out in more detail at the Catalogs page:
Article Writing with Usha Sliva: Have you ever wondered what it would be like to see your article and name appear in Cosmopolitan or Flair; Entrepreneur or Newsweek? The pride and joy is indescribable. And the pay, not bad! Learn how to become an accomplished article writer and pitch your work to magazines of your choice. It’s all in the writing, selling and presentation and this course will teach you step by step, how handle each one of them.
These are new courses too, having been added in the past month:
Experimental Fiction Joining the Dialogue with Tantra Bensko: If you enjoy the idea of pushing beyond the boundaries of ordinary fiction, this course will allow you to play, and to forge new directions in literature which remain compelling for the reader. You will also consider how you fit into the history and ongoing presentation of experimental fiction, delve into new parts of your psyche, and start making connections with magazines.
Publish Your Writing Creative Writing that Creates Income!with Ned McIntosh: This course offers a series of progressive one-page Teaching Guides of the crafts of writing and submitting, leading up to the specific goals of submitting works for publication. The course should help determine whether the student has both the talent and drive necessary to become a published author.
FEATURED
COURSES: (Also see our homepage for daily featured courses)
Essays and Personal Stories: This is a class for any writer who is motivated to write short pieces based on his or her personal experiences, explorations, dreams, longings, emotions, thoughts, and/or ideas. These pieces can be targeted to magazines or complied into a book.
Flash Fiction: Flash fiction, when crafted with care, works within the boundaries of the genre and on the periphery of traditional storytelling. In the world of flash, a compelling story can be told in fewer than a hundred words!
Nonfiction Book Proposals: The best kept secret to marketing nonfiction books is that you don’t have to write the entire book. In this course, you will learn about all of the elements that need to be included in a book proposal and how to put them together for maximum effect on the agent and/or editor, setting you on the path to signing a contract with a publisher.
Shadow Writing: Are you curious about writer’s block (a myth), the dreams, longings, cravings, obsessions, and needs that distract you from your writing because of the strength of their grip? Do you suspect that there are depths that you can’t quite reach in your writing for fear of turning up something unpleasant? In this class, we will turn toward these things. Step on the accelerator and move into one of the darkest places you’ve ever been as a writer—your own unconscious.
Web Presence for Writers: Develop a basic knowledge of the internet, how it functions, how web sites are made, and the steps necessary to build your own web site. Learn how easy it is to have your web presence!
ESSAY: Trees and Ted Turner
by WritersCollege.com Director Steve Morrill
Ted Turner, the "Mouth of the South," popped up again the other day. He's a hard man to keep down, sort of like that Whac-a-Mole game. His latest wish list was to go back to running CNN (which he founded) but have it focus more on really important news, not just silly stuff. Oh, and Cartoon Network, he wants it to feature some show about a hero who is saving the planet from environmental disaster. And we didn't know Al Gore had a show. Personally, my only complaint with CNN is that it only seems able to cover one event at a time, and that one event endlessly. But that's true of most TV news and partly caused by the severe limitations of time and partly by the assumption that the viewer is a drooling moron.
But that's not what got me "all het up" as my mother used to say. No, in his interview with Editor & Publisher.com, Tempestuous Ted got on the case of newspapers: "You're chopping all these trees down and making paper out of them and trying to deal with all the waste paper. It's the biggest solid waste problem that we have."
Oh, for pity's sake, Ted, get a grip. Does a daily newspaper pile up around the house? It sure does. Are newspapers choking land fills nationwide? Not if those cities use recycling, newspapers are an easy recycle and most folks do that. (Indeed, being organic, they decompose in short order even in landfills. And the trees regrow, which is more than I can say for gasoline.) But the real problem is not that we generate too much newsprint but that we generate too little, and we're using less and less every day.
Even long ago, Jefferson (Thomas, the red-headed politician, not George from the 1970s sitcom) remarked upon the need for an informed electorate to maintain a strong democracy. And an electorate that relies upon television news alone is not doing its job. I read once someplace that a half-hour news program transfers about as much information as two or three pages of a newspaper—and the newspaper has dozens of pages. I recall once, as a Reuters corespondent standing around some news event with all the other media, talking to one of our local TV reporters.
"How long of a piece will you write for Reuters?" he asked.
I allowed as it might go 500 words up to 800 words but that there really was no set rule.
"I haven't written 800 words since I left J-school," he said.
Alas, Turner may be getting his way soon, as newspapers shrink, in staff size, page size, number of pages, and in advertising revenue—loss of ad revenue is what's bleeding them to death. In the process they are shrinking in coverage too. Reporters are expensive and reprinting press releases is cheap. Overseas bureaus are hideously expensive and maybe the local yokels will be satisfied with reading front page news about the County Fair's Miss Pumpkin beauty contest.
I have read an argument for the Federal government bailing out the newspaper business, on the theory that newspapers—once referred to as "the forth estate"—are a necessary check on the government itself. That's unlikely to happen. But perhaps it should.
WEB LINKS:
The New Yorker's take on book marketing plans. Funny but painfully accurate too.
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